Eric P. Perramond Libros

The book explores the resilience of private ranchers in northern Mexico through historical challenges like the Mexican Revolution and agrarian reforms. Focusing on the Rio Sonora region, it examines diverse management techniques, labor costs, gender roles, and decision-making processes on ranches of different sizes. The study reveals that ranchers generally operate independently, only collaborating on land title issues, showcasing the complexity of their decision-making that reflects the varied landscapes they manage.

In the American West, water adjudication lawsuits are adversarial, expensive, and lengthy. Unsettled Waters is the first detailed study of water adjudications in New Mexico. The state envisioned adjudication as a straightforward accounting of water rights as private property. However, adjudication resurfaced tensions and created conflicts among water sovereigns at multiple scales. Based on more than ten years of fieldwork, this book tells a fascinating story of resistance involving communal water cultures, Native rights and cleaved identities, clashing experts, and unintended outcomes. Whether the state can alter adjudications to meet the water demands in the twenty-first century will have serious consequences.