SAN LUIS — Like a bit of poetic irony, John Nichols’ classic 1974 novel “Milagro Beanfield War” has been adapted into a play written and performed by youths, many of whom are heirs to the Sangre de Cristo Mexican Land Grant — the focus of a seven decade battle over historic land rights.
The troupe will end it’s tour of the San Luis Valley with final performances of the play to be performed at Su Teatro Performing Arts Theater in Denver at 1 and 6 p.m. on Sept. 27, and in Pueblo at 1 p.m. on Oct. 3 at Pueblo Community College’s Hoag Theater. Admission to all performances are free.
Director Millie Duran, said the production has been a yearlong project for her Denver-based nonprofit Casa Milagro Youth Solutions. Before his death in November 2023, Nichols gave Duran’s group permission to perform the play based on his novel. The process began when four San Luis Centennial High School students were asked to read the novel. The students, ages 13-18 broke the story down into scenes, wrote a script and recruited actors.
“Some of these kids are the actual heirs to that (disputed) land,” Duran said.
Aware that the rural youths of the San Luis Valley share many of the same issues their urban counterparts experience, Duran thought involving them in theater would give them a forum for self-expression.
Even before the ink was dry on Nichols’ novel, comparisons were being made between the beanfield war in the fictional town of Milagro, NM, and San Luis, CO, where heirs have been fighting to regain access to the Mountain Tract purchased by lumber baron Jack Taylor in 1960.
For more than a century, the original settlers of the Sangre de Cristo lLand Grant had unimpeded access to the 77,000-acre tract for the basic necessities of timber, firewood, livestock grazing, wild game and recreation. The delicately balanced communal use of the tract was disrupted when Taylor fenced the property off and bulldozed county roads into the property.
In Nichols’ novel, the Chicano community of a northern New Mexican village are fighting powerful business interests over land and water rights. A New Yorker transplanted to Taos, NM, Nichols, cleverly paints his “Milagro” from the perspective of a Gringo immersed in Chicano culture.
The Denver and Pueblo shows are the last scheduled performances for the current tour and may be the last chances to see production with the original cast of 11 adolescents. Except for two Denver teens, the cast are from San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado.
