{"id":416296,"date":"2017-08-30T12:54:03","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T18:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=416296"},"modified":"2017-08-31T20:13:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T02:13:47","slug":"colonias-on-the-border-struggle-with-decades-old-water-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/08\/colonias-on-the-border-struggle-with-decades-old-water-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonias on the border struggle with decades-old water issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_416346\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-416346\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-10-771x514.jpg\" alt=\"La Union\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-10-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-10-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-10-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-10-1170x780.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-10.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Maria Esquinca \/ News21<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The water in La Union, N.M., had tested positive for arsenic above the legal limit since 2009. Residents said they still don\u2019t drink the tap water, opting instead to fill at the local filling station.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>YUMA, Ariz. \u2013 Nestor Alaniz didn\u2019t get a permit to build a well in his mother\u2019s backyard, and he didn\u2019t get it inspected.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, he didn\u2019t even know how to dig a well. He learned by watching tutorials on YouTube while his brother, a construction worker, helped him drill the 25-foot-deep hole.<\/p>\n<p>They built the well after the old one dried up for the fourth time. Their mother, who lives in a \u201ccolonia\u201d \u2013 an unincorporated community \u2013 of about 400 residents outside of Yuma, Arizona had gone without water to her home for a year.<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t have the $5,000 to $10,000 to pay a certified well driller, so they spent $1,200 to buy their own equipment and build it themselves.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article\u00a0was produced by <a href=\"https:\/\/news21.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">News 21<\/a>,\u00a0a cornerstone of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The program is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>County officials said they\u2019re concerned when residents build wells without required permits. They know there\u2019s often not enough separation between the wells and septic tanks, which can increase risk of contamination. And they fear some of the wells do not go deep enough. However, officials said their hands are tied because the legal process to get things done is too complicated.<\/p>\n<p>All along the U.S.-Mexico border, about 840,000 mostly low-income, immigrant Latinos have settled in colonias \u2013 cheap plots of land outside city limits without basic infrastructure such as water and sewage systems, electricity and paved roads.<\/p>\n<p>A News21 analysis of census data indicates that across the United States, the average income in predominantly Latino unincorporated areas is 40 percent lower than the average income in predominantly white unincorporated areas, making it harder for these communities to deal with water quality issues. Colonias exemplify some of these problems.<\/p>\n<p>As of 2015, an estimated 30 percent of colonia residents didn\u2019t have access to safe, clean drinking water, according to the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, a national nonprofit group.<\/p>\n<p>News21 visited colonias along the border \u2013 in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas \u2013 and examined how residents deal with water contamination and why it\u2019s so difficult to improve their condition.<\/p>\n<p>Colonias often face complicated government bureaucracy and limited budgets that make it hard to secure funds to fix problems. Residents are often poor, with little education, and some are undocumented. And since many residents say they are not civically engaged, they feel invisible to their elected officials.<\/p>\n<p>Colonia residents also have to face the public perception that they chose to settle in their communities knowing they lacked services.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are attitudes out there that these people moved into these subdivisions on their own, consciously, and they should not be expecting the state to bail them out,\u201d said Texas state Sen. Jose Rodriguez, a Democrat from El Paso. \u201cThe fact that (colonias) exist in other parts of the border along the U.S. reflects some similar attitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Historical settlement<\/h3>\n<p>The word\u00a0<em>colonia<\/em>\u00a0means \u201cneighborhood\u201d in Spanish. The federal and state governments use the term to describe settlements along the border that lack infrastructure. Colonias can be traced to the 1950s, but some argue they\u2019ve been there longer.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of mostly immigrants \u2013 both legal and undocumented \u2013 who couldn\u2019t afford to live in the city settled in colonias. County and state regulations did not require developers to provide basic services if the land didn\u2019t exceed a certain number of lots.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you look at the history of these communities, they were unscrupulous land sales,\u201d said Gina Nu\u00f1ez, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Land developers would tell colonia residents: \u201c \u2018Don&#8217;t worry. Those services are coming. The county is growing, and they&#8217;re going to provide those services,\u2019 \u201d El Paso County Commissioner Vince Perez said. \u201cWe still haven&#8217;t been able to deliver (water and wastewater) service to residents who have been waiting three decades.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About 90 percent of the colonias \u2013\u00a0 roughly 2,000 of them \u2013 are in Texas, according to data from Texas and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership. It was the first border state to legally recognize colonias and allocate funds for them.