Guest Blog | Roberto Lovato on the wisdom of acequias

Moderator’s Note: With the
challenges facing us in all matters related to the survival of the dream of democracy,
equality, sustainability, and resilience, the work of local place-based institutions
that foster conviviality and economic livelihoods respecting these cherished
American values becomes all the more relevant and important.  We are pleased to present a photo essay by our
friend and colleague, Roberto Lovato that was published this past November in
the Craftsmanship Quarterly (Winter
2017) as part of a special thematic section on the “The Water Innovators.” We are
reposting with the permission of the author. The link to the original is here. Mr. Lovato interviewed me for this story in
Denver, Colorado for about two hours in October (2016). Many of the themes he
explores are addressed further in my forthcoming book, The Last Common: Endangered Lands and Disappeared People in the
Politics of Place.

The
acequias of Colorado and New Mexico are one facet of a fascinating assemblage
of agroecological methods, materials (biota), and artisan practices that blend
elements from across four continents and more than a dozen countries.

Our
irrigation system of acequias is ultimately rooted in the kuhls of Kangra, Himachal Pradesh (India) as this system was over several
centuries diffused westward toward the Middle East, North Africa, and the
Iberian Peninsula. The nearly 800-year presence of Arabic, Persian, Yemeni, Moor,
Berber, and Sephardic Jewish peoples in al
Andaluz (Andalusia, Spain) also shaped the institution of the acequia as it
exists today in the former Spanish and Mexican borderlands. This communal
irrigation institution is also rooted in the great Puebloan traditions that
have existed in the so-called American Southwest for more than 3000 years.

Our
principal crops – corn, bean, squash – are all indigenous to the Mesoamerican
Center of Origin; our orchard crops originated in Asia Minor (Kazakhstan) or
represent domesticated heirloom lines of native varieties like chokecherry,
elderberry, gooseberry, wild currant, and miniature black plum; our wheat and
barley come from the Middle Eastern and Asia Minor centers of origin, with further diversification via Spain.

The
unique riparian long-lot (vara strip or extension) cultural landscape of the
acequias of Colorado and New Mexico are modeled on the waldhaufendorf (forest long-lot) introduced by the Visigoths to
Spain after they converted to Christianity in the fifth century. The ancient
Roman metes and bounds tradition—which was refined by al-Majriti to survey the
boundaries of olive and citrus and fig orchards across Andalusia and, unlike the
rigid square grid of the 1785 Land Ordinance, favors cherished place-based
signposts like ‘witness trees’—was the method originally used to define and
describe our land grants and acequia-irrigated ribbon farm parcels.

This
is true multiculturalism. The attributes of the acequia farming systems of the
United States are widely celebrated as ecologically sustainable, socially
equitable, economically viable, and especially as a form of “water democracy”.

These
institutions of collective action, at once aboriginal yet wildly diasporic, are
becoming rarer as the United States continues to dig itself into the quicksand
of the white identity politics of resentiment.
It is time to learn and practice the antidote: Celebrate and replicate the
genius of those institutions of collective labor and action that allow people
to live in harmony with each other and their environments.

The
greatest craftwork of the acequia is perhaps ultimately the result of a set of sociability
and communicative skills that derive from our own deeply felt propensity toward
the convivial life that we nurture as Mexican origin people. That is the most
important lesson I get from reading Lovato’s eloquent paean to the wisdom and
genius of the ancient system of water democracy known as the acequia.

José
Avila is what’s called a ditch leader, or a mayordomo—a Spanish term from the
Arabic sahib-al saquiya: the one who takes care of and divides the water. In
Colorado and New Mexico, they are referred to as el digno de confianza—the one
who is worthy of trust. In either case, their job is to manage the local
acequias, a system of irrigation that has been passed from country to country
for centuries.

The hydraulic genius of Shari’ah law

You’ve probably never heard the term “acequia,” but it describes
one of the oldest methods of irrigation on the planet. Too bad American
ranchers have largely ignored it.

