Maye Torres and Ana Beluche

[00:01] MAYA TORRES: My name is Maya Torres. I'm 62 years old. Today's date is March 27, 2023. And we're in Taos, New Mexico. My interview partner is Ana Beluche and she's a wonderful, dear friend of mine.

[00:18] ANA BELUCHE: Hi. My name is Ana Beluche I'm 77 years old. Today's date is March 27, 2020, 2023. We're at the library in Taos, New Mexico. And my interview partner is Maya Torres. And she's just a wonderful, dear friend and sister.

[00:39] MAYA TORRES: Yes, definitely a sister there.

[00:43] ANA BELUCHE: Yep. Yeah, we're in the sisterhood.

[00:45] MAYA TORRES: Yes.

[00:47] ANA BELUCHE: All right. Well, we figured we start out with talking about our childhood, and Maya has had one heck of an interesting childhood.

[00:57] MAYA TORRES: It's been different than many people. I was born in Taos. I'm a 13th generation on the spanish side, though. We also have native blood and Irish and Scottish as well, African and Congo. I love it all. We're kind of a global mix, and our relatives to Pater Martinez, who was one of the priests in the valley. And growing up, my dad was a teacher, and he not only did he teach in Albuquerque, but he taught throughout different places in Latin America. So we grew up in El Salvador and Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as Taos. But I did get to return to Taos and graduate with the class in 1978, which is probably some of the best people you've ever meth from dear old Taos High. And so that's kind of the extent of my childhood. Till about. What about you?

[01:56] ANA BELUCHE: Well, I grew up in New York. I was born and raised in New York. And our connection now that you said that is Ecuador.

[02:04] MAYA TORRES: Yes.

[02:05] ANA BELUCHE: My father is ecuadorian, was ecuadorian, and my mother was from Puerto Rico. So I came here 38 years ago, and this is home.

[02:16] MAYA TORRES: You said you saw the mountain, and that was it.

[02:18] ANA BELUCHE: That was it. Started crying, knew I was home. Had an apartment by that afternoon.

[02:24] MAYA TORRES: Well, you, too. You had an interesting childhood because your mom was a curandetta.

[02:30] ANA BELUCHE: Yep. She used to do herbs, and being in New York wasn't easy for her, but we used to walk the parks on Riverside Drive, and she'd pick herbs and she'd make baths for people. She was also very psychic and would tell people in the streets. And I'd be with her and I'd say, oh, dear. But tell us about your El Salvador.

[02:57] MAYA TORRES: Oh, those were very interesting experiences. We were there during the years of 1969 through 1972. And all of Latin America, except for probably Costa Rica, was in a lot of political upheaval, often onset by the us government. I will say that because it was very upsetting to me to find out that's what our government did. And even though I was a young child, you could see that that was what was happening. At that point, 10% of the people owned 90% of the wealth. So when we're talking poverty in the United States, we don't really quite know what poverty is, where you just have a skeletal body and there's no food in sight. So it was a highly impoverished country at that point. I do believe Naib Bukele, who is their new president now, has made severe changes because it was a harsh country, but yet the people were just super, super kind. So it influenced me in a way of deep compassion and empathy for people who have less than you and how to be able to assist people to gather their kind of composure and become more self sufficient. It definitely taught me not to be dependent, really, on people or government. Yeah. So those experiences were often dotted with coups and mass violence in terms of having live executions on tv. They would have them in the plazas. So we saw a lot of people die in front of us, not just on tv. It was in real life. So really, I do not own a gun or weapon today. I really, truly believe if you're going to be a person of peace, you will not walk with that at all. Correct. You got to spend time in Puerto Rico, which was quite different, though.

[05:12] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah, it was different because. But there, too, the government suppressed the people. You know, they weren't really allowed to have gardens. They had to depend on the food being brought in. They were really oppressed in those days. I don't know what it's like now, but I'm planning to go back this year, hopefully to visit family. But also, is this where you started your art?