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 1990s, after a population boom, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Agriculture officially recognized colonias as neighborhoods within 150 miles of the border that lack some basic utilities. The National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 required that all the border states set aside a percentage of Community Development Block Grants for colonias.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe created ways for these communities to better compete for resources,\u201d said Ed Cabrera, a HUD spokesman. \u201cDespite these efforts, there\u2019s obviously still a lot of need in these areas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some colonias have their own water systems or receive water from nearby cities if they&#8217;re close enough. Their treatment facilities, pipes, wells and septic tanks are too often old, or they can\u2019t afford the technology to properly clean the water.<\/p>\n<h3>Complicated bureaucracy<\/h3>\n<p>Araceli Silva moved to her colonia near Yuma 27 years ago because of the cheap price. She settled there after immigrating from Michoacan, Mexico when she was 17 to do farm work in the fields.<\/p>\n<p>The 53-year-old mother of nine has struggled with her wells, which have run dry more than once. She doesn\u2019t have the money to hire a professional because she stopped working after suffering severe back pain \u2013 a result of harvesting broccoli for so long.<\/p>\n<p>Silva and her neighbors rely on individual wells because they can\u2019t hook up to the city system.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_416347\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-416347\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-9-336x232.jpg\" alt=\"Araceli Silva\" width=\"336\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-9-336x232.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-9.jpg 380w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Maria Esquinca \/ News21<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cBefore, all of this used to be a dump. If there was sewage and potable water, it would be all right,\u201d Araceli Silva said. Her sons drilled and installed a well in the backyard of her home in Wall Lane, Ariz.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Yuma County officials said the residents must meet certain conditions before they can apply for funds to connect to city water. The first problem: The county won\u2019t allow more than one house on each parcel. But since the residents already have multiple homes on each parcel, they won\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n<p>Residents who want access to water also would have to sign off on a petition and agree to pay for a preliminary assessment without first knowing the cost. The county would need to hire engineers to figure out if the project is viable and determine the expense. Residents would have to pay for these reports even if the project doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome of them would call them a \u2018blank check\u2019 because they\u2019re signing a petition without knowing how much it\u2019s gonna cost them at the end,\u201d said Nancy Ngai, Yuma County community planning coordinator. She said that, depending on the size of the project, those reports can cost\u00a0 nearly $100,000. Without the residents signing that petition, the county can\u2019t help, she said.<\/p>\n<p>After years of going back and forth with residents, the county gave up. \u201cFor the past 10 years, I really have not worked with them at all simply because there were too many roadblocks that I was just not able to find an answer to,\u201d Ngai said.<\/p>\n<p>For Silva, that means remaining in the shadows. \u201cNo one comes to this place to help,\u201d Silva said in Spanish.<\/p>\n<h3>Lack of funding<\/h3>\n<p>The residents of Tornillo, a small unincorporated community in El Paso County in Texas, get their water from their own water treatment plant. But their system has tested positive for high arsenic levels for a decade, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n<p>Local officials tried to address the arsenic, which is naturally occurring in the region, but they couldn\u2019t secure enough money to pay the $3.25 million needed for a new water treatment plant.<\/p>\n<p>The El Paso County Tornillo Water Improvement District relies on property taxes and the revenue from water bills, which isn\u2019t enough to pay for the upkeep of the new plant. The lack of funds is a common problem for these small water districts when they need to make major improvements. It means they must obtain a loan or seek help from the county, state or federal government.<\/p>\n<p>Franciela Vega, business affairs manager for the Tornillo water district, said securing a loan wasn\u2019t a viable option. \u201cWe knew that if we obtained a full loan, it wouldn&#8217;t be affordable for the customers,\u201d Vega said.<\/p>\n<p>Vega said they never even thought of asking the county for money since it struggles financially as well. And when the district tried the state, it couldn\u2019t secure a grant through the Texas Water Development Board\u2019s Economically Distressed Areas Program, which provides water and wastewater funding for poor communities. That funding is quickly evaporating: Now there\u2019s only $50 million left from its latest $250 million bond authorization in 2007.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_416348\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-416348\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-12-336x224.jpg\" alt=\"Jose Rodriguez\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-12-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-12.jpg 380w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Maria Esquinca \/ News21<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Texas State Sen. Jose Rodriguez speaks to residents of the Horizon View Estates colonia. \u201cThey were misled by developers and now the government has been stuck with having to supply these services,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cThe bottom line is that a lot of these legislators feel they\u2019ve spent a lot of money (on colonias),\u201d said Rodriguez, the Texas state senator. \u201cIt\u2019s really unconscionable that people didn\u2019t give priority to these programs, for people that are essentially living in Third World conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jessica Zuba, an administrator with the water development board, said these funds have serviced 300,000 colonia residents in Texas since the program\u2019s inception in 1989.