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[Music] since i was 14 years old i always wore cowboy boots maybe because my little boy role models were always the men in the black hats richard boone and have gun will travel robert vaughn and the magnificent seven
Anthony Bourdain explores New Mexico's blend of cultures, from Route 66 and Santa Fe's chili-driven cuisine to its gun culture, Native heritage, and Los Alamos nuclear history.
Key Takeaways
- New Mexico embodies a layered blend of Native American, Hispanic, Anglo, and immigrant cultures.
- The mythic American West persists in imagination but coexists with modern realities.
- Gun culture is deeply rooted in American identity, and cultural divides shape the debate over gun control.
- Local food, especially chili, serves as a window into the history and identity of the region.
- New Mexico's history includes both ancient Pueblo resilience and the high-stakes legacy of nuclear science.
What the video covers
- Bourdain opens with his lifelong fascination with the American Western myth and the reinvention promised by the frontier.
- He reflects on Route 66 as a faded relic of mid-century road travel, with its motels and eerie roadside atmosphere.
- A visit to a taco truck in New Mexico highlights the local food scene and the state's Mexican influences.
- The episode examines gun culture, including shooting an AR-15 and rifles, and contrasts New Mexico's attitudes with those of the East Coast.
- Bourdain tries cowboy-style campfire cooking and meets local ranchers, including David Manzanares, whose family traces roots to Spanish conquistadors.
- He visits Santa Fe, discussing its tension between tourism, Native American culture, and the 'new age' spirit.
- Chili is central to the episode, from roadside cafes to the Pueblo dish 'push around chili' and its historical roots.
- Pueblo history of adaptation through drought and conflict is contrasted with the state's modern character.
- The Manhattan Project and Los Alamos bring the discussion to nuclear history and the area's secretive, science-fiction-like reputation.
- Bourdain closes by arguing America is both an immigrant culture and a gun culture, with New Mexico as a microcosm of that identity.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
silent killers men with pasts men from somewhere else who found themselves in the great american west a place where reinvention a new life was always possible as long as you were willing to kill for [Music] it i took a walk through this beautiful
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world felt the cool rain on my shoulder [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh the western myth has pretty much captured the american imagination none of us can escape it for ages we identified ourselves with the image of
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the lone cowboy the perception of frontier values self-sufficiency rugged individualism the freedom of wide open spaces [Music] few places in america still manage to embody that mythic landscape of the imagination like the state of new mexico what does freedom mean it's different
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things to everybody it seems but something about this place manages to catch the overlap between a whole hell of a lot of very different cultures old route 66 runs through new mexico like a collapsed vein right through santa fe and albuquerque
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it must have seemed like magic once families loaded in a massive chrome and steel chariots with powerful v8 engines and took off down that blacktop highway they slept in whimsical motor lodges and bungalows swam in kidney-shaped pools then it all
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went redundant route 66 was decommissioned chopped up largely forgotten except by desperate and lazy travel show hosts anyone else i've seen i do this like drive around like 10 15 at night looking for tacos yeah probably i'll say this the strip takes on a much
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more interesting look at night you can imagine dennis hopper huffing nitrous and dismembering somebody over an unrolled tarp in any one of those sinister looking motel rooms cool well hopefully the tacos first because after you do the meth you really
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aren't going to want to eat in ancient times early drivers would hang the testicles of their enemies on their rear view mirrors best case scenario around here in my humble opinion taco truck of which there are quite a few parking
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lot the smell of mystery parts on a griddle yes could i have uh one asana one knowing my love of all things mexican you might expect me to be eating tacos for the next hour gotta adopt the wide stance damn you
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taco spillage come for the vistas stay for the tacos [Music] so yes [Music] 30 rounds per magazine of steel jacketed destruction as fast as your finger can pull the [Music] trigger you might well ask yourself why the hell
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would anybody need a weapon like this the ar-15 is one of the weapons most reviled by gun opponents it's also america's favorite rifle i never thought i'd say that a guy from new york is a natural when it comes to shooting an
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ar-15 in new mexico but i'm impressed as a nation we love them there are about 4 million in circulation those are the facts basically ar-15 is a semi-automatic civilian version of an m16 and the funny thing is is that
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in relation this gun is almost identical to this gun but this is the one that's evil shoots the same caliber same magazine capacity just looks a little different i'm an east coast guy i'm a new yorker but culturally i come from a place
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where glimpse of weapon on somebody at a bar in the street it is reason for panic here and in much of america in between new york and la you walk into a bar and you see somebody with a weapon it's like
