The social embeddedness of hydraulic engineers in the regulation of water and infrastructure in Peru

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Majes-Colca watershed in Peru, this article explores some of the questions posed by Wittfogel regarding the management of hydraulic infrastructure and its effects on social relationships, by focusing on the practices of the ‘hydraulic bureaucracy’ in Peru. The author argues that although a hydraulic bureaucracy developed after the nationalization of water and the construction of the Majes Irrigation Project, the engineers working in Majes-Colca do not constitute a despotic elite detached from the water users. Practices of water regulation are entangled in social life and cultural values, and engineers are differentiated in hierarchies based on geography and social background. The author suggests that the regulations are performed in hydrosocial networks, and the distribution of water is an issue of negotiations and struggles. The engineers are constantly balancing and negotiating the requirements of impersonal rationality and efficacy, and the social obligations of relatedness and reciprocity. These balancing acts also contribute to the reproduction of asymmetric power relations and the everyday processes of state formation.

Keywords

Water bureaucracy sociality infrastructure engineers state Peru

Introduction

The control and management of water give rise to different forms of cooperation, but also potential conflicts, especially in societies with large social, economic and cultural differences. The manipulation of the flow of water running from the Andean highlands in Peru creates new fertile areas on the arid coastline, but also conflicts and negotiations over distribution of water from dams and irrigation canals. In this article, I will explore some of the questions posed by Karl A. Wittfogel (1957) regarding management of hydraulic infrastructure and its effects on social relationships, by focusing on the practices of the ‘hydraulic bureaucracy’ in Peru. What can an examination of water regulation teach us about bureaucracy in a modern, postcolonial and neoliberal state? Teresa Oré and Edwin Rap (2009) have described how a hydraulic bureaucracy developed in Peru as a result of the centralization of the state’s water management, the expansion of hydraulic infrastructure and an increasing number of engineers working in water institutions since the 1970s. The focus of this article is how the work of hydraulic engineers and bureaucrats is manifested in practices and interactions at a local and regional level, more specifically in the management of water and infrastructure in the Majes-Colca watershed in Arequipa, southern Peru. The distribution of water in this watershed changed drastically after the construction of the Majes Irrigation Project (MIP) in the 1970s. The water from the Majes-Colca headwaters is led into a system of dams, canals and tunnels through Colca Valley in order to irrigate the arid plains of Majes. Peasant farmers in Colca only got access to this water after a long struggle, and their access is today strictly regulated by the state. The infrastructure is managed and maintained by a public agency, and the engineers employed by this agency coordinate with other engineers working as bureaucrats in the public water administration and the engineers working for user associations.

Although the MIP has arguably strengthened a managerial relationship to water in the Majes-Colca watershed, there is no ‘despotic regime’ of bureaucrats in complete control of the watershed. Instead of a Weberian ideal of an impersonal bureaucracy, which ‘segregates official activity from the sphere of private life’ (Weber, 1978: 957), this article demonstrates the entanglement of work, social life and cultural values. This is connected to an anthropological understanding of the state as embedded in specific practices, processes and social encounters (Krohn-Hansen and Nustad, 2005; Trouillot, 2001). Wittfogel’s hydraulic society model – like Weber’s model of rational bureaucracy – is an ideal type that must not be misunderstood as an empirical artefact, since water management all over the world is embedded in social complexity. As Herzfeld argues in his now classic study from Greece, bureaucratic accountability is socially produced, and despite its claims to a universal rationality, its meanings are culturally specific (Herzfeld, 1992: 47). My argument in this article is twofold. First, I argue that state practices in Peru are not isolated from local life and values, but are entangled in local practices of reciprocity, sociality, kinship and different relationships to nature. Secondly, I suggest that, the collaborations and work relations in water management are structured by a colonial matrix of power in which hierarchies are codified according to ideas of race, class and gender (Quijano, 2000). In Peru, formal education tends to elevate people not only socially, but also racially (De la Cadena, 2000). The state-employed engineers rank high in the Peruvian hierarchy of race, class and geography, where indigenous peasants in the rural highlands are assigned the lowest rank. The article demonstrates, however, that the boundaries are permeable and unstable. Although most of the engineers of the Majes-Colca watershed have an urban mestizo background, a few technicians and engineers come from highland villages, and some act as mediators between farmers and bureaucrats.

The analysis is based on ethnographic material generated during 13 months of fieldwork in Colca Valley and Majes in Caylloma Province, Arequipa Region, in 2011, 2013 and 2014. My main method was participant observation in work places, organizations, bureaucratic offices, agricultural fields and households. Interviews complemented the observations from everyday work and family life. From March until October in 2011, I lived in the provincial capital Chivay and visited 16 villages in Colca Valley, where I cooperated closely with user organizations and public water offices. I made more than 40 formal interviews with local authorities, leaders of water user associations and state officials, in addition to informal interviews with engineers, farmers and villagers. In November 2013, I returned to Colca and from January to April 2014, I lived in Majes, where I conducted 25 formal interviews with leaders of farmers’ organizations, water user associations, local politicians, state officials, agronomists, hydraulic engineers and farmers, in addition to innumerous informal conversations during meetings and visits to farms and workplaces.

