La lucha por la Sierra | Machismo, patriarchy, and the common

Moderator’s Note: Today’s blog post is adapted from a research paper prepared by Rocio
Evelin Carranza Jacinto, a pre-med student that participated in the Second
Annual Acequia Agroecology and Permaculture Institute, which just completed a
month-long field school hosted by The Acequia Institute in Colorado and offered
through the University of Washington for Natural World (NW) and I&S (Ideas
and Society) credit.

Rocio’s carefully documented research
paper is based on original interviews with two women active in the struggles
for land, water, and indigenous culture. While Rocio does not explicitly
present this as a critical eco-feminist interpretation of women and property
rights, the paper nonetheless links ecological concerns and gender dynamics in
in the context of the acequia land grant communities of south central Colorado’s
San Luis Valley. One fascinating aspect of Rocio’s argument is that
assimilation actually represents a transition from machismo as a set of gender
role expectations and ethics to the systematic patriarchal exclusion of women
from the ownership or management of property rights.

Las mujeres del Valle de San Luis challenge machismo

INDIGENOUS
IDENTITY IS ONE KEY TO RESISTANCE

Rocio
Evelin Carranza Jacinto | Seattle, WA | August 6, 2014

Among poor people, there’s not any
question about women being strong – even stronger than men – they work in the
fields right along with the men. When your survival is at stake, you don’t have
these questions about yourself like middle-class women do.

Dolores Huerta

Every so often white feminist
scholars criticize ‘Latino’ culture and men for machismo, but have they stopped to think about the privileged
patriarchy that is practiced by the dominant society and is imposed through the
everyday norms of Anglo-conformity? It is undeniable that machismo is a quality associated with patriarchy, but patriarchy is
itself a more complicated social system
based on formal and oft-times legal male domination. In the conquest of the
Americas, the patriarchal order was designed as the part of the contact
strategy between European colonizers and Mexican peoples. The displacement and
disempowerment of indigenous women was a central part of the process of colonization.
Chicana/o studies scholars view machismo
through a more varied lens and this has allowed for revelation of a history that
is more inclusive than the Anglo normative system of patriarchy.

The acequia land grant communities
of the San Luis Valley, located in south central Colorado bordering New Mexico,
provide a striking contrast to the common misconception of machismo as something worse than Anglo patriarchy.  This essay presents a decolonial history of the
San Luis Valley acequia communities seen through the perspectives, knowledge,
and experiences of two strong land- and place-based Chicanas: Shirley M. Romero
and Teresa Vigil. Through their eyes, we can discern the differences between machismo
and patriarchy.

Shirley and Teresa have deep multigenerational
family roots in the San Luis Valley and they have long fought machismo but agree that the problem of machismo does not translate to simple patriarchy.
Their leadership roles in the community and their relationship to the Acequia
Institute reveal different views about machismo
including the numerous drawbacks and injuries women face within the acequia
and land grant (merced) systems.  These two women leaders believe machismo could be more effectively
addressed if the acequia and merced institutions were to become more inclusive
of women. 

Main Street, San Luis, CO. Photos by Rocio E. Carranza Jacinto unless other wise noted.

In order to address the machismo and patriarchy in the region,
it is important to take into account the historical discrimination and
displacement of the indigenous people of the San Luis Valley. Prior to the
western expansion of the U.S. and the Spanish settling in San Luis Valley, the
land was occupied by the Ute people. In 1895, the Ute were displaced by a
menagerie of settlers emigrating north from Mexico through New Mexico. The Ute
were moved to a reservation in western Colorado (“History of the San Luis
Valley”).

Throughout the years the Chicana/o
and indigenous settlers who today inhabit the southernmost part of the San Luis
Valley have been able to find resilience in a sustainable way of life that has
been tied to flexible gender roles practiced within the community. Indeed, one
thing we notice about this history is how easily women have taken over roles
once defined as male.

In the San Luis Valley machismo did not always hold all
negative connotations and instead was seen as the transition of a young man to
adult status as a man, which implied responsibility for the protection and care
of the household. In a distinct manner to Anglo patriarchy, machismo holds the ideals of honor, courage,
and the respect for others as intrinsic to the ability for a man to provide
sustenance for his family. One way to think of this is to make a distinction
between differentiation of roles and stratification of roles. Machismo
differentiates roles but does not intrinsically value male over female roles.
Of course, the question of transgendered and other alternative identities is
erased and suppressed.