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you know that's my neighbor you know maybe he's going hunting maybe he's who knows most people you know own guns everybody i know everybody everybody ever had a rifle before i had a baseball bat meet jesse bill bo and daniel
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[Applause] pretty much who we are talking about when we see the latest stats on gun purchases in america and shake our heads uncomprehendingly [Music] that cultural divide much more than policy is what's kept the issue of gun control
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so polarized and so frankly hopeless he had a gun before he had a baseball bat i'm in the same situation i was shooting a bb gun when i was five years old and i knew at that time it wasn't a toy
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it was a weapon and i was very well educated by my father on the responsible use of that piece of equipment and that's what's critical to me i shoot all the time and i'm always trying to shoot better than i did last week
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it's relaxing you're out with friends it's fun there's a dark little genie in all of us i think that wants to pick up a gun pointed at something and blast away this is a new springfield arm nine millimeter with a 19 round clip you
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know the reason i like guns i don't own a gun but i like holding them i like shooting them the glock 22 is chambered in a 40 caliber there is something compelling an eerie rush an unholy sense of empowerment
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feeling the warm glow of these heavy iconic shapes in your hands [Music] get off my lawn you kids that's a 357 magnum it's an eight shot revolver bigger kick on this guy yeah a little bit you just can't help silently
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mouthing make my day or feeling lucky punk [Music] you do this all day whatever your opinion on the subject fact is gun culture runs deep in this country this one i grew up with yeah this was i shot my very first turkey with this gun
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at 12 years old actually that's a 22 um rimfire cartridge and that that is probably the type of firearm that most kids start off with these guys i'm guessing are not people i should be worried about they are nice and exceedingly patient
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with a city boy who wants to play with their guns that there's a 338 winchester magnum that's a a big cartridge heavy bullet kind of for a very large game like elk there's a target up on that hillside can you see it
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now watch mr new york city liberal shoot that target out there from 244 windswept yards oh wow uh now am i accounting for windage dropping and wind distant what yeah you want to aim 13 millimeters to the left
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four millimeters high and you'll hit that center [Music] [Laughter] left no hold right on i'm just gonna hold right on i'll just make it make it a joke taking advantage of the city boy and that wind's got to be 20 miles an
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hour yeah holding a rifle in this wind without a brace it's tough all eyes are on you no pressure pretty close huh yeah it may have been a hair left it's a little high that time i think little right shooting real good though
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tony i mean you're not missing it by much if you're ill country you'd be hitting him exhale pull and squeeze the big the biggest thing is just let it surprise you because you're pulling the trigger squeeze it slow and every time it goes
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off it should surprise you that way you don't flinch that looked right on that looked right on to me i have to tell you i'm proud of myself i was like who's somewhere in the neighborhood he's uh he's a natural do you think that like
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people who just don't like the idea of guns if they had a day out here shooting targets i suspect a fair number of them would at least temper their views somewhat a thousand percent absolutely and you definitely get a
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respect for the power of it for sure generally speaking me and these guys i think should feel free to buy all the guns we want it's the rest of you i'm not so sure about oh i know how to shoot beer cans
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[Laughter] when the zombie apocalypse comes i'll be ready as long as they're holding beers [Music] so when i grew up when i was a kid i played cowboys and indians the cowboy myth had such a grip on american self-identity i remember
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playing cowboys in india which is part of the culture you looked up to john wayne you know steve mcqueen my kid 12 years old wouldn't even think about cowboys this is david manzanares his family has lived here for
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generations tracing their roots all the way back to the spanish conquistador you know those cliff walls out there tony are 160 million years old and the ones on the bottom about 220 they're all the way back to the
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to the triassic area and this is ghost ranch next door to david's spread this is the area where georgia o'keeffe spent the last and most productive decades of her life now you've walked into her painting but this is what she called my country
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you know it wasn't until i was uh my early twenties that i even knew who george o'keefe was really grew up with her being like a grandmother it took me going out to la and uh going into a gallery out there i
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saw these paintings like an idiot i said why they got pictures of my house and she said please take a step back that's uh giorgio o'keefe's it's just gonna get prettier it's just gonna get prettier one of o'keefe's biographers infamously
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described this landscape which had so captivated the artist as garish vulgar and in poor taste which if you look around is pretty hard to comprehend this is such other side of the universe for somebody who lives like i do people
