The Ethno-politics of Water Security

281 Pages·2011·5.77 MB·English

by  Vera, Juana

The Ethno-politics of Water Security:

Contestations of ethnicity and gender in strategies to
control water in the Andes of Peru

Juana Rosa Vera Delgado
Thesis committee

Thesis supervisors
Prof. dr. L.F. Vincent
Professor of Irrigation and Water Engineering
Wageningen University

Prof. dr. E.B. Zoomers
Professor of International Development Studies
Utrecht University

Thesis co-supervisor
Dr. ir. M.Z. Zwarteveen
Assistant professor, Irrigation and Water Engineering Group
Wageningen University

Other members
Prof. dr. ir. J.D. van der Ploeg, Wageningen University
Dr. ir. R. Ahlers, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft
Dr. ir. G. van der Haar, Wageningen University
Dr. D. Roth, Wageningen University

This research was conducted under the auspices of the Wageningen School of Social
Sciences (WASS)
The Ethno-politics of Water Security:

Contestations of ethnicity and gender in strategies to
control water in the Andes of Peru

Juana Rosa Vera Delgado

Thesis
submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor
at Wageningen University
by the authority of the Rector Magnificus
Prof. dr. M.J. Kropff,
in the presence of the
Thesis Committee appointed by the Academic Board
to be defended in public
on Friday 23 December 2011
at 1.30 p.m. in the Aula.
Juana Rosa Vera Delgado
The Ethno-politics of Water Security: Contestations of ethnicity and gender in strategies
to control water in the Andes of Peru. 257 pages

Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, NL (2011)
With references, with summaries in Dutch, English and Spanish

ISBN: 978-94-6173-104-3
This research described in this thesis was financed by the Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO).

To the memory of my mother Casilda Delgado Ibargüen and my father Amadeo Vera
Neyra. You planted in me the seed of work, perseverance and commitment to justice

To all those women and men displaced and dispossessed from their land and water, your
struggles might be lost, but your spirit for justice remains alive through countless works
like this thesis, with the intent to some day change the course of history.

Acknowledgments

The first thoughts that come to my mind when I take a seat behind my computer to write
these pages, is the persistent questions of my children ‘Mommy, do you still need a lot of
time to finish your book?’, ‘how many pages do you still need to write?’… If only I could
explain the meaning enclosed in these words, so familiar to every mother who launches
herself on a mission to research and writes a PhD thesis, whose children are still small
and largely dependent on their parents. Love, a smile, patience and the bright attention of
my son Inti and my daughter Ch’aska were my source of inspiration and energy and fed
my perseverance to write this thesis, actually just the beginning of a new quest in my life.
I am conscious that finishing this work represents at the same time a new start for me
and my children. However, on the same path, we will continue our steps to “make the
road by walking” for a different society, more human, with more justice and sensitivity to
the language of Nature. There are so many colleagues, friends, family members and
institutions who collaborated, gave inspiration and help, friendship and professional
assistance, not only enabling this study but also putting on paper all these years of
intense learning, of encounters and confrontations with the daily reality of rural Peru and
my commitment to contribute to rural development in the Andes.

In the first place I would like to thank the men and women of Coporaque and the Colca
Valley in general. They have offered me shelter with love and much needed good spirits
and made me feel at home. My reencounter with my Andean identity, after finishing my
university studies in the 1990s, I owe partly to them. The experiences I could share
during their daily work, cultural celebrations, daily struggles to confront the scarcity of
water and even personal or family problems, sowed the seeds which later blossomed in
this research project. I express my special thanks to Sixto Huerta, Zenobia Taco, Beatriz
Choque, Honorato Suyco, Josefina Bernal, Jury Huaypuna, Hugo Bernal, and Marcial Sullca
for their valuable help, advice and solace in difficult moments.

The hydrological studies in this research were done by Patricia Valdivia Requena, as part
of her thesis to obtain the degree of agricultural engineer, while working with me as a
research assistant. Patricia showed a great professionalism, creativity and adaptability to
collect data in the harsh working conditions in the field that included long walks through
rugged mountains, meetings at daybreak and a lot of physical stress. I would like to
express my gratitude for the quality of her work and my appreciation for her
collaboration, which includes sending me necessary information from Peru while I was
writing up this thesis. I would like to congratulate her for the prize she won twice for the
best thesis written in 2007, first in her own faculty (Water Engineering) and later on at
university level (in the Universidad Agraria la Molina). I would also like to express my
gratitude to Oscar Toro, director of Desco-Arequipa, for his logistical assistance and a
vacancy in the team Desco-Chivay. This position allowed me to reintegrate myself in the
Colca Valley. My thanks also go to Aquilino Mejía and Benigno for their friendship and
interest in helping me. I appreciate Germán Ramos for your support until the last days of
my writing.

