Paula Garcia

Emerge New Mexico is delighted to honor Paula Garcia as our 2010 Emerging Democratic Woman Leader of the Year.

Paula Garcia is Executive Director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, a grassroots, statewide organization of acequias which are centuries-old, community-based irrigation systems.  In her years of service to the Association, acequias have built a movement around the principle that “el agua es la vida – water is life” and have achieved major policy changes locally and statewide to protect the historic water rights of the predominantly Hispanic, rural communities in New Mexico.  In recent years, the Association created a project entitled Sembrando Semillas (Growing Seeds) to promote revitalization of agriculture and to cultivate the next generation of community leaders who retain roots in acequia tradition.  Through the project she and her colleagues have worked with families and youth through community food projects in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.  The NMAA is also a member of the New Mexico Food and Seed Sovereignty Alliance which promotes the seedsaving traditions of the traditional farmers of tribes, Pueblos, and land-based communities.

Paula is a co-founder of La Asociacion de las Acequias del Valle de Mora, a council of acequias in the Mora Valley and President of La Merced de Santa Gertrudis de lo de Mora.  She is a strong advocate for the cultural heritage and the historic land and water rights associated with community land grants and acequias.  She has also served two terms as the Chair of the Democratic Party of Mora County where she has diversified leadership and recruited women and young leaders to become politically engaged.  Paula recently won the primary election for the Mora County Commission on a platform of ethics in government, revitalization of the land-based economy, and protection of land and water resources.

Paula’s views on land, water, and community have been published and referenced in various op-ed pieces, articles, and book chapters.  She has also spoken at numerous conferences at the local, state, and national level including being featured as a plenary speaker at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Conference and at a conference of the National Water Resources Association.  Her experience on land and water issues has been a valuable asset when she has served on policy making and advisory boards including the New Mexico Water Trust Board, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center at the UNM Law School and the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Water.

Her contributions to the state and her local community have recently been recognized through the Governor’s Outstanding Woman of the Year through the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women.  She lives in Mora County where her extended family continues to operate a small-scale ranching and forestry business.  Her son Joaquin is in second grade at Mora Elementary School.