Cleaning the Acequia in El
Valle
Ditch crew ranging in age from 71 (in foreground) to
17
Two of the young kids who come out to dig. What would
we do without them?
Ralph Martinez cutting the jaras
Mayordomo Fred Montoya
La Jicarita Story Updates
By Kay Matthews
Wolf Creek Village
Despite several pending lawsuits and continued
controversy, the proposed development of Wolf Creek Village
at Wolf Creek Ski Area in southwestern Colorado seems to be
moving ahead (see La Jicarita News, May 2006). As reported
in the May issue of Colorado Central, Texas developer Billy
Joe "Red" McCombs recently held a public meeting in Alamosa
to apprise the public of the progress on the development
and to announce his pending closing on two ranches in nearby
Rio Grande County.
According to the articles in Colorado Central,
development of the Village will require "extraordinaryily
deep pockets." The proposed Village will consist of
approximately 2,200 homes at the base of the ski area,
located at 10,300 feet in elevation. There is no nearby
energy supply; the plan is to store liquified gas that will
be burned to generate electricity. Neither is there nearby
airplane access, but there is talk of improving the airport
in Del Norte. Furthermore, there is usually more than 400
inches of snow annually that will have to be cleared to
provide access.
But apparently McCombs is prepared to pay the price. As
the 258th richest American, he is the billionaire founder of
Clear Channel Communications who has also made a fortune in
oil and gas and real estate development. Citizen groups have
filed two lawsuits against the Forest Service decision to
approve access from Highway 160 across forest land to the
proposed Wolf Creek development, and the Pitcher family,
which owns the ski area, have also sued McCombs, apparently
after a disagreement over the size of the development. But
McCombs has a long history of getting what he wants, and
given the depressed economy of the San Juan Mountain
counties adjacent to the ski area that are anxious for "a
shot in the arm", it looks like he may get his ski area
village, no matter what the costs-financial, social, or
environmental.
Weimer Properties Development
In the October 2005 issue of La Jicarita News we provided
an overview and history of the proposed 5,000-acre
subdevelopment on the former Cristobal de la Serna Land
Grant by the Weimer family, heirs to Taos merchant Alexander
Gusdorf. A year and a half later Weimer Properties LLC is
still working to gain preliminary approval from Taos County
for its 20 to 40 acre ranchettes and preserve that will
stretch from Picuris Peak to Llano Quemado.
The family's latest proposal recently hit a snag when El
Valle Water and Sanitation District turned down its request
to hook into its system. Weimer Properties originally
intended to provide individual wells (or combined household
wells) and septic systems for the ranchettes. However,
because the family owns 40 acres of water rights from Top of
the World Farm (TOW), purchased in 2004 from Public Service
Land Company of Costilla, family representative Todd Barbee
decided to approach El Valle de los Ranchos Water and
Sanitation District about transferring those water rights to
El Valle so that Weimer Development could become part of its
system. According to Barbee, the company would pay for a
50,000 gallon water treatment plant and three and a half
miles of sewer main to "jump start" El Valle's system from
Llano Quemado spring to the town of Taos Sewage Treatment
Plant. In return, El Valle would buy the TOW water rights
from Weimer (with a loan it has already secured to acquire
water rights and improve its system) and once the
development was tied into the water and sewer system Weimer
would pay back the cost of the loan through system hook-ups.
Weimer had already been negotiating with El Valle to buy the
TOW water rights before the company considered using them to
develop a community water system.
La Jicarita News tried to contact Taos County
Commissioner and El Valle de los Ranchos Water and
Sanitation board president Gabriel Romero to find out why El
Valle turned down Weimer's proposal, but he never returned
our calls. He was quoted in the Taos News, however: "The
sentiment in the neighborhoods is against this project. The
underlying thought and the feedback I've gotten is
anti-Weimer." This sentiment is understandable, considering
the long and contentious battle between the Weimer family
and the Cristobal de la Serna Land Grant Association over
ownership of the former grant. As we reported in the 2005
article, former members of the Association have also
acequired private holdings within the grant and have said
they intend to develop them. Barbee insists that the "green"
development plan for the former grant that Weimer Properties
has laid out is the best scenario for this property that he
claims was abused and exploited under the control of the
Association.