[05:46] MAYA TORRES: No, I was always making art. I was lucky to be around a really creative parents. And my dad used to paint, and it was interesting because he wouldn't let me touch the paints, but I could draw, which is probably one of the reasons I focus on drawing today. And I have the possibility to paint now, but I still have this resistance, and I know it goes back to that voice, don't touch my paints. And now I'm like, let's squeeze the whole tube out. And so, growing up in Taos, of course there were artists everywhere and in New Mexico, throughout all the pueblos and the spanish people were making art. It didn't just start in Taos when Blumenshine's wheel broke. I mean, art was just part of the fabric of the culture. I think in the southwest and in Latin America as well. It wasn't treated as a side kind of extracurricular activity in El Salvador. It was one of the main subjects. And every week we had a really intense, serious art lesson where you had to draw still lives and learn about volume and shape, and it was really kind of lovely. So I just basically learned with how to draw books, and that's what my dad had around. And I started drawing when I was like, you know, five or six.

[07:11] ANA BELUCHE: Nice. Yeah, nice. The one thing I want to say was, moving to Taos 38 years ago was a whole totally different Taos than what it is now. It really taught me how to survive. Coming from New York, you had everything kind of, you know, at the corner or here or there and here. We didn't have gas at those days to keep us warm. We had to depend on the wood and the wood stoves to keep warm, and that was quite interesting. But like you said, just seeing all the art around, for me, that was so incredibly wonderful, and meeting all the artists, you could walk in the street and say, oh, there's so and so, and, you know, you could have a conversation. Can't do that anymore here. It's sad. What's changed?

[08:00] MAYA TORRES: There is a huge change. The gentrification is really global. I don't think it's. Anyone is going to be able to sidestep it. Well, just like my parents, their first language was Spanish, and most of the people also spoke Tiwa in the valley. My grandparents, Arturo Martinez y Salazar, and my grandmother Teodora, they owned a bar on the plaza, and they were. My grandfather was trilingual. He knew English, tiwa and Spanish. That would be lovely to see it come back.

[08:34] ANA BELUCHE: Yes.

[08:35] MAYA TORRES: I think English is a harsh language and does kind of program us to be, in itself, a little bit harsh just because of the language. Because you grew up with Spanish?

[08:45] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah. When I went to school, I only knew Spanish, so I learned English in school, even though my brothers and sisters spoke English. I knew some words, but still. But we had good school system then. It was wonderful.

[09:03] MAYA TORRES: What area of New York did you go to school at?

[09:08] ANA BELUCHE: Where? What area in Manhattan? I went to the junior high school and high school in Harlem, and it was great high school. I didn't care for too much and got married young and had kids young, which is why I can do anything I want to do now with my kids being older, having grandkids, and saying bye.

[09:36] MAYA TORRES: Time for mom time. And that brings us partly to healing, which was one of the things we really wanted to talk about how we can heal ourselves, and by doing so, heal the people around you and community and hopefully the world. And Ana is known here in Taos as a very powerful curandera. She is a great healer, and she has been focusing on that for several decades. And I go to Anna, and she has a magic that a doctor does not have, because what you deal with is more of a heart, mind, body kind of healing, rather than just, you know, locations like, oh, my stomach hurts. Well, why does your stomach hurt? It's because maybe there's too much going on.

[10:27] ANA BELUCHE: We have to look at the whole picture, right? Yeah.

[10:30] MAYA TORRES: So how did you get into healing?

[10:32] ANA BELUCHE: Well, in 1990, I got lupus and systemic lupus arrhythmiatosis. And they told me I almost died from it. They told me that I would have to take a bunch of medications for my heart, for my thyroid, for my lungs forever. I said, I can't afford that. And in those days, medicines were very expensive. We didn't have the coverage that we have now. But I said, no, I can't do this. So I had to learn how to walk, talk because I had been intubated, so my voice wasn't there. And as I'm learning, I used to come to this library a lot and get books on tape because I couldn't even hold a book and listen to these tapes. And one of the doctors, I can't remember his name right now, but he had said, if more people saw chemotherapy as a healing rather than a horrible thing happening to you, more people would heal. Well, they were going to give me chemotherapy for my kidneys, and I used to go for 6 hours and sit in Los Alamos, and they used to give me chemo. And I just see it as a golden healing light coming into my body, healing my body. This is a healing for my body. And I stopped medication, like two and a half years after that. And the doctors refused to be nice to me. They said, you're in denial. You gotta take these medicines for the rest of your life. I've been off medications basically since 1994. Wow. Everybody can do this. You just have to really want to live and be happy, and everybody can do this. So I started doing massage. I went to massage school when I was 50, and that was the beginning of everything. And in order to keep your license here, you have to take continuous classes. And I've grown so much with all those classes. We have a wonderful UNM course here. So that's how I got into it. And it's been over 20. How old am I 27 years.

