I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
A proposal by the State Land Office to swap over 14,000 acres of public trust land in northern New Mexico’s White Peak area for 9,650 acres of land owned by several big ranchers in other parts of the state has raised the ire of sportsmen who use the area to hunt and fish and attracted the attention of elected officials who say it’s a bad deal. Now, the state’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, LULAC, is calling it a land swindle that does a disservice to the Hispano and Native American communities that surround the area.
Ralph Arellanes, Chairman of the Hispano Roundtable of New Mexico and Director of the NM LULAC office, sent The Independent a letter from him addressed to Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, in which he lays out in blunt terms why the land swap harms the surrounding community:
… This land swap is being conducted in a very secretive, private and discrete manner between you, your office, the UU Bar Express Ranches, the Stanley Ranch, the CS Cattle Co, and the Bill Galloway Ranch. This land swap is designed only to benefit these ranchers who already own the majority of the lands in Ocate, their associates and business partners …
… This land swap (swindle) has not been conducted in a public manner with regard to the majority population that is our Hispano and Native American communities that surround these lands for well over 200 miles.
….This land swindle that you are carrying out includes encroaching on land within the Mora Land Grant, encroaching on privately held lands and revoking several current leases between numerous Hispano families and the State of New Mexico.
Arellanes goes on to compare the land swap to the history, in which Hispano and Native communities lost much of their land to Anglos:
This land swindle is reminiscent of the Santa Fe Ring operation that is responsible for stealing millions of acres of lands, land grants, ranches and homes from Hispano families since New Mexico became a U.S. Territory in 1848. This operation continued when New Mexico became a State in 1912 and unbelievably, this continues to this day obviously.
The entire letter is included below.
A call to Land Commissioner Pat Lyons was not returned Friday.
