Paradise Rocked

The old Spanish settlement of Taos, tucked away in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico, is loosely linked to the rest of the world only by narrow, crumbling ribbons of highways. It seemed a God-sent El Dorado for the nation's newest wave of migrants. Over the past two years, driven from the cities by hoodlums and a yearning for the pastoral life, some 1,000 hippies have settled around Taos--buying small plots of land, hand-fashioning adobe casas, and settling down to light farming. Along with their home-grown marijuana and vegetables, however, they have been reaping a harvest of distrust, misunderstanding and rejection--accompanied by sporadic violence. Hippies have been beaten. Their homes and "free stores" have been vandalized. Last month a hippie girl was gang-raped.

The postcard-picturesque county seat, Taos (pop. 3,500) has weathered older if less disruptive migrations. Its primitive charm and unassailable isolation have made it a magnet since the 1890s for hundreds of bohemian writers and artists. One of the first hippies to come was D. H. Lawrence, whose ranch and grave near by have been turned into a literary shrine. Swarms of tourists followed those early migrants, and Taos County now boasts ski resorts, art galleries and countless souvenir shops.

Public Fistfight. At first, the refugee hippies were accepted with little suspicion. But a spontaneous public fistfight in April was followed by a stabbing and a firebombing, and state troopers were called in to establish an uneasy truce. Last month Taos canceled an annual two-day town festival for fear of further violence, but ugly incidents have continued nonetheless.

Taosenos complain of the hippies' immorality, drug abuse and public nudity, but the complaints have proved largely illusory. A more realistic reason for the rancor is the fact that as many as 25% of local residents--most of whom are Mexican Americans--are unemployed, and many resent the white middle-class hippies' obvious flouting of the American ideal. "They are making fun of our poverty and our fight for survival," says Francis Quintana, a local school principal. Another explanation is that local entrepreneurs fear the hippies will hurt Taos' largest industry, tourism. "Tourists don't want to come and share the venereal disease and hepatitis with us," said Mrs. Beverly Gonzales, wife of a Taos merchant.

Boom let. In fact, tourism is thriving, and the hippies have brought no epidemics with them. What they have brought is an economic boomlet, by injecting nearly half a million dollars into the local economy with their land purchases alone.

As the community conspires to oust them, the hippies have been setting up well-organized but acephalous communes, with ordinances that prescribe nonviolence and charity. "We're not political," explained Gretchen Dickson, a 17-year-old blonde from Pittsburgh. "We just want to be beautiful." To relieve tension, many hippies have fled higher up into the mountains. But some 10,000 more are expected to pass through Taos this summer as word of its pristine seclusion gets around.

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