The Mother Ditch

An acequia madre, a mother ditch, is more than a channel of water. In northern New Mexico it is one of the oldest forms of self-government still running.

The Spanish brought this technology when they colonized the region beginning in fifteen ninety-eight, carrying engineering and water law of ultimately Arabic origin from the dry country of southern Spain. Pueblo peoples had irrigated here for centuries, but the Spanish system added a code. Each family along the ditch shared the labor of cleaning it every spring and shared the water by turns, overseen by an elected ditch boss called the mayordomo.

Those customs survived Spanish, Mexican, and American rule alike. New Mexico still has roughly seven hundred active acequias, living institutions that have governed who gets water, and when, for more than four hundred years.