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Trespassers on Our Own Land is structured as an oral history of the Juan P. Valdez family, primarily covering the period from 1807 (when Juan's great, great, great-grandfather, Juan Bautista Valdez and others who were unnamed (probably his sons and grandsons) were given a grant in the area where Cañones, Rio Arriba County, New Mexico exists today) until the present. Trespassers also presents the political history of the same period establishing how the government was able to take millions of acres from the land grants during the period from 1891 to 1907.

Trespassers is also a rebuke of the government's taking for itself as much as ninety percent of various land grants which had been in existance for decades. The Government's intentional taking of the land resulted in a severe economic depression from which the area has never recovered.

I have finally reloaded two galleries. Gallery 1 has slides reflecting information I found while researching New Mexico land grant history. It consists of information establishing that the government unlawfully took millions of acres from various land grants, not because it was entitled to the land, but because it wanted the land.

The government had no legal basis upon for. It used the Court of Private Land Claims to disavow land grant interests. In so doing it violated not only the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and ignored the protections provided by the Constitution.

Gallery 2 contains copies of the "Figures" set out in Trespassers.

When the site is completely developed it will include a gallery of significant points of interest mentioned in the book where for centuries Spanish and Mexican land grants existed prior to the long arm of the government reaching out and appropriating the millions of acres without compensating those from whom the land was taken.

Trespassers was structured to be used as a textbook for courses in territorial history of the southwest, political science, sociology and creative non-fiction.

The subject matter covers political history between the early 1800's and the present as well as an oral history of Juan Valdez' family from the time his great, great, great-grandfather, Juan Bautista Valdez was granted land by Spain in 1807.

 

I recently established a blog that references Trespassers. It can be accessed at: trespassersonourownland.blogspot.com

About Mike Scarborough

Mike Scarborough grew up in Española, sixty miles south of where Juan grew up. After having spent eight years in the United States Air Force, Mike returned to New Mexico, attended college and law school, and practiced law in the area for twenty-five years. Some years ago he was asked by his good friend, Juan Valdez, to help write Juan’s family history. Read more

Excerpt from the Book

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