José A. Rivera Papers

This collection contains articles, reports, meeting minutes, ledgers, legal documents, clippings, oral histories, and photographs produced and collected by Professor Rivera while researching several different projects. The collection is divided into four series: Series I. Acequias (irrigation ditches), Series II. Mutualistas (mutual aid societies), and Series III. Justice of the Peace, Sapello, NM., and Series VI. San Antonio, Texas Water Systems.

Series I contains the bulk of the collection, which relates to research on acequias, or community ditch irrigation systems. This includes research and publications files, acequia association records, seminar/workshop records, and oral histories. The research and publications files, arranged chronologically, contain transcriptions and translations of source documents, government reports, published and unpublished papers (including writings by Rivera), and articles on Precolombian systems, Spanish colonial irrigation, present-day systems of irrigation and their administration throughout New Mexico and Colorado. Of primary interest in this series are organizational records of acequia associations from around New Mexico, such as the Belen Ditch Association. These includes minutes, rules, ledgers, journals, business records, by-laws, and resolutions. Many of these documents were collected as part of a UNM sponsored project entitled,"Acequias y Sangrias: The Course of New Mexico Waters," funded by the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities (NMEH). Notes and transcripts from proceedings of several workshops and seminars on water systems are also included in this series. Together, the materials in series I resulted in a book, Acequia culture : Water, Land, and Community in the Southwest, University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

The acequias series also contains a large oral history component, the products of three separate oral history projects. The first, a part of the larger "Acequias y Sangrias" project, were recorded in 1985. These interviews are transcribed; most are in Spanish. The second is a series of interviews by F. Lee Brown and Gil Bonem as part of the "Upper Rio Grande Survey" project, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and conducted through the University of New Mexico. A small portion of the interviews were used in Brown's book, co-authored by Helen Ingram, Water and Poverty in the Southwest (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1987). Only four of these interviews are transcribed. The third oral history project contains three interviews by Dan Scurlock, archeological consultant, about Las Huertas, NM, all of which are transcribed.

Series II contains research materials on Hispanic American mutualistas, or mutual aid societies. These documents include ledgers, constitutions, and board of directors minutes from various mutual aid societies in the Southwest, primarily from the Unión Protectiva de Santa Fe and the Sociedad de Proteccion Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos headquartered in Antonito, Colorado. The research began under an NMEH grant to the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute at UNM to study mutualistas in Roswell, NM. Rivera later expanded on the initial research, in preparation for a book on mutual aid societies. Some of the initial research was used in the published monograph, Mutual Aid Societies in the Hispanic Southwest: Alternative Sources of Community Empowerment (Albuquerque: Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, 1984).

The third series contains three journals kept by justices of the peace in Sapello, NM, 1881-1939. There is also a community register of Sapello and Las Tusas, NM, 1920-1940. The original journals were borrowed and photocopied by Rivera for their research potential. Together the items document legal, social, and community events in a rural community of northern New Mexico.

Series IV contain materail Rivera collected on the acequia and dams system in San Antonio, Texas.