El amanecer, Taos. El espiritu de
nuestra comadre seguira con nosotros.

Sodbusters and the 'native gaze' - Part VII

Diversity: The key to resilience

I conclude with a photograph and accompanying epigraph: “Diversity is the key to resilience.” This photo shows some of the heirloom land race maize harvested from our Culebra bottoms in September 2007. The rainbow bundle of maize includes many “chimeras” and represents 25 years of collecting and seed saving of Zea mays.



I should clarify the first statement and note that my acequia-hood vecinos harvested the seed corn. That single act of tequio demonstrates the importance of collective community work in sustaining a local food system.

All my neighbors wanted to see my corn harvested. They appreciated the fact that one of the heirloom lines I have collected is a drought-resistant white flint from the Seri people in Baja California. This white corn is a lot like our heirloom concho varieties, a local white flour corn that also comes in dent and flint iterations and is the basis of our annual oven-roasted chicos production. Both the Seri white flint and the concho are short-season varietals and do not require a lot of irrigation.

This motivated everyone and so Joe Gallegos organized much of the harvest work. Indeed, I was at the time preoccupied with arranging for my Father’s funeral and also engaged in a wearisome, stressful battle to redefine my future not only as a member of an embattled Department but indeed as an activist-academic.

I will always connect the three events: Death; Rebirth; Survival.

I am bound to reflect not just on the diversity of our corn, but on the diversity of other plants including the many beneficial weeds that co-inhabit our field crop, orchard, and meadow landscapes. These “beneficial weeds” include the edible and medicinal wild relatives of cultivars that prefer to grow alongside the corn, bean, and squash trinity.

Certain “weeds” are essential to our local heritage cuisine. One should not have a Lenten meal in La Plaza de San Luis de la Culebra without freshly sautéed quelites (Lambs Quarters) to give you one interesting example.

I sort of feel that way sometimes: Like a weed, not yet proven beneficial, that has to survive by negotiating some level of acceptance and co-existence within the given association of “Native” plants to find solace in the soil medium of the modern western university.

I know I am often seen, or even see myself, as an exotic weed that refuses to be naturalized to these soil conditions. I am immutable in resisting academic monocultures of the mind. I imagine that perhaps I might sometimes even be misconstrued as a noxious weed according to someone else’s framing of my intellectual being and my presumed “faculty politics.”

Such feelings born of misrecognition or narrow, even fear-based, ideological proclivities are really not my concern. I am concerned with what I perceive as the structures of knowledge production that academic communities are sometimes prone to engage and reproduce, and which can indeed constitute acts of epistemological violence since they force the Other into the kind of troubling genuflection we have had to endure over the past hour or so.

I can’t say I always relish the challenge of presenting a parallax-shifting vantage point epistemology. My family’s acequia farm in Colorado constantly tugs at me, filling my mind with the presence of a place that zigzags me between Seattle and San Acacio. These thoughts are the liminal result.

Closing now with a brief lesson from linguistics or if you prefer semiotics: The word “weed” is variously defined in Spanish as 1. mala hierba (bad herb or plant); or 2. debilucho,-a (bad person). It can also be used in a transitive verbal and figurative sense as escardar (to weed out). I have learned through my own experiences that academics are prone to engage in the weeding out of the soil of knowledge production. That itself is the most demanding epistemological contradiction of our time and place. Perhaps to rebuke all that and signal some semblance of audacious hopefulness, I want to close with a poem I improvised to end this paper:

I am a weed

Soy hierba;
I am a weed
Unwelcomed; exotic;
soiling the ground
Bringing unwelcome thoughts…
Soy debilucho,
soy una amenaza
I am a threatening Other:
Porque creo en las instrucciones originales
I believe this place teaches me
Sacred ground of all my being
Epistemology does not beget ontology
Being here in place
Blesses me with the knowledge
Of inhabiting not conquering
Of coevalness not greedy usurpation

Translation plantation
Homogenization
Fast food for all
GMOs will be your fall!
The hunger is not
In the eyes of the child
It is in vacant hearts
Yearning to find freedom
From deconstructed
Onco-burgers
And napalmed Freedom fries
The thirst is not in our bellies
It is gnawing away inside our souls
Exhilio, memorias de pérdida
Los buitres sobre vida muerta

The thirst for justice
Against the aridity
Of capitalist desire
Is a burning that leaves
Not even figurines etched
Under the heat of nuclear-blasted
Walls in Nagasaki
It is, I am a weed:…A hunger that thirsts for justice.

This is Part 7 of 8 of an original as yet unpubished essay prepared by invitation for the Department of Anthropology, Spring 2008 Colloquium, “Epistemologies of Anthropological Research,” University of Washington, May 23, 2008. It is presented here free of the footnotes in the original. Sources cited in the text will be posted at the end of the series of 8.

This is a work in progress; please do not quote, cite, or circulate without the author’s permission. Send inquiries to: dpena@u.washington.edu. The author thanks Elaine H. Peña and Mario Montaño for comments on earlier drafts.

"Recognition of Acequias" - Colorado State Law Forwarded to Governor Ritter

Moderator's Note: We are providing without comment the text of HB 09-1233 as amended and passed on third reading by the Colorado General Assembly House Committee on Agriculture, Livestock, and Natural Resources. The bill has also received the approval of the State Senate and awaits the signature of Governor Bill Ritter.

