Friday, 17 Aug 2001

BERNALILLO, N.M.

At 6:30 last night, I learned that the Sandoval County Commission would be considering a resolution to oppose our wilderness proposal. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not good. We spent the day frantically lobbying the commissioners, lining up our business allies in the area, and calling through our membership list for that part of the state. In the end, the commission voted against us, but we were not surprised. This is, after all, New Mexico.

Although New Mexico is actually the “Birthplace of Wilderness” (a fact most New Mexicans do not know), very few people have any idea what wilderness designation really means. At the hearing tonight, I listened to over an hour of misinformation and insinuations about how wilderness designation would stamp out the rural way of life for local ranchers. Again, I wasn’t surprised.

Three weeks ago, I reached out to some local ranchers to talk about our proposal. I drove out to Bernalillo, the Sandoval County seat, to meet with a handful of folks and was surprised when I was greeted by 25 pickup trucks in the parking lot. My little meeting to talk about wilderness with a couple folks turned into a two-and-a-half hour session with well over 50 ranchers arguing over the merits and repercussions of wilderness.

Just a brief point of clarity of what wilderness is anyway: Wilderness areas are special tracts of land protected by Congress from development, oil and gas drilling, off-road vehicle use, and other destructive things. You can, however, hike, hunt, camp, fish, ski, horseback ride, and graze cattle in wilderness. Needless to say, this message did not completely sink in with the cowboys at my little meeting, and many of the same folks came out for the County Commission meeting tonight.

I can’t really blame anyone for opposing us. As I wrote on Tuesday, most of the folks out in Sandoval County have no reason to trust a bunch of enviros from the city. For one, we’re not part of the community (although it’s hard to say many folks outside the two or three main Hispanic family lines are part of the community). Many of these families have been on the same piece of land for over 200 years. New Mexico is probably one of the only places in the country where you can live in a place for 30 years and still be called a newcomer.

The other reason there is a lot of distrust is because these folks have all been burned before by the left and the right. Ten years ago, the right-wing corporate front group, People for the West, came through raising money and making lofty promises to keep the “environmental extremists” from taking their land rights. Well, the “environmental extremists” came along with their lawyers and Endangered Species Act and shut down logging, grazing, and mining practices all over the place — and the “People for the West” were nowhere to be found. Bent over on both sides of the aisle, these folks learned to circle the wagons whenever there were perceived threats, and with that, any chance of organizing locally was shattered.

But despite the staunch opposition we’ve run into on this proposal, we are adamant about continuing our efforts to organize locally. The wall can be only so tall and the distrust only so deep. The dedication and success of people like Brett Myrick, and the openness and integrity of the Zia Pueblo, make all of the animosity of tonight seem so petty and give us all hope.

In the end, we know that New Mexico’s history is one continuous struggle to overcome adversity. Every major advancement this humble state has made was first met with skepticism and recalcitrance. With the truth on our side, I think we will have great success in the coming years. But first, we need to remember Cesar Chavez’s great secret to his organizing success: “First I talk to one person, then I talk to another person, and then I talk to another person.”

Thanks for staying with me for “a week in the life.” It’s been fun.