[13:21] MAYA TORRES: Like a second career after all the motherhood and. Yeah, yeah, well, I started getting into natural healing. I was violated by a doctor when I was a teenager, so I never wanted to go to doctor. And back then, you just didn't say anything about it. So I was lucky enough that my grandmother had a curandera here named Margarita Mascarenas who would come and heal my grandmother with. She had the glass suction cups was one tool that she used. She crystals and massage and talking about what ails you inside and trying to clear those emotions. And she did a little cluck as she worked around my grandmother, and she was a highly sensory person, and she'd use her hands, like, to feel the situation. So I was lucky enough to be introduced to that kind of healing at an early age. Luckily, I was in Taos, New Mexico. We had a phenomenal midwifery school and group of women here at that time. Elizabeth Gilmore and Trish dinnerman were the midwives. And I opted to have all my kids at home. And it was just phenomenal because they're also really aware of natural medicines and, I mean, they're not going to give you an epidermal or any of those things. And I wanted to be really clear with my sons when they were born, I didn't want to be drugged up. And I know that my grandmothers weren't drugged up when they gave birth. It kind of started with our mother's generation. I felt really lucky that we always had different options for healing, you know, and that kind of awareness as we evolve, right, as a society and people and stuff is, I think, slowly coming to the surface now where you can't just get a pill and make it go away and, like, letting go of past angst or traumas and is key to healing because, like, the anger or whatever caused your lupus, I don't know, whatever happened in your child.

[15:31] ANA BELUCHE: I had raised three kids by myself at that point in New York, made lots of money. And that's when I said, I gotta get out of here. And it didn't hit until I stopped. Once I got here and I stopped, the body says the whole thing. God. And one day I just got up and I fell. That was it. I must have had symptoms before, I'm sure. But that's how it happens. All of a sudden, the universe says, you're stopping now.

[16:06] MAYA TORRES: That's true.

[16:06] ANA BELUCHE: And I was lucky I was here. And I felt I was lucky I was here because I, you know, we gathered all these friends, you know, and all our friends are like our family, and they all take care of you, right. So I was blessed in that respect. I had all my friends helping me.

[16:30] MAYA TORRES: And also, I mean, northern New Mexico was and still is known as a.

[16:36] ANA BELUCHE: Kind of healing place.

[16:37] MAYA TORRES: Healing place just because of the land and valley, and also because there's a lot of healers that are drawn here. And back then, they didn't really have doctors. So every family had to have somebody who knew something about the herbs and something about how to tie a tourniquet if somebody was bleeding so bad. You know, things like that. It's an interesting procedure when you're way in the middle of nowhere, you know, and you get bit by a rattlesnake or things like that, have to know these things. And I think it's important to take control of your own healing and body rather than hoping a doctor can do.

[17:19] ANA BELUCHE: It for you with a pill.

[17:21] MAYA TORRES: With a pill. Because that just, in my opinion, masks the issue.

[17:25] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah. And then they give you another pill because that other pill caused something else, you know, and it's such an ongoing thing, and they don't ever. I have clients that have been on high blood pressure medicine for years, like 1020 years. Why? They said, oh, I feel good, my blood pressure's fine. No, your body's changing somewhere else. It's doing. And doctors don't ever check to see that it has worked and allow your body to start working on its own again. And it does. Our bodies want to heal continuously.

[18:06] MAYA TORRES: They do, yeah, they want the healing.

[18:09] ANA BELUCHE: So tell me a little bit more about your gallery.

