These people have been listening to the UN too much.
Iran sent a letter to the president telling him that the United States of America belongs to all countries:
".. the contemporary U.S. belongs to all nations, including the natives of the land," he wrote. "No one may consider themselves the owner and view others as guests or immigrants."
Now this idiot:
Univision senior anchor Jorge Ramos declared on Friday that the United States belongs to Latino migrants, emphatically stating to a Spanish-speaking audience that “it is our country, not theirs."
Jorge Ramos: America Is ‘Our Country, Not Theirs’—‘And We Are Not Going to Leave’/
Boys, you are mistaken. I can even show you what part of it I own, and what gives me the right to protect it. And what allows me the weaponry to do so. Come get it...
Our country is ENGLISH in roots, not Spanish. These people have never lived here. They have no claim on my country.
Totally amazing the level of ignorance of our 'Conservatives'. The whole of the Southwest belonged to and was settled by the Mexicans. We took it from them during the war of 1848.
New Mexico Office of the State Historian | people
Iberian Origins of New Mexico’s Community Acequias
By José A. Rivera, University of New Mexico and Thomas F. Glick, Boston University
The American Southwest encompasses a vast territory rich in natural and mineral resources but short on water supply. When Spanish conquistadores first entered the region, known to them as Nueva España, they immediately realized that irrigation would be a necessary development in the establishment of permanent communities, whether presidios, missions, provincial government centers or civilian settlements. Due to the conditions of aridity, already familiar to Mediterranean dwellers, Spanish colonization policies required that officials of the crown, and settlers who accompanied them, must locate their communities in the vicinity of watercourses and other natural resources needed for permanent occupation. To sustain themselves, irrigation systems would have to be built far in excess of the water control, flood-water farming and other irrigation practices conducted at the time by some of the indigenous peoples encountered in the region.
During the Spanish colonial period (1598-1821), the irrigation method most commonly employed was gravity flow irrigation by way of earthen canals or “acequias.” At various times, acequias were constructed in all of the southwestern states: Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California. For a variety of reasons, however, it was in La Provincia del Nuevo México that Spanish colonization policies were the most effective, particularly with regard to the establishment of civilian towns and agricultural colonies. From the outset, the plans to colonize Nuevo México included the introduction of not only soldiers (for the presidios) and friars (for the Indian missions) but hundreds and then successive waves of pobladores (civilian settlers).
The relative isolation of this Hispanic province, its early colonization (compared to Texas and California) coupled with the issuance of a series of land grant concessions, led to the proliferation of towns and villages scattered alongside the major streams and their tributaries from El Paso del Norte to the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Today, the acequias of New Mexico continue to function much as before, unlike the fate of colonial period acequias in the other southwestern states where most were either abandoned after secularization of the missions, or they eventually were supplanted, as Well Hutchins (1928) points out, by Anglo-Saxon forms of organization such as private mutual ditch companies, water user associations, irrigation districts, or conservancy districts.
In New Mexico the acequia persists as a transplanted Iberian civil and social institution. Like their Valencian, Murcian and Andalusian counterparts, acequia associations continue to function as “water democracies.” This means they are autonomous, and for the most part operate outside of government in terms of their internal affairs: they elect their own officers, establish rules and regulations, enforce them, and settle most disputes. Similar to the herederos (proprietors) in the Spanish huertas (traditional farmlands), the parciantes (members) of the New Mexico acequia all own lands irrigated by a principal canal. As a comunidad de regantes (the term in Spain for irrigators in a system), they are in charge of their day to day governance, and collectively they maintain their common canal and finance repairs to their diversion structure when necessary.
