Trafford Publishing: You Can't Push a Rope

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You Can't Push a Rope

by Clint Trafton

309 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0002; ISBN 1-55212-338-3; US$29.50, C$33.50, EUR24.00, £17.00

This book is about New Mexicans caught up in the land grant struggle that began following the Mexican-American war and which continues to blister to the surface even today. You Can't Push A Rope focuses on the especially turbulent 1960s when activist Reies Tijerina became the internationally known leader of the Hispanic civil rights movement in America.

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About the Book

Joaquin Peralta is fighting to get the family land back. Twenty-thousand acres in New Mexico, stolen by gringo politicians, ranchers, speculators, and the United States Government. Hiring lawyers, going to meetings, burning barns, cutting fences, whatever might work. In 1965, Joaquin marries Bonita, a beautiful Hispanic widow and adopts her half-Anglo teenage son, Chava. It soon becomes apparent that Chava isn't chicano enough to suit Joaquin. He isn't tough enough, doesn't fit in with the Peraltas, doesn't get fired up over the land-grant fight. He can't even speak Spanish.
In June of 1967, Joaquin takes part in a historic courthouse "raid" and shootout in a small northern New Mexico town. Reies Tijerina, leader of the raiders, is vaulted into national prominence in the Hispanic civil rights movement, even though Tijerina, Joaquin, and several other raiders are arrested and imprisoned. Bonita then must take work as a domestic to make ends meet and Chava blames Joaquin. Who needs this fight over ancient land grants anyway?
Conflict between the two men escalates when Chava falls in love and marries Ellie Carter, whose family has innocently settled on contested land-grant soil and is being drawn into the fight. Ironically, Chava's new life as a member of the Carter family leads him to better understand the love of land, culture, and family that drives Joaquin to seek justice, however long delayed. When Chava stops an attempted rape of Bonita by racist Anglos bent on revenge against the Peraltas, he finally gains Joaquin's respect and hope of reconciliation.

Review

By Roy Durfee. From Santa Fe's The New Mexican, Sunday, April 22, 2001 page F-2.
Fiction uses the facts of the land-grant struggle
    Perhaps it says something about the publishing industry that Clint Trafton's first novel was published in Canada late last year after winning a Frank Waters Southwestern Writers Contest in 1997. Certainly it says something about Trafton's persistence, and that persistence has rewarded us as well as him.
    You Can't Push A Rope concerns itself with the events surrounding Reies Tijerina and the Alianza Federal de Mercedes in the late 1960s, when New Mexico's land grant struggles boiled over into civil disobedience and an armed entry by Alianza members into the Rio Arriba County courthouse, followed by Gov. Dave Cargo's activation of the New Mexico National Guard. With that one dramatic media-grabbing episode, Tijerina emerged as a leader within the national civil rights movement and assured himself a place in history.
    Trafton's concern here, however, is not the celebrity of the leaders of Alianza, but rather the lives of those caught up within the movement and those threatened by it. Calling his book "a work of faction," or fition based on facts, Trafton has studied the historical record, conducted his own interviews of participants, and created an interesting amalgam of didacticism and coming of age fiction.
    Most of the public events presented ring true to my recollection of the era, but the emotional center of the book is found in teenager Chava Traxler's struggle to understand his father's commitment to the cause, and the immediate impact of that commitment upon his own youthful existence. In typical fictive fashion, Chava's situation is complicated by his attraction to a young schoolmate whose parents live and farm on land claimed by the land grant activists for whom his stepfather is a highly visible and charismatic spokesperson.
    The book recreates the courthouse assault along with a historic protest march from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and an armed occupation of land in Northern New Mexico. It focuses most closely, however, on events in Corrales, which the author indicates to be fictional.
    It is there that Chava shares the rural farming life with land-grant heirs and relative newcomers alike and finds himself attempting to understand the implications of true believerism for those who are implicated accidentally in a century-long struggle for which they have no spirit except the instinct for survival.
    Do two wrongs make a right? Does history repeat itself? Can the clock be turned back to redress the inequities of another century? Can a teenager find love and happiness in good conscience amidst the political and cultural turmoil of the late 1960s?
    These are all questions tackled by author Trafton, who lives in Jemez Springs and, clearly, some of his questions are more profound than others. In an effectively evenhanded way, Trafton strives to dramatize those questions along with the answers he finds within his story. He takes the trouble to begin his tale in 1942, offering an accounting of how Chava's stepfather, Joaquin, became a true believer, and he provides adequate discourse among the activist principals to underwrite their indignation and call to direct them.
    Simultaneously, however, he presents the irony of circumstances that lead those who were robbed to rob from others, posing the notion that those who live and work on the land are the land's stewards, for better or for worse. While rapacious developers, glamorous media people and duplicitous, self-serving politicians don't do well here, ordinary people living and working in good faith are ultimately held in high esteem. The author's "answer" to the land-grant question in New Mexico is contained in the book's title.
reviewer Roy Durfee is a writer residing in Albuquerque
Read the news release for this title.