[18:11] MAYA TORRES: Oh, well, now I have a gallery on Taos Plaza called Studio 107 B. And what we, our focus is including the artists of northern New Mexico with the different cultures and equal men and women as well. And we're focusing on the artists doing more contemporary work, the work that's really coming from the heart. This is after maybe you've done 2000 landscapes, and you really want to use the imagery to say something. So most of our artists kind of have a message, and the medium is the message. And I do believe art is healing. I mean, I know I feel like I came here to make art, but through the journey, for me, it's also been a method of healing. Some of the traumas, I'm just realizing this now. Some of the traumas that I experienced as a child in Latin America, some of those intense violence, the look on a person's face as they're dying or being shot have come out in my artwork. And for years, I was really puzzled about why the art had generated that kind of dark imagery. But now I realize that's where it was coming from, I think. So it was a tool for healing for me, and I think most of the artists that we have in our gallery, it's been definitely a tool for self exploration and staying centered so you can heal others through your art. I mean, just looking at a piece by Larry Bell with those exquisite colors and just the simplest of forms, you know, and shapes can just move you to a place that you never knew of before. And I think art is incredibly important. We tend to deny it in our culture, in the public schools. So that is a travesty. And I think it set our country back because we don't have creative thinkers and problem solvers like we used to. And so I just, you know, the shift that's happening. Wouldn't it be great if school were taught through art, you know, rather than art as a separate subject? So in the times I work with kids, that's kind of what I do, is like, we always will learn something through the art, right? And that I think art and creativity will be the tools to change the world and heal the world. Because once everyone opens up to their creativity, because you don't just have to be an artist to create. There's a lot of ways you can create. You can be a scientist or a businessman and be creative thinker in that way as an art. So I think by having the gallery, my mom had a gallery in the same space for 17 years, and she focused on more the abstract artists and kind of the guys who had come to Taos in the fifties, like Ted Egry and John Dupuy and Bill Gersh. So she was focusing on the super.

[21:20] ANA BELUCHE: Abstract artist hard time.

[21:22] MAYA TORRES: And she did well, it was interesting. My mom told me three weeks before she died that she finally understood my art. No, it was like three days before she died. She's like, I finally understand it. Keep doing it. Now all my life she said, you should not do this. And there she's like, oh, finally. I'm like, oh, thank God.

[21:46] ANA BELUCHE: Before you died, it wasn't just, like, hobbies gallery. We used to always be there. Yeah, at your mom's gallery, she would.

[21:55] MAYA TORRES: Have a changing show every month. And back then, all the artists would really attend all the different openings and even buy art from the other artists. There was huge support, and they were open to discussing their technique with people who were just interested in looking at it, you know. Do you remember that?

[22:16] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah. And that's, you know, here to survive, you have to work in a lot of galleries like I did, and you learn so much just about people, and it's so wonderful.

[22:29] MAYA TORRES: Yeah, it is wonderful.

[22:30] ANA BELUCHE: And art also.

[22:32] MAYA TORRES: Yeah. It's a strange phenomenon here that the children really like the art, and often the parents won't want to come in because it is contemporary and it's edgy, but a lot of the kids relate to it more. And the dogs. The dogs would come in and nod their heads. I'm like, do you see that? One dog stood in front. He just sat in front of one painting there.

[22:57] ANA BELUCHE: His master was confused to take a picture of that. That would have been perfect.

[23:03] MAYA TORRES: But, yeah, I mean, healing is so broad. It doesn't have to just be exercise.

[23:10] ANA BELUCHE: Right? And definitely diet. Diet, yes. Diet is important, folks. I'm not saying it's not, but they say, you know, if you want to lose weight, you got a diet. No, there's lots of other things you can do.

[23:25] MAYA TORRES: Oh, talk to us about that.

[23:27] ANA BELUCHE: Well, you know, one lady I know, she was so oppressed by her mom that she doesn't care. So she's gained all this weight. So we have to look at that, you know? Come on. And I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, by no means, but there's a lot of simplicity in what's happened to all of us in life. So when we start looking at, gee, why am I doing that? Hmm. Okay, well, maybe I should try not to do it. And it isn't easy.

[24:04] MAYA TORRES: That's right.

[24:05] ANA BELUCHE: Breaking habits, it's not easy. But the more you do it, the easier it'll get. And, you know, right now, we just need to be happy and send love and light to the world. That's all.

[24:20] MAYA TORRES: Be as kind as we can to each other.

[24:22] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah.

[24:23] MAYA TORRES: Even the global leaders. Are you guys listening?

[24:30] ANA BELUCHE: We need to do something, for sure.

[24:32] MAYA TORRES: Well, and laughter, too. My late husband, Rory Wagner, had. He had a classic artist, crazy bohemian, juggadic lifestyle, and he produced amazing paintings in his lifetime. And though he did not take care of his body at all, his childhood was a really difficult one. And often drug use is a result of the traumas in our childhood that we just can't get over. And at a certain point in his life, he started having seizures, and it collapsed his spinal cord on itself. So he had seven compression factors in his back. Well, we, of course, went to all these doctors, and they'll say he'll never walk again, and none of that was ever going to happen. Well, I started bringing in all these natural healers to Rory. You were gone at this point, or you would have been on top of it. But we had healers like Ana Easter and Ana Chavez coming in and doing hot rocks and laser healing and sound therapy. And he was walking within a couple of months, not the same as he was. But they said he never would walk again. And so we would go to this one doctor. I'm not going to name names. We would just find everything in the doctor office hysterical. And so we discovered, and we are almost sure, that vibration and laughter are some of the key essential ingredients for really healing.

