The Oryx and the Bomb: Colonial Legacies at White Sands Missile Range with Marcus Xavier Chormicle  

[00:00:00] Marcus Xavier Chormicle: In New Mexico, (theme music begins) we put these animals out so forwardly in our visual language, from roadrunners and quails to pronghorns and lizards, and the oryx certainly has found its home in that. And it becomes this kind of, I don’t know, almost, like, supernatural presence out in the desert that shouldn’t exist, but it does. 

And despite being in a completely foreign place has thrived, it just fits right into the kind of strangeness of a New Mexican cultural cannon that’s really contradictory and nuanced and complicated, and I think that that relates a lot to how a lot of New Mexicans view themselves.  

[00:00:40] Emily Withnall: ¡Bienvenidos! This is Encounter Culture from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. I’m your host and editor of El Palacio Magazine, Emily Withnall. 

(intro music transitions to sparse music reminiscent of old Wild West films) 

For many people in New Mexico and beyond, hearing the name of the White Sands Missile Range immediately brings to mind Trinity Site, the place where the atomic bomb was first detonated on July 16th, 1945, prior to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At 320,000 square miles, White Sands Missile Range is the largest military test range in the United States. 

The area is located within the Chihuahua Desert, which is made up of gypsum dune fields and mountains and contains White Sands National Park and the San Andres National Wildlife Refuge. White Sands Missile Range is also home to six thousand oryx, a species of antelope native to the Kalahari Desert in Africa. 

On average, the shoulders of oryx are at the same height as the roof of a car, and they weigh roughly 450 pounds. They’re also visually compelling with striking black and white markings on their faces and long, straight horns. What are oryx doing in New Mexico? To answer this question, Marcus Chormicle joined me in the studio. 

Marcus is a trained journalist and photographer and one of New Mexico Art’s 2024 Artist-in-Residence. His family’s connection to oryx provided the spark for creating a photo series, including photos of his grandparents’ mounted oryx skull, oryx butcher shops in Las Cruces, oryx taxidermy, and organized oryx hunts on the White Sands Missile Range. As a Las Cruces native, Marcus has grown up with the intertwined legacies of colonialism, the atomic bomb, and the oryx in his backyard, and a selection of his photographs will appear as a photo essay in the spring 2025 issue of El Palacio. 

As with any discussion of invasive species, the conversation around oryx is complex. Marcus offers a keen understanding of these complexities against the backdrop of Trinity Site’s ongoing environmental effects on the communities and natural world in southern New Mexico. 

Welcome to Encounter Culture, Marcus. Do you want to start us off by telling us a little bit about who you are and what your background is?  

[00:03:35] Marcus: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. My name is Marcus Xavier Chormicle. (Music fades away) I’m from Las Cruces, New Mexico. I was born in Tucson, but my family back to my grandparents all lived in Las Cruces. 

My parents both grew up in Las Cruces, and I moved back when I was four or five and went through all of grade school there. I then went to Arizona State, where I studied journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and I’m a photographer. I’m a working photographer that mostly makes documentary-style or pseudo-documentary-style photo projects in the context of the fine art world. 

I finished school realizing pretty early into that process that I didn’t want to be a working journalist, and art was the space where I really felt like the things I was interested in had the most room to run. And so, I began to work as a fine art photographer and I moved back to Las Cruces during Covid. I had a bunch of jobs and have continued to make work and ran a couple of art spaces and worked for an art museum and have just tried to integrate into the art world. 

And now, I’m making a documentary project about the oryx in southern New Mexico, yeah. 

[00:04:53] Emily: What sparked your interest in photography and when did you get your first camera?  

[00:04:58] Marcus: I began being interested in photography because both my mom and my paternal grandmother were family photographers and they would, they would take a lot of photos at family events and make portraits of—not any sort of formal portrait, but they would just be photographing our family all the time and they would make albums and scrapbooks and show them to me. And I just have really vivid memories of being shown family photos by them. And I know that’s what sparked my interest. 

And, and then I was also interested in photojournalism as a way of getting out of Las Cruces. And when I was in high school, I went to Las Cruces High School, there was a photography class and that year for Christmas, my dad and my grandma pitched in and got me a Cannon Rebel T3, which was a really great starter camera. And I took this photography class and, and I began to be interested in, in making photographs. And at that point I understood it as art, but I didn’t really understand anywhere close to what photography could be. 

And I was making, you know, photographs of the mountains and of—I’d gotten photographed cows a lot and just cruise around Las Cruces, and I started doing, like, friends’ senior portraits, and those sorts of things. And then I went to college and I was undeclared and just decided that photography really was this thing I was interested in and began to push into that, and, and it wasn’t until my sophomore year that I began to understand it as art, when I began to be introduced to these, these photographers who were making work that I was excited about. And that’s when my perspective really started to shift and I began just shooting pretty relentlessly. I would shoot in Phoenix all the time. I would just go every, every weekend and a lot of afternoons. I would just drive to a different part of the city that I had never been to and park my car and walk around and take photos. I’d come back to Las Cruces and drive around to all the parts I had already been to a million times and photograph and go over to my grandmother’s and take—I always had my camera on me—and take a million photos of everyone to the point where people couldn’t stand it anymore (laughs). 

