Columbus, New Mexico, shocked by COVID-19 early on, adapts for new normal
COLUMBUS, N.M. - Not even international borders stop the Mimbres River.
Ninety-one miles of melted snow and runoff from mountain ranges of Northern New Mexico, the small river flows through the Southern New Mexican desert, going underground beneath Deming, then Columbus, and surfacing again in the sparkling lakes of Puerto Palomas de Villa, a small tourist town of about 4,600 just across the U.S.-Mexico border.
That’s the story of Columbus and Palomas, too: generations of unfettered connectivity binding the two communities above the ground and the Mimbres binding them beneath it. Many in Columbus have family homes in Palomas, and most people in Columbus frequent the less expensive shops and services available in their town’s Mexican counterpart.
For generations, Mexican families in Palomas, mindful of future opportunities for their children, have come to Columbus to give birth, then return to Palomas with their American newborns to live a Mexican life. When these youngsters are ready for school, Columbus school buses retrieve them at the border, obliging their legal right for public education in this country.
“The border is an imaginary line in Columbus. It’s a gray area,” said Norma Gomez, a lifelong resident and an official for the local chamber of commerce.
When the news of the COVID-19 pandemic reached the village, it was viewed as a threat too distant to be alarming, and too abstract to distract residents from the welcomed stability of the small town. Some residents waved it off as a peculiar big-city affliction.