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

Epilogue: A la acequia o a la escuela: Acequia Literacy

201 Epilogue A la acequia o a la escuela: Acequia Literacy • Our journey is now complete, and we now know the truism of the dicho Sin agua no hay vida (Without water there is no life). If we want to continue the traditions of our ancestors, from the Indus Valley to Embudo, water and community have to remain one. Water cannot become a commodity , for today more than ever we have to remember the Muslim Law of Thirst, that water belongs to every living thing, be it a plant, an animal , or a human being. In our journey we encountered a lot of traditional knowledge and saw how, when that knowledge was lost, the civilizations that depended on it crumbled. Look no further than the sacred valley of the Incas, the chinampas of Xochimilco, Ses Feixes in Ibiza, and the hundreds of irrigation canals that have reverted back to desert. When we forget that sacred knowledge that bonds water to community , humanity disappears. And the acequias are in a very precarious state at this time. Either we recoup this oro del pueblo or in a few years they will be but a memory. Either no one is preoccupied about the acequias and other community irrigation systems or there is a need for a reinterpretation of the landscape and water. Náyade Aguirre, in a column for El Observatodo in Chile, writes, The development and growth of our city has permitted the ancient agricultural lands to be turned into towns, condominiums, and villas. But there have remained on its periphery trenches of the ancient 202 E PI LOGU E acequias and canals that today are only receptacles for trash and rubbish . The trenches are full of junk that deface the city and serve as trash collectors for those insensitive neighbors who prefer to travel for miles and deposit their trash and rubbish (when logically they should simply take out their trash to the door of their house on the day of trash collection ). These trenches are not only a sanitary danger or an ugly site but rather represent a great danger to the security of the community, since they are used as a refuge for delinquents. She continues, To whom do these pieces of land belong? Do they belong to those who own the canals even though they don’t deliver water for irrigation? It seems important to have ordinances pertaining to construction, so that in each new development . . . whether as a new green zone or another alternative, in accordance with the neighbors, [the canals are] maintained if possible for irrigation purposes. The construction companies buy agricultural lands next to these lands [former acequias or canals], and that’s why when building they are not incorporated , but it is the municipality (I think) that should demand a solution for these ancient irrigation structures that are not in use, so that they don’t become a community problem. If a canal or acequia is not in use, the owner should be required to . . . maintain it. Traditional agriculture is no longer a producer of food, as in the past, but rather it provides other services for society, such as the maintenance of the agrarian landscape, the preservation of the environment, and the provision of green belts. The new role of traditional agriculture in today’s world is the conservation of the environment and its biodiversity and the occupying and rearranging of the landscape; today this is known as multifunctional traditional agriculture. The production of food should again become a priority, however, if not for the market then for local consumption. The population has to be concientizada, as Paulo Freire would say, about the positive aspects of a traditional agricultural landscape, whether it’s an acequia landscape or the chinampas of Xochimilco. 203 A la acequia o a la escuela INTERPRETATION OF THE LANDSCAPE AND THE WATER Traveling through rural communities, whether in New Mexico, Spain, or Mexico, makes us reflect on the sentiment of querencia toward the landscape. Today traditional rural agricultural landscape environments have been damaged in the process of accelerated transformation, causing them to lose their scale and their appearance as a rural scene. There is a possibility of preserving certain landscapes, particularly those of great value and those in the most alarming processes of decay. To protect others from extinction there has to be radical change. This preoccupation with the landscape must be translated into an elaborate series...