John Nichols’ seminal social-justice novel “The Milagro Beanfield War” turned 50 this year. In San Luis, Antonito, Saguache, Alamosa, Denver, and Pueblo as well, young direct descendants of the fact-based water-rights conflict are performing their stage adaptation of the story and touring the play as their first significant exposure to the performing arts.

The year-long effort is the passion project of Millie Duran, founder of a Denver-based nonprofit called Casa Milagro Youth Solutions. She was inspired a decade ago by a visit to Denver by the legendary Brazilian theater practitioner Augusto Boal, who coined the term Theater of the Oppressed as a way to use art to promote social and political change.

Duran found that many young people in San Luis, Colorado’s oldest town (225 miles south of Denver near the New Mexico border) – are burdened by domestic violence and other traumas that are not being addressed. “I thought there was an incredible need, and that theater would help,” she said.

Nichols’ fictional novel is based on the very real struggle by Hispanic-Americans in northern New Mexico to restore ancestral land grants taken from them by Anglos dating back to the 1850s. In the novel, a patchwork battle is sparked between dirt-poor small farmers and rich New Mexico golf course developers over access to the town’s main irrigation channel. To many, the conflict symbolized a struggle over access to tens of thousands of acres of mountainous land that has been waged in Southern Colorado for decades.

A year ago, Duran gave Nichols’ novel to four San Luis high school students, and together they began to break it down by characters and scenes. Over time, their ensemble grew to 11, even adding two kids from Denver. The students, ages 13-18, developed their own script, parsing out 55 roles among them. “This became their lives,” said Duran. And in many ways, it already was.

“Some of these kids are the actual heirs to that (disputed) land,” Duran said. What they learned from all their study, she added: “So much has not changed.”

Millie Duran: milliecasamilagro@gmail.com

By Casa Milagro Youth Solutions & The San Luis Valley Youth

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