Sheathed in green satin and confidence, Green Chile Queen Alexandria Berridge claims her title – coveted by every teenage girl in this village – is about more than beauty.

"I actually know what I'm talking about," she says of her chile credentials.

This is no small claim in New Mexico, where the cult of the chile – the state's official fruit (yes, fruit) – verges on the religious. The fruit's likeness is a sort of state Virgin de Guadalupe – ristras, hanging strings of chile pods, bless front porches everywhere. Chile sauce is slathered on every native food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Thousands make a pilgrimage to the annual September harvest festival in this town, the self-proclaimed chile capital of the world, to buy their yearly stock. And it would seem that the trade in chile tchotchkes and T-shirts is a bigger state export than the chiles themselves.

Queen Alexandria says her knowledge – a speech about "authentic Hatch chile" – secured the crown. Key in that speech was the story of a chile farmer's wife who had to hitch a ride with neighbors to the hospital when she went into labor because her husband didn't want to be pulled away from his harvest.

But Alexandria – whose well-worn cowboy boots peak from beneath her gown – also has some of her own first-hand chile lore: she's witnessed the plowed earth of her family farm erupt in green every season of her 17 years; she's brushed through the rows of plants in the back-breaking labor of picking chile pods; and she walks her talk by participating in the festival's chile-eating contest.

But Alexandria was crowned this month in a particularly dicey harvest season – the crop emerged in August to weeks of rain. Alexandria watched her dad get three tractors stuck in the saturated fields of the Hatch Valley.

A wet chile is not a happy chile. There's a reason chiles thrive in the baking sun of the southern New Mexico desert. Wet chile plants ripen too fast, and pods maturing at lower temperatures can have less bite. Muddy fields make for difficult harvesting, and some of the green and most of the red chiles (which ripen later) hadn't been picked in time for the Labor Day festival.

Chile peppers aren't simply an overplayed Southwestern icon (which, at its worst, has a face and legs, and dances). New Mexico is the nation's biggest chile producer, and chile products contribute $200 million to the state's economy. There's even a chile think tank – the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University – devoted to breeding, researching, and the high task of "educating the world about chiles." And, in that category of educating the world, the Hatch Chile Festival website points out that New Mexico spells it "chile," not "chili," the way its hot pepper rival, Texas, (and the 48 other states) spell it.

So when the town of Hatch swam in four feet of water last month, many New Mexicans had nightmares about chile dearth.

But at the festival earlier this month, there were plenty of prized Big Jims (medium heat), Sandia (hot), and New Mexico No. 6 (milder) pods slung in big burlap bags over buyers' backs. Though rain limited the crowds this year to under 10,000 (the usual is 20,000) it was still the most action Hatch (pop. 1,600) sees all year.

Rain or not, peppers pack enough political punch here that Gov. Bill Richardson found time – amid a diplomatic effort to free a New Mexican journalist being held by Sudan authorities – to open the Hatch chile festival as grand marshal of the Labor Day weekend parade. It took all of 20 minutes – and banter between parade and curb made it clear that everyone knows everyone.

Page: 1 | 2