New Mexico, Bolivia, and customary water traditions
A few days ago, I compared the interesting parallels (and differences) between New Mexico and the country of Spain. This time around, it's New Mexico and Bolivia; here I want to create an opening for analyzing how both entities (again, a state, and a State respectively) have recognized local, customary water traditions. As you will see and appreciate, there are strong material parallels between how irrigators in Bolivia operate and how acequias in New Mexico handle water management and governance. The differences, however, are just as fascinating and have largely to do with how the claims to water are wrapped around cultural identity.
My good colleague, Tom Perreault (Syracuse - Geography), wrote about the recent recognition in Bolivia of local "usos y costumbres" with special focus on the national irrigators' movement. Granted, that country has pursued an arguably anti-neoliberal path on water goverance in recent years, as Tom has suggested. But both Bolivia and New Mexico give special weight to local customs, management, and the institutions of local water governance in their respective settings.
By usos y costumbres, Perreault (2008, 835) is referring to the "mutually agreed-on norms of water rights and management practices that govern communal irrigation systems." For our sake, here in New Mexico, this aligns well with what acequias would understand to be local practice and tradition in both management and governance; so far, so good. Additionally, in Bolivia (p 835), these customs are "inherently communal, place-based, and variable in time and space." Check, check, and check for similarities to New Mexico's acequias. Finally, there are three basic tenets held by rural irrigators in Bolivia using traditional customary practices (p 839):
1. They are practices that are repeated, habitual, and regular (like acequias in NM).
2. They are based on thorough, intimate knowledge of the social and environmental context in which irrigation takes place (like acequias in NM, though changing*).
3. They are voluntary, mutually agreed-on, and accepted within a given social context (the members of the irrigation system), and not imposed by an external actor (like acequias, in most ways, but again changing in today's context*).
* Both "intimate knowledge" (2) and "mutually agreed upon" (3) are changing in the context of rural in-migration to New Mexico from outside of the state. Retirees, for example, from California will often have no knowledge of the ditch environment/institution, and may not agree with the long-time residents on the rules for operation.
source of map: http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/112-4/img/wastewater_148_la_2488.jpg
These parallels should come as no surprise to those familiar with Spanish colonial land and water laws, autonomous irrigation ditches (world-wide), and places around the world influenced by Roman and Islamic water law and practices. In Bolivia, though, these traditional, customary practices gained national legal recognition with a 1994 Law of Popular Participation (p 839). Yet where the rhetoric of "usos y costumbres" turns materially different in our two cases of NM and BOL is on how this phrase is used as both a claim to water management recognized in law (somehow), and in its recitation for a claim to cultural identity and cultural rights. In Bolivia's case, it becomes not only a set of rules recognized as legal "fact," but also a set of cultural norms for being recognized as indigenous people with strong cultural rights to resources. For New Mexico, there are certainly parciantes who would claim the latter, and you can hear these claims in acequia meetings all over the state. In meetings and individual interviews with irrigators, I've heard the following:
a) "Somos gente de la tierra" (We are people of the land) - Mora
b) "Somos Indo-Hispanos, todos, y necesitamos agua y tierra para vivir" (We are Indo-Hispanos, all of us, and we need water and land to live) - Taos
c) "Agua para la tierra, sangre en mi venas" (Water for land, blood in my veins) - Chama
....the list could go on for pages!
And yet the cultural claims for "irrigation rights" in New Mexico are complicated, since the U.S. federal government recognizes only "Indians" and not "Indo-Hispanos" as indigenous populations and peoples of New Mexico (and the U.S. at large). At best, one could claim "Other" on the census in 2010, and then write it in. Additionally, the problem of identity in this state was further complicated because of the conflation between Mexican/NewMexican/Hispano/Mexicano/NuevoMexicano terminology. If identity is claimed, and self-identified, or ascribed, these vary widely and wildly throughout the state. The Indo(dash) strategy is simply the latest configuration of this in what Carl Wilmsen (2007) has called "racial triangulations" to environmental claims in the state. So, in this case, the Bolivian claims by rural (indigenous) irrigators serve both material (water) and cultural (identity) purposes. In New Mexico, the material governance of water is tangible and parallel, but cultural identity is complicated by the over-arching hierarchy for recognition of who is "indigenous" in the United States. And yet state statute (73-2-41) recognizes "Indian and non-Indian" co-management principles are in effect "based upon the customs heretofore practiced and recognized between the Indians and the non-Indians, by and between the governor of the Indian community or pueblo and the commissioners of such acequias in which the non-Indians may have acquired any such rights and, the governors of such Indians and the acequia commissioners shall also regulate the amount and manner of work to be done by the Indians and non-Indians in all such acequias in which all have water rights in accordance with such customs."
