Mr. MERCURE. It seems to me that it is almost mandatory that at this point something be done to settle this question for the benefit of these people, and for the benefit of the economy, because any time that we are permitting people an opportunity to contribute fully to the economy, I think that the economy is paying a price in human resources otherwise being undeveloped.

Mr. RESNICK. In other words, that is one suggestion of some sort of a way that this problem could be solved by administrative action? Mr. MERCURE. Right.

Mr. RESNICK. The other thing, of course, is to try to get our agencies to work more actively in this region.

Mr. MERCURE. I think it is necessary, also, to establish some operational capacity other than planning, coordinating, and stimulating. Operational capacity to establish pilot programs, to develop those techniques of development which are specifically adapted to both the natural characteristics and natural community structures, so that the greatest amount of gain for the smallest dollar can happen. A $50,000 investment, for example, in small available shops to produce some of this beautiful stuff that is being produced and to merchandise it, could produce a total volume in a given community of a quarter of a million dollars. This is gain.

Mr. RESNICK. And the Small Business Administration and the others could be used for this.

Mr. MERCURE. The Department of Agriculture, for instance, is constrained against developing small shops, small enterprises. They are limited to the development of cooperatives, as I understand it.

Mr. RESNICK. That is not the Department of Agriculture. It is the Small Business Administration, which has these community development loans.

Mr. MERCURE. Yes. They do. What I am suggesting is that, perhaps, the Department of Agriculture ought to think about using some of the money that they have available for some of these cooperative enterprises, which is the only thing that they can do, and could move in, or to provide some other agency which has the capacity to do so, with help. There is some advantage with working with private, nonprofit groups. As you know, every 2 years there is an election, and there is a shorter range in New Mexico, because every 4 years there is a change of administration. And the agencies experience a kind of flip-flopping pattern which private, nonprofit groups are immune to.

Mr. RESNICK. We will not solve that here. I would like to thank you for your testimony.

Mr. Garcia was to be heard today, but unfortunately he was delayed, so that he will be here tomorrow. We will also have Mr. Tomas Atencio, a program specialist from the Colorado Migrant Council. I want to thank you. I hope that you will forward to us the other documents that will be helpful to the subcommittee.

Mr. MERCURE. I will. Thank you very much.

Mr. RESNICK. We will now stand in recess until 10 o'clock in the morning.

(Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the hearing was adjourned, to reconvene Tuesday, June 13, 1967.)

EFFECT OF FEDERAL PROGRAMS ON RURAL AMERICA

TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1967

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:10 a.m., in room 1302, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Joseph Y. Resnick (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Resnick, Montgomery, Goodling, Mathias, and Zwach.

Also present: Martha Hannah, subcommittee clerk.

Mr. RESNICK. The hearing will now come to order.

Our first witness is Mr. Bert Corona, president of the MexicanAmerican Political Association. Is Mr. Corona here?

Next on our list is Tomas Atencio.

Robert Garcia, Director of State Office of Economic Opportunity, New Mexico.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT G. GARCIA, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, STATE TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE OFFICE, OEO

Mr. GARCIA. On Monday afternoon, June 5, 1967, a group of men attacked the county courthouse in the small mountain town of Tierra Amarilla in New Mexico. There was much shooting and some destruction of property. Twenty hostages were held for about one and a half hours, then released. Two State police officers, unfortunately, were seriously wounded, and two other men were allegedly taken away as hostages, one escaping and the other released shortly afterward. Two police cars were ruined, according to one witness, mainly by one man using a machinegun. The newspaper accounts say that the cars seemed to have been blown up from the inside, they were so riddled with bullets.

About one and a half hours or so after the shooting started the group fled toward the mountains.

Using troopers and tanks, the guardsmen surrounded the village of Canjilon, apprehended about 50 people believed to have been involved and held them in the town of Canjilon.

