Anti-Colonial Recoveries: Building an Alternative Infrastructure in New Mexico

Dan Kabella

University of California, San Francisco

danielle.kabella@ucsf.edu

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of Quebrar, a community-led drug recovery program, as a dynamic and evolving alternative infrastructure within New Mexico’s complex historical, political, and social contexts. Established in 1968 by a coalition of activists, drug users, and individuals in recovery, Quebrar aimed to address the pervasive lack of support for drug addiction in a region marked by racial violence, land dispossession, and the criminalization of drug use. Through ethnographic research and archival sources, this paper explores the processes and strategies through which Quebrar transformed a decommissioned site into a drug recovery program. Quebrar’s infrastructure serves as a “thing-in-motion” by resisting and reimagining colonial and carceral systems tied to addiction treatment. This exploration raises questions about how alternative infrastructures can evolve in response to histories of colonialism and what they offer for future reimaginings of care and justice. Finally, it considers how these themes intersect with the practice of research itself, asking how embodied knowledge can be incorporated into the research process.

Resumen

Este artículo explora el surgimiento de Quebrar, un programa de rehabilitación de drogas dirigido por la comunidad, como una infraestructura alternativa dinámica y en evolución dentro de los complejos contextos históricos, políticos y sociales de Nuevo México. Creado en 1968 por una coalición de activistas, consumidores de drogas y personas en proceso de recuperación, Quebrar pretendía hacer frente a la omnipresente falta de apoyo a la drogadicción en una región marcada por la violencia racial, el despojo de tierras y la criminalización del consumo de drogas. A través de la investigación etnográfica y fuentes de archivo, este artículo examina cómo Quebrar transformó un lugar abandonado en un programa de rehabilitación de drogas y cómo su infraestructura resiste y reimagina los sistemas coloniales y carcelarios vinculados al tratamiento de la adicción. De este modo, la infraestructura de Quebrar se convierte en un «objeto en movimiento» que evoluciona en respuesta a las condiciones históricas y materiales. Este artículo también plantea cuestiones sobre cómo pueden evolucionar las infraestructuras alternativas en respuesta a las historias de colonialismo y qué ofrecen para futuras reimaginaciones del cuidado y la justicia. Por último, se reflexiona cómo estos temas se entrecruzan con la práctica de la investigación.

Keywords

borders, infrastructures, ecologies, drug recovery, decolonization, abolition, New Mexico

Introduction

I felt the ground tremble from the roar of the train, its unyielding passage carving a boundary between north and south, just two blocks away from the two-bedroom family home that had once belonged to my grandmother. The tracks, a reminder of how the land and lives were separated, now stood between the past and the present. Driving along the Caminos, I departed the neighborhood dubbed “the Brick” after the industrial brick-making company whose coal-fired kilns still release a faint trace of smoke into the air. My car lugged me through mixed landscapes of arid shrublands and cottonwoods that hugged the river bottoms on the west bank of the Rio Grande to the old Armijo schoolhouse.

This ethnographic vignette serves as an entry point into my research on alternative infrastructures. The article examines the emergence of Quebrar through its interconnected material, social, political, and ecological dimensions as an alternative infrastructure for drug recoveries in New Mexico. Established in 1968 by a coalition of activists, drug users, and individuals in recovery, Quebrar aimed to address the pervasive lack of support for drug addiction in a region marked by racial violence, land dispossession, and the criminalization of drug use. Central to this study is a decommissioned radar site, redefined into a residential treatment center and one of the earliest methadone maintenance programs in the United States. These two interventions were separate efforts but were deeply interconnected, both physically and socially grounded in the histories and realities of the people around them. This infrastructure became a space where local actors—activists, medical practitioners, and community members—came together to confront the intersecting issues of police violence, systematic neglect, and the enduring legacies of colonialism.

Let me start by saying that this research is not confined to abstract theories or distant histories. Addressing injustices, including those that extend to knowledge—how it is produced, whose worldviews are valued, and who is recognized as a credible knower—requires grounding this work in its specific contexts and struggles. To remain grounded in the people and places this study represents, I begin with my own family—its connection to these lands and the lives of those whose stories I seek to tell. My grandmother, María Alfaros, introduced in the opening vignette, embodies ties to lands granted under both Spanish and Mexican sovereignties, reflecting our family’s entanglement with the contested histories examined in this work. Her son, my father, Clotario Alfaros, resisted and survived a legal system designed to systematically target Chicanos for incarceration. Later, he endured the long-term consequences of this system’s neglect, including the impact of viral hepatitis—a consequence of the delayed and inadequate provision of life-saving resources. Their intertwined stories are not fixed narratives but suspended tensions, embodying both the pain of dispossession and the possibilities of worlds otherwise.

These stories do not offer closure but instead pose enduring questions: What happens when we allow loss—whether personal grief or collective suffering—to shape our research? In a field often marked by detachment, what if the researcher is not separate from the researched? How can we shift from simply producing information to engaging deeply with lived experience? Finally, what kinds of institutions must we build to allow knowledge to emerge through this messiness—refusing to separate theory from lived reality?

