Page 11 - the Noise December 2016

Acequia Perpetua
We all wake up in the desert each and every morning. One good way of reminding ourselves of the fact is going out of the way of our day-to-day routines to consider the institutions put into place by those who came before us and experienced this arid reality in a more gut-punching, inescapable fact-of- life kind of way.
I traveled to northern New Mexico to attend an intergenerational acequia walk in Dixon — a pleasant little agricultural mountain town about an hour north of Santa Fe, tucked into the folds carved out by the Embudo River. The event was hosted by the Agrarian Trust, a nonprofififififififififififififififififififififififififififififit group dedicated to exploring and facilitating the upcoming transfer of agricultural land from the increasingly older owners and operators of farms and ranches in this country to their successors — hopefully folks with similar devotion to land stewardship and conservation. There were attendees from both sides of the coin, new and old farmers alike, as well as other interested parties from backgrounds in landscape architecture to interested laypeople curious and invested in at least the idea of traditional New Mexican acequia agriculture.
What is an acequia? In short, it refers to both an irrigation canal as well as the community organization of water users that maintains and depends upon that very canal. We have a similar, smaller set of irrigation canals here in the Verde Valley, though it being Arizona, we just call them ditches and don’t quite have the deep historical and cultural connection to them that our neighbors in New Mexico do. I have irrigated my vegetable crops using water diverted from creeks and springs here in the Verde Valley for a few short years now, and was eager to cross a border to witness in person, a system that went back a few more lifetimes than the manmade waterways local farmers here in Arizona have been relying upon since the 19th century.
The chief interpretive elder on our walk was Stanley Crawford, a semi-retired garlic and produce farmer who has been cultivating his acequia- irrigated crops since the late 1960s. As he stood on the banks of the irrigation ditch above his house, the gray-haired farmer recounted his community’s history of sharing locally controlled river water for his crops and those of the mostly Hispanic neighbors. Topics in the discussion ranged from Quranic edicts mandating the sharing of water in the desert to the difffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffference between whiskey and water, a colloquial saying referring to the former being for drinking and the latter being for fifififififififififififififififififififififififififififighting. Wry sense of humor aside, the joke underscored the divisive nature of water division, a timeless point of contention that shows no signs of becoming less contentious.
Yet here in front of us was an example of voluntary water sharing, and though not free of dispute or grumbling, this particular acequia was a working community hearkening back to a previous time period when sharing water wasn’t
Looking at the
by Tyler Zander
Ways of New Mexico’s Water From an Arizonan
Tyler walks the acequia in Cornville, Ariz., which brings water from Oak Creek to feed properties in the country.
such a heartwarming throwback to antiquity, but rather a necessary means for survival.
Crawford explained, the key to keeping relations workable was the accepted foundational idea that its members are all in the same boat, and that there’s no first class seating on that boat, only coach. Acequia members collectively share both the potential bounty promised by periods of sufficient water as well as the hard times imposed by water shortages. Lean seasons of drought are less divisive if it’s understood that your neighbor is facing the same challenges you are. This practice is one shared by many, if not all, societies founded in arid regions, especially those arising before the modern extractive miracle of the high-powered well drilling rig. Think of the Mormons settling Utah, Israelis farming the Negev, desert-dwelling Native Americans constructing their own pre-acequia canals, or their conquering Spanish cohabitants of the southwest.
Beyond this simple principle of water as an understood shared resource, there are some other defining characteristics of acequia agriculture, and something of a specialized vocabulary is needed to be conversant in it. Adapted from a centuries-old Spanish dialect, these terms outline practices and obligations inherent in them. Parciantes (ditch shareholders) elect a mayordomo (the ditch boss), who is responsible for settling disputes and ensuring fair access amongst users. Each stakeholder along the acequia receives a pión (or specific share) that outlines the duration and volume of water they are allowed to redirect from the acequia. In times of drought, these amounts are naturally limited, and the mayordomo issues papelitos (written communiques) indicating recently enacted water conservation measures that must be followed. During the limpia (cleaning) in the spring, community members work together to clean and repair the acequia to allow for the free, effective flow of irrigation water onto the small farms up and down the valley. Community organizing being what it is — a messy and imperfect process, there is also specialized terminology for those who don’t do their part in these yearly duties. These folks are labeled delicuentes, a term also reserved for those who fail to pay their annual monetary dues for their water rights. Using these historic terms is a deliberate way of honoring and reinforcing the spirit of traditional acequia collective management. This acequia vernacular is one part of the bulwark against more recently developed, lawyerly and extractive-minded concepts reducing water and land to mere commodities up for sale to the highest bidder. Adjudication, the doctrine of prior appropriation, subdivision, gentrification: these are
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