And, um, and then I’d photograph a little bit more. And, yeah, I just, I was really relentless and hungry in that, at that point in my life. Early college.  

[00:07:10] Emily: Before we dive into the oryx, can you talk about, you know, going to school for journalism and making that decision between journalism and fine art? 

[00:07:18] Marcus: I was in journalism school and I was working for a publication that was ran by the university. So, I was doing my projects for school and I was making work for work, and I was a little disenchanted with the way that photojournalism was basically being portrayed and, and I felt frustrated with this parameter of supposed objectivity that I was having to aspire to in my work and just really wanting something a little more expressive, I suppose. 

And on top of that, the school only offered two photojournalism classes, and I was pretty set on wanting to work in photography. And so, I started supplementing that education with fine art photography classes in, in the Herberger School of Art at ASU. 

So, I was taking dark room photography classes and in this enormous lecture with Binh Danh—he’s a really incredible photographer who’s teaching alternative processes there. And I went to his office hours and he basically talked to me into trying to do a concurrent major and art photography. And that just opened up the door to taking so many courses and so many more courses. 

And from there I was introduced to just so much really exciting work that went beyond the bounds of, of traditional journalism and into this kind of other understanding of documentary photography that existed in the art world. 

The thing that also really just got me hooked was one of my professors, Liz Cohen, showed me a book called Deep Springs, which is a documentary project by a photographer named Sam Contis. She’s based in California, and she made this project about this, at the time, all-boys college in Deep Springs, California. It was this group of young men who were working the land, and it was agricultural school. It was just really, like, complicated and interesting work. And that book showed me what photography really could be in this other, other space. 

And then from there, I just was hooked. I was addicted to fine art photography and the expressive nature of it and the relationship between (ethereal music begins) reality and art and how photography didn’t have to be this, this document, but could just be a, an art object that was transforming light in reality for a split second into something that you’re putting on the wall and asserting in a space and, and asking folks to look at and consider in this different, complicated way. 

(Music continues) 

[00:09:57] Emily: So, let’s talk about your project, then. You were a New Mexico Arts Artist-in-Residence at Lincoln Historic Site earlier this year. I think this is the second year they’ve done the artist residency. Talk to us about that experience and what you were working on and have continued to work on since. 

[00:10:15] Marcus: That residency was really incredible. You’re correct; it was the second year that they had done it. The residency placed two artists earlier in the year at the Lincoln Historic Site in the town of Lincoln, New Mexico in southeastern New Mexico. And basically, it was just a really supportive program where they gave you a house there in the town of Lincoln. They gave you really generous support on the financial side, so you’re able to cover your costs of living, travel, and produce the work. 

And so, yeah, I lived in Lincoln in this small house called the Frescas residence that’s really, really comfortable and cozy, and it’s right next door to the Historic Sites office, and the focus of the residency was basically—community engagement was, was kind of the main requirement of the artist who participated, was to try to be there and engage with the community. And so we, we did some artist talks, both remote and there in the Lincoln Historic Site. And, and I was making work that was really rooted in the community, the regional community of the space, and I had proposed this project that I had wanted to start for a little while. And so, this residency really gave me the time, space, and financial support to be able to jumpstart this, this project about the oryx in southern New Mexico. 

And so, there’s four species of antelope called oryx in Africa, but this is the gemsbok, and its scientific name is Oryx gazella. And it was brought over to southern New Mexico in the sixties. And so, my family had hunted them. My grandparents on my maternal side specifically hunted them. And so, I had grown up seeing them when I was really little we ate them. I don’t really remember what they tasted like. I’m, I’m hoping to get some soon so I can speak to that a little bit more. 

But yeah, I just grew up with them mounted on the wall at my grandparents’ house, and there was this really incredible creature that I didn’t know was, like, introduced to New Mexico. At that point in my life, I, I just kind of assumed that it was out there with all the other indigenous animals, but as I grew up, at some point, that I became conscious of that fact. And yeah, it’s just something that was always like very present in my visual world and my cultural experience in southern New Mexico. 

And something that is really commonly known in Las Cruces, that oryx exists there, but not so widely known outside of our, our corner of the world. And so, it was just this project I had wanted to, to kick off for a really long time and just kind of sat on it and thought like, “Okay, well, one day I’ll start it.” 