[26:04] ANA BELUCHE: Absolutely.

[26:05] MAYA TORRES: But if you're so depressed, you can't really laugh. I mean, but you have to find these situations to make you laugh. And we just found everything of the doctor hysterical from his misreading the charts and confusing the people. He didn't want the heavy drugs they were giving him, because nothing worked for the pain. And they kept trying to push these drugs on him. And we would just burst out laughing. And the doctors would get so mad at us. They're like, stop it. This is very serious. Don't you realize he'll never walk again? And we would laugh, and then we would go back home and laugh some more. And sure enough, I do believe it was that laughter that did kind of cure him.

[26:48] ANA BELUCHE: Absolutely.

[26:48] MAYA TORRES: And just having a sense of joy, which is very difficult if you're in a traumatic childhood or adulthood, if you're in a domestic relationship with somebody and you're not getting along and you're just throwing these painful words at one another and destroying each other. How do we move past this kind of stuff?

[27:11] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah. And changing the energy. It's the energy. Everything is energy. Everything vibrates. And once you start changing that negative energy to positive, things start to happen. And it just happens, including your body, what you see, who you're with. Life changes you in that sense. And then people start to fall away that shouldn't be in your life. So it's very interesting and very broad as to what we all have, because we are all different, right? So. And it's important to really look at.

[27:53] MAYA TORRES: Yourself, right between blood type and stuff. When my mom would love to go garage shopping, you know, around here, and she picked up a book, two important books for me in healing, and one, Washington, the Tao of Healing. And the other one was Louise Hay.

[28:11] ANA BELUCHE: You can heal your diet. That was one of my first.

[28:14] MAYA TORRES: When I first looked at that book, I was laughing. I thought, this can't be true. And I thought, well, boy, is that closed minded. We should try it. And so I used it on my kids and myself specifically the kids, because I knew that they would still be open minded. Right. And I saw these positive affirmations just change. Cold sores or bruises and all sorts of the negative thinking programming that we have. I mean, that book made me aware of how to think more positively. Right? So we don't create the angst and negative energy in our body that can.

[28:56] ANA BELUCHE: Create closing up cancer and stuff. My mom was 97 when she passed away.

[29:03] MAYA TORRES: Wow.

[29:04] ANA BELUCHE: And she was never on any drugs. She could heal herself making teas, making this and that, and she just died of old age, you know, but she was healthy to the very end, and she never. She would go to the doctor and say, eh, he doesn't know what he's talking about, you know? And so to this day, I don't really have a doctor. Not that there's any doctors around anymore. Everybody's a pa. There's no doctors. And some of the pas are really good, better than doctors. So it's coming to that point where we have to learn to heal ourselves.

[29:47] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[29:49] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah.

[29:49] MAYA TORRES: Because not all doctors are bad.

[29:51] ANA BELUCHE: No, not at all bad.

[29:54] MAYA TORRES: That's why I just categorize them as all bad, but they're not. Well, we wanted to talk about miracles, too. Miracles, remember?

[30:06] ANA BELUCHE: Yes, that's right.

[30:07] MAYA TORRES: Miracles do happen.

[30:08] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah.

[30:09] MAYA TORRES: When was your first miracle?

[30:12] ANA BELUCHE: Well, walking and talking and being able to start my life again, that was, to me, a miracle. Thank you. Thank you. But that was one of the first for me as an adult, trying to remember some of the other ones. So refresh.

[30:32] MAYA TORRES: I think the first time I had a miracle happen, we were living in Albuquerque and riding our bikes down these steep hills. And so there would be these watch guards who would say if a car was coming or nothing, if you could go. And so my brother, who's a little bit vicious with me, you know, he's like, come on down. It's clear. And it wasn't. And I should have been killed in that accident. I should have been smashed on my bike. But I just remember seeing the guy's eyes as he was about to hit me on my bike. And all of a sudden, I was down the street, and the car was up there road, and it was like, in a flash that that happened, that I was somehow catapulted. He never hit me.

[31:18] ANA BELUCHE: Wow.

