OUR STORY
CESOSS was founded by South Valley community members Jorge Garcia and Santiago Maestas. As early as 2003, we began working alongside other community leaders throughout the Valle de Atrisco to reorganize local acequias under New Mexico water law, Chapters 72 and 73.
What began as an effort to strengthen acequia governance quickly expanded. The community made it clear that protecting acequias also meant protecting the relationships among land, water, culture, and future generations. Our work grew to include land and water advocacy, youth development, community education, cultural preservation, and the strengthening of local capacity.
The history of land and water in the Middle Rio Grande has also been shaped by dispossession, displacement, and historical trauma. For this reason, CESOSS approaches its work through a framework of Transformative Community Justice—supporting communities in strengthening their own knowledge, relationships, institutions, and responsibility to place.
In the Valle de Atrisco, this means cultivating querencia: a deep relationship of belonging, responsibility, and care for the place we call home. It means recognizing that acequias are more than irrigation systems. They carry his/her stories, relationships, governance traditions, agricultural knowledge, and responsibilities that have been passed down from one generation to the next. This is the core of Somos Atrisco.
FROM ACEQUIA PRESERVATION TO COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIP
Over time, CESOSS has grown from an organization focused primarily on acequia preservation into a community-based land and water learning organization.
Today, our work connects education, advocacy, community research, cultural practice, and stewardship. We work alongside acequia associations, schools, educators, public agencies, families, youth, and community organizations to strengthen the systems that connect people to land and water.
Our partners include the South Valley Regional Association of Acequias, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, Bernalillo County, educational institutions, and other community organizations working throughout the Middle Rio Grande.
Our approach is grounded in a simple principle: lasting community change must be developed with the people who live in, care for, and carry responsibility for a place.
We do not simply work in the acequia community.
We are part of the acequia community.
OUR WORK / OUR PHILOSOPHY
Agua es Sagrada / Water is Sacred
As this work developed, CESOSS articulated a guiding philosophy: Agua es Sagrada—Water is Sacred.
Water is not simply a commodity or resource. It connects land, community, culture, agriculture, governance, and future generations. Protecting water therefore requires more than conservation. It requires education, participation, advocacy, cultural continuity, and collective responsibility.
Agua es Sagrada grounds the work of CESOSS and reminds us that the decisions we make about water today create obligations to generations we may never meet.
Learn more about Agua es Sagrada →
Rooted in the Valle de Atrisco
CESOSS's work is rooted in the Valle de Atrisco, the historic South Valley of Albuquerque.
For generations, families here have maintained relationships with land, agriculture, acequias, and the Río Grande. Although the South Valley is often described primarily through measures of poverty or economic disadvantage, those measures tell only part of the story.
The Valle de Atrisco is rich in culture, community knowledge, agricultural traditions, land-based practices, and relationships that have endured across generations.
Those relationships are increasingly important as the Middle Rio Grande faces prolonged drought, development pressure, changing land use, and growing competition for limited water.
Understanding the future of this region therefore requires understanding both its water systems and the communities that have cared for them.
Explore Somos Atrisco →
Why This Matters Today
As drought continues across the Middle Rio Grande, water becomes more than a resource—it becomes a shared responsibility.
In the Valle de Atrisco, our relationship to water is rooted in tradition, community, governance, and stewardship.
Protecting water also means protecting the knowledge, relationships, and responsibilities that connect people to place.
The work of CESOSS is about carrying those relationships forward.
Protecting water means protecting who we are as a community
