New Mexico land grants, Forest Service strike deals after decades of conflict

“The land was taken from us,†Aguilar said.

He slowly approached the wood harvesting spot as his truck rocked in the ruts of unpaved trails.

For Aguilar, who traces his ancestry here to the 1750s, his chain saw work is a bridge to the past, a connection with his forebears. He recalled when the Forest Service would not “even let you cut a tree,†but he feels that is changing. He voiced the need for forest thinning after the nightmarish Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire scorched more than 530 square miles on the eastern side of the mountain range, burning some 20 or 30 miles from Las Trampas.

Forest Service officials in New Mexico appear to be demonstrating an increased willingness to work with rural land grant organizations to allow members access to areas that once were common lands for traditional uses such as harvesting wood and growing crops.

Locals in remote hamlets along the High Road to Taos are celebrating a historic agreement earlier this month between the Las Trampas Land Grant and the Forest Service that allows land grant members to run a small-scale sawmill on a 12-acre plot near Chamisal, a few miles north of Las Trampas. The deal comes after Santa Fe National Forest entered into an agreement with a Rio Arriba County land grant earlier this year for the restoration of an acequia in the Rio Chama canyon northwest of Abiquiú.

These deals have been hailed as monumental following decades of tension and conflict between residents of Northern New Mexico and the federal agency; norteño activists and rural landowners long have called for more local stewardship of the federal lands surrounding their villages.

A separate project through the Las Trampas Land Grant allows people to harvest wood for personal use on a designated plot within the national forest, affording heirs and residents of the region — who use the timber for firewood, vigas and latillas — an opportunity to participate in the stewardship of their ancestral lands.

New Mexico's centuries-old land grants were established under Spanish and Mexican rule and recognized under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War. However, the U.S. government didn't honor the property rights. The yearslong adjudication of land claims — a process rife with corrupt land speculation — led to massive losses for residents of what had then become the New Mexico Territory.

Resentments building over decades culminated in the high-profile 1967 raid on the Rio Arriba County Courthouse in remote Tierra Amarilla. Land grant activists stormed the courthouse intending to perform a citizens' arrest of a district attorney who had targeted members of their group, arresting several of them. But the prosecutor wasn't there.

The raid led to a shootout that wounded a New Mexico State Police officer and a jail guard, Eulogio Salazar. Both survived the shooting, but Salazar was fatally beaten in Canjilon six months later, according to news reports. An undersheriff was badly beaten in the raid.

Researchers and scholars have long been drawn to stories of Northern New Mexico's conflicts over resources and forest management. In the 1990s, there were reports of activists hanging effigies of environmentalists in Santa Fe, shooting at forest rangers and burning Forest Service vehicles.

Communities that lost their common lands also struggled with the loss of a way of life and population decline — people have been forced to seek out wage labor away from their hometowns.

David Correia, a University of New Mexico professor who wrote a book about land grant conflicts, said the Forest Service has played an overwhelmingly negative role in the lives of rural New Mexicans over the years — but he said he applauds land grants that are able to strike deals with the agency.

“There's no federal institution more responsible for the destruction of the land grant commons,†Correia said. “After the courthouse raid in ‘67, and even before that, they spent years trying to transform the local economy from a subsistence economy focused on grazing and small wood production to a wage labor economy.â€

Much of the former common lands of Spanish land grants today are part of national forests or federal land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Over a million acres of what is now Carson National Forest and Santa Fe National Forest were once land grant property.

Jacobo Baca, a research historian with the New Mexico Land Grant Council, said land grants in the state have become significantly more organized since 2004, when New Mexico law changed to allow them to become political subdivisions of the state.

Now land grants, the smallest form of elected government in many rural communities, can qualify for state funding.

The Las Trampas Land Grant, too, has benefited from state capital outlay, boosting its projects.

Land grant officials have met with state, county and federal officials in search of funding streams and have become adept at navigating government bureaucracy — resulting in the agreements for traditional uses of the land and more local stewardship.

Baca feels the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire in the state's recorded history — sparked by a federal prescribed burn gone awry — and reduced Forest Service staffing also have played a role in the shift toward collaboration with local land grants.

