Acequia Stories: The Democracy of Dysfunction, or How Everyone is Equally Crazy

OK, I’ve heard enough about the romance of acequia democracy. As I wrote in my posting “Elegy for El Valle”, acequia meetings are often forums for long-standing feuds or a recent offense that’s easier to duke out in the acequia playing fields than court. Not that we’re not litigious: “Take him to court!” is the common command even before mediation is given a chance. While it’s often just bluster, I can’t count the number of times private lawyers, judges, district attorneys, and the State Engineer’s Office (a really bad idea) have gotten involved in acequia issues they should never have known about.

So instead of going to court I’m going to tell some stories about the Democracy of Dysfunction as I have seen them played out in my norteño lifetime. It may be dysfunction, but it’s still democracy—kind of.

Story Number One: How the Commission Tried to Give Us An Additional Water Right and We Refused

Mark and I got taken under the wing of Tomás soon after we moved to El Valle. He was the commissioner on one of the three acequias in the village and he was also the de facto mayor of the village, the one with the tallest woodpile, the most tractors, all the connections—basically, the Alpha Male benevolent dictator. What that meant to the guys in the village challenging his position was that whoever was friends with the enemy was their enemy as well. Tomas didn’t bother to attend the acequia meeting where these guys were commissioners, but Mark and I went because we had water rights on two ditches—the “dark” side and the Tomas side—and we figured someone needed to know what they were up to.

So we show up at the meeting. The only attendees are the three commissioners, one of their mothers, and two parciantes. When they get to the agenda item about whether there have been any transfers of water rights they inform us that instead of owning a half a water right we now own a full water right. Actually, they only present this information to me, although Mark is sitting there right next to me, because the land is in my name and we’re not married. I can’t really remember why we put the land in my name, but there it is. Tomás used to own the land and when he sold it to the young man we bought it from—a kid from Santa Fe who had big ambitions to be a farmer but then kind of burnt out—Tomás divided the water right and kept half for his house and field and half for the land he sold. So when we bought it from the kid we had half a water right, meaning we got to irrigate for 12 hours each rotation.

We bought the land in 1992. It is now 2000 and these guys are just now telling us we have one water right instead of half a water right. Or telling me, that is. I have a printout of the minutes of the meetings (which for some reason the commissioners actually tape recorded), which reveal much better than I ever could just how crazy these meetings get.

• David tells Kay that her property historically had one water right.

• Kay [jokingly] says that one right for her property was fine with her but that Tomas would raise hell over that.

• Mark asked why the Commission suddenly has a problem with the issue since in recent history the Commission had recognized that Kay’s property had ½ water right and Tomas had ½ water right. Mark said he had no problem with ½ a water right on Kay’s property.

• Ruben asked Kay if she had a problem with owning only ½ water right.

• Kay said she had no problem with it.

• Ruben told Kay that if she didn’t have a problem with the transfer Tomas should just get the permit at the State Engineer’s Office. We can’t just let individuals move water rights around without following procedure.

• David said as an individual he would have a problem with it.

• Mark said that he and Kay were objecting to the way the discussion had proceeded and would have to speak with a lawyer before continuing.

• Mark and Kay leave the building.

• Mark and Kay return to the building. (We didn’t have time to talk to a lawyer but we talked to Tomas and he said he was going to talk to a lawyer.)

• Kay said she felt the meeting was not legal because we were counting a quorum by majority of water rights and not on one-person-one vote majority. She said she wanted it on record that she was objecting to the meeting.

• Mark and Kay leave the meeting again.

Tomás ended up having to get a lawyer to write a letter stating it is perfectly legal for parciantes under community acequias to transfer a ditch right to other lands served by the same ditch, and that the State Engineer’s Office doesn’t want to hear about it, much less issue a permit for it.

So they backed off. For the time being. And only on this issue. There would be plenty more to come.

Pee Wee’s Story: The Deaf Leading the Blind

Albert, my neighbor, is “severely” deaf and his little terrier mix Pee Wee is “completely” blind: she has no eyes. Albert asked me to write a story about how this happened and suggested the title: “The Deaf Leading the Blind.”

Albert and Pee Wee are inseparable. They live together in an immaculate trailer in El Valle. Pee Wee has a solar doghouse but she prefers the trailer. And since she lost her eyes, Albert prefers having her with him inside: “She’s my partner.”

Albert got Pee Wee about a year ago from a friend in Chamisal. She was supposed to be a present for his granddaughter, who was living with him at the time, but the granddaughter moved to Albuquerque so Albert ended up with Pee Wee. She used to run out onto the village road when I went for walks with my dogs and occasionally accompanied us up the llano. Even then Albert often took her with him when he went to Peñasco to hang out with his friends, or on a quick trip to Taos when she wouldn’t have to stay in the car too long, waiting.

One day she was in the car with him when he got out to lock the gate. She must have jumped out the door when he wasn’t looking and when he got back in and started up his driveway he felt a bump and then heard her cries. He stopped immediately and found Pee Wee rolling around on the ground with blood pouring out of her face. He picked her up and ran to his mother Corina’s house, next door. They washed the blood off Pee Wee’s face and tried to insert her eye back into its socket.

This is when the Salazar Clinic vets in Taos and Jeannie Cornelius of the Dixon Animal Protection Society come into the story. Albert rushed Pee Wee to the clinic where they immediately took her in but were unable to save her eye. Albert doesn’t have much discretionary money, but he paid what he could and left Pee Wee with the vet for a couple of days. He then took her home and she seemed to be doing OK, but about 10 days later her other eye swelled up and Albert took her back to the vet. This time he had no money so the clinic contacted Jeannie, the compassionate dog lady who runs an animal rescue service in Dixon, who agreed to pay the bill. The vets kept Pee Wee over the weekend, but the eye got worse, and when they told Albert that they’d have to remove it he broke down and thought, how am I going to take care of a blind dog? He considered euthanizing Pee Wee, but the vets told him how spunky she was and offered to try to find a home for her. One of the vets took the dog home with her and considered keeping Pee Wee herself.

But Albert couldn’t let her go. He built a chain link fence around his yard and came back to the clinic and took her home. A week later, which was exactly a month after he accidently drove over her, he took Pee Wee back for a final exam. The vets’ report read: “Looks great—doing well. Eyes look good—pulled stitch from medial aspect of (L) eye. Everything else [they had also spayed her] looks good. Very happy.”

So that’s how the Deaf Ended Up Leading the Blind. Pee Wee remains “Very happy,” at least as far as we humans can tell. She sits on Albert’s lap in the car. He feeds her high protein dog food. She follows him everywhere around the yard and occasionally bumps into things but regains her equilibrium after he whistles or claps his hands to let her know where he is. She sleeps in his bed at night. When I went over to get the vet report from Albert for this story Pee Wee and my dog Paco played together in the yard for half an hour, rolling around, first one on top, then the other, nipping, yapping, then running in circles.

Albert also got some medical help recently, a new set of hearing aids. They are outrageously expensive, and he can’t afford them, either. There’s no deaf person rescue service that we know of, so he’ll have to make payments for a long time to come. But now he can better hear Pee Wee’s bark when she wants to alert him that she needs help or someone is coming. He wants to thank everyone who helped him, financially, physically, and emotionally, through his ordeal with Pee Wee—an ordeal that in the end became a blessing.