7 Things New Mexicans Are Tired of Hearing From Texans
Texas’s House Speaker ordered a state committee this year to study annexing several eastern New Mexico counties back into Texas.
It wasn’t the first time somebody floated the idea.
New Mexico has been fielding the same handful of remarks from across that line for generations, and the annexation one is only the loudest.
These are the things New Mexicans are tired of hearing from Texans.
1. That’s Not Chili, Right?
New Mexicans hear this chile-versus-chili correction from Texans almost every time chile comes up.
It’s chile, not chili.
The spelling matters enough that New Mexico has gone to unusual lengths to defend it.
Sen. Pete Domenici once entered a formal defense of the “chile” spelling into the Congressional Record.
It drew a hard line between New Mexico’s pepper and Texas’s bean-and-meat stew.
That happened in 1983, and New Mexicans still bring it up.
New Mexico took the food seriously enough to make “Red or Green?” the official state question in 1996.
Order a plate almost anywhere in the state, and a server asks it before the food ever arrives.
Say “Christmas,” and both sauces show up on the same plate.
Texans who show up expecting a bowl of chili con carne usually leave confused.
Hatch Chile Is a Certified Place, Not Just a Pepper
New Mexico’s chile debate has one hometown attached to it: Hatch.
The Hatch Chile Association runs a voluntary certification mark for chile grown in the roughly 30-mile Hatch Valley along the Rio Grande.
That mark isn’t the same kind of legal protection France gives Champagne.
For years, retailers outside the valley have sold chile labeled “Hatch” that never grew there.
2. Everything’s Bigger in Texas, Right?
New Mexicans crossing into Texas run into the size boast before they even reach a gas station: Welcome signs, roadside billboards, bumper stickers.
Texas Highways, the state’s tourism magazine, has run entire features on how the hats, the steaks, and the trucks all supposedly run bigger here.
New Mexico usually just lets it go.
The numbers back New Mexico up more than many Texans expect.
Texas covers more ground than any state except Alaska.
New Mexico still ranks fifth nationally for land area, behind only Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana.
New Mexico’s 121,590 square miles still add up to more land than the entire United Kingdom.
England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland combined don’t cover as much ground as New Mexico, a state many Texans call small.
Texans keep the bragging rights on size.
New Mexico isn’t the punchline.
3. Y’all Practically Belong to Texas Anyway
New Mexico’s rivalry with Texas runs a lot deeper than jokes.
It started with an invasion.
In 1841, the Republic of Texas sent an armed expedition toward Santa Fe, hoping to talk or force the eastern half of New Mexico into joining Texas.
It failed badly.
Roughly 320 men set out from Austin.
Mexican forces captured the survivors and marched them to Mexico City, releasing them in April 1842.
Texas kept the claim on paper anyway.
Texan raiders crossed back into New Mexico again just two years later, ambushing a caravan on the Santa Fe Trail.
New Mexicans still hear a version of that claim in 2026.
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows directed a legislative committee this year to study annexing Lea and Roosevelt counties, two oil-rich corners of New Mexico that border Texas.
A University of New Mexico historian still teaches the 1840s invasions as the root of the modern rivalry.
His video on the subject had drawn more than 43,000 clicks by the time a local TV station covered it in 2018.
A few Texans clearly never got the memo that the old claim never held up.
4. We Basically Own Ruidoso
Ruidoso belongs to New Mexico on a map and to Texas in practice, at least according to the Texans who show up every summer.
Vendors at the Ruidoso Downs Race Track sell metal Texas-shaped signs right alongside New Mexico souvenirs, aimed straight at the crowds who drive up from West Texas every summer.
Cabin owners around town hang wooden signs out front.
Many of those signs skip the family’s last name for a Texas hometown instead: Lamesa, Wichita Falls, Abilene.
Their license plates give them away before the signs do.
New Mexicans get the cool pines and the mountain air to themselves most of the year.
That changes come summer.
Texas shows up then like it never left.
5. Y’all Are Stealing Our Water
New Mexico’s fights with Texas aren’t all jokes and license plates.
Texas sued New Mexico in 2013, arguing its neighbor was pumping so much groundwater that Texas never got its fair share of the Rio Grande.
That’s a serious accusation.
The case dragged through federal court for more than a decade.
The U.S. Supreme Court finally approved a settlement in May 2026, ending the fight.
New Mexico now has until 2036 to cut its groundwater pumping by 18,200 acre-feet a year in the stretch of river closest to Texas.
Texas got its water, and New Mexico got a decade of paperwork to prove it.
6. So, Who’s Winning?
New Mexico State and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) have been settling this one on a football field since 1914.
They call it the Battle of I-10, named for the interstate connecting Las Cruces and El Paso.
The Miners lead the all-time series, 60 wins to 40, with two ties across 102 meetings.
New Mexico State clawed a win back in November, stunning UTEP late in the game.
That hardly evens the score.
Texans still show up every fall ready to remind New Mexico who’s ahead in the series.
7. It’s Just Desert Out There, Right?
Texans lump New Mexico in with flat, dry West Texas more often than its geography deserves.
Santa Fe alone should end that argument.
New Mexico’s capital sits at 7,199 feet, higher than Denver.
The elevation makes it the highest state capital in the country.
Head north to Taos Ski Valley.
The resort has averaged 171 inches of snow a season over the past dozen years, with some winters topping 220 inches.
That includes chairlifts.
That’s cold, not a postcard desert.
New Mexico has both landscapes at once.
Texans usually only picture one of them.
Psst! How much do you know about New Mexico beyond the rivalry? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
New Mexico vs. Texas IQ
Answer these questions on New Mexico history and trivia. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
In July 1947, wreckage recovered near a New Mexico town sparked one of America’s most famous unidentified flying object (UFO) stories. Name the town.
New Mexico's History Before Texas
New Mexico's history runs far deeper than its rivalry with Texas.
Santa Fe was founded in 1610 as the seat of the Spanish province of Nuevo México.
That's a full decade before the Mayflower reached Plymouth.
San Antonio, Texas's oldest city, didn't get its start until 1718, when Spanish missionaries founded the mission that became the Alamo.
New Mexico got there first.
New Mexico had already been running a territorial capital for more than a century by then.
The National Park Service also lists Santa Fe as the oldest state capital in the country.
9 New Mexico Foods Outsiders Refuse to Try, and Locals Wouldn't Trade
A first-time visitor in Santa Fe orders "the red" without asking what it means, then reaches straight for a water glass.
The local at the next table barely blinks.
These are the New Mexico foods outsiders can't handle and locals refuse to give up.
9 New Mexico Foods Outsiders Refuse to Try, and Locals Wouldn't Trade
19 Places in America Where New Mexicans Feel Like They're in Another Country
New Mexicans know better than almost anyone that crossing a state line can feel like crossing a border.
These are the spots around the country that make even lifelong New Mexicans pull out the map and double-check they're still in the same country.
19 Places in America Where New Mexicans Feel Like They're in Another Country
