Sacred Mountains and Good Trouble
In honor of John Nichols, 1940-2023
John Nichols introduced me to northern New Mexico. Maybe he did the same for you, or maybe Robert Redford’s syrupy film adaptation did it.
Traditional flat roofs are a leaky nightmare, but you can climb up on them to check if the mountain is still there..
The funny thing is I was already here. I had transferred to the Santa Fe campus of my college and really spent a pretty long time up in the ivory tower on the hill, not thinking about my surroundings much. But I did notice things. The people were freaking weird as hell in every possible way and very rich or very poor and lots of people were very angry for reasons that were not clear. Every day and every view is insanely beautiful and just watching the clouds roll through the sky is magnificent. The river ran through town but there was no water in it. One day they opened the gates of the acequia madre and everyone came out to watch the water trickle through the ditch. Why? What the heck?
Just regular New Mexico stuff, with the tourists watching.
Milagro Beanfield War held the answers to my questions. At first I fell in love with his characters, the “inbred, toothless, tubercular, flea-bitten, illiterate vecinos, sobrinos, primos, cuates, cabrones, rancheros and general all-around fregado’d jodidos.” From blustering, ignorant asshole Joe Mondragon, the hero of the story, to sweet alcoholic Flossie with her Texas drawl and her “are we the baddies” moment, and including the cops, the mechanics who can keep any car running, the lost and confused city kid, the drunken santero, the bad dogs, the grifters and developers, the embittered and cynical leftist attorney, the immortal Amarante Cordova and his drunken asshole old lunatic friends, the housekeepers, veterans, lonely widowers, and small farmers, every person in this story is someone you will meet in New Mexico, even the Coyote angel. If you look at the landscape and the weather and the low low prices for real estate, you may think OH HEY WHY NOT. Or maybe you’re just a clueless college kid in a new town. And then you end up with Abel Armijo the backhoe driver next door with his goddamn rooster that crowed whenever it felt like it, which was all the freaking time.
Goddamn rooster! Abel Armijo the backhoe driver turned out to be a nice guy and it only now occurs to me that he always introduced himself as Abel Armijo the backhoe driver because he knew a lot of Abel Armijos who did other things (maybe nefarious!!) and wanted to avoid confusion.
John Nichols helped me understand and appreciate Abel Armijo the backhoe driver and his goddamn rooster. Milagro Beanfield War also opened my eyes as to why the Armijos and the Trujillos and the Jaramillos and the Montoyas and the Bacas were all so pissed. I can’t say even now I understand all the ins and outs of New Mexico land and water disputes but there is no denying the fact that Americans invaded, and then spent nearly a century raiding the land and water of the folks who were already there. Nichols captured the story one battle in a war that has raged since 1848, when Mexico ceded territory with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That war continues to this day, and northern New Mexico still feels very much like occupied territory.
In this land, for the people here, the land is sacred and the water is sacred. The relationship with the land and water is sacred, and those who care for the water and the land are honored. One of Nichols’ characters in the New Mexico trilogy literally cleans the acequia and frees the water as he is dying. When I read that, I understood why people lined the streets along the acequia madre to see the water flow again. It had been a long time coming (like decades-long lawsuits), and everyone’s heart burst with joy to have the water returned.
The Rio Grande cutting through the Taos gorge. Agua es Vida.
If not for John Nichols, I might not have started learning about the deep history of the people here, and the more recent history of American exploitation and extraction that happened on an individual level, with ruthless Anglo attorneys scamming residents out of lands, and it happened at the federal level, with fiats (creation of Santa Fe & Carson National Forests) that locked people out of their common lands. The history is all incredibly sad and convoluted and horrible and maddening, and Milagro Beanfield War is such a gentle, loving and humorous introduction.
The last few years I’ve been working with many villages like the fictional Milagro in northern New Mexico to support a community archiving initiative, where both residents and those in the diaspora can digitize and share their family images, documents and more, and reconnect in this way with both family and place. I’ve seen is that community libraries, community centers and schools become places for the residents of many generations to share their agricultural strategies, and knowledge of the land and water, with the newcomers who share their values.
And honestly, I think John Nichols plays a part in that too. What’s he been up to in the 50ish years since he wrote Milagro Beanfield War? Well, he wrote a metric shit ton of books, which are ok, and wrote another metric shit ton of letters and op-eds for very specific local audiences to persuade people in power to care for the land and the water and the people and to persuade the people coming in to care for the land and the water and the people AND to hold the fuckers in power accountable every single minute of every single day. And more or less, people have listened and made things better.
When I was following up on what happened to the Taos hippies, John Nichols was the only one who not only stayed, but stayed a thorn in the side of capitalism and colonialism. Praise be upon him and may his memory inspire us to show our love by making good trouble and great art. May “a bunch of limping, chewed-up, noisy, useless, blind drunk, flea-bitten, tail-dragging, shifty-eyed Coyote Angels” sing him right to heaven.
querencia <3
This is lovely. Thank you.