The patriarchal qualities of machismo became more amplified in the
San Luis Valley with the western expansion of the U.S. and the institutional
discrimination of the Catholic Church. According to this decolonial view, the
denial of one’s indigenous identity is a form of assimilation and accepting the
colonization of their people.  In the
past, many indigenous cultures in the Americas were matriarchal (or gynarchic,
woman-centered) until the conquest of indigenous communities through religion
and the ideals of patriarchy came into the picture.

Mural at Emma's Hacienda.

The San
Luis Valley Chicana/o community has a strong connection to Catholicism and therefore
many of the Europeanized ideals of patriarchy are embraced and followed by some
members of the community.  However, there
is also the spirituality to place-attachment and this is important because it rejects
the colonialist hierarchies.

In 1876,
after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, another form of
colonization took hold in the San Luis Valley: Manifest Destiny. Machismo became recoded as part of this
dominant form of patriarchy as Anglo American culture imposed its ideals unto
the indigenous populations of the Western U.S., including the San Luis Valley. However,
despite the waves of colonization, the community has articulated resistance to assimilation
and patriarchy through a strong and visceral connection with Mother Earth. 

The
acequia system is the most important indigenous Chicana/o institution for local
self-government involving a sophisticated irrigation system based on the
sharing of water usage. The acequia madre
is the Mother Ditch and is the main course where the water runs based on
gravity flows. All the water is runoff from the winter and spring snowpack that
collects in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

This acequia
irrigation system is set up to be as equitable
as possible for all propietarios or parciantes, the farmers with common use
rights to irrigate with water from the community ditch. When the Chicana/o
families that settled La Plaza de San Luis de la Culebra (St. Louis of the
Water Snake), the list of the parciantes of 1852 included eight women who “had
full voting rights on the ditch association and were eligible to serve as
commissioners,” (Devon G. Peña, “Women of the Rio Arriba Acequias”).

The fact
that the San Luis acequias had eight women listed as landowners in 1852 with authority
to participate in acequia affairs and governance contradicts the assumption that
the men in the region wee the beneficiaries of some unchallenged and pervasive
system of patriarchal authority. We are justified to challenge our white
feminist sisters with the fact that at this this time (1852) patriarchy was well-entrenched
in western culture because women could not own or sell property, could not
engage in management or administrative authority, were denied the ability to
serve on juries, and could not be independent parties in legal court cases.

Historical marker for San Luis Peoples Ditch.

But the
independent Chicanas of the San Luis Valley were in involved in all these activities
and exercised various forms of political and legal agency. The
Colorado Historical Society marker for the San Luis Peoples Ditch is living
proof that these women took part in the management of the acequia system. Machismo was present in the community, but this does not imply the existence of a
systematic order in which women are not respected or trusted with chores other
than those associated with the reproductive labor of the household.

After Colorado entered statehood,
the Chicana/o people of the San Luis Valley began to be displaced by Anglo
settlers. By 1960, the common land of the Chicana/o community had been fenced
and enclosed by the Taylor family of North Carolina. “La Sierra” as locals name
it is the Culebra Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. La Sierra is an
80,000-acre common land that was historically used for hunting, fishing,
grazing, logging, harvesting of herbs, and as a place of healing and renewal.
In 1960, it was enclosed and the San Luis community was evicted by force and
with brutal beatings and other acts of violence against the land grant heirs.

Jack Taylor had bought the land for
$493,000 in 1960, which was roughly $6.40 an acre, and the sale benefited from
a long history of less than ethical legal maneuvering before judges willing to
violate the local peoples’ constitutional rights of due process and equal
protection (“History of the San Luis Valley”).  The lands of La Sierra were closed from
1964-2006 and this caused great disruption as the local people began to suffer
economic, social, emotional, and physical harms. 

Mt. Blanca. Sisnaajini.