However, in both New Mexico and Bolivia, irrigators have "promoted the reinstitutionalization of water governance, calling for new organizational forms, norms, and standards." How? Bolivian campesinos got it done by getting national, legal, recognition of their uses and customs (as we've seen). In New Mexico, parciantes have successfully injected their long-practiced customary use and tradition to the legal negotations of adjudication suits. To use one example, perhaps the most notable in this state, the Abeyta settlement in the Taos Valley (map from Rodriguez 2007) uses language that acknowledges the standing agreements between Taos Pueblo and the acequias that share the waters with the Pueblo. In Section 8 of the 2006 agreement, on "surface water sharing," the Pueblo and the acequias have simply formalized (and reinstitutionalized) their long-standing agreements on water allocation, water timing and releases, and cooperation conventions for access to ditch maintenance. Is this a new organizational "form, norm, and standard?" It depends on what you mean by "new." Does it simply formalize what was already being done? Yes, and that's the case with the vast majority of arrangements when acequias undergo adjudication. But now this organizational cooperation, in both its format and the normative practices, may become (just like in Bolivia's case) a "legal fact" recognized in the settlement (it passed in the House, 1.20.10). --updated 1.21.10
So, in both cases, Bolivia in its national legal recognition, and New Mexico in the currently-phrased settlement agreements stemming from adjudication, rural water organizations were able to translate the locally-accepted "uses and customs" of water management and governance into "legal fact." And both Bolivia and New Mexico have given legal, cultural, and historic recognition to the importance of these rural irrigation ditches and associations. Civil society actors were important in both Bolivia and in New Mexico. But the recognition of cultural claims to water, stemming from these material recognitions, remain different. In a few days, I'll return to this comparative work with some notes on how the country of Chile set a precedent for water governance and new economic arrangements in the New World. - epp
Citations:
Perreault, T. 2008. “Custom and contradiction: Rural water governance and the politics of usos y costumbres in Bolivia's irrigators' movement.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4): 834-854.
Rodriguez, S. 2007. Acequia: Water-sharing, sanctity, and place. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
Wilmsen, C. 2007. "Maintaining the environmental-racial order in northern New Mexico." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(2):236-257.
By usos y costumbres, Perreault (2008, 835) is referring to the "mutually agreed-on norms of water rights and management practices that govern communal irrigation systems." For our sake, here in New Mexico, this aligns well with what acequias would understand to be local practice and tradition in both management and governance; so far, so good. Additionally, in Bolivia (p 835), these customs are "inherently communal, place-based, and variable in time and space." Check, check, and check for similarities to New Mexico's acequias. Finally, there are three basic tenets held by rural irrigators in Bolivia using traditional customary practices (p 839):
1. They are practices that are repeated, habitual, and regular (like acequias in NM).
2. They are based on thorough, intimate knowledge of the social and environmental context in which irrigation takes place (like acequias in NM, though changing*).
3. They are voluntary, mutually agreed-on, and accepted within a given social context (the members of the irrigation system), and not imposed by an external actor (like acequias, in most ways, but again changing in today's context*).
* Both "intimate knowledge" (2) and "mutually agreed upon" (3) are changing in the context of rural in-migration to New Mexico from outside of the state. Retirees, for example, from California will often have no knowledge of the ditch environment/institution, and may not agree with the long-time residents on the rules for operation.
