Water and Power in Highland Peru

by Gelles, Paul H.

• ISBN13: 9780813528076
• ISBN10: 0813528070
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-07-01
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

Summary

In Andean society, as in many other areas of the world, irrigation water carries broad cultural significance and has long been a source of conflict. Nowhere is the struggle over irrigation and over the cultural meanings of water more apparent than in Cabanaconde, a large peasant community located in the arid highlands of southern Peru. Using historical materials and richly detailed ethnographic reporting, Paul H. Gelles shows that water, ethnicity, and power in Cabanaconde, as elsewhere in the Andes, must be understood against the backdrop of the region's colonial past and contemporary nation-builing in Peru.Sifting through the layers of meaning found in the local, ritualized model of irrigation and the secular, monetary model put forth by the Peruvian state, Gelles shows that these models embody fundamentally different cultural rationales concerning natural resources, power, equity, and efficiency. Local models of irrigation, which previously served indigenous and Iberian states, have now become powerful tools of resistance against interference by local elites

Author Biography

Paul H. Gelles is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
Note to the Reader	xvii
Introduction Channels of Power, Fields of Contention	1	(25)
History, Community, and Ethnicity in Cabanaconde	26	(20)
The Political Ecology and Cultural Politics of Irrigation and Land Recovery	46	(29)
Earth Mother, Cabildos, and Water Ritual	75	(23)
Dual Organization Equilibrium, Extraction, and the Cargo of Water Mayor	98	(20)
The Power of the Pen: Patriarchs, Pudientes, and the State Model of Irrigation	118	(20)
Water Politics and Distribution of the Ground	138	(16)
Conclusion: The Cultural Politics of Irrigation, Community, and Development in the Andes	154	(8)
Epilogue	162	(3)
Appendices	165	(8)
Notes	173	(22)
Glossary	195	(12)
Bibliography	207	(16)
Index	223