Lawmaker asks U.S. attorney to intervene in New Mexico common lands case
A state lawmaker is asking the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico to reopen a case that allowed the American government to take millions of acres of commonly owned land promised to New Mexicans in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Rep. Miguel Garcia (D-Albuquerque) on May 28 sent a letter to U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico Ryan Ellison asking him to reopen a 128-year-old court case called United States v. Sandoval.
Garcia is asking Ellison to attend one of this year's interim legislative Land Grant Committee hearings, at which land grant attorney Narciso Garcia will present the legal arguments and questions surrounding the case to either Ellison or his designee, and the committee will ask him to intervene.
Last Friday, at the committee's first meeting since this year's legislative session, Garcia said he took it upon himself to make the request, and that Ellison's office is deliberating how to respond to it.
Ellison's office declined to comment.
The case deals with commonly owned land — locally managed lands meant to sustain communities — in seven areas in New Mexico granted by the Spanish Empire and later recognized by Mexican law.
The justices ruled that the common lands were actually owned by the Spanish Empire, and therefore became the U.S. government's property as a result of the the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.
During this period, land speculators, including U.S. government officials, took advantage of adverse U.S. Supreme Court decisions to defraud communities of their common lands, Arturo Archuleta, director of the New Mexico Land Grant Council and the University of New Mexico Land Grant-Merced Institute, told the committee.
The Sandoval decision resulted in the seven land grants shrinking from an average of 450,000 acres to 1,500 acres, Garcia wrote.
He wrote that the ruling was a travesty of justice, and told the committee that it resulted in the depopulation of some land grant communities who could no longer herd as many cattle and sheep or produce as many forestry products.
'This was devastating for these communities because this is what brought on poverty in our state,' Garcia told the committee. 'This is a good example of how our land grant communities were turned from a vibrant, self-sustaining community to an impoverished community.'
Garcia attached to the letter a 2018 working paper written by John Mitchell, who argues that after Mexico ceded the Territory of New Mexico to the U.S., Congress failed to incorporate it and allowed a temporary government to grant common lands to the inhabitants, which took away jurisdiction from the U.S. Supreme Court concerning land titles in the territory. 'Ultimately, the decision still belongs to the New Mexico Supreme Court who could hold that the de facto government did in fact grant common lands under existing law,' Mitchell wrote.
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