<\/p>\n<p>The Tornillo district eventually got a federal grant through the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s border program, and it installed a plant in March.<\/p>\n<p>But water-quality experts said federal funds face an uncertain future as well. President Donald Trump\u2019s budget proposal eliminates all federal money allocated for water and wastewater projects through HUD\u2019s block grant program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s water and wastewater program, and the EPA\u2019s border program.<\/p>\n<p>Even when water districts in colonias do find the money for major projects, they can struggle with maintaining their systems. Small water systems often have to charge their customers more because they can\u2019t spread out the costs among a larger population base.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the Tornillo district installed the treatment plant in March, however, the water district still had an arsenic violation in July, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The cost of any repairs will mean higher rates for residents.<\/p>\n<h3>Residents rely on bottled water<\/h3>\n<p>As colonias residents struggle with the long wait for clean water, they often turn to bottled water. Latinos rely more on bottled water than other minorities and whites, according to the 2015 American Housing Survey, and they spend nearly $2.17 more on commercial bottled water a month than non-Latinos, according to a study conducted by Vanderbilt University economist William Viscusi.<\/p>\n<p>All along the border, dozens of small water bottles and gallon jugs pile up in homes because residents don\u2019t think it\u2019s safe to drink from the tap.<\/p>\n<p>Residents from Glen Acres, New Mexico, rely on bottled water because they don\u2019t trust the quality and don\u2019t like the taste of the tap water from their own water system. It has had more water quality violations than any other system in the state, according to a News21 analysis of EPA data.<\/p>\n<p>The system, which delivers water to 72 homes, has had uranium and fluoride levels above the legal limit intermittently since 2002, but it could not afford the technology to remove the uranium. In July, it began buying water from the city of Lordsburg, which is less than 3 miles away.<\/p>\n<p>Glen Acres resident Jacinta Marquez, 60, has lived in the colonia for more than 30 years. She relies on a disability check \u2013 on average $1,200 a month, according to the state \u2013 and spends about $20 on bottled water and nearly $75 on her water bill during the hot months, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re on a limited income here,\u201d Marquez\u2019s daughter Anna Marquez said.<\/p>\n<p>Residents are also concerned about the quality of Lordsburg\u2019s water, which also struggles to keep its fluoride levels low. They said they will continue to buy bottled water even though they get their water from the city.<\/p>\n<h3>Lack of communication<\/h3>\n<p>Colonia residents say their water companies often don\u2019t communicate with them, or they do so in English \u2013 despite the fact that about 30 percent of the Latino population in the U.S. border states speak limited English, according to a News21 analysis of Census data.<\/p>\n<p>Some residents from La Union, New Mexico, said they didn\u2019t even know their water, which comes from their own water system, was contaminated because they never received a notice.<\/p>\n<p>Barbara Mu\u00f1oz and her 87-year-old mother, who has dementia, diabetes and congestive heart failure, said she didn\u2019t realize the water they\u2019d been drinking for the past seven years had arsenic. Neither did nine of the neighbors contacted by News21.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt sucks,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said. \u201cI\u2019m disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since 2009, La Union Mutual Domestic Sewer and Water Association had 28 violations for exceeding arsenic levels, according to the New Mexico Environment Department. Their arsenic levels returned to normal in November last year.<\/p>\n<p>Officials from the water company, which serves more than 900 people, said they have been informing residents when they mail bills. However, the state gave them nine violations from 2009 to 2016 for failing to notify their users of previous high arsenic levels.<\/p>\n<p>Regulators issue violations when water systems fail to follow EPA standards or notify residents that their water is unsafe to drink. The EPA requires water systems to notify its users about potentially dangerous violations with \u201canother method\u201d \u2013 such as the telephone \u2013\u00a0in addition to mail to make sure all customers receive the information.<\/p>\n<p>Rosa Maria Jasso, who has lived in La Union for 30 years, said she never drinks the water and only uses it to cook. She doesn\u2019t trust the water, especially after her pet fish died when she used tap water to fill its tank. She didn\u2019t know it had arsenic.<\/p>\n<h3>Leadership struggles<\/h3>\n<p>Colonias that have secured funds to improve water conditions have one thing in common: Community organizing. But mobilizing a community isn\u2019t easy. Leaders sometimes have to overcome opposition from their neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey tell us \u2018what do you gain from doing this?\u2019 Sometimes (they say) \u2018why do you care?\u2019\u201d said Arturo Padilla, a community leader from Horizon View Estates, a colonia in El Paso County.<\/p>\n<p>The residents of Horizon View Estates must rely on septic tanks for waste disposal, but they often overflow and residents can\u2019t afford new ones.<\/p>\n<p>Padilla tried to persuade the city water utility, Horizon Regional Municipal Utility District, to build a sewage system in Horizon View Estates. He called a state senator, the county commissioner and a state representative and invited them to Horizon View to listen to residents. He handed out more than 200 fliers inviting residents to a meeting so officials could talk about funding options for the $10 million sewage project.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of residents from Horizon View Estates attended. But after the meeting ended, some residents said they were disappointed and didn\u2019t think it would make a difference.