Since early in my life, I have been attuned to the north-south flow of peoples and cultures in this beautiful state of ours. A major reason for that is the Rio Grande, which meanders for 450 miles from north to south through the heart of our state. The Rio has had the strongest geographic impact on our lives, dating back to Mesoamerican times.

As a child growing up in Española, I learned to swim in the Rio Grande and would spend many hours just watching the river flow south. I would gather twigs and toss them into the Rio, imagining they were small boats traveling south to explore new places. In fact, my dreams would float south down the Rio on those twigs, enticing me to follow a few years later.

Because of the Rio Grande, we have a deep human imprint on our state of pathways and dreamways that flow along a north-south axis.

While we are bombarded daily through the media with the glossy façade of Euro-American culture, we are blessed in this state to still have among us the cultural and spiritual guides who can show us the north-south pathways to a sustainable future.

New Mexico has a spiritual power emanating from the landscape—its rios, mesas, llanos, sierras—that inform our traditional cultures.

New Mexicans are spiritual peoples. Native Americans know that our landscape is sacred and alive. They live each day in a vibrant relationship to everything around them. For them, New Mexico is not just a place to live. It is a way to live.

Similarly, Indo-Hispanos have created an intimate relationship with the landscape over the past three or four centuries. They built acequias not only to sustain an agricultural lifestyle, but also to caress and sustain the Earth and its natural creatures.

It is no accident that artists and writers—the most sensitive souls—were among the first US colonists to arrive in New Mexico. More than most, they sensed the spirituality of our place.

We not only live in the United States of America. We also live in Native America and in Latino America.

I want to spend a few minutes describing just how strong the north-south human imprint is on our state.

For thousands of years, Native Americans took to the trails in the name of the harvest, the hunt, commerce, plunder, warfare, religious fervor and celebration. They may have forged trails as least as far back as eight or nine millennia ago. Native Americans forged thousands of miles of trails from Mexico to San Juan Pueblo, now renamed by its Native American residents as Ohkay Owinge. It lies along the Rio Grande near the confluence with the Rio Chama, just about 30 miles north of here.  (1)

At least three well-documented major north-to-south arteries—or connected segments of trails—began in Mexico.

One 1,500 mile trail began in Mexico City and ran generally northward for more than 1,000 miles across Mexico’s central highlands and through the Chihuahuan Desert basin to the Rio Grande’s Paso del Norte (today’s El Paso, Texas) crossing. It followed the Rio Grande upstream for about 400 miles to the upper drainage basin.

With the emergence of settled villages of farmers, traders likely became the primary authors of the trails of the Southwest.

In his book, “Traders of the Western Morning,” John Upton Terrell itemized nearly 250 trade items which fueled the commerce of the Native American trails and markets of the Southwest.

Primary trading centers arose, including Pecos Pueblo just 20 miles east of here; Gran Quivira in central New Mexico and the San José junction near northern Chihuahua’s Villa Ahumada.

Some communities like Taos and Abiquiu Pueblos in northern New Mexico, staged trade fairs where vendors from across the Southwest gathered to display and exchange their commodities.

After Spanish conquest of the Americas, the Spaniards used existing Native American trails as the basis of the Caminos Reales—the Royal Roads—that emanated from Mexico City throughout Mexico and what is now the Southwestern US.

The 1,500 mile road that connected New Mexico to Mexico City was called “el Camino Real de Tierra Adentro”, also known as the Silver Road or Road to Santa Fe. This road was protected by Spanish armies against attack and was maintained by order of the Viceroy in Mexico City.

As the Spaniards built the Camino Real on existing Native American trails, they built strongholds and missions, as defensive measures against existing tribes. These still existing settlements today include Querétaro, Durango, Sombrerete, Chihuahua, El Paso, Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Including its branches, the Camino Real extends for nearly 2000 miles. In the late Spanish colonial period and through the Mexican period, the northernmost part of the Camino Real between Santa Fe and Chihuahua became a significant commercial route, especially since the Camino Real connected in Santa Fe with the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri.

Among the major impacts of the Camino Real were the introduction of land grants, acequia irrigation systems, and legal concepts still used in the American legal system, including community property rights, land grant administration, first priority in terms of water usage, mining claims and the idea of sovereignty, especially as applied to Native American land claims. (2)

When I grew up in Española—just north of here—I was integrated fully into a long tradition of communal living.

We were a nuclear family, but we belonged to an extended family along bloodlines, and then to the larger community of villagers through thevecino system of the land grants. That is, our land and water rights were defined by communal law.

Both land and water rights were communal rights, and personal rights to both land and water were subsumed by the larger rights of the community.

In the spring, every able-bodied male was required to show up on the appointed day and time to clean and repair the acequia madre—the mother ditch from which each individual plot received irrigation water.

In land grants, each family received an irrigated plot of land on which to grow vegetables and plant orchards. The much larger grazing lands and timber lands were owned jointly by the community, and an elected board apportioned these lands to each family according to need.

This communal value was played out in other institutional settings as well.

Even though I have spent my entire adult life as a secular humanist, I was born and raised in a strong Catholic family. One of the most enduring memories of my childhood was the Feast Day of Los Reyes Magos, held each year in early January.

To celebrate the Reyes Magos, all of the boys and young men in Española would spend the week or so between Christmas and the Feast Day gathering the used Christmas trees from villagers.

In an open field behind the Church, we would pile hundreds of trees into a huge mound.

The evening of the Feast Day, the entire village would gather around the trees and we would set off a huge bonfire. While the flames reached 50 feet into the dark night, we would gather in a circle and sing alabados and other religious songs.