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who live in cities for whom a backyard this big is inconceivable the idea that there's a certain type of personality who's drawn towards open spaces like this you know this country it either embraces you or within a year let's spit you out
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we reach the end of our trail at a place called valley of thieves once said to be a haven for infamous cattle rustlers of course they call it the rabbit ladies you know what i'm talking about jesus i'm in my 50s everything's still
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with the jerks i gotta find a distinguished segway into adulthood one of these days three generations of manzanares are here with me this evening herman david and max we'll do our best to put together a little meal anybody want some coffee
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yeah i'll take some of that cream anybody yeah who am i kidding i'm a city boy i need a queen yeah trying to get all jack palance here come on who am i kidding we're also joined by dan flores
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respected authority professor of history author of the book horizontal yellow nature and history in the near southwest how spanish is new mexico still i mean how powerful are the echoes from spain spain was in control of new mexico for
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far longer than mexico was well i think a lot of these new mexican families are 10 generation and 11 generations when they look back on themselves they think of themselves as spanish those traditions they've continued to thrive in these little
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pockets we're cut off from spain so i once worked with some people from spain and they kept cutting up snickering at me what they told me was okay you can knock it off with the donkey hoodie uh phraseology the equivalent of me
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today talking say top of the morning to you sir really they were like stop making fun of us and i said you know what i'm not making fun of you that's the way we speak and how we go
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see grandpa that's all he knows it's 500 years ago spanish maybe if we're lucky enough we'll have a grandpa play his uh harmonica the way he used to on the cattle drives but i have a plan here on his meat all
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right the meat is yours all right good just call me cookie some cute local beef glowing hot coals cast iron pan [Music] what is this pureed green chilies here yes beautiful yeah i'm going to throw those chilies in a little bit and
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stew it for a few minutes and we'll be good i just need a few splashes of like an open beer check it off the chuck wagon greatest hits we got some beans some potatoes some cornbread [Music] we do our best this is just about ready
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let's eat dig in well we done good gentlemen no kidding thank you tony this is excellent i'm wondering uh you guys have been here for so long your family could you live anywhere else not me no not me this is home the roots it
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always i always get called back here you know i visited paris and lived in la for a while and you know paris is pretty great it's pretty great it's pretty great but it's not here dad i'm curious to know why why you
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chose why you came here initially open space because i'd grown up in a circumstance where you couldn't see 50 feet i mean the forest was so dense i used to climb up into the top of the tree on the highest
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hill just to be able to see over the forest so there was something about the idea of being able to see the landscape that really compelled me so the big empty makes a real s deep deep sense to a certain type of
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[Music] person [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] since before 1598 when santa fe was established as a province of new spain grizzled frontiersmen and hardy pioneers have come to this unforgiving landscape to eke out a difficult existence welcome to santa fe today where we can
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all live the western dream and even buy a little piece of it to take home you gotta love it we pretty much eradicate the native american culture and now in newer more politically correct times we decide we love indians
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at all things native american and we're kind of but not really sorry and how much is that brickabrack but that's not all the new west is inclusive welcome to santa fe you got your whole spectrum of new age
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crystal type seeking spiritual purity and intensity in the harsh yet beautiful landscape it's the last place in the u.s you can wear buckskin and fringe without ironing while holding a buddhist blanket [Music] there is very deep inside this ordinary
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looking five and dime something truly authentic [Music] hi frito pie and soda please this is the frito pie as american as apple pie or the manhattan project and nearly as deadly chili and dayglo yellow cheese-like substance dropped like a deuce another
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roller in the night right into a bag of fritos [Music] it feels like you're holding orange crap in the back close your eyes and i put this in your hand you would be very worried with colostomy pie imposed everything this dish stands for
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and yet it is also delicious neither the freedom nor the fleet of pie are indigenous to new mexico they are actually text them new mexico you have many wonderful things i think let texas have this one [Music] in only six minutes i've managed to
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reach a depth of self-loathing it usually takes a night of drinking to achieve combine the frito pie experience with like a binge tequila drinking and a strip club a warm spreading glow fills my belly as i set out once more