<\/p>\n<p>Padilla is afraid that people will lose interest and won\u2019t care, he said. Or even if they do, they won\u2019t do anything about it.<\/p>\n<p>In border communities, undocumented immigrants often don\u2019t want to interact with officials or call attention to themselves because they\u2019re afraid of deportation.<\/p>\n<p>Lorena Hernandez, a Tornillo resident, said undocumented immigrants in Tornillo won\u2019t accept free water filters from a nonprofit. They won\u2019t go to the water district meetings either. They told her if they go to the meetings, officials will tell them: \u201cWhat are you complaining for if you\u2019re not from here?\u201d she said in Spanish.<\/p>\n<p>Perez, the El Paso commissioner, said race, ethnicity and legal status place an additional barrier when trying to solve water issues in these communities. Many residents won\u2019t even report crime, he said. And if they\u2019re afraid to call the police, they\u2019re probably afraid to report problems with their water.<\/p>\n<p>He said the problem has worsened under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeing on the border, unfortunately, we have a front-row seat to just all this unfolding,\u201d Perez said. \u201c(There\u2019s) this atmosphere of fear that I&#8217;ve never seen before, and it&#8217;s really unfortunate \u2026 I don&#8217;t think that this is what America used to represent.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Taking action<\/h3>\n<p>In California\u2019s eastern Coachella Valley, not too far from exclusive golf resorts and luxury hotels, hundreds of decades-old mobile home parks that lack access to clean water are scattered near grape, citrus and date fields.<\/p>\n<p>Sergio Carranza, executive director of the nonprofit Pueblo Unido Community Development Corp., has used his engineering background to design cost-effective filtration systems in those colonias \u2013 or polancos, as they call them in California \u2013 that are too far away to consolidate with the city.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_416350\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-416350\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-21-336x211.jpg\" alt=\"Sergio Carranza\" width=\"336\" height=\"211\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-21-336x211.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/LATINOS-21.jpg 380w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Maria Esquinca \/ News21<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sergio Carranza, executive director of Pueblo Unido Community Development Corp., said the nonprofit plans to install a cheaper water system in a California colonia.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Back in his home country of El Salvador, Carranza did volunteer social work in his community during his country&#8217;s civil war. So when he came to Southern California and noticed that Latinos were living in similar conditions as they did in El Salvador, he became a community organizer.<\/p>\n<p>Carranza managed to bring a less expensive arsenic filtration system to St. Anthony Mobile Home Park, which has a contaminated well that serves as the main water source for the community.<\/p>\n<p>In Horizon View Estates near El Paso, Cristina Morales joined Arturo Padilla\u2019s efforts to install a sewage system.<\/p>\n<p>She collected brown water from her tap in a bottle and carries it in her purse to show officials. She worked on a petition. She also started taking photos of the damage: sewage pooling in a backyard, a bathtub full of sewage water, sewage coming from a kitchen sink.<\/p>\n<p>When she went to a utility meeting with Padilla, she said officials told them they could not speak to the board if they didn\u2019t do so in English. \u201cI told Mr. Arturo, \u2018No, we don\u2019t walk out. We\u2019re not leaving,\u2019\u201d Morales said. Her daughter translated.<\/p>\n<p>Morales is one of many women in colonias who have taken on the role of organizing and advocating for sewage and clean water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI refer to women as \u2018chispas\u2019 \u2013 sparks \u2013 because they have to ignite the energy and enthusiasm in their neighbors to want to gather and organize and advocate for themselves,\u201d said Nu\u00f1ez, the anthropology professor.<\/p>\n<p>That was the case in San Elizario, Texas, where a group of women who lived in colonias formed the nonprofit Adults and Youth United Development Association Inc.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a title,\u201d Executive Director Olivia Figueroa said. \u201cWe were just housewives who didn\u2019t know English. But we had, and we still have, the necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-three years ago, Figueroa left her colonia in Chihuahua, Mexico, and immigrated to the U.S. She payed $40 to cross the Rio Grande, only to arrive in another colonia in the U.S. As in Mexico, the colonia had no electricity, no paved roads, no sewage and no drinking water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd that\u2019s when I said, \u2018Where\u2019s the American dream?\u2019 \u201d Figueroa said in Spanish. \u201cI didn\u2019t think that here, in the United States, in the most powerful country in the world, there would be lack of services.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Figueroa and other women from the colonia began to meet regularly at one another\u2019s houses and discuss what they could do to get basic services. Sometimes they met at abandoned houses.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, they bought an old house, demolished it and built a new one to house their own organization. Figueroa said most of the colonias in San Elizario now have tap water, sewage, paved roads and electricity, a feat she thinks would have been slower if left up to government officials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you see the authorities not doing anything, then we have to do it ourselves,\u201d Figueroa said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of 2015, an estimated 30 percent of colonia residents didn\u2019t have access to safe, clean drinking water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":416346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,147,143,277],"class_list":["post-416296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-environment","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}