Profile
Casa Camino Real Bookstore is in the heart of the Mesquite Historical District on the Camino Real in Las Cruces New Mexico. We are a multicultural bookstore, art gallery, and community resource center whose goal is to serve our underserved Borderland community. We offer books in English, Spanish, bilingual English and Spanish books for adults and children as well as many other languages. Our focus is on Chicano/a/Latina/o, Southwestern, Indigenous, Native American, Regional, Borderland as well as international books from many countries. We are the founders of Libros Para El Viaje/Books for the Journey, an ongoing Refugee, Migrant and Asylum seekers book initiative that has given away over 30,000 books to children and families on the U.S./México border since 2018. The bookstore has won awards from the New Mexico Book Association for our work and the bookstore has been named as a Brave Books honoree by the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson. A mural of our bookstore was painted on the children’s room of the Poetry Center. Founder Denise Chávez was recently awarded the Activist Bookseller of the Year by Word and Duende Books. We believe that everyone should have books, no matter where they are housed. In April 2020 we gave away 600 hundred books to local children in a drive by Book Bash and in July 2021 we gave away thousands of books in A Bags of Books Giveaway to Adults, both in a Covid-safe drive by event. We support local schools, non-profit organizations and many readers who might not otherwise have resources for books. Our historic adobe building dates from the 1850s and is a place of creativity, empowerment, and blessing for our multicultural neighborhood on the East side of Las Cruces, where many low-income Latino and Black families live. Our motto is: Leer Es Vivir/To Read is to Live.
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Special Offers
We always have our wonderful Café de Olla, delicious Mexican coffee available to visitors, either iced or hot. Books are available to all in our Little Free Library as well as our bookmarks. We have never turned anyone away from a good book because of resources.