Hassles in New Mexico

by William Rose
Liberation News Service
Albuquerque, N.M.

Northern New Mexico’s explosive political situation has a new ingredient – the hippies.

Hippies have been streaming into the area for some time now. Some wander from place to place, others live in abandoned adobe houses in isolated areas and still others have settled on land purchased with grants they have received from organizations such as the Ford Foundation.

Some indication of the state of affairs can be gained from the following incident. When I returned to New York City from a recent visit to New Mexico, I heard that the New Buffalo Commune had been attacked by vigilantes and that several of the men had been castrated and several of the women raped.

We immediately checked with a friend in New Mexico who visited the commune and learned that the rumor, which apparently originated on the West Coast, was absolutely false. However, people in New Mexico were very disturbed because they felt that it might be a case in which the rumor precedes the fact, and indeed, that the rumor might have been deliberately circulated in order to create an incident.

Two things are apparent; first, that the smallest spark could precipitate a tragic confrontation, and second, that the situation is so explosive that such a story was immediately credible.

“Hippie” is a vague, unsatisfactory term to describe the variety of mainly white, middle-class youths who have migrated to New Mexico. They range from isolated individuals to entire communes, which include such dissimilar groups as the politically oriented Up Against the Wall Motherfucker group from New York; the Hog Farm, an apolitical, non-farming group which travels around the land presenting rock/light show movie happenings at colleges, universities and churches; and serious, hardworking farming collectives such as the New Buffalo Commune.

Most of these groups are attempting to establish contact with their neighbors in order to overcome the hostility surrounding them. The UAW/MF, for example, is trying to participate in the political struggle in northern New Mexico, while the Hog Farm operates on an entertainment level by holding open house each Sunday, during which time they show movies and organize events such as frog races and fireworks for their neighbors.

And yet, at the same time, some hippies have accepted the protection of the local authorities, who are hated by the Chicanos and Indians. The latter see it as an alliance between the hippies and their oppressors.

The newcomers have to contend with hostility from two sources. On the one hand they are generally resented by the Chicanos and Indians, who see them as a new group of Anglo land owners. In the town of Truchas, to cite only one example, a hippie store was recently burned to the ground and any hippie appearing vehicle which happens to drive through the town is stoned by the children.

On the other hand, most New Mexican Anglos despise the hippies for the same reasons that white Americans generally hate hippies: for their long hair, exotic costumes, use of drugs and apparent sexual freedom and independence from the system – and in New Mexico, paramilitary vigilante groups such as the Minutemen are extremely numerous and well-equipped.

Indian and Chicano hostility arises from their poverty and landlessness. The focus of political struggle in New Mexico is the land which once belonged to the Indians and Chicanos, and now is in the hands of individual Anglos or Anglo institutions, such as the Boy Scouts of America, the Presbyterian Church and the American government.

The leading Chicano organization in the state is the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres (Federal Alliance of Free City-States), which was organized precisely around the issue of the Spanish land grants. These grants were guaranteed to the Chicano communities by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 between the United States and Mexico, and then were systematically stolen from their owners by the new Anglo power structure. However, the Chicanos were still able to use most of their land until the second decade of the century, and have not forgotten. The land grants are still a burning issue, and not a memory of past glory.

The hippies have now entered the picture and purchased amounts of land which, although they are insignificant then compared to the expanses owned by the Anglo organizations mentioned above, are nevertheless considerable in the eyes of the impoverished Indians and Chicanos. To the latter, the hippies are simply a new group of Anglo landowners who possess some additional irritating qualities.

For example, they find the hippies’ pretense of poverty extremely irritating. They are not impressed by the hippie life style because if people can buy land they are obviously not poor. And then, there are those hippies who live without a visible means of income, which is even more suspicious as far as the local people are concerned.

Another issue which perfectly illustrates the Anglos’ ignorance of the problems of colonized people and which verges on racist arrogance is that of marriage and family. The family obviously does not have the same meaning for people who are fighting to preserve their cultural identity against the attacks of a colonial system as it has for people rebelling against Anglo bourgeois hypocrisy.

And yet, many people who go to New Mexico, including some with political intentions, seem incapable of comprehending this and sneer at the Chicanos for their “bourgeois” attachment to the family. But what is more bourgeois is certainly this attitude of superiority and refusal to recognize the role that the Chicano family plays in the struggle to preserve their identity.

There is yet the question of why the Establishment (in the form of foundation grants and the like) encourages the hippies’ migration to New Mexico.

The answer seems to be that this strategy accomplishes two purposes at once. The first is to remove some of the most sincere nonconformists from the cities, where their presence could be disruptive. The hippies, on the other hand, think that they are creating a counter institutional way of life in their communes, and in some cases have accepted foundation money in the belief that they are using the system against itself.

The second and far more important purpose of this strategy is to throw a divisive element into a highly polarized and explosive situation. The entrance of the hippies on the scene has diverted the attention of the Indians and Chicanos to some degree from their real enemy, which is the Anglo power structure. The ultimate success of this maneuver depends largely on the hippies themselves.

There are long term residents of New Mexico who believe that this strategy may backfire on the system. If more serious hippies develop politically and really come to understand the problems and attitudes of the oppressed people of that area, then they may become an ally of the Indians and Chicanos. But this can happen only if the hippies learn from the people rather than flaunting their own attitudes, values and life styles before them.

A factor which operates in favour of this is the hostility which the Anglos in New Mexico feel towards the hippies. As far as the Indians and Chicanos are concerned, “An enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and they are more sympathetic towards the hippies when they see them attacked by other Anglos.

Actually, the very survival of the hippies in New Mexico depends on the development of such a coalition with the oppressed peoples.

Related Topics: Communes – Hippies