Alumni Spotlight: Ernie Atencio
Ernie Atencio attended a Whole Thinking Retreat in 2005. We interviewed him this winter about his work in New Mexico building whole communities.
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With what organization are you affiliated?
Taos Land Trust. I’ve been here about three and a half years.
What does your organization do?
We do land conservation work.
How would you characterize that work?
We use conventional land trust approaches including easements, and purchases of development rights, but increasingly we do an awful lot of general public education about land conservation issues and work with landowners on other approaches to conservation and restoration that don’t necessarily mean we get an easement out of them. We’re not in the business of creating easements, we’re in the business of helping people take care of their land.
What do you consider to be the most exciting part of your work at the moment?
Right now we have a very exciting collaboration we’re working on with two other organizations in town. One is the Taos County Economic Development Corporation and the other is the Taos Valley Acequia Association. My original interest in taking on this job was to use the tools of the land trust to help protect traditional agricultural land holdings and thereby all the other values and wisdom of the traditional land-based community that go along with those lands. But we quickly realized that conservation easements alone can’t do it all. So we started this collaboration, which we call “De La Tierra a La Cosecha,” meaning “From Earth to Harvest.” And between our three organizations we bring an incredible bunch of tools and expertise and locally-relevant competence to help landowners with land tenure and land conservation issues, water and water rights, efficient use of water, and locally-appropriate economic development primarily focused on agricultural products; the idea being that this all provides incentive for people to stay on the land, keep it in production and undeveloped, keep it in the family, and ultimately create greater local food security.
Can you give me an example of how the collaboration might work with a landowner?
Well, first we find out what it is they need, what tools and services our three organizations can provide that would help them in their particular circumstance. Potentially, Taos Land Trust might help a landowner create a conservation easement. But many of these landowners are the classic “land-rich, cash-poor.” They don’t always need tax breaks, but easements can help with estate taxes and can make all the difference in many cases to help families pass the land to the next generation without having to sell half of it to pay the estate tax bill. Alternatively, we can look for sources of income to purchase the development rights. Or we can point them in the right direction to some other approach to estate planning or family trust that can accomplish the same goals.
Acequias are the ancient tradition of simple, gravity-driven irrigation ditches that have provided both water and social cohesion among Indo-Hispano communities in northern New Mexico for centuries. So we work with Taos Valley Acequia Association because they represent most of the community we are trying to reach and because they can help landowners find more efficient ways for using water in agricultural production, particularly to grow food.
The Taos County Economic Development Corporation provides direct marketing assistance, business development assistance, a commercial kitchen where people can prepare, package, and market their product all in one place to add value to their agricultural products. Another brand new facility is very exciting, called the “Mobile Matanza,” a mobile livestock slaughtering unit, which goes ranch to ranch, farm to farm, and slaughters and hangs livestock onsite, then takes it to another facility to age and package the meat. It’s inspected and certified and helps farmers market their meat directly to stores and restaurants, without going through a middleman. So it provides a lot more value to the product that goes directly back to the farmer or rancher. A matanza, by the way, is a traditional celebration, a big community event that involves the cooking and sharing of an animal.
Would you consider yourself to be an environmentalist? If not, how would you categorize yourself and your work?
Yeah, I consider myself to be an environmentalist. But it’s a much broader category and label than most people think. Even though I work with ranchers and farmers and I support small-scale sustainable forestry operations and other uses of the land—working landscapes—which I know a lot of the mainstream environmental community don’t consider “environmental,” I do consider myself to be an environmentalist, and in part I use that label to desensitize it. If I call myself an environmentalist, but define myself by the example of my work in social justice and sustainable agricultural and appropriate economic development, not by a narrow label, I think it changes what people think about environmentalists and we’re not all stigmatized by the actions of an angry and confrontational few. But I do often have to say, “I’m an environmentalist, but I’m one of the good ones.”
But it’s just a label! Who knows, maybe I shouldn’t use any label.
What motivates you most?
I think a very acute sense of justice and equity and fairness. Growing up in a very low-income, inner-city circumstance instilled that in me at a very young age. It’s been my motivation for involvement in environmental issues and social justice and the approach I take now to land conservation work. Just trying to make things right.
What is one of the biggest obstacles you face in your work, and what methods have you devised to overcome it, if any?
Perpetual preconceptions and misconceptions of land trusts and what we do. I think we all get lumped together with the big national conservation groups (I won’t use any names), and people think we have tons of money and we buy up land and displace people from the land, and that if people work with a land trust they’re going to lose their property. They don’t realize that they’re just going to give up rights to development that they were probably never going to use anyway. It’s simply voluntary, and it’s not some sort of insidious government plot to take over private property rights. That’s our biggest obstacle, forever trying to explain ourselves and get over that hurdle.
We do a lot of very active and targeted public outreach and education, from publications to workshops to booths and tables at conferences and forums. Any time we have an opportunity, we’re out there, without proselytizing, just trying to explain how land trusts work and how we can be of service to landowners. We show up at, say, local acequia meetings, meetings of the Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association, anywhere that gathers folks from the traditional land-based community and other agricultural forums.
Who are your teachers, the people that most influence you and your work?
Since I moved back to northern New Mexico—this is where my roots are, my family’s been here over 300 years, but I grew up elsewhere and then moved around a lot before moving back here ten years ago—since I’ve been back here, of all of the organizations I’ve been affiliated with, my greatest teachers have been the ranchers, farmers, and loggers that I’ve worked with. I’ve learned more from that community of people who are really deeply rooted in the land, I’ve learned more from them in terms of a strong land ethic and deeply-rooted traditional wisdom about the land—the kind of wisdom that the scientists and experts don’t really give much credence, but I think is very important.
Are there any organizations or coalitions out there that you think are shining examples of “whole thinking” in practice? What are they, and what are they doing?
The shining example for me is the Quivira Coalition—especially after their last conference [in January 2007], which just reaffirmed that. We had ranchers and acequia advocates and youth who were reconnecting to their roots and learning to farm and ranch and radical environmental activists (or maybe I should say reformed radical environmental activists) and Amish farmers and Navajo ranchers and land-based Chicano activists and Wendell Berry, on and on—this incredible cross-section of people working on the land who are all working in their own way, in their own cultures, to try and care for the land and keep it healthy and productive for the next generation.
What gives you hope?
Things like the Quivira Coalition conference, where I see that incredible diversity, that spectrum of people who come together—the range of people and interests and organizations represented there—we were all over the map geographically and ideologically. Quivira has been more successful than anyone else that I know of in cultivating that common ground, what we call the radical center.
Finally, if you could have every Center for Whole Communities alumnus do one thing, what would it be?
Buy local!
May 16th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Very inspiring!