In the following sections, I will first discuss theories of infrastructure, state and bureaucracy, followed by a discussion of scholarship of water and power in Peru and recent changes in national water policies. I will then present my case study from the Majes-Colca watershed. After discussing the tensions created by the Majes Canal and the plurality of water institutions in Colca Valley, I present an account of a typical valve regulation. Finally, I will discuss the social embeddedness of hydraulic engineers.

Water control: Infrastructure, state and bureaucracy

As a young scholar who was influenced by both Marx and Weber, Karl August Wittfogel joined the Institute for Social Research – known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory – in 1925, and started his work to discover how the bureaucratic apparatus of the ‘hydraulic-bureaucratic official-state’ in China and India had come into being and what impact it had on social structures. In his most famous work, Oriental Despotism, Wittfogel (1957) created the controversial ‘hydraulic society’ thesis, in which he postulated that large-scale irrigation systems, composed of ever larger dams and increasingly elaborate canal networks, lead to centralized coordination and administrative bureaucracies. Wittfogel studied the hydraulic management in ancient empires to show the connections between water control and the political power of bureaucratic elites. Referring to ancient texts on Chinese statecraft, Wittfogel (1957: 53) described how the special officials in Oriental empires with great care opened and closed the canals and conduits to regulate the distribution of irrigation water from the reservoirs and larger canals to the smaller canals and ditches. Distribution of water requires high levels of organization and cooperation, and necessitates regulations, manuals and bureaucratic details. Wittfogel (1957) argued that ‘the power of the agromanagerial regime was indeed closely interlinked with the “bureaucratic” control which the government exerted over its subjects’ (52). He was concerned with the role of bureaucrats – the persons who ‘rules through bureaus’ – in governments that turn into despotic regimes, and he argued that ‘bureaucratic chair-warmers can be annoying and harmful […] But a bureaucracy becomes truly formidable only when its offices are the organizational centers of ruthless and total power’ (Wittfogel, 1957: 306). Wittfogel’s analysis has been heavily criticized for environmental determinism, ethnocentrism and ideological bias (Bichsel, 2016). Nevertheless, the fundamental legacy of his work, namely the interest in connections between control over hydraulic infrastructure, water flows and power, continues to inspire research on today’s water regimes.

One of those inspired by Wittfogel is Donald Worster (1985), who analyses the large-scale manipulation of water in the American West, arguing that the system became increasingly coercive and hierarchical. What he calls ‘a modern hydraulic society’ is ruled by a power elite based on the ownership of capital and expertise. Although Worster’s work has been criticized for lacking a sense of process and complexity (Banister, 2014), the analysis of modern bureaucracy and irrigation control shows how modern states and markets rely on technological mastery of water. What Worster (1985) describes is a society built on an alienating, managerial relationship with nature. This view is supported by Scott’s (1998) argument about how state control requires a narrowing of vision of complex and unwieldy realities and a simplification of nature. This simplification makes the phenomenon at the centre of the field of vision – in this case water – more legible and more susceptible to measurement and calculation, thus making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control and manipulation. This bureaucratic logic of legibility is practically synonymous with a commercial logic, meaning that both markets and states are dependent on legibility (Scott, 1998). Legibility is intrinsically connected to technology, infrastructure and civil engineering expertise, which has been central to the formation of the modern state (Carroll, 2006; Harvey and Knox, 2015). Larkin (2013) shows how the provision of infrastructures is intimately caught up with the sense of shaping modern society, organizing the market economy and enacting progress (Larkin, 2013: 332). Other scholars have also argued that engineering and infrastructure are associated with the conditions and expectations of modernity (see, e.g. Edwards, 2003; Mrázek, 2002). Hommes and Boelens (2017, 2018) argue that large-scale hydraulic infrastructure in the Lima region of Peru is the result of the ideas of modernity and progress that dominated Peru in the early and mid-20th century. These ideas were intrinsically connected to ‘a glorification of engineering work’ and ‘deep beliefs in the superiority and fundamentality of engineering science’ (Hommes and Boelens, 2017: 75). Andersen (2016) shows how the ‘visionary’ work of engineers and the construction of ‘advanced’ hydraulic infrastructure were part of the creation of modernization, progress and well-being in Arequipa in the middle of the 20th century. Hence, in Peru and elsewhere, engineering and infrastructure have a central place in state projects of modernization and development. The state thus participates in the production of ‘hydrosocial territories’, which are ‘(re-)created through the interactions amongst human practices, water flows, hydraulic technologies, biophysical elements, socio-economic structures and cultural-political institutions’ (Boelens et al., 2016: 1). The relation between state formation and hydrosocial territories is mutual as they co-constitute and (re)produce each other (Menga and Swyngedouw, 2018).

