Acequia Culture

Acequia Culture. . The Rio Grande supports life for a diverse ecosystem of plants, animals and people. Its waters reach out into the South Valley landscape through an intricate web of gravity-fed acequia waterways. When the ancestors cut the first diversion off the river, the landscape changed, creating opportunities for communities to farm, raise animals and thrive off of what they produced in connection to the land and the water., Many generations ago, ancestors of some of the current residents of the South Valley dug out the acequias, working together to create social, spiritual, cultural and physical connections with the landscape that are still experienced today in various forms. These connections remain despite multiple forms of government, efforts toward urbanization and policies that intended to disconnect people from their land and water rights. Acequia culture is built on a foundation of sharing resources, hard work, mutual support and building community., In the past, people were communally connected to acequias as a means of survival, as a system of governance, as well as through everyday tasks like washing hair or clothes. Many current South Valley residents remember playing along the banks of the acequias, flying across on rope swings suspended from tall cottonwood trees and taking an occasional swim, even after their relatives warned them of the dangers of La Llorana, who also wanders along the acequias looking for her lost children. The acequias have always connected communities through a mutual dependency on water, but they also provide internal pathways where people walk and continue to connect with each other and with history., Now, there are ecological and environmental challenges in maintaining the health of the acequas, in addition to economic factors in maintaining a family farm. However, the waters still flow and community networks are actively woking to keep acequia culture alive today. Many of the thriving farms you see in the South Valley use acequia water and the ecological balance remains diverse. The acequia you see in front of you is a diversion from the Atrisco Drain, called the Rodgers Lateral, which travels south toward the Sanchez Farm Open Space and Isleta Pueblo.