My Last Acequia Meeting Ever, I Swear

This month’s acequia meeting was the second worst I’ve attended in my 30 plus year tenure in El Valle. The first was 23 years ago when the commission, same as the one this month, tried to take Tomás’s water right away. I’m probably repressing the untold number of other horrible acequia meetings I’ve been to, but I’ll continue with the deconstruction of this one that probably just replicates those ones I’ve repressed.

You’re probably wondering, the commission for this month’s horrible meeting was the same commission for the meeting 23 years ago? Yes, my friends, the commission, really just two guys who are the commission—the third is just someone they can find as a figurehead—has ruled our little El Valle village for almost the entire time I’ve lived here. For the first 15 years they only governed one of the acequias until Tomás, my beloved vecino, and Mark, my partner, died a year apart and they took over our acequia. The third acequia was governed by a mixture of bad and good until they finally took over that one as well.

You may also ask, who are these guys and why have they been jockeying for control of acequias in the tiny little village of El Valle? If I were being politically correct, I would say they want to assert their authority as a stake of enfranchisement, after years of colonial disenfranchisement. The problem with that theory is that they started the acequia wars against Tomás, the unofficial mayordomo of the village when Mark and I moved here, in 1992. He served as a commissioner on both the Arriba and Abajo acequias and as mayordomo on the Abajo and was the man around whom most village activity revolved, born and raised and having lived here all his life. Both warring commissioners were born in El Valle but left for various jobs or the military and didn’t like the way things were when they came back. I loved the way things were when we moved here: Tomás took us under his wing, taught us how to be parciantes, shared his tools and machinery, cut our hay, gave us steaks from his butchered cows, and treated us like the buen vecinos we were trying to be.

Once the two guys took over, we never had a community limpia, or cleaning of the ditches every spring. They hired a crew of peones and later bought machinery—like the $80,000 mini excavator that’s been broken for a year—to periodically clean whatever section they thought needed it. Other sections never got cleaned in the spring so when the presa, or dams were opened, parciantes had to go out and clean all the accumulated debris before it all got stuck in our compuertas, or gates. They changed the bylaw of the Acequia Abajo from one parciante one vote to voting by ownership of water rights. One of the guys has about eight water rights that he either owns or manages and the other one also has a bunch (he gave a water right to his daughter and one to his son-in-law who don’t live here to increase his number). They changed the bylaws to disallow pumping when it’s your turn in the rotation if you want to water something above the ditch (we had a raspberry patch right next to the Abajo that we could never get enough water to from the Arriba).

Enough background. What exactly happened at the meeting? They torpedoed every agenda item we’d submitted (we is me and a couple of other disgruntled parciantes) by voting it down or delaying a vote on it until a year from now. So no vote on my request to change the voting back to one parciante one vote (that will never happen because they have the majority of votes). No vote on whether the commissioners have the authority to define beneficial use, i.e., whether they can deny a parciante’s turn in the rotation because they don’t approve of what the parciante is watering (too many rosehips, only flowers). A no vote on my motion to schedule an annual meeting among the three acequias to share information and concerns with all El Valle parciantes. The only one of our agenda items that was addressed at the meeting was our objection that one guy has been functioning as both commissioner and mayordomo for many years, which may be an abrogation of the bylaws. His son was chosen as the mayordomo, which seemed to be a better scenario until I found out that he lives in Santa Fe! That’s really the lynchpin of our acequia absurdity: our mayordomo lives in Santa Fe, an hour away.

But wait, there’s more. Hovering over the acequia absurdity was the specter of our acequia future: the same guy’s daughter, who has conveniently been given water rights on the Arriba and the upper ditch. While the parciantes sat in chairs in front of the commission table, she hovered around behind our backs, correcting, calling point of order, essentially running the meeting as an attorney, which is what she is. How fortuitous. The guy’s daughter is a lawyer.

So there you have it. I’m never going to an acequia meeting again. Fortunately, I’m old and there aren’t going to be that many more before one of us keels over: me, or the guys. The son and daughter can then have it all.