Considering Local Culture…Caveat: the Middle Class Anglo Ascendancy

Surely, July of 2015 will go down in the history books as the time when Taosenos remembered most of the historic and current cultural highlights. From music and art to literature and Fiestas, Taos is celebrating not only its far-flung history but also the current practitioners who use the brush and stylo, the guitar and the dance to express the best elements of the human spirit. Culture, like geography, is the gift that keeps on giving in El Norte.

Even los Politicos are getting in on the act, whether via contributions at Town Hall from Lodgers Tax for publicity or from the County which has scheduled a public meeting on July 22 at (6 pm? in the Mural Room) the Historic County Courthouse to discuss proposed renovations. The Town itself will consider a “budget” for the “arts and culture district” and “mainstreet” program at the Wednesday, July 15 meeting.

The Town

The Town of Taos itself is preparing to undermine the historic uses of the Plaza with an “arts and culture district/mainstreet program,” both of which aim at supporting towns with “mainstreets” (or Plazas) and arts and culture districts or to develop the latter. Apparently some on the council and among staff would like to close the Plaza.

Taos, by definition and practice, is an “arts and culture district.” This practice is carried on daily, weekly, and monthly. So the concept seems like a way to divert attention from more pressing problems: potholes, infrastructure, and a vision of where the Town ought to go. And the Town has financial problems. Where will the money come from? More grants, one guesses.

The current Town government interferes with the historic district by allowing the proliferation of both unhelpful events and signs of an unsightly commercial and/or government character, whether made of Vinyl, Digital, Canvas Banners, Sandwich Boards, and Neon. Signs, like the potholes, weeds, and elms, grow more numerously, even as empty buildings decay and vacant properties rot. Town crews water the flowers but forget to sweep the central square or neglect to take down the Christmas tree lights and cords that continue to choke the tall trees on the Plaza.

And the leadership at Town Hall has shown little inclination to forge constituencies necessary to garner longterm support among the landlords who are the most influential merchants and can actually affect change downtown. Appointing a committee or a new layer of bureaucracy (ACD/Mainstreet) seems like a way to evade the responsibility for governing even as this council’s claim on the “vision thing” is highly unimaginative.

Social Engineering

Councilor Fritz Hahn, who has urged the Town to delete the name “Kit Carson” from the park and appoint an “arts and cultural district ”(ACD) and “mainstreet” committee, could not give me s specific example as to why we need another version of the failed ACD.

“Grants,” Fritz said, knowingly about the ACD.

“Grants for what? more planning?” I asked.

Dear Reader, we’ve been planned to death: what we need is “action.” (You can read the results of thousands of hours of planning and no follow through on the Internet.) By removing the offenders, i.e. signs, lights, potholes, and rot, we could improve the sight lines and locate the beauty sites, now disappearing behind obstructions. Fearful merchants and town administrators never met a scribbled sandwich board or neon “open” sign or directional sign they couldn’t love.

Hahn, like other members of the Anglo Cultural Ascendancy want to ultimately close the Plaza to traffic: call it the “death knell” of local hospitality or hospitality to locals. Believers in Arts and Culture Districts apparently want an “old Town” type of dead zone with an appropriate café culture (not the cantina culture) peopled not with human beings but with effigies or perhaps pictures, evoking a nostalgic era of sugar plum fairies.

While you weren’t watching, the Town’s unsupervised Public Works Department has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of private road and wastewater treatment contractors or out-of-town engineering firms. The executive team procrastinates for 12 to 18 months and then hires out of town marketing firms for substantial fees to tell you what you already know or could learn or could do yourself.

The Town after first destroying the acequia culture and forcing the Spring Ditch out, now wants to build a museum culture for “acequias” in the park as a tourist attraction and to “re-educate” locals in their use, as if they’ve forgotten. The Anglo Ascendancy might not know how but “they” know better.

And now the County, too, wants to take away your shelter. A Taos Friction reader brought the following to my attention after a local individual was rousted out of his, alleged RV shelter. The County in June 2014, according to the posted Land Use Regulations, under definitions in the ordinance, says: “RECREATIONAL VEHICLE OR SHELTER—a vehicle or shelter designed primarily for temporary use as a portable dwelling unit for travel, recreational, camping purposes or as a temporary residence while constructing a main residence not to exceed 180 calendar days.”

Notice how the clause “not to exceed” sneaks in to the end of the sentence, wherein it can be used to reinforce the gradual encroachment of upwardly mobile mainstream values and ultimately infringe on the free living ways of our brothers and sisters who live off the grid or variously, whether under the brow of Tres Orejas amidst the sand and sage in their lean-tos, school-buses or in non-compliant code-busting teepees, not to mention folks who inhabit liberated dwellings among the hidden corners of the County.

In addition to an Anglo majority on these elected bodies (above) and in law-enforcement (sheriff and judges) you’ve got republicans who register as democrats making policy, and who aim to make a buck by adjusting the language in contracts with white-out (as does the exemplary painter in El Prado).

We’re talking a change in culture here folks: get used to it.