Michael and I were delighted to be able to join in as participants in the Southwest Folklife Alliance’s Rio Sonora Fieldschool based in Banamichi Mexico this past June. The idea of filming the field program and its visits on a casual basis soon turned into a more serious project to carefully record each local visit and to record some important aspects of the teaching program. The little film made to date is just a taster for this longer record of the group’s work over the week, but it gives some sense of the mix of visits, hands on experience gained and some of the back and forth of our conversation with the community. It seemed to me right from the beginning that in drought stricken Sonora the fragile flow of water and how local people made the best possible use of it, as they did of other resources too, was one of the key themes of the field school, and as it turned out we could have paid even more attention to this, because a threat to the river was building even while we were there.
The water of the river and the spring in nearby hillsides is the life of this region as is so crucial in all the arid lands of the American southwest and the Mexican northwest- truly el agua es la vida, as a friend commented. In Arispe we heard something of the history of the old Opata settlements along the river and their encounter with Spanish missionaries who saw potential to develop a breadbasket and great orchards in this quiet regional of fertile soils. We saw a reminder of the prehistoric irrigation systems once used here in a large boulder bearing a map of such a system carved into it many centuries ago. The remains of great water powered 19th century mills which once ground the special Sonoran white wheat once grown here (before the agricultural revolution of the 1930’s closed them down) when larger scale commercial wheat production became feasible further south. We witnessed careful stewardship of resources as we visited local ranches, learned an eco-building project, the work of a cheesemaker, a carpenter making furniture using naturally downed trees, and others too. We heard stories about the water consumption of new mining operations in the area, and general concern about a lowered water table.
And all through our brief week in Banamichi the weather was scaldingly hot with days of up to 118 degrees fahrenheit challenging our determination to be out on local visits. All around us each day were the welcome sounds of local water, flowing in the acequias on the one day in 12 local small ranchers could take a share, trickling in the nearly dry river bed, flowing with less uncertainty on a very large ranch fortunate enough to be able to pump directly from the aquifer.
Finally on the 6th of June we headed north to Tucson with 8 hours of filmed footage and many memories.
Just a few weeks later we heard that the monsoons had come, blessing the southwest and northern Mexico with plenty of water at last. We saw friend’s pictures posted showing how overnight the Sonoran deserts were blooming and the rivers full.
But on August 6 a disastrous spill of industrial chemicals and heavy metals used in a mine operation near the head of the river began to silently poison the Rio Sonora watershed. Within a few days, as people realised what had happened, a scramble to control and contain the damage began. This has now become the subject of national and international attention. Tragically there were further spills in the fall, as inadequate containment systems continued to fail under the pressure of the heavy rainfall last summer. Mitigation remains an ongoing project, and the polluters of course were fined, sanctions brought, assistance sought and short term remedies patched the problems of polluted water, the deaths of wildlife and fish and immediate danger to the people of the region. However the load of heavy metals released by the spill remains in the river silt and moved towards the enclosed sea of the northern sea of Cortez.
For a brief introduction to the local economy and the potential dangers of the spill see this good short account by SWFA friend and former field school staff, Mexican anthropologist Ernesto Camou:
For a taster on the SWFA fieldschools and in particular on this one in Banamichi see the film short from the 2014 field school that we made.
For information about joining the next field school in the Rio Sonora:
Southwest Folklife Alliance in the Rio Sonora: Banámichi Fieldschool June 2014
-Teri