These questions of course engage with broader discussions in postcolonial and Black feminist studies, where scholars foreground situated and relational nature of knowledge production. Theorists have positioned the body as both a site of suffering and a medium for transformative solidarity (Anzaldúa 1987; Fanon 2023), as well as a locus of power and resistance in corporeal practices of knowledge production (Ruiz-Trejo and García-Dauder 2019), critiquing Eurocentric epistemologies and advocating for pluriversality—the coexistence of diverse ways of knowing and being (Escobar 2018; Lloréns 2021). These worldviews call for epistemic disobedience, disrupting hegemonic frameworks and centering subaltern experiences and decolonial epistemologies (Liboiron 2021; Mignolo 2000; Quijano 2007). Other theorists explore the uses of vulnerability, anger, and positionality to challenge systems of power, emphasizing the importance of lived experience and interdependence in understanding humanity (Behar 2022; Lorde 2012). Together they invite questions and exploration of where the personal and political intersect in the formation of alternative infrastructures.

Science and technology studies (STS) conceptualizes infrastructures as dynamic and heterogeneous assemblages that integrate material, social, political, and ecological dimensions (De la Cadena 2015; Puig de la Bellacasa 2016, 2017; Star 1995, 1999). Rather than static systems, infrastructures function as “things-inmotion,” evolving through the interaction of institutions, legal frameworks, policies, and material practices (Anand et al. 2018; Larkin 2013). They are also sites of power, negotiation, and transformation, capable of generating new possibilities (Dokumaci 2020, 2023; Edwards 2003). In the context of borderlands, alternative infrastructures emerge from the boundaries that divide, transforming these arbitrary lines into dynamic processes for creating innovative ways of living and organizing. At the border, infrastructures are often theorized through lenses of control and surveillance, as demonstrated by studies on border surveillance (Dijstelbloem 2021), infrastructural rehabilitation (C. Martinez 2023), and rivers as borders (Thomas 2021), which frame the transborder space as a carceral zone. This paper builds on and moves beyond these carceral frameworks to explore Quebrar as an example of a reimagined border infrastructure—one that transcends and expands beyond carceral frameworks. It represents an infrastructure in motion, rooted in a specific place yet actively transforming the borderlands into a space of possibility and collective reimagination.

This study centers two critical landscapes of infrastructure: a physical decommissioned radar site and the symbolic landscape of methadone, which embodies both liberation and state-imposed control hybridities. I examine how Quebrar resists and reshapes dominant systems through interconnected material and symbolic practices, highlighting their broader role in the work of drug recovery. Before delving into these efforts in detail, I provide an overview of Quebrar’s politically grounded praxis within contexts of ongoing struggle.

Worlds in Struggle | Communities in Motion

They gathered to confront a subject laden with stigma and silenced by shame: heroin addiction. Old Armijo became a symbol of an emancipatory vision for a therapeutic community. The potential—and limitations—of methadone maintenance “fired the imagination” of those present. As one participant from the Wednesday night meetings recalled, “Here were the addicts, their families, their parents, people from respectable families, too, coming to see if there was going to be a miracle.” (Danaceau 1973, 74)

This vignette captures the grassroots beginnings of a community grappling with heroin addiction. In spring 1967, people gathered weekly at the Armijo schoolhouse to share their firsthand experiences. According to a federal program evaluation report from a War on Poverty–era agency, these meetings started small but gradually expanded, at one point involving nearly sixty participants. Meetings, however, faced external scrutiny (Danaceau 1973). Police patrols and infiltration attempts were commonplace. Within a year, the group formally identified as Quebrar, uniting people who used drugs, individuals in recovery, family members, and activists. Its name, both a tribute and a shortened phrase, originated from “Es de curar, quebrar a las puras bravas,” which translates to, “It is to cure, to break, in a manner of pure guts.” The phrase apparently was spoken in anguish by an addict who had spent eighteen years in prison. He uttered these words after the name he proposed was voted down during a naming meeting for the group. Two weeks later, he was found deceased in a ditch from a heroin overdose. In his memory, the group adopted the shortened name, Quebrar, as a tribute to his words and his struggle—a struggle emblematic of countless others seeking a place in mid-century New Mexico to detox in a system dominated by private facilities accessible only to those with financial means (Polanco 1971).

Leading these meetings was Joe Fernandez, a high school math teacher and president of the Armijo Neighborhood Association. In my interview with his daughter, she described Joe’s commitment to the Chicano rights movement, a dedication shaped by his experiences as a first-generation Mexican American.¹ Joe’s cause for action was shaped by personal encounters with stereotypes and wrongful accusations, which led to him and his brother facing the reality of incarceration—an issue so pervasive in the region that it violated the civil rights of many in their community (United States Commission on Civil Rights 1970, 8).² While Joe moved forward, his brother’s full term marked the beginning of a struggle with heroin that was both initiated and perpetuated by his time in prison. The meetings emerged to address a critical gap in Chicano activism, offering a space to confront issues related to substance use an area that other groups often chose to avoid in the Southwestern United States.³

The Black Berets, established in 1968 and named in honor of the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, were a Chicano activist group that broadened the movement’s reach in Albuquerque (E. Martinez 2002). Their campaigns tackled systemic issues such as racism, unemployment, police brutality, and land dispossession. These struggles were intensified by the influx of Anglo migrants drawn to Albuquerque for federal jobs, nuclear science, tourism, and its reputation as a haven for those seeking respite from tuberculosis (Forrest 1998; Sánchez 2008; Veregge 1993). They organized direct-action protests against police violence. In addition to their advocacy, the Black Berets launched programs such as food banks, free breakfast initiatives, health clinics, legal centers, and political education projects. Inspired by groups like the Black Panthers and the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Berets adopted an internationalist perspective, connecting their local efforts to global anti-imperialist movements and positioning Chicano struggles within a broader fight against colonialism, capitalism, and systemic oppression (Chavez 2023; Gómez-Quiñones and Vásquez 2014; Oropeza 2019).

