The Ethno-Politics of Water Security
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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.