Water

In 1848, the U.S. appropriated from Mexico the lands that would become all or parts of present-day California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas. Agriculture and cattle ranching continued in “occupied” Mexico under a race-based caste labor system — Anglo owners, managers, and foremen; Mexican cowhands, miners, and manual laborers. One of the most important “Mexican jobs” was digging irrigation ditches, “bringing water from rivers and streams to parched areas. Some of the irrigation methods had originally been developed by the Moors in Africa before the tenth century and had been brought to the Southwest by the Spanish. Other techniques had come from the Pueblo Indians, who had developed irrigation systems in the region long before the arrival of the first Spaniards. Mexican laborers would level the land, then divide the fields into squares with low embankments to hold the water. After soaking a block, they would make a hole in one of the walls, permitting water to flow into the next square. This method of irrigation came to be know as ‘the Mexican system’” (Takaki, A Different Mirror, 176-185).

Here at Nambe we irrigate our fields with the same system: the photo at top is of the acequia, the communal canal that J’s ownership of the land gives him the right to use. The acequia is a tool, a way of watering to complement the well and the rains. It is an idea, reaching across at least 50 generations and three continents. And it is further evidence of how we are connected, through our histories and through the land.