I confess, I'm a Minnesota native who has resided full-time in Santa Fe for 20-plus years.

For about 15 of those years, I've participated in a variety of events at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. Until I briefly served as a member of its board, I was uncertain as to what role in the community El Museo had been created to play. El Museo's stated mission, from the articles of incorporation, follows:

"The corporation is organized and will be operated for charitable, educational, and community preservation purposes and in particular the protection and promotion of the Hispanic culture of New Mexico by collecting, supporting and making available to the general public, but not limited to, the visual and language arts, literature, music, dance, architecture, culinary and other traditional and contemporary representations of the Hispanic culture which directly or indirectly affect and improve the quality of community life."

To some this mission may not be politically correct. It is not meant to serve a touted, yet imaginary, harmonious "tri-cultural" community. The mission, for historical and geographic reasons is culture-specific and meant to serve a unique sub-culture within the larger global Latino culture. This social construct has been in place in Northern New Mexico since the 1500s.

As a former board member of El Museo, some of my duties included examining the comprehensive history of the organization, including lease agreements, liabilities and assets and programming history, to gain an overall perspective of the obstacles the corporation faced and possible solutions for some of those problems.

A few weeks before my arrival, our former Mayor Debbie Jaramillo was hand-selected for invitation to the board by those managing the corporation at the time. The most obvious reasons put forth for this choice were her proven tenacious dedication to task and negotiating skills, tailor made for El Museo's most visible problems. It did not hurt that it was from her concept that the El Museo mission statement had been derived.

We began a collaboration, several months in duration, that revealed an interlocking, disturbing and seemingly insurmountable string of obstacles. We researched and "discovered" many of the issues briefly referenced in Tom Sharp's Dec. 12 article, "Ex-mayor cuts ties after alleging conflicts of interest, diluted cultural mission," about Ms. Jaramillo's recent resignation from the board. The vast majority of these issues arose after the management of El Museo's lease was transferred from the City of Santa Fe to the Railyard Corporation. Generating income to meet Railyard development indebtedness became the highest priority, and as always, the "aesthetic" of preserving (Latino) culture and community moved far enough down the list as to become nearly invisible. The conceptual bottom line: El Museo was a prime piece of real estate, in a prime location far better suited to other commercial, income-generating interests, than those of a nonprofit, culture-specific, community-based organization.

Much of the board seemed to share that perspective, placing emphasis on income, not mission, to the point of dismissing or tabling many of the concerns, issues and suggestions raised by myself and Ms. Jaramillo at our then-weekly meetings.

Throughout, we attempted to take the position of "mission first ... potential remedy second." This led to conflict, confrontation and the resignation of several board members of whom we were only the most recent. Internally, the personalities involved in this reality theater came into play, but ultimately things always boiled down to who would do what to "pay the rent."

This issue is more about the use of a historical weapon of oppression, the "civilized" (read white Western) use of lawyers and bankers to ensure a proper social distance is maintained between those who "have" and those who do not. Unlike the movies, the guy without the lawyer or the bank account never wins in the end. Like it or not, this issue is about both racism and class. The city and the Railyard corporation hold the purse strings.

The state statutes govern nonprofits and their missions. Each has the ability to resolve the matter without a shot being fired. For truth, track a few coming attractions at El Museo and see how they fit the mission.

T.E. Origer is a former board member of El Museo Cultural. He lives in Santa Fe.