THE RULES OF THE GAME AND THE GAME OF THE RULES Normalization and resistance in Andean water control I Promotoren: Prof. Dr. Ir. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg Professor in Transition Studies Chair group Rural Sociology Wageningen University Prof. Dr. Hans Achterhuis Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Twente Promotiecommissie: Prof. Dr. Michiel Baud Professor in Latin American Studies and Director CEDLA, University of Amsterdam Prof. Dr. Milka Castro Lucic Professor of Indigenous Law and Director Legal Anthropology & Intercultural Studies Program, Law Faculty, University of Chile. Prof. Dr. David H. Getches Dean and Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law, University of Colorado Law School, USA Prof. Dr. Linden Vincent Professor of Irrigation and Water Engineering, Dept. Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University Dit onderzoek is uitgevoerd binnen de onderzoeksschool CERES II THE RULES OF THE GAME AND THE GAME OF THE RULES Normalization and resistance in Andean water control Rutgerd Anne Boelens Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor op gezag van de rector magnificus van Wageningen Universiteit, Prof. Dr. M. J. Kropff, in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 11 april 2008 des namiddags te vier uur in de Aula III The Rules of the Game and the Game of the Rules. Normalization and Resistance in Andean Water Control. Rutgerd Boelens, 2008. Wageningen University, The Netherlands Keywords: water rights, irrigation, water management, legal pluralism, water policy, legislation, normalization, resistance, power, identity, gender, peasant and indigenous communities, cultural politics, Andean Region. ISBN: 978-90-8504-896-1 Copyright 2008 by Rutgerd Boelens IV To Aeilt, my father. You taught me that life is full of questions that ask you to doubt all unquestionable truths, full of encounters that ask you to open your eyes and think the world differently; that these questions – more than the answers – are a fundamental condition to be able to coexist, co-think and share. To Julio, my friend. Although they quenched your life because you would not put up with Injustice, your struggle for justice and solidarity in the Andes carries on. Through the seeds you planted in your films, in your photographs and your texts, but above all through the love that you planted in people, in Andean communities. To the ‘wild herbs’ in Andean communities, who refuse to behave the way they should, who refuse to become ‘normal’. For you, this book, and the words of Pablo Neruda: Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero nunca podrán detener la primavera. They may cut all the flowers, but they will never be able to stop the springtime. V Table of Contents Acknowledgments XIV Prelude to the game XIX PART 1 ANDEAN IRRIGATION AND RULE-MAKING 1 1. Introduction: About Rules and Games 3 1.1. The rules and the game 3 Water rights and water struggles in the Andes 3 Forced engagements, cultural politics and dynamic identities 8 Norms, power and truthful water knowledge 11 Discourses and networks 18 The art of water governance and stabilizing the water rights order 20 1.2. The research: From the powers of illusion to the forces of con-fusion 23 Re-membering and positioning myself 24 Fieldwork, cases and methods 25 How this book is organized 29 1.3. The introductory chapters: Water rights conceptualization and the order of things 30 1.4. The contextualizing chapters: Andean water user communities in a changing policy environment 32 1.5. The domination chapters: Coercive and capillary powers and the politics of participatory domestication 33 1.6. The resistance chapters: Mimicry and the struggles for water and identity 38 2. Creation and Recreation of Diversity. Conceptualizing Water Rights 43 in Collectively Managed Andean Systems 2.1. Ceceles contra Tzaticahuan 44 2.2. Water rights’ diversity and legal complexity in Andean communities 46 2.3. Water rights’ embeddedness 49 2.4. Collective and individual rights 53 2.5. Mechanisms of water rights acquisition 55 2.6. The contents of water rights 57 Access and control rights 57 Obligations and penalties 58 Internal allocation principles and modes of water scheduling 61 In-house and external usage rights 67 2.7. Water rights and property regimes 67 2.8. Fluid conditions and dynamic relationships: water rights in action 69 Water rights´ dynamics 69 The fluid nature and versatile appearances of water rights 71 Activating water rights: reference rights, rights in action, materialized rights 73 2.9. Creating and re-creating water rights 76 VII 3. Diverse Waters and Diverging Truths. The Domains of Water Rights 81 3.1. Balcompata: diverging truths about the heart of irrigation water control 82 3.2. A true love story: Viracocha and the waters of creation 88 Amaru. Construction and destruction 88 Cosmovisión and life cycle: the hydrological bond between Pachamama, Apus and human and natural communities 91 The creation of truth about Creation 98 3.3. The interdisciplinary nature of irrigation and its taxonomy: the analytical domains of