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in my mighty ford galaxy yet i am also depressed frito pie i smell metaphor speaking of explosive diarrhea [Music] did you know that the first ever atomic bomb was exploded in 1945 in the desert of new mexico sushi bars galleries reki massar studios
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crystals we got them i think i need to adjust my beds or something because i just see dark portense at all of this well there are a lot of dark parts all i've had today is frito this food will lighten you up i
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[Music] guarantee horseman's haven cafe sits next to a gas station and is about as far away from the plaza as you can get without leaving the santa fe city limits it has a special feel of chili's grown specifically for this
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restaurant and nowhere else i meet back up with dan flores for a little historical perspective over some of santa fe's most beloved new mexican fare i've known people who have journeyed three and four hundred miles to come and
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eat at horseman's haven enchilada with carne adubata cubed pork in red new mexican chili sauce with beans and rice gotta have that some pisole a stew made from soaked harmony and pork and so papilla a fried bread like a
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spoon bread or a johnny cake did the early spaniards early cattle railroad men and you know the people on the way to making this america were they romantic about this this part of the world i thought of it
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as a hard place for one thing it was exceedingly remote when you were here this seemed like one of the farthest reaches of the globe i mean initially americans began coming here because they perceived that santa fe was so remote from the rest of the
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spanish empire that it was possible for the united states to pluck it i don't think anybody becomes romantic about it probably until the taos painters arrive starting a long-running tradition of artistic pilgrimages to catch the spiritual groove every kind of utopian dreamer eccentric
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new ager they all came here in search of whatever mmm chili's all right thank you very much that's level three all right we will be careful indeed new mexican chilis come in two varieties red or green that's the by the way the state question
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in new mexico ordinarily i like green it's like yankees or mets you gotta pick one this green however is not ordinary green my face is burning off this this ain't normal oh god this hurts i'm gonna join you
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fate lies right here defcon one two three it's a slow roll till first you think it's gonna be okay then it's not there's nothing to do but wait it out i believe they use these same peppers in uh pepper spray
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for repelling grizzly bears if that tells you anything yeah shotgun so that would put you in the hospital no kidding and everybody in the restaurant seems so calm maybe they're not eating this they're all just trying to muffle their
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screams [Music] history they say belongs to the victors and here where the myth of the american west took root where so much romantic lore began history was being rewritten almost as soon as it happened this was never the big empty as dan
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flores writes the idea of a wilderness is itself a cultural construct as early as 1539 when marcos denisa a franciscan friar reported sighting from a distance what he called the seven cities of cibola these were interpreted as tantalizing
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outposts of wealth possible cities of gold coronado the famous spanish conquistador quickly dispatched an expedition and there were indeed [Music] cities this is zia awesome well thank you for having us the home of community leader ivan pino in zia pueblo
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i'm here to join him and his nephew robert and family in a traditional hunt so we'll be carrying our shotguns we'll be carrying our rabbit stick we don't do this anymore you know it's harder [Laughter] it's always good to get
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a prayer going so that the animals can be willing to take their life the pueblo who lived here continuously since around 12 50 a.d had long before the spanish or anyone else arrived a highly organized society they built
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multi-level adobe apartment blocks they farmed the land irrigated crops using intricate water diversion systems all this in what sure as hell looked like a harsh and unforgiving land this is good uh weather though for hunting because this nice breeze
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overcast breeze is beautiful not too hot pueblo long ago learned to adapt to hard times dry seasons war incursion there were years where there was nothing and they had to deal oh come on we found a pack rat
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our first pack in preparation for the summer solstice ceremony game like rabbits and pack rats are collected for the medicine man as a payment for his services how you notice is that there's some dropkins fresh droppings you see the
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droppings we know there's one around and this time of the day they're going to be inside their homes there's too many predators around it's not easy once you find a nest you gotta dig after the little burrowing bastards
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you hack you dig you dig some more a lot of work for a small think of that yeah that's what our ancestors had to do sometimes you know when times go hard right now there's this drought going on
