by Robert Coles
The land in Hidalgo County and other counties up and down the river is unrelievedly flat — so flat that one looks with gratitude to palm trees and some tall, pliant pines. Tropical flowers are everywhere — wild sometimes, along the roads, or in carefully tended abundance in the gardens one sees in both Anglo and Chicano sections of the villages and towns. There is oil in the northern parts of some of the Rio Grande Valley’s counties, but the nearer one comes to the river itself, the more lush and developed is the agricultural land. Cattle and sheep graze casually, but there is nothing easygoing about the planting, tending, and harvesting of crops — which are especially abundant in the warm winter, when the nation to the north is seized by cold and snow. Apparently endless fields of cotton, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and beets can be found on the same farm, often subdivided by individual crop into separate worlds, each with its own foreman and “trained” crew of harvesters.
A particular Chicano family may, for example, specialize in cutting lettuce or celery, as opposed to picking tomatoes or cucumbers. There are machines, astonishing in their size and complexity — the dinosaurs of agribusiness. But human labor is still needed — cheap, more precise, more “reliable,” one hears: no sudden breakdown of a piece of equipment that may cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair. Cantaloupe and watermelon also abound, and citrus fruits — enormous orchards devoted to oranges, grapefruit, tangerines. If one favors the slightly exotic, by ordinary American standards, there are papaya and banana trees. And there are flower farms — as well as acreage given over to peppers or black-eyed peas. In the words of one grower: “We are rich here with a good climate — warm, sunny, and plenty of rain. And we have all of Mexico nearby to help us; the Mexicans need the work, and they do a good job. Of course, there are exceptions. But to me the reason we have such good crops is that we have the right people to work here as well as the right kind of weather.”
He merges the two, field hands and climate, for his reasons; Chicanos do so too — a response to the kind of lives they live. The strong, rarely absent sun, “Mexico’s sun” one hears it called sometimes, starts the day for thousands of Chicanos, many of whom have never heard an alarm clock go off. Once awake, the first question has to do with the weather: is it clear, cloudy, rainy, or (in winter) has a freeze, uncommon but deadly dangerous, settled upon the citrus? Soon enough the men and women (and very often, the children) are on their way to the land — their land once upon a time, as they often remind one another. The Rio Grande Valley was, in fact, first settled by Europeans in the middle of the eighteenth century at the initiative of the Spanish government of Mexico Indians had been probing Spanish territory, and the French, who controlled what is now Louisiana, had expansionist designs. To protect its claims, Spain sent its Conquistadores up to and across the Rio Grande, with instructions to clear the land and begin settlements. The province of Nuevo Sontoneer was established, headed initially by Count José de Escondon. Large grants of land were given to certain families, the descendants of whom still live in the various counties of the Valley. These families began to work the land; they brought with them Indians, introduced cattle, sheep, goats, and, not least, agriculture. Corn, beans, and squash were the first crops.
When Mexico broke away from Spain the Valley became part of the Mexican province of Tamaulipas. In 1836, when Texas broke free of Mexico, the Valley was declared part of Texas — by the Anglos, who did not, however, make any immediate effort to move south. Until 1849, when the United States troops moved to enforce their claim to all land north of the Rio Grande, there were virtually no Anglos in the Valley. American children, Anglo or Chicano, are usually told what happened in 1847: Mexico was decisively beaten after President Polk instructed General Winfield Scott to take the war into the heart of “enemy country.” After Veracruz and Mexico City itself were occupied, the government of Mexico was willing to cede all territory north of the Rio Grande to the United States — the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexican citizens were permitted to choose between remaining where they were and becoming Americans or moving south and starting a new life. Most stayed.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, as middle-class (professional men, storekeepers, landowners) Spanish-speaking people in the Valley will tell an outsider, a trek of Anglos began, bent on farming, mostly. Land was cheap and plentiful. Often the Anglos were single men, and they often married Spanish-speaking women. The crops were bountiful, and there was a minimum of friction between the Anglos and the old Spanish families. Significantly, the Spanish-speaking people were then proud of their heritage and quite able to absorb Anglos socially and culturally. The daughters of the old Spanish families who married Anglos did so across the border, on Mexican soil and under the sanction of the Catholic Church. Many Texans, accordingly, had Mexican marriage certificates and, even more confusing, their children had Mexican birth certificates because the Spanish families sought out the superior medical care then available in the towns south of the Rio Grande.