The "Recognition of Acequias" Law re-establishes the norms and practices of acequia customary law in certain southcentral Colorado watersheds. This includes important principles that define water as a communal asset-in-place and bases allocation of water rights on equity and not just priority; the one farmer equals one vote rule; the sharing of scarcity; the expectation of communal labor and mutual aid in the maintenance and cleanup of acequias; and the possibility of a ban on the sale of water away from acequias.



NOTE: This bill has been prepared for the signature of the appropriate legislative officers and the Governor. To determine whether the Governor has signed the bill or taken other action on it, please consult the legislative status sheet, the legislative history, or the Session Laws.

UNEDITED TEXT OF COLORADO LEGISLATION (HB 09-1233):

AN ACT
________

HOUSE BILL 09-1233

BY REPRESENTATIVE(S) Vigil, Court, Curry, Fischer, Frangas, Hullinghorst, Labuda, Looper, McNulty, Merrifield, Pace, Tipton;also SENATOR(S) Schwartz, Bacon, Foster, Gibbs, Groff, Heath, Hodge, Newell, Romer, Sandoval, Tapia.

CONCERNING THE RECOGNITION OF ACEQUIAS, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, AUTHORIZING ACEQUIA DITCH CORPORATIONS.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Colorado:

SECTION 1. Legislative declaration.

(1) The general assembly hereby finds that:

(a) The first nonnative Americans to settle in Colorado were Hispanics from colonial Mexico, who brought with them their ancient irrigation practices based on a community ditch called an "acequia", pursuant to which water was treated as a community resource and allocated based upon equity and need rather than priority of appropriation;

(b) Colorado's territorial session laws from 1868, 1872, and 1874 recognized the validity of acequias within the counties of Costilla, Conejos, Huerfano, and Las Animas, including the requirement for irrigators to contribute labor to the upkeep of the acequia and a preference over other diversions for acequias' diversions regardless of priority;

(c) As the general assembly recognized in the following excerpt from Senate Joint Resolution 02-028, the continued operation of these historic acequias is an "essential foundation for the sustenance of the local economy":

"WHEREAS, Spanish American settlers founded the Town of San Luis in the Culebra Valley in 1852, thus making it the oldest town in Colorado; and

"WHEREAS, In keeping with their ancestors' acequias tradition, these settlers quickly initiated an irrigation system; and

"WHEREAS, The oldest water right in Colorado is attributed to the San Luis People's Ditch, with a priority date of April 10, 1852, in the amount of 21 cubic feet per second from Culebra Creek in Costilla County; and

"WHEREAS, Originally, the land adjacent to the Ditch was divided into strips approximately 100 yards wide and 16 to 20 miles long, allowing settlers to have irrigated farmland near the Ditch and also to have access to range and timber land, and today, the Ditch is 4 miles long and irrigates 1,600 acres of farmland; and

"WHEREAS, The San Luis People's Ditch has been continuously operated for irrigation purposes for 150 years, thus making it an essential foundation for the sustenance of the local economy; . . ."

(d) Upon adoption of Colorado's constitution, the prior appropriation system became the law governing water allocation; and

(e) The prior appropriation system is, in fundamental ways, inconsistent with the community-based principles upon which acequias were founded.

(2) The general assembly hereby determines that:

(a) Notwithstanding the constitutional establishment of the prior appropriation system, communities that were historically served by an acequia have used informal methods to continue to allocate water based upon equity in addition to priority and to treat water as a community resource; and

(b) Recognition by the general assembly of the continuing existence and use of acequias, while continuing to comply with the constitutional requirements of priority administration of tributary water, is critical to preserving the historic value that acequias provide to the communities in which they are located.

(3) The general assembly hereby declares that the purpose of this act is to promote and encourage the continued operation of acequias and the viability of the historic communities that depend on those acequias.

SECTION 2. Article 42 of title 7, Colorado Revised Statutes, is amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read: 7-42-101.5. Acequia mutual ditch - definition - powers.

(1) FOR PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, "ACEQUIA" MEANS A DITCH THAT:

(a) ORIGINATED PRIOR TO COLORADO'S STATEHOOD;

(b) HAS HISTORICALLY TREATED WATER DIVERTED BY THE ACEQUIA AS A COMMUNITY RESOURCE AND HAS THEREFORE ATTEMPTED TO ALLOCATE WATER IN THE ACEQUIA BASED UPON EQUITY IN ADDITION TO PRIORITY;

(c) RELIES ESSENTIALLY ON GRAVITY-FED SURFACE WATER DIVERSIONS;

(d) SUPPLIES IRRIGATION WATER TO LONG LOTS THAT ARE PERPENDICULAR TO THE STREAM OR DITCH TO MAXIMIZE THE NUMBER OF LANDOWNERS WHO HAVE ACCESS TO WATER;

(e) HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN OPERATED PURSUANT TO A ONE LANDOWNER-ONE VOTE SYSTEM; AND

(f) HAS HISTORICALLY RELIED ON LABOR SUPPLIED BY THE OWNERS OF IRRIGATED LAND SERVED BY THE ACEQUIA.

