Here's an example of the chasm between the two ethnic groups in Silver City:

Last night Raymond Caballero spoke at Miller Library about his new book, McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks, just published by the University of Oklahoma Press. During the discussion period, I asked him whether the Empire Zinc strike would have happened without Clinton Jencks. Caballero gave a noncommittal answer; it's one of those hypothetical historical questions that nobody can be too sure about.

From the audience, three people said it would not have happened without Jencks; they are all Anglos. Three other people said it would have happened without him; they are all Hispanics. It was a polite exchange, but people expressed themselves strongly.

Historical accounts are inevitably biased and subjective, of course. History is not a social science; there is nothing "scientific" about it. In this case, it seems, the determining factor was not the available historical evidence but the speaker's ethnic identification. People took sides based on that.

It seems to me that we need to ventilate these issues and talk about them in candor. Something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that took place in South Africa in the 1990s.

Stephen Fox
Silver City