In newer anthropological analyses, the state is increasingly being scrutinized and analysed as a configuration of dispersed and flexible practices (Pinker and Harvey, 2015), and an aggregation of many levels of bureaucracies, agendas, offices and officials that may act in contradictory ways (Rasmussen, 2015). Not only is the state an incoherent agent, but also the consequences of bureaucratic practices are arbitrary (Gupta, 2012). Trouillot (2001: 131) argues that the state is ‘a set of practices and processes and their effects’, and that anthropologists should study these practices, processes and effects without prejudice about sites or forms of encounters. Likewise, Krohn-Hansen and Nustad (2005) argue that the anthropology of the state is tied to the ethnographic study of politics and culture as embedded in practices and specific forms of agency. From the officials’ actual work practices and social interactions, it is possible to elicit the everyday processes of state formation and see how they are socially embedded. In Hetherington’s (2011) analysis of official documents in Paraguay, he shows that personal relationships are as important as having a ‘file’ in the system. According to Matthew Hull (2012), documents can also function as tools for building networks – either coalitions or oppositions. Hull (2012) shows that the functions of the forms of representation of state governance – whether schemes, maps or measuring standards – ‘can be drastically transformed by the practices through which they are deployed, undermining them as techniques of bureaucratic control’ (245).

Recent studies of water and infrastructure indicate that hydraulic engineers and bureaucrats who administer the water flows are not despotic elites that are detached from the water users. Barnes (2014) shows how state engineers in Egypt constantly negotiate with farmers organized in water user associations about the provision of irrigation water for the land along the Nile. Anand (2017) describes the hydraulic system in the city of Mumbai as a network that is controlled by a variety of residents, engineers and administrators that move water in the city. Arguing that social connections are critical to accessing potable water in the poor urban settlements, he shows how the public water system is ‘made through personal-political relations – between residents and councilors, councilors and engineers, and the plumbers who connect them’ (Anand, 2017: 186). Poor settlers have to navigate in a system of favours and of patronage, and while they often succeed in obtaining access to water, the system also reproduces inequalities and relations of power (Anand, 2017: 186). Seeing hydraulic systems as networks instead of centralized regimes can contribute to making the analysis of hydrosocial relationships between bureaucrats, engineers and farmers in Peru more nuanced. In this article, I will analyse how hydrosocial networks can be navigated and negotiated and how they simultaneously reproduce social relations, cultural values and hierarchies of power.

Water and power in Peru

Hydraulic engineering has a long history in Peru, and irrigation technologies such as agricultural terraces and canals have been used in the Andes since at least 2400 BC (Denevan, 2001). The coastal plain, which is one of the driest deserts in the world, has been irrigated, farmed and urbanized since pre-Columbian times. The civilizations of Moche (AD 100–800) and Chimú (AD 700–1470) were based on intricate systems of canals and wells (Moseley and Day, 1982). These early civilizations in northern Peru, as well as the Inca Empire, were used as evidence by Steward (1949), who extended Wittfogel’s thesis to argue the parallel evolution of hydraulic societies from farm villages via supra-village authority to states and empires. Although such evolutionary approaches have long been abandoned, scholars have continued to examine the connections between water and power. For example, Sherbondy (1994) has analysed the relationships between control over water sources and irrigation canals, kinship systems and power in Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire.

Numerous ethnographic studies on irrigation in the Andes have discussed the relationships between landscapes and irrigation techniques (Treacy, 1994), the role of rituals in decentralized irrigation systems (Paerregaard, 1994), the moral economy of water in peasant communities (Trawick, 2003), as well as cultural politics of irrigation and state intervention (Gelles, 2000). In their edited volume on irrigation in the Andes, Guillet and Mitchell (1994) argue that Peru is an excellent place to analyse the impact of state intervention on locally organized irrigation, since irrigation management was still largely left in local hands at the beginning of the 20th century while state power expanded throughout the century. In 1969, the reformist Velasco government nationalized water with the General Water Law, while also implementing an agrarian reform, which ended the power of the dominant landowning elite who also controlled all the water resources. Bolin (1994) and Guillet (1994) argue that the state was unable to fully implement the management forms dictated by the 1969 water law, and that the success of state intervention depended on its compatibility with local ecological and social needs. Water management in the Andes has often been analysed in terms of opposition and conflict between state power and local governance (Boelens, 2009, 2015; Guillet, 1992; Guillet and Mitchell, 1994; Paerregaard, 1994, 2013; Trawick, 2003). The MIP has particularly been analysed as an imposition of power, in which local needs in Colca Valley were much neglected (Gelles, 2000; Vera Delgado, 2011). Rasmussen (2015) argues that for people in the rural highlands, dealing with the authorities entails strategies and manoeuvres for confronting a state apparatus that cannot be avoided but cannot be relied upon either (Rasmussen, 2015: 11).