(2) SUBJECT TO ANY CONTRARY PROVISION OF SUBSECTION (3) OF THIS SECTION, THE PROCEDURAL AND SUBSTANTIVE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS ARTICLE OTHER THAN THIS SECTION THAT APPLY TO THE CREATION, POWERS, DUTIES, AND GOVERNANCE OF A DITCH CORPORATION SUBJECT TO THIS ARTICLE SHALL BE DEEMED TO APPLY TO THE CREATION, POWERS, DUTIES, AND GOVERNANCE OF AN ACEQUIA DITCH CORPORATION.

(3) AN ACEQUIA DITCH CORPORATION MAY BE ORGANIZED PURSUANT TO THIS ARTICLE, AND A DITCH CORPORATION ORGANIZED PURSUANT TO THIS ARTICLE MAY CONVERT TO AN ACEQUIA DITCH CORPORATION, IF:

(a) AT LEAST TWO-THIRDS OF THE IRRIGATED LAND SERVED BY THE DITCH IS PLATTED OR ORGANIZED INTO LONG LOTS, THE LONGEST AXES OF WHICH ARE PERPENDICULAR TO THE STREAM OR DITCH;

(b) SURFACE WATER RIGHTS PROVIDE ALL OF THE WATER RIGHTS USED FOR IRRIGATION IN THE DITCH, AND SUCH WATER RIGHTS HAVE HAD SUBSTANTIALLY UNINTERRUPTED USE SINCE BEFORE COLORADO'S STATEHOOD;

(c) THE IRRIGATED LAND SERVED BY THE DITCH IS LOCATED WHOLLY IN ONE OR MORE OF THE COUNTIES OF COSTILLA, CONEJOS, HUERFANO, AND LAS ANIMAS; AND

(d) AS REQUIRED PURSUANT TO SECTION 7-42-101, THE STOCKHOLDERS OF THE DITCH FILE ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION, OR AN AMENDMENT TO THE ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION, THAT STATE THE STOCKHOLDERS' INTENTION TO CREATE OR CONVERT TO AN ACEQUIA DITCH CORPORATION.

(4) AN ACEQUIA DITCH CORPORATION, IF ITS ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION SO STATE, MAY SPECIFY IN ITS BYLAWS THAT:

(a) ITS ELECTIONS MAY BE HELD PURSUANT TO A ONE LANDOWNER-ONE VOTE SYSTEM;

(b) OWNERS OF LAND IRRIGATED BY THE DITCH CAN BE REQUIRED TO CONTRIBUTE LABOR TO THE MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR OF THE ACEQUIA OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE, TO PAY AN ASSESSMENT IN LIEU OF SUCH LABOR;

(c) WATER IN THE DITCH MAY BE ALLOCATED ON A BASIS OTHER THAN PRO RATA OWNERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION; AND

(d) THE CORPORATION HAS A RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL REGARDING THE SALE, LEASE, OR EXCHANGE OF ANY SURFACE WATER RIGHT THAT HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN USED TO IRRIGATE LONG-LOT LAND BY THE ACEQUIA.

SECTION 3. Safety clause. The general assembly hereby finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety.

____________________________ ____________________________
Terrance D. Carroll Peter C. Groff
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE PRESIDENT OF
OF REPRESENTATIVES THE SENATE
____________________________ ____________________________
Marilyn Eddins Karen Goldman
CHIEF CLERK OF THE HOUSE SECRETARY OF
OF REPRESENTATIVES THE SENATE

APPROVED________________________________________
_________________________________________
Bill Ritter, Jr.
GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF COLORADO

A culinary journey through Ecuador

Andean Foodways: Del maiz a las abas, papas, y verdes

Seattle, WA. Most of us rightly think of Mexico as the cradle for the origin and domestication of Zea mays (maize, corn). That may be, but on a recent trip to La Mitad del Mundo, I learned that Ecuadorians are probably much more focused on the diversity of corn as a matter of vernacular (everyday popular) cuisine.

Ubiquitous maize

Corn is ubiquitous in both places and is of course Mexico's great gift to the world. But the Ecuadorians approach corn with a great deal more fanfare and nuance in their everyday cuisine. Mexicans might eat tortillas everyday, and munch an occasional corn-on-the-cob, but Ecuadorians prepare myriad everyday foods based on distinct land race varieties of corn in ways that range from simple toasted flint kernels to nuanced corn-based batters for empanadas or corn cakes with cheese.

Let's start with some basics: Tostados are the original "Corn Nuts." These fried kernels of Andean white or yellow flint corn can be prepared with a variety of ingredients but my favorite version involved a street vendor's use of clarified butter mixed with home-made pig fat (lard) with a dash of sea salt, cinnamon, and clove.

Yet another variant of maize cuisine involves the preparation of mote, which is the Ecuadorian version of Hominy. This white, cal-soaked, white corn is used as a condiment side or ingredient for soups including consomes of pork or fish, amid variations that reflect the coastal or mountain contexts.


Choclos are the Ecuadorian version of corn-on-the-cob. These are a truly ubiquitous food staple and can be found on close to every restaurant menu, in every street-vendor's warm bucket, and in every household's kitchen table. Choclos, steamed sweet yellow corn, are the preferred daily snack and are often paired with fresh cream for slathering or slices of quesos frescos during the merienda.

