To Defend Our Water with the Blood of Our Veins: The Struggle for Resources in Colonial Puebla. By Sonya Lipsett-Rivera. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 199. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95.)
A reliable supply of water was necessary to sustain human and animal population and to grow crops in the semi-arid region of Puebla in highland Mexico. Lacking adequate rainfall for productive dry farming, indigenous farmers turned to communal supervision for distribution of water and development and maintenance of irrigation. Since Spanish settlement and the introduction of new crops, notably wheat, in the sixteenth century overlapped with native depopulation of the region, allocation of water long posed no major problem. Expanding native population as from the late seventeenth century, however, created growing conflict over irrigation systems. In the absence of effective centralized authority over the irrigation systems, by the early nineteenth century, large landowners had achieved domination over water in Puebla.