Solidarity between Quebrar and the Black Berets was inevitable given their shared roots in the same barrios and common politically grounded struggles. Joaquin Lujan, a former Black Beret, reflected this in an interview with me, stating, “We were the community. We found unity because we all lived in the same neighborhoods.”⁴ Together their organizing rooted in relational dimensions of justice is recognized across several campaigns that came up in the interviews I conducted. These campaigns focused on addressing local needs, such as access to water and sewer services in areas affected by groundwater contamination, building recreational infrastructure for youth, and repurposing a decommissioned radar site for drug recovery.

By advocating for basic infrastructure, the activists simultaneously addressed related economic and material needs, at times transforming neighborhood improvement projects into opportunities for job training or leisure. Meeting people where they were, in their homes, or at their parks, created a direct pathway to observe and address homegrown challenges. Activists spoke of supporting young people, many of whom were struggling with addiction. For example, programs focused on teaching construction skills, such as plastering, equipping them with practical and employable abilities. At the same time, critiques of racial labor divisions in trade jobs prompted school walkouts at Joe’s high school, advocating for better education.⁵

The schoolhouse, community centers, and drop-in centers became vital spaces within neighborhoods, providing residents with places to gather, seek support, and address community challenges. Joaquin described how the office of the Black Berets, located near an old family restaurant, became a hub for addressing critical issues like police brutality and the rise of heroin use—interconnected challenges that underscored broader systemic issues of racism as well as poverty.⁶ He noted that alongside these issues raised by residents who dropped in, people often sought help with basic needs such as clothing, food, and shelter, highlighting the multifaceted struggles faced by the community. He reflected on how these spaces stood out to him as opportunities to resolve problems within the community, which was grappling with the pressures of capitalism, evolving land holdings, and the lingering effects of internalized colonialism and assimilation policies (Dunbar- Ortiz 2007, 2015; Gilmore 1999; Johnson 2013).

Joaquin noted that these struggles sometimes manifested in conflict, with individuals “stealing from each other,” but the meetings provided a crucial forum for dialogue and accountability.⁷ They offered restorative ways to disrupt the cycles of harm exacerbated by police interference and a court system that decontextualized the root causes of their challenges, while simultaneously reimagining and creating community interdependence and redefining justice through an intersectional framework. Their approach transformed “crime” and “violence” by prioritizing collective accountability and healing. It shifted away from punitive systems, toward restorative practices that strengthened social bonds and acknowledged the broader structural forces contributing to harm. This practice sharply contrasted with interventions that framed crime and poverty as problems to be managed through the imposition of “law and order”—a logic central to top-down approaches to methadone treatment. Quebrar later sought to invert this framework (further explored in the final section).

Both neighborhood improvement projects and the creation of restorative spaces embodied a politics of place (Herrera 2015), as activists cultivated a collective community identity through their practices. As I demonstrate below, these efforts not only grounded the Chicano movement in specific spatial contexts but also reconfigured semi-urban landscapes (the South Valley), transforming how people engaged with and experienced their environments. The stakes were particularly significant in places like the South Valley, where residents had endured centuries of land tenure transformations driven by shifting borders that continually redefined class and racial hierarchies.

Overlapping Territorialities | Sovereignties in Dispute

A historical marker stood like a witness, inscribed with utopian fantasies of development tied to the very transit corridor that I traveled. The path—El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro—connected the once isolated frontier provinces of New Mexico to a colonial empire governed by Spain, then by Mexico roughly 1,400 miles away. European colonizers followed footpaths of the Pueblo peoples north to occupy these lands and retreated south during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and returned once more in the Spanish reconquest (Sánchez 2008). These turbulent histories—of violence, resistance, and survival—have left indelible marks on the landscape, shaping infrastructures that continuously mutate under the weight of shifting borders.

The South Valley, located southwest of Albuquerque, includes several historic villages connected by a network of irrigation systems vital to the region’s agriculture and community life. The area depends on the Rio Grande for its fertile soil and encompasses a mix of rural and semi-urban land uses, shaped by its overlapping ties to Pueblo and Spanish land grant histories (Moises 2012).

In 1692 Atrisco was established as a Spanish settler community through colonial land grants, its name derived from the Nahuatl words Analco and Atlixco. These land grants allocated large parcels to prominent families for private ownership, displacing Tiwa-speaking Puebloans from their communal lands (Metzgar 1977; Sánchez 2008). The colonization of New Mexico also involved the presence of Tlaxcalan Indigenous Peoples and detribalized Natives, blurring the lines between Indigenous and settler identities. This complex entanglement illustrates how colonization co-opted Indigenous groups into systems that facilitated dispossession and assimilation, while also spurring acts of resistance. Efforts to recover, reclaim, and reremember these histories—both of displacement and defiance—are gaining momentum (Cotera and Saldaña-Portillo 2014; Saldaña- Portillo 2016, 2017; S. Trujillo 2020).

