Will the Real Mayordomo Please Stand Up

Fred called late one afternoon and quickly dispensed with the social chit chat.

”Orlando’s been taking all the water and says he’s not going to send a peon to clean the ditch because he’s the mayordomo.”

“He’s not the mayordomo, you are,” Mark said. “He knows we just made him mayordomo on paper because you don’t own any land and can’t officially be the mayordomo even if you really are because you do the job.”

“Then you tell him that. He won’t listen to me.”

Orlando is Fred’s uncle and he knows that Fred is the mayordomo, the one who directs the rotation of water among the irrigators in the village. Orlando was the mayordomo for twenty years until Tomás, Fred’s father, took over the responsibility. Then Tomás lost his leg to diabetes and it says in the bylaws of the acequia association that the mayordomo can’t be someone who has a disability and Fred was the only one left to do the job. But Tomás hadn’t put any of the land in Fred’s name and neither can you be a mayordomo if you aren’t a landowner. Mark and I were already the commissioners, the treasurer and secretary of the acequia, so we really needed Fred (Tomas could then be the third commissioner, as that didn’t require having two legs). The rest of the village irrigators, or parciantes, never came to the meetings and were happy to leave the administration of the acequia to those of us who had governed it for years, even if two of us were gringos, Tomás had only one leg, and Fred didn’t own any land.

“I’m quitting if Orlando doesn’t agree to send a peon to clean the ditch and pay him the $64 just like everyone else has to,” Fred said. From the tone of his voice Mark could tell he was offended that his uncle wasn’t acknowledging his status as mayordomo.

“OK, Kay and I will go talk to him. If he gives us any trouble we’ll just tell him that the commissioners have decided he’s not going to be the mayordomo, even if it’s only on paper. We’ll use someone else’s name to make it legal and you’ll continue to be the mayordomo.”

“He’s loco,” Fred said. “And he’s my uncle!”

That’s never made any difference in this crazy place we live. So Mark and I walked down the road to Orlando’s house the next morning to try and get things straightened. There was no answer at his place so we went down to his son Nelson’s house and there he was, sitting outside in the sun watching Nelson work on one of his cars. Nelson had a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a construction foreman and never worked the land. Orlando irrigated it all and ran a small herd of cows, like he always had, although the only way he could get around anymore was on an ATV that he called his caballo.

“Hola, vecino,” I said. “Como esta?”

“Bien, bien,” Orlando said, giving each of us one of those gentle handshakes that are typical of the viejitos of the villages of northern New Mexico.

We sat down on the bench next to him, out of the wind, and made chit chat for a few minutes until I thought it was time to talk about why we were there.

“So, Fred called us yesterday and says that you told him you weren’t going to send a peon to clean the ditch. He says you told him you’re still the mayordomo. You remember at the meeting we just put your name down as mayordomo for the record because Fred doesn’t own any land, but that he’s going to do the job, right?”

Orlando threw back his head and laughed and laughed.
“I really got him good, didn’t I?” he said.

“You mean you were just joking with him?” Mark asked. “I think Fred believed everything you said.”

“He don’t know shit about being mayordomo, pero if you say he’s the mayordomo then I guess I have to send a peon to clean the ditch. I already asked someone anyway.”

Mark and I grinned at each other. Apparently these guys joked with each other as much as they joked with us, to the point we never knew when they were telling the truth or not. But asking Orlando about taking all the water was trickier. He had a reputation for hogging the water when he was mayordomo and we didn’t doubt for one minute that Fred was right in that regard. But we did our best to stay on good terms with everyone and didn’t want to be the ones to call him on it.

“So, who has the water?” Mark asked diplomatically. “We’d like to get it soon so we can water the orchard.”

“It’s coming down, it’s coming down, what’s your hurry. Everyone’s always asking, where’s the water when they know it’s got to go all the way up before it comes down.”

