The Battle Joined: Relationships Forged in the Fire of Local Elections

Just as the residents of Taos County have come together and lobbied for the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, so today candidates from across Taos County will file for county commission. Nothing less than the future of our water resources and the Monument’s protection are at stake. Question your commission candidates closely. What and who do they support?

Lawsuits from Texas aim at clawing back more water from irrigators in the southern part of the state. So southern New Mexicans will turn toward northern New Mexico’s perceived abundance of water despite drought and the lack of watershed management. In the link below analysts discuss Gov. Martinez’s capitulation to the mining industry’s pollution of ground water. Thanks to political activist David Cortez’s alert, see:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22282-new-mexico-where-polluting-groundwater-is-legal

Just as this Governor would pollute children’s mind’s by advocating standardized tests that raise the standards in exams, calculated to create not standards of success but standards of failure, so the Governor is seizing control of water standards and regulations, meant to protect citizens from polluters, so regulations aimed at preserving the purity of drinking water now protect the polluters themselves.

Our friends in Mora, two of three county commissioners, voted to forbid “fracking.” The one commissioner, Paula Garcia, an alleged acequia and land-grant activist, who voted for the oil and gas industry, appears to be the prodigal wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In the Town of Taos the citizens rejected Gov. Martinez’s anointed representative, incumbent Mayor Darren Cordova, and voted for County Commissioner Dan Barrone and two Taosenos, loyal to community, Fritz Hahn and Judi Cantu. Today, the County Commissioners themselves meet with representatives of Taos Pueblo in a discussion aimed at resolving the issue of the “Morrison Memorial Tower” in the sacred viewshed out by the old armory at the once and future Blinking Light.

As well commissioners will tour the Camino del Medio as a potential candidate for a Community Development Block Grant, a project aimed at collaborating with the Town of Taos in order to upgrade and extend an inner traffic relief route through Town and into the County via Tom Holder Road. The Mayor will join fellow commissioners.

Taosenos are famous for fighting with each other. But veterans of these homegrown battles must now turn their eyes toward a common foe, an external threat to community. Just as we have forged relationships in the water wars, the Abeyta/Taos Pueblo Water Settlement, the Battle for Blue Lake, and are now poised to make common cause and collaborate in the E911-Dispatch Command Center at the County Complex as well as collaborating at the regional Taos airport, so we must practice the arts of political civility in order to confront the real and important issues.

KCEC’s generation and transmission provider, Tri-State, would despoil the Monument and so Gov. Martinez and her Tejano compadres would seize our water. Above all we must work to create civil relationships among the historic entities, Town, County, Taos Pueblo, Kit Carson Electric Coop, and the myriad nonprofits and activists, the citizenry who would fight to protect and preserve Taos from the corporate and state-sponsored predators. Vigilance is the price of liberty and local sovereignty i.e. everything we hold dear in greater Taos.