University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Anthropology ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 10-31-2017 Bodies of Water: Politics, Ethics, and Relationships along New Mexico's Acequias Elise Trott University of New Mexico Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/anth_etds Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Trott, Elise. "Bodies of Water: Politics, Ethics, and Relationships along New Mexico's Acequias." (2017). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/anth_etds/138 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Elise Trott Candidate Anthropology Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Lindsay Smith, Chairperson Erin Debenport Ronda Brulotte Michael Trujillo i BODIES OF WATER: POLITICS, ETHICS, AND RELATIONSHIPS ALONG NEW MEXICO’S ACEQUIAS by ELISE TROTT B.A., Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2007 M.A., Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2012 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Anthropology The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2017 ii DEDICATION For Patrick, who loves his homeland with compassion and fury. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Sylvia Rodríguez, who first introduced me to the acequias and whose encouragement, rigor, and insight have continually spurred me to look more closely and think more deeply. This study would not have existed at all without her example, guidance, and support. I would also like to express my gratitude to Paula Garcia, the late Estevan Arellano, and the other members of the Mayordomo Project – Kenny Sanchez, Quita Ortiz, Gilbert Sandoval, Juanita Revak, and David Garcia – for welcoming me onto the team. I thank Paula and the rest of the New Mexico Acequia Association staff for kindly including me in meetings, events, and projects over the last seven years and repeatedly affirming their belief that I had something to offer. I also thank the many other mayordomos, acequieros, and acequia organizers who have generously guided me along their ditches, answered my questions, and offered their thoughts on my ideas. I especially thank Jorge Garcia for the many introductions and phone calls that he made on my behalf, and Pilar Trujillo and Juliet Garcia for helping me develop my research questions. From beginning to end, this study was shaped by the gentle guidance of Dr. Erin Debenport. Her creative and thought-provoking ideas, sweet and sincere encouragement, and inspiring scholarship have provided an invaluable example and support. I also thank Dr. Lindsay Smith for her close readings and challenging critiques, Dr. Michael Trujillo for feeding my New Mexico obsession, and Dr. Ronda Brulotte for generously stepping in when I needed her. I am grateful to my entire committee for the time and energy they devoted to this study. I also wish to thank Dr. Cathleen Willging for her mentorship, for iv an abundance of professional opportunities in the community I love, and for reading my grant applications even when she had a million other things to do. My graduate career has been made so much warmer by the company of my fellow graduate students, especially Daniel Shattuck and Lara Gunderson, who have studied, researched, and written alongside me since Day One. Dr. Stephanie Spong, Dr. Calinda Shely, and Geneva Smith have also been invaluable friends and supports. I wish to express my gratitude to the individuals and institutions who have offered me indispensable financial support throughout my graduate career, including the UNM Department of Anthropology, the UNM Department of English, the Anderson School of Management, Dr. Beverly Singer and the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, Dr. José Rivera and the UNM Center for Regional Studies, the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, the Scholars Strategy Network, the American Association of University Women, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Finally, I cannot adequately express my deepest love and daily gratitude to my parents, who have ceaselessly guarded and guided me; to Dan, my lifelong friend; to Nikki and the little ones, who make all our lives infinitely sweeter; to the Jaramillo family, who have so generously embraced me; and to Patrick (and Oso), my home and my heart. v BODIES OF WATER: POLITICS, ETHICS, AND RELATIONSHIPS ALONG NEW MEXICO’S ACEQUIAS by Elise Trott B.A., ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO M.A., ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PH.D., ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ABSTRACT Growing public attention to global economic and environmental instability and collapse have brought new urgency to a classic activity of anthropology: looking for alternative economic and environmental models in other ways of life. This dissertation is a case study of the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which New Mexico’s acequias (communally-managed irrigation ditches) are produced, experienced, and contested as an alternative form of living, creating community, and relating ethically to the environment. Drawing on over six years of participant observation and in-depth interviews with Nuevomexicano (Spanish- and Mexican-descendant), indigenous, and non-indigenous acequia users and organizers in North-Central New Mexico and the South Valley of Albuquerque, I analyze social and political projects involving acequias, including resistance to a proposed housing development in Albuquerque’s South Valley, the formation of emergent publics in opposition to state logics of water governance, the coalescence of mutual support and resilience in human and nonhuman relationships along vi the acequia, and the efforts of women activists to increase Los Alamos National Laboratory’s accountability to indigenous women’s health. I argue that acequieros (acequia users and activists) have often been represented as melancholy and illogical citizens and are subject to technologies of governance that I call chronotopic marginalization, which de-materialize and de-politicize their contemporary concerns and displace them in time and space from decision-making processes. Second, I suggest that acequieros are engaged in the formation of fluid publics, emergent social and political spaces shaped by the materiality of the acequia itself and the human and environmental relationships that it structures. Third, I illuminate the nature of these relationships using the concept of mutualismo, meaning mutual dependence and protection. Finally, I suggest that while the political projects of fluid publics, shaped by relationships of mutualismo, are borne of the place- and race-specific experiences of New Mexico’s acequieros, they also represent a unique, though precarious, effort to contest injuries of social isolation and abandonment by the state and the institutions of capitalism both in New Mexico and elsewhere. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................xi LIST OF TABLES .........................................................................................................xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................1 Findings and Theoretical Frameworks.......................................................................5 Background ................................................................................................................12 Identity Terms ......................................................................................................12 Acequias in New Mexico .....................................................................................15 Research Sites ............................................................................................................24 North-Central New Mexico .................................................................................25 The South Valley of Albuquerque .......................................................................31 Project History ...........................................................................................................34 Methodologies............................................................................................................37 Plan of the Dissertation ..............................................................................................40 CHAPTER 2 BODIES OF REPRESENTATION: NUEVOMEXICANO SUBJECTS IN THE THICK PRESENT ...............................................................45 Melancholy New Mexico in Popular and Scholarly Imaginations ............................47 Acequias in the Thick Present ....................................................................................60 CHAPTER 3 DELIBERATING BODIES: CONTRA SANTOLINA AND CHRONOTOPIC MARGINALIZATION ............................................................65 Santolina/“Sand”olina ................................................................................................69 Paper Water and Wet Water; Water Authority and Water Expertise ........................73 Postcolonial Neoliberal Governance and