By Andrew Hay
ALAMO, N.M. (Reuters) – – Twenty-eight-year old Ambrose Begay died after a fentanyl overdose under a tree 125 yards from his home on the Alamo Navajo reservation in southern New Mexico two years ago.
He is among a generation of young Native Americans losing their lives to drug overdoses in increasing numbers even as such deaths decline nationwide.
Begay’s grandfather, Manuel Guerro, 77, passes the spot every day as a school liaison, shuttling students to class and checking on those regularly truant.
Elsewhere, mourners have made shrines to overdose deaths and vehicle accidents among the arid, rolling landscape of one of the poorest reservations in the country.
Guerro decided not to tie a ribbon to the tree for his favorite grandchild, who died Oct. 19, 2022. He did not want the place to remind him of the drug epidemic tearing through his isolated community of around 2,000, which has among the highest overdose…
