Acequias: Trust and Hydrosocial Territory

Abstract

New Mexico’s acequias belong to a family of hand-dug, gravity-flow, small-scale, farmer-managed irrigation systems found all over the world. Some are historically related, but others are not. Despite their differences in terms of environment, geography, climate, regional and national setting, language, and culture, these systems all seem to operate in strikingly similar ways. This alignment has led one anthropologist to propose that their common operating principles are the result of a rare process of convergent evolution, whereby the same form emerges independently in different places and times, because it is highly adaptive (Trawick, Reig, and Salvador 2014). Such systems—which are found, for example, in the Andes, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Africa, and Bali—have proven to be sustainable and resilient within their respective ecological settings, whether arid or humid. Nevertheless, many have disappeared under the onslaught of modernization, while those that still exist struggle to survive in the face of myriad adverse political, economic, social, demographic, environmental, and climatic forces. This chapter examines the dynamic interface between acequia governance and the broader hydrosocial regime and territory in which it is embedded. My discussion explores the question of acequia sustainability