Most anthropological studies of water and irrigation have focused on indigenous peasants, while the state is often presented as an impersonal force. One notable exception is Maria Teresa Oré and Edwin Rap (2009, 2017) who have investigated the actual practices and social networks of state-employed hydraulic engineers. They argue that what Wittfogel called a ‘hydraulic bureaucracy’ developed in Peru after the agrarian reform and the nationalization of water, which was followed by the centralization of the state’s water management and the expansion of hydraulic infrastructure and state institutions. This hydraulic bureaucracy consists of engineers working in water institutions who have formed a professional culture and epistemic community through their education, trajectories and networks. These engineers have had a huge influence in water politics and water control in Peru during the past four decades (Oré and Rap, 2009: 33). Following Velasco’s reforms, the state started to intervene and regulate irrigation at local and regional levels, where lower-level hydraulic bureaucracies also developed. Officials working in the Technical Administration of Irrigation Districts (ATDR) under the Ministry of Agriculture were present in the rural districts, like Colca Valley, to support, supervise and control water use (Gelles, 2000).

With the neoliberal policies that were implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, the land reform was reversed through the cancellation of subsidies, the removal of protectionist agrarian laws and the promotion of private property (Mayer, 2009). Although water has never been fully privatized due to popular resistance (Oré et al., 2009), the public management of water and irrigation infrastructure has been deregulated through several legal decrees. The majority of these were passed during the Fujimori government in the 1990s, when also large numbers of state functionaries in the water administration were fired (Oré and Rap, 2009: 46–47). In 1989, the functions of the state institutions in operation, maintenance and administration of the irrigation infrastructure were handed over to the Water Users’ Boards (Juntas de Usuarios). To finance this work the Juntas were encouraged to charge a tariff, which could be increased, in order to have financial autonomy from the state (Oré and Rap, 2009). In 2009, García passed the new Law on Water Resources (Ley de Recursos Hídricos), which was tailored to meet corporate interests. The state has therefore opened ample space for private companies to intervene and invest in water management and infrastructure (Del Castillo, 2011). Simultaneously, water management was transferred from the different ministries (of agriculture, health, mining and others) to the National Water Authority (Autoridad Nacional del Agua, ANA), in which the management of all kinds of water uses in Peru has been gathered. Most of the administrative responsibilities under ANA are given to the regional offices called Administrative Water Authorities (Autoridad Administrativa del Agua, AAA), and the Local Water Administrations (Administración Local del Agua, ALA), which have replaced the old ATDR offices. Lynch (2012: 371) notes that highland peasant communities worry that the ambiguous wording of the 2009 water law may act to their disadvantage, especially since institutional arrangements continue to favour coastal irrigation, hydropower and mining often at the expense of other water uses. She argues that vulnerability can be produced by a water regime that favours some users and uses over others or heightens competition by encouraging new demands (Lynch, 2012: 364). In the Majes-Colca watershed, the ATDR office in Colca Valley has been replaced by a new ALA office in the irrigated pampa of Majes. This transfer of state presence reflects how the government prioritizes export-oriented agribusiness in Majes over small-scale farming in Colca.

Socially embedded water management in the Majes-Colca watershed

The MIP

In the Majes-Colca watershed, water from springs and rain in the headwater environment above 4000 metres of altitude is collected in the Condoroma Dam. When it is released from the dam, it runs down the Colca River to the Tuti intake station, where most of it is directed into the Majes Canal that goes through Colca Valley and down to the arid flatlands of the Majes Pampa. In Majes, the water irrigates the fields owned by 5 hectare family farms and large-scale agribusiness companies. In Colca Valley, there is a complex network of old and new canals and pipes, which connect the springs, lakes and ponds with the pastures and small fields that lie scattered in the steep hillsides. During the planning and construction of the MIP, the engineers and politicians focused on the aim of mastering nature in order to make the desert productive. The irrigation of the desert plains in Majes and Siguas had been studied and planned for decades when the Velasco government (1968–1975) started the execution of the project in 1971 (Zamalloa, 2013). However, the possible consequences for the farmers in Colca Valley were not taken into consideration. Yet, the impact was huge: MIP transformed the ecological and social composition of the watershed, and opened a political space for demands and struggles.

