D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July 2009
Neighborhood Watchdogs
For 20 years, the Colonias Development Council has helped residents of Dona Ana County's border communities help themselves.
By Jeff Berg
Land, precious land. As the old saying goes, it's so valuable because they aren't making it anymore.
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Women in Chaparral celebrate their culture at a Colonias Development
Council event. |
For the thousands of people who live in the colonias that have sprung up all along the US border with Mexico, from California through Texas, however, the land they live on simply isn't valuable for anything besides hardscrabble housing. And only in the past 10 years or so have developers been required to provide something besides a piece of empty land — such as infrastructure — to hopeful and typically impoverished buyers.
Loosely described, a colonia ("neighborhood" in Spanish) is characterized by having substandard housing, inadequate roads, poor drainage, substandard or no water and sewer facilities.
Texas has the most colonias, with estimates ranging from 1,500 to nearly 2,400, housing 400,000 inhabitants. In Texas' colonias, by the way, 85% of the residents under age 18 are US citizens. Arizona has about 60 colonias, and California, surprisingly, only about 10.
New Mexico's colonias, although fewer in number than Texas at 140, and smaller in population, housing perhaps 40,000, pepper the landscape from Lordsburg to Anthony and Sunland Park, south of Las Cruces. They include areas as far away from the border as the heart of Grant County and even that second-home mecca, Ruidoso Downs
Surprised? A colonia does not have to be on the border. All that is required to create a colonia is land that is, in general, useless for agriculture, lies in a floodplain, or suffers from other such misfortune. Developers can buy up such land, subdivide it into small lots (sans infrastructure, such as roads, water and other things you take for granted when buying property), and resell those lots to low-income individuals or families as "affordable housing."
Colonias are basically any unincorporated area that lacks basic infrastructure. They have existed in New Mexico for more than 50 years, lining 44 miles of the landscape from Las Cruces to El Paso.
Some obvious examples of colonias near the border include Vado, Chaparral, Berino and Mesquite. Less-obvious ones include all or part of such unincorporated areas in Grant County as Pinos Altos, Santa Rita and Sherwood, plus the city of Bayard and the town of Santa Clara. Others that dot the landscape include parts of or all of Orogrande, Datil, Pie Town and the ironically named Top of the World.
This information comes from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD, www.hud.gov/local/nm/groups/coloniasnm.cfm), which helps individuals and groups in these areas get funding for basic infrastructure. HUD defines colonias as rural neighborhoods within 150 miles of the border that lack adequate infrastructure or housing, as well as other basic services.
According to the Colonias Monitoring Project, a joint effort of HUD and the US Geological Survey (geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/colonias2.html), "The colonias typically have high poverty rates, making it difficult for residents to pay for roads, sanitary-water and sewer systems, minimum-standard housing, street lighting and other services. Colonias are scattered along the border as makeshift settlements, commonly on private land. Because these settlements have been established outside the formally sanctioned governance of nearby cities and towns, colonias residents have traditionally struggled to gain access to the public services available in those communities."
In Dona Ana County, the Colonias Development Council (CDC) celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. This organization, whose mission is to help colonias residents gain the funding and resources needed to "make a village," is directed by Diana Bustamante. A long-time activist, Bustamante's experience reaches back to the Farmworkers Organizing Project, which took root in southern New Mexico in the 1970s.
The Farmworkers Organizing Project was the predecessor of the CDC, and it came to be during a housing shortage. This situation allowed numerous somewhat unscrupulous developers to take advantage by selling land to farm workers and other low-income people, creating illegal subdivisions. The Office of Catholic Social Ministries started the Project, which morphed into CDC, an independent non-profit organization.
"Prior to 1996, New Mexico, the settlements included no historical planning," Bustamante explains. "A subdivision lot could be a four-way split of a four-acre tract, and the developers would subdivide them again into individual parcels. Since there were no easements, sometimes there was no access to the 'back' properties by the buyers."
Land developers used loopholes in the 1973 Subdivision Act, which allowed for this without "attendant infrastructure improvements."
But in 1996, all of that changed when Dona Ana County put together some of the strictest subdivision legislation in the state. Bustamante says, "Only two-way splits are allowed now, and there are easements and water must be accessible. The lax laws before 1996 allowed the developers to get away with a lot of things that they couldn't do now."
Another issue that was addressed was that of Contract for Deed. Previously, developers were able to sell lots through these contracts and charge exorbitant amounts of interest, sometimes as high as 12%, which was based on the balance due. since the seller is always the owner through these contracts, deeds were not accessible; even though someone was building a home on a lot, the lot did not really belong to them.
Bustamante notes that this practice was like buying land by using a payday loan. "If they were even one month late with a payment, the land could be taken back from the buyers."
Today, the Colonias Development Council is a grassroots organization whose main goal is to help develop community-based organizations to empower the residents of colonias. It works on issues of social, environmental and economic justice, and does so through outreach programs. The CDC has also assisted in starting child-care centers in Chaparral and Columbus and, with a grant from the USDA's Community Food Project, community gardens in Anthony and Chaparral.
"We have no other role than that of outreach," says Veronica Carmona, who has worked for CDC for the last five years, and is currently the Lead Community Organizer.