water rights 101 Interdisciplinarity and sociotechnical approaches 101 The Order of Things 107 3.4. Practice, power and process 112 PART 2 ANDEAN COMMUNITIES AND WATER POLICIES: A CONTEXTUALIZATION 115 4. Embedding Irrigation Management in the Andean Peasant Economy 117 4.1. Introduction: the rationality underlying irrationally inverted agro-ecology 118 4.2. Agro-ecology and social relationships: Andean irrigation and vertical economies 121 A walk along the main canal 121 Water control and vertical economies 122 4.3. The organization of farmer-controlled irrigation systems in the Andes 125 4.4. The Andean peasant economy 129 Socio-productive logic without romanticism 129 Interaction between community and market spheres 132 4.5. Construction and deconstruction of the Andean ´community´ 135 4.6. Collective water demand and hydraulic identity: delicate balances 147 ‘Ethical principles’ and collective contractual reciprocity 147 Regimes of reciprocity: between mutual support and concealed subjugation 151 5. Hybrid Traditions and Conflicting Policy Approaches in Andean Water Management 155 5.1. Introduction: water policy, authority and legitimacy in a new water context 156 5.2. Irrigation traditions and policy transitions 158 The Andean tradition 158 The Hispanic and hacienda tradition 159 The bureaucratic tradition 161 A new, endogenous tradition? 163 5.3. Current water management approaches and reconciliation of conflicting water rights in the Andes 166 A policy reorientation: coordinating among multiple uses and users at basin level 168 VIII Diverging approaches to accommodating multiple water uses and rights 171 5.4. The demand for local rights recognition: analytical and strategic agendas 178 PART 3 ENCOUNTERS OF NORMALIZATION: INCLUSION OF THE EXCLUDED AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF PARTICIPATORY DOMESTICATION 185 6. Coercive and Capillary Powers. The Hydro-Politics of Identity 187 6.1. Introduction. Don Fermín and the politics of identity 188 6.2. The expropriation of creation: eroding control over collective labor and reciprocity in communal water control 190 The ‘creative dynamism’ of Padre Abelardo 190 Violent, vertical mita expropriation: from Inca to republican rule 192 Contemporary mita expropriation: a new manifestation of ‘power’? 196 6.3. From the quartering of Tupac Amaru to the process of ‘mestizaje’: a power regime transition 199 Coercive, vertical, exclusive power 200 Capillary, inclusive, disciplining power 205 6.4. Modern power in ancient times, ancient power in modern times: the hydro-politics of identity 211 a. The Hydraulic Hypothesis revised (yesterday’s modern politics) 211 b. Metaphysical techniques of water governance (today’s ancient politics?) 213 c. Ancient and modern power: Janus-faced strategic continuity 216 ´We have always been modern…´ 219 7. Panoptic Power and the Moralization of Water Control Technology 221 7.1. The panoptic dream and the hydro-political dream scheme 222 The panoptic dream 223 The imagined irrigation system or hydro-political dream scheme 226 7.2. Modules and tertiary canals: the canalization of power 232 The case of Licto: a story of oppression and conflicts 232 The ‘final design’ and the legislative recipe 234 Techniques of governance: a political anatomy of Licto water control disciplining 240 7.3. The moralization of irrigation technology 248 Social contents in irrigation technology design 249 The power of illusion 256 8. Equalization of the Unequal: The Laws of the State and the Laws of the Heart 259 8.1. Orders of unruliness 260 8.2. Underdeveloping the Rules: Justice versus Equity 263 IX 8.3. Legal centralism in water resources policy and legislation 265 8.4. Exclusion and inclusion: a jump into the history of legal recognition politics 269 8.5. Special law in the Andean region: policies of recognition and politics of negation 272 State law and local rights: a shotgun marriage 273 a. The Peruvian Water Laws and the Comunidad Campesina 274 b. The Indigenous Law, double legislation and political practice in Chile 276 8.6. Codification of community norms and rights 279 The politics of legal re-representation: freezing, subordination, and illegalization 280 ‘managed multiculturalism’ 281 Participatory non-governmental intervention to install government rule and order 283 8.7. Seduction and invasion of the laws of the heart 284 Back to De Soto’s utopia: comprehending and including extralegal rights 286 9. Pinochet’s Laboratory. Collective Water Rights in the Era of Neoliberal Normalization 291 9.1. Introduction 292 9.2. Paving the way: new policies with ancient roots 293 9.3. Recent waves of water privatization policies in the Andes 297 9.4. Making the model and breaking the anomalies: the silencing of ‘objectivity’ and the construction of ‘natural law’ in the water rights laboratory 300 9.5. Privatization and water neoliberal language 303 9.6. Demystifying neoliberal claims to promoting efficiency, secure tenure and investment 307 9.7. Disciplining and equalizing deviations: the model’s self-fulfilling prophecies 309 9.8. … but some are more equal than others 312 9.9.