Review by Kay Matthews
Hispanic Southwest – July 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin
Edited by Devon G. Peña
Published in 1999
by University of Arizona Press
ISBN 0-8165-1873-4
THIS BOOK should be required reading for every resident of the upper Rio Grande region who calls him- or her- self an environmentalist. Just as European society requires that we read the books that promote and maintain the values of that society, so must we open ourselves to the values of Rio Arriban land-based communities which connect cultural and political systems into a world that embraces diversity. This book, a collection of essays by Devon Peña, Ruben O. Martinez, Reyes Garcia, Laura Pulido, Gwyn Kirk, Malia Davis, and Joseph C. Gallegos, is a great place to start.
Peña has brought these particular writers together to present a mixed bag of academic analysis and stories — acequia tales, activist tales, and homeland tales. The first part of the book deals with issues of bioregionalism and Indo-Hispano land ethics. The second part of the book brings these issues closer to home by discussing the histories and current environmental politics in the Upper Rio Grande watershed, including chapters on Ganados del Valle’s struggles to find grazing land, and La Sierra’s attempts to regain land grant rights in the mountains above San Luis.
This is where Peña, himself, put on the activist mantel as he joined the local community, first in its fight against a gold mine and then against a massive logging operation on the Taylor Ranch, the former land-grant commons.
In his introduction, Peña explains the meaning of the book’s subtitle “subversive kin,” or Chicano environmentalism: an antidote to Western “reductionist” thinking — a separation of facts and values that holds to universal truths — which instead allows a sense of place and identity to integrate ecology with politics and economics. It embraces the diversity of life, in both human and natural landscapes, and defines new ways of thinking about what constitutes bioregionalism.
Several chapters deal with the concept of bioregionalism. In the chapter “Los Animalitos,” Peña credits sociologist Bill Devall with the clearest statement of what defines a bioregion: a perspective that links the study of cultural and natural areas based on biotic shift (the change in plant and animal life from one region to another), watershed, sense of place or spirit of place, and cultural distinctiveness. He emphasizes that this applies to existing, endangered cultures rather than just the people who lived and defined a bioregion before industrialization.
The next chapter, written by Ruben O. Martinez, associate provost at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo, builds on the premise that it is critical for Chicano communities to organize at the bioregional level, just as ethnic minority groups throughout the world organize to secure autonomy. Strategies to counteract western development and the forces of the free market economy must be based on synthesizing political economy, cultural ecology, and environmental history on a bioregional basis.
In Chapter 3, Reyes Garcia, who lives on his family’s Conejos County ranch and teaches philosophy at Fort Lewis College, furthers this discussion by focusing on the Indo-Hispano concept of homeland and sense of place, which are articulated through personal history and analysis.
Subsequent chapters tell the story of Ganados del Valle, critique the work of certain environmental historians that fails to credit Hispanos with a conservation ethic, and delve into profeminist issues as well. The last two chapters tell the story of just what is at stake in Rio Arriba, as Joseph Gallegos, a fifth-generation San Luis farmer, attempts to govern acequia water, just as his forefathers have done for generations, in the face of a gold mine and massive logging operation that threaten el aqua with pollution and waste.
This whole book is his story, really, just as it is the story of many who live in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. They are our subversive kin.
— Kay Matthews
(This review was originally published in La Jicarita, a monthly newspaper “dedicated to preserving the clean and plentiful waters that sustain the rural communities, culture, and traditions of northern New Mexico.” It’s $5 a year from the Rio Pembudo Watershed Protection Coalition, P.O. Box 372, Peñasco NM 87533; website http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~tierra/lajicarita.htm )