Story and photography by
ROBERTO LOVATO

Special from the Craftmanship Quarterly

Posted by Devon G. Peña |
January 28, 2017 | Seattle, WA

Near
the southernmost deserts of Colorado, in the immense silence and blue shadow of
the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) mountains, José Avila’s raspy, soft
voice seems to blend seamlessly with the swish of water flowing in the
irrigation ditch cutting through the alfalfa farm at our feet. A 30-degree
chill begins what will later become a 70-degree October day in the San Luis
valley. The farm’s quiet feels eons away from Denver, Colorado Springs, and
other upstream cities that are trapped in yearly cycles of drought, fires, and
other water calamities. Such is the fate of the arid land between the Rio
Grande and Interstate 25, as opposed to the communities where the Culebra River
flows.

The
People’s Ditch is the watery heart of San Luis, one of the oldest communities
in Colorado. It is also the oldest water right in the state and one of the
first public works projects in the region. At over 8,000 feet above sea level
and with average annual rainfall of less than 7 inches (the equivalent of some
of the world’s hottest deserts), the San Luis valley is not supposed to be as
green, gorgeous, or alive as it is. Nor is it supposed to enjoy the equilibrium
that the acequias make possible, an equilibrium that I saw lacking on the long
drive south from Denver.

With
the ditch burbling next to him, José explains the ancient practice of dividing
the flow of water with acequias, the gravity-based ditch and communal water
management systems that have irrigated farms in southern Colorado and northern
New Mexico since the arrival of the conquistadores. To be historically precise,
the conquistadores–and the Indian warriors and craftsmen accompanying them from
Mexico–brought this technology with them on their transatlantic journey from
the semi-arid regions of 16th-century southern Spain to the New World. The
Spaniards, in turn, learned it from their Arab and Berber conquerors, whose
civilization dominated large of swaths of Spain’s Iberian peninsula for more
than seven centuries.

José
and I are standing in a parched piece of the farm around what’s known as the
People’s Ditch, marked by a bronze plaque that commemorates this acequia’s
founding in 1852. “Some of the original signers,” José informs me, “have the
same last name as the parciantes (affiliated water users) today.” The football
field-sized strip of acequia serves 16 parciantes and irrigates more than 2100
acres of hay, chicos (dry corn) alfalfa, and other heirloom crops. And this is
just one slice of a four-mile network of earthen and concrete acequias. This
watery nervous system connects the People’s Ditch to 14 other acequias uniting
more than 350 families, and irrigating in excess of 23,000 acres across the valley.

When
I ask José how acequias work, he says “How do you explain how salt tastes?” His
Spanglish accent contains hints of the Purépecha indian heritage that he
brought with him from Michoacán, Mexico. “People write books and tell stories
about cambiando agua (literally “changing water”), but I’ve read some of those
books and sometimes it’s not stated well. You really have to do it.” José
describes acequia as a method of irrigation in which water managers work with
what they see as nature’s intent. As romantic as this sounds, it is supported
by the findings of Sylvia Rodriguez, a scholar at the School for Advanced
Research, a Santa Fe think tank. Acequia irrigation, she says, is “kinesthetic,
visual, technical, and interactive, but not especially verbal.”

“Watch” he says, asking me to pull the tarp away from the section of the farm he wants to irrigate. “Watch how the water does what you ask of it—if you ask the right way.”

I
check my boots and tuck in my pants in preparation for my first-ever attempt to
change the water in the 40 years since I discovered acequias as a curly-haired,
working-class, city-boy tourist in southern Spain. Moving slowly, José leads me
along the banks of the ditch next to a parcel used to grow alfalfa. Acequias,
he explains, “begin with finding springs and venas (veins) of water.” Once they
identify a source, locals try to envision the water’s course from higher to
lower elevations, according to the natural pull of gravity. Central to the
process,he adds, is the excavation of the acequia madre (literally “mother
acequia”). This is the largest and widest of the family, and it is cut
perpendicular to the stream so as to move the water laterally, toward the
fields the farmers want irrigated.