Developing my field work, at times being absent for several days or staying up until wee
hours (often until 1 o clock in the morning) participating in meetings of the Comisión de
Regantes de Coporaque, would not have been possible without the valuable and dedicated
help of Hilda Mamani, my former university batch mate. She took the bold decision to
leave her work and family in Lima in order to join me in Chivay, helping me with the care
of my children who at that time were only 1 and 4 years old with my son Inti not even
walking yet. At that moment I had just moved from the Netherlands to Chivay to do my
ix
field research. I found myself alone, trying to build a home where I could live with my
children, far from any family help in Peru (who live in Lima and Apurímac) and the
Netherlands (the father of my children stayed in the Netherlands). Combining my roles of
researcher and mother was an enormous challenge for me and Hilda, as my children fell
constantly ill (as foreigners used to Holland) with diarrhoea and bronchitis, and helping
their adaptation to to rural life at the high altitude of Chivay (3,700 m.a.s.l.) was a great
feat. Hilda has been a mother, a sister and friend in these dear moments of my life and
work in the Colca Valley. My children and I will be eternally grateful to her.

During the process of writing in the Netherlands there have been many friends and
colleagues who lent a hand at the right moment and in the right place. The list of names is
endless and I apologize if I do not mention everybody explicitly. You all know that you are
present in my mind and heart. One of the first persons I would like to recognize and
thank is my daily supervisor Margreet Zwarteveen, who with her patience, creativity and
analytical capacity guided me through the research journey with a critical mindset, but
also with great enthusiasm and even passion. Margreet gave shape and “wings” to ideas I
wrote in every chapter, to the point where they got shape, sense and fluidity, given some
limitations of my “Spanglish”. Thank you Margreet for your time and patience, helping me
sculpt my ideas and writings. I would also like to recognize the effort and valuable
experience of my second supervisor Annelies Zoomers, who with her capacity to look
further and analyse the reality of Andean livelihoods in an objective and critical way,
knew how to “put my feet back on the earth”. She guided me through the process of
producing (concrete) knowledge without deviating into elaborate and complicated
theoretical frameworks and concepts. The synthesis and fluidity of the thesis would not
have been possible without the scrutiny of Linden Vincent that made me to balance my
arguments and integrate my findings, as she put it, to give my work its deeper voice, and
through this access to the real worlds and everyday struggles of the Andean people of
Peru. I would like also to thank her for the push she gave in through final stage of this
PhD career.

I would like to thank and recognize the valuable and permanent help of Rutgerd Boelens,
from the moment I initiated my MSc-studies (1997-1999) in the Netherlands (as
supervisor of my thesis), until the moment I finished this work. He gave me the
opportunity to be part of the research group on WALIR (Water Law and Indigenous
Rights), developing a study about ‘gender and water’ in three Andean countries (Bolivia,
Peru and Ecuador). Fortunately my entrance in WALIR also opened the prospect to learn
from the experience and studies of my colleagues about ethnicity/ethnic concerns in
water rights and the analysis of water control. This experience fitted like a ring on my
finger, not only because it allowed me to learn more about gender, but also because it
located me in the centre of my Andean cultural background. Although I was learning a lot
in WALIR, it also confronted me with dilemmas regarding identity, while I was reading
and analyzing the Andean water world. To some extent I was educated (at the university)
to read this reality from the perspective of a technical scientist, with the ‘lens’ of
‘westernized’ education. At the same time I have also lived and experienced the Andean
water culture, and I frequently felt tempted to ‘romanticize’ it; something which even
occurred during the writing of this book. To be honest, I feel I belong to both worlds and
sometimes of neither. I am just a woman and a mother who, although being a scientist,
living and being part of a Dutch family, still feels strongly linked to my community and its
communalities, to my sentient rivers and water springs, and to my sacred mountains
(Apus). I am simply different, although not unique among those feeling plural identities.
In remarking on this cultural dilemma and fusion, I also want to thank the people of my
community, where I have learned somehow to be a comunera. My parents (both passed
away) for the insights and support they have given me. My parents were comuneros of the
x