And this residency was really great because it just kind of gave me the dedicated time and resources to be like, “Oh no, this is what I’m gonna be doing for six weeks while living in Lincoln.” And a lot of that point was a lot of just research and connecting and sourcing. And I’d go into the basin and make some landscape photos and I’d actually go back to Las Cruces to photograph at this taxidermist where they were making the mounts of the oryx and they were cleaning the carcasses and skinning them. And, um, that’s primarily the work I made while I was in residence there. And since, based off of the sourcing and networking I was doing during that time, I’ve gotten to go on an oryx hunt and photograph out in the field with hunters. 

[00:13:24] Emily: So, I want to ask you about the hunt, but before we get to that, I want to know what you have learned in your research about how and why the oryx was imported to New Mexico.  

[00:13:38] Marcus: Yeah, so, the oryx was brought over by this archeologist who was a professor at UNM, and he, his name was Frank C. Hibben. He was this archeologist who studied pre-historic people in New Mexico. And interestingly, a lot of his, his findings have been contested, although basically he’s been accused of falsifying some of the evidence in his work that led to his conclusions. And although nothing has exactly been proven one way or the other, from what I understand. 

He was in the military and he was stationed in Africa and while he was there, he would go out on safari, and he became really interested in safari and the oryx were brought to New Mexico as this kind of interesting colonial project where they wanted to introduce oryx as a trophy hunt into the United States for the purpose of recreational hunting. 

And so, the oryx, they’re a great candidate for being brought over here. And so, they were brought over in the, in between the years of ’69 to ’77. They’re introduced to the San Andreas Wildlife Refuge, which is on White Sands Missile Range, which White Sands Missile Range is the location of the Trinity Site, where the nuclear bomb was first tested and continues to be an active testing site, proving grounds for the military, the United States military. And they, they test all sorts of things that I don’t even know about—no one really knows about—there. 

And the place is really interesting too. The Tularosa Basin, where the White Sands Missile Range is, it’s this, you know, occupied space of land that’s the largest military installation in the United States, and it’s this kind of space that is opaque and you, there’s only a few ways through it that are accessible. Um, obviously White Sands National Monument is there, which is, like, one of the largest tourist destinations in New Mexico. 

The Trinity site is also visited pretty frequently. It sits in between basically Socorro and Chapparal, New Mexico. Chapparal is the town north of El Paso, Texas. And then in between Las Cruces and Alamogordo are the kind of, like, the major bigger towns around the perimeter of it. And yeah, it’s this space here in the Chihuahua Desert that humans outside the military aren’t really able to access. 

And so, the Oryx gazella, the gemsbok, the species that they brought over, is from the Kalahari region of Africa, which is Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe. And I think that the oryx’s range goes up a little bit in Angola as well. But they went out there and they captured eighteen oryx. They brought them over through New Jersey and then to the Albuquerque Zoo. 

And I guess under federal law, you’re not able to release those oryx. And so, they bred them there in, in captivity until they eventually released ninety-three of them into the San Andreas Wildlife Refuge on White Sands Missile Range. And so, they were released and they were expected to never, their population, to never grow beyond five to six hundred, which now they’re estimated to be around six thousand, five to six thousand.  

They’re super well-adapted to the Chihuahuan Desert environment. I understand it’s like relatively abundant compared to the Kalahari region of Africa. In Africa, they’re not able to breed year-round, so they have those limitations.  They also have natural predators there, such as lions and hyenas and wild dogs. Here, they were expected to be predated by cougars or mountain lions, and there’s no evidence that I have found in the articles I have read of that happening in any significant way. 

Apparently, there is evidence of one mountain lion killing about thirty of them over time, usually young ones, but it doesn’t seem that the mountain lion population is helping contain those numbers at all. And so, that leaves humans as the only predators of, of the oryx here in New Mexico. 

And so, in 1974, they, they began the first oryx hunts and they only had four hunters on that year. Now there’s upwards of 1,500 oryx that are harvested every year on both the White Sands Missile Range and on private ranches. And so, the amount that are being harvested every year still is not able to, like, keep this population in check because they’re just breeding year-round. 

They’re basically able to, like, have one baby and then again, you know, having a second one immediately after. And they are just outcompeting all of the indigenous wildlife, particularly the pronghorn and the mule deer. And even bighorn are really affected by the presence of the oryx. And so, they’re classified as an invasive species now here, and from what I understand there, particularly a problem on the Missile Range as far as the getting in the way of testing and they get hit on the roads. And so, (gentle percussive music begins) the Missile Range, from what I understand, is trying to really decrease their population of oryx. And so, they give out a lot of tags every year to folks who come from all over the place to hunt them. 

And so, there’s, there’s definitely a culture in southern New Mexico of hunting them and harvesting their meat and eating them. And—but, there’s also a lot of folks who are coming to do the trophy hunt and get to live the safari here in, in the United States, which, it’s a really interesting kind of dynamic for southern New Mexico. 

(Music continues) 

[00:19:11] Emily: So, as far as the environmental concerns go, are there conversations about how to handle this beyond just increasing the hunting?  