José
says the parciantes’ job is to make sure the water curves and cradles itself
within the natural embrace and gravity of the land. To do this, acequia
managers actually re-form the surrounding landscape. Once the higher elevations
have been irrigated, any water that remains returns to the original stream,
through what’s known as a desague (unwatering) channel located at the acequia’s
bottom portion. A line of trees, plants and other vegetation growing alongside
the acequias signal another of their distinguishing features: the ecological
benefits of the earthen materials used to build them.

At
over 8,000 feet above sea level and with average annual rainfall of less than 7
inches (the equivalent of some of the world’s hottest deserts), the San Luis
valley is not supposed to be as green, gorgeous, or alive as it is. Nor is it
supposed to enjoy the equilibrium that the acequias make possible, an
equilibrium that I saw lacking on the long drive south from Denver.

Unlike
modern concrete ditches that benefit little to no nearby plant life, a clay and
earthen-based acequia enhances the local ecology, especially the waterway’s
borderlands. Called riparian zones, these areas can grow into an entire
cornucopia of plants, animals, birds, and insects, which help sustain huge
fields of farmland through their interaction.

We
walk southward, downstream toward a dry patch of farmland. José furls his
eyebrows as he looks around, then reaches for a large orange tarp. “Watch” he
says, asking me to pull the tarp away from the section of the farm he wants to
irrigate. “Watch how the water does what you ask of it—if you ask the right
way.” Sure enough, water rushes down from the presa (an iron diversion dam),
flooding the section where José and I are standing and then washing onto the
plot of land to the right of the acequia. A 50-foot radius of parched earth
suddenly becomes a muddy patch of ground. Seeing life brought so easily to what
is essentially a piece of desert gives me a serious rush.

With nothing more than a simple tarp, José manages to divide and distributes water

to fields among
the community’s various landholders.

“THE
UNEQUALED CRAFTWORK OF ACEQUIAS”

The
deserts near the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains remained inhospitable
to agriculture for centuries, until the arrival of the acequias combined with
the water management ways of native peoples, such as Uti and Tlaxcala (people
from Mexico who accompanied the conquistadores).

Devon
Peña, a scholar at the University of Washington, breaks this down for me. Peña
is one of the world’s leading authorities on acequias, and he uses complexity
theory, as well as what’s known as “resilience theory” to describe how acequias
contribute to the simple green gorgeousness of a valley. “In order to have
equilibrium, you have to have the ability to bounce back from disturbances.”
That, he says, is how acequias help the local ecology. “If you don’t have
resilience, then all you have is stagnation and homeostasis—and homeostasis is
not a good thing.”

Peña
lives part-time in the San Luis valley, where he founded the Acequia Institute,
whose mission is to support “water democracies, resilient agriculture, and
environmental justice.” Between 1995 and 1999, with the help of a major federal
grant, Peña led a team of 24 researchers who conducted studies of the acequias’
various “ecosystem services.”

Among
other benefits, he found that acequias help create wetlands through what is
known as “subirrigation,” the process by which water moves through soil and
then collects in areas (called “sumps”), creating wetlands in the process. This
of course boosts the variety and health of the area’s flora and fauna, while
also replenishing groundwater aquifers.

“This
is the unequalled craftwork of acequias,” Peña says—a very different process,
he argues, from the approach to efficiency advocated by groups like the Ditch
& Reservoir Company Alliance, a powerhouse lobbying organization for big
agriculture, as well as industrial and municipal interests. “They measure
‘progress’ in strictly economic, not ecological terms.

The
craft of the acequia can be admired from any of the hills and mountains
surrounding the San Luis Valley. At over 8,000 feet above sea level and with
average annual rainfall of less than 7 inches (the equivalent of some of the
world’s hottest deserts), the valley is not supposed to be as green, gorgeous,
or alive as it is. Nor is it supposed to enjoy the equilibrium that the
acequias make possible, an equilibrium that I saw lacking on the long drive
south from Denver.

José
Avila believes that both soil and water reciprocate what you put into them: “I
say to my wife ‘look how water loves you back.' If you love the soil, the soil
will love you back and support you.”

