Tenzin Bhagen often climbs Picacho Peak, just east of Santa Fe. The mountains and dry landscape around the city remind him of the Tibetan steppe, where generations of his family used to live as semi-nomads, raising crops and herding yaks, sheep and goats.

Bhagen, who was born over a decade after Chinese troops entered Tibet in 1950, only knew of that lifestyle from stories.

“But I knew really well how life was like, even though I never saw it ... because grown-ups always tell us [stories] about their [lives],” he said. “Their dream was their past.”

The Chinese government reasserted control of the region after the Communists won the Chinese Civil War, ending a period of de facto Tibetan independence. China says Tibet has long been part of China and today, most governments, including the U.S., recognize China’s rule over Tibet. However, China has also been accused of serious human rights abuses in the region, and Tibetans worry

about preserving their culture in Tibet and in exile abroad.

“The situation in Tibet now, in terms of losing identity and hope, is worse than ever,” Bhagen said, sipping Tibetan butter tea in his Santa Fe home.

“I feel the pain and can’t stay silent . ... I feel this is my duty, to tell the story of Tibet,” he said, adding he is working on a memoir.

Bhagen was born in the mid1960s in eastern Tibet, where people continued to resist Chinese governance of the region. He has few memories of his father, who was tortured and shot by Chinese soldiers and whose body was eaten by animals because soldiers would not allow villagers to give him a proper burial, Bhagen said.

“That part was always really painful for me,” he said. “Many people fought and died, but that kind of treatment marked the Chinese Communist Party’s darkness, the inhumanity.”

For the mostly Buddhist country, “everything had changed,” he said. “My generation had a nickname ... which means, ‘born after the collapse of time.’”

After working on a communal farm from a young age — he received only two summers of schooling — Bhagen jumped at a chance to become a truck driver. Driving to other cities and meeting educated people spurred him to dream of escaping Tibet and going to school.

He was about 20 years old when, in 1987, Bhagen and two of his younger cousins began the dangerous journey to India, taking a bus, truck and eventually walking across high-elevation passes near Mount Everest in the Himalayas for five or six days.

They followed in the footsteps of tens of thousands of other Tibetans who made the journey following the Dalai Lama, the country’s spiritual leader, who had escaped in 1959 to set up the still-existing Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala, India.

Luckily, Bhagen said, he reached Dharamshala. There, he set to learning, completing the first through 10th grades in a school run by Tibetan refugees in India before eventually moving to the U.S. and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

While Bhagen was in India in the early 1990s, other Tibetan refugees from across the world were coming to Santa Fe, aided by a U.S. resettlement project. Within a year or two, they organized the Tibetan Association of Santa Fe, association president Jamyang Thayai said.

Thayai echoed Bhagen’s concerns about a deteriorating situation in Tibet.

“I think the situation is getting worse and worse,” he said, saying the Chinese government closely surveils Tibetans and any effort to preserve traditions will make them a target.

“The Chinese government, they are taking all of the Tibetan kids age 5 to 18 to [boarding] schools ... trying to destroy the Tibetan culture and Buddhism,” he said. “That is my biggest concern.”

Bhagen likened the Chinese government’s actions to when the U.S. ran Native American boarding schools.

“[It’s] the same thing that [the] West now realizes [was a] mistake, everyone is against it, but China is now moving toward it,” he said. “They relocated all the Tibetan nomads in the last decade, just like Native Americans were relocated.

“The U.S. gives some autonomy to Native people,” he continued. “They still have a lot of problems, but there’s autonomy. In Tibet, there’s no such thing.

... They’re really effectively, now, changing Tibetan culture.”

The 130-member Tibetan Association of Santa Fe primarily works to preserve Tibetan culture in exile, Thayai said. The group holds classes every weekend at its center on Hickox Street, teaching the younger generations Buddhism and Tibetan language and history. It also holds monthly prayers and celebrates holidays such as Tibetan New Year and Tibetan National Uprising Day.

Thayai hopes for a negotiated solution between the Chinese government and Tibetan government-in-exile.

“As long as the Dalai Lama is healthy ... I think all the people in the world will see the truth that Tibet is not really part of China,” he said. “It has a long history, and the world surely will know that. Tibet will be free one day, and we can go back . ... That’s my hope.”

Bhagen hasn’t lost hope, either. But Tibetan culture and language must be revived in Tibet, he said.

“I think we won’t be able to achieve preserving culture in the West,” he said. “Even my kids, they don’t want to learn Tibetan.

“I think what we need to do is just be part of America, contribute to this country and to the democracy and freedom in the world,” he continued.

“When I first moved to U.S. in ’96, there was a lot of talk about Tibet and a lot of movement. It was a hopeful time. Nowadays, things happen in Tibet, and nobody’s talking about it.”