[ English ]

New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. 10 years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.

Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.