Carmona, who was born in Juarez, is a lifelong organizer who has worked in immigration reform and educational outreach. In Juarez, she was involved in the Workers Movement with the maquiladoras. She has also worked with the AFSCME labor union and in El Salvador.
The Colonias Development Council will co-sponsor a film, Children in No Man's Land, followed by a panel discussion, on Sunday, July 26, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla. The documentary film focuses on the plight of the 100,000 unaccompanied minors entering the US every year.
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"I try and follow the methods of Paulo Freire, who wrote The Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Carmona says.
This notable tome, which was first published in Portuguese in 1968, explores the "struggle for justice and equity in the educational system," and also the "relationships between the colonizer and the colonized." Friere's theory is briefly summarized as, "Nobody liberates anybody else, and nobody liberates themselves all alone. People liberate themselves in fellowship with each other." His work can be a tool in helping those who often aren't quite aware of how to help themselves.
"I work with key individuals in the community and help them become representatives who work with other community members," Carmona adds. She cites the recent controversy regarding Waste Connections, a huge corporation that manages 37 active landfills around the country and collects trash in 125 cities in 23 states.
Waste Connections wanted to open a new landfill near a housing area of Chaparral, the state's largest colonia, with 20,000 residents scattered throughout Dona Ana and Otero counties. Chaparral already has the dubious distinction of having three landfills.
The project first came to light in 2001. In 2007, after a long battle by CDC against the project, the company agreed to consider moving the landfill several miles north of the original planned location. At one point Waste Connections used a local resident who was known for her almost daily trash patrols in the community, citing her as a reason the landfill was needed.
To CDC activists, the landfill location became an issue of environmental justice. Often, landfills and the like are located in a poverty-stricken area such as southern New Mexico or near an American Indian nation.
"The community showed that they were against it eight years ago, and the struggle is ongoing," says Carmona. "We helped the people in the community to build their own network, using one-on-one organizing skills. Each community has its own issues, and we teach the community the tools that they will need to have an infrastructure."
Another issue that comes up often is the fact that most colonia residents have to use propane instead of natural gas, and propane is often twice as expensive as natural gas. CDC hopes that infrastructure improvements will soon allow many colonia residents to make the switch.
"We have monthly meetings with a core group of residents that allow them to develop their own organization which will empower them," Carmona says. "They can then attend meetings, such as county commissioner meetings, and have more presence while working with government officials. It becomes comparable to a civil-rights movement."
After a group of colonia residents attends a government-sponsored meeting, Carmona will meet with them again, asking, "Now what is on your mind?" and "What happened for you in the process?"
Since CDC is not a fundraising group, it works closely with HUD. The federal agency provides the money for infrastructure projects including water, roads, wastewater treatment facilities and other necessities.
"We work to make sure that residents are given rights of way, and wastewater systems," says Bustamante. "Potable water must come from private water companies, but if a home is close enough to the source, they can have a well."
CDC also works with the New Mexico Department of Public Education in developing literacy programs. In Dona Ana County alone, 30% of the residents have less than an eighth-grade education; fewer than 60% of Las Cruces students graduate from high school.
Couple those facts with some other discouraging statistics, such as the county averaging only 69% of the national median household income and 32% of county residents living under the poverty line. Las Cruces ranks as the fifth-poorest Metropolitan Statistic Area (MSA) in the US, and New Mexico ranks worst among all 50 states for the rate of children living in poverty. All that helps make education a top priority for the CDC.
Neither Bustamante nor Carmona is shy when it comes to the subject of racism toward people of the colonias. "Things like anti-Spanish [language use] are forms of camouflaged racism," Bustamante believes. "There have been incidents where someone from Chaparral has called 911 only to be told 'English only,' and not have a response to the emergency.
"There is more friction than there needs to be with law enforcement," she goes on. "There is racial profiling of people who are stopped by the Border Patrol under 'suspicion.'"
Although most colonias residents between Las Cruces and El Paso are about 95% Mexican in origin, about 30% of Chaparral's residents are of European descent.
Bustamante also cites incidents with the Otero County Sheriff's Department, during immigration "sweeps" in 2007, that resulted in numerous people being detained whose US residency was questioned. That led to charges of not having search warrants and targeting households on the basis of ethnicity. Although a lawsuit was won and accords were reached, trust issues remain concerning the police and other law-enforcement groups, she says.
Despite such roadblocks, CDC has been remarkably successful in its efforts to extend justice to all people, not just those who can buy it. The council was also instrumental in collecting affidavits from farm workers in Hatch in the 1990s, when the US Commission on Civil Rights investigated the housing practices described in the village ordinances. A number of families settled out of court, and the village of Hatch had to change its "discriminating language" as it developed a "fair comprehensive housing plan."
Current projects include a planned apartment building, to be made with earth-friendly compressed-dirt blocks, and the Chaparral Family Development Center. That center houses a Head Start program, Happy Face Daycare and the Creaciones Yucca Sewing Group.
But much work remains for colonias, including getting the message across that residents are, for the most part, just average citizens who need a hand up — not illegal immigrants living on the dole.
"These are social, political and economic issues," Bustamante insists. "They need to have solutions; they don't have to be criminalized."
More information about the Colonias Development Council, including volunteer and donation opportunities, can be found at www.colonias.org or by calling 647-2744 in Las Cruces.