Enduring Acequias: Wisdom of the Land, Knowledge of the Water

2: The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: The Water Road

75 2 The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro The Water Road • NOW THAT WE HAVE taken a tour of other community irrigation and agricultural systems in different parts of the globe, we are ready to embark on the next part of our journey. What came to be known as the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (the Royal Road of the Inner Province) has been used by the people of the Americas since prehistoric times. During the Spanish epoch, the road stretched from Mexico City to Taos, though most historical accounts have it ending in Santa Fe. The only problem is that Santa Fe didn’t exist when Oñate made his way up north, since he settled in San Gabriel, on Ohkay Owingeh land, about twenty-five miles north of present-day Santa Fe. Until the Santa Fe Trail came into existence all trade and migration into northern New Mexico was from south to north. But the Camino Real has also been called the Camino de Agua, that is, the Water Road, because the settlers, especially those from Zacatecas on north starting in 1596, had to make sure as they traveled that there was water for their animals and also for them. El Camino de Agua, the Water Road, can be traced by the names of settlements such as San Juan del Río, Aguas Calientes, Ojo Caliente, and Ojo de Talamantes and also by the names of places where the water became scarce, such as the Jornada del Muerto, the “Journey of the Dead,” 76 CH A P T E R 2 in what is now southern New Mexico. But as they traveled north they were also very much aware of where there were chupaderos, pozos, manantiales, arroyos, tinajas, and socavones; whatever could hold water or any place where there was water that could be had, they knew about it. When we stopped at Valle Allende on our way to Durango for the 1997 Coloquio del Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Rita Soto, a local historian from Valle de Allende, explained to me that settlers had to have come through “El Valle” instead of Santa Bárbara for the simple fact that there was more water in San Bartolome, as the place was initially known, because of its proximity to the Ojo de Talamante, which is fed by forty manantiales. Though she didn’t refer to the Camino Real as the Camino de Agua, she did stress that “the settlers had to follow the water sources in order to survive.” The Ojo de Talamante is a beautiful spring close to El Valle de Allende that I had the privilege of visiting for the first time in 1998. Now it has become a swimming hole and a place for picnics for the local people. Today the Ojo is starting to dry up due to urban pressure, as wells are dug to take water to the city of Parral, northwest of El Valle de Allende. Parral, a city with a population of about one hundred thousand , is the sister city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the place where Mexican Revolutionary hero Pancho Villa was assassinated on July 20, 1923. Walking the streets of Parral one can almost sense that Pancho Villa is still alive, as everywhere one goes, whether to a local cantina or simply to the streets, people still talk of him as if he had just walked by. But no one has stressed more that the Camino Real is actually the Camino de Agua than Dr. Tomás Martinez Saldaña, who has devoted his life to studying the role of the Tlaxcaltecas in the development of agriculture in northern Mexico, including present-day New Mexico. In a recent personal communication he wrote, “El camino real es una especie de escalera hidraulica o acuatica, donde cada parada, cada lugar, cada espacio tiene un referente al agua” (The Camino Real is in a sense a hydrologic or aquatic ladder, where each stop, each place, each space is somehow related to water). The old Camino Real between Ohkay Owingeh and La Joya, today Velarde, followed what today is known as the “camino del medio,” which goes through Alcalde (formerly La Soledad del Río Arriba), Los 77 The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Pachecos, La Villita, Los Luceros, and Las Cachanillas. It then made its way to the Plaza del Embudo (Dixon today) following the south side of...