El Agua de Mi Abuelo
By Pilar F. Trujillo
Pilar F. Trujillo was born and raised in Española. She now lives in Chimayó where she is helping her family grow chile and other vegetables on their ancestral farmland. She has a degree in Environmental Studies from Prescott College and works as the Youth Coordinator for the New Mexico Acequia Association, where she encourages local youth to grow food that is spiritually and culturally meaningful to their traditional communities.
Most days during the balmy, summer months I wake up to the sound of the acequia running right outside my bedroom window. This is the time of year when the snow has already melted from Truchas peak and surely as ever made its way down the Rio Quemado all the way to our Acequia de la Cañada Ancha in Chimayó. I wake up tired because it’s early and the majority of the work on our fields needs to be done before noon, before the hottest part of the day. I grumble about this business of waking up so early to my brothers, but in secret I like it. It’s peaceful. On any given day and depending on the time of year, there is more than enough work to go around the farm. The fields need to be cleared and prepared, or the seeds need to be cleaned, or the headgate controlling the flow of water needs to be fixed, or the surcos (rows) need to be made or fixed, or it’s time to plant, or it’s time to harvest, or it’s time to irrigate, or it’s time to make ristras, or roast the chile, and of course there are always weeds and more weeds to be pulled. Time is not linear in any sense on a farm, and neither is the work. We are just beginning to learn the cycles of our land, adjusting our bodies and hearts. This practice is not special or unique to my family here in northern New Mexico. To be sure you could say that this work is in the blood of all people, but more immediately, it is in the blood of every norteño and every native person, passed onto us by our ancestors. The land is our body, the work is in our blood, the acequia is our heart pumping blood and giving life to our body. This is how we were born.
When I think about waterways or about the Santa Fe River, I think about the people that used to know the river like I have gotten to know the acequia outside my window. There are probably people that still remember. I have met people like them. People like Louie from Tesuque, who knows the original Tewa names of the mountains and watershed that feed the Santa Fe River, who knows the old ways of using the land as a sponge. I think of people like Victor from Questa, who makes his living from his farm that is 7500 feet in elevation and only a few miles south of the Colorado border. Victor cries when he talks about water because he knows that he is talking about God, about that which sustains his way of life. I think of all the people who understand the tricks of properly irrigating with an acequia, how to be intimate with the water and get it to go where you want it, those who truly know that irrigating this way is an art form. I think about the bendiciones (blessings) that are said at the beginning of every season, out in the fields and over the acequias, honoring the sacredness of the water and the land.
When I think about the Santa Fe River, I think about my grandfather Cipriano Trujillo of Chimayó, whose land we inherited and plant today. My grandfather, whose upbringing was so hard that he couldn’t imagine tending the fields willingly and without the need for survival, did not pass his knowledge directly to us. The intimacy he had with the land and the water is something that my brothers and I have had to relearn after years of living and working in the city, of pot smoking, partying, and buying our food from stores. After years of disconnect, we seek to find ourselves again, my brothers and I. We find ourselves living in Chimayó. And together we are working the farm. At first we take advice from anybody who’s willing to dispense it. There are a lot of people who have an idea of what farming is about. We hire a nice boy from Vermont, Daniel, who lives with us and has an extended knowledge of organic farming—in Vermont. He struggles with the challenge of growing food at 6500 feet with little water, and we struggle with conveying to him the things about farming that we seem to inherently know. Daniel has a hard time believing us when we tell him that the native chile doesn’t need to be irrigated every day. He thinks it’s dying or suffering, but we know, somehow, that it loves the heat, loves the challenge of surviving and thriving in this climate. We are proud of ourselves, looking at our calloused hands at the end of the day, acknowledging the information that we are regaining. I like the idea that our hands are able to remember the work. Can you imagine what it would mean for the city of Santa Fe to regain this information as well? If you ask the right people, I’m sure you can still hear the stories around the Santa Fe River, learn the same lessons I’m learning in Chimayó.
Can you imagine having a living river that feeds dozens of acequias, instead of just a handful of parciantes (acequia irrigators) on the Acequia Madre? If you drive down Agua Fria or West Alameda, the fields are still there, quietly waiting. They hold horses now, or a mobile home here and there, but can you imagine instead you see gorgeous irrigated fields of alfalfa or corn or chile? You see youth learning how to flood irrigate with their neighbor or grandpa. You see beautiful, large cottonwoods dotting the riverbank and owls, hawks and squirrels all making their homes in the trees. You see families and neighbors helping each other with planting or harvesting. You see chile ristras hanging outside of porches not for decoration, but because the people grew that chile and are intending to eat it once it dries. You see children running happily through the bosque, finding frogs and salamanders and getting their feet wet in the soggy riverbed. You see a community coming together, planting, weeding, harvesting.
