History in Questa is not only found in old buildings and photographs. It is also sitting in the memories of the village's elders, and a project launched in fall 2025 is making sure those memories are gathered, honored, and kept. It is called Voces de Nuestro Pais, which means Voices of Our Area.
The gatherings take place at the Questa Library on the second Saturday of each month, and they are hosted by Michael Rael. Families and neighbors come together to listen as elders share family stories, history, love, and adventures, the kind of stories that have traditionally been passed down at kitchen tables rather than written in books.
The project's language says a great deal about how it sees its storytellers. The elders are honored as "nuestros tesoros," our treasures. That is not just an affectionate nickname. It is a statement of purpose: the people who remember the old Questa are themselves among the community's most valuable possessions, and their recollections deserve care.
The sessions are about fellowship as much as recording. At a session this past April, Billy and John Archuleta of Des Montes performed with guitars, bringing music into the room alongside the storytelling. Stories and songs have always traveled together in northern New Mexico, and a gathering that makes space for both feels true to the culture it is preserving.
Crucially, these stories are not lost when the afternoon ends. Recordings from the gatherings join the community archive at QuestaStories.org, an archive maintained by the Questa Library together with Voices of the Northern Rio Grande and the Manitos Community Memory Project. Anyone who wants to hear Questa's own voice telling Questa's own past can go and listen.
The project has grown a second life as well: Voces de Nuestro Pais is now also a podcast, carrying the elders' stories well beyond the library walls to listeners wherever they may be, including Questa families who have moved away and want to hear home.
In a village whose history stretches from ancestral settlements to mining booms, the newest chapter is being written by its oldest voices. One Saturday a month, the treasures of Questa open their memories, and the whole community becomes richer for it.