[31:19] MAYA TORRES: I just was catapulted to another area. And then I. I just always thought it was my guardian angel. So I'm a huge believer in angels and higher power, and I think. And that was one of my first, I think, miraculous thing I can remember was, like, that was a miracle. I should. I should have died.

[31:37] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah. When I was 21, I had a volkswagen in New York, and I was stopped at a light, and I was in the center lane, and there was people on the bus stop. And I remember looking at them, and from my rearview mirror, I could see this car coming fast. And in those days, they had the pointy noses, remember? And I braced myself, and I saw my brother, who had passed away ten years earlier, hold my car.

[32:14] MAYA TORRES: Wow.

[32:15] ANA BELUCHE: He was just right in front of. Hold my car. I had a little volkswagen, and this man just plowed into me, and I didn't move.

[32:24] MAYA TORRES: Wow.

[32:25] ANA BELUCHE: My car should have been sent away.

[32:28] MAYA TORRES: Right.

[32:29] ANA BELUCHE: So that was one of my first miracles. Yeah. That. You just reminded me of that. Yeah. And I wound up with whiplash, but that was it. And then he backed up and took off.

[32:41] MAYA TORRES: Wow.

[32:42] ANA BELUCHE: Didn't even stay to see. And all the people from the bus stop came over. Are you okay? Are you okay? Cause literally, the way he hit me, I should have gone flying.

[32:52] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[32:53] ANA BELUCHE: But because I was in neutral, those good old days when you could drive.

[32:58] MAYA TORRES: We had to have a stand.

[33:01] ANA BELUCHE: You could drive.

[33:01] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[33:02] ANA BELUCHE: Stick shift. But, yeah.

[33:05] MAYA TORRES: Yeah. I think we had come to a point where we have to believe in miracles. And if we, as a globe, believe in miracles, I believe that we can bring peace to the table of, like, what's happening all over the world.

[33:18] ANA BELUCHE: It's not just.

[33:20] MAYA TORRES: And with the 8 billion people, we've reached a tipping point, I think, too, where there's just too much energy on one planet. And we have to learn how to be kind with everyone here. I don't think killing 5 million people is the answer. I think we just have to learn how to treat each other as humans with dignity and I, not as pawns in some sort of board game called risk. Right?

[33:53] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah.

[33:53] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[33:54] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah. Wow. So, how would you like to be remembered?

[34:00] MAYA TORRES: Oh, interesting. I guess. I want to be remembered as a good mom, I hope. I mean, parenting is such a struggle, and I feel like I've failed at many venues and platform as a mom. But I have a deep love for my children, which is the most important. And I want to be remembered through my artwork, because that will be able to stay on after we do in our bodies. And I hope in a hundred years, people will be looking at my artwork and being inspired by it, too. Yeah. Yeah.

[34:35] ANA BELUCHE: And the good person that you are.

[34:37] MAYA TORRES: And hopefully a good human. Yeah. Yeah.

[34:40] ANA BELUCHE: You do so much for everybody.

[34:42] MAYA TORRES: Yeah. I try to get people to laugh, but we can also cry together. So what about you. How do you want to be remembered?

[34:49] ANA BELUCHE: Same, you know, good mom, good person that I tried to do the best I could continuously and help people and have fun.

[35:03] MAYA TORRES: That's important.

[35:04] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah.

[35:05] MAYA TORRES: I think we've all forgotten how to dance during COVID Exactly.

[35:09] ANA BELUCHE: I was just going to say, I don't want a funeral. I want a dance party.

[35:14] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[35:15] ANA BELUCHE: I want music being played. I want people dancing. I don't want anybody saying, oh.

[35:23] MAYA TORRES: We'Ll miss you for sure.

[35:25] ANA BELUCHE: Absolutely. But I'll be there dancing, too.

[35:27] MAYA TORRES: I believe in spirit world so we can hang out still.

[35:31] ANA BELUCHE: Yes.

[35:34] MAYA TORRES: The higher powers are important to not forget.

[35:37] ANA BELUCHE: And especially now, when so many of the dear people that we've known in Taos are just leaving so soon, we won't know anybody.

[35:49] MAYA TORRES: And I feel, yeah, with COVID people have gone inward and they're almost afraid of each other. And we have to learn how to trust one another again. And that can happen by being kind and helpful and not sabotaging each other.

[36:05] ANA BELUCHE: And not afraid to hug anybody anymore. You know, people just kind of back off and I. Okay. Other people say, I hug. You want to hug? Yes.