The Velasco government created the state entity DEPEMA (Direccion Ejecutiva del Proyecto Majes), which in 1982 would change name to AUTODEMA (Autoridad Autónoma de Majes). The International Consortium MACON, consisting of five companies from five countries – Sweden, United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada and Spain – was in charge of the construction, which is remembered by many people in Colca as a time of rapid and intrusive change. Work on the Tuti water intake and the Majes Canal started in 1972, and MACON brought specialists from all over the world and workers from other parts of Peru. According to people in Chivay who remember the 1970s, the ‘macones’ often behaved disrespectfully. Paul Gelles (2000), who did fieldwork in Cabanaconde in the 1980s, notes that most people lamented the changes that the project brought. The MACON employees acted abusively, and there were incidents of prostitution and rape (Gelles, 2000: 61). MACON offered temporary contracts for low-paid, labour-intensive jobs to local people. This work was dangerous and many lives were lost in the tunnels and the construction sites. In the eyes of many farmers in Colca, MACON further disrespected the mountains as they used dynamite to make the tunnels, and according to local practices, some of the workers thought it necessary to make offerings to avoid accidents.

When the Canal Majes was finished in 1982, the farmers in Colca suffered from an extreme drought while they watched the water flowing by in the canal. Their petitions to the government, where they solicited access to this water, were ignored. Only after a group of 11 men took action and blew a hole in the canal with dynamite, did the community of Cabanaconde get access to the water to irrigate their lands. These men are still honoured as the ‘eleven heroes’ (Gelles, 2000). Vera Delgado (2011) describes how the rest of the affected communities on the left bank of the river felt encouraged by this victory and after many years of mobilization and pressure, AUTODEMA agreed to open more valves alongside the canal in 1991. Today, the main marker of difference between the left and right side of the river valley relates to water access. While the farmers living on the right riverbank struggle with water scarcity, the farmers at the left riverbank receive regulated amounts of water from 26 valves in the Canal Majes. Some farmer communities – in particular Cabanaconde – have expanded their areas of cultivation with the allocated water from the Majes Canal (Paerregaard, 2013, 2018).

The allocated amount of water from the valves are regulated by AUTODEMA, which is the main operator of large-scale infrastructure in Arequipa region. In 2004, AUTODEMA was transferred from the central to the newly formed regional government. Although the regional state has limited fiscal autonomy and no legislative or juridical power, the regions have a moral power associated with their specific territoriality and the wealth generated from local resources like water (Pinker and Harvey, 2015). In order to foster regional economic growth, AUTODEMA (2017) has in the past years reoriented some of their functions towards the promotion of national and international private investment, ‘promoting a culture of rational use of water, the restructuring of production towards export-agriculture, the private investment and the corporate collaboration for the development of the region’. In the planned second phase of the irrigation project – Majes-Siguas II – the concession to construct new infrastructure and administer the whole irrigation system for 20 years has been given to the private Consortium Angostura-Siguas. In the meantime, AUTODEMA continues to be responsible for the maintenance and operation of the Majes Canal. In the regulation of water allocations from the canal, the AUTODEMA engineers have to cooperate with the other water institutions in the watershed.

Water governance in Colca Valley

In Colca Valley, several water user associations and public agencies manage the water flow. At community level, irrigation is organized in water users’ committees (comités de usuarios) and water users’ commissions (comisiones de usuarios) which were established after the 1969 water law. While the committees are small groups of farmers organized around single water sources or canals, the commissions are community-based associations that organize the water distribution and maintain the local irrigation infrastructure. The water users are obliged to participate in meetings and collective work, such as cleaning the canals. Since the farmers depend on irrigation, the commissions are the most important entities in local political life. Apart from the presidents, secretaries and treasurers who are elected according to state regulations, water allocators called regidores are also elected on an annual basis. The regidores are in charge of distributing allocations of water measured in hours of irrigation for each field.

The regidores also have the responsibility of maintaining good and respectful relations with the mountains, springs and lakes, as well as with the ponds, reservoirs and canals. The sentient mountains are seen as the owners of water, and the springs and lakes are also respected as living water-beings (Stensrud, 2016). Twice a year they offer gifts called pagos (‘payments’), consisting of food, coca leaves and alcohol, to the most important water sources. The main offerings are organized by the president and the regidor during the annual cleaning of reservoirs and canals (escarbo de acequia), which marks the start of the new agricultural season. One of the presidents explained why he and the regidor made pagos to the springs and irrigation ponds (estanques): ‘We respect them so that they will supply us all year and so that there will be enough water in the ponds to sustain all our agricultural fields’. The tasks of cleaning the irrigation ponds and canals are done collectively. When the work is over, the water is released and celebrated with music, dancing, drink and food.