Of course, choclos are also a basic accompaniment to ceviche, and Ecuador counts with numerous regional variations of the lime-soaked mariscos and pescados dish. Choclos also show up at the dinner table besides a bowl of fanesca, the Lenten stew prepared exclusively during Holy Week. A good bowl of locro, potato-cheese soup, is also usually accompanied by a side of choclos.

Corn meal is used to make a wide variety of savory and sweet empanaditas. In one favored savory version, the corn meal is the envelop for a filling of local Mozarella cheese and sweet choclo kernels. Another version has the corn enveloping verde, the fried sweet green plaintain, often paired again with the cheese. Another sweeter version is the humita, or the Ecuadorian tamal.

Quimbolitos are "corn dumplings" made from corn meal infused with lard, raisins, choclos, and vanilla extract. We enjoyed these dumplings during our first almuerzo presented in a clear chicken broth that served as the opening course by our host family.

Beyond maize: yuca, plantains, and potatoes

Muchines de yuca are tasty cassava balls with a crunchy outside protecting a soft, savory filling. Favored in the coastal towns, the muchines are mostly served as an appetizer or side dish topped with salsa de ají, Ecuador's contribution to hot pepper sauce.

The nearly bewildering array of cuisine dedicated to the plantain in Ecuador is a delight to explore. As far as I could tell, there are three principal types of plantain used in everyday cooking: Large Yellow, Medium Green, and Small Yellow plantains.

The patacones are the fried medium-sized green plantains and are also known as verdes; these unripened plantains also play a big role as filling for empanaditas. The small yellow plantains are preferred for use in the puree for potato cakes, or llapingachos.

Yuca (cassava) is as ubuquitous as maize and plantain and is utilized across a wide variety of preparations. The one that most intrigued me was how it is used in its pureed form to prepare llapingachos (potato cakes). Yuca is also used in the preparation of a wide range of soups and stews and certain land race varieties are imbued with medicinal properties including the treatment of enlarged prostate.

Yet another snack we tried are the chifles, or fried yellow plantain chips. For a sweet and piquant effect, chifles (and dried yuca slivers) can be used to dip into salsa de ají.

A word about papas (potatoes). Ecuador is not Peru, or even Bolivia, in its diversity of perennial land races in the tribe of Solanum tuberosum in the Solanaceae or deadly nightshade family. But it does have some hardy native high altitude potatoes. There are some small yellow potatoes that seem to be the preference in the preparation of llapingachos (fried potato puree cakes).

Globally, there are about five thousand potato varieties and three thousand of these are found in the Andes across high altitude Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia. There are also about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties, and are protected by indigenous inhabitants.

In urban Quito and Manta, the chain grocery stores offered a reduced range of only 3 or 4 different varieties of Ecuadorian potatoes: a medium white; a large red; and a small yellow variety.

However, rural roadside stands presented a much wider variety of potatoes from one place to the next. It seems potatoes are a serious place-based matter in Ecuador and the mass marketing of this diversity has not yet co-opted this traditional practice of heirloom preservation. Each place seems dedicated to the cultivation of 4 to 6 varieties that are consumed or sold locally.

A range of slow-cooked pleasures for the omnivore

Speaking of meats, Ecuador's regional cuisines vibe with creative dishes involving beef, chicken, pork, sea and freshwater fish, shellfish, and lamb or goat. We sampled various parrilladas, grilled meat and sausage assortments.

In Manta's Martinique Restaurant we had an amazing serving of appetizer mollejas (beef sweetbreads) stewed in a simple but eloquent neo-French dressing of whole cream, white wine, peppers, and garlic. The same restaurant served outstanding plates of corvina (Sea Bass) in various guises including our favored version, a la plancha (open-grilled).

Even the local cold cuts from the deli at the Supermaxi in Manta made for excellent sandwich fill when paired with freshly baked bolillos (round buns).

Pig's heads are commonly used by street vendors and puestositos as the source of delicious fritadas. The shredded pork is combined with fried sweet yellow plantains and boiled skinless potatoes. We ate our sampling of fritada at a puestosito on the Panecillo (Bread Loaf Hill) underneath the towering figure of La Virgen de Quito, a monument featuring the only winged-Virgin in the world.





Truchas at Two Mile High

Some of the best food we sampled in Ecuador involved both simple and complex fish recipes. This was especially the case in the upland area of Papallacta (House of the Potato), an eco-tourist volcanic hotsprings resort and sustainable community in the mountains lying one hour east of Quito at an altitude of 10,086 feet.

The thermal springs here are at the entrance to one of Ecuador's most cherished cloud forests and páramo (high altitude grasslands). Yet, the restaurant at Papallacta derives all of its vegetable, tuber, grain, and herb supply from the organic 3 hectare polyculture huerto familiar. The home kitchen garden, despite the high altitude, produces food year-round.

The Ecuadorian government, working with local indigenous communities and Japanese scientists, developed a fish hatchery that serves to restock streams in the Cayembe-Coca Ecological Reserve while providing fresh brook trout (trucha) directly to local restaurant tables.

At Papallacta we sampled truchas in two different presentations: a la plancha with a white wine sauce and a breaded and baked cordon bleu trout stuffed with local melting cheese and ham. We also sampled a fish and prawn soup prepared in a base infused with cream, coconut, yuca, and mote.

