NHCC awaits city's decision on Adela Martinez property

During the construction of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Barelas, it was Adela Martinez who forced architects to build around her house.

The longtime resident refused to sell her land in order to build the cultural center, which opened in 2000. She won the battle and her family’s home still sits on the NHCC campus today.

Martinez died in 2000 and her family was left to care for the property.

Today, the property is boarded up and the city of Albuquerque is working on a plan to figure out what the future holds for the site.

According to the city of Albuquerque Planning Department, one of the buildings caught fire in 2021 and was then boarded up. No one was living in the house and the living space was deemed non-habitable.

Court records show that the property is privately-owned and going through probate, which means the city can’t make a decision on what to do with it now.

Since the NHCC was built, there’s always been a plan on the back burner to incorporate Martinez’s home into the center’s mission — when the time came.

Zack Quintero, NHCC executive director, said the plan right now is to monitor what the city’s process is.

“We’re on standby to see if we can have a moment to collaborate,” Quintero said. “We know the history and the story of the two locations. It’s part of our history.”

Quintero said the NHCC is open to conversations with the city when the time is right.

“With this development with the city, we want to make sure everything is done the right way,” Quintero said. “There’s been a clean-up effort by the city.”

Quintero said within the last six months, the properties were tagged as substandard.

“The city will make the final decision and we want to be part of the conversation,” Quintero said. “We want to honor the Martinez story.”

Martinez lived in the home from the age of 4 until her death in 2000.

Hers was the lone property left untouched in what is now the NHCC campus.

She told the Journal in 1999, “What kind of person would I be if I said now, at my age, that none of that matters to me? If I took their money, I’d be saying that the work my husband put into this house, and the fact that my family lived here and raised me here, didn’t matter. It matters to me.”