These parallels should come as no surprise to those familiar with Spanish colonial land and water laws, autonomous irrigation ditches (world-wide), and places around the world influenced by Roman and Islamic water law and practices. In Bolivia, though, these traditional, customary practices gained national legal recognition with a 1994 Law of Popular Participation (p 839). Yet where the rhetoric of "usos y costumbres" turns materially different in our two cases of NM and BOL is on how this phrase is used as both a claim to water management recognized in law (somehow), and in its recitation for a claim to cultural identity and cultural rights. In Bolivia's case, it becomes not only a set of rules recognized as legal "fact," but also a set of cultural norms for being recognized as indigenous people with strong cultural rights to resources. For New Mexico, there are certainly parciantes who would claim the latter, and you can hear these claims in acequia meetings all over the state. In meetings and individual interviews with irrigators, I've heard the following:
a) "Somos gente de la tierra" (We are people of the land) - Mora
b) "Somos Indo-Hispanos, todos, y necesitamos agua y tierra para vivir" (We are Indo-Hispanos, all of us, and we need water and land to live) - Taos
c) "Agua para la tierra, sangre en mi venas" (Water for land, blood in my veins) - Chama
....the list could go on for pages!
And yet the cultural claims for "irrigation rights" in New Mexico are complicated, since the U.S. federal government recognizes only "Indians" and not "Indo-Hispanos" as indigenous populations and peoples of New Mexico (and the U.S. at large). At best, one could claim "Other" on the census in 2010, and then write it in. Additionally, the problem of identity in this state was further complicated because of the conflation between Mexican/NewMexican/Hispano/Mexicano/NuevoMexicano terminology. If identity is claimed, and self-identified, or ascribed, these vary widely and wildly throughout the state. The Indo(dash) strategy is simply the latest configuration of this in what Carl Wilmsen (2007) has called "racial triangulations" to environmental claims in the state. So, in this case, the Bolivian claims by rural (indigenous) irrigators serve both material (water) and cultural (identity) purposes. In New Mexico, the material governance of water is tangible and parallel, but cultural identity is complicated by the over-arching hierarchy for recognition of who is "indigenous" in the United States. And yet state statute (73-2-41) recognizes "Indian and non-Indian" co-management principles are in effect "based upon the customs heretofore practiced and recognized between the Indians and the non-Indians, by and between the governor of the Indian community or pueblo and the commissioners of such acequias in which the non-Indians may have acquired any such rights and, the governors of such Indians and the acequia commissioners shall also regulate the amount and manner of work to be done by the Indians and non-Indians in all such acequias in which all have water rights in accordance with such customs."
However, in both New Mexico and Bolivia, irrigators have "promoted the reinstitutionalization of water governance, calling for new organizational forms, norms, and standards." How? Bolivian campesinos got it done by getting national, legal, recognition of their uses and customs (as we've seen). In New Mexico, parciantes have successfully injected their long-practiced customary use and tradition to the legal negotations of adjudication suits. To use one example, perhaps the most notable in this state, the Abeyta settlement in the Taos Valley (map from Rodriguez 2007) uses language that acknowledges the standing agreements between Taos Pueblo and the acequias that share the waters with the Pueblo. In Section 8 of the 2006 agreement, on "surface water sharing," the Pueblo and the acequias have simply formalized (and reinstitutionalized) their long-standing agreements on water allocation, water timing and releases, and cooperation conventions for access to ditch maintenance. Is this a new organizational "form, norm, and standard?" It depends on what you mean by "new." Does it simply formalize what was already being done? Yes, and that's the case with the vast majority of arrangements when acequias undergo adjudication. But now this organizational cooperation, in both its format and the normative practices, may become (just like in Bolivia's case) a "legal fact" recognized in the settlement (it passed in the House, 1.20.10). --updated 1.21.10So, in both cases, Bolivia in its national legal recognition, and New Mexico in the currently-phrased settlement agreements stemming from adjudication, rural water organizations were able to translate the locally-accepted "uses and customs" of water management and governance into "legal fact." And both Bolivia and New Mexico have given legal, cultural, and historic recognition to the importance of these rural irrigation ditches and associations. Civil society actors were important in both Bolivia and in New Mexico. But the recognition of cultural claims to water, stemming from these material recognitions, remain different. In a few days, I'll return to this comparative work with some notes on how the country of Chile set a precedent for water governance and new economic arrangements in the New World. - epp
Citations:
Perreault, T. 2008. “Custom and contradiction: Rural water governance and the politics of usos y costumbres in Bolivia's irrigators' movement.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4): 834-854.
Rodriguez, S. 2007. Acequia: Water-sharing, sanctity, and place. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
Wilmsen, C. 2007. "Maintaining the environmental-racial order in northern New Mexico." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(2):236-257.
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