The Weimer Properties 75-year water plan, based on its
hydrology report developed from the drilling of test wells,
is finished and will soon be released to the public. The
company will soon submit its domestic well plan for
preliminary plat approval by the county. But Weimer is still
considering the feasibility of a community water system, and
according to Barbee, the county would allow Weimer to amend
its plat permit if the company is able to change to a
community system.
City and County Wells
In last month's La Jicarita News we discussed
Santa Fe Country's application to transfer water to its
supplemental wells and the increase in transfers from the
Middle Rio Grande to the Buckman Wells and Direct Diversion.
Since then, we have reviewed a hydrology report and
demographic report on the Pojoaque Basin, which reveals some
interesting information with regard to water use and need in
the basin.
The rationale for many of the county water transfers is
to meet the growing needs of the county and its obligations
in the Aamodt settlement. Members of the Pojoaque Basin
Water Alliance, who pulled out of the Aamodt settlement
negotiations to raise issues they felt were not being
addressed, have always been concerned that the water
delivery system stipulated in the settlement will open the
door to increased growth and development and loss of
agricultural land in the basin.
A 2006 report, "Demographic and Economic Profile of the
Greater Pojoaque Basin," prepared for the County of Santa
Fe, corrects the misconception that the basin is already
seeing significant growth and that it needs to be
accommodated in the terms of the Aamodt settlement.
According to the report, "Valley growth has been slow and
stable over the past fifteen years. In recent years, housing
growth on tribally owned lands (primarily in Pojoaque
Pueblo) has been rising. Growth on privately owned lands is
declining." (Tribally owned lands occupy 88% of the 65,000
acres in the Pojoaque Valley.) Basin growth has been much
more stable and much less rapid than in the county at large.
Between 1990 and 2000, the population grew at an average
annual rate of 1.4%, less than a third of the rate of rural
Santa Fe County. "Natural" growth (births minus deaths)
accounts for this minimal growth, not in-migration, which is
"virtually non-existent." In contrast, housing growth on
tribal land within Pojoaque Pueblo has increased to an
average of 22 units per year during the period of 2000-2005
and is likely to continue through 2010.
The "Evaluation of Water Supply and Demand in the
Pojoaque River Basin", prepared by hydrologist James
Brinkman with support and review by retired Office of the
State Engineer chief hydrologist Francis West, also reveals
some useful information. Commissioned by the Pojoaque Basin
Water Alliance, the report addresses water rights data, the
existing estimates for surface and groundwater budgets
("budgets" is the word often used in these kinds of reports
to identify water resources), the uncertainty regarding that
information, and the validity of the groundwater modeling
used in the Aamodt settlement. The report finds that there
is significant data uncertainty regarding surface and
groundwater budgets. Two of the most uncertain components of
the groundwater budgets are the surface water-groundwater
exchange and the mountain snowmelt recharge. According to
the report, "These two components are most critical in an
understanding of the affects of groundwater pumping on the
aquifer storage and on the effects to surface water flows."
In the report summary, the author notes that the OSE Report
on Domestic Wells in New Mexico states, "It is important to
note that it is difficult, if not impossible to identify and
quantify domestic well depletions with the existing level
and accuracy of stream and monitoring well measurements in
New Mexico." The report also notes that county wells outside
the Pojoaque River Basin use nine times more water than all
the wells located within the basin. As it stands now,
consumptive use by non-Pueblo domestic wells accounts for .7
to 2.0 percent of the total water inflow into the basin.
This is interesting information in light of the fact that
one of the major components of the Aamodt settlement is the
goal of capping individual non-Pueblo wells and having those
households become part of the proposed water delivery
system. When the settlement proposal was first released,
there was a mandatory requirement that non-Pueblo well
owners cap their wells and hook up to the water system.
However, when the federal government balked at the estimated
cost of the delivery system, the settlement parties went
back to the negotiating table and decided that the
settlement would ask only for voluntary well capping and
system hook-ups.
What many opponents to the proposed settlement believe,
of course, is that the water delivery system is unnecessary
and that the county of Santa Fe should step out of its role
as water broker and facilitator of the Aamodt settlement.
They would like to see the court acknowledge Judge Mechem's
original ruling that the pueblos are entitled to 3,660 afy,
and that no water be imported to facilitate growth and
development.