(Music fades) 

[00:19:19] Marcus: Well, there was, as far as, from what I understand, the hunting is the main population control that’s being utilized now. In 1998 there was, there was some backlash because some animal rights activists and organizations caught wind that they were going to exterminate specifically the oryx that were on the White Sands National Monument, White Sands National Park. It’s, it’s become a national park, but it, previously it was a national monument. And so that forced the parks department to have to basically do live capture. And so, what they did was they, they went on and they tranquilized the oryx who were within the boundaries of the White Sands National Monument. And then they would remove them onto the Missile Range, which put them back into the huntable population of the oryx. And so, there’s definitely not another really great option other than just kind of culling them en mass. 

But I don’t think that that’s being explored at all. I think it’s just this letting the hunts kind of dwindle it down to a controllable point, and I don’t think there’s really much momentum to completely remove the oryx. I mean, the oryx have become an important economic factor in southern New Mexico as well. 

There’s folks who, you know, part of their livelihood or their entire livelihood is outfitting oryx hunts for folks, or taking them on guides on private ranches. You know, I’ve photographed it. This taxidermist and a significant amount of what I saw them working on was oryx in addition to other native species. 

But you know, there’s butchers and taxidermists and there’s a whole industry around it that kind of exists now, and it’s, it’s difficult to imagine that just being something that could be erased even for the sake of ecological safety.  

[00:21:02] Emily: Yeah. Interesting. So, you went on a hunt recently. Who did you go with, and how did you, how did you figure that out? 

[00:21:10] Marcus: I went on a hunt on the Missile Range with a man who works on range, and so I had to go through the process of getting clearance through the Missile Range and through their environmental department. They, they basically got me clearance. Um, I had to do a background check and the whole thing to go onto the range and, and make photographs of this hunt process, basically. 

And so, it was kind of a lot of, you know, just kind of like signing papers and, and those sorts of things, just to go out onto this piece of land that’s about 50 miles from where I lived my entire life. And we went out on the range and hunted oryx. Yeah. And so, it was really an interesting time being out there. 

And we saw a lot of oryx through binoculars, and they ended up not having a successful hunt on that day unfortunately. But getting to go out and be out there and be on the military base for an authorized reason was a pretty interesting, interesting dynamic. And it really is covered in oryx. They were uncharacteristically skittish this day, and so that’s why the folks I was with weren’t able to get one that day. But we basically chased them all over, all over the base, which was pretty interesting. 

And so, they’re definitely, you know, out there. Yeah, it was a—it was a kind of very interesting experience because you could just be out there and be so near to something that you’ve known is there your whole life, or, or be near to where you’re, you’re from and, and be in this place that you previously had no access to for this purpose of kind of participating in this American safari that was happening. 

And so, we would, we were driving in in their truck and then we would see some oryx off in the distance through binoculars, stop, and then hike out. I’d follow behind the hunters and, and basically get to photograph them, and then I’d have to hang back as they got closer and closer to the oryx, as they—not to have additional folks out there who might spook the oryx. 

And even still, they weren’t able to get one on that day, although they did go back the next week. And I wasn’t able to join them, unfortunately. And they, they were able to get their kill a little later on. So now what I’m looking to do is go on some private ranch hunts, so I won’t have to go through the same clearance processes in order to make the photos.  

And the process I’m in right now is getting the photos cleared for publication. So, I had to take all the photographs to some person who oversees correspondence and public affairs with the Missile Range to basically review the photographs that I made. That way they were cleared as acceptable for publishing and not revealing anything that, um, can’t be revealed, you know?  

[00:23:44] Emily: Yeah. So, were you able to get close enough to actually photograph the oryx, or was it mainly just the hunters?  

[00:23:50] Marcus: No, it was—I was just focusing on the hunters while I was out there. I got—this happened really fast, so I wasn’t able to make a photograph of it, but the closest that we got was, there was actually a, a baby oryx, a super young oryx probably within a year of age that ran past us that had been separated from the herd, and it was just darted through, near us, like probably within 15 yards. 

But no, I wasn’t specifically in this setting interested in getting close enough to the oryx to photograph them. There are oryx that I’m looking to photograph that come over to the Las Cruces side of the Organ Mountains, which surround the Tularosa Basin. 

Different points in my life, I’ve seen them out there, and so those I’m interested in photographing because they’re the ones that are expanding their range. But for the purposes of the hunt, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get close enough to the oryx in order to photograph them. And, and the priority was the hunters getting the kill. 

And so, yeah, I, I haven’t photographed the live animals for this project as of yet. I was just out there making photographs of basically the way that the hunters were moving around there on the base and on the land and the process of getting ready for the hunt, and that sort of thing.  

(Lively music for promo begins) 

[00:24:59] Emily: Do you ever wonder who coordinates public art around New Mexico or how the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts are chosen? Or who runs the New Artist-in-Residence Program at the Historic Sites? 

