Belen writer reflects on home, identity and staying connected

Aubrie Moore grew up in Belen hearing the question every kid gets, but her answer changed as she got older. What once sounded simple became a deeper reflection on home, adulthood and why some people leave, some stay and some return to Valencia County with a stronger sense of belonging than they had before.

A coming-of-age question with a local answer

Moore, a 20-year-old who has spent her whole life in Belen, writes from inside that familiar tension between ambition and attachment. She recalls once imagining the chaos and anonymity of New York City, a life far from yuccas and roadrunners, only to realize later that the place she had been eager to leave was full of details worth noticing. Her column is less about a dramatic departure than about the slow recognition that identity can be shaped as much by where you stay connected as by where you go.

That is what gives the piece its force for Valencia County readers. Moore is not describing Belen as a postcard or a backdrop. She is describing it as a lived-in place where family ties, shared memory and daily routines create a kind of pressure and comfort at the same time, especially for young people deciding what adulthood will look like.

Why Belen feels hard to leave

Belen’s own history helps explain why those feelings run so deep. The city says it was founded in 1740 by Captain Don Diego Torres and Antonio Salazar as Nuestra Senora de Belen, the Spanish words for Our Lady of Bethlehem. From the beginning, the community was built around agriculture, which rooted the town in land, labor and interdependence long before modern road traffic or rail travel made it a regional crossroads.

The city still leans into that role by calling itself the “Hub City.” It sits on Interstate 25 and Interstate 40 and has Valencia County’s only public airport, a reminder that Belen has always been both a stopping point and a place people circle back to. That mix of movement and permanence is part of the setting Moore is writing from: a town where leaving is possible, but staying connected is often the more complicated choice.

Traditions that make the place feel alive

Moore’s reflections also land in a community defined by public rituals that are both festive and deeply local. The Hispano Chamber of Valencia County says the World’s Largest Matanza is held the last Saturday in January, and a News-Bulletin report said the 26th annual event was scheduled for Jan. 24 at Eagle Park in Belen. Another report said the 25th annual Matanza drew about 8,000 attendees, with about a dozen teams serving food, a scale that shows how tradition in Belen can pull in crowds while still feeling personal and hands-on.

Those gatherings are part of what Moore is getting at when she writes about matanzas, fiestas and generations gathering around food, music and shared identity. The City of Belen also points to the 40th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye at Eagle Park, along with National Night Out and the All American Celebration, as fixtures of civic life. In Belen, public celebration is not a side note. It is one of the ways the town keeps telling itself who it is.

A history preserved in plain view

That sense of continuity is visible at the Harvey House Museum, which the City of Belen says was turned over to the city by the Valencia County Historical Society in 2013. The museum focuses on Harvey House, railroad and Southwest history, and it overlooks the railyard that helped shape Belen’s identity. For a town that still understands itself through movement, labor and connection, the museum is more than a collection of artifacts. It is a physical record of how Belen became Belen.

The Valencia County Historical Society itself dates to 1969. The society says it was founded to document and preserve Valencia County’s historical legacy and varied cultures, and it has worked with schools to support local history education. That mission lines up closely with Moore’s piece: both are about remembering that a community’s story is built not just by big public milestones, but by the people who keep noticing what others might overlook.

Why local storytelling matters

Moore, now a senior at the University of New Mexico studying communication and journalism, frames community journalism as something more than a record of events. In her column, it becomes a way to notice how people change and how places shape them in return. She says documenting other people’s efforts and acts of kindness restores her faith and reminds her why local storytelling matters, a view that gives the piece a quiet civic purpose.

That perspective matters in Belen because the town’s identity is built on layers of memory that are still visible in daily life. The city’s founding story, its rail connections, its festivals and its museum all point to the same truth: Belen is a place where belonging is reinforced by repetition, where people inherit traditions even as they decide whether to leave for school, work or a different life.

Staying connected as adulthood arrives

Moore’s column resonates because it does not treat growing up as a clean break from home. Instead, it treats home as something that keeps changing shape, especially when adulthood brings new expectations and new distances. For Belen, that means the conversation is never only about where young people go next. It is also about what they carry with them, what they return to, and what parts of their hometown remain part of them even when they are far away.

In Valencia County, where the roads, rails and public celebrations all point back to the same center of gravity, that idea feels especially plainspoken. Belen’s past is still visible, its traditions are still active, and writers like Moore keep translating that reality into something the next generation can recognize as their own.