About the Author

Education:
Public schools of Albuquerque NM. Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Master of Science in Experimental Psychology at the University of New Mexico. PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Illinois.

Experience:
Printer at the Albuquerque Journal, Associate Engineer at Boeing Airplane Co., Assistant Professor at Pomona College, Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, maker of fine furniture, straw bale home builder.

Accomplishments:
Designed and produced a line of fine custom furniture made of mesquite, copper and leather. Published scholarly articles in psychology journals and woodworking magazines. Self-published a small book of short stories. Won a literary award in the 1997 Southwestern Writers Contest with You Can't Push A Rope, the present novel and is working on a second while building his straw bale house in the Jemez mountains of New Mexico.

Contact Clint at 505-829-9195 or email ctjemez@yahoo.com

Chapter 1
JUNE 1942.
"Sit here, on my right," Santiago said to Joaquin at the first breakfast."I need a strong right hand to replace your father's absence and cowardice."
Joaquin was angered by the harsh words but something in the old man's eyes convinced him not to show it. Nearly six feet tall and lean for his years with pencil-trimmed mustache and weather-worn face, Santiago looked like someone accustomed to being obeyed without question by men much older than his oldest grandson. Grandmother Lupe brushed a strand of gray hair from her face as she struggled to fit her hefty frame to the kitchen chair and said, "You and your son may not be talking to each other but that is no reason to speak badly of José in front of your grandson. He sent the boy to us for the summer, didn't he?"
Joaquin glanced at Santiago and, with eyes averted, said, "Well really, it was mom's idea that I come. She said I had to know my family even if grandpa Santiago is a little loco."
"Ha! You see, mujer? I knew my son would not want my grandson to know the facts." Santiago shoveled in his food as he spoke, punctuating his words with a rolled tortilla.
After the meal, Santiago stood and walked toward the door ordering over his shoulder, "Come.There are things I want you to see."
Joaquin jumped to follow and as he trotted after Santiago toward the pickup, Grandmother Lupe watched through the screen door and marveled at how much the boy resembled his grandfather when she first met him. Same wiry thin but strong build, same curly black hair and eyes, same high cheek bones and handsome face. God willing, she prayed quietly to herself, he will not face the same hardships. She finished her prayer with the sign of the cross and touched the silver Virgin of Guadalupe which she wore always around her neck.
Santiago and Joaquin drove out of the sleeping village past barbed wire and weathered gray wooden fences and adobe walls.The sun, filtered first through the forest to the east, began to reflect off sheet metal roofs. Clouds were already forming for the afternoon thundershower and carried pink edges in the sunrise. The dirt road rose quickly, becoming rougher as they climbed, more or less following a small creek through grassy meadows alternating with groves of white-trunked aspen or dark tangles of spruce and ponderosa, too thick to walk through. Twice, Joaquin saw deer bound away from the road deeper into the woods as they passed. Santiago said nothing as he repeatedly shifted gears up and down and the pickup whined and rattled its complaint.They crossed the creek, running much wider and deeper here at 10,000 feet than the trickle back in the village of Canjilon, and came out on what seemed to Joaquin like the top of the world.
The steep rise of mountains ended, changing to a vast expanse of undulating hills, covered with grass, devoid of timber.Rivulets of clear water ran between them, winding around to join the creek. White-faced cattle roamed in groups of ten to twenty. Santiago guided the truck over a cattleguard and pulled to the side of the road. Barbed wire fences ran from each side of the cattleguard off into the distance. A sign hung on the fence next to the truck, splattered with bulletholes, "Coyote Ranch, Private Property, Stay On The Road."
Santiago stepped out of the truck, reached down to pick a shaft of grass,and placed it between his teeth. "From here back the 10 miles to Canjilon," he said, "is all our family's land. Your family. "He then pointed to the southeast. "From here to El Rito,twenty miles, belongs to the Gonzalez and Morales families." Turning to the northwest, he repeated the gesture and said, "From here north to Tierra Amarilla, 25 miles, belongs to the Madregon and Baca families." He paused to remove the grass from his mouth and spit. "It 's all been stolen." They walked along the fence to a higher point.
