¡Colores!; Una Lucha Por Mi Pueblo

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When we're in swimming there's no time. Then we're in contact with them. They let you know guys not knowing. Their eyes don't burst they don't see you. I'm five five in front of life. They didn't walk away. They're so strong. And life is one of their foreconfidence. They said large gShep rough Cowboy and mandia and striped glass water. into the

The resistance has been continual ever since the U.S. occupation started. And people have fought this with what they had available to them.

At first it was terribly difficult because they did not speak English. They were at the mercy of lawyers who tricked them. They were at the mercy of courts which didn't recognize their rights. I think one can say that whatever democracy is, it was never practiced in Northern New Mexico from the time the Americans came until right now. We've had a pretense of democracy, ruled by political machines, ruled by land speculators, ruled by those who are out to exploit the people, not to serve them as their political servants. Now the very first confirmations for land grants were highly peculiar and I think that they show us that the instructions of Congress to assume that any community that had existed in 1846 was on a land grant which should be respected, completely disregarded. The third land grant to be confirmed was the Chiramadiya grant and it was confirmed to

Francisco Martinez. But that was a community grant, Francisco Martinez was one of the sons of Manuel Martinez who was one of the applicants for the Chiramadiya grant. But the grant, it was emphasized, was a community grant when it was made and Malcolm E. Bright's work on this, I think, makes it very, very clear the nature of this grant. So it was not the Martinez grant, definitely not. However, Francisco Martinez was given the rights of an al-Qalde to make the donations on the grant. And the curious thing that he did it according to Mexican law, that is to say he told each and every person that they all had equal access to the common lands of the grant and the forests and so forth and so on, but that they could only sell their allotments. Well, that was something that was so totally violated within 10 years that, you know, it just

made the whole thing very meaningless. So, at the end of the year, 1969, we started to pay time to pay time to pay time to pay taxes for it. So, nobody, nobody claiming, and we've been working it, says, well, the did that, I make to say some more, I'm fluent, you know, Flores, I met it in 1968, I think, so we started to make the land, plant potatoes, beans, corn, you name it, and we're just to plant it

all. W I've learned a lot in the wild and the volcano.

Then I tell my name, call me A F they said in the wild for three years now, an Arizona investors group called Vista Del Brasso's has been fighting in court to get Amador Flores off 500 of 1900 acres they say they bought a few years ago near Tierra Amaria. This spring, Flores refused to obey a court injunction ordering him off the land, some of which he claims has been in his family for decades. Since then, Flores family and friends have built bunkers and stood armed guard on the property. The district court judge Bruce Cop and held a hearing in Espeniola last month to allow Flores to show why he should not be held in contempt. Continue today in Santa Fe. The guns and bunkers are on land a couple hours away in Tierra

Amaria, but with Amador Flores contempt hearing continuance here in Santa Fe, security was tight just in case. How can you view the security arrangements for that hearing other than as expressing some sort of bias either culturally or racially against the people of Rio River County? The trees have been cut down, bunkers have been built, the area around Mr. Flores' encampment, Floresville or whatever you want to call it is completely denuded of grass. Meanwhile, some supporters have shown interest and raising for his bond money, whatever it may be. When Amador took over this land, he knew that it was land that belonged to the community, that belonged to the American people, and he knew that someday it would have to go back to the American

people. When that permanent injunction was issued against him last year in April, that legal said Amador Flores, you don't know nothing. But when we came and took this position, we said, no, the land is ours and we're going to keep it and we're going to do it by any means possible. And we're not going to let nobody come and threaten the existence of our community. The land is their life. To them, the land is not a commercial commodity to be bought and sold for profit. It's a very foundation of human life. And the Treaty of Guadalupe Dalgo stated that the land right to these people should be protected by the American government. The American government violated the term to that treaty, but almost the moment it was signed, because these people had imposed upon them a political, an economic, and a legal system that they never understood and that were used by cunning and shrewd Anglo-American and unfortunately, in some Spanish Americans, to take the land from them by fraud, by violence, and by exploitation of their ignorance

of American law and ignorance of American political system. What is happening here was for the first time, he kind of takes over a piece of land and remains on the piece of land, claims it, and remains 22 years and now when they want to throw them out of the court, people, other people supporting and they continue to remain on the land and say it's not going to happen again. We're going to get it in the last, in the last minute, we're going to get it.

