Monuments harm Hispano culture
The July 14 commentary by New Mexico LULAC titled “National monuments key to Hispanic culture” is a gross overstatement. The proliferation of national monuments in New Mexico is merely the continuation of several decades of land loss that the Hispano community has endured, beginning with the U.S. War on Mexico in 1846 and continuing through the present. These national monuments represent a net loss to the surrounding communities, especially to the native Hispano, as a land-based people.
Traditional Hispano culture is fundamentally rooted in the numerous villages and rural communities of New Mexico, especially in the mountainous areas of the state. There you will find the uniqueness of the native Hispano experience in “El Nuevo Mexico,” deeply rooted in its traditional land use practices. Its long history, unique dialect, written literature and oral stories, legends, epic journeys, and pioneering presence have kept generations of scholars busy in its historic documentation. The New Mexico Hispano culture is truly without parallel in this country and even among its counterparts throughout Latin America.
Juan de Oñate’s founding of San Gabriel del Yunque near presentday Española in 1598 predates the failed Jamestown colony of Virginia by a decade, and more importantly, it never failed. The Spanish colonization of New Mexico was welldocumented, including numbers and inventory of livestock — horses, mules, donkeys, cows, sheep, goats and swine — in a caravan miles long. Many native Hispano ranching families are direct descendents of these original founders of the livestock and ranching industry in the USA. It is these Hispano ranchers who constitute the “Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association,” sponsor of this commentary. Today, northern New Mexico remains a repository of valuable crops, including several varieties of native chiles, squashes, maize, apples, pears and grapes, as well as many of the pit fruits. This legacy did not happen by chance but by the hand of successive generations of Hispanos living and surviving on the land in their numerous villages. This legacy includes the numerous “acequias,” incorporated from Spanish/Moorish tradition into the native landscapes in the mountain ranges of New Mexico, both north and south, enabling an environment for all life to thrive.
The New Mexico LULAC position that any loss of any acreage to the two national monuments will somehow diminish the Hispano cultural heritage is absurd in the light of the millions of acres of former land grants that were stolen by the Santa Fe Ring. After the complete exploitation of these huge expanses, millions of acres were then recycled to the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies. The illegal theft of these lands continued with the U.S. Forest Service’s continuous reduction of the grazing permit system since its inception in the 1930s.
The rural Hispano population has long opposed the far-left environmentalist agenda that puts their unrealistic goals ahead of the rural communities of New Mexico. NNMSA is committed to protecting its members’ “existing vested rights” against any reductions by the federal government. To this end, NNMSA has recently promoted two public meetings in Abiquiu to discuss the “road closings” and the “wilderness studies” proposed by the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests. Crowds in excess of 200 local Hispano residents expressed their unanimous sentiment against these proposals, 200-plus opposed to 0 in favor.
In creating these national monuments, President Obama overlooked the statutory requirements involved in designating a national monument. The Antiquities Act of 1906 requires that reservations of land “be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” This law was blatantly ignored, given the enormous sizes of the two monuments: 496,000-plus acres for the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and 242,500 acres for Rio Grande del Norte. NNMSA urges (Interior) Secretary (Ryan) Zinke to drastically roll back the acreage in these two designations in order to provide the land base for the next generations of New Mexicans.