In the last three decades of the nineteenth century the number of Anglos markedly increased, and the social and cultural equilibrium of the Valley was upset. Crude and greedy land speculators arrived, buying cheap, selling dear. There were always takers — men who wanted to dig in, try to make a living out of the obviously fertile land. Yet no one was going to get all that rich in the Valley, however good its soil and weather, unless transportation north to the rest of the country improved. Throughout the nineteenth century the Valley was approached by steamboat up the Rio Grande or on horse (stagecoach) through the various cattle trails that had been forged. In the first decade of the twentieth century a railroad connection was at last established, and with it, the possibility of enormously profitable agricultural production. Land speculation increased; a fever of buying and selling swept the Valley. Soon thousands of Mexicans were being brought in by Anglo landowners to clear the land, irrigate it, plant and tend and harvest its crops. A once-picturesque region, inhabited by old, aristocratic Spanish-speaking gentry and poorer Mexican laborers of mostly Indian ancestry, gave way to a bustling, Anglo-run, highly developed agricultural economy. And the Spanish cultural domination ended; the Valley became — socially as well as economically and politically — very much part of Texas and the rest of the United States.
Cheap, compliant labor turned into an obsession with newly rich Anglo growers. Mexico had for a long time been poor; in the first decades of the twentieth century, it was also plagued by a series of revolutions, with their attendant disorganizing influence on the people, thousands of whom crossed the Rio Grande. Better, they thought, the arrogant, demanding Anglos, who at least paid something, however little, than the chaos and near starvation that went with constant civil strife in Mexico. And the Anglos were not full of apprehension or self-recrimination, never mind the guilt a bad conscience can generate. They were eager to keep wages low. They had come to a sleepy, relaxed, casual valley, owned largely by a few wealthy Spanish-speaking families and populated by a larger (but overall, not very large) number of other Spanish-speaking people. In a few decades they had turned the place around, making of its land a rich breadbasket — one of the most valuable in the nation. Now the cactus and mesquite were virtually gone. Now the quaint burros and smiling, hesitant people had lost control to strong, assertive, active, and industrious landowners, anxious to make the most of a region beginning to be known (in the 1920s and 1930s) as the Magic Valley.
With the crops came other initiatives: canneries, cotton gins, packing plants, transportation centers, stores that sold machinery, fertilizers, farm equipment of all kinds. At times one can look around Texas and feel oneself to be in Mississippi’s delta or in south Georgia or central Alabama: cotton or vegetables as far as one can see, interrupted only by irrigation ditches and, occasionally, a tree-lined road or some railroad tracks; or maybe the squat, flimsily constructed but constantly busy packing plant — a wooden or tin shell to protect dozens and dozens of workers from the sun, as they sort out fruit
and vegetables all day long, and sometimes by night too. They pack up boxes or crates full of produce, which are loaded and dispatched by truck or train to the rest of us, who have learned to expect fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables all year.
The “magic” of the Valley is, of course, a wondrous combination of ample sun and water that makes already good land produce so abundantly. The contrast with much of New Mexico’s land is rather apparent to Chicano migrants who have had yearly occasion to move from the Valley north and west in search of work. There is not all that much rain in the Valley; the river itself supplies the water, except during the wet season, midwinter, when more than enough falls and gets soaked in. But during the spring and summer it can be dry, almost semiarid, for weeks on end. When Chicano field hands first came across the border in large numbers a few decades ago, they camped out. There were, at best, old shacks to house them; they crammed into small rooms, empty save for a mattress or two, maybe an old, rickety chair — as if the buildings too were going to be packed, sealed, and sent off somewhere. “Wetbacks” the people were called, Mexicans illegally in this country: mojados. Soon enough they found el patrón, and from then on his needs became their obligation — work in the fields from sunup to sundown.
