The Hoy Recovery Program in northern New Mexico is helping heroin addicts reconnect with the land. Since the mid-1990s, the network of Spanish-speaking villages in the Espanola Valley has had the highest per capita rate of heroin-related death in the United States — more than New York, Baltimore or any other U.S. city. Hoy’s director Ben Tafoya envisions a sustainable community in an inpatient clinic in the village of Velarde, where acres of land could be cultivated in order to feed both body and soul. This summer — the garden’s first year — row upon row of bright yellow squash blossoms spread before the clinic, and corn stalks reached a few feet high. The facility, which housed so much anguish and frustration, looked like a vibrant scene from a Van Gogh painting.
Read the related article, Digging deep: Addicts get back to the land in northern New Mexico.
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