The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, following the Mexican-American War, transferred the South Valley, including the Atrisco Land Grant, from the Mexican Republic to the US. This shift entrenched the region within a settler-colonial framework, accelerating capitalist extraction, military expansion, and land dispossession (Maciel and Gonzales-Berry 2000). Over time, traditional communal land practices were replaced by systems emphasizing individual ownership, leading to significant disputes and inequalities. By the late twentieth century, corporate development reshaped both the governance and landscape of the region, reinforcing the shift from land-based economies to market-driven structures with lasting social and economic impacts (Correia 2009, 2013; Dunbar- Ortiz 2017; Sánchez 2008). The consequences of these shifts prompted various redevelopment interventions, with grassroots efforts led by organizations like Quebrar and the Black Berets emphasizing resource access—water, sewage, and healthcare—while directly challenging systemic forces that criminalized addiction, poverty, and crime. These systemic issues became deeply intertwined with personal struggles of addiction.

An August 1968 editorial in the Albuquerque Tribune addressed socioeconomic distress and systemic inequities related to addiction in the South Valley. Joe, set to direct the rehabilitation program Quebrar, emphasized the colonial and structural roots of addiction, linking issues like land dispossession, US urbanization, and the erosion of community institutions as key contributors to the region’s struggles (Jennings 1968). Driving the reporter through the “fringes of the city,” Joe pointed out areas marked by deindustrialization, sharply contrasting with the expanding defense industries spurred by the Cold War. This uneven development highlighted how the Valley absorbed the weight of economic decline, while the city center thrived on military-driven growth. Joe described how families, once land-rich, had to sell their properties incrementally to afford legal representation for relatives caught in cycles of drug-related incarceration. “There is a husband, a brother, a sister who were once land wealthy, who have had to sell it little by little to hire lawyers for their sons,” he explained (Jennings 1968). His account underscores the interconnected burdens of land loss, incarceration, addiction, and uneven development, revealing how systemic injustice perpetuates these cycles.

Joe’s framing of addiction aligns with prior research linking land dispossession to heroin addiction (e.g., Garcia 2010; M. Trujillo 2010). However, his insights also reveal a gap in the literature, which often overlooks the role of political engagement in addressing these issues. Such politically grounded efforts—aimed at challenging carceral and colonial structures—shift the focus of medical anthropology from social suffering (Kleinman et al. 1997) to the world-making capacity of infrastructure. Building on the foundational work of Angela Garcia (2010, 2014, 2016a, 2016b), which emphasizes the intertwined nature of land, loss, and love, this research seeks to extend this important scholarship by exploring the multiplicities of pain and love in contexts of colonial loss. It examines how these complex phenomenological experiences, coupled with material struggles, serve as powerful vehicles for political engagement.

In addition to these theoretical frameworks, geographic factors also play a significant role in shaping these efforts. One key aspect is the geographic divide between the South Valley and other parts of Albuquerque, which has shaped how the region and its residents are viewed and treated—particularly in relation to drugs. In my interviews with family and fellow activists who organized alongside Joe, people often talked about prejudice and fear tied to geographic markers. In those accounts the South Valley was perceived as a site of danger shaped by stereotypes and unfamiliarity. For some, the Rio Grande, physically separating the South Valley from Albuquerque, emerged as both a literal and symbolic boundary. For example, Joe’s daughter Evelyn recounts, “People were afraid to cross the river and come into the South Valley.” The river, in this narrative, transcends its physicality to serve as a metaphor for division and fear. Evelyn’s reflection—“At one point, I thought, yeah, I kind of like that people are afraid to come over here, you know?”—reveals the complexity of isolation and preservation.⁸ While the river symbolized marginalization and exclusion, it also offered a protective shield against external judgment and intrusion. This hybridity captures how geographic markers can both oppress and manifest as structures that protect communities navigating imposed marginality and carceralization (Gomez 2000).

This divide was further entrenched by patterns of policing, which disproportionately criminalized the South Valley. Despite the presence of drug use in both the South Valley and the Northeast Heights, punitive policing and heightened surveillance were concentrated in the former, further intrenching inequalities and justifying the racialized “law and order” governance of the Great Society era (Alyosha Goldstein 2012; Polanco 1971).

Other accounts reflect how some community members reclaimed these fractured spaces in the South Valley, which signals how landscapes entangled with ways communities organize, resist, and redefine their relationships to both space and systemic forces. For instance, Quebrar’s initiative of the “Poor People’s Park” addressed youth “idleness” by transforming land into recreational spaces, aimed at offering alternatives to drug activity (Leahigh 1969). As volunteers and others cleared tree stumps and prepared the land for a baseball field, their efforts symbolized more than tangible redevelopment—they embodied a collective commitment to resist the flow of drugs and foster community through cooperation and leisure. While the October 1969 Albuquerque Journal article about the park inaccurately and problematically framed “drugs” as the sole culprit behind youth “idleness” (Leahigh 1969), much of Quebrar’s activism extended beyond neighborhood restoration to the streets in direct action protests. Activists took to the streets to demand accountability for the treatment of Chicanos, challenging the use of drugs and crime as justifications for excessive force, entrapment, and incarceration.