Other arrests followed, and then Gov. David Cargo ordered the removal shortly afterward of National Guard troops and two tanks in the area. The leader of the disbanded alianza, this alianza group, it is Alianza Federal de Mercedes, which is a land-grant group-the leader

of this alianza-Reies Tijerina, was taken into custody Saturday, June 10, and at the present time only a few purported members of the attacking groups remain at large.

I would like to outline the basic reasons for the recent violence and the danger of a recurrence that even now exists, as well as describing the efforts being made to solve the problems. Although the current crisis has been pinpointed to northern areas of the State, I am certain that underlying factors have caused similar responses and reactions in most rural areas of New Mexico. Because of this, I feel that these observations will serve for the entire State. It should be stressed that the attack on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse was essentially an explosion of a smoldering economic and social problem that has existed for decades in the rural areas of the State.

The current scope of the rural problems of New Mexico certainly transcends the present position of the leader of the alianza who headed the alianza from the beginning.

Tijerina formed his alianza through claims of ancient Spanish land grants that would give back to the people vast areas of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.

He gained his membership and following through offering the hope of returning land that had been taken away from the Spanish people years ago. His following in large measure includes the poorest of the

poor.

This statement is not to debate the issue of the land grants. Nor is it to comment on the movement led by Reies Tijerina.

This statement does stress that the alianza's promise of remuneration for lost land represented ideas that had never been injected into many of these rural areas. This statement represents a hope and a dream for something better for these people.

People in the extreme rural poverty areas are not aware of the democratic process, for one thing, and are definitely suspicious of State and Federal courts.

They feel economically depressed and defeated. They do have a deep sense of justice, but have never been given the opportunity to learn the full intricate workings of modern law, at least as we may know it. The recent outburst at Tierra Amarilla was a result of deeply rooted resentments along with a sense of hopelessness as to present conditions. And here I refer to appendix A which is the section taken from the Bureau of Business Research Statistics for northern New Mexico counties. I will point out at this time that in the county of Taos, in northern New Mexico, which is near the county where the violence occurred, in regard to family income, 64.9 percent of the population or of the families earn less than $3,000. I would also point out that in Rio Arriba County, likewise in regard to families, 50.2 percent of these people earn less than $3,000.

In regard to selective service, rejectees in Rio Arriba County total 17 percent.

Following the incident of violence, many gross violations of civil rights were reported. About 50 people, old men, women, some with infants and children, were enclosed in a sheeppen for 30 hours. They were made to sleep there overnight. They had to rather, they were given C-rations to eat by the National Guard. They were not allowed

to leave for the restroom at night, they had to sleep on the ground, and they had to drink water from a small reservoir used for the sheep. Also, many houses were broken into without warrants. Cars were stopped and searched without warrants. Seven defendants apparently were kept in jail for 50 hours before a lawyer was allowed to see them. They were not allowed to make calls to their families. They were not advised of their civil rights and these things I heard myself from some of the prisoners.

These alleged violations of civil rights were in the wake of mass arrests at small villages adjacent to the aforementioned town, and angered the people. Among those apprehended there existed a pathetic lack of understanding of the circumstances and certainly a lack of resources to retain adequate legal protection.

The surge of people in poverty in these areas join the alianza stems from an innate desire, I believe, to attain first-class citizenship. If they have not been treated as full citizens thus far by the U.S. community, symbolically they are seeking to attain it by creating their own community with its own government. I throw this out as a reason why they have acted in this way and I in no way defend their action. We are not dealing with educated Spanish-speaking people here, nor are we dealing with people who understand the complexities of our Government and our society. But we are dealing with people living in an abject economic state. Your Appalachia here has nothing on New Mexico's rural communities, believe me. To step into many of our communities is to step back 100 or 200 years. At this time I would like to read what Dr. Clark S. Knowlton, head of the sociology department of the University of Texas at El Paso, has to say on this matter. In a paper written by him in March of 1967, he says:

