Limpiza y saca de acequia - 2009

Parciantes, familia, y amigos on the San Luis Peoples Ditch (April 23, 2009)

The San Luis Peoples Ditch Annual Clean-Up

EL RITO, CO. Every spring, the parciantes of the acequias of New Mexico and Colorado gather to engage in the collective labor of cleaning up the acequias to get ready for the irrigation season which around here starts around May 15 (The Feast Day of San Isidro Labrador).

Tania P. Hernandez on the acequia clean-up crew.

This year, on the San Luis Peoples' Ditch, we had more than sixty people turn out for this communal endeavor. We had a dozen students and three faculty from Western State College join us this year. There was even a self-identified tourist by the name of Mark who toiled alongside the rest of us.

Elaine H. Peña cuts weeds from the bank.

The limpieza y saca de acequia is an ancient custom that has been followed throughout the history of Chicana/o acequia farming in the Rio Arriba. This is a very important part of our local food system as it prepares our irrigation system and nurtures the bonds of mutual obligation and cooperative labor among the parciantes of the acequiahood.

Tania P. Hernandez and Praxedis Ortega, Jr. pause for a photo op.

The parciantes of the San Luis Peoples Ditch, now renamed as La Acequia de la Gente de San Luis, include some of the first farming families in Colorado like Praxedis Ortega, Jr., the owner of a Colorado Centennial Farm. "Prax" is the fifth generation in his family to farm off La Acequia de la Gente de San Luis.

The mid-day comida.

The day's proceedings always revolve around a collective luncheon of local foods prepared with ingredients from the previous year's harvest. This year we were treated to chicos del horno, chile verde and chile colorado, habas, bolita beans, corn bread, corn tortillas, and even hot dogs and burgers (prepared with locally butchered ground beef).

Sisnaajini (Mount Blanca) and the Gallegos-Peña haystacks.

This year was an especially memorable one because we engaged in our collective labors fully aware of and in the mood to celebrate the passage of Colorado's new "Acequia Recognition" law that formalizes the customary law of the acequia as an alternative to the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation. The new law also states that the collective work of limpieza y saca is legally required for all the farmers on the ditch.

The annual limpieza y saca de acequia is above all an important social event. It is the "cultural glue" that binds neighbor to neighbor in a spirit of conviviality.

This year's snowpack is about 110% of the annual average so we will have plenty of water for all 74 acequias in our local watershed. Even the "water hogs" might have an easier time than usual if they take water out of turn or take too long to irrigate their fields.

Yet, despite the spirit of community, a deep rooted sense of place, and the new Acequia Law, we face some serious challenges in our little bioregion. I am just now waiting for Joe Gallegos to drive to the Torcido Creek Gate of La Sierra Commons (formerly known as the Taylor Ranch) for the first of what I am certain will be a long series of protest events by local people against subdivision developers.

A new subdivision is being developed on the Torcido Creek Road that provides entry to our common lands. The subdivision developer claims that this is a private road and we can no longer use it for access to the commons. The local people and the County Commissioners disagree and rightly assert that this is a county road and must therefore remain open for local people to gain access to the mountains.

A critical issue of concern to us is that this development represents yet another act of environmental racism that will affect the quality and quantity of water moving from the mountains and into our streams and acequias. The 35-acre lots need roads and the developer constructed what must be close to a hundred miles of new erosive surfaces.

It seems our struggles for environmental and social justice never end, they simply enter into new chapters of resistance to those who treat water and land as mere commodities instead of the ecological basis of life to be cared for under Original Instructions. Another summer of civil disobedience is in order. We will prevail; we always have.