Just as the South Valley’s geographic markers shaped its challenges and resistance strategies, the land’s organic and constructed elements became sources of possibility and reimagination. In the next section, I will show how this reimagination materialized into an adaptive reuse of a decommissioned radar site as a residential treatment center—a grounded resistance, rooted in both the land and the reimagined radar site, challenging the systems of oppression that have historically shaped their lives.

Aerial Surveillances | Grounded Resistances

During the Cold War, New Mexico emerged as a strategic hub for US defense initiatives, hosting key facilities such as research centers for nuclear weapons development and military bases central to nuclear strategy and deployment. These installations were not merely sites of technological innovation but also exemplified the federal seizure of land, perpetuating what scholars have termed the “nuclear colonial” period of New Mexico (Gómez 2022; Masco 2006). The early-warning radar site, established by the US government to enhance national security through air defense and missile detection, became yet another instance of this broader pattern.

Initially, Mt. Vulcan—part of the Atrisco Land Grant—was identified for the radar installation. However, when the private landowner refused to sell at the offered price, the Air Force redirected its plans to a site twenty-two miles west of Albuquerque on the West Mesa, also within the Atrisco Land Grant. In 1955 the federal government invoked eminent domain to seize this land, offering only six hundred dollars as “just compensation” (The Albuquerque Tribune 1955). This controversial act of condemnation underscored the logic of American exceptionalism, where national security and technological progress were prioritized at the expense of local sovereignty and communal rights. The land was repurposed to construct a radar site that included housing facilities and an oxidation pond.

As the Cold War waned in the late 1960s, the perceived need for a robust military infrastructure diminished. The radar site, once a bustling hub of areal defense, became obsolete. In 1968 the Air Force deactivated the station and a year later the federal government declared the site surplus property and transferred it to be auctioned off. In a fractured post–Cold War landscape, jurisdiction over the radar systems transitioned to the Federal Aviation Administration, while portions of the land were transferred to the Office of Economic Opportunity. This transfer to Office of Economic Opportunity reflected the Great Society governance era’s broader ambition to address systemic poverty.

With the radar station’s deactivation, the site fell into neglect. The extensive decay, from frayed electrical systems to corroded plumbing and structural disintegration posed monumental challenge, requiring significant resources and labor. In August 1970 Quebrar would acquire the site and 54 buildings, including 27 residential units, and 38.8 acres of land from the Office of Economic Opportunity (Swanson 1970). This endeavor was far from straightforward. Rehabilitation required not only substantial financial investment but also the navigation of complex administrative and legal hurdles. To address these challenges, Quebrar leaned into collective action, community support, and shared resources. Within this mutual-aid-based political economy, a volunteer lawyer helped navigate legal complexities, while grassroots fundraising efforts, including taco sales, became a cornerstone of local contributions. In my interview with Joaquin, he recalls the early efforts to transform the site: “We went up there to help the various folks who were in the program, living and meeting there. It was pretty rough. We went out and helped do the yards. It isolated them from the street. It became moment to try to heal.”⁹

While grassroots efforts formed the backbone of the project, federal initiatives such as the War on Poverty’s Model Cities program provided $120,000 in funding. This partnership between government resources was further exemplified by a petition with over 2,000 signatures. At first glance, the stakes may seem to align primarily with a dynamic and participatory vision of democracy. However, a closer examination reveals complexities that warrant deeper consideration. Many of Quebrar’s clientele were convicted felons who had lost their voting rights, effectively excluding them from formal democratic participation.

This raises critical questions about political agency beyond conventional systems. While the petition reflects widespread community endorsement, it also underscores gaps in democratic representation. Despite these exclusions, disenfranchised individuals asserted their voices through everyday practices of protest, mutual aid, and neighborhood rehabilitation. These efforts culminated in the establishment of an institution like Quebrar, where they could stake claims in uses of a radar site through alternative pathways. This transformation represents a profound assertion of collective agency, reframing democracy not solely as formal participation but as grounded, lived practices that actively challenge and resist systemic oppression. In parallel, this challenges the stability of human rights frameworks, especially in relation to drug policy reform. While shifts in understanding and application have emerged, the broader concern persists that human rights, as traditionally conceptualized, may serve as an unstable and at times counterproductive foundation for reform (Seear and Mulcahy 2024) as they fail to fully capture or support the lived, collective resistance embodied by movements like Quebrar.