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and we didn't have the grocery stores right then hopefully you flush one cleanly get it got it right here right and give them a good whack on the head the ratio of work to protein is not in the hunter's favor it's
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whiskers [Music] and a little bit of his tail and plant it back in here to ensure regeneration of this once vital source of food tradition and ritual requires returning a part of the animal back to the nest i will never go hungry
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going for pack rats is really an homage an acknowledgement of a important earlier time when that was all there was a 25-year great drought as a city boy i am greatly relieved these little critters are for the medicine man
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and that we won't actually be eating any of them instead linda ivan's wife is preparing a pretty traditional menu nothing is wasted when a big game is brought home you know we dry up and dehydrate the bone deer bone stew red
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chili stew cooked with dried elk and potatoes pinto beans with chicos that's roasted dried corn and tortillas and of course more chiles we call these this dish push around chili because together and push around push around do you see the one you want
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yeah the chilies in the state are magical they're zia chili's not hatched chilies oh and the seeds have been passed down from generation to generation oh definitely stay within the families what percentage of young people leave and don't come back not too many people
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will leave really no their people will leave but eventually there's this yearning inside you that you want to go home you want to learn your culture uh you want to you know be a part of everything it would be an understatement
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to say that the first europeans who came into contact with indians the effect was destructive to the culture and given that history how american do you feel [Music] this is this village is unique in that we can easily just you know ignore
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everything that happens out there and just keep to ourselves here and when we do that sometimes we close the road and we take care of our own business here but it really varies by individual and maybe even by generation we have a veteran a
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veteran a veteran that all served in armed forces the big tradition of serving in the military is yes yeah we continue to be out outdoors man and we are survivors i've dealt with the elements of the dust the
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rain the hail but it made a bigger better person out of me we are who we are we're still going to be here ufo activity yes spiking and i don't need to look out my window to know that
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animals are behaving strangely [Applause] oh backwards [Music] [Music] look up in the dark the night sky uncontaminated by the light of any nearby cities you can see things and of course you've got a rich tradition of actual real-life
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spooky science fiction stuff the manhattan project in los alamos nuclear missile silos hidden deep beneath the desert floor it's out there so where are we ground zero of where everything seems to have started submitted for your approval norio and
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his friend james two men associated with the new mexico ufo and paranormal forum this is where uh america's rocketry actually started at the end of world war ii classified units of the cia and army intelligence were busy sandbagging and
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sneaking away from probable prosecution cadres of the world's best rocket scientists did i mention they were nazis oh yeah many of them were sent around here other very mysterious things even took place allegedly in 1947 1947 roswell incident
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that's right that's still a mystery some say you notice how they always say that in those dubious cheaply reenacted dock shows some say it was the remains of an alien spacecraft anywho back then they were working on some pretty cool stuff
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for instance a mylar-like weather balloon designed to carry high-resolution cameras across the soviet union when they got way up in the atmosphere they pancaked out like a flying saucer might that explain the excessive zeal and mysterious behaviors i mean if one
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of these things crashed in the desert you can well understand that a whole bunch of sinister looking bodies would show up and start telling people never speak of this incident you know it's hard to say but uh any
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military could create a cover story for anything any possibility of like cyborgs or aliens i you know i've heard that there is and then i've heard there isn't we're taking you to a place an undisclosed location what's known as albuquerque's
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own area 51. there will be no probing involved oh you know because every time there's like alien stuff there's always probing always with the probing i don't understand it's like if they've been coming here for years haven't they done enough probing
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well if we were this from like uh ghost adventures we'd be really playing this up some say that this area was used for sinister experiments german-speaking cyborgs you need to find some crackpot scientific this is even better than area
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51. it's like area 61. area 61 turns out to be a fenced-off view of essentially kirkland air force base the leading edge uh military research development and testing at night there's a lot of lights uh it's a huge complex fact is there was
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and still is some pretty cool stuff being tested out there in the desert maybe for darpa or nsa or the air force who knows do you think there are do you think there are other life forms among us or who visited this planet yes
