The barrio is a miracle. It is wind and dust put to work. It is water poured out on a browning ice plant yesterday, bursting fuchsia tomorrow. The barrio is where we cook over an open flame or fast on a holy day. It is the place of fresh paint and salt lines on mud-clay bricks. It is where sleep comes easy or not at all, where nights are punctuated with parables and gatherings spread the latest news. The shop clerk tells the strange dream she had the night before last, the mailbox meeting moves to a cup of black coffee and chisme in the kitchen, and Sunday morning banda music whispers into a bedroom window a block away. In the barrio you can hear the birds. You can hear the doorbell. If you listen. You can hear a neighbor tell the tale of a broken leg, a wandering dog, a sunset sky beyond comparison.
Have you seen so-and-so lately?
Has the brush and bulky come?
When does school let out today?
A river runs through the barrio, a path for monsoon storms pouring down on the neighborhood, their waves deep down under a sandy wash that remembers distant thunderclouds. A freeway injects a human-made border between two sides of the barrio; its side-of-the-road memorials mark the places of tragedy and hope.
Sometimes, the bulldozer comes to rip through the barrio and its push arms screech against the pavement and caliche, carving a relentless wound.
Homes are not always houses in the barrio, and not always permitted. But even modest dwellings have a hearth.
A truck wanders through the neighborhood, picking up or dropping off what no one can manage to deal with today. A vato on his bike stops to kick a deflated tire, wheels carrying the weight of the world. The lady with too many bags tags this street and that, crisscrossing the city like it’s a game of hood checkers. Some boxes black, some white. Some players men, some kings.
I once knew a man they called the mayor of the barrio. A welder by trade, he held in his pocket the keys to the electrical box for the light switches to the community park. When it was time for a soccer game, the children ready on the field or sulking on the monkey bars, the mayor would crack open a can and tell the neighbors all his glories — all but how he managed to get those keys.
Meanwhile, the comadres clustered in their team shirts would map out their backyard barbacoa seating, the proper way to hang clothes on the line, where to position hummingbird feeders, and which corner store had the best candles and carnations.
Have you prayed for the barrio lately?
Have you driven in or out?
Have you held the sacred hearts pinned to front doors, the handprints eternally pressed in cement, the birthday cards preserved under refrigerator magnets?
Even as it shrinks on a map, the barrio grows considerably in our memory. And we need hands big enough to hold it.
Glossary
Chisme: gossip
Banda: large ensemble dance music
Vato: dude
Comadres: close female friends or family
Barbacoa: barbecue
Melani Martinez is a senior lecturer in the University of Arizona’s Writing Program. She is also the author of The Molino: A Memoir. A profile of Martinez appeared in Arizona Highways’ May 2025 issue.
EL PRESIDIO
BARRIO SIN NOMBRE
ELYSIAN GROVE MARKET, BARRIO VIEJO
BARRIO SANTA ROSA
BARRIO VIEJO
BARRIO VIEJO
BARRIO KROEGER LANE
BARRIO ANITA
ART HOUSE CENTRO, EL PRESIDIO
BARRIO VIEJO