Arturo Sandoval

Arturo Sandoval. Photo by Kim Jew Photography.

I was born and raised in northern New Mexico’s Española Valley. It is my Tierra Sagrada (Spanish for “sacred earth”). I did not realize it then, but looking back over five decades, I realize now that I was raised as much by “place” as I was by family and by community.

My family did not own a TV until I was about 10, and because I was one of 11 children, we did not have many extras in my home. Our toys were “palitos de leña” (pieces of wood) that we turned into horses that we “rode” in races across the plain. In winter, we built our own sleds out of wood, and covered the runners with thin strips of tin before propelling ourselves down the nearby hills. More than anything else, we used our imaginations and the place in which we lived to entertain and educate ourselves.

My home was located a few hundred yards from the boundary with Santa Clara Pueblo. The greatest thing about the neighboring pueblo land was that it was open and undeveloped. I had a playground so big that it would have taken me eight to ten hours to cross to the other side. This playground was filled with piñon and cedar, crisscrossed with arroyos, singing with breezes that dried the sweat from my brow as I played with my brothers and my friends over the hills and in the arroyos.

Every day I saw coyotes, rattlesnakes, owls, rabbits, lizards, bluebirds, sparrows, and worms. I saw and heard birds I never knew the names of, but whose songs I still hear echoing in my dreams at night. I learned to swim in the Rio Grande, where we built our own crude diving board above a quiet pool along the great river. There, we kept from drowning by dog-paddling our way furiously from one end of the pool to the other. We played Tarzan in the Bosque (the cottonwood forest near the Rio Grande), where it was cool and dark throughout the hot summer days.

I was raised by my parents, by my older siblings, by my tios y tias, by my teachers, by my neighbors. But I was raised as well by my “place”—my Tierra Sagrada. I was hugged each night by the huge red-faced sun setting over my playground—and wondered why he tired before I did. I was greeted each morning by the cu-cu-ru-cu-coo from the gallinero. Western breezes tickled me. Birds talked to me. Trees danced with me. Magicians prowled through my neighborhood at night, disguised as snakes and owls. “Place” dirtied my clothes, wrung sweat out of my boy’s body, made me late for supper, waited up all night for me, and made me whole.

We know that the first New Mexicans honored “place” in everything they did. Every bird, every stone, every arroyo, every mesa, every tree had a soul. For them, “Place” is not only about food and shelter. It is even more about soul and spirit. Our challenge now is to create a communal vision of what our sacred place should be: a vibrant, living organism that we sustain so that, in turn, we can be sustained.

Our challenge is to find the energy and spirit to fight against a vision of our homeland that seeks short-term gain over long-term viability. Our expectation is that we will reach out across those seemingly high barriers we may think divide us: cowboy against conservationist; white against brown; rural against urban—and find that common vision of a sacred place.

As the number of Latinos in New Mexico pushes past 750,000, or about 40 percent of the population, political candidates are scrambling to figure out how to win our votes. Advertisers want to know what makes us tick. The simple answer is: There is no simple answer. We are 750,000 different people. But I believe the vast majority of us do have strong feelings about the land. New Mexico is our homeland, whether our families have been here 10,000 years, 400 years, or arrived in a U-Haul last month by way of New Jersey. By birth or by choice, we have made New Mexico our homeland. We want our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren to have the same opportunity we have had to be embraced and nurtured by this special place.

Arturo Sandoval, who was the western regional coordinator for the original Earth Day in 1970, works with the Coalition for New Mexico Wilderness to foster collaboration between local Indo-Hispano communities and wilderness advocates. He owns VOCES, Inc. a communications and public relations firm in Albuquerque.