More than 1% of the surface of New Mexico caught fire, burning 821,000 acres so far this year, and counting. KOAT TV, citing US Forest Service data, counts 19 fires in all, spread throughout the state, ten of which have burned more than 1000 acres. And the fire season is not over.
Nearly 80% of the burned surface area come from two fires, the Black fire, in the Gila Wilderness, and the Calf/Canyon-Hermit’s Peak fire, on the East side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In the South, The Black fire has burned about 12% of the Gila National Forest between Silver City and Truth or Consequences. The enormous scale of these fires leaves you in awe.
Slightly larger in acreage than the Black fire, The Calf-Canyon-Hermit’s Peak fire, like the others, has left a deep visible scar in its wake. Unlike the others, it also burned a less-visible hole into the very soul of Northern New Mexico. Most of the people affected by this fire form a significant component of a larger, fragile, and elusive society, whose singular culture is captured only by a trickle of novels like Bless Me Ultima, preserved in a handful of museums, and celebrated by a few advocates such as Roberto Mondragon, whose songs, dichos, humor, and passionate love for this culture have for more than half a century helped norteños better understand just who we are. In our increasingly transactional world where the value of everything is measured by its discounted future market value in current dollars, how do you price the value of keeping a fragile and now wounded culture intact? How do you price the value of Ukrainian resolve to remain free from Putin’s clutches, or the desire in Tibet to continue practicing their own form of Buddhism?
The Calf-Canyon-Hermit’s Peak fire, as everyone knows, was set in two places by the very stewards of the land, acquired more than a century ago under contentious circumstances still debated. Just ask Moises Morales, current Rio Arriba County Commissioner, who was with Reies Tijerina during the legendary raid on the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse in 1968, when these same issues were in play. The inhabitants of El Norte have a long history of challenging not only the quality of that stewardship, but also the quality of the relationship between the stewards of the land and the people living in the region. And surely, the failures we’ve witnessed in recent weeks have something to do with the quality of that relationship between that regime and the public, as they did in the events leading up to the 1968 incident.
As the smoke clears the air in the North, it would appear there are several critical items on the public agenda. The first is to compensate those whose property was damaged or destroyed by the actions of those who set the fires. President Biden promised to compensate “100%” of the damage. We will see. The second, no less important, is to correct stewardship and management, after what looks like serious failure: this is long overdue, and state government might be able to play a constructive role here. The third is not about the Forest Service or the President or about the level of compensation. It is about us.
Will we in the North mobilize our institutions—the National Hispanic cultural center in Albuquerque, the universities, the art galleries in Santa Fe who make money showing off the landscapes that are now in ashes, our museums, archives, and libraries that chronicle and celebrate? Where are the voices of our cultural leaders? Our college presidents, the movie industry, our musical institutions, tribal leaders, our writers, our sculptors, our political leaders, our religious leaders, the archdiocese of Santa Fe, the business community? Are we as committed to preserving our way of life on the East side of the great Sangre de Cristo (The Blood of Christ) mountain range as Ukrainians are to theirs? The scale of things is not so large that it cannot be fixed. What is in play here is our will to do so. The white Sangre de Cristo snows on the mountain tops have bathed people and irrigated their crops on the East side for millenia. Those people are in need today.
Whether that way of life is to be preserved or not depends on what each of us does today.
C’mon, Michelle: Sangre de Cristo blood runs through you too. Pick up the phone. Ask the Santa Fe Opera to send their finest singers for a concert in Las Vegas. Organize a three-week task force to ask what people need instead of the feds telling you what programs — designed for a Haiti earthquake — you are eligible for. Tailor up a program to meet those needs. Tell the Washington delegation to roll up their sleeves and bring home some serious bacon or else you’ll go Republican.
Santa Fe Institute: With all your brainpower at hand, tell us how to resolve the complexities of cultural preservation in the wake of a disaster.
R.R. Martin: Find a great cinematographer to work on a romantic movie on Hulu to show the world what El Norte looks like in all its splendor and grief.
Echale gas! Que viva el Norte!
Dr. Garcia is a retired professor of politics at NMSU. He also served as Secretary of Higher Education from 2011-2015. Recently he lost a lot of pine trees on Holman Hill in Mora to the Calf Canyon fire.