Espanola, NM

It’s okay to express yourself. Grandmothers, teenagers, and even city council members cruise the streets of Española, N.M., in sparkling cars painted with intricate, detailed murals reflecting the driver’s individual interests, religion, or history.

The lowriders are canvases that Arturo Medina spends countless hours painting with a technique called airbrushing, by which artists use tools such as stencils, spray guns, and paintbrushes to put images on the cars. “My dad did oldie cars, like gangster style, and now I’m into that,” he says. His family parks lowriders in their yard when the weather is good to show them off.

“For Holy Week and Lent, I have a car that I park next to the Santuario de Chimayo, so when people come to pray, they can see it. It has the story of the crucifixion painted on it,” says Medina, who lives just outside the town of 9,008 in the Rio Grande Valley.

The New Mexico town is nicknamed the “Lowrider Capital of the United States” because of its tradition of highlighting the cars as part of local culture and the high number of lowriders per capita. The surrounding landscape is a combination of lush river valley life—the Rio Grande, Rio Chama, and Santa Cruz rivers converge near town—and majestic mountains.

But lowriders are the community’s heritage. Tomas Martinez, a local banker and founder of the Vicious Dreams lowrider club, says lowriders are family-oriented.

“I’ve noticed a lot of people are really religious, painting a saint or the Virgin Mary (on their cars); there are others who paint homage to family members who have passed away,” he says.

Opinions differ on what makes a true lowrider. Some say it can be a new car with small wheels, a nice paint job, and chrome rims. They consider any car a lowrider as long as it has tiny tires, chrome wheels, and has been dropped low to the ground—the defining characteristic of a lowrider and a practice that contributes to the distinctive look of the cars.

Others stick to the more traditional definition of late-model automobiles, lowered, with custom paint jobs, tiny steering wheels, and chrome rims. Carlos Sanchez, marketing director of The Ultimate Lowrider II, an annual car show hosted by the Casino just a couple of miles north of Española, insists a true lowrider must be an older car. People invest anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to $40,000 in these cars, he says.

Everyone agrees the cars must be dropped as low to the ground as possible. Española folks make lowriders from vans, trucks, and even motorcycles. Medina jokes that people drop wheelbarrows down to become lowriders.

When they aren’t lowriding, residents of Española spend a lot of time working or hanging out with their families. The Los Alamos National Laboratories is one of the area’s largest employers, and others work at the Ohkay Casino, in retail stores like Wal-Mart, on cattle and sheep ranches, or in local apple orchards.

Lowriding originated in the early 20th century when Mexican-American teenagers, or “pachucos,” dressed in “zoot suits” and polished shoes, slicked back their hair, and cruised the streets in restored cars. Cruising may be a modern form of a traditional Mexican courtship, the paseo, in which young, unmarried people would walk around the central plaza of a town, women in one direction, men in the other.

Attracting attention is a major aim of lowriding, Medina says. “You know, I mean, if you go out cruising in a normal car, it doesn’t stand out, but if you fix up a nice ride, well everybody checks it out and says, ‘Hey, that’s a nice car; Can you give me a ride? Can I take your picture?’” Medina says. Medina, now a husband and father, still cruises with his wife and daughter.

Martinez believes low-riding deters teens from trouble. “It’s a good outlet for younger kids. They work on cars, putting their money into the car as opposed to doing drugs,” he says.

One lowrider from the Española Valley is even on display at The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, Medina says. “Dave’s Dream,” a 1969 Ford LTD from the Española Valley, was started by David Jaramillo in 1978. When he died in an auto accident, his family finished the car as a memorial—complete with a hand-painted mural of Jaramillo’s family.

Anne García is a writer based in Nederland, Colo.

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