Taos Portrait

In the Santa Fe main square the sights, sounds and colors of New Mexico are in every corner. In this particular corner next to a large cottonwood tree sits Felicita Fernando, a 35-year veteran pinon vendor. Injured in an accident in 1995, both legs were crushed when she was caught in between two mail trucks as she was loading her mail for the day. Unable to return to work, she supplements her disability income by selling pinon nuts to the customers who come to browse the over priced turquoise jewelry of the neighboring vendors.

The pine nuts she sells are "alive" and have matured naturally "coaxed" as opposed to the nuts whose life cycle is accelerated by the use of a blowtorch. Fernando shares some of her philosophies on life along with a $5 bag of nuts.

"People are stupid; Mother Nature is smart," she explains, "she ripens the nuts while the animals are sleeping, and when they wake up, the wind brings the food down to them."

She also credits her late husband, an "old fashioned" type of man who spent his time with his family for a good portion of her success in life.

"We would make our food outside when we lived in Tucson when it was hot, and we shared all the work," and as she remembers, she smiles and continues, "on his day off he would just sit under the shade tree all day long and rest."

Fernando says she knows she was lucky to have a good husband, and she misses him since he died of a heart attack a few years ago.

"Today, if a woman makes a correction of a man, she'll end up in the cemetery." She acknowledges her marriage "wasn't perfect, but it was better than some."

For now, she will sit on her corner under the big cottonwood tree as she sells her pinon nuts and try to make ends meet. She hopes the cold weather is over because it hurts her legs and prevents her from selling her making her living at the corner of the Santa Fe square.