In Redefining Community, the main thesis offered by Sarah Deutsch is that Hispanic coal miners were forced to turn to the regional community because the mining community offered only manipulation and forced assimilation: “The CFI succeeded in dominating the economy of southern Colorado, in destroying the framework of village life, and in preventing the miners from rebuilding it on their own terms” (106).
Between 1900 and 1910, the community of coal-mine workers in Colorado more than doubled. Many New Mexicans, Hispanics and Anglos followed the establishment of mines. Las Animas County, Colorado was a small Hispanic village in the 1850s, but by the turn of the century the population quadrupled with only one-quarter being Hispanic (Deutsch 88). Large groups of immigrants, including Italians, Poles and Irish contributed to the rapidly changing population, one that according to Deutsch “threatened the integrity of the Hispanic communities” (89).
Hispanic farmers continued to comprise the regional community, but often these farmers would migrate to the mine communities in search of seasonal and/or higher paying work opportunities. The living space of Hispanics prior to the arrival of the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI) Company was a homogenous community-oriented system. Adobe housing and a community-oriented plaza were hallmarks of the prior settlements before CFI moved in and basically took over community organization and control. By declaring the existing settlers “squatters” after purchasing the site by a land grant settlement, CFI effectively denied the existence and legitimacy of the prior settles. As Deutsch notes: “The company could justify its erection of company ‘city-states’, arguing that the ‘remoteness’ of sites from any real settlements necessitated their provision of all housing and community services” (90).
Old formations of Hispanic communities involved adobe housing linked by walls that ...