Historic Waterways Keep Traditions Alive.

• Author: Pinto, Kathy
• Position: Acequias in New Mexico

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Perhaps nowhere in the United States is the distant past as evident as in r northern New Mexico. In towns and villages throughout the region, the thread of tradition runs strong, creating bonds between people and the land of their ancestors, their culture, and their traditions. Once a remote outpost of the Spanish empire, this area of New Mexico has preserved a connection to the land and a reverence for the earth and what it provides to sustain life, both material and spiritual.

Centuries ago, Spanish colonists took advantage of the abundant snow melt from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Taos and dug an elaborate network of irrigation ditches called acequías . The word acequía comes from the Arabic as-saquiya , meaning "water carrier," and has its origins in the desert lands of Morocco. The Islamic invasion of Spain in the late eighth century brought this highly efficient irrigation system to Spanish towns and villages. In the sixteenth century, the colonists brought it to the New World, and more than 400 years later, this ancient system still endures.

Today, about a thousand acequías continue to operate throughout New Mexico, but most traditional acequías are in the northern part of the state. Scattered throughout the area, these irrigation canals can be seen from near and far. About four feet wide and half as deep, they follow the contour of the land--threading through valleys, winding around trees, boulders, and hills, irrigating fields and pastures. They are the people's connection to the land, bringing life-sustaining water to their small towns and villages. These ancient waterways and the water they carry symbolize the spirit of a community, its social cohesiveness, economic welfare, and sense of historical continuity. Sustained by religious beliefs and practices that penetrate the day-to-day lives of the people, they are as much a part of the culture as the Catholic Church. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In a land where water supplies depend primarily on the whims of nature--how much or how little rain falls in the summer, how much winter snow piles up in the mountains, how great and when summer runoff will be--man has devised a way to control the water that is available, delivering it to where it is needed most.

In a state frequently ravaged by drought, the acequía system operates a under repartimiento (water sharing) system in proportion to what the various groups of people in the system need. Farmers and...