In the summer, though, when the sun is too hot and the Valley’s land rests for a few months, the Chicanos move hundreds, thousands of miles north in search of work. They cross Texas, moving steadily uphill with their old cars, and eventually (those headed for the West Coast) reach New Mexico. In west Texas and in eastern New Mexico (referred to as Little Texas) they cross space that is limitless and uninhabited, striking in its rugged, unpredictable appearance. They wonder, on their return to the Valley in the autumn, whether they could ever find a halfway useful or comfortable place for themselves, as Indians have, as other Spanish-speaking people have, in the area near Albuquerque. In a curious way the new interstate highway system has given them a sense of security and confidence; they remember with mixed awe and apprehension the old, narrower roads that brought the traveler closer to the plains, the desert, the mountains, the buttes and mesas and canyons, the highlands and scrubby pine and cactus lowlands that make up the state that has their ancestral home as part of its name. Best to keep moving; in Colorado, or farther north and west, in Oregon and Washington, there is work. New Mexico, as one migrant keeps saying, is “a place you see in dreams; it’s strange — like the Indians.”
The western sky: immense, boundless, infinite, it seems, while under it. And if one is leaving Texas, moving higher, steadily higher, closer all the time to that sky, the ascent does indeed become unnerving, mystifying. Ahead are grasslands that end in a strange rise of the land — a high table, as it were, awaiting visitors. “God must be there,” Chicano children have said with mixed curiosity, surprise, and apprehension. Suddenly tumbleweed comes rushing toward the road, dry and withered almost, yet at the same time round and bouncy and endlessly responsive to the wind. “A skeleton of a plant,” a young Chicano child comments; he enjoys his observation, but his mother tells him not to speak like that: “You mention a skeleton and you flirt with Death.”
Death is indeed very much present: land that has long since given up hope for moisture; or mountains once boiling with volcanic gases and liquids but now extinct; or arroyos, gulleys, ditches that even desert lizards seem to have shunned. Suddenly, though, deeper into New Mexico, there is a strange shift; the land seems kinder, softer. A few aspens assert themselves — thin, tentative, huddled together against the still, dry, bleak, windswept landscape. How have they managed to grow, to stay alive, to remain standing? A young child, for the first time (at five) conscious (to a degree) of the natural world outside of his immediate environment — that of a car, a family on the move — lifts his finger and points and counts: five of those aspen trees, so fragile and isolated to anyone who comes from a woody region, but here a surprise, if not a miracle. The questions begin: how come their presence, and how come no more? His mother shrugs but has an answer: there will be more ahead. They have been a sign, those trees, one of many signs the traveler comes to anticipate in New Mexico. The state offers an extraordinarily mysterious journey that begs and defies comprehension.
No one really knows when the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico first made their journey across New Mexico’s high plateaus, cut by deep canyons or interrupted by various ranges of mountains. The Spanish came about 1540, and there is no doubt that Pueblo settlements like Cochiti, north of Albuquerque and south of Santa Fe, had then been in existence at least several centuries. Archeological studies, incomplete but continuing, date some Pueblo pottery as far back as 1050, and perhaps before that. Coronado’s expedition wandered widely across central and northern New Mexico, as well as Arizona, and to the east to Texas and Oklahoma. The Pueblos were approached, surveyed, conquered — without any real opposition. The Pueblos showed a willingness to make token gestures toward a Christian God so long as they were allowed to have simultaneous concourse with the various spirits of their own faith.
