The Destruction of Acequias
What are Acequias
Acequias are gravity feed irrigation ditches diverted from rivers to provide water for farming. This technique for farming has been used for centuries by the Pueblo Indians, and was also brought over by the conquistadors from Spain in 1598. They were the ones that brought over the first rules governing how the water would be divided and used. Those basic regulations have lasted in their general form through Mexican independence, revolution, and United States ownership. They have helped sustain acequias to allow for life in the high desert to thrive for centuries, however, as water demands change so have the environment, rules, and regulations surrounding the water.New Mexico Water rights
Water rights in New Mexico are based on four main principles. “Water belongs to the public and is subject to appropriation by beneficial use; beneficial use is the basis, the measure, and the limit of a water right; priority of appropriation shall be given the better right; and a water right is the right to use water, not the right to own water.” These principles influence all water regulation and adjudication in New Mexico. Water adjudications are lawsuits that decide claims to water rights in certain water basins or stream areas that were used pre-1907. In adjudications the State is always the plaintiff leaving water users the defendants. This creates huge cases with thousands of defendants, over huge spaces, with centuries of history. The adjudications process is also vastly complex with seven stages: 1) the filing of the complaint, 2) the hydrographic survey, 3) the subfile phase, 4) the stream-wide issues phase, 5) the errors and omissions phase, 6) the inter se phase, and 7) the entry of the final decree. The main issues in adjudication are water priority and quantity. “A water right’s priority date is the date by which the appropriator first takes concrete steps to putting the water to beneficial use.” In many cases determining a property's water priority is up to historians and anthropologists to dig through history to find when the water was first used. Obtaining water priority means that in times of drought one gains first right to water. Water quantity is how much water is allocated to a property. Depending on how that water is used one might need more or less however, New Mexico does not have a hierarchy of uses like most states therefore industrial and agricultural water rights are treated similarly leaving small family farms mainly in northern New Mexico under greater threat than the larger farms and industries down south.As development grows in New Mexico and water rights become more contentious and valuable, acequia communities become more endangered and vulnerable. This piece focuses on how acequias and acequia communities are being destroyed by practices of infrastructural violence. This destroys culture and ways of life that have been a crucial part to New Mexico for hundreds of years and erases a way of life and agriculture that can never be recovered. By dissecting the change in landscape and development from hydrology maps made in the 1900s to modern times and the change detailed by mayordomos and parciantes from the times of the Acequias in their youth to today we can see the destruction caused by water adjudication and building development through the lens of infrastructural violence in these communities that have been on these lands since the 15th and 16th centuries. This shows the disregard the state and developers have for these cultures and practices in the quest for land and transfer of water rights to industry and alternate agriculture practice.