The economic consequences did not
compare to the psychological damages that are difficult to erase from people’s
souls. As Shirley M. Romero explains:

People had
lost hope. People had become complacent. People had to leave out of necessity.
It affected them socially, it affected them financially, and it affected them
more than anything physiologically. Many of the families around the Valley have
gone through some kind of substance abuse…

Owning property for a male rancher
allowed for the flourishing of pride as men qualified as “land rich” and
therefore able to provide sustenance to the family through farming and
ranching.  With the enclosure of the
common land came the displacement of men from their own property and many
ranchers found refuge in substance abuse. This clearly illustrates how the
disruption of traditional machismo actually leads to patriarchal violence
including domestic violence and substance abuse.

Shirley Romero Otero (l). Author (r)

One woman that could not tolerate these injustices in her
community any longer was Shirley M. Romero. Shirley M. Romero was born in 1955
in San Pedro and moved in 1971 to a house in San Luis because it was closer to
her mother’s work. Shirley’s family was one of the original 13 families that
moved to the Valley in the 1850s, which makes her the fifth generation living
in the Sangre de Cristo land grant valley.

At the
time Shirley was too young to internalize the abuse her community was facing
because she was never taught her history as a Chicana woman. This Chicana
decided to take a stance with her community and fight for the Sangre de Cristo
Land grant that was undeservingly taken away.

During the
school year Shirley attended Adams State University and throughout the summers
Shirley would return to San Luis where she started the Land Rights Council (LRC).
The purpose of LRC was to rightfully get back what was unfairly taken from the
San Luis Community, their connection to the land. Shirley Romero had to start
by organizing among the community and at first the majority of supporters were
elders because the displacement of families caused a whole generation to be
lost after the mountain was fenced-off:

Between 1962-1970, we lost a whole generation that was off of the
mountain. They didn’t know their history; they didn’t understand their rights
as heirs; so the old people were removed and the young people were even more
removed. The youth couldn’t go up there and were complacent, thinking that
Taylor bought it; it’s his, which was the general attitude.

Finally
after more than a decade of organizing, the community, alongside the LRC
grassroots organization, led the campaign to restore historic use rights to the
common and in 1981 the heirs filed suit in what became known as the land rights
court case of Rael v. Taylor. Shirley
and the community did not see results until June 24, 2002 in the Colorado
Supreme Court where the heirs were restored some of the plaintiffs historic use
rights (Devon G. Peña, Mexican Americans and the
Environment: Tierra y Vida).

Throughout
this process Shirley was a well-respected and trusted community member within
the San Luis Valley, but that does not mean she was not faced with obstacles
especially ones that involved machismo.
Women in the San Luis Valley struggled to find their place in the land grant
movement with the patriarchy surrounding them, “Women would come to the
meetings with the men and I knew the women, so I knew they had something to
contribute and weren’t ignorant by no means,” (Shirley M. Romero). Women were
afraid to speak up because they thought their ideas would not be validated as
intelligent and some even feared that if they embarrassed their husband their
partner would physically abuse them.

Even then
the women resisted patriarchy by being able to place themselves in the same
space the men were occupying, something that is not tolerated in a true patriarchy.
Women’s presence in these spaces allowed for a progressive beginning to address machismo in the community.

Machsimo in the San Luis Valley needs to be
addressed through the inclusion of women in these political spaces of everyday
civil society. If women become more politicized, the social movement has a
stronger prospect for protecting the land. Empowering women is the first step:  “We need to start empowering women, the same
type of organizing we did back with the land rights council needs to be done
around women’s issues.” (Shirley M. Romero)

Teresa Vigil, ethnobotanist and elder mentor.

Another Chicana that fights against racist and patriarchal
injustices is Teresa Vigil, but her form of resistance is through the ancient
science and art of natural healing. Teresa’s family has lived in the San Luis
Valley for six generations and she remembers the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
before the logging: “These were my happy days. And what I loved about being
here was the natural way of things. We ate off the land.”

During her
youth, the ties to the land promoted a healthy diet and a holistic approach to
wellbeing because the pride tied to place attachment was so deeply rooted in the
San Luis area watershed and mountain common. This lifestyle was destroyed for
many families in the Valley after they were denied entrance to the mountain.

Teresa
worked as a traditional licensed vocational nurse in California for almost 40
years, but every summer she returned to her beloved Valley. Through Teresa’s summers
in the San Luis Valley, she became interested in alternative medicine and
slowly came to find her resistance to colonialism through the art of healing.

