50 years ago: Cargo blasts schools, ignites film industry

David Cargo, who was running for New Mexico governor, decided that what his platform needed was a strong Indian plank.

So on Oct. 23, 1966, he gave a speech blasting school districts in the state for “using Navajo children merely to collect federal matching funds without providing even a minimum of education for the Indians.”

These are grandparents of today’s students that he is talking about and he minced no words in his anger at what the public school districts were doing to that generation of Indian children.

“There are instances, and you know of this, of Navajo children 15 and 16 years old who have been attending school and who cannot speak, read or write the English language,” he said.

Cargo, who was elected and served until 1971, spoke several times during his campaign about the pitiful plight of education in the state not only for Native children but for rural children as well.

During Cargo’s tenure as governor, he was not noted for reforming education in the state and while he would bring up the sorry condition of public schools throughout his administration, it seems he did little to improve them.

But he did something that would benefit the Navajo greatly — he promoted the state as a perfect place to film movies. Movie production in the state increased substantially, and if you watch some movie from his period, you may get a chance to see his face in the background of a scene or two.

Some of the movies made during that period included “The Vanishing Point,”which is now a cult classic, and “The Hired Hand.”

The Navajo Tribe got a few movie directors here to film scenes, mostly in the Farmington area, but Monument Valley was still the place most movie directors wanted to film.

Westerns, however, were losing their appeal and by 1971, when Cargo left office, the genre was pretty much dead (although the reservation was chosen by Clint Eastwood as a location for a couple of his movies in the 1970s, including “The Outlaw Josey Wales”).

This date 50 years ago, it had been a week since the incident in Wide Ruins at a rally for Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai,who was running for re-election.

Depending on which version about what happened you believe, it appears from police records that supporters of Nakai’s opponent, Sam Billison, started asking questions in a loud and angry fashion and were beat up by Nakai supporters in the crowd.

Several people were taken to the hospital with injuries and a decision was made to have a great tribal police presence at all of the other rallies until the election was over in early November.

Everything had gone smoothly since the Wide Ruins scuffle, but this kept Billison from trying to profit from the violence at the rally.

He released a statement this week in 1966 urging members of the Navajo population to remain calm and enjoy the remaining three weeks of the tribal election period.

“We realize some persons became overexcited during the heat of the political campaign,” he said. “But I would remind such people that to release their excitement in the form of violence is to defeat the very thing we are all striving for — a truly Democratic society.”

He finished his talk to radio listeners by saying that “differences of opinion are healthy for democracy — violence is not.”

Of course, he did not give up an opportunity to scold Nakai.

“Unfortunately, the present chairman has indicated a lack of leadership ability in this field as well as others and did not attempt to control the incident when it happened,” said Billison. “Now he compounds his error by failing to issue a statement condemning such behavior at public meetings.”

Which points out something about the way each of the candidates treated the press.

Billison spoke to the press often, hoping to get stories in the Navajo Times and bordertown newspapers, thus save him money on advertisements. There would be one or two articles about Billison in every Times in September and October.

Nakai, on the other hand, sill did not trust the press and most of his appearances in the papers during this time consisted of statements that he released from his office on this or that subject.

He felt the best way he could conduct his campaign was to take it to the people and this he did, spending four or five days on the road each week attending chapter meetings and rallies.

---