Abstract

RIVERA, José A.  and  MARTINEZ, Luis Pablo. Acequia culture: historic irrigated landscapes of New Mexico. agric. soc. desarro [online]. 2009, vol.6, n.3, pp.311-330. ISSN 1870-5472.

The first Europeans who entered the upper Rio del Norte (current Rio Grande or Rio Bravo) of northern Nueva España (New Spain) in the sixteenth century, encountered Pueblo Indians whose  Anasazi ancestors were the first horticulturalists of the region by their use of rainwater harvesting and other water control systems. Due to Spanish colonization policies, new and more expansive settlements were to be located throughout the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro from El Paso del Norte to Santa Fe in the old  Provincia del Nuevo México. Water from snowmelt was essential to the establishment of communities in downstream valleys where pockets of arable land were located. Here the Spanish-Mexican settlers diverted and conducted water from rivers through acequia irrigation canal systems transforming the semi-arid landscape  into agrosystems that have survived in to modern times as sustainable examples of the millennial culture of water of Arab,  Iranian and Saharan origin that reached the New World. Economic change and State-driven hydraulic policies removed acequia diversions along the Middle Rio Grande Valley ending  much of the acequia legacy in the 1930s with the establishment of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. In recent decades the pressures of development threaten to destabilize the surviving  acequia communities in Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado as they confront increased demand from municipalities, industry, recreational, and environmental uses of water. For more than four centuries the acequias have overcome other forces of change due to the solidarity of the irrigators in defense of their agrarian traditions. This article outlines the historic roots of the acequia culture and how the traditional irrigators plan to protect their traditional way of life into future generations. Sharing of knowledge and the interchange of experiences and human values with other traditional irrigation cultures around the world may offer strategies for collective action to counter the common threats.

Keywords : Acequia culture; New México; landscapes.

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