New Mexico Arts supports these programs and provides funding for art services throughout the state, including Arts in the Military, Poetry Out Loud, the Folk Arts Program, and Arts and Cultural Districts. To learn more, visit nmarts.org  

There’s something truly special about visiting places where significant parts of our history have happened. The eight-state-run Historic Sites not only interpret history, but welcome visitors to engage in programs and events in the northern part of the state. 

Walk along the ancient Kuaua Pueblo at Coronado, enjoy the breathtaking views of the mountains at Jemez, or sit by the Rio Grande after visiting the hacienda and Navajo churro sheep at Los Luceros. 

In southern New Mexico, learn about the Long Walk at Bosque Redondo Memorial. See where buffalo soldiers were stationed at Fort Stanton. Walk Billy the Kid’s footsteps in Lincoln. Learn adobe brick-making at Fort Selden. And experience community art and history at Taylor-Mesilla. 

Learn more and plan your visit@nmhistoricsites.org. 

(Promo music plays, then fades) 

[00:26:35] Emily: So, I know you brought some photos. Is there one in particular that, you know, ‘cause our listeners can’t see them, obviously, but is there one in particular that you would be able to describe?  

[00:26:46] Marcus: Yeah, so as far as the photographs there on the range, I was making a lot of portraits of the hunters looking through their binoculars. And so, it’s them in these desert landscapes that are just, you know, it’s completely covered in creosote and ocotillo out there in that area on the mountains on the backside of the Organs and, and it’s just this really intense, hilly landscape where you’re, we were trekking through arroyos and up these hills, and you’d get up to the top of the hill and you’d, they’d peer through their binoculars in order to see if, if we’re still on the tail of these oryx. 

And so, I was making a lot of photographs of these men weaving their way through the desert, up and down the hills, through the arroyos, peering at them through the ocotillo and the creosote. And you know, they’re all in camouflage and decked out—and, and funny enough too, you have to wear bright orange safety vests. So, it’s really just this kind of like, a striking—and I was shooting in black and white, so they’re, like, bright white over the camo, which is really interesting. 

And so, yeah, it’s, it’s a lot of portraits and a lot of—particularly of people looking through these lenses, these binocular lenses. And I think that’s really interesting and as far as relation to my practice, and there’s just this level of, like, hunting and peering through these tools in order to, to find something that, um, I think is pretty interesting. 

And it was a different, different kind of experience out there, photographing these people, but in this kind of abstract way where you’re looking at them, representing what they’re trying to find—that being the oryx. 

And so, in the second half of what I’ve made there in the taxidermies, there’s a lot of direct representation of the oryx being there. Of course, it’s no longer a live oryx, but it’s kind of this like Frankenstein’s workshop of, of these people basically tearing it apart and putting it back together in this way that’s ready to go into folks’ homes and be their trophies.  

[00:28:36] Emily: You said earlier that you were drawn to the kinds of emotions that you can reveal in documentary photography, so I’m curious: As you are doing these different pieces of this project, what is the overall story that you are hoping to tell through this series?  

[00:28:56] Marcus: I’m really interested in the oryx as this symbol of southern New Mexican identity and this thing that we have created an authentic cultural, um, understanding of—but it’s also this really difficult problem that exists for, specifically for southern New Mexicans as these stewards of this animal that southern New Mexicans didn’t ask to have brought over. 

And so now, now we’re basically responsible for what happens, you know, and, and I think that the fact that in the ’90s, as soon as there was momentum to address the problem in a more direct way, folks spoke up and basically didn’t want to see this animal eradicated even in one corner of the, of the range, and so I’m really interested in it as a question—what does this mean for us in this region in or to be responsible for this creature and to take responsibility for it and to have this, like, authentic relation to it through hunting, which is a common ancestral practice of, of all people everywhere in the world. 

But it’s kind of gotten distorted in all of these different ways, through all these complications of, of where they’re at, the relationship of the United States and the United States military to this specific part of land, how it’s been used to test the nuclear bomb and, and to create basically all of these different levels of, um, occupation there on the land. 

And, and it’s a really interesting topic because these animals are so beautiful and they mean so much to so many people in the area. And I experienced that just firsthand growing up without any sort of journalistic or documentarian or artistic interpretation of it. You know, it was just this thing that we were excited and proud of in being in our area and to understand, you know, this thing that seemingly feels good is also detrimental to the indigenous ecology. 

It’s a very complicated thing that there’s not a lot of right answers for. It’s, it becomes more challenging to address the more you learn about it. Yeah, and so, I think that this project and, and these photographs and documentary photography is really good at being able to kind of tug at the nuance. 

And the photographs I’ve tried to make are hopefully nuanced enough to make it to where it doesn’t seem like there’s, like, I’m trying to exactly say this is the right way to handle this or not, but to kind of bring the trickiness of it more to the forefront of the conversation and, and to maybe help others progress their thoughts around it. 

