| This is one in a series of interview summaries from an ongoing Oral History Project Amigos Bravos is conducting in an effort to preserve some of the rich traditional knowledge about rivers throughout New Mexico communities. Please contact the Amigos Bravos office if you would like a copy of an interim report on our Oral History Project.
A founding member of Concerned Citizens of Questa, Berlinda Trujillo has been involved for over thirty years in struggles surrounding the Molycorp mine, located upstream of the village of Questa. In recognition of her years of volunteer service to the community and the environment, Amigos Bravos granted Mrs. Trujillo the annual Environmental Service Award in 1998.
Amigos Bravos intern Eirian Humphreys conducted this interview at a kitchen table in Questa, while Mrs. Trujillo's mother and sister-in-law sat on a patio and two grandsons played in the yard. Eirian said later, "Berlinda seemed very wise, and I was really impressed with her perspective on both the positive and negative qualities of the Molycorp Company. She explains very well the conflict between economic goals and the struggle to preserve the environment in Questa." In Mrs. Trujillo's own words:
"I grew up about five miles from here at Lama, where the fire was three years ago. Right there. And, I'm the oldest of eight children, plus three that my father and mother raised with us, older than me.
"I became involved with [Concerned Citizens of Questa] because we . . . gave [Molycorp] an [easement] for their tailing pipes . . . and they were asking if we would renew the contract. So, I got involved because we had a lot of grievances [toward the mine]. . . . When we signed the contract with them, my husband and I, my husband had a verbal agreement with the managers here that the local people would have priority to the work. And they were supposed to get it in writing but they never did. They do a lot of things, they tell you, 'We're gonna do this or that,' but they never do it
"[I told them], I can't let you use my land,' so they started offering me a lot of money to buy it. It's been passed on . . . in my husband's family . . . from generation to generation. And I have two sons. I can't sell, you know.
"They hired people from everywhere. Then finally, they started employing a lot of the local ones that needed a job. The young ones that were starting their families under a lot of pressure from people like us, and probably the Concerned Citizens.
"When [Molycorp] closed the mine-they've closed it twice-and when they closed the mine, [miners] were in a real panic, like. And, of course, they had a reason to be panicked, because they had bought their trailers-double-wide trailers-they had bought cars. Now they were without a job. They had to move on to some other place, mines where they could work. But, for most of the people, well, they'd go on unemployment, and they could draw unemployment for a couple, for a year, at least.
"Of course . . . a mine divides a community. There's the pros and cons. You can't even talk environmental issues, cause if somebody else is not for it, then they right away withdraw from the conversation because, I don't know, I guess they're afraid to lose their job, or the ones that are anticipating getting the job are afraid that they might not be called to work, so they don't get involved and they don't even want to talk about it. . . . And there's a lot of people that don't want to talk about it because they feel that the ones that are trying to keep the air clean and the water clean are attacking the ones that are working. And that's not it at all. I mean, you live and let live. In letting others live, there's where the environment, protecting the environment, comes in.
"I came to school here [in Questa]. Incidentally, my house, my home, is right by the Cienega school across the post office. And there's where I came to school when I was little in the forties. There was no running water, so the ditch, that main ditch, was where we drank water from. We'd make cups, paper cups, and have our lunch there by the little stream. And we'd drink water there from the river. And, of course, the mine was already operating then. . . . It was underground though. . . . The school didn't have wells, so the school children drank water from the ditch.
"Nobody ever complained [about illness], because, I guess, the mine didn't cause any pollution then. But after they made it an open pit, it's just terrible.
"See, they had this open pit, and they had this huge mountain there, where every time it rains that thing must have some kind of minerals, and when it rains they have washouts there, and it gets into the river.
"They have found dead fish there, when they're out fishing on the river.
"My husband was a gardener, and he'd make a big garden, and once in a while, we'd leave the stream open, and the water would come in, and then it would flood the garden, and we could see this awful thing just bury the plants. And we never sent the stuff to be tested, but we did have some of the neighbors, some of the people from here, look at it, and they'd say that it was from the open pit thing. [It was] like a glossy yellow and sometimes gray paint or something. . . . I have not made a garden there [since].
"[There were] complaints from the people that their water was being polluted, the ones along the river. . . . [When the tailings pipeline breaks], if it's near the river, it goes into the river. . . . They have people around the clock surveying it. . . . So, they do try to live to these environmental rules, I guess. But, when those pipes break there's nothing they can do.
"I can remember a few years ago when people were complaining of getting sick to their stomach, and they were blaming the water, but I never really found out for sure. . . . I guess probably the people that had shallow wells.
"Some friends that told me––[they] have shallow wells [from] before the village provided water for everybody around––that their bathrooms had like an oil-based rust, or that they couldn't keep their commodes clean.
"I don't know. It seems like it's not as green around the river as it used to be. It used to be like you could hardly get near the river. . . . But up here, it seems like there's mostly dead trees––we used to go on a lot of picnics, and we drank water from the river [she laughs]. Thirty or forty years ago I used to do that." |