DISEQUILIBRIUM

The
most important term in Islamic law besides “Allah” is “Shari’ah”—a word that
originally described the legal principles that governed the water management
practices of nomadic tribes in the Arabian peninsula of the pre-Islamic era.

Crowley
County is just a two and half hour drive across highway 25 northeast of the San
Luis, but, in terms of ecological equilibrium it resembles another galaxy. Its
sorry condition is worth noting if only to underscore the easy gains that
acequias offer, and which the practitioners of conventional agriculture ignore,
or dismiss as foolish. Signs of human habitation—empty farms turned into
cemeteries for rusty agricultural equipment; the occasional for-sale or
Trump-Pence signs; and commercial streets with no commerce, or people—give the
area the feel of futuristic battlegrounds and wastelands like the ones featured
in Independence Day and other movies filmed in the region.

Shortly
after its birth in 1911, Crowley grew exponentially. Tens of thousands of acres
of arable land turned into a rainbow carpet of tomatoes, cantaloupe, onions,
corn, wheat and other crops, until drought colored the land dustbowl brown in
the 1930s. Not easily discouraged, and inspired by a vision fusing God,
capitalism, and engineering, Crowleyans built a $2 million tunnel into the
Rockies through what they identified as the narrowest part of the Continental
Divide. A new water day was born.

And
then another drought darkened their day in the 1970s. Crowley’s response became
an object lesson in water catastrophe. Its citizens started a process of
separating water from the land, doing what critics today call “buy and dry,”
the buying and selling of water rights as a profitable and transferable
commodity. Tired of farming amidst the browning-greening-browning dialectic
that’s endemic to the area, many Crowley farmers sold the majority of their
water rights (90 percent or more in many cases). As a result, water companies
like the Crowley County Land and Development Company saw an opportunity.
CLADCO, in turn, sold its water rights to the newly sprawling “Front Range”
cities of Colorado Springs, Aurora, and, most notably, Denver, which is now
ranked number seven on a list of US cities that will be most impacted by
climate change.

José
uses a compuerta to divide the water leaving the main artery of the acequia,
called the acequia madre—
literally, the “mother acequia”.

Of
the tens of thousands of acres of arable land around Crowley, 4,000 acres are
all that’s farmed now, after the most recent water diversion back toward the
west. The rainbow is gone. Farms lie fallow. Local farmers now have to import
bees to pollinate what little hay they harvest. But the most glaring of the
effects of this separation of the water from the land are found in the dozens
of relatively new grey, concrete buildings in Crowley County housing what is,
by far, the region’s most important crop: inmates in both government and
private prisons.

The
effects of buy-and-dry in Crowley stand as a rusty monument to one of the
blindest acts of legal audacity ever devised in the American West: the Doctrine
of Prior Appropriation (or DPA). Also known as the “first in time, first in
right” system of water management, DPA began amidst the Gold Rush fever in
California and spread rapidly.

Though
it resembles a guillotine, the compuerta is a major component of a water
management system that scholars and other observers call “water democracy.”
José and others speak of water as a don divino, a divine right, one that helps
people overcome their differences.

DPA
gives the first person to “appropriate,” or use, water in a given region the
first rights to virtually the entire water flow as the senior water right
holder. By law, their water needs must be met before anyone else gets water.
DPA effectively turns a water right into personal property that, in Colorado
and other states, gets treated as shares by the mutual ditch companies that are
the primary holders of these rights. In so doing, DPA introduces a Wild West
spirit into water management that remains a foundation of civilization west of
the Mississippi, a foundation flooded, (and dried and wildfired) by the
perpetual flow of disequilibrium.

Standing
next to The People’s Ditch, I ask José how it is that acequias have been so
successful for so long in a state ruled by the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation.
He points immediately to the need to not separate water from the land. “One of
the ways I was taught to connect with the land,” José tells me in Spanglish,
“es agarrando un puno y hueliendolo, you have to grab a handful of dirt and
smell it. It will tell you what it’s made of, what’s unique about it, what it needs.
That’s the beginning. ” I grab my own handful of the dark brown soil.
Black-specked water drips onto my hands and down my arm, as I lift the clump to
my nose. It’s grassy smell makes it feel alive. One reason the water and soil
have such a rich relationship, I soon learned, is that water is not governed by
who gets it first; instead, it’s considered a communal resource.