As I said, Tierra Maria has always been a center of land-grant agitation in Mexico, and the only way this question will ever be resolved is when the people see that justice is done or that the common lands of their grants are restored to them, and then the land-grant agitation will see. In the 1960s, a new organization which had its roots back many years opened up the issue in a very public way that brought national recognition of the fact that there was an issue prior to that, when I came to New Mexico, I was told this is not an issue, this has been decided, it's all over, everything is okay in hunky dory and forget about it, but I mean I kept talking with villagers

for whom it was an issue and who had lost so very much. But if the federal government were to develop a program to buy up, the common lands of the grants from the current legal owners would cost less than would to develop a major bomber in the United States, but in the United States to fend forces. If class less than would develop a major bomber. There were two ways of settling this situation, a confrontation, and that was to say, well, maybe a three in court, out of court, or impeached battle. But at least this later situation in Tierra Maria ended up with what I consider a positive,

very positive result in that land of developers were willing to settle out of court. So it's not just Florida that one, it's that people as a whole, in my opinion, that came out, at least with something in their hand to say, see so pretty. But it's a good feeling, it's a damn good feeling to know that there is liberated land and that people have a place to go and there's pride in the

community because of this, because the first piece is you a parallel she get the first piece. Okay, that's good cake, well done, homemade. Thank you for the case. What are you mucking around with a 200 acre piece over here? Oh, I ain't going to help you. No, I got my own property. You guarantee one thing, don't come after my property. You ain't going to it. You ain't going to come. No, you ain't going to end up the way you're doing with it. You prove it. Well, hey man, prove it. I got title and shows you can prove it.

You'll get paid off. You can pay it off. Yeah. You're a damn right. Oh, yeah, my building right there is a TA grant. Harold Lake State Park is a TA grant. The village of Thomas and the TA grant, everything. People are leaving in Chama. Why don't people leave in Chama? Let me tell you something. That's why the population stays the same in Chama. Every time a baby is born, some guy leaves town. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. But you never heard it before. No, no, I don't afraid of nobody else. How can you feel such a bit on your window? You don't see a big fence around this building. You don't see no bunkers on my place. You see a whole bunch of dogs in a big fence and lights all over the place. You have to keep

the skunks up. You come over here to congratulate us or did you come over here to start trouble? You just call it. Well, if you came over here, congratulations people. You can congratulate them. If not, you keep your mouth shut. I'm talking to this man here. I'm not talking to my father. He talked to him. He talked to me too. Well, I think a lot of people feel the same major. Well, can I talk to you, though? I have to talk to your old family. I think that it's not only me. A lot of work. You want to vote to go to a tree. No, no, no. No pictures. Sorry. This is how proper it is. The money can be replaced at tree once it's

passed. It can be replaced, but not that way it was before. A land, if it's destroyed, no matter how beautiful apartment houses, condominiums or whatever it is, how beautiful they are. They were created by man and they'll never be as beautiful as what God creates. Fred, this is El Corrito de Flores. Corrito de Amador, Flores. Corrito, that I composed, well, April the 19th, 1988. I'd like to give you an idea of what came out after that or during

the incident in Tierra Maria when Amador and a group of his friends took a stand against some land-developed person. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened.

I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened.

I think that starting me, again, involved in the land grants, when I was about seven or eight, ten years old, I saw my grandfather and all the other old people talk about how the service was taken to an end of the way. Well, what really has happened is that our ancestors have always gone to the court system and the legal system, paying lawyers and these and that, and they have never gotten any

justice in the courtroom. We don't have another alternative, but do what we have to do. It's just a matter of, I guess, losing patience with the system. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened.

I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened.

I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened.

I'd like to give you an idea of what happened. I'd like to give you an idea of what happened.