Threats to Colorado's acequias and the communities that depend on them-Highland News-Understanding the West

2021-12-06 16:08:22 By : Ms. Nicole Fu

Every summer, in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, a long, high desert valley surrounded by mountains, Jose Martinez admiresly watches the water flowing through his land through irrigation pipes. He planted 8 acres of alfalfa near his home in St. Louis to provide nourishment. Francisco, a small town with less than 90 people. The water comes from public irrigation ditches or the acequias network, which comes from Arabic and means "water holder". These acequias were built in part by his ancestors, who arrived in southern Colorado more than 150 years ago with other Hispanic families from what is now New Mexico, and established seven villages around the Culebra River.

"I started to think, in the past, these people used what we call pico y pala-picks and shovels to dig all this," 76-year-old Martinez told me during my recent visit. On a cold October day, we sat in his kitchen with his 70-year-old wife Junita. The two of them explained how acequias works.

Unlike ordinary irrigation ditches, acequias is a public resource that is collectively owned and managed by its affiliates or members (small farmers who have the right to use the ditches). Acequias is also egalitarian: whether you irrigate an acre or 100 acres, you will get a vote in the decision about the ditches in exchange for helping clean and maintain the acequia. The council elected a three-person committee to make decisions about the maintenance and operation of the ditches, and a mayor to manage the irrigation infrastructure and tell people when irrigation is possible and when the gate must be closed.

In Colorado, acequias are found in the four southernmost counties and are used to irrigate only a small portion of the state's agricultural production. However, in certain areas where water rights are bid by the highest bidder and private benefits sometimes take precedence over collective well-being, acequias remains a powerful antidote to the power of rural communities-a way of valuing local resources beyond their value And share their catalysts in times of scarcity. In dry years, acequias strives to ensure that everyone can survive the shortage fairly; sometimes, when Jose does not see the prospect of a bumper harvest, he chooses to give up his water altogether so that others can have more water.

"Our concept is community," Junita explained. "If I can't get something, why should I hurt my neighbor, if I can let him drink my water-maybe he can grow something?"

This shared mentality originated in part from the family of Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, who settled on one million acres in the southern part of the San Luis Valley in the mid-19th century. Attracted by the promise of land and resources, they established small farming communities on the land where the Kupta Ute people wandered for thousands of years until they were gradually killed or expelled by European colonists from the 1600s. The families that began to settle in the valley in the 1850s were mainly from Mexico. A few years ago, Mexico sold the territory now called New Mexico—including the southern end of the San Luis Valley—to the U.S. government—American War.

The family built acequias and shared a mountainous piece of land in the nearby Sangre de Cristo mountains, known locally as La Sierra, where they depended on water, firewood, and foraging. The land transfer fee was eventually sold, but its later owners respected the historical right of local families to enter La Sierra.

Growing up, Jose Martinez remembered how the family built cellars to store vegetables grown on land nourished by acequias, as well as the meat of deer and elk hunted in La Sierra-these foods can keep them through winter. Although they live in one of the poorest counties in Colorado now, "we eat like kings," he said.

All this changed in 1960, when North Carolina timber tycoon John Taylor purchased 77,500 acres of La Sierra, renamed it Cielo Vista Ranch, and closed it to the local community to create logging operations. Taylor's logging industry has caused lasting damage to this land. According to residents of the area, poorly constructed roads have caused erosion and reduced the amount of water flowing into acequias from the mountains.

Because of Taylor's actions, water is not the only resource reduced or eliminated. Unable to enter La Sierra to graze, local families lost their herd and maintained their self-sufficient culture for decades. Many people, like the family of Bixe Martinez, moved out of the valley. Those who stayed saw their health and well-being deteriorate. People continue to receive food stamps, and the incidence of diabetes has soared. There are also psychological effects.

Shirley Romero Otero, chairman of the Land Rights Committee established in the town of St. Louis in the late 1970s, said: “You have lost the relevance of the meaning of land.” (A group of St. Louis community members are participating in the Colorado Trust’s Community partnership strategy; Romero Otero was previously part of this work.)

In 1981, the Land Rights Commission mobilized local residents to sue Taylor for their historical right to prevent them from entering the property. The ensuing legal battle lasted for 40 years and was fought by several generations of the same family, and led to the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court in April 2003, the Lobato v. Taylor case. The ruling grants people the right to graze, cut timber and collect firewood on the land, provided that they can prove that they are the heirs of the original San Cristól land donated property.

