Custom and Contradiction: Rural Water Governance and the Politics of Usos y Costumbres in Bolivia's Irrigators' Movement

Abstract In recent years, water governance has emerged as a conflictive political issue in Bolivia, leading to major protests and the rise of influential social movements. Although conflicts over urban water services have received more attention, rural water issues have been an important if underexamined contributor to processes by which water governance is being reinstitutionalized in Bolivia. Rural water conflicts have given rise to a well-organized and influential peasant irrigators' movement, rooted in the department of Cochabamba but with national membership. The irrigators' movement has successfully promoted a vision of water governance based on traditional customary practices of water management, or usos y costumbres. In addition to being material practices associated with agricultural production, usos y costumbres are symbolic of livelihood strategies specific to Quechua- and Aymara-speaking peoples in the Bolivian Andes. This article examines the material and symbolic importance of these usos y costumbres for the livelihoods and political claims of Bolivia's peasant irrigators. Irrigators have successfully mobilized a politicized and symbolic discourse of usos y costumbres, as well as dense associational networks that have together allowed them to renegotiate the institutionalization of rural water governance in Bolivia: who makes resource decisions, for the benefit of whom, at whose expense, at what sociospatial scales, and through what institutional arrangements. The reinstitutionalization of Bolivian water governance is reflective of historically rooted cultural systems that seek to reconfigure long-standing power asymmetries. En años recientes, la administración del agua ha emergido como un conflictivo tema político en Bolivia, ocasionando protestas importantes y el surgimiento de movimientos sociales influyentes. Aunque los conflictos sobre los servicios urbanos de agua han recibido más atención, los problemas rurales de agua influyen de manera importante, aunque subanalizada, los procesos mediante los cuales la administración de este recurso se está reinstitucionalizando en Bolivia. Los conflictos rurales sobre el agua han dado origen a un movimiento influyente y bien organizado de irrigadores campesinos, con raíces en el departamento de Cochabamba pero con afiliación nacional. El movimiento de los irrigadores ha promovido exitosamente la visión de una administración del agua basada en prácticas usuales tradicionales, o usos y costumbres. Además de ser prácticas materiales asociadas con la producción agrícola, los usos y las costumbres son simbólicos de estrategias de sustento específicas de los pueblos quechua y los hablantes de aymara de los Andes bolivianos. En este artículo se examina la importancia material y simbólica de estos usos y costumbres en las demandas políticas y de sustento de los irrigadores campesinos de Bolivia. Los irrigadores han movilizado exitosamente un discurso simbólico y politizado de usos y costumbres, así como densas redes de asociación, que en conjunto, les han permitido renegociar la institucionalización de la administración del agua rural de Bolivia: quién toma las decisiones respecto a este recurso, a beneficio de quién, quién corre con los gastos, a qué escalas socioespaciales, y mediante qué acuerdos institucionales. La reinstitucionalización de la administración del agua boliviana refleja los sistemas culturales de raíces históricas que ambicionan reconfigurar las antiguas asimetrías del poder. Key Words: Boliviacustomary practiceirrigationresource governancewater关键词: 玻利维亚习惯做法灌溉资源治理水Palabras claves: Boliviapráctica usualirrigaciónadministración de recursosagua Acknowledgments Funding for this research was provided by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad fellowship, as well as grants from the Department of Geography and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Earlier versions of this article benefited from comments by Jessica Budds, Gabriela Valdivia, Margaret Wilder, and four anonymous reviewers, as well as discussions with patient audiences at the University of North Carolina, Colgate University, the University of Arizona, Cornell University, the University of Montréal, and Texas A CitationAlbó 2002; Grindle and Domingo 2003; CitationAlbó and Quispe 2004). Each of these terms is highly politicized and cannot be taken as straightforward, "objective" reflections of social or ethnic reality. 3. This literature is examined in a pair of excellent review essays by Noel Castree (Citation2008a, Citation2008b; see also CitationBridge and Jonas 2002; CitationCastree 2006; CitationBakker and Bridge 2007; CitationHimley 2008). 4. One exception to this is Chile, which has introduced thorough market-based reforms throughout its water sector (CitationBauer 1997; CitationBudds 2004). 5. Author interview, Luís Salazar, Programa Nacional de Riego (PRONAR), Cochabamba, 23 October 2003. 