SHARI’AH
LAW

The Doctrine of Prior Appropriation—the legal structure that guarantees first rights to whoever first uses water from a river—introduces a Wild West spirit into water management. That spirit that remains a foundation of civilization west of the Mississippi, a foundation flooded, (and dried and wildfired) by the perpetual flow of disequilibrium.

My
journey into the world of acequias began accidentally. I was 12 years old, on
vacation with my mother and grandmother. At age 76, Mama Tey didn’t want to die
without visiting Andalucia, the land of countless crying virgenes and bleeding
Christs made of stone and wood in the dozens of big, dark, boring churches she
dragged me into. Andalucia, which sits in the southernmost corner of Spain, was
and remains the most arid region in the country. It is also the only part of
Europe that built a tourism industry around the marvelous ruins left by Arab
conquest.

From
the Stations of the Cross church José Avila surveys Colorado’s San Luis Valley.
A cross marks each of the 5 stations offering views of the valley made green by
the acequias used here for over 400 years.

The
boredom of my Andalucian journey was vanquished in Granada, thanks to the
monument that rocked my adolescent imagination: the Alhambra, the fortressed
royal court and fabulous residence of king Mohammed ibn Yusuf ben Nasr, also
known as Alhamar. The founder of the Nasrid kingdom, Alhamar ruled Granada
before the Reconquista (Reconquest by the Spaniards).

The
mellifluous flow of water cascading throughout the Alhambra’s mosaiced stone
grounds helped me reverse roles: I was the one dragging my mother and Mama Tey
across endless acres of gardens and fountains as we followed the course of the
earthen channels sculpted into the palace floors. My clearest memory is of our
Moroccan guide. After dazzling us with stories about the fountains, the tall,
gaunt man took us to an arched, concrete lookout point facing outward, toward
the city and the Sierra Nevada mountains. He described, in Arabic-inflected
Spanish, how the “acequia system,” which he called a “marvel of water
engineering,” had made the city and its civilization possible. The networks of
acequias in Andalucia also laid the legal, engineering, and cultural
foundations for the Spanish civilization whose towns and cities (Almeria, La
Zubia, Algeciras) kept their Arabic names.

Along
with the phrase “qa’lat al-Hamra” (“red castle”) the other Arabic term I came
home repeating mantra-like that summer was “acequia.” As one of about 4,000
Spanish words rooted in Arabic, the term comes from the pre-Islamic Sabaean
(ancient Yemeni) term saquiya (bearer of wine or water), which went on to
become the Arabic term as-saqiya (“that which gives water”). Water management
systems like the acequia have for millennia—some say 10,000 years—provided a
foundation for desert religions. Over time, water and religion shaped each
other. The most important term in Islamic law besides “Allah” is “Shariah”—a
word that originally described the legal principles that governed the water
management practices of nomadic tribes in the Arabian peninsula of the
pre-Islamic era.

From
Spain, the dynamism and flexibility of the acequia system quickly rooted itself
throughout the Spanish Americas, beginning a continental water divide that
remains to this day. (For more detail on the path of the acequia’s evolution
from the indios of South American on up to the U.S., see our sidebar, “The
multi-layered history of acequias in the West,” near the end of this story.) I
was reminded of this history during a 2011 visit to Bolivia. One day, during a
break at a global conference on climate change in the city of Cochabamba, I
visited an acequia-based Aymara indian community.