Finally, as the bonfire abated, we would march in procession down several streets and into the Church. As we marched, we sang more songs and carried banners proclaiming our devotion to La Virgen and other santos.

What is seared into my memory is not the religious aspects of the celebration, but the communal power this celebration unleashed.

I felt completely at home with the several hundred other people participating in the event. I felt I belonged to something much larger than just me, or my family.

It is precisely that communal feeling—that deep resonance of my being with a larger community and a larger purpose, that I have sought to recreate in my social justice work.

With US Occupation came rejection of Spanish law governing land grants; communal lands became public lands—so the vast Forest Service and BLM lands in New Mexico were once probably communal land grants. In all, more than 70% of all surface lands in New Mexico now belong to government.

This communal model lives today in the 22 land grants still functioning; together, they own more than 250,000 acres of common land.

Similarly, there are tens of thousands of parciantes—individuals and families who own water rights and belong to acequias in New Mexico.

Even more astonishing is the survival of Native American communal systems in New Mexico.

In almost every Pueblo in New Mexico, every single person is tied to every other person in the Pueblo. If not through bloodlines, then everyone is tied through the padrino/madrina system—godfather or godmother at baptism. If those two systems don’t complete the personal connection, the Pueblos also have their ancient clans, into which every single Pueblo person is born.

Ultimately, in both Pueblo and Hispano cultures here in New Mexico, our world view is a communal world view.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that because of that, either Hispanos or Native Americans here are living an exceptional lifestyle. We are materially poor; we suffer from drug abuse, especially alcohol abuse; we have higher infant mortality rates—in some areas—than most third-world countries. Some of that is due to our own human frailties; some of it, however, is due to the ugly boot heel of oppression brought and still maintained, however subtly, by US Conquest.

Since American Occupation—now in its 161st year—our traditional communal systems have been stretched to the breaking point. It is not clear how much longer we can hold on. It’s not even clear that we are holding on; we may be in a cultural freefall that will end with our complete assimilation into US society.

I personally believe we are holding on; I even dare to hope we may be on the verge of a comeback.

Why?

For one thing, Mexican immigrants have had a positive cultural impact on our existing Indo-Hispano communities. Because we have historically maintained strong north-south ties to Mexico, the influx of significant numbers of Mexicanos—most from our neighboring state of Chihuahua—is not cause for alarm, but rather a cause for celebration. These neighbors have helped revive our traditional Spanish language, as well as our cultural traditions, including music and dance.

Fueled by the need to educate these new neighbors and also by the rising cultural pride of Indo-Hispanos, dual language (English/Spanish) immersion programs are spreading throughout our public schools systems.

We may eventually—despite our xenophobia--end up with a fully bilingual population.

Similarly, Native Americans are engaging in language preservation programs—teaching their youth the ancient Amerindian languages of their ancestors. In all, there are about 15-18 different indigenous languages alive in New Mexico.

In addition, more than 10 New Mexico tribes are engaged in gaming, and the proceeds from that economic activity are providing growing political muscle for them. They are also building schools, health clinics, housing, and other infrastructure for their people. Still in play is whether they will be able to sustain their spiritual beliefs in the flood of material plenty that now washes over them.

We are entering what author James Howard Kunstler calls “The Long Emergency.” Basically, he argues that world oil production is peaking and that the remaining oil left to be exploited is geometrically more difficult to find and extract.

He argues that this long emergency into an oil-depleted economy will change forever everything about how we live.

Kunstler presents a bleak future for all of us.

He does, however, offer one ray of hope: Permit me to quote what he concludes:

“The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope—that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom…”

I would argue that we already have those conditions for post modernity in New Mexico. We have those close communal relationships; we have those spiritual and community leaders who can show us the path to what I call the Circle of Hope.

We need to look to our pueblo communities for models for the best way to live in the future. We need to study our acequias and our land grant communities to see how people find a livable future with the most effective power source available—local communal vision and hands-on work.

To do that, we need to learn how to celebrate our roots and culture and still cross our individual cultural boundaries in hopes of building successful collaborations. We all want healthy peoples and communities; we all want good health care; we all want a good education for our children; we all want decent housing; we all want justice and peace in our lives.

But for us to be successful, especially in New Mexico, we all have to examine our own practices and beliefs. We must root out those negative behaviors that limit our capacity to grow and to give; and we must give light to the positive values that permit us to embrace each other despite our fears and biases.

Just how do we achieve peer-to-peer relationships? How do we become better people in the process of trying to create better communities?  I don’t know the answers, but I’m really interested in helping to find them and to begin the search collaboratively.

We are blessed to have living among us a native son, our Chicano poet laureate, Jimmy Santiago Baca.  For him too, the Rio Grande is sacred. I want to end with a piece from his latest work, entitled, “Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande”:

“Sometimes I stand on the river bank
and feel the water take my pain,
allow my nostalgic brooding
a reprieve.
The water flows south,
constantly redrafting its story
which is my story,
rising and lowering with glimmering meanings—
here nations drown their stupid babbling,
bragging senators are mere geese droppings in the mud,
radicals and conservatives are stands of island grass,
and the water flows on,
cleansing, baptizing Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.

I yearn to move past these days of hate and racism.

That is why this Rio Grande,
these trees and sage bushes
the geese, horses, dogs and river stones
            are so important to me—
            with them
I go on altering my reptilian self,
reaching higher notes of being
on my trombone heart,
pulsing out into the universe, my music
according to the leaf’s music sheet,
working, with a vague indulgence toward a song
            called
            we the people.”

1. “Desert Trails” by Jay W. Sharp.
2. “Web Page.”  El Camino Real Heritage Center