I think a lot of folks in, in southern New Mexico don’t exactly know that they are considered invasive species, or the full extent of the environmental impact isn’t something that people are as aware of. And from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of folks who feel really resistant to this designation of them as an invasive species. 

And the question of what to do with them is something that people are hesitant to address to begin with. Just let ‘em be, you know? Like, they’ll just continue doing the same things that we’ve been doing. But despite how many are being harvested every year, the population is, it has continued to just grow. 

And their, their territory is extended now. They’ve been seen 60 miles south of Albuquerque. And they’ve been seen in west Texas. And you know, they’re on this side of the Doña Anas and the Organs on the Las Cruces side. And so, they’re, you know, they’re really resilient, tenacious creatures that want to, they want to survive. 

And they’re actually thriving in the Chihuahuan Desert, you know, despite the other indigenous species continuing to struggle because of other issues related to climate and development in the region. (Music begins) And them no longer having access to the same amounts of water and land and food that they used to. 

(Music continues) 

[00:32:51] Emily: So, you mentioned the way that the oryx have influenced a lot of economic systems in southern New Mexico in terms of, like, the taxidermy you mentioned and the hunts and—I forget the, what word you used, but the guided hunts or whatever they’re—outfitting. I’m curious if you feel like there’s also been an influence culturally. 

(Music fades out) 

[00:33:17] Marcus: The oryx certainly has had a cultural impact on southern New Mexicans. I think it’s this animal that has been kind of put into the cultural canon of creatures that exist around us. And, you know, in New Mexico, we, we put these animals out so forwardly in in our visual language, you know, from roadrunners and quails to pronghorns and lizards, and we’re really proud of our wildlife. And the oryx certainly has found its home in that. 

And going into people’s homes in Las Cruces and seeing the oryx mounted on their walls and knowing how proud of it people are—it becomes this kind of, I don’t know, almost like supernatural presence out in the desert that shouldn’t exist. But it does. And, and it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s literally an alien species there in the desert and we revere aliens so much, (both laugh) especially in southern New Mexico!  

And so, you know, I think that it just fits right into the kind of strangeness of the New Mexican cultural canon that’s really contradictory and nuanced and complicated. When I speak to people who aren’t from New Mexico and telling them, you just go through your list of stories about the place and people, “I can’t believe that. I can’t believe that. I can’t believe that.” 

 And then you get to the oryx and they’re like, “Wow, I really can’t believe that one.” You know? And so, it fits right at home with the weirdness that we, we really enjoy in New Mexico. And it’s this surviving species. It’s this creature that despite being in a completely, you know, foreign place has thrived. 

And I think that that relates a lot to how a lot of New Mexicans view themselves, and I think it’s just this complicated thing as far as how that relates to New Mexico’s historization and projection of, of its own colonial legacy. And so, I think that it makes a lot of sense to have this random animal—it’s this thing that makes no sense, makes a lot of sense in the context of New Mexico. 

New Mexico is also this place that’s become a playground for a lot of people. And it’s this place to go and, and experience something that feels so different. And I, yeah, I think there’s resistance to letting go of some of the, the more detrimental aspects of this culture that has been created here. And so, yeah, I don’t, I don’t really know what the future holds for the oryx, but I think probably even increased numbers in its population’s likely, you know. I think it’s going to continue to thrive in the desert. 

[00:35:42] Emily: I know you—I mean, you started out saying that this is something that your grandparents were involved with in terms of hunting the oryx. So, is it something that has been passed down in your family? Like did your parents also participate in hunts?  

[00:35:56] Marcus: Neither of my parents participated in hunts. My paternal grandfather was shot and killed and my maternal uncle, my mom’s younger brother acidentally shot himself and died with my grandfather’s gun when he was a kid, when my mom was a kid. And so, both of my parents were really anti-gun and didn’t participate in hunting, and so I grew up only experiencing these things when I’d be at my grandmother’s house. 

And I went, I grew up going out shooting with my grandpa and my uncles and stuff, and my perspective on it and my experience with it, like, going out in this oryx hunt was the first time I’d ever actually been out in a hunt myself. And so, I felt like there was this picking up of, of something that had been generationally intended for me, and for very valid reasons I hadn’t gotten to participate in. 

And, you know, I have a very conflicted view on it all for a lot of different reasons. But, yeah, there is a level of generationality in our relationship to the oryx that is something that is really powerful and important and that I’m grateful for, whether—I’m grateful for, despite feeling like it needs to be addressed and changed in, in certain ways, or it could be made to be much healthier or better for the environment and for even for ourselves. 

You know, like I think changing our relationship to how we understand these things, even if it’s just addressing the challenging nature of the oryx existing in the Chihuahuan Desert in general.  

