Enduring Acequias - (Querencias) by Juan Estevan Arellano (Paperback)

About the Book

Touching on the Middle East, Europe, Mexico, and South America before circling back to New Mexico, Arellano makes a case for preserving the acequia irrigation system and calls for a future that respects the ecological limitations of the land.

Book Synopsis

For generations the Río Embudo watershed in northern New Mexico has been the home of Juan Estevan Arellano and his ancestors. From this unique perspective Arellano explores the ways people use water in dry places around the world. Touching on the Middle East, Europe, Mexico, and South America before circling back to New Mexico, Arellano makes a case for preserving the acequia irrigation system and calls for a future that respects the ecological limitations of the land.

Review Quotes

Few people are more qualified to talk about New Mexico's acequias than this lifelong Nuevomexicano.--Pasatiempo

Juan Estevan Arellano is indigenous to his landscape. He is deeply in touch with his querencia, and he has written a handbook for the Río Arriba bioregion that also serves as a perfect guide for everyone who is concerned with understanding a balanced cultural relationship with homeland. Five gold stars to this great thinker!--Jack Loeffler, coeditor of Thinking Like a Watershed: Voices from the West

Only Juan Estevan Arellano could have written about the sacred knowledge of water from the perspective of a nuevomexicano who has spent a lifetime observing and learning from his elders and mentors, people who passed on to him the memory of the land, water, and community. Arellano should be declared a State of New Mexico Historic Treasure.--José A. Rivera, author of La Sociedad: Guardians of Hispanic Culture Along the Rio Grande

About the Author

Juan Estevan Arellano, a native of Embudo, New Mexico, is a poet, artist, writer, and agronomist. He is an expert in traditional Spanish/Moorish agriculture and the sustaining of traditional crops originally brought to New Mexico from Europe and Central Mexico.