Charlie Crowder, R.I.P.

Charlie Crowder was a genius.  He had algorithms in his head for strategy that were simply different from those of anyone else.  No matter what the subject, when trying to think a move or two ahead, Charlie's solution was inevitably better than mine, more comprehensive, bolder.  But his genius also included finding creative ways to implement his plan, an instinct for where the obstacles would be, and a plan for solving these, and an arsenal of contacts that might help him overcome.  So his genius was multi-dimensional.  He was also enormously fun to be with, his jolly disposition contagious as he rattled out one funny story after another, a twinkle in his eyes, often making fun of himself but never forgetting to include you in the conversation.

Charlie had a knack for making friends in very high and often not-so-high places.  He knew every Mexican President from Lopez Mateos in the early 1960s on and he could prove to skeptics that he could get help when needed.  Like another accomplished genius, Cesar Chavez, Charlie had an uncanny ability to make you feel it was a privilege, not a chore, to do a favor for him.  As with Cesar Chavez, it was in great part the feeling of participating in a tiny way in the creation of a vision--something larger than yourself and worth doing—that motivated you to throw your own grain of sand into the mix.

Charlies' greatest accomplishment was his vision for the US-Mexico border, a vision that in part has been realized in the project at Santa Teresa.  Way back in the 1960s he envisioned binational border communities working together symbiotically, both sides benefiting and growing closer together.  He had the stuff to put this vision to work, trading federal land in Arizona for 29,000 acres of desert on the US-Mexico border near Sunland Park.  He had a water claim, of 110,000 acre-feet in the Mesilla Bolson, backed, at the time, by the New Mexico state engineer, the legendary Steve Reynolds.  Reynolds understood that Charlie's claim to this water, under the Mendenhall doctrine, would also, ingeniously, protect New Mexico against Texas' desire to pump water in New Mexico for El Paso.  So he backed it.

Ultimately, Charlie’s vision was so stunning, historic in scope, and just downright attractive, that ambitious rivals couldn’t resist wanting to saw off pieces of his vision for themselves, for money or, perhaps just as important, to step into the middle of the photograph, leaving Charlie to one side.  Politicians, some of them still revered in New Mexico, listened to some of these rivals, none of whom, despite promises, delivered much to further the vision.  The delays these moves caused ended up fragmenting the project and there it stands today, a border crossing with limited appeal, a source of political conflict, unfinished, precarious, worthy of pursuing but unworthy of its original intent.

At his best the algorithms in Charlie’s head, when acted on, changed reality dramatically, leaving observers trying to sort out what had happened.  At one critical moment, when actors on the other side were dragging their heels in completing a road to Santa Teresa, Charlie simply rented equipment, crossed the border, and built the road himself, leaving observers on both sides astonished at this boldness, wondering how this unauthorized US incursion into Mexico territory, 50 miles from where Pancho Villa crossed over, had gone apparently unnoticed at the highest levels of the Mexican government.  But it got the job done.