Santiago stared at a mountain in the distance. "Our families were given this land over two hundred years ago. We've lived here since then. A hundred years ago, in 1848, the Americans won the war with Mexico and the stealing started. Everyone got their share, the lawyers, the politicians, the ranchers, the National Forest Service." He paused to select a fresh blade of grass. His voice was hard, as if it had happened yesterday. "They didn't ride in here with guns to steal the land. That we could have recognized and fought against. No, they did it the gringo way, on paper in Santa Fe and Washington D.C. They didn't walk on the land or work it or even piss on it. They just lied and wrote what they call 'quiet titles' which their good friends approved."
How could that be, wondered Joaquin. I thought the law was supposed to be fair.
Santiago's eyes glittered and his jaw muscles tightened as he spoke. "They were quiet titles all right. We didn't even know they existed for over sixty years. We found out when the fences started going up." He pointed to the barbed wire they were following. "The first ones went up in 1912. I was 20, not that much older than you."
They turned and started walking back toward the truck. As they neared it, a second pickup pulling a horse trailer approached, rattling over the rough, rocky road. A red coyote was painted on the door. When it stopped at the cattleguard next to Santiago's truck, two cowboys got out.
Santiago glared at the truck's approach. He tore the blade of grass from his teeth and swore, "Cabrones". Joaquin watched the driver reach back in the cab and lift a 30- 30 saddle rifle off the gun rack behind the seat. The man raised the rifle and aimed. Joaquin grabbed Santiago's arm and pulled. "Grampa! Look ..." Smoke puffed from the rifle barrel as the fence post next to Santiago burst into pieces. Splinters of wood splattered his face and as he winced, he fell. Only then did the sound of the rifle's explosion wash over them. "Grampa!" Joaquin threw himself down beside Santiago.
"I'm all right. It's all right. I fell." A cedar splinter was stuck in his cheek and blood seeped from it. "Stop! Stop! You've hit my grandfather." Joaquin jumped up, faced the truck, and raised his arms, waving them about. "Are you crazy?" he yelled. Santiago stood and took Joaquin's arm, saying, "It's all right boy. They've had their fun. They will not shoot me. They know who my friends are. Come." Joaquin, heart pounding, watched in amazement as Santiago started walking back down the fence line toward the truck, his expression flat, his pace steady. Joaquin fell in behind. "Your face," he said.
Santiago felt his cheek and pulled the splinter out, releasing a new surge of blood, now dripping from his chin. He calmly dropped the splinter by his side without inspecting it and wiped blood from his face with his hand.
The two men at the truck waited, motionless, as Santiago and Joaquin continued to walk in their direction. The shooter spoke. "It's a damn good thing it's you, Peralta. Anybody else out here off the road and that post would be their head."
The two men were dressed almost identically under sweat- soaked felt cowboy hats, with worn blue jeans, snap- button shirts, and run down boots, but Joaquin knew the shooter was the boss, the other his hired hand. "We've been having fences cut pretty regular up here. It's a damn shame but I've had to take to shootin' first and asking questions later." The man's eyes were hard behind his words. Santiago was silent, his stare flat, his jaw tight. "Course, you wouldn't know nothin' about that, am I right?"
Santiago replied in Spanish. "Perhaps you should let the police do the shooting, Señor Payne."
Payne laughed. "We both know how good the law is around here, Peralta. I'll take care of what's mine. Meanwhile, you people stay off my land."
Santiago showed his anger for the first time, yelling, but still in Spanish, "Your land? You and those like you think that because you gave someone money, you can fence us out. You've been here twenty or thirty years and think this land is yours and we are peasants. You are wrong. The Peraltas have been here two hundred years and we will be here two hundred years after you are gone."
Payne stared at Santiago for a moment and then turned to the other man. "Jesse, start unloading the horses. We got work to do." As the man turned toward the horse trailer, Payne asked Santiago over his shoulder, "How's things down at the school?"
Santiago continued to answer in Spanish. "The same. The ninety percent who speak Spanish at home are being taught in English to benefit the ten percent who speak English at home."
Payne grunted and said, "I got to get to work," turning his back on Santiago and Joaquin.
As they drove back down the road toward home, Joaquin's heart continued to pound. "Can't you call the police on him? He could've killed you."
