Properties of Violence

About this book

"Through the compelling story of the Tierra Amarilla conflict, David Correia examines how law and property, in general, and a Mexican-period land grant in northern New Mexico, in particular, have been constituted through violence and social struggle. Correia narrates a long and largely unknown history of property conflict in Tierra Amarilla characterized by nearly constant violence - night riding and fence cutting, pitched gun battles, and tanks rumbling along the rutted dirt roads of northern New Mexico. The legal geography he constructs is one that includes a remarkable cast of characters: millionaire sheep barons, Spanish anarchists, hooded Klansmen, Puerto rican freedom fighters, or as J. Edgar Hoover, another figure in Correia's story, would have called them, 'terrorists.' By placing property and law at the center of his study, Properties of Violence first reveals and thenexamines a central irony: violence is not the opposite of law but rather is essential to its operation"--Unedited summary from book.