Ceviche was everywhere but we followed local advice and waited till we got to the central coast at Manta before sampling this classic seafood dish. Some 20 kilometers east of Manta is the inland village of Montecristi, best known for its misnamed "Panama"-styled hats. We sampled three versions of ceviche in Montecristi and all of them involved fresh ingredients (fish and shellfish) and careful skilled preparation. The local honey bees agreed and they danced and flitted about our table.

The ceviche in Montecristi included corvina, or what is sometimes called "Gulf" or "Chilean Sea Bass." This delightful, flaky white fish meat melts in your mouth like butter. The Monterey Bay Aquarium lists this species as endangered but many different white finfish are also presented with the name, corvina, and I suspect that was the case in Montecristi.

Some missing elements

Through the course of our "local, slow, and deep food" tour of Ecuador, I am sorry to report that we did not try encocado, a concoction of shrimp (or sometimes fish) smothered in a rich, spiced coconut sauce. We cook a Thai version of "coconut fish stoup" in Seattle, so we truly regret missing this version.

We also did not sample the presumed "National Dish" of Ecuador consisting of roasted guinea pig or cuy. This was not due to any food prejudice on our part perhaps stemming from reservations many Americans have over eating something we consider household pets.

We never returned to the old barrio in Quito that was reputed to have the best version around. I did not get the sense, in the long days spent in the northern lake district uplands or the central coastal area (Manta), that cuy was as big a part of the regional cuisine in those areas as it seems to be in the more urbanized places like Quito or rural mountain locales.

We also did not sample the range of cuisine from the "Oriente," the vast Amazon jungle that lies east of the Andes and is the third major geographic subdivision of Ecuador in addition to Mountains and Coast. Of course, we heard not just about lemon-flavored ants but about the many selva creatures, usually egg-laying flies, that slowly eat you. How is that for an inversion of the slow food chain?

Is it sustainable, resilient and just food?

Ecuadorians are into their food as much as any other comparable Latin American culture. The question that comes up of course: Is the Ecuadorian food system sustainable, resilient, and just?

Ecuador has hunger, but in relative terms the number of hungry and malnourished persons is relatively low. Indigenous areas that have experienced an economic and cultural resurgence show little signs of widespread hunger. Our visits to Cayembi indigenous strongholds of Cotacachi and Otavalo in the Northern Lake Districts of Imbabura Province revealed a well-fed and well-nourished population.

Some environmentalists express concern that maize terraces have spread across the entire foothills biome of Imbabura and pretty much all of the montane ecosystems of the Andean Cordillera.

It is true that maize sembrados are an ubiquitous feature of the foothills landscape; indeed every urban household lot seems to have a bit of corn and other grains planted. However, it is not clear that this represents a recent encroachment and intensive cultivation of the Imbabura Province predates the repelled Inca incursions of the late 15th century.

The Ecuadorian hill terrace agroecosystem seems well-suited to extant local conditions and is by and large well-maintained. I did not notice extensive evidence of erosion or landslides (there are always localized exceptions). The intensive labor necessary to maintain these soil conservation structures and landscape features is present and this is likely a result of the fact that 30 percent of Ecuador's population is indigenous. The terracing system adds depth and stability to the rich volcanic soils that underlie most of the arable uplands.

These traditional agroecosystems have been displaced in some areas of the Andean corridor but the most severe transformation involves the establishment of large tropical fruit plantations in the coastal litorals.

In the mountain valley surrounding Otavalo, thousands of invernaderos (greenhouses) have been built on former farm land for the production of flowers for national and export markets. The tales of poisoned workers and degraded environmental qualities associated with the cut-flower industry are well known. This case involves foreign investors including interests that were first rooted in the Colombian cut-flower industry, Israeli capital and technology, and Dutch investors.

The big agro-industrial export crops remain bananas, coffee, and cocoa. The 1998 El Nino event destroyed the coastal banana plantations and that sector is only now undergoing a recovery of sorts but exports have already reestablished Ecuador as the world's leading banana exporter. Banana plantation workers, many of them Afro-Ecuatorianos and itinerant indigena migrants are ununionized and earn an average of $2 a day.

Despite problems in the "Banana Republic" sector, it seems the independent small and medium sized producers of plantains are doing well. This sector was not as severely affected by the 1998 drought in part because many of these smaller producers can still flood irrigate with acequias, are located in more rainy montane valleys, or remained small and diverse enough to survive disturbances affecting banana production.

Coffee is a growth industry both domestically and in the export-oriented sector. While cocoa is still principally produced for domestic consumption, more than anything else, it is witnessing rapid increases in exports spurred by the search for organic and socially responsible (Fair Trade) sources by high-end specialty chocolate manufacturers in Europe, Asia, and North America.

The most important lessons I learned during this food tour occurred while visiting the village of Cotacachi in the Northern Lake District outside of Otavalo. I learned that the native Cayembi people of this bioregion managed to repel Inca intruders who arrived in the 15th century. They were also never fully subordinated by the Spaniards in the 16th century due to the remote and mountainous nature of the area.

The native peoples of the Imbabura bioregion remain well positioned to maintain some semblance of local governmental autonomy. Indeed, Cotacachi has received recognition from the United Nations (UNESCO) for its progressive work on participatory democracy and transparent municipal government.