The
respect that Teresa shows for nature is an indigenous form of wisdom that rejects
assimilation. This held true even during those difficult years when the
mountain was not accessible to her. The place attachment of Teresa to the
Sangre de Cristo Mountains and nature was strong enough to with stand the enclosure
and forced separation from it: “I don’t like having a key because when I came
during the summers my dad would drive there without restrictions” (Teresa
Vigil).

Teresa knows
this mountain range as a place of peace, resistance, and healing from traumas. These
psychological traumas are the scars that have stopped the Chicana/o people of
the San Luis Valley from being inclusive of women across all spheres of power: “Machismo still exists quite a bit. Some
women have to be very guarded what they say and what they do. Sometimes they
aren’t allowed to speak out about issues in the community,”

Denying
this type of patriarchal power in the community can only guarantee a better
chance in returning the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to their original state as a
wild and beloved common land. Teresa has become a healing intermediate between
the land and the San Luis community through her memories before the enclosure
and her constant dedication to the care and protection of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains. 

The enclosure
of La Sierra has left many scars on the land and people of the San Luis Valley
that can be tied back to the beginning of colonization. One of those scars is
patriarchy; the transformation of machismo
to the service of systematic patriarchy took years of oppression from
institutions such as the Catholic Church and the displacement of people from
the mountain. Yet Teresa herself is the first to reclaim the rightful place of
women within that Church, which she serves as a veritable deacon.

Women such
as Shirley M. Romero and Teresa Vigil have lived through and experienced all
these dramatic changes in the culture of machismo.
Through these women’s accounts, the larger society can learn about the
differences between machismo and
patriarchy, but also how under different levels of assimilationist pressure and
structural violence, machismo can quickly
be transform into a servant of patriarchy.

Shirley M.
Romero and Teresa Vigil are inspiring examples of women empowering women who
found resilience in their own indigenous cultural passions in order to combat
patriarchy. Through Shirley’s involvement in the community and Teresa’s natural
healing, the local youth are given an option, the possibility of learning to
refuse patriarchy by reclaiming their indigenous identity and principles of
equality and mutual respect.

According
to these two remarkable women the only path to heal from colonization and
patriarchy is to empower the youth by engraving the value of place-attachment.
For this to happen in the San Luis Valley, the community must mobilize itself
around outreach to women and youth in order for them to be more directly involved
in planning and decision-making processes.

Involving
women in the governance of local acequia institutions is an important first
step toward restoring the original sense of equity for all people in the San
Luis Valley. Even with the dire consequences of displacement of people from La
Sierra common lands, the San Luis Valley’s indigenous culture of machismo has been shown to differ markedly
from patriarchy. The San Luis community continues the path toward self-empowerment
by reclaiming an indigenous attachment to place, a loving relationship to each
other through the care and protection of the mountain. The way to healing those
scars since, “When you take a man from his land, you take his spirit.” (Elena
Avila, Woman Who Glows in the Dark).

WORKS CITED

“History of the San Luis Valley.” History of the San
Luis Valley. Lifetime Legacies Productions and
San Luis Valley Museum Association, 2011. Web. 22 July 2014. .

“San Luis Valley &
Colorado History.” Let’s Talk Heritage: San Luis Valley. San Luis Valley  Heritage, 2010. Web. 22 July 2014.
.

Counihan, Carole. A Tortilla Is like Life: Food and
Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Austin, TX: U of Texas, 2009.
Print.

Peña, Devon G. Mexican Americans and the
Environment: Tierra Y Vida. Tucson: U of          Arizona,
2005. 82-83. Print.

Peña, Devon G. “Environmental and Food Justice: Challenges
of Acequia Farming. “Women of the Rio Arriba Acequias.” N.p., 14 May
2012. Web. 22 July 2014. .

“Shirley M. Romero’s Memories in the San Luis Valley.” Interview
by Rocio E. Carranza. San Luis, Colorado, 9 July 2014. Interview.

“Teresa Vigil’s Memories in the San Luis Valley.” Interview by
Rocio E. Carranza. San Luis, Colorado, 18 July 2014. Interview.

“Delmer Villapando’s Memories in the San Luis Valley.” Interview
by Rocio E. Carranza. San Luis, Colorado, 7 July 2014. Interview.

Avila, Elena, and Joy
Parker. Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and
Spiritual Health. New York: J.P.          Tarcher/Putnam,
1999. Print