6. The concept of usos y costumbres is not unique to Bolivian irrigation. The term refers to common property arrangements of many sorts, including water, forests, and agricultural lands, and has been adopted in a variety of Latin American contexts to refer to indigenous customary law (CitationOrellana 2004). Moreover, concepts equivalent to usos y costumbres—mutually recognized practices to govern the management of commons resources—exist in commons property systems throughout the world (CitationOstrom 1990). 7. Interview, leader of Asociación de Riego y Servicios de Tiraque (ARST), Tiraque, Cochabamba, 6 April 2004. 8. Wiracocha and Pachamama are references to Andean water and earth deities, respectively. 9. Unless otherwise indicated, information presented in this section is based on (1) open-ended interviews with irrigators, state officials, researchers, and representatives of development agencies in the Bolivian cities of Cochabamba, La Paz, and Oruro; (2) observation and analysis of three Quechua campesino irrigation systems in Cochabamba department; (3) participation in water policy–related meetings and conferences in La Paz, Cochabamba, and Oruro; and (4) analysis of project reports and summary data produced by state irrigation agencies, bilateral aid agencies, and NGOs. Fieldwork was conducted over fourteen months, between 2002 and 2007, including a ten-month period during 2003–2004. 10. The broad alluvial plain on which the city of Cochabamba and the numerous surrounding smaller towns and villages are located is divided into four zones, along distinct watersheds: the Upper Valley (with its principle towns of Tiraque, Punata, and Tarata) ; the Sacaba Valley (with its principal town of Sacaba) ; the Central Valley (with its principal towns of Tiquipaya, Colcapirhua, and Quillacollo) ; and the Lower Valley (with its principal towns of Vinto and Sipe Sipe). See Figure 2. 11. Author interview, Humberto Gandarillas, Programa Nacional de Riego (PRONAR), Cochabamba, 12 July 2005. 12. Canal systems frequently connect multiple communities within a watershed, but rarely serve every household in a given community (CitationZimmerer 2000b). Thus, the scale at which irrigation is practiced is not always congruent with the campesino community. 13. Author interview, Rocío Bustamante, Centro AGUA, Cochabamba, 9 February 2004. 14. Municipios are similar to counties in the United States, in that they are focused on an urban center, and include its frequently large rural hinterland. Administratively, they were created by reassigning preexisting territorial units known as provincial sections, which had no administrative authority, budget, or elected government of their own. 15. Author interview, Rocío Bustamante, Centro AGUA, Cochabamba, 9 February 2004. 16. Author interview, Rocío Bustamante, Centro AGUA, Cochabamba, 9 February 2004. 17. Cochabamba's Water War, which has become an iconic event for the global antineoliberalism movement, has been analyzed at length elsewhere, from a variety of ideological positions and disciplinary perspectives. See, for example, CitationBarlow and Clarke 2002a, Citation2002b; CitationFinnegan 2002; CitationLaurie, Andolina, and Radcliffe 2002; CitationNickson and Vargas 2002; CitationGarcía, García, and Quitón 2003; CitationPeredo et al. 2004; CitationAlbro 2005; CitationKohl and Farthing 2006; CitationPerreault 2006. 18. In fact, the Constitution of 1994 explicitly states that all natural resources are the property of the state, and the state alone has the authority to make management and allocation decisions. Thus, a legal contradiction exists between the Constitution and the sectoral law regulating drinking water (author interviews with Carlos Crespo, Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios, Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba, 29 October 2003; and René Orellana, Agua Sustentable, Cochabamba, 25 February 2004). 19. The referendum drew 48, 276 people, who voted on the following questions: (1) Do you accept the water fee increase? (99 percent responded "no") ; (2) Should the contract with Aguas de Tunari be canceled? (96 percent responded "yes") ; and (3) Do you agree that water is private property, as stated in Law no. 2029? (97 percent responded "no"; Bustamante 2002). 20. Author interview, Marcelo Ortega, CEPAS-Caritas, La Paz, 13 January 2004. 21. The text of this law can be found at http: //www. aguabolivia. org/index. php? option=comwrapper&Item-id=50. 22. As of this writing (December 2007), Aguas de Illimani's contract still has not been canceled, and its future remains an open question. 23. Although no definitive data exist, and the numbers of irrigators change as new irrigation systems are developed, it has been estimated that roughly 25 percent of Bolivia's campesino population has access to water for irrigation, meaning that some 75 percent of campesinos have no irrigation (Alfredo Terán, Director, Centro AGUA, personal communication, Cochabamba, 15 August 2007). 24. The other positions are held by the minister and three vice-ministers of the Ministry of Water, a representative of the national peasant union CSUTCB, and a representative of the national agribusiness council, CONFEAGRO. 25. Author interview, Eberhard Gol, GTZ, La Paz, 14 June 2004.