Acequia Culture

In the South Valley, the Rio Grande’s waters spread through an intricate web of gravity-fed acequias that transformed the landscape after the first river diversion was cut, creating opportunities for communities to farm, raise animals, and thrive through their connection to land and water. Many generations ago, ancestors of some current residents dug the acequias together, forming social, spiritual, cultural, and physical ties to the landscape that continue today despite changing governments, urbanization efforts, and policies meant to separate people from their land and water rights. Built on sharing resources, hard work, mutual support, and community, acequia culture once bound people communally to the waterways for survival, governance, and everyday activities such as washing hair and clothes. South Valley residents also remember playing along the acequia banks, swinging from tall cottonwood trees, swimming, and hearing warnings about La Llorana wandering there in search of her lost children. The acequias have long connected communities through mutual dependence on water and through internal paths where people walk and maintain ties to one another and to history. Although ecological, environmental, and economic challenges now affect the health of the acequias and the upkeep of family farms, the waters still flow, community networks are working to sustain acequia culture, many South Valley farms still use acequia water, and the acequia in front is the Rodgers Lateral, a diversion from the Atrisco Drain that runs south toward Sanchez Farm Open Space and Isleta Pueblo.

South Valley, New Mexico · United States