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| Water irrigation system in Huaynacotas: an ‘autonomous’ peasant community |
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Reference |
| Trawick, Paul. 2002. "Comedy and Tragedy in the Andean Commons."Journal of Political Ecology. Link: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/archive/00001642/01/Trawick2002.pdf |
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Introduction to the Institution |
| Villagers of the village Huaynacotas are the indigenous people who identify themselves as runakuna, During the late colonial and modern periods, however, they have remained relatively independent of hacienda influence, never having allowed landlords to actually colonize their community and acquire land there. In this village the traditional methods of sharing water and irrigating with it are distinctive and seem to remain intact. The hydraulic irrigation system is operated and managed here independently by the village members through a system of rotating, allocated authority in which customary procedures are exclusively followed. |
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Rules for Management
of the Institution |
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(a) Boundary Rules |
| Spacial Boundaries: Village Huaynacotas, a high altitude village located in the Cotahuasi valley of Peru’s Department of Arequipa, one of the more remote provinces on the arid western Andean slope. The hydraulic system is a dual one with two main water sources (alpine springs), two storage tanks, and two separate networks of canals.Social Boundaries: Everyone in the village receives water from each major source with the same frequency. The water is distributed to the villagers in the proportional amount to which the extent of their land entitles them. |
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(b) Governance
rules |
| The system is operated independently by the village members through a system of rotating, allocated authority in which customary procedures are exclusively followed. The water officials, called campos are elected by the community. During each distribution cycle, they divide the flow of each main canal approximately in half, into two standard and roughly equivalent portions called rakis diverting them into the secondary canals. They then allow the water to flow on down to the fields, where each raki is dispersed and used, or consumed, by a landowning family or household. No one can use more water than the proportional amount to which the extent of their land entitles them, nor can they legally get it more often than everyone else. The water distributors do not allow any departures from this arrangement of distribution of water, such as the destruction of terracing and the irrigation of slopes People’s contributions to maintenance must be directly proportional to the amount of irrigated land that they have. Everyone in the community knows the rules, and has the ability to confirm, with their own eyes, whether or not those rules are generally being obeyed, to detect and denounce any violations that occur. The male heads of household maintain this in rotation cycle, also sponsor and direct the yearly Water Festival, Yarqa Aspiy, the ritual cleaning of the irrigation canals. |
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(c) Resource Allocation |
| The entire landscape is terraced. Due to this the actual watering can be carried out by means of a uniform water-pooling technique. This minimizes waste by ensuring that nearly all of the water soaks into each terrace, and it also ensures that the duration of irrigation, and the amount of water consumed by people in each allotment, are strictly proportional to the extent of that person’s property. The land sectors that make up the village territory, are allotted water consecutively in a fixed sequence based on planting order and crop maturation times . During each cycle of the system, watering passes through all the sectors currently in production, reaching every parcel before beginning again. A standard method of adjusting allotments guarantees that households absorb rather equally the impact of chronic shortages. Because mayoristas have more land and use more water, their contributions to the Water Festival, and generally to the upkeep of tanks and canals, are required to be greater, in terms of labor, food and other inputs, than those of the minorista majority. |
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Conflict Resolution Mechanism |
| Even though the springs that supply this community are the most vulnerable in the entire province to droughts, which have reached alarming frequency during the last thirty years, conflict over water is far less prevalent in Huaynacotas than in most other places as a standard method of adjusting allotments guarantees that households absorb rather equally the impact of chronic shortages. People who ignore the rules and steal water or irrigate excessively, interfere with the efforts of others to shorten the cycle and instead cause it to slow down. Consequently, the arrangement generates strong social pressures against this kind of behaviour. |
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Problems Faced by Institution |
| The loss of proportionality has generally occurred in the region as communities have become more stratified, due to the accumulation of land and also water by certain prominent families, without an accompanying obligation proportional to their rights, rights that in many cases were simply imposed by force. The breakdown of these communal work traditions has been widely noted in the Andes for many years because of the lack of proportionality and the resentment and conflict that arise among people because of this. |
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Changes in the Institution over time |
| Not mentioned |
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Purpose |
| Management of hydraulic irrigation system |
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Country |
| Peru |
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Region |
| Huaynacotas is a remote village, located at high altitude, of people who identify themselves as runakuna, indigenous people, native Quechua-speakers. They have remained relatively independent of hacienda influence, never having allowed landlords to actually colonize their community and acquire land there. The members of the community claim that this hydraulic irrigation system is Inca. The tradition that lives on in Huaynacotas today is probably one component of what appears to have been a dual tradition with two modes of operation. One for use on rare occasions when water was abundant, of which more will be said below, the other for use when it was scarce, the normal state of affairs today in Huaynacotas and most other places in the highlands. Scarcity, probably prevailed widely during Inca times too |
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Date Of Publication |
| RS-2002 |
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