The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Tracing Mexican American Environmental Concerns in María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don

Abstract

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• The Water-Energy-Food NexusTracing Mexican American Environmental Concerns in María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don
• Anthony Gomez III (bio)

Introduction

When San Diego first received mountain water from the Cuyamaca Basin in 1889, government leaders celebrated and cheered for the expanded access to a water supply. No longer did the booming town's population have to depend on outmoded wells and dwindling reservoirs. To many, the moment represented a profound triumph and a chance for the city to develop, grow, and attract new residents. To Mexican author María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, however, news of the basin must have been cause for disappointment. Having long fantasized about establishing a reservoir and irrigation network of her own, the basin's success cemented an end to her ambitions to influence the government and better the economic situation of California's Mexican inhabitants. An unfortunate set of results was clear. Without power over the water, the Mexican population could not depend on their usual food supply, as their farmers were susceptible to a company and state that preferred to help and invest in Anglo farmers. Without the stable income from agriculture, there was no financing to lobby for their proposed railroad line. And without the pecuniary reward and trade benefit of a train line, there was no guarantee of future security for either food or water. The blue gold that disappeared from control proved a devastating blow to a Mexican-led infrastructure across the state.

For a short moment in 1872, Ruiz de Burton's dream of bringing water to San Diego felt plausible (Sánchez and Pita 392). While geographer George Davidson of the University of California, Berkeley, [End Page 189] studied and assessed her plans, Ruiz de Burton waged a public campaign in The San Diego Union newspaper to persuade locals to her cause. Over the next decade, the author ventured to Capitol Hill, speaking before Congress to defend and assert the necessity of her visions for infrastructure (Crawford). Despite her efforts, political support and public morale were lacking. San Diego, known mostly for locals that were "sin dinero y sin fe," did not seem worthy of investment from either state or federal channels (qtd. in Sánchez and Pita 392). Her plans, though revived for a brief spell in 1882, did not come to fruition (392). Worse yet, in the following decade San Diego would boom due to funding and capital given to Anglo individuals and corporations, many of which were created to resolve the same problems she discussed in her writings and speeches. San Diego would have a new reservoir in 1875 and the network to bring water from the Cuyamaca Basin would first be announced in 1885 ("February 22, 1889").

It is perhaps no coincidence that in her 1885 novel, The Squatter and the Don, the Mexican hero Don Mariano Alamar longs for his people to expand the water supply and control it before others can. Like his creator, Don Mariano argues that with such power Mexican ranchers can secure the right to irrigate their preferred crops and acquire a railroad line that caters to their needs. Addressing cattlemen and agricultural workers, he also states, "The water is in the sea now, for there we let it go every year; but if we were sensible, judicious men, we would not let it go to waste—we would save it" (Ruiz de Burton 50). Don Mariano's plea functions as a lesson toward the conservation of one resource, and the need to consider each resource not as separate entities but as a unified set. Both here and in her life, Ruiz de Burton expressed an understanding of the interlinked relationship of water, food, and energy and its centrality to a community: in the absence of security around one resource, dominant and capitalistic systems tend to subvert access or future access to the others.

In today's parlance, we might say what Ruiz de Burton intuitively understood and transformed into narrative is the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. The World Economic Forum Initiative popularized the concept in their 2011 publication, Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus, which stated that...