“The Forest Service reminds us that their manpower has been reduced by at least a third since the 1980s, so they just don't have the boots on the ground to do these types of projects,†Baca said. “And there's a lot of local expertise.â€

He pointed to a Forest Service planning initiative that began in 2012, which includes land grants in conversations around federal land stewardship, a dynamic that led to greater understanding and solid working relationships.

Further, more people in leadership positions with the Forest Service in New Mexico these days are native to the state, Baca said.

Carson National Forest Supervisor James Duran, for instance, who shook the hand of Las Trampas Land Grant President Juan López in the old Las Trampas schoolhouse to formalize the recent agreement, is a native of Cuba.

J.R. Logan of Del Medio Forestry, a forestry consultant to local, state and federal government agencies, said some land grants also have shifted their approach.

“There's been a cultural shift [in which] land grants are willing to step back from that fight about ‘Give us our land back' and willing to engage in a conversation about ‘What will it take for us to gain access to and allow our community to help manage and steward these lands?' †Logan said.

But he said not everyone feels this way. Wounds remain unhealed.

“There's plenty of land grant members and land grant board members who are not interested in entering into those kind of agreements because they still feel very much aggrieved,†Logan said. “They've been wronged and even symbolically, somehow, to enter into an agreement with the agency is a sign of giving up that fight — and I recognize and appreciate that viewpoint.â€

Ruben Montes, tribal relations and traditional communities liaison for Santa Fe National Forest and an heir to the Francisco Montes Vigil Grant — swallowed up by the national forest long ago — keeps a map of the land grant at his work cubicle.

Born and raised in Santa Fe, he traces his family history back 400 years in the region. He began working for the Forest Service about 25 years ago.

Recently, Montes spoke with pride about being the person who drafted an agreement between Santa Fe National Forest and the San Joaquín del Río de Chama Land Grant, which allows heirs to restore an acequia and cover-crop production to a Rio Arriba County parcel on what is now Forest Service land. It had been part of the land grant until the early 1900s.

“I think it's just a real reflection of changing attitudes and a desire to formalize these types of arrangements with Spanish land grants,†Montes said. “It's long overdue.â€

He added, “A huge part of it for sure is having people in decision-making roles who understand and whose families were part of the tradition. All of our families have heard about the injustices that went down when the Forest Service was created, the unscrupulous lawyers who took advantage of people who couldn't understand English.â€

If anyone can relay generations of conflict — tell you what it was like joining up with storied land grant activist Reies López Tijerina and marching on behalf of La Raza Unida — it's Moises Morales, who spent six months in jail for his role in the Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid in 1967.

These days, Morales lives in Canjilon, serves as a Rio Arriba County commissioner and runs cattle on Carson National Forest land. He noted the forests north of Canjilon were once common lands stripped from land grant heirs in the early 1900s.

Morales recalled hearing when he was very young about the Forest Service shooting teams horses of people in Canjilon so they couldn't work the land in the 1940s and ‘50s. He said in the 1940s the federal government began taking away the pastures of his family members, who did not understand their land had been lost in a legal process.

“What pisses me off the most is that our grandparents died with a broken heart because they didn't even know what was going on,†Morales said in a recent interview. “My plan is to get all of the land grants together to see if we can get some of these lands back.â€

Since the 1960s, Morales has been among the most visible figures in the battles between the Forest Service and norteño activists, excoriating the federal agency in the news media and generally being a thorn in the side of federal officials on various fronts.

“Well, they've done a lot of wrong things,†Morales said when asked about the recent agreements between the Forest Service and Northern New Mexico land grants. “But it makes me think maybe they are trying to open up their heart and start working with our people. And maybe we can get some of these lands back.â€

During a discussion about a pending proposal from a Canadian mining company to conduct exploratory drilling in Carson National Forest near Canjilon, a move critics say could lead to devastating impacts on the Rio Chama watershed, Morales said, “You can't trust the Forest Service.â€

For Pat Aguilar, secretary of the Las Trampas Land Grant and a resident of El Valle, the opportunity to use former common lands the way his ancestors did — albeit under much different circumstances — is a major step in the right direction to address historical injustices.

Like many of the roughly 200 members of the land grant, he traces his roots back to one of its original 12 families. The land grant spans the communities of Las Trampas, El Valle, Ojo Sarco and Chamisal.

