A group of down-and-out Chicano farmers are struggling to make a living in a patch of New Mexico desert. They raise sheep, they grow beans, they drink to excess, they laugh and screw and murder one another. They and their ancestors have been doing this for 300 years or so, and that's just sort of the way it is.
Except that's not the way it's going to stay, because about 40 years ago somebody passed a law and half the town of Milagro lost all its water rights. Things have been a lot harder since; the only ones left are the ones living on inertia and welfare. Surprise, there's a land baron who owns pretty much all the land around Milagro, wants their land too, and has no problem getting water and grazing rights. His grandfather started putting the squeeze on the community, he's still up to it two generations later, and just can't seem to get rid of the Chicanos.
This next law's gonna do it, though. A new dam and land conservancy will make property values (and property taxes and user fees) skyrocket. In another ten years the only residents will be the ones cleaning the resorts our villain plans to build.
Except one day Jose Mondragon, who always was kind of a troublemaker, takes it into his head to illegally irrigate his father's dry old field and plant him some beans...
Between all the sub-plots involving Pacheco's wayward sow, Herbie Goldfarb the profoundly misplaced VISTA volunteer, the apparently immortal Amatante Cordova whose pistol is bigger than he is, Onofre Martinez' mysteriously missing arm (the literate one, alas), Pancho Armijo's insanely oversexed dog Esperanza, Nick Rael's crazy mother's habit of pelting his customers with rocks, the gunfight that never happened, the Smoky Bear santo riot, Charley Bloom the cowardly lawyer, and too many more for this poor head to remember, the book sometimes wanders from the plot just a tad. But it's pretty funny while it's doing that.
And there's not a superhero or a lecture in 600 pages, which puts it on my list for pretty darned good freedomista lit.
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6 comments:
I'm interested...who is the author (so it will be easier to find)?
Yeah, that would be kind of important in a book review, wouldn't it? Good thinking.
The author's name is John Nichols. Amazon linky here:
http://www.amazon.com/Milagro-Beanfield-War-Novel/dp/0805063749/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
Thanks, I thought I had heard of it before.
Milagro Beanfield War also made a pretty good movie. Worth checking out.
Another unintentional freedom book with a great story and no lectures is The Secret of Santa Vittoria. (That one made a mediocre movie, though, so I'd stick with the book.)
Great book! Don't know if you knew this - but the author considers it one of a trilogy. The others in the trilogy are "The Nirvana Blues" and "The Magic Journey". Nichols does a great job of describing life in the smaller Spanish villages in Northern NM.
Another good read based on the same region but set several generations earlier is "People of the Valley" by Frank Waters.
I've lived in the same area described by Nichols and Waters in these books and if I had to go back to living in a town or village setting - I'd prefer that over most of the alternatives I've seen. Changing times have really hit those places hard though - they're getting dragged into the 21st century whether they like it or not.
The movie is gorgeous.
And Secret of Santa Vittoria stars Anthony Quinn, so how can it be bad.
And from the random associations file : Rosanna's Grave.
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