The Acequia Institute (TAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to research, education, and program extension to support the flourishing of the acequias, or communal irrigation canals, farming communities of the Upper Rio Grande watershed in New Mexico and Colorado. Since the 1980s, beginning with the work of the precursors of TAI, including the Colorado College Rio Grande Bioregions Project (est. 1986), several research grants led to the development of what is possibly the largest multi-media collection of archival materials related to the environmental, cultural, legal, and social history of acequia farms and farming families.
Supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities #RO 22707-94, the Ford Foundation, and the Colorado Historical Society, between 1995 and 2005, a group of 15 social scientists and humanities scholars were led by a group of nine Chicana/o acequia farm families in conducting the first major study of acequia agriculture since the years of the Great Depression when the federal government conducted its famous Tewa Basin study (Weigle 1975).
The collection of photographs in the Acequia Institute Photograph Collection spans nearly 20 years and documents the work and livelihood of a community of Mexicano/Chicano farmers in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, contributing and altering the narrative of farm working. This digital collection captures themes of food production, the care of the land and environment, and water management. In a time where large-scale agribusiness is defined by chemicals and seed control, these farmers work to maintain acequia culture.