This political and cultural climate contributes in no small measure to the sustenance and success of an organic, resilient, culturally-appropriate, and socially well-embedded local food system. People in Cotacachi are eating well; they are eating local; and they are eating heritage cuisines instead of westernized fast foods. Obesity is rare and malnutrition has been greatly reduced among Cayembi youth, elderly, and underemployed workers.

The lessons of Cotacachi present hope for an alterNative place-based approach to indigenous inhabitation of homelands linked to resilient local food systems. This Cayembi automous village illustrates the possibility that local food self-sufficiency is an inextricable quality of food justice. Most of the rest of Ecuador is still struggling to understand that lesson.

Fanesca, or food as syncretic conviviality?

There is one more thing to say about regional cuisines and local food systems in the areas of Ecuador that we visited. Coastal plains and mountains; rural and urban locales; all these places shared the common occurrence of acts of food-sharing in public or in the household. The act of sharing food is an important social event in and of itself. It is a dedicated form of conviviality.

I witnessed and participated in this everyday lived practice of la comida. Every day we spent in Quito with our gracious host family, we were summoned to the familial daily rounds of almuerzos and cenas. As Gustavo Esteva has observed, the consumption of food is not just for purposes of bodily nutrition, it is also a powerful cohesive symbolic practice imbued with interpersonal and collective meaning. Food in this way nurtures souls and promotes social bonding and reciprocity in small groups and large.

An example of a food that captures this symbolic gesturing is fanesca, the Lenten chowder that is served exclusively during Holy Week before Easter. The recipe for fanesca reads like a fascinating "who's who" of ecuatoriano ethnobotanical diversity. The grains and legumes used are all local land race varieties.

There are actually twelve grains used in the traditional quiteno recipe for fanesca. These are said to represent the "Twelve Disciples" of Jesus Christ. Most recipes include chochos, abas, lentils, peas, and two or three varieties of corn.

The inclusion of chochos (tarwi) is interesting because chocho (Andean Lupine flower seeds) is said to represent a "wild indigenous" grain that has been collected by Cayembi and other native peoples for millennia. Fanesca in this manner is rooted both in the Western Christian worldview and in the indigenous ethnobiology of place.

We can call this food "syncretism" but the deeper history of these indigenous grains and legumes, including abas which are a "naturalized exotic," signals something a bit more profound.

Fanesca is fastidiously tied to a Christian religious calendar cycle so that the temporal frame freezes or subordinates the indigenous agricultural cycle and the cosmovision that underlies it. The aboriginal cycles are partly defined by the autopoetic condition of alternating seasonal patterns involving both the collection of wild "pulses" and the cultivation of domesticated crops in an extended agroecological mosaic that includes wild relatives and not just the cultivars.

In other words, there is no "wild" and "domesticated" space in the indigenous food system or its cuisine. The presence of Lupinus mutabilis (Andean Lupine or chocho) in fanesca recipes is thus for me an intriguing indicator of a dialectical tension between a multicultural and largely land race-based recipe and the presentation of the chowder as a featured Holy Week entree that has been reinvented as an icon of food conviviality in Ecuador.

Acequia Recognition Law is Passed by Colorado General Assembly

Acequia recognition law

Moderator's Note: We are posting a journal kept over the past five weeks since I testified with Joe Gallegos and others on February 18 in Denver to support passage of Colorado General Assembly House Bill (HB) 09-1233. The proposed law recognizes acequia systems and re-establishes traditional norms of self-governance for our historic community ditches. HB 09-1233 was passed by the House on February 25, 2009. On March 23, 2009, the Colorado State Senate passed their version of the House Bill. As of April 7, the legislation awaits the signature of Governor Bill Ritter.

February 18 (Denver)

By the time this news report and commentary is posted, we are certain to have been waiting for several weeks to learn of the destiny of the "Acequia Recognition" law introduced two weeks ago by our incomparable salt-of-the-Earth Colorado State Representative, Edward Vigil (D) of Ft. Garland.

Mr. Vigil is a first-year, freshly-minted, State Representative from our district in south central Colorado which includes the Chicana/o strongholds of the San Luis Valley and Pueblo. He is the first acequia farmer from the San Luis-Ft. Garland area to serve in the state legislature in close to a hundred years.

I admire Rep. Vigil for having the courage and vision to be so bold as to introduce a law, in his frosh year at that, presenting a challenge to the dominance of a singularly Anglo-American legal regime for water allocation and governance in Colorado.

At the invitation of Joe Gallegos, I came to testify before the Colorado House Committee on Agriculture, Livestock, and Natural Resources. The testimony was to support legislation entitled HB 09-1233 "Recognition of Acequias." The bill was developed by Rep. Vigil and Thomas Morris, legal counsel to the House Committee. Joe Gallegos and I provided some input on the first draft over the past few weeks. Mr. Morris drew ideas and concepts from an article published in the Colorado Law Review (see Hicks and Peña 2003).

We have remained quiet and reserved, but the breaking news will soon require us to offer commentary and perhaps a note of celebration.