Book Review: The Nuclear
Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New
Mexico By Joseph Masco
Reviewed by Kay Matthews
At one point in his book The Nuclear Borderlands
author Joseph Masco cites a list of seven groups of people
at risk from U.S. nuclear production: 1) Workers in uranium
mines and mills and weapons designers; 2) armed forces
personnel who participated in atmospheric testing; 3) people
living near nuclear weapons sites; 4) human experiment
subjects; 5) armed forces personnel who were exposed during
the handling and maintenance of weapons for the Department
of Defense; 6) residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and 7)
the world inhabitants for centuries to come.
This list, of course, includes just about everyone on
earth, but the focus of Masco's book is New Mexico, where
scientists built the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL). The book is a ground-breaking
ethographic study of how the Manhattan Project has affected
the social, environmental, and political lives of the
scientists who work at LANL and the Pueblo and Nuevomexicano
(Masco's terminology for Indo-Hispano) communities who deal
with its presence and legacy on a daily basis.
In his introduction Masco contextualizes the bomb as a
national fetish, the "one true sign of 'superpower' status
[for the United States] and the ultimate arbiter of
'national security.'" The nuclear economy required to build
the bomb has created new concepts of time and space and
produced cultural and environmental effects whose
consequences we will never even know. Because nuclear
weapons are designed "never to be used," they become a
"technoaesthetic whose primary importance in the global
order is one of appearance. In other words, while it is
important for other nation-states to believe the U.S.
nuclear arsenal is viable, it need not actually be so to
provide a military deterrent."
The "technoaesthetic" concept is revealed in the
relationship of the Los Alamos scientists who
"self-consciously devote their careers to engineering the
bomb so that it will never actually be used as a bomb."
Masco leads the reader through the different phases of the
nuclear industry at LANL and how that affects the
scientists: the development of the first atomic bomb dropped
to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; above-ground testing
(1945-1962); underground testing (1962-1992); and finally
Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS, 1992-2010). As
the bomb becomes increasingly abstract, it has become an
"increasingly aesthetic-intellectual project."
To the Pueblo communities that surround LANL, the bomb is
something quite different, but ironically, according to
Masco, "The arrival of the Manhattan Project on the Pajarito
Plateau . . . brought together multiple secret societies . .
.": U.S. military nuclear science top-secret projects and
"Pueblo nations [that] have used secrecy as a way of
mediating colonial experience since the seventeenth century
. . . ." So while the sovereign pueblos eventually created a
government to government relationship with LANL, their
silence regarding the Lab "cannot be dismissed as either
implicit support or lack of interest."
Masco's chapter dealing with the relationship of the
Nuevomexicano community with LANL is subtitled "A Nuclear
Maquiladora?" Just as Jake Kosek did in his chapter on LANL
in Understories (see La Jicarita News, January
2007), Masco explores the complex and often contradictory
relationship between the Lab and Nuevomexicanos as one that
posits the question, "Does LANL destroy the past by
contaminating the future, or does it enable new kinds of
futures by stabilizing the present?" For many Nuevomexicanos
LANL has destroyed the land and culture that sustained their
communities for hundreds of years. For others it has
provided jobs that have enabled people to stay on the land
and feed their families. But like the maquiladoras along the
U.S.-Mexico border that activist Devon Peña describes
as "postmodern factories", LANL produces a product that is
meant for a global, not local market. Not until the
mid-1990s, after employee lay-offs, did norteño
groups organize to challenge the hiring and promotion
practices by the Lab, just as they were fighting the U.S.
Forest Service and environmentalists over access to the
forests of northern New Mexico.
Masco goes on to explore the relationship of the Pueblo
and Nuevomexicano communities with the antinuclear
"environmental" activists in the succeeding chapter,
"Backtalking to the National Fetish, The Rise of Antinuclear
Activist in Santa Fe." Beginning in the early 1980s
activists came together to challenge the Waste Isolation
Pilot Project, a permanent nuclear waste facility near
Carlsbad, and by the mid-1990s were beginning to focus their
attention on the environmental and health effects of LANL
after the devastating accident at Chernobyl and the
revelations of environmental contamination at Rocky Flats
(Colorado) and Hanford (Washington).
According to Masco, however, "[U]nlike
Nuevomexicano and Pueblo activists, who maintain complex
investments in LANL requiring difficult (and at times
impossible) acts of translation between communities,
antinuclear NGOs [non-governmental organizations] in
Santa Fe are more resolute in their condemnation of the
laboratory." They were able to focus on the Lab as the
source of pollution and radioactive contamination, as the
origin of the bomb, and as the center of the post-Cold War
U.S. nuclear project. Scientists at LANL told Masco that
they regarded Santa Fe-based antinuclear groups "the single
greatest threat to the implementation of LANL's post-Cold
War nuclear mission."