[00:37:21] Emily: Do you know anything about, you know, connected to my question about the cultural changes that have happened in southern New Mexico, do you know if there are ways that there have been cultural changes specific to groups of people like tribes in southern New Mexico, for example?  

[00:37:39] Marcus: As far as I’m aware, there’s no direct initiatives from, well, specifically from the Mescalero Apache, which is the nearest tribe in the, the only, I believe, it’s the only federally recognized tribe in southern New Mexico. 

And so, there’s, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no specific difference in how native people in southern New Mexico are viewing them. You know, certainly, certainly there’s an understanding among a lot of folks in southern New Mexico that the ecology and the environment of southern New Mexico is at great risk of continuing to be degraded and, and the oryx is one small part of that. 

And this place is, you know, occupied land there in the Tularosa Basin that intersects a lot of different folks, traditional migration routes, and historical and ancestral homelands, and it’s basically cut off from all of that now and exists purely as a place of development of weapons of war. 

And so, it’s a really nuanced place that, you know—a lot of people understand that, and a lot of people understand specifically the environmental impacts of that. You know, when I was growing up, we lived pretty near that side of Las Cruces, and so just on the other side of the mountains is the Missile Range. 

And so, you could at night hear sometimes, like, detonations. You’d see odd lights kind of flashing over the mountains. And so, there’s, there’s a lot of awareness around the military base, White Sands Missile Range, and how that has created an interesting cultural dynamic. There’s a lot of awareness around how the Trinity Site and its environmental and cultural legacies have impacted folks in that region, and I think that the oryx feels small in a way compared to some of those things. 

And also, we’re in this situation where there’s not a ton of industry in our region and it’s difficult to imagine—you know, a lot of folks work on the military base. A lot of folks work for NASA. It’s out there as well, and a lot of folks now work around the economy of the oryx, and the sale of the tags for the oryx supports the Department of Game and Fish. 

These are people that are from the community that survive through these established ways of the economy. And when you’re in a situation that southern New Mexico often finds itself in of having very low economic development, (music begins) it’s difficult to imagine new ways of survival. And shaking the status quo is very scary because it—there’s a lot of risk associated, and the people that suffer most in those situations are the people who have the least means to even have a say in how things are changed. 

So, I think there is a lot of awareness around those issues and whether people specifically hone in on the oryx as being a touch point of that or not, I don’t think everyone does, but I think that it is a really interesting thing that when I speak to folks, they recognize it and they say, you know, they’re able to see that, the conflict in it. 

(Music continues) 

[00:40:51] Emily: I know you said earlier that the oryx outcompete some of the native species. I’m curious about what specifically the environmental impacts are in terms of things like, you know, what are they eating? Are they (music fades) contributing to erosion, for example, or are there water issues? Like, what are some of those environmental concerns? 

[00:41:12] Marcus: From what I’ve read, there’s conflicting opinions over what exactly is hurting the indigenous species the most. You know, like, pronghorns specifically, their population is decreasing while the oryx population increases. And so, what is the biggest reason why pronghorn are being depleted? Is it because there’s less water? Yes. Is it because there’s more oryx? Yes. Is there land that they occupied traditionally—is that being developed and changed and fenced off and gated, and they’re not able, I mean, pronghorn can jump pretty high, so, but, you know, the changes in their landscape certainly also have contributed to their population decreasing. 

And so, the oryx, you know, in a healthy environment where everything else was going according to plan, maybe wouldn’t have as great of an impact on the indigenous species, but because of the other impacts of climate change and development, every single little hit against these indigenous species of the pronghorn, the mule deer, and the bighorn sheep is really detrimental. 

I mean, cattle have a much longer history of basically taking up too much space and the indigenous habitats of these creatures. And so, that’s something that we’ve looked at for a much longer time, is being, you know, the cattle are overgrazed and they’re overwatered and they take up too much territory, and, I mean, that conversation around like ranching and beef and cattle and—it’s so much more fraught with different opinions and momentum. 

And yeah, the oryx, they’re out there and they’re consuming resources and they’re doing it really well. And driving in this environment where they don’t have a lot of predators and they, they’re relatively built to compete with heartier animals, whereas the pronghorn, the mule deer were, you know, their ecosystem was set with who they were competing for previously. 

And so, there’s a lot of factors in the oryx’s success in the Chihuahuan Desert as far as how that’s negatively impacting the other animals. But on top of that, there’s issues of them impacting human environments. They’re coming onto ranches, and they can be aggressive and they get hit by cars and interfere with government operations in the area. 

And so, the oryx has become kind of a pest in several different ways, and it’s sad to say that about this animal that is, you know, so beautiful and so impressive—and then to, you know, they’re not what we think of at all as being pests, but you know, these things are really common in the greater Americas as well. 