This traditional knowledge is not completely lost, but rather displaced by sidewalks and pavement, businesses and bigger homes. But it is still there; we still have a chance to bring it back. Imagine waking up most days to the sound of water running right outside your window.
Agua Fria Village and the Once and Future River
The title of this "position paper" is the approximate title of an article by the Trust for Public Land in its national Land and People biannual magazine issue of May of 2006: http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=20636&folder_id=3228. We believe it accurately reflects the passion that Agua Frians have for their land and water from the past and into tomorrow.
DISCLAIMER: This is not an official position of the Agua Fria Village Association (of which I am President), Acequia Agua Fria (of which I am President), or the Agua Fria well Owners Association (of which I am Vice-President); but rather a compilation of a lot of things, said by a lot of Agua Frians, over many years. It is not a legal or a historical treatise but references a number of factual events.
But for the record….
Agua Fria Village is a place of settlement in New Mexico, first recognized as a place of modern recorded settlement, when Sergeant Major (Maestro Campo) Roque Madrid was given a land grant on the Santa Fe River from Ojito Fresco to Pueblo Quemado in 1693 by General Don Diego de Vargas for his service in the 1692 “Reconquest” of New Mexico by the Spanish Crown. His request was granted based on his parents and grandparents having farmed this area prior to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.
Agua Fria exists on an alluvial plain farmed by Native Americans until a regional drought of circa 1250 A.D. The place was partially resettled in the 1300’s then finally abandoned in the 1400’s (http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/30-Dig).
Although the ancient Agua Fria Village has nearly been swallowed up by City of Santa Fe Annexations and nearly driven into extinction by the illegal damming of the Santa Fe River managed by the Santa Fe Ring, Agua Frians conceive of a totally different identity from the City of Santa Fe. There are some real distinctions between Agua Fria Village and the City of Santa Fe: Agua Frians do not consider the Fiestas as there celebration, but rather May 15th San Isidro Day; they do not pilgrimage north to Santuario but instead south to San Antonio Church in Cieneguilla; Agua Frians consider that they supported the City residents by their local food production, adobe block production and fuel wood collection. Agua Frians see themselves as completely independent of the City of Santa Fe and living on sustainable lands that have been encroached on by City’ values and greed. Whereas, city councilors often publicly talk about weaning the village off it dependence on city sewer and water systems for the last five decades.
So it has been a strife and conflict that has existed for quite some time. The City has asked for many things from us and we have reluctantly complied and then have been “abused” for complying.
Every stick of wood burned in a fireplace in Santa Fe to keep warm was brought by the vendors living on Agua Fria Street (no wood came from Pecos until the highway was paved in the 1950’s). Almost every ear of corn and pound of flour, and slice of meat came from Agua Fria; the virtual breadbasket of the City of Santa Fe. The repayment to Agua Frians has been the theft of land, water rights, the closing of acequias, and the cramming down our throats of every objectionable land use that the City desperately needed and was too good to put into their own backyard: the Siler Road sewer plant, the effluent line to the golf course, the high power electric lines from Algodones and White Rock; the sewer lines to Cieneguilla; the gas lines to Los Alamos; the road network like: Camino de los Carros[i] in the 1890’s, Cerrillos Road in the 1930’s, Airport Road, St. Francis Drive in 1950, Osage in 1955, Rufina Street in 1985 (for the easement) and the building of it in 1999, the Bypass or State Road 599; the Regional landfill; everything took land and divided family members on one side or the other of it physically.
We blocked the four laning of Agua Fria Street and West Alameda; projects that would have ejected long-time residents. We blocked the construction of River Road, Powerline Road, Sunset Road and Richards Avenue to West Alameda; projects which would have turned our community into a subdivision.
We encouraged the extension of Rufina Street, Siler Road, and South Meadows Road and these projects, which would have benefited us most, have literally taken decades.
We have attended all the City and County sponsored planning meetings and have joined task forces that meet for years on end and then their recommendations are shelved. We have been good citizens and partners when both the City and County have been deceitful, and in the pockets of developers. We formed the Southwest Area Taskforce, or SWAT, a powerfully descriptive acronym---in 1980. The group fought for ten years and then just got burnt out. The leaders felt used up by the community and refuse to participate in anything today. Some have moved away.
Over 70% of all the electric power and natural gas comes through the land of Agua Frians. Instead, of giving into the piece-meal easement acquisition we should have fought a class action lawsuit and asked for toll power lines and toll roads in exchange for our loss of wet water. But then we aren’t like that. Most feel we just need to go along to get along.
