Is it a cool spring morning. Our group of ten is seated on around a picnic table, squeezed onto the wooden bench or else sitting in rusty metal chairs, under a immense apricot tree. We have come to Dixon New Mexico, a small town north of Santa Fe, to meet with Estevan Arellano and discuss the ways that the northern new mexican irrigation system of acequias is connected to culture, life, and environment in this region.
Estevan is in his sixties or seventies, stooped and stiff his voice unmistakably identifies him as a northern new mexican native. Although he speaks english perfectly his accents carries the unmistakable lilt of someone who only spoke english once entering school. Over the course of the two hours that we sit under his apricot tree, Estevan he tells us about acequias, his childhood, northern new mexican identity, and the ways in which these ideas are interrelated and connected to life and culture in northern new mexico.
Because they are one of the main themes of our visit, Estevan begins by telling us about acequias. Acequias are community supported and maintained irrigation systems that Estevan says are first mentioned in Yemen around the year 5000 BC. Here, in the mountains of new mexico, every acequia has a locally elected commission made up with a president, treasurer, secretary and mayordomo. The mayordomo is the only paid position on the commission and is responsible for the daily operation and maintenance of the acequia, walking its banks to insure that water isn't hogged and that the ditch does not become clogged by trash or debris. Acequias are used to irrigate feilds, trees, and pastures and traditionally are the way in which agricultural life was made possible in communities like this one. Estevan tells us that acequias aren't just about the water they carry, or even the vegetables, fruits, etc. that they feed. Instead he tells us that they are also about culture, that the acequias are like the veins in a body, taking nutrients to the land and a way of life to the people. The system is entirely community based, which is a good thing because, as Estevan says, "We do a better job because we are here on a regular basis." As he talks about the acequias Estevan weaves in other stories, a fact that seems fitting due to the ways that these waters weave in and out of daily life.
I ask Estevan about the term "Hispano", an ethnic and cultural identifier that I have never heard out of northern new mexico. He says that it originates from the word hispanola, that it is a new idea--a word that replaces mexican or even mexican-american identity, and that the development of Spanish Colonial art in Santa Fe is central to the development of this term and the identity associated with it. Estevan says that as artists and collectors have sought to market the idea of a spanish colonial culture the term "Hispano" has become a central way of erasing or ignoring mexican and indian lineages. This is interesting because it essentially has allowed individuals to chose what cultural history they want to inform their lives. It has also legitimated a shift in lifestyle and culture, framing history in terms of more elite social groups instead of rural individuals.
Listening to Estevan speak it is impossible to ignore the ways in which culture, environment, history, and modernization all intersect. The establishment of the lab at Los Alamos led to the cash economy that made the acequias and the fields they traditionally irrigated seem less important. This has led to the abandonment of landscape, the creation of a "landscape of poor people", and the avoidance of traditional farming practices The ways that education erodes culture has facilitated what Estevan calls the 'exportation' of youth of villages. This in turn is part of the reason that Dixon has shrunk so much and that its population has become both older and also made up of retired professionals from bigger cities instead of families with roots in Dixon. And all of this, he says, connects to the acequias, the ways that they preserve culture, the ways that they are tied to the environment, to growing food, and to public health. For Estevan, and as we listened I think to us as well, it is impossible to consider life in Dixon without considering the historic importance of acequias and the implications of their disappearance for the culture and environment of this region. For now the acequias continue to exist, but Estevan tells us that it is getting more and more difficult to find individuals to fill the commission. For now, however, there are enough individuals who still use them, both for practical purposes and for the ways that they maintain a sense of place and feeling of rootedness , that they are maintained.
When Estevan was young he worked collecting oral histories of individuals of the elders in rural new mexican communities. As he speaks about political engagement, quotes Freire, and discusses environmental practices you can only hope that someone collects his history so that, like the acequias that loves and works to protect, his stories can act as the veins that carry the 'nutrients' of the past into the present and future of life in northern new mexico.
-Maya Lemon
No comments:
Post a Comment