From, like, the hippos in Columbia to—there’s a species called nilgai in south Texas that’s an Asian antelope that was also brought over in, in a kind of similar way and is now wild and hunted. And so, these things are, you know—iguanas in Florida, it’s the changing of the ecosystem in the ecology in this way that we weren’t anticipating, which is funny to have just brought over all these animals without expecting any sort of impact on what already existed here.  

[00:44:05] Emily: Yeah. Interesting.  

[00:44:07] Marcus: Well, what’s interesting about this project, and I spoke about it a little bit, was this sense of like feeling a return to form and of documentary photography because over the past few years, my work, while still existing in, in kind of like documentary visual style, has really shifted to being much more intrinsic and I’ve been photographing. 

My own family and even starting to work a little bit in self-portraiture, and so literally photographing myself basically. I mean, this type of work started as a rejection of, of what I was doing in in journalism school and in the journalism world where I wanted to represent. Myself and, and my story, and my family’s story. 

And so, I was making work in Las Cruces where my family had been for a long time. Um, I’ve been making a project in Séc-he, or Palm Springs, California, where, you know, my family were Agua Caliente, so then our ancestral homeland, I’ve been going back there and photographing with my uncles on the reservation and making a project there. 

And so, it just has been very intrinsic work for the last several years and, and this project, while it did—it has its start in my family, and actually on my mom’s side, I haven’t been directly photographing my own family for this project much and wanting to, to really just explore something that is something that I feel like I, I have my own authentic origins in something that I grew up around and do understand as well as pretty much anyone could wanting to look outside of my own direct experience and also revisit this other way of making work. 

And so, that’s been something that’s been really exciting in this work. It feels like this change of pace that has kind of reenergized me in a different way and, and taken me in a different direction. I’m a person that, like, I like to have kind of a lot of variety in my work. That way I can bounce back and forth between projects without ever feeling too bogged down in one thing or the other. 

And so, that’s been really nice to, to be able to visit this kind of old way of making work and get back into that.  

[00:46:01] Emily: So, you’ve been immersed in your oryx project for a long time. What’s your next obsession?  

[00:46:05] Marcus: I don’t know what my next obsession is! I have a few, a few different kinds of broad intellectual and artistic interests, but I’m also still very much in the process of making this work and every other project that I’ve ever started—none of them are technically complete at this point. Um, I don’t really feel like any, anything I’ve started is done yet. I’m really interested in the photo book as being my ideal medium or vessel for carrying these. 

And so, I see that when all of these feel ready to be published, I’ll get to that point. And until then, I feel like they’ll all be ongoing projects, including this oryx project. And so, I’m definitely still very much in the midst of too many things to even see what is going to come next as far as projects go. 

And this oryx project I sat on for so long being, like, I need (music begins) to make photos about this. I need to work, make a project about this. And I’ve come into this point just in this last year where I’ve, I’ve had a lot of momentum and, and a lot of support. And so, I’m actually working through ideas I’ve been sitting on for so long. 

And I feel great because new ideas are slowly starting to form, but I don’t really know exactly what is going to come next. And my broad interest is connecting the history of the New Mexico territory and its surrounding regions, including Alta, California and the legacy of colonialism in the Southwest to the way that we’re living now. 

And so, I’m, I’m just primarily interested in contextualizing the history, our shared history in how we are living contemporarily, the things that I’ve seen growing up and how they exist in, in this kind of broader context of history. And so, I feel like that’s, that’s something I could work on forever and will continue to be more and more important to myself. And relevant in how we understand ourselves here. 

(Music continues) 

[00:47:58] Emily: After learning about the oryx and the larger environmental contexts at White Sands Missile Range, what do you think about the expanding population of oryx in New Mexico? Be sure to check out Marcus’s photo essay in the spring issue of El Palacio. Find links to his website and other topics we touched on in our conversation in the show notes. 

Thanks for listening. 

(Music continues, then transitions to outro music) 

Emily: Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. 

Our producer is Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios. 

This season is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder and Alex Riegler with additional editing by Monica Braine. 

Our recording engineers are Collin Ungerleider and Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe. 

Technical direction and post-production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz. 

Our executive producer is Daniel Zillmann. 

Thank you to New Mexico artist “El Brujo” D’Santi Nava for our theme music. 

For a full transcript and show notes, visit podcast.nmculture.org or click the link in the episode description in your listening app. 

I’m your host, Emily Withnall. 

The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs is your guide to the state’s entire family of museums, historic sites, and cultural institutions. From Native treasures to space exploration, world-class folk art to ancient dinosaurs, our favorite way to fully explore is with the New Mexico CulturePass. 

To see everywhere CulturePass is accepted and reserve yours today, visit nmculture.org/visit/culturepass. 

And if you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio magazine. Subscribe at elpalacio.org. 

Thank you for listening, and if you learned something new, send this episode to a friend or share it on social media. We love celebrating the cultures of New Mexico together. 

(Outro music ends)