The acquisition of the radar site was framed as a pivotal moment in addressing the interconnected challenges of poverty and crime in New Mexico. In their petition, Quebrar emphasized its unparalleled potential, stating, “There is no other use either present or contemplated which can serve the needs of Albuquerque as can the Quebrar program.” They further described the site as a “strong weapon” in the “war against poverty and crime” (“Petition” 1970). In this way, the radar site symbolized more than just a physical space; it embodied a collective imaginary of rehabilitation. Methadone, central to Quebrar’s treatment model and inextricably linked to the drug policies of the time, became a tangible embodiment of a broader moral and political vision for how rehabilitation should matter to Albuquerque. For administrators grappling with rising crime and persistent poverty, the site’s acquisition was framed not merely as a response to heroin use but as a means to address the perceived correlates of addiction— poverty and crime. These were understood, at the time, as both causes and consequences of addiction, reinforcing a narrative that tied individual rehabilitation to broader social reform—a reform anchored in tightly regulated methadone doses and the management of streets within carefully controlled environments. Quebrar strategically mobilized this rehabilitation imaginary, translating it into a compelling narrative to gain support from skeptical politicians.

This covert strategy was undeniably brilliant, leveraging methadone’s legitimacy as a federally sanctioned treatment to secure political and institutional support. By aligning their program with mainstream drug policies, Quebrar gained access to critical resources and recognition that might otherwise have been unattainable. Evelyn, Joe’s daughter, recalled how the political urgency surrounding heroin addiction, especially among politicians' own families, spurred the creation of rehabilitation programs, and how Joe strategically leveraged the opportunity to secure funding for Quebrar initiative at the former radar site turned treatment center, using “rehabilitation” as a boundary object to gain political support (Roberts 2012).

Indeed, this was not merely a concession to dominant narratives; rather, it was a calculated move that allowed them to “hack” the system and reorient the program toward an alternative vision rooted in recovering the Chicano addict and also the world around them. For Quebrar, reform was never an individual pursuit but a collective endeavor to “make well the society.” This worldview is encapsulated in an evaluation report quoting Joe: “We can’t take and throw a person into a brand-new beautiful box (Mental Health Center) and keep him there for treatment and then throw him back into the garbage can. We are trying to rehabilitate him to our society, and I don’t think our society is all that great right now...I think that our society is sick, and I think that the addict is a symptom of that sickness. We have to make well the society while we are making well the addict” (Polanco 1971, 53). Joe critiques the narrow focus on individual, alienating pathology, emphasizing the need for a more grounded approach that addresses the underlying causes of addiction embedded in social structures—factors dismissed as the “garbage can” of colonialism. Rather than placing the burden solely on the individual, Joe deflects the focus to the “sick society” itself, highlighting how societal and political conditions play a pivotal role in perpetuating addiction and the need for transformative recoveries for both the addict and the world around them.

In the same report, the evaluator dismisses Quebrar’s “constant references” to the “fight” to secure the West Mesa Radar Site, stating that it “serves no purpose.” The critique extended further, as the evaluator opined that those designing the program were “too Chicano” to administer it effectively without external consultation. The evaluator criticizes their unwillingness to publicly credit the “establishment” for its role in the site’s acquisition, framing their refusal to conform as too radical (Polanco 1971, 53). This evaluative commentary underscored the tension between Quebrar’s grassroots, politically grounded approach and the institutional frameworks seeking to regulate and professionalize their efforts. It also reflected broader racial and cultural biases, undermining the legitimacy of Chicano-led initiatives by positioning them as insufficiently professional or overly insular, even as they navigated systemic barriers to realize their transformative vision.

The evaluator’s dismissal of Quebrar’s “constant reference” to the “fight” for the radar site reveals the core values of Joe and Quebrar—fighting not just for treatment but for land and sovereignty. This struggle aligns with decolonizing frameworks, like those of activist Lorena Cabnal (2020), that emphasize that embodied experiences and the environments we occupy play a crucial role in resisting systemic oppression, highlighting how our physical and social contexts shape both our understanding of harm and our responses to it (Rodriguez Castro 2021). These frameworks challenge Western models of pathology by delinking from individualizing, medicalized frameworks of suffering. Instead, they focus on collective harm rooted in sociopolitical contexts, emphasizing that healing both body and earth happens in reciprocity—emancipation and self-determination for both bodies and land must be achieved together. By integrating local knowledge, these perspectives offer a holistic approach to healing that connects identity, land, and body, and in the case of Quebrar advocating for reclamation and sovereignty of the radar site and its surrounding land are essential components of recoveries (Chaparro-Buitrago 2022, 2024). This approach shifts the focus to the land-body dynamics of the South Valley and the US-Mexico borderlands—historically shaped by colonialism. By connecting addiction to colonial legacies, Quebrar mirrors Indigenous feminist thought, advocating for a more expansive form of accountability that encompasses personal healing, land reclamation, and institutional justice.

In the section below, I demonstrate how political action led to the intersection of bottom-up abolitionist recovery praxis with the top-down imposition of correctionally-mediated methadone. The friction between these two approaches acted as a spark, igniting a transformative fire—where tensions and contradictions fueled new possibilities for reimagining both recovery and justice.

