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Summer 1999 Bulletin
Amigos Bravos continues to gather valuable information for our Oral History Project, part of our commitment to help sustain the cultural wisdom and traditions of New Mexico's rural communities. This year, we have focused on Questa residents' perceptions about the connection between clean water and healthy communities. For over 30 years, the Questa watershed has suffered 239 tailings spills and ongoing seepage from the Molycorp mine. Thick clouds of toxic dust from the tailings ponds have blanketed the village during the dry summer months. Sandhya Ganapathy is our intern this summer. A graduate student in applied cultural anthropology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Sandhya is particularly interested in learning more about community health and the many factors that affect it. She has done research in the historic cigar-producing community in Tampa and health-related ethnographic research with clients of a substance abuse treatment center. Sandhya's research provides significant evidence to help hold Molycorp accountable for a range of impacts on Questa. Amigos Bravos is also working with videographer Sylvia Atencio to incorporate the oral histories into a documentary about Molycorp and community's perspectives. In order to broaden our understanding of these complex issues, we have interviewed life-long Questa residents, former mine employees, activists, and authors. Individual opinions about Molycorp vary greatly from one resident to another. Said one resident in an accepting, somewhat fatalistic tone, "The mine or an oil well or I don't care what kind of industry you bring into a town, a community, a city, you're going to have the pollution...If you want the jobs, you're going to have to deal with it, and pray to God that nothing happens to you." Aware that multinational corporations are destroying traditional, sustainable communities around the world, other residents are angry at Molycorp for the pollution it has brought to Questa. "They come in here and make big bucks. And then they leave and leave you with the degradation of land, air, water. And they're still creating problems...The Molybdenum Corporation of America has not been a good neighbor." Comprehensive studies of Molycorp's effects on the health of Questa's citizens have yet to be done, yet many residents tell what pollution has meant to them. One resident recalls, "Can you imagine? Can you imagine canceling the state final championship baseball game because the dust was blowing in the field and they couldn't see? I mean that was...that was uncalled for....There was a lot of kids getting sick....That's why we have a new high school." Another resident said, "I imagine that by the time they do decide to prove it, by that time maybe half of those people are dead."
Oral History Intern Gauges Community Health Concerns
Please return to the Summer 1999 Bulletin Index.