| Title | : | Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0806138335 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780806138336 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 258 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1980 |
In New Mexico—once a Spanish colony, then part of Mexico—Pueblo Indians and descendants of Spanish- and Mexican-era settlers still think of themselves as distinct peoples, each with a dynamic history. At the core of these persistent cultural identities is each group’s historical relationship to the others and to the land, a connection that changed dramatically when the United States wrested control of the region from Mexico in 1848.
In Roots of Resistance—now offered in an updated paperback edition—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz provides a history of land ownership in northern New Mexico from 1680 to the present. She shows how indigenous and Mexican farming communities adapted and preserved their fundamental democratic social and economic institutions, despite losing control of their land to capitalist entrepreneurs and becoming part of a low-wage labor force.
In a new final chapter, Dunbar-Ortiz applies the lessons of this history to recent conflicts in New Mexico over ownership and use of land and control of minerals, timber, and water.
Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico Reviews
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Requested this book after reading Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Exceptional companion which focuses on the land tenure of the Pueblo Indians pre-Columbian through the present-day. Understanding the communal nature of land use and ownership and how the United States used a capitalist system of land tenure to destroy communities, which is enlightening.
This is a book I recommend not only for students of history of the Americas, but also should be required reading for anyone who studies community health, land use planning, and/or environmental sciences.
One of the most relevant books on the power and strength of community land grants today. -
I am very impressed at how much weight is given to every aspect of the historical period. Other books I have read about the Southwest put more weight on the more recent events: the pre-Spanish period is glossed over in a few pages, the Spanish/Mexican period gets a few more pages, and the bulk of the book explores the US period entirely from a Euro-American perspective. In contrast, the author, a Taos native, actually provides a detailed yet engaging history of land use and land tenure, with fully half of the book devoted to the pre-US period. She provides enough context and background to properly appreciate older systems of land tenure and to appreciate the struggles of the modern-day claimants as they fight for their ancient rights.
In addition, the author does not just boil this down to Pueblos and Euro-Americans, but instead examines the evolving relationships with a variety of peoples and complex interactions with the rest of the world. Even in the first chapter, she links pre-Colonial New Mexicans to regular trade, religious, and linguistic interactions from Mesoamericans in Central Mexico to groups living by the Great Lakes of the US and Canada. She talks about the relationship between the Pueblos and the Navajos/Apaches to the West and the bison-hunting nomads of the East during the colonial period and how that relationship changed over time. The author connected land investment in New Mexico to broader global trends such as agriculture in England and the development of refrigeration, and in the last chapter explored how Pueblo activism interacts in positive (and at times negative ways) with other Indian movements, the Chicano movement, Aztlán, and the Catholic Church.
Finally, throughout the book the author breaks down the economic and ideological foundations of colonialism in New Mexico and in conquered US territories in general. With key quotes from Karl Marx, she explored how market expansion, systems of value, and capitalism developed in the 19th century West and displaced or otherwise interacted with other economic systems.
I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Native issues, the Southwest, or anything to do with colonialist, imperialist, or capitalist ideologies and mechanisms. -
Pros: I learned a lot about New Mexico’s history and colonization, there was a lot of interesting info on pre-colonization (which can be hard to find), and I could tell a lot of work went into this book
Cons: I was not the right audience (much more academic than I can read), and the flow of the work was quite detailed oriented which made reading it confusing to follow
Proud that I got through it!
