A Cultural Struggle in the Trenches

Ralph Garcia’s pickup crunched to a stop in the dust at the side of the gravel road. Hanging a leathery arm out his truck window, he gazed at a ribbon of water gurgling through the nearby ditch.

Garcia grunted in disgust. What should have been a torrent of spring runoff water was instead a modest flow. Not enough, Garcia knew, not nearly enough, to sate the thirst of the farmers and ranchers in the Valdez Valley. Not this summer.

“It’s so bad, I’ve never seen it like this,” Garcia said, not able to take his eyes off the weak stream of water. “I don’t know what we are going to do without the water. Summer is not even here.”

Garcia is the mayordomo in this narrow valley, and irrigation water is his intense concern. For 25 years he has been the man who decides who gets how much water and when. Garcia and this ditch, the San Antonio, and the 40 families who use it, are part of northern New Mexico’s ancient irrigation system--known as acequias (ah-SEC-key-ahs)--which has been moving water here since the Spanish rule of the 17th century.

Still governed by Spanish law, acequias siphon river water hundreds of miles through earthen ditches of various widths and depths. The mayordomo controls the head-gates of his ditch and diverts water to each member of the acequia.

But the persistent drought choking New Mexico threatens to dry up the acequias and a part of northern New Mexico’s way of life. Without water for their crops and cattle, few small farms or ranches here can survive.

The drought also imperils the centuries-old culture that’s centered on the beloved acequias and defines the northern part of the state. If water is the lifeblood of this semiarid landscape, then acequias are the silvery arteries that bring families and communities together.

And drought is not the only threat. Development is overtaking agriculture as the economic force in the region and the fast-growing cities may soon try to acquire the acequias’ water.

“The truth is that we are at a crucial point in the history of acequias: Is the drought going to last and affect our future or not?” asked Paula Garcia, director of the nonprofit New Mexico Acequia Assn. “Acequias are a touchstone for people in the community. Maybe this will be the crisis that precipitates a renewal.”

Because the region has been dominated by agriculture for 400 years, water--and the acequias--became the center of each community’s concern.

Even today, there is nothing else in the social fabric in this part of New Mexico, El Norte, that comes close to the significance of the acequias. In most communities here, the annual ditch-cleaning occasions a full-scale party, a harbinger of spring. As local boys labor alongside their elders in scraping and mending the ditch, the new responsibility signals their transition to manhood.

The sharing of the water--and the squabbling over it--have bound neighbors by allegiance or by feud for hundreds of years.

Water in New Mexico used to be more plentiful. In fact, the state is blessed with snow-covered mountains that feed a web of rivers and streams. Or they used to. Like most of its neighbors in the Southwest, New Mexico is in a state of drought emergency. Its rivers are not living up to their names: Rio Hondo is not deep and the Rio Grande is no longer big.

Only the Rio Seco, dry river, is appropriately named.

In impoverished northern New Mexico, where 90% of the state’s acequias operate, there has been a resurgence of interest in preserving the acequia culture in the last decade, as younger people have been encouraged to embrace their history.

“Your acequia is your tie to your land and your community,” said Geoff Bryce, the executive director of the Taos Valley Acequia Assn., as he gave a recent tour of Taos Valley ditches.

Bryce is also a parciante or member of the San Antonio acequia. Members take a share of water according to how much land they have. The mayordomo sets the priorities: In dry years such as this, the mayordomo may decide that members with livestock have priority for water over squash or chile farmers.

“The animal must come first,” Ralph Garcia said. He also has decreed that small kitchen gardens that feed families will be watered before commercial fields.

Members receive their water on the day and at the time set by the mayordomo. But some along the ditch get impatient for their allotted time and open their head-gates to allow a neighbor’s water to green their fields.

Disputes are common, and the drought has made relations even more tense. Many mayordomos, who must resolve any disputes, can tell stories of water-poaching arguments that resulted in fistfights or drawn guns.

“It’s almost unbearable to watch the water flow by when the fruit on your trees is dying,” said Priscilla Rael, whose family has grown apples and plums in the Valdez Valley for generations. “People do desperate things. To say that water is life is not saying too much.”

It’s not just the drought that threatens acequias, it’s increasing demand for water; 70% to 80% of New Mexico’s surface water is controlled by acequia associations. And with the state’s water resources about 21/2 times over-apportioned, it is likely that thirsty cities in northern New Mexico will look to the acequias this summer as a water source for municipal needs.

So-called “water farming,” in which cities buy water rights from beleaguered farmers, is a controversial practice in the Southwest, where thousands of acres a year of formerly farmed land lies fallow while its allotment of water flows to encroaching subdivisions.

The New Mexico Acequia Assn., aware of the increasing pressure for water, recently issued a statement of principle: Water belongs to the community and is not an economic commodity to be sold.

But everyone on the ditch knows the value of the water, and everyone knows what a developer would be willing to pay for it. In a drought year, the financial stress on families is enormous, as is the pressure to hold out.

In the curious economics of water, acequia members may be assessed only $1.25 per acre-foot (about 325,640 gallons) per year to draw water from the ditch. A local water broker might offer a member as much as $40,000 for one-time rights to the same amount of water.

“This is northern New Mexico, the poorest region of the country, and people are vulnerable,” said David Benavides, a water lawyer who works with acequia groups. “Developers come in and try to buy out the farmers. How can that be good for the community?”

Garcia, making his rounds in his battered pickup, will not allow his acequia to dry up, one way or the other. Like the others along the ditch, his fields need water. He’s not doing it for the $300 he’s paid a year. “That’s not even gas money,” he said, laughing.

“The acequia is for the people, that’s why I do it. To continue the tradition. Let’s hope we can keep our water.”