La cultura de las acequias, paisajes históricamente irrigados de nuevo México

Abstract

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 into 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.