The 31 commissions in Colca Valley are represented by the Water Users’ Board of Colca Valley – la Junta de Usuarios Valle del Colca (JUVC) – often just called la Junta. The Junta is a private non-profit association that is responsible for operating the small-scale hydraulic infrastructure, distributing resources among the commissions and mediating in conflicts. Since the 1990s, farmers have been obligated to pay a water tariff to the Junta. The tariff is calculated according to land size and source: whether it is regulated water from the Majes Canal, unregulated water from natural springs and streams, or mixed water from both sources. The tariffs are not payments for the water per se, since water is public property by law, but for the use of infrastructure. Therefore, the water coming from the Majes Canal is the most expensive (between 26 and 40 soles a year per hectare), while unregulated water is cheap in comparison (between 12 and 15 soles). The Junta pays AUTODEMA, which is responsible for the maintenance of the Majes Canal, for the regulated water. Although they have more autonomy by the new law, the Junta reports to the local public administration office ALA and regularly sends updated lists of water users, accounts, budgets and ‘plans for operation and maintenance of the minor infrastructure’, including an inventory list of all the hydraulic infrastructure in Colca Valley.

The board members, who are elected every three years by the general assembly of the commissions, participate in meetings and inspections whenever it is required. However, the day-to-day running of the Junta office is in charge of the employed staff: a technical manager, a secretary and an accountant. In 2011, Miguel had worked as a technical manager for eight years.¹ He was born and raised in a family of farmers in Chivay, and after training as an engineer at the University of Arequipa, he returned to Colca. In spite of the relatively low salary that the Junta could afford to pay him, he took his work very seriously. Since several of the water users were his family, childhood friends and compadres, he made an effort to show impartiality and treat all the users equally. Hence, Miguel attended meetings and events organized by all the commissions. Since the farmers work all day out in the fields, their meetings are usually held in the early morning or late at night, and many of the villages are located several hours of travel away from Chivay. Miguel usually travelled by public transportation and by foot, and many farmers expressed how they appreciated his work ethics and modest way of being. Miguel often said that the Junta has 31 children (the commissions) and 15 grandchildren (the committees), and Miguel did his best to convince the farmers that the Junta took good care of their ‘children’, for example by helping with elaborating projects to improve infrastructure or by supporting claims against mining companies. However, the Junta could not do much to defend them against agribusiness and mining companies. Although the Junta has the power to sanction individual farmers for ‘water theft’ when they irrigate without having paid the tariff, Miguel has no means of sanctioning mines for large-scale water appropriation. Boelens (2009) argues that the neoliberal state refuses to actively balance societal injustice, because according to neoliberal ideology, all water users are treated as ‘equals’ and peasant families are supposed to compete with transnational companies. The amounts of water allocated to farmers in Colca from the Canal Majes are relatively small compared to the amounts that are sent to agribusiness in Majes. Still, these water allocations are regulated in detail, as will be discussed below.

The social entanglement of valve regulation

The volume of water released from the Condoroma dam, the amount that is let into the Majes Canal as well as the amounts taken from the valves along the canal are decided in monthly meetings where AUTODEMA, ALA and the Juntas in Colca and Majes (JUVC and JUPM) negotiate the distribution of water based on the supply in the dam and the farmers’ demands. In every ‘valve regulation’ (regulación de válvulas), representatives from AUTODEMA, ALA and JUVC (la Junta) must be present, and the three entities have different roles to fulfil and different interests to defend. As the operator of the large-scale infrastructure, AUTODEMA is responsible for the functioning and maintenance of the Majes Canal, which means that in a regulación their representative has to control the water flow rate (caudal) from each valve, adjust the flow according to the official amount allocated to each commission, and make sure that the canal and the valves are operative. In short, the AUTODEMA representative should make sure that the farmers along the canal do not take more water than they are allowed, and thus ensure that enough water reaches Majes. As representative of all the commissions in Colca Valley, the Junta oversees water distribution in the valley. Their representative has to attend the regulación in order to defend the rights of the farmers and ensure that the commissions get the water they are entitled to. As the local branch of the National Water Authority, ALA represents the state and has ultimate authority over water in the watershed. ALA’s role in the regulación is to supervise the whole inspection and ensure that regulations are followed in the most impartial and fair way as possible. However, as we will see below, the boundaries were not so clear-cut in practice. What follows is an ethnographic description from an inspection that took place during my fieldwork in 2011, and which is typical for the many inspections and interactions between farmers and engineers that I observed in Colca Valley.