The hearing before the committee went well and four people testified in support of the proposed statute. Rep.Vigil led off by presenting the amended bill and discussing its merits. Rep. Vigil was followed by three other voices. These included Mr. David Robbins of the Colorado Water Congress (CWC). Not much in matters pertaining to water law in Colorado goes through without first being vetted and approved by the CWC. Mr. Robbins was knowledgeable and gracious, demonstrating a sense of appreciation and respect for the historical, cultural, and ecological significance of acequia systems.

Next was Joe Gallegos, the lifelong advocate of acequia farmers and hailing from one of the oldest farming families in the State of Colorado. Joe's great-great-grandfather, Dario Gallegos, established Colorado's "Oldest Town" (La Plaza de San Luis de la Culebra) in 1851.

The first thing Dario and his compatriots did, way back in April of 1852, was to dig by hand the town's first acequia madre or "Mother Ditch," La Acequia de la Gente de San Luis (a.k.a. San Luis Peoples Ditch). This was more than ten years before Colorado became a Territory and a quarter century before the creation of the Centennial State (1876).

Testifying last before the House Committee, I briefly described the legal history and the principles of acequia self-governance. I outlined the ethnoecology and agroecology of the acequia-riparian long-lot. The acequias provide vital ecosystem and economic base services that have been valued in excess of $300 million a year in benefits accruing to the seven-county area known as the Rio Arriba (Upper Rio Grande) in New Mexico and Colorado. I will post my testimony on the blog at a later date.

Our expectations remain so high that the disappointment of a loss is imponderable. We are all jitterbugging through time and space.

February 19 (Denver International Airport)

Acequias and the 'Lords of Yesterday'

As I sit here waiting for my flight back to Seattle, I am reflecting on the day's proceedings. I can't help but recall the excellent book by Professor Charles F. Wilkinson, Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West (1992). The opening chapter, as I recall, is entitled "The Lords of Yesterday" and it outlines and then criticizes three laws that have come to shape pretty much close to everything about the "settling" of the lands West of the 100th Meridian, an area Wilkinson calls the "Intermountain West."

The three "Lords of Yesterday," Wilkinson explains, were the EuroAmerican settler miners, ranchers/farmers, and loggers that relied on the federal government and three laws to settle, exploit, and transform "the West" into an extractive resource colony that displaced native cultures, laws, and ways of life.

The General Mining Act of 1872, the Homestead Act of 1862 , and the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation with roots in the California (1849) and later Colorado (1859) "Gold Rushes" were the three most significant legal frameworks imposed on native peoples in the "conquest" and enclosure of the "West."

Punching a Hole in the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation?

The water law of the Intermountain West has been defined by the prior appropriation doctrine ever since hardrock miners in California and Colorado declared themselves to be the "first in use" and thus "first in right." Never mind that Native Americans and Chicana/o communities had their own laws for the allocation and use of land, water, and other resources. In recent decades, researchers have deemed these alterNative systems to be more democratic, resilient, and ecologically-sustainable compared to the modern regime of land and water law.

The acequia legal code, rooted in deep antiquity, clearly predates the advent of the prior appropriation regime. Yet, in 1882 the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed in Coffin v. Left Hand Ditch that the only true water law of Colorado was the principle of first in use/first in right. This tragically mistaken and ethnocentric decision erased hundreds of years of legal evolution in the water allocation and use practices in upland headwaters territories that had been sovereign parts of local place-based water institutions under Native, Spanish, and subsequent Mexican rule.

The Colorado Supremes enshrined "Prior" in Left Hand Ditch despite the fact that the Colorado Territorial Legislature had just enacted three laws recognizing acequia governance norms during the 1870s, a few years before statehood.

While acequia principles are as true to place (if not more so than Prior), Left Hand Ditch nonetheless imposed Prior as the only water law held to be "true to place" in the State of Colorado. This has had the effect of erasing the institutional memory and codification of the earliest forms of watershed governance and local democracy in the region.

Despite this legal erasure, the acequia water democracy and its forms of local self-governance persisted over time through informal arrangements deriving ultimately from the strength of mutual reliance interests that are the heart and soul of acequia place-based cultures.

The proposed new law will restore some crucial aspects of the legal paradigm of acequia customary law and practice and make Colorado a more progressive and "legally plural" state in the area of water law. Will the General Assembly see fit to allow us to punch albeit a small hole in the edifice of one of the three principal laws of the Lords of Yesterday?

February 25 (Shoreline, WA)

This morning I finally received a call from Joe Gallegos informing me that the House of Representatives of the Colorado General Assembly had just voted unanimously on third reading to pass HB 09-1233 on the "Recognition of Acequias." Full passage of the bill is expected once the Colorado State Senate votes sometime during the first half of March. Senator Gail Schwarz is the principal sponsor carrying the bill in the State Senate.

Restoring the Resilient Water Democracy of the Acequias?

This bill is significant because it recognizes that acequias have "...historically treated water as a community resource and...allocated water...based on equity in addition to priority." Moreover, the law states that the acequia "has historically been operated pursuant to a one landowner-one vote system."

In one short but pithy paragraph, the law legitimizes five central norms of acequia water law that are distinct from the principles enshrined in the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation:

(1) Water is a communal resource and not a commodity.

(2) The principle of the one farmer-one vote rule. This restores our long cherished democratic practice that was lost with Prior's shift to a share-based system in which larger landowners had more votes.