As we've been highlighting the last few months in La
Jicarita News, that mission is quickly becoming much
more than the original Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship,
which is supposed to research, largely through computer
models, how aging effects on any single component of nuclear
weapons might alter safety and performance over decades of
storage. Now we're looking at the possibility of increased
production of plutonium pits for nuclear warheads and
consolidating U.S. nuclear projects at LANL.
Masco's book is an important read for all New
Mexicans-Pueblo, Indo-Hispano, antinuclear activists, and
all the rest of us whose lives are impacted by what he
refers to as the nuclear uncanny: the dislocation and
anxiety created by an industry that functions in secret,
blurs the line between what is real and what is imagined,
and profoundly changes the nature of our relationship to our
environment.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
• The "Elevator 6" will be going to trial in
Albuquerque on May 18. This is the group of peace activists
who staged a sit-in in the elevator of the federal building
in Santa Fe after Senator Pete Domenici's staff refused to
meet with them last September. They were attempting to get
the Senator's signature on the Declaration of Peace, which
called for an end to the war in Iraq and the return of
American soldiers. Domenici's staff refused to allow all
nine activists into the office, and the protesters ended up
sitting down in an elevator whose electricity had been
turned off and reading aloud the names of American soldiers
and Iraqi citizens who had been killed in the war. The group
was eventually cited for "failing to conform with signs and
directions" and scheduled for trial. Two of the nine
activists have accepted a plea bargain, and charges against
another, who is 15 years old, were dropped. The remaining
six, who include Father John Dear, other Catholic activists,
and individual activists, will have their day in court on
the 18th. La Jicarita News will continue to follow the
story.
• Both the proposal for the community cultural
center made by Helen LaKelly Hunt and the proposal for the
"El Genizaro" lodge made by Seledon and Alice Garcia that
were the subject of last month's article "Abiquiu
Divisiveness and Discord" were approved by the Rio Arriba
County Commission on April 26. La Jicarita News plans to
visit both sites and discuss development plans and their
potential effects with a cross-section of community members
in an upcoming issue.
LANL Compensation Petition Granted
The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health
approved a petition that could ease the way for hundreds of
sick workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and
their survivors to receive compensation and health care, but
rejected the majority of a similar petition from Rocky Flats
employees. Workers sick from radiation exposure are eligible
for compensation and medical coverage under the Energy
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act.
However, the act requires claimants to prove the link
between their illness and occupation following detailed
guidelines, which are difficult for ailing workers and their
survivors to meet. Groups of workers can petition the
advisory board to receive automatic compensation without
proving how much radiation they were exposed to or the cause
of their cancer. These workers are given Special Exposure
Cohort (SEC) status. The board granted SEC status to workers
at LANL who developed certain cancers after having been
employed for at least 250 days in certain technical areas
between March of 1943 and December of 1975. The SEC will aid
400 to 600 ailing workers from LANL in receiving up to
$150,000 in payments and medical coverage. Survivors are
also eligible for the payments.
La Jicarita News will interview a former LANL
employee who was denied compensation in an upcoming issue.
Hispanic Homesteaders on the
Pajarito Plateau: An Unconstitutional Taking of Property at
Los Alamos 1942-1945
Editor's Note: This article is an abridged version of a
comprehensive report written by historian Malcolm Ebright.
Introduction
In the summer of 1942, with the prospect that the war
against Germany and Japan would be long and drawn out, a
group of physicists under the direction of J. Robert
Oppenheimer began meeting to develop plans for designing and
building a nuclear weapon. It soon became clear that a
laboratory to house the scientists who would build the bomb
needed to be located at a remote site that would be
protected from populated areas. Oppenheimer, who was
familiar with the Los Alamos area from the pack trips he
took there from his summer home near Pecos, New Mexico, was
instrumental in picking the Los Alamos area where the Los
Alamos Ranch School was located.