The Spanish American inhabitants of northern New Mexico have been caught in a harsh cycle of culture shock, resentment, hostility, bitterness, apathy, and even self-hatred that have paralyzed their ability to deal effectively with their own problems. However, strong tides of unrest are beginning to run through the mountain valleys and down the streams into the urban centers. It will not be long before Spanish American protest organizations growing up out of the villages, the migrant labor camps and the urban slums will begin to make ever more insistent demands upon the State and Federal Government and upon the AngloAmerican community. If a comprehensive dialog can begin between the poor Spanish American groupings, the State and Federal Governments, and the leaders of the Anglo establishment, problems may be resolved and unrest prevented.

We are dealing here with people who have experienced hope for the first time in their lives and who will be extremely reluctant to relinquish this hope. At this point I would like to refer to the appendixes B and C, which show that some of their hope comes from the fact that they are organized in many of these areas, in most of them, in community action groups. However, it shows that even though they are organized, they still have hope that something more will come besides Headstart and perhaps program administration grants.

I appeal to the State and Federal Governments to help these people following up on their symbolic attempt to help themselves. By symbolic I mean that perhaps these people did not really intend to shoot anybody and perhaps they did not intend to harm other persons, and this I say because the latest development seems to be that the police have discovered after all that shooting only about four or five slugs, four or

five bullets, imbedded in the courthouse. There were hundreds of empry cartridge cases, however, strewn all over the place and the police seen to think that perhaps blank cartridges were used.

A lot of this the attack on the courthouse, the using of blanks, the time of day at which it happened, in broad daylight seems to indi cate that a lot of local Spanish-type symbolism was used.

This is explicitly why programs must be pursued which should be tailored to their needs expressed by themselves, basic as they are.

These people were told after the Economic Opportunity Act—that is, in organizing OEO programs that help would be forthcoming pro vided they organized, advised their needs and submitted proposals They organized and they submitted proposals, many of them excellent. and which struck at the core of their poverty. Then, however, they were told there were no funds. Could it be that OEO has, in a sense. contributed to their frustration?

Mr. RESNICK. If I could interrupt you there. Do you administer the whole State OEO?

Mr. GARCIA. No, I do not. I merely direct the technical assistance office and we also serve in a capacity of coordination and information. Mr. RESNICK. Now, how are the funds distributed in New Mexico! Do you feel that the rural areas are getting their share of the funds? Or do you feel they are getting left out because they were slow to organize?

Mr. GARCIA. Well, I would not say that the regional office who funds them directly-that is, the communities or the community action groups—are leaving them out. I just think that there are not enough funds overall.

Mr. RESNICK. Well, for example, the rural communities often do not have the leadership. They were slow to apply. By the time they ap plied, the funds were gone. I saw that in New York State. Now, did the same thing happen in New Mexico, the OEO funds went to the cities, the more advanced urban areas and, by the time the deprived areas applied, the funds were gone?

Mr. GARCIA. I would think that that is the way it happened. I do think that the rural areas are not getting a fair shake.

Mr. RESNICK. That is what happened in New York State, and it appears to have happened in New Mexico as well. This is one of the things we hope to correct in the forthcoming Economic Act of 1967. to see that a certain portion of the funds is set aside for rural areas so the people who are slow to apply could get that money.

Mr. GARCIA. Yes. This is my point, that the rural areas have been discriminated against and, I believe, I say this in the statement later on, by neglect, not only by OEO but traditionally for the past hundred years.

Mr. RESNICK. By the State as well.

Mr. GARCIA. Yes, and the Federal Government.

Mr. RESNICK. Would you say Albuquerque is fairly well funded? Mr. GARCIA. I would say so, yes. They are more sophisticated and they are better able to take care of themselves and develop more highclass programs. They can provide perhaps better staffs.

Mr. RESNICK. Fine. Thank you.

Mr. ZWACH. Mr. Chairman, could I ask a question?
Mr. RESNICK. Certainly.