Conflicts between Hispanic farmers and developers made for compelling reading in The Milagro Beanfield War, the famous novel of life in a northern New Mexico village in which tradition triumphs over modernity. But as cities grow and industries expand, are acequias, or community irrigation ditches, a wise and efficient use of water in the arid Southwest? Jose Rivera presents the contemporary case for the value of acequias and the communities they nurture in the river valleys of southern Colorado and New Mexico. Recognizing that "water is the lifeblood of the community," Rivera delineates an...

In 1900 Celedonio Mondragon and several other San Luis valley residents formed the Sociedad Proteccin Mtua de Trabajadores Unidos (SPMDTU) to help prevent the usurpation of Hispanic land ownership and to combat discrimination against wage laborers. The SPMDTU rapidly grew into a tri-state organization with sixty-five local concilios (lodges) in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Hispanic mutual aid societies proliferated at the turn of the twentieth century, providing such services as religious aid, burial funding, low-cost insurance, and fraternal support.