[36:16] MAYA TORRES: Yes.

[36:17] ANA BELUCHE: You have to.

[36:18] MAYA TORRES: I just elbow now. That's all I know.

[36:21] ANA BELUCHE: I see people doing that. It's like, wow, how we have changed.

[36:25] MAYA TORRES: The fist bump is a new signal. Instead of handshakes.

[36:28] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah, the fist bump.

[36:30] MAYA TORRES: I saw Biden doing that with someone else the other day. The world leaders are fist bump bumping. I'm like, I'm concerned. They're wearing black shades and.

[36:45] ANA BELUCHE: I know, I know. Yeah.

[36:48] MAYA TORRES: Well, you contribute in many, many ways to Taos, and I thank you for coming here because so many people from all different parts of the world come here.

[36:59] ANA BELUCHE: Do come here.

[37:00] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[37:00] ANA BELUCHE: And there's a lot of healing. Sometimes I hear through a client or something, oh, we just had this wonderful conference here.

[37:11] MAYA TORRES: Really?

[37:11] ANA BELUCHE: How come I don't hear about it? It's like, wow. Yeah, he was just here. Really.

[37:19] MAYA TORRES: I mean, Joseph Campbell came here. I think Einstein came here. And we have to also, we're so lucky to be in this area with Taos pueblo. And they are keepers of a really deep tradition that we'll never understand. And I just want to say how fortunate I feel that's also one of my favorite places in Taos to go to the pueblo. Absolutely. And just to be witness to their beautiful ceremonies. And it's probably thousands and thousands and thousands years older than they even say. And how fortunate we are to be here with that beautiful energy.

[37:58] ANA BELUCHE: Energy, yes.

[38:00] MAYA TORRES: And they're key to me to this.

[38:02] ANA BELUCHE: Day and that they allow us to still go in and enjoy their ceremonies. To me, San Geronimo day is my favorite. And, of course, Christmas. But the powwow, I do hope they come back. Me, too, because we haven't had one in, what, four years?

[38:22] MAYA TORRES: Yeah. So those energies really send those beautiful vibrations not just around our valley, but around the earth.

[38:31] ANA BELUCHE: I think to sit there and look at that mountain like, oh, it's just so beautiful. It's just one of the most beautiful things. I think I got here in July, and I think they had started the year before. So that was my first introduction going there, and it was like, oh, this is so heavenly. Just to sit there by the river.

[38:55] MAYA TORRES: Right.

[38:56] ANA BELUCHE: And you could do that in those days. And now so many people take advantage of their going in there. You know, I had a gentleman tell me, he said, they climbed the walls. They don't even care that this is our home.

[39:12] MAYA TORRES: Wow.

[39:13] ANA BELUCHE: You know, they said, some people are just so rude. It's so sad what's happened to courtesy and respect with a lot of people?

[39:24] MAYA TORRES: Let's see that come back. I think that kindness and courtesy and empathy and helping others is key to our survival as humans. And don't forget the animals. The animals, they can't speak English yet. Without the animals, we would all die if we didn't have songbirds or the monkeys in the jungle, the whales in the sea and the dolphins. I mean, if they die, we die. And we just all have to realize we are one earth. Like, if we go and take a group selfie from the moon, it is one planet. We are one species of human being. Even though we come in all sorts of different shades and colors. And we've all had different upbringings. But what a beautiful planet this is. I mean, and just to think that whatever our 3 trillion cells can even think and perceive any of this, it truly is a miracle to be alive. And we live in pretty much the best planet around.

[40:29] ANA BELUCHE: So that we know of.

[40:31] MAYA TORRES: That we know of. Better take care of her.

[40:35] ANA BELUCHE: Yeah, absolutely. And we live in one of the most beautiful places there is. Other people see it as, because we don't have manicured grasses and all of that stuff. But that's the beauty of it, that we're still kind of wild.

[40:55] MAYA TORRES: Yeah.

[40:56] ANA BELUCHE: You know, we live in a place that's natural, more natural than, you know. You go to ARizona and everything is rockstar. Rocks, rocks, rocks. I love rocks. But, you know, here we have everything.

[41:12] MAYA TORRES: Yeah. And mud. There's something to be said about mud. The lotus flower grows out of MUD. Thank you, Anna. What a great conversation.

[41:23] ANA BELUCHE: Great. Thank you.

[41:25] MAYA TORRES: Thank you, storycorps for this wonderful interview.