Santa Fe New Mexican, June 15, 2014

Page 1

With new projector, one of state’s Happy Father’s Day: For this last drive-ins lives on Local news, C-1 dad, baby had the plan Opinions, B-4

Locally owned and independent

S.F. girl found in Calif. Nine-year-old is safe after night alone in the woods. LOCAL NEws, C-1

Bustos lands UNM job Ex-West Las Vegas standout is Lobos’ new video coordinator. sPORTs, D-1

Sunday, June 15, 2014

New owners at San Marcos

www.santafenewmexican.com

$1.25

Capitol’s art expert Roundhouse curator oversees 600 works of art in eclectic statewide collection.

Michigan couple to take over the landmark restaurant south of the city but plan few changes — and the menagerie of fowl will stay. PAGE C-1

NEIGHBORs, C-6

Years of ‘waiting for the VA’ Nationwide reports of widespread problems in the Veterans Affairs health system is nothing new to local vets, who say long delays and poor service are common in N.M.

At the Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery in Taos, adjacent to the newly renamed park, a streak of paint tarnishes the legendary scout’s name on a historic marker. CLYDE MUELLER/THE NEW MEXICAN

Renaming of Taos park revives debate on Kit Carson By Daniel J. Chacón The New Mexican

TAOS — Sam Jiron grew up believing that Christopher “Kit” Carson was a noble man, a great leader and scout whose place in American history should be revered. Over time, Jiron, now 43, has come to a different belief. “He was a murderer,” Jiron, a Taos Pueblo member, said Thursday while sitting on a shaded patch of grass in a 19-acre park named after the famed frontiersman. It’s a sentiment shared by others, including newly elected town Councilor Fritz Hahn, a white man who was part of a majority vote last week to strip Carson’s name from the park and rename it Red Willow in deference to Native Americans. The Tuesday vote, intended to ease some of the pain that many indigenous people still feel about Carson and other settlers, reignited a bitter debate in New Mexico over the recognition and honor that should be placed on historical figures with complicated pasts. Hahn said he has been flooded with complaints from “angry” constituents since the council renamed the park, where Carson and his third wife, Josefa Jaramillo Carson, are buried side by side. Hahn said he has been encouraging people to attend the next council meeting June 24 to voice their concerns, but he’s not going to change his mind. “Here’s the core issue: When I hear people from the pueblo saying that they don’t like coming into town, they feel diminished, when I hear our Pueblo sisters and brothers talking about not even wanting to go to

Vietnam veteran John Breneiser waited so long for eye care through the Veteran Affairs health system that he eventually gave up and paid thousands of dollars out of his own pocket for surgery.

By Robert Nott Photos by Jane Phillips

W

The New Mexican

hen John Breneiser underwent cataract surgery in 2011 at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Albuquerque, doctors discovered another problem. The retina of his right eye was detached. The disabled Vietnam veteran would need more surgery. Three years later, Breneiser was still waiting.

The pain at times was searing. His vision out of that eye gradually eroded. Yet weekly phone calls to a veterans outpatient clinic to schedule an operation yielded only promises of callbacks that never came. Finally, last week, with still no word from the clinic, Breneiser went to a private doctor and paid thousands of dollars out of his own pocket for the procedure. “I got tired of waiting for the VA and waiting for the VA and waiting for the VA,” the 64-year-old Santa Fe resident said. “It takes forever to get anything done.” His experience is just one of a growing number of stories of agonizingly long delays in care offered by the nation’s veterans hospitals. An audit released last week by the

Department of Veterans Affairs revealed a wide range of problems with the department’s 731 hospitals and outpatient clinics. Among the issues: 57,000 veterans, or 90 percent of all new enrollees, waited more than three months for their first medical appointments. Another 64,000 never saw a doctor at all after being enrolled in the system for a decade, despite repeated requests. And more than three-quarters of all facilities had manipulated data at least once, some creating “dummy” lists to make the wait times look more favorable. In New Mexico, more than 1,000 veterans have waited three or more months for initial medical appointments, and more than 3,000 vets were assigned to

Please see wAITING, Page A-4

Please see HIsTORY, Page A-5

Militant group’s gains in Iraq fulfill founder’s violent vision Years after Zarqawi killed in U.S. strike, organization again on march By Joby Warrick

The Washington Post

Feds struggle to inspect high-risk oil and gas wells By Hope Yen and Thomas Peipert The Associated Press

NEW CASTLE, Colo. — Four in 10 new oil and gas wells near national forests and fragile watersheds, or other areas with high pollution risks, escape federal inspection, unchecked by an agency struggling to keep pace with America’s drilling boom, according to an Associated Press review that shows wide state-by-state disparities in safety checks. Roughly half or more of wells on federal and Indian lands weren’t checked in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, despite potential harm that has led to efforts in some communities to ban new drilling.

Index

Calendar A-2

Classifieds E-7

In New Castle, a tiny Colorado River valley community, homeowners expressed chagrin at the large number of uninspected wells, many on federal land, that dot the steep hillsides and rocky landscape. Like elsewhere in the West, water is a precious commodity in this Colorado town, and some residents worry about the potential health hazards of any leaks from wells and drilling. “Nobody wants to live by an oil rig. We surely didn’t want to,” said Joann

Please see INsPECT, Page A-5 INSIDE: Inspectors racing to keep up with wells in New Mexico. PAGE C-5

Comics Inside

Main office: 983-3303 Late paper: 986-3010 News tips: 983-3035

Neighbors C-6

Pasapick

www.pasatiempo magazine.com

New Mexico Gay Men’s Chorus We’re Married! Now What? 3-5 p.m., James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf, 1060 Cerrillos Road, $20 in advance online at nmgmc.org and at the door, discounts available.

Obituaries Nancy Jean Deane, Santa Fe, June 12 Fidel “Del” Jacques, May 30 Robert F. Kelly, 61, Tucson, Ariz., May 20 Jacobo (Jake)

Lotteries A-2

Opinions B-1

D. Martinez Sr., 88, Santa Fe, June 9 Manuelita Romero, 102, June 8 Deborah Roxburgh Scott, 62, Oro Valley, Ariz. PAGE C-2

Sports D-1

Today Sunny, breezy. High 84, low 50.

On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a 36-year-old Jordanian who called himself “the Stranger” slipped into the suburbs of Baghdad armed with a few weapons, bags of cash and an audacious plan for starting a war he hoped would unite Sunni Muslims across the Middle East. The tattooed ex-convict and high-school dropout had few followers and scant ties to the local population. Yet, the Stranger — soon to be known widely as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — quickly rallied thousands of Iraqis and foreign fighters to his cause. He launched spectacular suicide bombings and gruesome executions targeting Americans, Shiites and others he saw as obstacles to his vision for a Sunni caliphate stretching from Syria to the Persian Gulf. Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006, but the organization he founded is again on the march. In just a week, his group — formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq and now called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — has seized cities and towns across western and northern Iraq at a pace that might have astonished Zarqawi himself. Already in control of large swaths of eastern Syria, the group’s black-clad warriors appear to have taken a leap toward realizing Zarqawi’s dream of an extremist Sunni enclave across the region.

Please see IRAQ, Page A-8

PAGE D-6

Time Out C-8

Real estate E-1

BREAKING NEWS AT WWW.SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

Six sections, 76 pages 165th year, No. 166 Publication No. 596-440


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