For a while the Spaniards were too busy hunting for gold, following the course of rivers, and in general sizing up a beautiful, dramatic, inviting landscape to come down hard upon the Indians. But in time the demand was made: go along religiously as well as economically and politically. By 1582 the Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley were part of an amorphous expanse of land called New Mexico. Before then the term Nueva Andalucia had been used. From 1597 onward the territory that included the Rio Grande pueblos was colonized in earnest. Spanish settlers, as opposed to roving bands of explorers or soldiers, arrived; soon churches were built, Santa Fe was founded (1610), and Indians were being converted rather zealously. (By 1624 there were 34,000 Christian Indians.) In 1680 the Pueblos revolted, fought hard and successfully against the Spanish, compelled them to retreat south. But by 1696 the conquerors returned, this time in even larger numbers. They had never completely gone away, of course. They raided pueblos from time to time, burning property and killing people, or taking them away as slaves. Eventually superior force won its victory, and the Pueblos were, in turn, required to help subdue other Indian tribes, the Navahos and the Apaches.
The Hopis, however, were never really reconquered by the Spanish, who had initially stormed the Hopi villages, located in territory that is now northern Arizona, during the early period of exploration (1540). The Hopis had made an effort to defend themselves the first time around, but when overwhelmed, became friendly and generous. The Spanish did not quite know what to make of a people who presented gifts to those storming a village with guns. When the Spanish came back to the Rio Grande pueblos, they continued to engage with, plot against, and try to overcome the wandering Navahos and Apaches, but they kept their distance from the Hopis. It had been the Hopis who had first shown the Spanish explorers the apparently limitless Grand Canyon, which failed to assuage their disappointment at not finding gold and silver but had struck them with awe for a few moments, at least. It was to be the Anglos of the United States, in the nineteenth century, who would gain decisive political control of the Hopis and all other Indian tribes.
The area of land called New Mexico, including present-day Arizona, was for a few decades part of the Mexican republic, which had been granted independence from Spain in 1821. The Spanish rulers had not wanted some 20,000 of their own people and the 10,000 Indians under their control to have any dealings with the Anglos, who were constantly probing the Southwest. But under Mexican rule trade began to flourish. Santa Fe became the terminus for goods brought by the Anglos — and sold profitably indeed. Other Anglos, from Texas, regarded such successful economic activity as an invitation for conquest. In 1841, and again in 1843, Texans tried to take over New Mexico, but failed. Soon thereafter Texas joined the United States, and an American army, under the command of Colonel Stephen Kearny, took over New Mexico. In 1850 Congress formally set up the territory of New Mexico, and by 1863 had given that territory the size of the present state by splitting off the western half as Arizona, th
e northern half as Colorado.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, railroads entered the Southwest; with them came an increasing trek of white men from the Midwest and the East. The Indians were gradually “quieted,” as it was put then — and not sent to the best land by any means. Texans crossed into New Mexico with their herds of cattle. Mining and agriculture (enabled by irrigation) began to be developed. By 1880 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway had reached Albuquerque, which had been founded in 1706, but grew rapidly only in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. In 1912 New Mexico was admitted to the union, followed (in the same year) by Arizona. The rest is contemporary history — motels, interstate highways, air force bases, nuclear testing stations, atomic research laboratories, and, not far away, Indians on reservations and Spanish-speaking people near villages or on farms or within the barrios of Albuquerque.
For those people New Mexico is something else, not measurable by economists, physicists, or engineers. For an Indian child or a Spanish-speaking child, New Mexico is aspens turning yellow in early autumn — a gradually unfolding blanket that covers the Sangre de Cristo mountains. New Mexico is sandstone formations in all their strange, eroded, suggestive diversity. New Mexico is a sea of gypsum, of white sand that seems infinite and utterly lifeless. New Mexico is also for such children a field of primroses, a mesa followed by another, a quick storm subsiding and so allowing everything to be lit up again: the cottonwoods, the low adobe houses, the coats of the grazing horses. “See the yellow,” one hears a child shout as the sun penetrates the clouds, reasserting a rather common hegemony; and the eyes of the six-year-old girl race from place to place: trees aflame, the sky a furnace, cacti suddenly in bloom, and the side of a building a strange, alive mixture of yellow, orange, red, brown, which together, on blinking, become a blazing fire.