Police Entrapments | Methadone Emancipations

It’s worth taking a pause here to reflect on how we come to know the topics we study, and why they ultimately matter to us. In the isolation of the pandemic—a shared yet deeply personal alienation from the world—I unexpectedly discovered a story that was intricately intertwined with my own. This journey began with my father, a man whose struggles had always been a part of my life but whose complexities remained veiled by silence and unanswered questions. As I sifted through fragments of his past—old photographs, faded letters, and scattered memories—I made an almost impulsive decision to search for his name on Google. Amid the growing digitization and democratization of knowledge, something remarkable surfaced: a 1969 news clipping that illuminated a part of his life I had never fully understood. The clipping spoke of Quebrar, not merely as a historical entity, but as a dynamic force that had intersected with my father’s journey. It described an episode linked to Quebrar’s work, which was now inextricably woven into the fabric of my father’s story. This discovery was more than just a historical revelation—it bridged the personal and the political, revealing the ways in which individual lives and collective struggles are deeply connected.

My father, Clotario, the central figure in this narrative, had been ensnared in a moment of police entrapment—a calculated act that preyed on his vulnerabilities, emblematic of the broader criminalization faced by those like him (Chicano, Tecato, poor). While it detailed his arrest, conviction, and sentencing, it also highlighted how he, like many in the South Valley, was caught in the crosshairs of a system that perpetuates racialized harm against those it seeks to contain. The story read like a theater of justice—a stage where the systemic injustices faced by Chicano communities were named, challenged, and resisted, all exercised through the real-life experience of my father. In that moment, in the courtroom, Quebrar mobilized, joined by a diverse coalition of allies—including legal experts, activists, and community members. The image still lingers with me. This moment revealed the intersection between personal experience and collective struggle, deepening my sense of connection to both my father and the wider movement that stood in solidarity with him. The story goes like this:

On the early morning of January 10, 1969, as the city of Albuquerque lay silent, a storm of flashing lights and sirens shattered the calm in the South Valley. Around 140 local and state police officers descended upon the predominantly Chicano community in a meticulously planned narcotics raid. Over two weeks of undercover surveillance had led to this moment—a show of force that resulted in the arrests of twenty-eight men, most of them young and Chicano, on alleged charges of illicit drug distribution. The local press lauded it as the “biggest single raid in the metropolitan area,” but beneath the headlines lay a story of systemic racial injustice (Brumbelow 1969).

Clotario, a twenty-six-year-old Vietnam veteran, was among those caught in the web. Months earlier, an informant named Marvin, an ex-heroin addict hired by the chief of police, had approached him outside the South Valley’s Music Box Bar.¹⁰ Desperate to sustain his own habit, Clotario had sold Marvin a single cap of heroin for five dollars. What he didn’t know was that Marvin had turned over his identity to the police, setting the stage for his eventual arrest. Prosecutors painted the defendants as dangerous elements within the community, while their public defender argued for a change of venue, citing the prejudicial media coverage that had already condemned his clients in the court of public opinion. For Clotario and the others, the trial’s outcome was bleak. Despite compelling evidence of entrapment and racial bias, two defendants, including Clotario, were convicted of unlawful sale of narcotics and sentenced to prison. But there was a twist. Under the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act (NARA) passed only a few years prior, they became eligible for early release on the condition that they undergo detoxification and evaluation at a federal narcotics hospital, followed by participation in a long-term community-led treatment program.

This provision seemed to offer a lifeline. Yet the reality was more complex. The system presented rehabilitation as a privilege contingent on criminal prosecution, entangling care with punishment. Judges such as Edwin Mechem expressed skepticism, wondering aloud whether defendants sought treatment merely as an “easy way out.” Despite his doubts, Mechem suspended Clotario’s sentence, offering him the chance at rehabilitation. “I hope you’ll take advantage of this,” the judge told him. “Yes, sir, I will,” Clotario replied, though the weight of the system loomed over his words (Herron 1969).

The civil commitment hearings and efforts to bring narcotic addicts into treatment in Albuquerque serves as a clear example of how NARA programs functioned. However, what set this case apart was its intersection with the work of Quebrar. Nevertheless, NARA’s contributions are often overshadowed by the deleterious effects of the War on Drugs in drug policy literature. The fleeting existence of NARA programs brings into focus the struggle between the progressive provisions enacted under Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and their subsequent dismantling during Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs (Besteman 1992). However, within its brief window of opportunity, a political opening emerged through which Quebrar implemented its praxis, transforming a top-down policy into a localized, grounded approach that was shaped by grounded histories and realities of the community.

A deeper understanding of the significance of this moment necessitates an examination of key themes that emerge from the NARA program and its intersection with Quebrar’s approach. The NARA program marked a pivotal shift in US drug policy, reframing addiction as a medical issue rather than criminal behavior, aligning with broader movements in public health and criminal justice reform. It also emphasized community-based solutions, relocating care from institutional settings to local environments (Besteman 1992). Central to this framework was methadone, envisioned as a stabilizing force to reduce cravings and facilitate individuals’ reintegration into their communities (Courtwright 1997; Courtwright et al. 2013; Avram Goldstein 1972). However, the subsequent escalation of Nixon’s Drug War in the 1970s undermined these efforts by narrowing the possibility for program sustainability. For Quebrar, the aggressive shift toward punitive measures may have constrained Quebrar’s ability to sustain support in New Mexico. However, the struggle for justice continued in other ways, as the movement’s infrastructure adapted and persisted, finding new avenues to resist systemic oppression and advocate for broader social change, even in the face of a hostile, carceral landscape.