In 2011, I was invited to join a regulación de válvulas with a group of engineers and technicians: José from ALA, Jorge from AUTODEMA and Miguel from the Junta. Edwin, who worked at AUTODEMA’s intake station in Tuti, drove the car. The purpose of the trip was to inspect the valves that provide water from the Majes Canal to farmers in Colca Valley. The valves are adjusted to specific flow rates measured in litres per second (lps), and the engineers measured the water flow in each valve. For example, in valve number 21, they measured the flow in two canals coming from the valve: one canal had 85 lps and the other had 50 lps. The allowed flow rate for this commission was 130 lps, and the engineers agreed that it was not necessary to adjust the valve. After eating breakfast in the village of Cabanaconde, we met Alberto and Pedro – the president and vice-president of one of the water user commissions. Bringing two bottles of soda to share on the road, they came with us to the next water outtake, where they opened a padlock to grant access to two valves. Edwin and Alberto used sticks to measure the height of the water coming out of the valve through a standard size triangular hydraulic outlet, and Jorge measured the length in centimetres and calculated the flow rate by consulting a chart. The flow rate was too low in both valves. Alberto and Pedro complained that ‘the water is decreasing’ because of algae blocking the flow through the valve. They asked for a solution, and the engineers discussed whether the valve could be moved to a better location. Jorge admitted that other villages had also complained, asking AUTODEMA to ‘not send so much algae’. There are more algae this year because of the warmer climate, he explained. Earlier, workers in the Tuti water intake removed all the algae before the water entered the Majes Canal, but now it was too much of it. The growth of algae is only one of the climate change effects in Colca Valley; other problems include changes in the rainy season, decreasing water supplies from glaciers and springs, and stronger heat, which increase the need for irrigation water and make farming more difficult. Therefore, many farmers from Colca have moved to Majes. Pedro told us that his brother had acquired a small farm there, and it turned out that José knew him since José’s cousin was the son-in-law of Pedro’s brother. ‘We are family, then’, Pedro said, and José promised to visit him the next time he came to Cabanaconde.

Back in the village, Alberto wanted to discuss some issues with the engineers, and invited us to a small shop where he bought three big bottles of beer. He served beer in a glass and invited all the engineers to drink with him. In the Andes, social relationships are strengthened through sharing food and drink in sessions where everyone drinks from the same glass, one at a time, and acknowledges each other by respectful toasting as well as giving a few drops to the earthmother (Allen, 1988). The glass went around while he talked about recent problems in his commission. Although Alberto had tried to improve the water distribution, some farmers complained that they had been allocated less water. Especially one man was always bothering him – ‘he makes my life impossible’ – and Alberto admitted that he wanted to withdraw from his position. The engineers advised him to call a meeting to explain the problem for everyone and to invite a representative from the authorities. Alberto bought another round and they agreed to have the meeting in a month’s time, and that Miguel from the Junta and a representative from ALA should be present to support him.

The inspection continued valve by valve, while the engineers were sharing stories, jokes and laughs. Some valves had a meter on which they could read the flow rate, while in others they had to use sticks, measuring tape and the aforementioned chart. Sometimes, they measured by simply ‘looking’: jokingly, they called this the ‘eye-meter’ (ojímetro). All the results were carefully noted on paper. If the water flow was lower or higher than what was allocated, they adjusted it. Miguel was the keeper of all the keys to the valves, but in some places the padlocks had been changed. In one valve, the flow rate was 30 lps higher than permitted, so they destroyed the padlock to adjust the flow via eye measure. Miguel said that they always had problems with this particular commission: ‘they don’t show respect; they destroy the padlocks and increase the water flow. ALA should sanction them, but they don’t sanction’. At one point, Miguel and José went looking for a cactus fruit that was in season. While they were gone, Jorge said to me: ‘we are supposed to be enemies, but we seem more like friends’. He was particularly referring to José who was often distracted from his duty to supervise because he was concerned with making and maintaining relations of friendship. In the following weeks, it became clear to me that this was not a one-time incident; the statement also revealed the degree to which engineers who worked in different entities were socially entangled.

After checking valve number 6 in Yanque, we went to see the president of one of the commissions there because the engineers had promised to discuss some matters with him. At his house, we stumbled upon a farewell party for a couple that got married the day before. The president and his wife were godparents for the couple, and they served us huge glasses of chicha (alcoholic maize brew) while the huayno music played in the background. Afterwards, it was hard to continue the inspection of the last five valves. It was also getting late, and after eating dinner in Chivay, the engineers went to a bar. They were joined by two engineers who worked in state-sponsored development programmes. One of them was also the son-in-law of José’s godfather.