The Los Alamos site was not the first to be considered by
the Corps of Engineers under the direction of Colonel Leslie
Groves, head of the Manhattan Engineer District, commonly
known as the Manhattan Project. He rejected a site near Los
Angeles on security grounds, and one near Reno was
considered unsuitable because of winter snows. In late
October, Groves assigned the task of choosing a site to
Major John Dudley of the Manhattan Project staff. Dudley
first picked a site near Oak City, Utah, but rejected it
when he realized "if we took over this area we would evict
several dozen families and we would also take a large amount
of farm acreage out of production." While the U.S.
government was able to avoid the eviction of farm families
in Utah, that is exactly what happened at Los Alamos with
the dispossession of Hispanic homesteaders on the Pajarito
Plateau without fair compensation for their land.
Acquisition of Los Alamos Site
The Army Corps of Engineers was unaware for the most part
of the existence of these homesteads and of the long history
of occupation of the Los Alamos area, first by Native
Americans and then by Hispanics. Prehistoric Indian ruins
dot the Pajarito Plateau surrounding the land taken by the
U.S. government for the Manhattan Project. In addition, the
Los Alamos Ranch School was just north of a Spanish land
grant called the Ramón Vigil grant that dated from
1742. The Ramón Vigil grant was eventually purchased
by Ashley Pond, one of the owners of the Ranch School who
operated a dude ranch there until the water source dried up
in 1917. That same year Pond purchased land north of the
Vigil grant where the Los Alamos Ranch School was built and
operated continuously from 1917 until 1942.
The first homesteaders on Los Alamos Mesa were said to be
Antonio Sánchez in 1885 and Donaciano Gomez in 1899.
By the time the government decided to take over the Pajarito
Plateau, the area was covered with homesteads operated
mostly by Hispanic farmers/ranchers. These homesteaders were
paid only a fraction of what the Ranch School was paid for
its land. In fact, one of the reasons the Los Alamos site
was picked over the competing choices was "ease of
acquisition." Of the 54,000 acres to be acquired, only about
8,900 acres were in private hands, and aside from the Ranch
School, the Corps of Engineers considered this land to be
largely unoccupied grazing land that could be acquired at
little expense to the government.
Eviction of the Homesteaders
Once the federal government decided to acquire the Los
Alamos site, the procedures followed in evicting the
homesteaders were often appalling. Many of the homesteaders
were not notified that they were evicted from their land
until May of 1943. The case of Marcos Gomez, one of the
children of homesteader Donaciano Gomez, may have been
typical. The Gomez family was at the ranch when two men from
the Army Corps of Engineers drove up in a jeep. These men
carried rifles and approached the family members, one of
whom was in the fields planting. These government
representatives told the family they would have to gather
the possessions they could carry and leave by the next day.
The Gomez family had an extensive homestead operation with
three log cabins, a log storeroom, and perimeter fencing.
Six family members were living at the ranch where they
farmed about 40 acres of the 160 acre homestead raising
squash, beans, and alfalfa, among other crops. They also
kept about 40 cows and 300 goats, all of which were lost.
Marcos Gomez testified in 1998 as follows: "What I remember
is that they came and they decimated everything . . .
buildings, corrales, and homes. And from there they had us
under guard. . . . They took us to where the school is."
Other family members recalled that the buildings were
bulldozed away and the animals, like those of many of the
other homesteaders, were shot by M.P.s.
For the loss of their 160 acre homestead with all the
improvements, Donaciano Gomez was awarded $1,300. A check
for a little over $1,100 was mailed to Donaciano Gomez at a
fictitious address and there is no record that Gomez
received it. Donaciano Gomez was never personally notified
of the condemnation proceedings or given an opportunity to
contest the "appraisal" of his property. His experience was
typical of the other homesteaders and is in sharp contrast
to the procedure followed by the Corps of Engineers in
regard to the Ranch School. Most of the homesteaders lived
on their land at least part of the year, and some of them
lived on their ranches year round. When they lost their
property they lost their means of support from the land that
made them virtually self-sufficient. None of the
homesteaders were able to reestablish themselves in
comparable situations. Instead, many of them were forced to
accept low-paying jobs working at the Los Alamos lab.
Condemnation of Property: Declaration of
Taking
Condemnation proceedings were commenced on 15 December
1943 (condemnation is the government authorized seizure of
private property for public use with constitutionally
mandated payment of compensation). Most homesteaders were
not personally served with notice of the condemnation
proceedings, but instead were mailed a notice (if their
address was known) telling them that the War Department was
taking immediate possession of their property.
