RELATED STORIES

• Bernalillo County suspect in Metro Court kickback case paid $1 million
• Indictments string together a web of theft

More Local

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
• Former Marine to serve two years in jail for killing Albuquerque robber
• Wilson-Pearce battle for U.S. Senate exemplifies party's disparity

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

It was 1979, and Manny Aragon had just proposed a bill that would bring public hangings back to New Mexico.

It was pure theatrics, and, in typical Aragon style, it made his point with a maximum of bombast. Aragon, a liberal Democrat, was a passionate opponent of capital punishment.

If people wanted executions, he said at the time, "Let them watch."

Many of the South Valley senator's early fights were similarly brash and impossibly idealistic. Faced with a ruling coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats Aragon chided as "cowboys," his fights were also often quixotic.

If the idealism of his early career remained after his rise to the Senate presidency in 1988, where he would remain for 13 combative years, it was often obscured by his overwhelming political skill and his indisputable hold on power.

Don Quixote, after all, would never be remembered as a hopeless idealist if the windmills had been men and he had smashed them all to pieces.

Aragon always maintained, even at the height of his power, that he stood for the little guy. But federal indictments handed down Thursday suggested a much darker and more squalid version of Aragon's reign over state politics: the emperor as thief.

Aragon had come so far from his early years that this version surprised few, even in the district he long represented.

"I always felt he was doing his job for the district," Margaret Rodriguez said as she waited to pay her lunch bill Friday at the Barelas Coffee Shop, the place for New Mexican food and New Mexican politics in the blurry border between Downtown and the South Valley. "But I always felt he was also doing a good job for himself, too."

Aragon, who was raised in the Barelas neighborhood, represented the South Valley as a state senator for three decades, rising to the pinnacle of Senate power before being ignominously toppled, until he retired in 2004.

The voters who elected him seven times saw him rise from a rabble-rousing back-bencher to the man former Gov. Gary Johnson called, with a mixture of sarcasm and dismay, "the emperor."

Aragon was known for championing liberal causes: health care for the old and disabled, economic programs for the poor, equal rights for gays.

But he followed his own script, and it rarely minced words or hid behind politically safe subjects.

When the push for tougher drunken-driving penalties reached the Roundhouse in the early 1990s, Aragon - himself a former DWI defendant - pushed back.

Less than a week after four victims of a drunken-driving crash were buried in 1993, Aragon and another legislator went to Phoenix to play golf - courtesy of an Albuquerque beer distributor.

When family members of a 16-year-old girl killed by a drunken driver just after midnight on New Year's Day lobbied Aragon for DWI reform that same year, he had none of it. If he had a 16-year-old daughter, he told them, according to published reports, he would never let her go out driving at that hour on that day.

But his traditionally poor and working-class district also saw another side of Aragon: the breadwinner.

When he was elected, most of the South Valley lacked sewer or water service. Septic tanks were beginning to foul wells, and many people couldn't drink their own tap water.

Now, sewer and water lines lay beneath most of the valley.

Bernalillo County Commissioner Teresa Cordova, who represents the South Valley, said many of the projects she's working on, like sewer and water, can be traced back to Aragon.

Roads, community centers, economic development projects.

"He brought a lot of resources to this area," she said. "Not just his district, but to the whole South Valley."

And it's not as if he saved all his personality for the Roundhouse, either.

"He's always been a real character," said Jim Chavez, who owns the Red Ball Cafe on Second Street. "If you've ever met him, you're never going to forget him."

The blow of Aragon's indictment this week nearly wasn't what it would have been 10 years ago.

He lost the Senate presidency in 2001 and left the Legislature in 2004. Last year, he was forced out as president of New Mexico Highlands University, though he left with a $200,000 buyout.

Aragon plowed through plenty of controversy and more than a few legal snags in his best days, but, at 60, he has never faced anything like this.

He has been indicted on federal charges that he pocketed $700,000 of the people's money during construction of the Metropolitan Courthouse.

"He's always been a real character," Chavez repeated, standing outside the door to his restaurant's kitchen as employees cleaned up after the lunch rush. "I really do hope he comes out of this all right. I hope that this isn't true."

A few blocks away, the "Manny M. Aragon Torre¢n" tribute stood guard outside the National Hispanic Cultural Center. According to a plaque, the design of the torre¢n, a round, squat adobe tower, was inspired by the defensive structures built by early Spanish settlers in New Mexico.

It's harder to explain exactly what inspired the design of Aragon's home, a few miles south off Second Street.

Set among unassuming homes and horse stables, Aragon's castle of rock and adobe - crowned with a series of turrets - rises up like some absurd, ultimate gesture over his world.

An old bell hangs above the front gate, leading to an inner courtyard and the front door. Twin spiral staircases climb up to the second-story's wrap-around porch, which is bordered by a wooden fence.

According to a story by a Los Angeles Times reporter who saw the inside some years back, a six-foot replica of New Mexico's Great Seal hangs over the headboard of Aragon's king-size bed. The bed is set on illuminated glass blocks.

The words of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata are etched into the floor.

"I prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees."

If Aragon was in there on Friday, chilly and overcast, he wasn't coming out. Neither he nor his lawyer have spoken publicly since before or after the indictments were handed down, and Aragon won't need to enter a plea for two more weeks.

After leaving Highlands - under rumors of the impending indictment - he's faded almost completely from view. A locked, chain-link fence surrounds his castle, and someone has spray-painted graffiti on the front gate.

Standing outside, it seems impossible to look at such an eccentric place without making a leap toward deeper meaning about the man.

Aragon the emperor.

Aragon the dreamer.

Aragon without apologies.

With the force of his personality deep in shadow, at least for now, the building looks ridiculous.

He's said he designed it himself as he went, without a master plan.

At first, it was meant to be a relatively modest structure. But then, Aragon has said, "it got out of hand."