Manuel Trujillo

Manuel is a Chama native, who grew up during the 1950s and remembers when the Chama River was a series of twists and turns that harbored great fishing pools, natural habitat, and swimming holes for summertime fun; and where the mountains were the peoples’: a place to gather wood, berries, healing plants, and hunt for food. He grew up with the Land Ethos: ‘La tierra es tu madre, y el agua es su sangre. El agua es vida.’ A man of varied experiences and talents, he has served his community and state as a roughneck on a drilling rig, surveyor and materials lab tech for NMDOT, a high school history teacher, an installer/repairman-to cable-splicer-to manager and lobbyist for a major telecommunications company in northern NM, a NM State Representative for District 41, member of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Water, one of initial board members of the NMAA, analyst for the chairman of the NM Senate Finance Committee, advisory Board Member for Acequias Norteñas, Rio Arriba Planning and Zoning, among several others. Manuel considers himself a water activist, and he continues to work for cultural and traditional water uses, the protection and preservation of the watershed, and the acequia system, being that he is a parciante and former Mayordomo on the Acequia PorVenir. Today he’s a part-time rancher and as an avid vegetable gardener, he is a preservationist of heirloom seeds. A favorite quote given to him by his friend Trudy: “Only when the last plant has died, the last river poisoned, and the last fish caught; will we realize we can’t eat money.”