Lawrence E. Sanchez,
President, Town of Tomé Land Grant
Adelino, New Mexico
“Trespassers on Our Own Land is an oral history of the Juan P. Valdez family and a snapshot of the maltreatment forced upon our Pueblo Indian, Spanish and Mexican people by the United States government. In Trespassers, Mike Scarborough has presented a comprehensive history of the adversarial relationship our ancestors had with the United States government between the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and 1912. Trespasser’s brought back memories of my childhood in Coyote and Capulín and a renewed understanding of the difficulties my ancestors endured while struggling to survive on the San Joaquín del Río de Chama land grant. I recommend this book as a must read for anyone interested in an in-depth and comprehensive oral history and study of New Mexico’s land grants.”
Leonard Martínez, President,
San Joaquín del Río de Chama
Land Grant Association
Cañon de Chama, New Mexico
“Trespassers . . . is compelling and authentic; occasionally, it is hilarious; sometimes it is poignant. . . . It is fitting that a book that brings this man’s experiences to life is set in the broader context of the history of land grantsmercedes. These mercedes mattered so much to Juan Valdez that he risked his life to bring attention to the enormous injustice [the grantees and their heirs] had suffered at the hands of the U.S. government. In these pages we begin to understand why.”
From the Foreword by Prof. LM García y Griego
History and Chicano Studies,
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque
A people’s history of loss cries out for redemption
by Armando Rendón
Book Review of Trespassers on Our Own Land, by Juan P. Valdez and Mike Scarborough.
The Treat y of Guadalupe Hidalgo—signed this day 164 years ago—first came to my at tention in connection with the news in June 1967 that a group of armed men had stormed the Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico: a police officer had been shot, hostages taken, a general furor had been sparked. Reies Lopez Tijerina had been named as the leader and instigat or of the takeover of the building: it was from him that I first heard reference to the Treat y and its singular position as the most important document in the history of Americans of Mexican origin.
In my book, Chicano Manifesto, which was published in 1971, I blithely repeat ed the assertions that Tijerina had made in speeches, some writings, and in one-on-one charlas we had when we met in New Mexico in the lat e 1960s. Not having a legal background, and largely reporting on the various key protagonists of the Chicano Movement, I simply reaffirmed the notion that the Treat y was primarily an agreement that had been forced upon Mexico as the result of an unjust war instigat ed by the U.S. government but which mostly contained protections of Mexicans holding property, read “land grants”, in the conquered provinces.
It took me another 10 years or so to come to a different, although I believe complementary, conclusion. During that period, I had to earn a law degree to enable me to understand the Treat y and finally, spend considerable time doing my own research.
Trespassers on Our Own Land, couched as an oral history, with Juan P. Valdez, the descendent of the land grant of that name—land on which he was born and has lived his entire life—as the subject of what apparently is a class assignment assigned to one of his grandchildren by a well-informed college professor.
What Tijerina could not impart—he was neither a New Mexican nor a land grantee—and I could only recommend in legalistic terms, Scarborough encompasses in a work which provokes anger and dismay at one moment only to resolve into poignancy and humorous goodwill in the next.