The methadone program overall faced criticism, particularly in Black neighborhoods, where it was seen as a state tool for pacification and control (Bourgois 2000; Hansen and Roberts 2012; Meng 2021; Roberts 2012). Critics argued it replaced heroin dependency with methadone, perpetuating systemic control rather than addressing addiction’s root causes. Meanwhile, solidarity between the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party in New York linked heroin responses to critiques of capitalism and oppression (Porzig 2013). Contemporary movements advocate for freeing methadone and other treatments from criminalization, emphasizing recovery without justice system involvement (National Coalition to Liberate Methadone, n.d.).

STS scholars have examined the ontologies of methadone, framing it within broader research highlighting how evidence construction is shaped by specific contexts, emphasizing its situated nature (Rhodes 2009; Rhodes and Lancaster 2019). Methadone embodies multiplicities, acting as a therapeutic intervention, regulatory tool (Fraser and Valentine 2008; Rhodes 2018), boundary objects (Roberts 2012), and, like other substances, a source of pleasure (Campbell 2023; Dennis et al. 2023). Quebrar’s approach challenges the neutrality of methadone, in this sense, illustrating how recoveries are deeply political and culturally embedded in place, reflecting the histories, struggles, and aspirations of the communities they serve.

Ruptures | Reclamations

The term quebrar, meaning “to break” or “to shatter,” symbolized a deliberate rupture from both systemic oppression and internalized colonial shame. Quebrar was born from this space of fracture—homegrown meetings where individuals could come together and speak openly about addiction, breaking free from the institutional frameworks that pathologized, criminalized, or attempted to assimilate them.

Several of my interviewees shared stories of forced assimilation. Struggles over language and names sparked a “shared consciousness,” uniting them in their collective resistance to systemic erasure and cultural repression. These fractures reverberate across generations, including my own, though they manifest differently after forty years of assimilation between us. Speaking partially in pocho Spanish to my grandmother, who resisted assimilation at the cost of her education, and entirely in English to my father, I felt alienated from both. This void raises questions: Is there a shared dialect of loss? Can our shared humanity transcend language, especially when linguistic acquisition is entangled with the bruises of an educational system that strikes instead of nurtures? These internal ruptures reflect the enduring impact of colonial ideologies, perpetuating subjugation and self-alienation.

The point I am trying to land on is the value of institutions being self-determined, as Quebrar exemplified in its efforts. By repurposing spaces like the decommissioned radar station and its embedded methadone program, Quebrar asserted the power of local, community-driven approaches, challenging external systems that sought to define and control how their healing processes were defined and executed and where. This self-determined approach not only subverted oppressive forces but also emphasized the importance of creating institutions that are rooted in the needs, values, and knowledge of the people they serve, rather than those imposed by disembodied knowledge structures and practices from anywhere.

In closing, I return to the questions posed in the introduction regarding the kinds of institutions we need to establish in order to facilitate the emergence of knowledge that is shaped by our lived experiences and the ways in which they inform the process of knowledge production. The questions I continually find myself grappling with are, What does it mean to witness a movement like Quebrar? How do we navigate the emotional complexity of witnessing deliberate repression, especially when it affects someone personally significant to us?

Engaging with this movement means confronting the tension between the known and its knower, between being a detached researcher and being drawn into the transformative work that it represents. Quebrar is not just a movement in the conventional sense; it is a living, evolving response to deeply entrenched social injustices. Witnessing it requires more than simply acknowledging its goals—it demands grappling with the emotional and intellectual weight of the struggles it addresses within the historical and geographical context of New Mexico. Central to this engagement is the shift in focus from the movement itself to the researcher’s position within it. How do one’s lived experiences, shaped by communal relationships to land, treaties, and its people, inform and influence their understanding of the movement’s significance?

These questions are central to my research and are situated within broader decolonial and Black feminist discussions of epistemic-corporeal practices of research, as they anchor inquiry in the deeply personal and emotional dimensions of knowledge production (Ruiz-Trejo and García-Dauder 2019). Research becomes not only an intellectual pursuit but also a living process, where the researcher’s own histories and experiences unfold into the questions asked and the answers sought. In this regard, Quebrar challenges us to engage with its complexity, recognizing that it is both a transformative process for drug-using communities in New Mexico and a reflection of our roles within broader knowledge systems of power. It compels us to examine truth claims regarding drug recovery efforts and their intersections with colonial histories (Spanish, Mexican, US, and nuclear) and the borders they impose, treaty rights (e.g., Atrisco Land Grant and the radar site), ecological harms (such as sanitation and water resource struggles), and violence against Chicanos (including police entrapment and drug criminalization). This movement calls us to confront these interwoven logics, making visible ethical, political, and ecological claims, and highlighting their significance within anticolonial imaginaries for drug recovery.

Acknowledments

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the individuals who graciously shared their time, experiences, and wisdom with me during the course of this project. Their voices are the heart of this work. I am especially thankful to the Border Laboratory for the feedback on earlier versions. I am also immensely grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback, which significantly enhanced the quality of this work. Special thanks to Maya Vijayaraghavan and Kelly Knight for their guidance and encouragement. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the panel at the 2024 Quadrennial Joint Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for their stimulating discussions and constructive critiques. Your contributions have all played a crucial role in shaping this paper.

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