Working Waterfront in the Desert

Reprinted with permission from Commercial Fisheries News. August 2025.

Antonia Small – FishAbility

“Whoops!” says Bella, my colleague and traveling companion, as we descend into a
valley east of Santa Fe. “We’re two ladies in a Mercedes.” The rental—above our pay
grade—had kept us cool through our week in Las Cruces, conferencing at the annual
AgrAbility National Training Workshop.
We’d blended in with tourists at White Sands National Park, admiring the otherworldly
landscape—an ancient seabed turned to dunes. Now, we stood out. Two gringas
heading to visit friends in a tiny village tucked into an agrarian valley in northern New
Mexico, centuries in the making.
Of the 250 souls living here, few are gringos. The rest have deep roots—a complex
combination of descendants of Spanish conquistadors, those brought to the region from
Central and South America centuries ago, and Indigenous peoples.
We found the house: an adobe perched on a small hill at the end of a long dirt road.
Fruit trees rimmed the field, which stretched toward the river, the cottonwoods, and the
bosque (Spanish for forest).
After hugs and hellos, my friend said, “Come on, we’re working in the ditch—let’s go for
a walk.”
We stepped down into a dry channel, three feet wide and a foot deep. It ran along the
upland side of their orchard and disappeared into scrub brush ahead. In a few weeks,
snowmelt from the mountains would swell the river and be directed into the channel.
Once the headgate—compuerta, at a low dam upstream is opened, water would flow
down the ditch. Smaller gates—sangrías, like veins, could then be opened by individual
farmers to feed fields and orchards until the summer monsoons arrived.
This ancient form of gravity-fed irrigation is called an acequia. There are over 900 in
northern New Mexico. When Spanish colonists arrived in what’s now Santa Fe in the
late 1500s, Pueblo communities had already been diverting river water for
generations—using flood irrigation and hand-dug ditches to grow corn and beans. The
Spanish brought irrigation knowledge shaped by Moorish traditions; the word acequia
comes from the Arabic as-saqiya, meaning “the one that gives water.”
Acequias are governed communally and hold ties to Christian rituals. Likewise, Tewa
and Pueblo belief holds that water is a life spirit and the acequia a living being. Each
ditch is overseen by a mayordomo—an elected caretaker (a term also used for one who
tends the church), along with several commissioners. Water users, or parciantes, pay a
small fee and help maintain the ditch, especially during la limpia, the spring clean-out
often timed with Holy Week.
Unless, of course, someone has sold their rights, refuses to participate, or has
otherwise lost the thread of why water matters to community survival.
Like Maine’s working waterfronts, acequias are under pressure. Drought, fires,
development, waning interest from younger generations, and the commodification of

water have chipped away at these systems. Now when rights transfers are filed,
parciantes are routinely asked if they want to sell.
For my friends, living along an acequia comes with a sense of responsibility to a rich
tradition—their ditch has been in continuous use since 1776—an ancient practice that
keeps groves of peach, apricot, apple, pear, plum, and cherry trees thriving in the high
desert.
Turns out working waterfront in the desert isn’t so different. When we at Maine
AgrAbility defend fishing as part of Maine’s agricultural portfolio, this is why. Feeding the
world is demanding, changeable work. It’s also anchored in generational faith and
fortitude. Thank you for the work you do.