Cultural Politics, Communal Resistance and Identity in Andean Irrigation Development

Abstract

This article uses two case studies to illustrate how Andean irrigation development and management emerges from a hybrid mix of local community rules and the changing political forms and ideological forces of hegemonic states. Some indigenous water-control institutions are with us today because they were consonant with the extractive purposes of local elites and Inca, Spanish and post-independence Republican states. These states often appropriated and standardised local watermanagement rules, rights and rituals in order to gain control over the surplus produced by these irrigation systems. However, as we show in the case of two communities in Ecuador and Peru, many of these same institutions are reappropriated and redirected by local communities to counteract both classic 'exclusion-oriented' and modern 'inclusionoriented' water and identity politics. In this way, they resist subordination, discrimination and the control of local water management by rural elites or state actors.

De-colonizing water. Dispossession, water insecurity, and Indigenous claims for resources, authority, and territory

“…Though this is not a major monetary sacrifice for flower farms, the symbolic implication of this submission to Indigenous costums and rules is an important rupture from the big landowner's dominance inherited from the hacienda era (Mena-Vásconez et al 2016). Boelens and Gelles (2005) provide similar cases in Peruvian and Ecuadorian contexts: after expropriation and standardization of Indigenous water management rules, rights and rituals under colonial, nation-State and neoliberal orders, today many of these same water institutions are being reappropriated and redirected by local communities under new, strategic forms of Indigenous practice and discourse.…”

“…As Orin Starn once commented, the Andean Highlands are ''… a place of synthetic, shifting identities that have grown out of the multi-layered interactions of the local, the regional, and the global since pre-Columbian times'' (Starn 1994, 20); ethnicity and identity in contemporary Andean society is the outcome of intensive interaction between different classes and cultures (Boelens and Gelles 2005).…”

Territorial pluralism: water users’ multi-scalar struggles against state ordering in Ecuador’s highlands

“…Ecuadorian water user communities and associations tend to follow a different rationality of signifying and patterning these elements than, for example, state agencies or development institutions (see Boelens & Gelles, 2005;Hoogesteger, 2015b;Rodriguez de Francisco, Budds, & Boelens, 2013). The former's rules, rights and obligations shape and are shaped by collective action and social organization around the joint creation and maintenance of irrigation infrastructure and water flows (Hoogesteger, 2013c).…”

“…Its rights and property relations are now embedded in Gompuene and Licto user collectives' cultural, agro-ecological and political context. Their collective and individual water rights are literally inscribed in the infrastructure, contours and water flows of the irrigation system, which have been shaped by their specific histories of communitarian cooperation and fierce conflicts with external actors who threaten their access to water and self-governance autonomy (Boelens & Gelles, 2005).…”

El impacto de la actividad extractiva petrolera en el acceso al agua: el caso de dos comunidades Kukama Kukamiria de la cuenca del Marañón (Loreto – Perú)

“…En este proceso, los discursos que fomentan la modernización y el desarrollo a través de políticas neoliberales valoran el agua a un nivel estrictamente económico, excluyendo las creencias y prácticas indígenas sobre la diversidad de valoraciones que hemos mencionado en la sección anterior (Boelens y Gelles, 2005;Getches, 2005). Si bien en el caso de los hidrocarburos el agua no es un insumo más para la producción, sigue siendo afectada en el proceso, considerando que el Estado no termina de cumplir con su rol regulador.…”