Orlando was referring to the water rotation that started at the lower end of the valley, where each parciante took his or her turn watering according to how much land he or she owned. If you had a few acres then you had one water right and you got the water for 24 hours, in a good year of sufficient water, and if you had a bunch of land you had several water rights and got the water 24 hours for each right. So in order to calculate when you were due to get the water you had to know how many water rights each parciante had and how long it would take the water to move up the village until everyone had had his or her turn and then the rotation started all over again. Most of us, even Mark and I as commissioners, just let the mayordomo work it out and let us know when it was our turn. But when the mayordomo was taking the water out of turn it was a problem.

“Are you irrigating your fields up above?” I asked. “I didn’t see any water coming through your compuerta at the house.”

“Si, si, I have the water until tonight at six and then I let it go. That’s the way we do it, and Fred should just quit bitching about it and wait his turn.”

“He says that somehow things have gotten out of rotation and it should already be coming down,” I say.

Orlando laughed again. “He’ll get his water tonight, no problem.”

We decided to leave it at that, a fairly satisfactory resolution of the problem. Which was highly unusual. When it came to dealing with the acequia, solutions were few and far between. When someone wasn’t complaining about the water being taken out of turn they were complaining about someone taking too much. Or someone not closing his or her compuerta, the gate that allowed the water to flow from the acequia madre into the landowner’s field. Or not leaving enough water in the ditch so animals downstream could drink. Or not paying ditch fees. Or letting the water run down the road instead of in the field. And the ones they usually complained to were the commissioners, meaning Mark, Tomás, and me.

When we called Fred to tell him what Orlando had said, he answered, “He didn’t sound like he was joking to me. A ver, we’ll see if someone shows up to dig for him on Saturday.”

Orlando’s grandson showed up to dig for Orlando on Saturday, and Orlando showed up as well, to keep an eye on things. It took us half an hour to figure out who was digging whose derecho, or water right, as most of the landowners in the village hired local men and women to clean the ditch for them. They were either too busy to do it themselves, too old, didn’t live in the village anymore, or uninterested in having anything to do with the acequia. If you had more than one water right your worker had to clean a longer section than the worker digging one right. Fred was the man who laid out the sections, approved the work, and moved us up the ditch, all day long, with an hour off for lunch. By the time we reached the presa, or dam, at the river, the ditch had been cleaned of weeds, roots, garbage, and mud. When the water was released from the presa at the end of the day, it hurried down the ditch on its long journey back to the river, and ultimately, the Rio Grande.

Orlando met us at the presa at five o’clock on his caballo.

“How do you like the new mayordomo?” he asked Mark and me, as we lay on the ditchbank, resting.

“Fred did a good job, and he’s not as mean as you,” Mark teased.

“You got to be mean to get these cabrones to do any work. I bet there’s still jaras all along the ditch that you guys didn’t cut,” Orlando said.

“We cut all the willows,” I said. “And they were a real mess, believe me.”

“That’s cuz you got to cut them every year and not let them get too big and suck up all the water.”

“Well, vecino, we cut them every year when Tomás was the mayordomo, just like we cut them every year when you were the mayordomo. So what do you think about that?” Mark laughed.

“I think you’re all loco, that’s what I think, and I’m glad I’m not the mayordomo anymore,” Orlando said.

Just then Fred opened the presa so the water could flow down the newly cleaned acequia.

Orlando got back on his caballo and took off down the road.

“I bet that old son of a gun is going to go open his compuerta and take the water before anyone else, to hell with the rotation,” Fred said disgustedly.

“Oh well,” Mark said. “For now, there’s enough water for everyone. Just go close his compuerta at six tonight and start the regular rotation. If he complains tell him to talk to us about it.”

Fred shrugged his shoulders and went off to pay the peones who had worked all day on the ditch.

I looked at Mark and laughed. “Since when are we the arbiters of what is reasonable?”
“Until someone accuses us of doing something stupid and then someone else will have to straighten things out. Let’s at least rest on our laurels for awhile. It won’t last long.”

So we did.