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You are here: Home / Politics / Radical Feminists, Angry Indians and Illegal Mexicans

Radical Feminists, Angry Indians and Illegal Mexicans

June 17th, 2016 by Sallie Bingham in Politics, New Mexico 4 Comments

Flag of New MexicoIt seems that a certain tourist from Pennsylvania was offended by what he viewed here in Northern New Mexico as people whose appearance, background, ethnicity and political opinions are unacceptable to him. He wrote a letter to the editor to our state’s two largest newspapers, denouncing these people and warning that they are injuring the tourist industry.

He blamed quite a large group, both here in Santa Fe, in the country as a whole (where Hispanics now make up the largest minority), and in the world.

But you know, this is the “Land of Enchantment.” Nothing is supposed to matter here but the climate and the landscape. Surely both would be better if the land was depopulated of those very groups that make it enchanted: the original inhabitants (our tourist disputes that), women who for a century have found their spiritual, emotional and political home here (and thank God that includes at least a few radical feminists, like me) and people from countries to the south, often fleeing persecution, who do ninety percent of the hard physical labor here and without whom our economy and the economy of the nation would collapse—especially since they are forced by necessity to accept the nation’s miserable minimum wage.

No self-respecting “American” would accept that wage or do the essential work we seem to consider beneath us.

These days we are hearing language that is the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater, language that whether the speaker is aware of it or not, incites to violence.

It’s fortunate for our tourist and his wife that they fled rather than going to the Trump rally—Fox News apparently enlightened them on episodes of “violence,” surely the acts of those same inflamed feminists, “Indians” and “Mexicans.”

Our tourist brought his wife with him. She is, in his letter “my wife,” but it seems likely that she has at least a first name, and if she has a name, she may also harbor some opinions, although they would probably only reflect and reinforce the blatherings of our tourist.

Fleeing, they escaped the blurring of our landscape and poisoning of our air by the vast Dog Head Fire southeast of Los Lunas. I like to imagine that our tourist might imagine that the fire was ignited by the rage of us feminists, “Indians” and “Mexicans,” rather than by lightning searing acres of drought-parched mountain.

Would that, Athena-like, we had the power to put it out.

Having laughed a little, I am now forced to realize that the opinions of our tourist (and his wife?) are the same opinions that fueled the killer five days ago in Orlando.

He exploded, his wife and a co-worker said, when he had to encounter the existence of women and “illegals”—and, obviously, LBGT people.

Our tourist is not a killer, and even Trump, who (and his wife?) has not dared to support excluding all LGBT people from “Great America,” although you can be sure when his adoring wife and adoring daughters (and, according to him, several adoring movie stars) are his audience, he may indulge in such fantasies. After all, given his other opinions, it would make sense.

So we are dealing with murderous thoughts, even when they don’t result in murder as they did in Orlando.

Now, of course, there is the issue of freedom of speech.

Long ago, its limit was popularly defined (if not legally) as anything that does not cause a panic, like shouting fire in a crowded movie theater.

These days we are hearing language that is the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater, language that whether the speaker is aware of it or not, incites to violence.

There is a little more to be said about our tourist from Pennsylvania (and his wife?).

Pennsylvania was the site of the first oil strikes in the nineteen century. It was the state where Standard Oil first sank is claws into the earth. As Ida Tarbell’s majestic The History of the Standard Oil Company reveals, in the process of creating its monopoly, John D. Rockefeller and my remote ancestor-by-marriage, Henry Flagler, crushed all the small local oil companies, such as one owned by Ida’s father.

We are beginning to understand something about inherited trauma, descending through a family for generations even when the source of the original trauma is hidden. Is it possible that the history of coercion in a state can produce generations of acceptors of the conservative point of view, whose great-great-great-grandfathers (and grandmothers) had to bow to the coercion of Standard Oil?

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In Politics, New Mexico Santa Fe New Mexico John D. Rockefeller Henry Flagler

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Nadine Stafford on Facebook says

    June 17th, 2016 at 1:08 pm

    He is a sadly ignorant man, as attested by his belief that Native Americans have somehow lied their way into our history and false entitlement. Unfortunately, this reinforces the stereotype of people who support Donald Trump.

    Reply
    • Jacquelyn Carruthers on Facebook says

      June 20th, 2016 at 7:03 pm

      They are a beautiful ancient and culturally rich group of people….I think they are patiently waiting for their time to come back around. This a painting I did of an Eastern Native indian… Choctaw

      Reply
  2. Tori Warner Shepard on Facebook says

    June 18th, 2016 at 12:32 pm

    he is so close-thinking to Trump. The New mexican had a gorgeous editorial on him yesterday.

    Reply
  3. David Allen Fitts on Facebook says

    June 21st, 2016 at 1:12 pm

    My first trip “out west” was in 1975, fulfilling a dream since I was an 8 year old of going to Yellowstone NP. I had always felt an affinity for native Americans. I knew there was prejudice against them out there but was shocked to actually hear it so openly expressed. Hopefully these views are experiencing their twilight time. It can’t happen too soon!

    Reply

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