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i do what do you think well personally i have a different opinion this whole alien concept is a cover story in order to conceal uh certain kind of projects but i could be wrong but i try to be a
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realist but i'm open to anything what is for certain and has been authentically documented on film is that somewhere out there among the silos underground cities supposed nuclear waste dumps and alien burial grounds there is a large animal
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and a hole in the ground [Music] what strange beast even now is being loaded into a grave-sized pit in the desert for me [Music] well since beginnings of civilization i think one of the first things we any society learn to do is dig a hole throw
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an animal in it yeah you know cook it they call it around here a matanza it's pretty much an old-school version of a barbecue in the sense that it involves burying a giant pig and the imbibing of much
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alcohol about 20 minutes from the nearest paved road is a place called dead horse ranch people who helped us make the show their families friends and no shortage of local new mexican characters have gathered to partake in the
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festivities there is beer here plenty of it local and delicious and abundant did i say that tony need another drink there are very tasty and lethal as it turns out margaritas and i believe to the best of my recollection anyway
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that i soon made the classic error of moving from margaritas to actual shots of straight tequila it does make it easier to meet new people let me ask you why is it that any time an alien visits like america yeah
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there's always anal penetration involved i've never heard it before really ever no am i new to that but but the pig the pig what about that body in the desert some say the tradition of the matanza dates back to
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moorish times when the eating of pig had to be clandestine but a bit of history we can verify this pig's been cooked slow over hot coals for the last 17 hours i uh cut a peek of his ass it looks
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delicious frank here he knows he runs pancho's barbecue in albuquerque let's start sticking it apart i guess time to get slicey i step in to help frank break my piggy friend down into his constituent parts beautiful first off go to legs
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what you call your fresh ham then your fourth quarter your shoulders and whatnot the loin and rib section your pork belly nothing goes to waste all right now mr head all those pig parts sent down the line to harold who's been using them for a
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veritable rainbow of new mexican specialties none of our 300 pound friend will go to waste he's getting shredded for tacos added to the beans cooked up with pisoli it's going into chili red or green oh yeah that's gonna be beautiful the
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tenderloin i set aside for a little time on the grill everyone here has put in a lot of work and they're hungry time to eat i didn't know the show was about this but i've been thinking about it a lot this sort of
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cowboys mexicans indian romantic ideal a lot of easterners came out here and fell in love with this romantic notion of the west and wanted to come out here and sort of kind of create their own version of the west was that a good
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thing that's what helps us as a people as a as a native culture as a culture that's been here for for these years we invite you to come and to enjoy what we've partaken i mean the indians had the beans and the
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chili and the corn the spanish people brought the pork i mean and we put that together and we have this meal here people love the native culture they love the hispanic culture here and it wasn't always that way when i was
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younger you played cowboys and indians as a kid if there's one american iconic hero it's the lone cowboy does that have any residents at all out here every culture here mexican spanish pueblo reservation white we all are cowboys here i am a native new
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mexican i've gone through strange phases of like my ownership of this place it's this weird mixed bag of everything here all the time and that's that is the identity that it i don't know it allows a certain freedom my
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desire to wear cowboy boots and put a hat on right now you're sympathetic to that well i'm from new mexico and yes i would like also like to put my curse word kicking boots and a hat very kind if you think
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well sure tell tony i got a question for you what do you think of new mexico kind of what are your thoughts i'm going to try to boil it down into a simple statement if you're an easterner and you come out
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to new mexico you start to to see metaphors and everything but actually if you were to stretch a little bit you could say that new mexico is a perfect metaphor for america [Music] it is a total mutation it's got
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spanish mexican original american and add a tinge of radioactivity this is what america really is to one degree or another we are an immigrant culture we are a gun culture the expression of american power and identity has always
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been the lone cowboy with a gun that goes deep this is the heart of the american dream love it or hate it this is it [Music] [Music] you
Topics:Anthony BourdainNew MexicoParts UnknownSanta FeRoute 66gun cultureNew Mexico cuisineLos AlamosPueblo cultureAmerican West
