Columns

He helped rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, and had just completed the famed Rock Mile tunnel in that city, when he heard he might be needed in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

He was told the land grant board in that faraway city was having trouble with its plans for a mammoth reservoir and irrigation project, which was at a standstill after D.A. Camfield gave up in frustration and abandoned the project in 1912.

The first time many of us saw Rudolfo Anaya was when he spoke to Highlands students and staff in a packed Sala de Madrid, around 1972.

He had just completed his first — and in my opinion, his best — novel, “Bless Me, Ultima,” now a movie that my family and I saw at a multi-screen theater in Santa Fe last weekend.

When the territorial legislature yanked the Las Vegas Land Grant from the Hispanic community in 1903, and placed it under the control of Judge William J. Mills, he immediately appointed an Anglo-dominated board of trustees to oversee the immense land grant.
Headed by banker Jefferson Raynolds and former New Mexico chief justice Elisha V. Long, the “trustees” quickly decided the grant should be developed in earnest — to attract both outside investment and settlement.

With the 2012 presidential election still fresh in our minds, I’d like to propose to the little piece of America that reads my column a different approach for voters four years from now.

But let me set the stage first, with a little perspective:

We just witnessed perhaps the most misleading presidential campaigns of modern times. By one estimate, more than a million campaign ads ran on television, nearly all in nine or 10 swing states, mostly containing innuendo and half-truths to advance the candidates’ mudslinging agendas.