So we have had a relationship of broken promises with the City of Santa Fe:
From the American Society of Irrigation Engineers Annual conference and report for 1892-1893:
“But besides this we have here impounded 500 acre feet, or more than 20,000,000 gallons of water, ready to be turned on in July when the Acequias fail and the fruit in ready to shrivel. This will supply for July and August 1,000 acres and save the crop, worth $20 dollars an acre, or a quarter of a million of dollars. Here is an ample warrant of the expenditure, which will be profitable for both the company and the community.”
So the sales pitch for the reservoirs was that it would help the farmers. But it was a ploy to sell them water rather than to guarantee them water.
We’ve gone to many city council meetings and Municipal Boundary Commission meetings and the official representatives will say: “that is ancient history” and it may be. But it has been handed down from grandparent to grandchild and is fresh on the mind of most Agua Frians.
Agua Frians love their river and their land. The Santa Fe River helps to define the cultural landscape and our sense of place.
So enough history and to the charge of the Core Working Group: how would you put 1,000 acre feet annually into the Santa Fe River?
We feel that the product revealed on February is the best thing for all parties involved including the Agua Fria Village.
To get to this clean ending point we asked ourselves the following:
1.What would we like to see in a Living River? A flow of water that is something that comes down on San Isidro Day and the Santa Fe River Blessing on May 15th for sure and waters the plantings that groups like the Santa Fe Watershed Association have done. Also the once a year flushing of the over-the-winter-riverbed (a “spring cleaning” if you will). The first City Of Santa Fe Ordinance in 1896 made it illegal for residents to dump the bodies of dead animals in the riverbed to wait for a flushing.[ii]
2. What are our values?
For people in Agua Fria, it is a lot about customs and culture. The old Hispanic saying: “water is life” rings as true today as it did 400 years ago.
3. How would we feel about a more natural river?
Historically, Agua Frians were prohibited from cutting wood in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (now the Santa Fe National Forest) by Royal Decree and were instead directed to the Caja del Rio Grant (sometimes loosely called “Buckman”) for their fuel wood needs. Most people still go there. So that the mismanagement of that forest in the watershed has directly impacted the Santa Fe River Flows, and the blame has to be put squarely on the shoulders of the historical leaders and residents of Santa Fe. To let the forest change from a scattered Ponderosa type with a grass savannah to a water sucking pinion-juniper jungle with Chamisa plants---is a detriment to all in the watershed. Further, the loss of the natural beaver ponds until the last decade has also impacted the watershed adversely. So the restoration of the natural policy is the best management advice.
Agua Frians favor the planting of native trees that replace non-native and invasive trees and shrubs. We have learned a lot about river restoration from the Santa Fe Watershed Association (http://www.santafewatershed.org/). Many of us were taught that “engineers knew best” and that the river had to be channelized for public safety. The more concrete we could pour the better off we were. Get the water off the streets and into the Santa Fe River ASAP. Over the last decade SFWA has spearheaded a lot of presentations, tours and demonstration projects that have dispelled these engineering myths. We have seen how native willow and cottonwood plantings have brought back the banks of the river and wildlife. We have seen how veins . We have seen how a Zuni Bowl, Media Luna, rock mulch rundown and a one rock dam can slow and spread out the water of side arroyos and inlets to the river and make it sink in. This is the 3-S formula: slow it, spread it, make it sink in.
We have a lot of erosion from upstream and some downstream activities. Activities that have a certain legal liability to them if we were to engage in a class action lawsuit. The project flows mitigate this erosive force.
[i] Camino de los Carros was a winding “donkey path” road that you can see evidence of by looking at the wavy north property boundaries of McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Arby’s, Village Inn, etc. It was thirty feet wide and graveled. The road wound around a bit and went from what is now Osage Avenue out to Airport Road. The upper acequia generally followed the road and they would use the road to go maintain the ditch.
After the land exchange for the new Cerrillos Road by the State Highway Department, Manual Romero’s grandfather then lost the land south of Camino de los Carros; as did all people in Agua Fria. This had been farming land on which alfalfa was raised. The entire parcel was put into a tax parcel and former City Councilor Seligman purchased it for a few dollars at a state Tax Sale of which residents were not informed in the 1930’s. This effectively stole all the traditional lands of Agua Frians, whose U.S. Government land Patents (land grants) confirmed in 1909 and issued by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, stretched from the Arroyo de los Chamisos (near the present day Santa Fe Place Mall) to the Arroyo de los Frijoles or the southern most boundary of the San Ildefonso Pueblo grant; a distance of some five to seven miles in length. Lots were narrower in width and may have been only 600 to 900 feet (200 or 300 yards or “varas”).
[ii] Pamela Dupzyk, Education and Outreach Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association, Presentation.