The organization has a membership process requiring applicants to trace their ancestral lineage to an heir named on an official list from 1913.

Although some land grant boards have expressed a desire to own their former common lands again, Aguilar, who spent his whole career with the Forest Service working in the Pacific Northwest, offered a different philosophy, noting the commons were not viewed as property that was owned but, rather, open property used for the betterment of the community.

He spoke of the challenges of managing land for a small operation like a land grant and the liability that could be involved with that.

“The purpose of the common lands was for the community to use all of these resources,†Aguilar said. “And for years, the Forest Service wouldn't even let you cut a tree. People were having trouble getting firewood, and this has all been turned around over the last few years.â€

The land grant organization doesn't need to own it, he said, because the land “was never to be sold and never to be subdivided. … What you really want is to manage the land so you still get the resources out of it and protect the resources.â€

The Santo Tomás Apostol del Río de las Trampas Land Grant was established in 1751 by Spanish colonial Gov. Tomás Vélez de Cachupín, initially as an outpost to help protect Spanish settlements to the south from raiding bands of Apache, Comanche and Ute tribes.

Descendants of the 12 founding families established numerous nearby communities. Much of the original land grant is now part of the Carson National Forest, including the Trampas Campground near El Valle and the Trampas Lakes trailhead.

Carson National Forest Supervisor James Duran's first action under the new memorandum of understanding between the Forest Service and the Las Trampas Land Grant was to sign a special-use permit letting the land grant use a 12-acre plot near Chamisal to process wood “harvested from hazardous fuels mitigation and forest and watershed health projects,†according to a statement.

The wood will primarily be used to produce heating pellets and rough lumber, with other types of wood processing possible in the future.

Maximo Gurule, who is in his 80s, a longtime teacher and resident of Peñasco, and his son-in-law loaded a yellow pickup full of wood on a winding Forest Service road near Chamisal on a recent day.

His movements were assured, like those of a much younger man.

Gurule and Aguilar are participating in a program through the Las Trampas Land Grant and the Taos County Soil and Water Conservation District that allows people — even if they are not land grant members — to each harvest a 1-acre unit of forest for personal use.

The Forest Service has allowed several of these leñero, or wood harvesting, programs in Taos County to spring up in communities such as Váldez, Las Trampas and San Cristóbal. The goals of the initiatives are to afford locals better access to wood products while giving them an opportunity to steward their traditional lands.

Importantly, locals say, the Forest Service is letting local organizations run the programs.

Greeting Aguilar and Las Trampas Land Grant treasurer Arnold López — up here, everyone knows everyone else — Gurule said he was about halfway through with his 1-acre unit, although he said it always seems like the trees he cuts keep growing back.

Gurule was well aware the forefathers of many of the participants in the leñero program in Las Trampas once labored here, harvesting wood for their fences and carving out an existence in a far-flung province of the Spanish empire.

“You mentioned history a while ago,†Gurule said, referring to ancient-looking cuts made with axes in some trees in this part of the forest. “Our ancestors — look. Boy, they really put in a lot of work. They didn't have power saws or anything like that.â€

The San Miguel del Bado Land Grant — which includes the communities of Ribera, Villanueva and Sena off N.M. 3, southeast of Santa Fe — has been outspoken in its desire to regain the common lands that it lost long ago.

The San Miguel del Bado Land Grant Board of Trustees has set out to recover portions of the roughly 300,000 acres lost in the 1897 U.S. Supreme Court case known as United States v. Sandoval. The organization, recognized as a political subdivision of New Mexico, has received $150,000 in state capital outlay in recent years to pursue land buyback initiatives as it continues negotiations with federal agencies and eyes properties that are privately owned but unused.

At least seven communities in the state were stripped of common lands as a result of the controversial court ruling, one that has since been castigated by some legal scholars.

Louis Gallegos, the land grant's secretary, said the organization is working with the Bureau of Land Management to purchase a roughly 100-acre parcel with two cemeteries through the Recreation and Public Purposes Act, which allows the BLM to sell or lease public lands for those purposes.

“That's still in the works,†Gallegos said, noting the land grant turned in an application earlier this year. “It's of the utmost importance. … We're seeing how this application goes.â€

“They went against the spirit of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,†he added.