(3) The law also specifies that acequias may rely on "labor supplied by the landowners of irrigated land served by the acequia," a phrase that restores our customary practice of cooperative labor and mutual aid.

(4) Since the law establishes that water is a community resource for purposes of acequia governance, incorporated ditches will be able to adopt by-laws or modify existing by-laws to exercise a "right of first refusal" on the sale or transfer of water to non-acequia uses. Incorporated ditches may also use conservation easements to restrict water transfers or sales.

(5) Finally, the law allows acequias to allocate water on the basis of principles of equity and fairness and not just priority. This is an especially important principle since it allows irrigators to share scarcity in times of drought instead of following the "priority call" system imposed by Prior Appropriation that provides water only to the most senior water rights at the expense of more junior rights. We have restored the principle of shared scarcity.

I will have another report on the new Acequia Law as soon as the Colorado State Senate vote is in. Some questions are emerging: Are we are on the cusp of a "minor" revolution in the evolution of water law in the Intermountain West? Are Prior's days as a singular normative regime for water governance and allocation numbered? Will a plural regime emerge in the Colorado watersheds with historic uninterrupted acequia water use and customary allocation practices embraced by these resurgent place-based principles?

Colorado acequia communities will seeks answers to these questions soon. At the behest of fellow parciantes, I will on occasion report to this blog on emerging local plans and discussions for the convening of the Congreso de Acequias (Acequia Congress) for Colorado. Our efforts likely will be modeled to some extent on New Mexico's Congreso de Acequias.

We will need our colegas in the New Mexico Acequia Association to help our communities find a process to discuss and define the values, norms, and rules that acequias in the four counties of Colorado included in the bill (Costilla, Conejos, Las Animas, and Huerfano) might use to implement the new law.

This must derive from a process of collective action drawn from the fullest participation of acequia parciantes across the bioregion. El Congreso de Acequias de Colorado promises to initiate the resurgence of acequia water democracy as an institution of place-based cultures in the headwaters of the Upper Rio Grande bioregion.

March 28, 2009 (Cotacachi, Ecuador)

I have not yet heard from Joe or Ed about the status of the Acequia Recognition bill. It went to the Senate two weeks ago and received a generally positive first reading. I have been anxious throughout this trip without news. My access to the Internet has been spotty....so my mind drifts into place....and I find connections.

There are acequias in Ecuador. Maize and acequias.

There are indigenous communities, resurgent participatory democracies, and their place-based communally-oriented agriculture, artisan production, and the albeit conflicted local management of the protected areas and ecological reserves.

Ibambura is the principal maize growing area in the Andean corridor of Ecuador. Located in the northern highlands close to the border with Colombia, this area includes several blue volcanic-origin lakes and is thus known as the Imbabura or Blue Lakes District.

One of the Cayembi villages, Cotacachi, is known for its leather-making and wool-weaving artisan traditions. Less recognized is that the bioregion is also vested with profound agroecological richness: Both rain-fed and acequia flood-irrigated polycultures are evident here.

This involves close to continuous year-round production of annual grains centered on the diverse land races of maize, various tubers including potatoes and yucca, and perennial and annual grains like quinoa.

There are numerous other perennial heirloom fruit vines, bushes, and trees and wild relatives of cultivars like the Andean Lupine and its ubiquitous chochos, the flower seeds so big they are presented, after careful steeping and rinsing to remove water-soluable toxic alkaloids and a soft boil, as beige-hued medium-sized habas next to a bowl of salsa de aji. The chochos are like our own quelites or verdolagas, the edible wild relatives of plants that are present with domesticated crop mosaics in polyculture huertos familiares.

Indeed, the word in rural areas like Cotacachi is that President Correa is making indigenous autonomy a vital part of the agenda of post-neoliberal state making policies. This process is riddled with contradictions and the constant threat of illegal loggers, drug traffickers, and military operations related to the intrusion of the FARC from Colombia into northern Ecuador's Imbabura bioregion.

I think back to our little valley in south central Colorado and our efforts to succeed in much the same manner as the indigenous people of Cotacachi, who are working to restore the Acequia de la Victoria as part of their place-based governance in and of place.

These are the ties of people and their memories intertwined with the land and water, clouds and skies, plants and animals, and living processes of change, disturbance, and resurgence. These are the presence of life as a process of change bound to place, a process of regeneration (autopoesis).

April 5 (Quito, Ecuador)

I arrived in Quito today after ten days in the Northern Lake District and Manta on the central coast. Finally received word from Ed Vigil that the Senate approved the Acequia Recognition Law on March 23, the day I left for Ecuador.

It seems almost anti-climatic now. We are waiting for Governor Ritter to sign the legislation.

Perhaps it may seem a bit trivializing, or a slip beyond the obvious, to state that the Acequia Recognition Law can be read as a central "watershed" event in the history of water law in the Intermountain West? Environmental justice ethics have prevailed in challenging yet another form of disparate impact resulting in this case from the subjection of place-based law by "positive" law.

For the first time in the history of Western water law, water has been declared a communal and place-based resource rather than a commodity. The value of water as an asset-in-place is thus re-affirmed. This opens the door to the acequia watershed democracy, which can now unfold in its own "natural" habitat as a mutual-aid commons freed from the tethers of individualistic and commodity forms of value.