Theoretically, the homesteaders then had the opportunity to
negotiate the fair market value of their property with
government representatives, as did the Ranch School. But, in
fact, no such negotiations were carried on with the
homesteaders' property in the condemnation proceedings.
Instead, a Declaration of Taking was filed in lieu of the
condemnation, an amount was deposited in court equal to the
estimated value of the homesteaders' property, and title to
that property immediately passed to the government. Now the
only remaining question was the value of the homesteaders'
property. But since the homesteaders, in most cases, were
not represented by counsel, and did not even have notice of
the proceedings, they were at a distinct disadvantage. And
since title to their property and the right of possession
had already passed to the government, they would have had
very little bargaining leverage if they had known about the
appraisal proceedings.
Each tract was described by township, range, section
number, and the portion of the section involved. The name
and address of the owner was included and a figure described
as "estimated compensation" was provided. Often the address
of the owner was listed as "address unknown," and in most
cases the estimated compensation was quite low in comparison
to the amount eventually awarded, and was a tiny fraction of
what has been determined to be the actual value of the
property. For instance, Enrique Montoya, the owner of a
tract containing 62.5 acres with a fair value of $17,500,
was offered as estimated compensation the total sum of $425.
He was finally awarded $1,250, though he did not enter an
appearance in the proceedings. Montoya's address was listed
as "address unknown", and he and his wife were given notice
only through publication in a local newspaper. Mr. and Mrs.
Montoya and their family lived on the land year round and
had cleared, planted, and fenced substantial portions of the
land. When the Montoya family was evicted from their
homestead ranch, they were told by A. J. Connell of the
Ranch School that they should accept the amount offered by
the government: $425.
In contrast, the government negotiated an award of
$335,000 plus interest with the Ranch School officials.
These officials submitted financial records to the
government and the government made an unusually detailed
listing and appraisal of the personal property that would be
acquired. By comparison, the total amount of appraised value
for all buildings and improvements of the twenty-three
homesteaders was about $4,900. The appraisals for the
homesteaders' property were about 1/20th of the land values
the government had agreed to for the Ranch School, and the
homesteaders were not given the opportunity to challenge
these values.
According to one expert on the Manhattan Project's land
acquisition, "the small landowners held more than two-thirds
of the privately owned land . . . but they received less
than an eighth of the money." Peter Bacon Hales goes on to
explain why the Hispanic homesteaders were treated
differently than the owners of the Ranch School. "[The
homesteaders] were not people the District took
seriously . . . whatever objections these representatives of
ancient land claims might have had to the loss of their
claims on the mesa, they were inconsequential to the
District and the Real Estate Branch. . . . The Anchor Ranch
and the Ranch school . . . were judiciously rewarded for
giving up their claims. But those who held the oldest title
to the region, those whose families had resided on land
grants [and patented homesteads] for centuries, were
the easiest to uproot. . . . In gathering up the land,
timber rights, and the grazing rights of the 'small
landowners,' District officials reported 'no special
problems were encountered!'"
Conclusion
The Hispanic homesteaders on the Pajarito Plateau were
deprived of their property without due process of law and
without receiving adequate compensation. Many of the
homesteaders received no compensation at all. The estimated
value of the homesteader's land was $642,272 at the time of
the taking, and $6,679,633 in today's dollars. This figure
does not include compensation for the violation of the
property owner's constitutional rights under the Fifth
Amendment, including compensation for the manner in which
they were evicted.
The treatment of these Hispanic property owners is a
shameful chapter in U.S. history. The facts of their
eviction and the government's active misrepresentation of
the valuation process and willful failure to notify the
homesteaders of the condemnation proceedings reveal a
flagrant disregard for the homesteader's rights. This period
of U.S. history contained an even more egregious example of
constitutional rights abridged in the Japanese-American
internment camps. Both actions were considered justified by
the government as a wartime necessity. In 1988 Congress
finally provided compensation for the survivors and heirs of
those Japanese-Americans.
Several of the homesteaders died soon after they were
evicted. None of them were able to continue their lives as
they had in the past, and in each case a way of life was
wiped out. The homesteaders and their heirs can never fully
be compensated for their loss.
Post script: Some of the homesteaders on the Pajarito
Plateau recently received a belated settlement of their
longstanding claims. La Jicarita News will provide
the details of the settlement in an upcoming issue.
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