For my first interview, I was delighted to sit down and speak with Junita (Juanita) and José Martinez, former members of the Acequia Association, current members of The Land Rights Council, and lifelong residents of San Luis’ San Francisco pueblito. I begin by asking Junita about the importance of water to the town. “Hito,” she says, with that urgency every latinx kid can relate to, “our town’s water struggles go back a long time. The old Pioneer days brought farmers, mostly Mexican and Indigenous, into the valley and they developed a waterway system of Acequias that they used to irrigate their farms using mountain fresh water. The water rights that exist in Colorado are some of the most senior in the country.”

 I’ve been blessed to grow up with an exposure to small town farming and politics. Colorado has had civil, environmental and workers’ rights battles raging for decades on behalf of women, communities of color and underrepresented groups like migrant farmers. The older generations carry the scars of these struggles and so in order to join a community like San Luis, it pays to understand the history of the region, especially if you’re looking to move west and strike gold in the infamous Green Rush. To give our readers and any wary ganjapreneurs some insights on cannabis in a small town like San Luis, I implored Abuela Junita to explain to me more about the source of the region’s water and give me a breakdown of the politic that the local farmers employ to deal with the issue of water and land in the valley. I’ll attempt to summarize her fairly complex take on the matter.

 The Sangre de Cristo mountain range extends from Southern Colorado into Northern New Mexico. One of the more prominent stand alone peaks is Culebra. The water runoff from the snowpack on Culebra Peak feeds the Culebra water shed, nourishing the 9 surrounding canyons. That water shed feeds over a thousand small farms and a number of large industrial operations. “Think of the region as a wagon wheel,” she says, “with the canyons being the spokes and the peak as the peg at the center. There are towns and communities nestled into those canyons that depend on that water for their livelihood.”

SM: So people’s survival is entangled, enmeshed with the ownership and availability of the water from the mountain? 

JM: That’s right. In our town, water cannot be sold apart from land.

 It’s a common practice of large companies to buy up local water rights from farmers, some who know better and others who unfortunately don’t. This leads to an extraction of the water resource from the local communities leaving them dried up.

JM: So land and water issues can not be separated either. How can you work the land without water? And there’s not enough water. All water rights are accounted for. If you leave out elements of water in your administrative boards and committees and your local politics then you can’t truly utilize your community’s lands and you could be sacrificing a town’s future to outside corporate interests.”

SM: So is conservation on the mind of your neighbors and the community?

JM: Always has been. We are using technology to measure snow melt and retention in the mountain that feeds the water basin. New irrigation tech in our farms allows us to time and section feedings. We are embracing enclosed growing options like greenhouses and indoor facilities as well. The older generation is depending on the younger generation to share new ideas on conservation. That, paired with the older generation’s practice of organic farming will keep towns like ours alive.

This is the delicate balance between meeting the needs of our nation at large, which the biggest companies are usually tasked with, and providing security for the interests of small towns and farmers. Both must be accomplished while making sure that natural resources that they depend on aren’t syphoned or depleted. My grandparents have witnessed my involvement in cannabis and the evolution of our industry and the narrative surrounding the plant since the prohibition days of reefer madness. They’ve lived through the counterculture, the war on drugs, and legalization and tell me that they haven’t seen such a dramatic and speedy swing in public opinion in their lifetime. I thought that it was important to talk about what it looks like when local town politics and 21st century cannabis collide. 

JM: When Colorado approved Amendment 64 and we started the regulation process, we gave counties the ability to set their own rules when it came to marijuana, and our county decided that we would be conservative in how many licenses we gave out and who could obtain them. Even big counties like El Paso weren’t as ambitious as some others surrounding Denver and Pueblo. I think we may have made some mistakes there because it drove the town youth, who had ambitions in the industry, away from participating and sticking around.

SM: Well have there been many people besides me looking to move in and hop in the cannabis wagon?

JM: There are a few who try to come in, but the town is strong in it’s ways.

SM: Explain.

JM: Well some may interpret our tight knit and enclosed tendencies as a bit of prejudice, and they could have a point. If you’re white and moving into our brown and latino community, we may have a few questions first about your intentions and what it’ll mean to allow you in. Community is everything to us down here.

SM: How did the county first experience cannabis?

JM: Well with youngsters like you and the boys who own the shops. You all have a respect for the water and your hónda(home). The locals take pride in their respect for that water sharing. Walking from the property to the gate that feeds your ditch and leading the water to your farm to flood irrigate is the traditional way. This way is dependent on your neighbors following rules. We are in a drought. There may be times where my field, that requires 8 days of consistent watering, only gets 2 days. Our thinking has to come full circle, and we have to start looking for sustainable crops that require less water, or develop newer methods of distributing water. We may share, but the drought is getting worse and climate change is affecting us all. We have to be judicious in watering fields and crops. Products and commodities like hemp and cannabis are a more economical choice and a better choice for the local environment.

SM: Tell me about the local pot shops. Have there been any bad actors locally?

JM: No. No bad actors in our legal shops. Some black market farms exist in the mountains and get busted by feds and end up on the news. Other small growers come to remove water from the rivers which is more of a concern for our town. The small farmers around here are from around here. There are two shops in the town of San Luis. They are involved with the community, the schools, the elderly, and they pay their taxes. To us boomers, that’s all you could hope for and our town really supports them. Some of them have grown for a long time and there are a few of our older farmers who are beginning to plant CBD hemp.

SM: You had mentioned the organic practices, could you talk more about that.

JM: Yes, in our communities, we are the few that do not use pesticides. We’ve never believed in them and never used them and we produce amazing and organic food products/commodities. Healing, relaxation, clean medicine, are what you expect from your greens, the rules in the county and in our town require that crops be grown organically and pesticide free.

SM: I love that it’s a part of what our local community down there believes is important. I know you all have done a lot of work to keep it this way. Does the use of the water by the cannabis farmers have an impact on the town’s attitude towards the plant or the people who grow it?

JM: Yes and No. I think as we get more educated, the people who are making decisions about water and who gets it are starting to see the light. The water usage is still important to us, but we’ve learned that it’s not as resource exhaustive as we had originally thought.

SM: What advice would you give to anybody coming to brave the American Cannabis Southwest?

JM: If you come from out East where there’s plenty of water, don’t come to the valley thinking that you can just take, take, take. The local community will make sure to make itself heard and felt. They will see you directly and remind you about the history of our water struggles. So share, make friends, be respectful, be helpful, volunteer your time and resources to your neighbors on your right, left, front and rear. Be community minded. You can’t be a pioneer in an established town. Please join the local 4h club at the schools. Open a tutoring center, sponsor the young people who have promise, in order to engage students with farming, the arts and our culture. Get involved in local school sports, it’s a big deal. Be generous. That’s what cannabis is about. Right? If we hold true to that then there may be limitless possibility. If you’re white moving into brown communities, read up on history and come with an open mind. Lay awake high at night and think “How can I be a great neighbor?”. This will demonstrate the helpfulness of the plant and of our cannabis community.

I couldn’t have expressed it better. Community is everything to us down here. That will resonate with me forever. It’s how I engage our industry on the professional level. We have to nourish the waterways for our friends and colleagues. We have to be representative of that wagon wheel and recognize our symbiotic relationship to the plant and one another.  The water washes away who we were, but also feeds the roots of who we can be. The Cannavatar must be a master of all of the elements in order to bridge worlds. We continue into the light for our next adventure.