"We are really diehards," Junita told me, pointing to an old black-and-white photo of the early land rights struggle posted on the refrigerator. After nearly 15 years of identifying the descendants of land donations, about 5,000 people obtained the keys to the gate of the ranch, and her husband was one of them.

"We will not let go," Jose added.

The Martinez's persistence is partly attributed to acequias, which is the lifeblood of every village, connecting people to the land and to each other. Every spring, the acequia community gathers for an annual ceremony called La Limpieza to clear the ditches and prepare for the irrigation season. For families, this is a de facto reunion-whether someone moves to Denver or California, people will return to La Limpieza.

For Junita, this public aspect is why acequias is so important: working together to cultivate shared resources. This is why she wants so strongly to protect these resources from wealthy outsiders who threaten the culture. "We are a people based on land and water," Junita explained.

The current owner of Cielo Vista Ranch is William Harrison, heir to the Texas oil wealth, who purchased the Cielo Vista property in 2018. According to its real estate listing, the ranch has a listing price of US$105 million, including the 23-mile Sangre de Cristo mountain range, including 18 peaks over 13,000 feet and one peak over 14,000 feet, Culebra Peak-USA Even the highest private mountain in the world.

According to court documents and residents’ accounts, Harrison’s ranchers threatened and harassed the locals who tried to enter the property even though the legal ruling confirmed the rights of the heir to the land transfer. As the threat of violent conflict grew, Jose and Junita’s children told their father that they did not want him to go to the ranch alone to collect firewood. Like many locals, he uses firewood for warmth.

A week before my visit, the Land Rights Commission submitted a motion to the Alamosa City Court to protect the rights of local residents to enter the ranch. During the two-day hearing, a judge heard testimony about how aggressive ranch surveillance strategies violated the community’s hard-won traditional land rights, including the use of drones to track people and ranch armed personnel bringing dogs close to people. The ranch denied using this strategy.

In an email, Harrison wrote through his lawyer that he believes that some "bad apples" occasionally abuse these rights by illegally hunting, driving all-terrain vehicles and sneaking into the property to fish. "That being said, we are fully committed to ending the hatred of the past and working sincerely to bring healing and peace," he added.

If ACEQUIAS are the seams that hold communities together, they are also what makes them fragile: stitches that can be untied. In recent years, developers have approached communities elsewhere in the St. Louis Valley to purchase their water rights, and then transfer the water from the aquifer below the valley to the Arkansas River through the Poncha Pass for the development of frontier cities.

"So some of these places look like ghost towns," said Peter Nichols, a lawyer for the Acequia project, a free legal aid program supported by the University of Colorado Boulder School of Law.

"So some of these places look like ghost towns." 

So far, the acequia community has resisted these efforts to ensure that their water stays on the land. With the help of the Acequia project and Colorado Open Lands, an environmental non-profit organization, acequias developed a charter to protect acequias from outside buyers.

Sarah Parmar, Director of Conservation at Colorado Open Lands, said that like any collaboration, acequias is not perfect. "It's messy because it involves interpersonal relationships, and as long as you have a community that goes back several generations, there will be resentments and things that have happened, and they will bring these things into these situations," Palma said.

But most importantly, the acequia community recognizes that water is more than an asset; “it is part of everything,” Palma told me. "If you pull that thread, the whole sweater will fall apart."

When the two walked outside to show me Nana ditch, JOSE grabbed Junita's arm to support her, this is the "mother ditch" gurgling under the willows in the backyard.

"I will die if I see water that doesn't belong to us," Junita said. "We have to go."

Today, abandoned houses are scattered among the roads and villages in the Culebra Basin-a reminder of how this community, like many rural communities, has changed. In the northern part of the village, huge agricultural operations have replaced the small family-run vegetable farms that once filled the St. Louis Valley, and their high-tech central pivot irrigation system is consuming the aquifer beneath the valley at an alarming rate.

At the same time, many people left, and the population of Costila County was almost half of what it was in 1950. When their children grew up, Jose and Junita moved to Colorado Springs so that the girls could receive a better education. But people are also returning to the valley, as Martinezes did in 2002. Jose once again started planting alfalfa on his family’s 8 acres of land. A few years ago, two of the girls bought this land on both sides of their parents, where they hope to build their homes one day.

In the Spanish dialect spoken in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, there is a term called querencia, which roughly translates to "the home or place of the heart." Even after they left the valley, Jose and Junita would bring the girls back to San Francisco every summer, reminding them: "This is where you go home."

This story is reprinted with permission from Collective Colorado, published by the Colorado Trust.

Sarah Tory writes in Carbondale, Colorado. Follow @tory_sarah