In
the former Islamic palace-city of Alhambra, in southern Spain, the Patio de la
Acequia commemorates the acequia traditions that Muslims brought to Spain
centuries ago. This canal connected to the Acequia Real (Royal Acequia), the
primary water artery of the entire palace. photo by Jesus Sierra

The
Aymaras lived near an arid, rocky landscape at the lower end of a mountain high
in the Andes above town. A guide took me along the path of the local acequia,
which he said coursed in this tiny, carnation-producing hamlet through the
entire town and into other towns. These Aymara communities were among the
indigenous groups that led what some call the Cochabamba Water War of
1999-2000—the fight to regain Cochabamba’s water rights back from the Bechtel
corporation. The fight for the collective rather than private water rights led
directly to the election Evo Morales, the first indigenous Bolivian President
in 500 years.

In
the former Islamic palace-city of Alhambra, in southern Spain, the Patio de la
Acequia
 commemorates the acequia traditions that Muslims brought to Spain
centuries ago. This canal
is connected to the Acequia Real (Royal Acequia), the
primary water artery of the entire palace.
Photo by Jesus Sierra

THE
“LAW OF THIRST”

Almost
1,000 acequias in New Mexico and Colorado still operate under the communal
principles first codified under the Islamic Law of Thirst, a doctrine
transferred and subsumed into Christian Spanish law. Under the Law of Thirst,
water management must prioritize dividing and distributing water for all living
things that thirst—in other words, people, plants, and animals.

To
make this work, the acequia system includes a process for conflict resolution.
Which sometimes is badly needed. As but one example, José tells me about a man
who was so desperate for water that he pulled a gun on the fellow who was in
line before him, and started shooting. After a SWOT team tried to arrest the
troublemaker, a group of his fellow parciantes met with him, and lectured him
about his communal responsibilities. Apparently, he has caused no trouble since
then.

In
February, 2008, during the annual meeting of the Congreso de Acequias held in
the crowded cafeteria of Centennial School in San Luis, more than 130 strangers
descended on the town one day, most of them wearing baseball caps and cowboy
boots. It turned out that leadership of the Ditch & Reservoir Company
Alliance (DARCA), the Big Ag lobbying organization, had decided to hold their
annual meeting in San Luis.

Add caption

The
Congreso members were taken aback, and a bit worried, until they took a second
look. Many of their visitors were holding DARCA flyers saying “Learning From
Others.” True to their word, they had come to learn about acequias,
specifically its system of conflict resolution and ecological services. What
brought them, apparently, was Colorado’s water crisis.

Such
things were unheard of in a state where textbooks like “The History of
Agriculture in Colorado,” published in 1926 by the Colorado State University Ag
School, concluded that “under Spanish Americans, agriculture did not progress.”
More recently, in response to claims by Peña and others for the state to
officially recognize and restore their common usage water rights, a judge
declared, “It’s time to bring these Mexicans into the twentieth century.”

In
2009, Peña and other Congreso members fought for HB 1233-09, a bill supporting
acequias that passed the Colorado legislature and was then signed by Governor
Bill Ritter. The bill officially recognized acequia institutions as one of the
oldest forms of local self-governance in the Western U.S., and created
conditions for their further development. Peña and other Congreso members are
now working toward another round of legislation that, among other things, would
prohibit the sale or transfer of water away from acequias.

“We
went from people denigrating us and saying ‘acequias are just a bunch of
Mexicans playing with water,’” Peña said, “to having one of the most
influential rural business groups in the state coming to us so we could teach
them how to save their own asses. That’s real progress.”

Roberto
Lovato is a writer and journalist based at the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
His work focuses on immigration, the drug war, national security, and climate
change.

ACEQUIA
RESOURCES: 

.
The Acequia Institute conducts research and investigations on acequias and
their benefits. Based in Colorado, founded by Devon Peña.

.
The Sangre de Cristo Acequia Association in San Luis, Colorado. On Facebook.

.
The New Mexico Acequia Association is the largest Acequia association in the
U.S., and New Mexico has the largest and oldest acequias in the country.

.
The New Mexico Water Resources Management Institute studies the management of
water resources, and includes a specialization in acequias.

©
2017 Roberto Lovato, all rights reserved. Under exclusive license to
Craftsmanship, LLC. Unauthorized copying or republication of this article is
prohibited by law.

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Published:
November 28, 2016

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