"No. He's right." Santiago drove with one hand and held a bandanna to his face with the other. "The police are worthless and belong to him and the other gringos anyway. They would do nothing. And Payne would not dare kill me. He knows I am important to our organization and my friends would avenge me."
"What organization?"
"You will meet them." Santiago looked at the bandanna and, satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, placed it on the seat beside him. "Do you know the word, hidalgo?"
Joaquin wanted more information about the organization but answered, "No sir."
"We, you and I, even your father, all the Peraltas of this family are hidalgos. It means gentleman, or man of honor. It comes from 'hijo de algo' or son of someone. In the old country it meant nobleman. Men to be trusted, men to be obeyed. That is your heritage."
A spattering of rain covered the windshield and Santiago turned on the wipers before continuing. "I have four daughters and one son, your father, José. He was born just after the fencing began and I thought he would stand beside me in this fight. I was wrong."
Santiago rolled down the window, cleared his throat, and spat into the rain as if ridding himself of the knowledge of his son's failure. "Instead, José took the coward's way and found a profession in the gringoworld. Even though his ancestors include Pedro de Peralta, governor of the province of New Mexico in 1610, the man who moved the capital to Santa Fe, he says we must stop looking back at the old ways. That is why I have not talked to him since before you were born. It is only because your grandmother begged that he let you come for the summer."
They pulled into the yard under a steady rain. Santiago shut off the engine but remained seated. "How old are you?" he asked.
"Twelve, sir," answered Joaquin.
"That's young," Santiago nodded. "I know this is all new to you. But I am fifty. I know now that we cannot burn enough barns and haystacks or cut enough fences to run them out. We'll have to fight them in their own ways, in their own courts, and it may take longer than I have left."
Thinking of the shooting at the top of the mountain, Joaquin felt his stomach tighten.
Santiago fixed his gaze squarely on Joaquin's eyes and said, "I want you, a living descendant of Pedro de Peralta, Hidalgo and Conquistadore of Spain, to help me fight for the return of the land given to our family by the King of Spain in the 18th century."
Joaquin didn't know what to say. It was hard to imagine his grandfather worried about getting anything he wanted. Framed by the driving rain behind him through the truck window, the older man seemed to almost shimmer with power.
"Don't answer now," said Santiago. "Wait until you've spent the summer here, seen something of our way, learned what the fight is about. Give me your answer in August."
Joaquin swallowed, "Yes sir," and then asked the question that had been on his mind the whole way down the mountain. "Grandfather, what did Payne mean when he asked you about the school?"
Santiago allowed himself a small smile. "He meant to insult me. I am a janitor at the high school in Tierra Amarilla during the week. He does not understand that I will do whatever I must to feed this family until our land is restored."
Joaquin felt a surge of anger pulse through him. Already, an insult to Santiago was an insult to him. That summer, Joaquin met his primos and tios , cousins and uncles and aunts. He discovered that he had padrinos, godparents, selected when he was an infant. He sat in on meetings at his grandfather's house, attended by men from neighboring villages, the organization Santiago had talked about on the day of the shooting. There, he was accepted as his family's selection to replace Santiago when the day came. Santiago didn't name the group during these meetings but Joaquin heard others call them Los Hermanos Penitentes or La Mano Negra. The topic was always the same: how to rid the land of the gringo thieves and their sell- out vendido Hispanic friends who his grandfather said were more than willing to help in the displacement of the original Hispanic people,la raza, from its old, sacred, and proper way of life. There were bailes, dances, fiestas and religious celebrations attended by all, loose, happy affairs filled with song and laughter, unless the topic of stolen land came up. Then the mood turned dark, the younger men speaking of guns and action. Santiago was invariably in the limelight at all these events, swinging the ladies through their paces as the music wailed, or counseling the men as to their next action. One night, as he stood and watched, Joaquin realized that he loved this village and its people, and that he idolized Santiago.

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