Tending to tradition

TAOS a ' In recent years, landowner and acequia parciante Miguel Santistevan noticed that fewer and fewer people were showing up for the annual spring cleaning of his acequia, the Acequia Sur del Rio Fernando.

[Chucho]

Acequias and water rights are in serious trouble in northern New Mexico. More people need to reactivate agricultural lands for food production purposes. Otherwise, water will wind up in urban areas downstream. Presently, it appears that the only folks who plant gardens are those who do it as a hobby or those who get most of their food via food stamps and other commodities.

[Nativo]

Unfortunately, the social climate in the U.S. does not foster an agrarian lifestyle nor does it give much credence to the traditional values of Native and Indigenous people. If we, the herederos of this land and water, don't find a way to hold on to THE LAST VESTIGE of Indigenous agrarian livelihood, our security as a people and our status in this society will increasingly diminish. Without our language, culture, land and water, we will have lost all that remains of our ancestral heritage with no past and no future.

[Miguel Santistevan]

I was misquoted in this article. There is no way I could be the only one cleaning my acequia and have never cleaned it with less than about a dozen people. The opening paragraph makes it sound like it is my own acequia when indeed it belongs to the whole community and several generations before and after me. I believe what I was really saying is that I am the only one IN MY FAMILY that participates in the acequia cleaning.

[Its not]

Miguel Santistevan wrote:

I was misquoted in this article. There is no way I could be the only one cleaning my acequia and have never cleaned it with less than about a dozen people. The opening paragraph makes it sound like it is my own acequia when indeed it belongs to the whole community and several generations before and after me. I believe what I was really saying is that I am the only one IN MY FAMILY that participates in the acequia cleaning.

...suprising. It's the New Mexican you are dealing with. I would have them print a correction.