The social life of engineers

During my fieldwork in Colca and Majes, I got to know many engineers and technicians who worked with the management of water and agriculture. All of them were male and most identified as urban mestizos, although a few were born in the highlands and partly engaged in practices that are considered indigenous. Most of them worked on short-term contracts and they circulated among different positions in different water institutions: the Juntas de Usuarios in Colca Valley and Majes Pampa, the ALA office, the AAA office, the AUTODEMA office, and the agricultural agencies in Chivay and Majes. Many of them knew each other from the university or from having worked together at some point. As a result, they easily became friends and compadres: a reciprocal relation of sponsorship. Becoming compadres means engaging in a lifelong, unbreakable relationship between the parents and the godparents of a child or between a married couple and the godparents of their wedding. Having a compadre or padrino (godfather) who holds a powerful position and has influence is beneficial in one’s job search and career. They are often willing to help in exchange for gifts or other services. Miguel, for example, has one compadre in the ALA office and another compadre working for AUTODEMA. José, who was currently working for ALA as a technician, has a padrino from his wedding who for a while held an important position in the regional government of Arequipa. For José, it was great luck to have a powerful padrino that he could turn to when he was unemployed and needed help. This also meant, of course, that José had to be ready to be at his padrino’s disposal and help him with various tasks. Relations of kinship and reciprocity are often ambiguous, and can either be helpful or detrimental for fair water distribution. This should not be seen as a ‘dysfunction’ of an ideal bureaucracy; what is interesting is rather to examine the social relationships that allow someone to consider one interaction a failure but another a success (Herzfeld, 1992; see also Hetherington, 2011). Although the water flow between the Condoroma Dam and Majes is highly regulated, an ideal version of a system where water is distributed in an ‘objectively’ fair way does not exist.

The hydraulic bureaucracy in Peru developed as a result of the land reform and the nationalization of water, which was a reaction against the despotic power of the hacienda landowners. The Peruvian anthropologist and writer José María Arguedas (1974 [1935]) vividly described in the story ‘Agua’ how a powerful and violent landowner appropriated all the irrigation water and how he arbitrarily distributed small amounts of water to the peasants once a week. As Boelens (1998) notes, the network of social relationships between the landlords and the indigenous peasants in Arguedas’ story reinforced acquiescence to structures of domination and inequitable distribution of water. The power of the landlord and his foreman was deeply embedded in relationships of compadrazgo with peasant families, and some acted as middlemen, controlling and overseeing their own people (Boelens, 1998). In today’s water regime, there are still colonial power structures at work and power is performed through social relationships. In the relationships between engineers and farmers, the sharing of food, drink and advice is asymmetrical, and often strengthens the inequalities of power that exist between state officials, who often are considered mestizos with higher education and in privileged positions, and peasant farmers, who tend to be associated with indigeneity whether they self-identify as indigenous or not. Hence, colonial structures of power and hierarchy are maintained through formal and informal practices. In Colca Valley, the engineers exercise power through their position in socially and culturally informed hierarchies, while their practices are embedded in local forms of reciprocity and dependent upon the cooperation from the farmers.

Both the engineers and the farmers have various social backgrounds, and hence, their relationships are also different. The MACON engineers were foreigners or urban mestizos without any knowledge of social conditions and cultural values in Colca Valley, and hence they caused both admiration and fear. Engineers coming from the cities to work in short-term projects, like the World Bank funded programme for modernization of irrigation technology, often fail to achieve resonance and mutual understanding in encounters with peasant farmers in highland Peru (see also Stensrud, 2019). In contrast, engineers who maintain long-term relationships with people in the area in which they work – through the nurturing of a sensitivity for cultural values and social life – have greater success in cooperating with farmers and thus achieving their goals. For example, Miguel, who is the son of farmers and who returned to Colca after having studied in the city, can more easily gain the farmers’ trust. Still, he has to maintain this trust continuously by accepting invitations to drink and keeping promises. As a manager of the Junta, Miguel maintained relations of kin and compadrazgo both to farmers and engineers. Having knowledge about the farmers’ work and lives on the one hand, and the work of engineering and the state requirements on the other, he often functioned as a mediator. This role gave Miguel a lot of socially embedded power and influence in the valley. It also contributed to the paternalistic power of the Junta, which became very clear when Miguel talked about the commissions as ‘children’.

However, the engineers in Colca are not part of a powerful bureaucracy like the engineers working in the national institutions in Lima, who exercise influence on policies. On the contrary, their status in the national hierarchy reflects a geographical distribution of power in Peru, in which the highlands are marginalized and seen as ‘backwards’ in contrast to the ‘modern’ coast. Modernity is in Peru associated with values of rationality, efficiency and individualism – values that are seen as European and that have been central in the building of modern states. Modernity is furthermore associated with whiteness and with the racial category mestizo, which is considered ‘civilized’ and thus incompatible with indigenous practices (De la Cadena, 2000). This is an expression of ‘coloniality of power’, a term coined by the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000: 534) to analyse how the ‘the idea of race was a way of granting legitimacy to the relations of domination imposed by the conquest’. As Hull (2012) has argued, colonial practices can operate in new ways in the postcolonial era. The engineers in Colca create and maintain social relationships by talking to people, accepting drinks, giving advice about water use, infrastructural maintenance and organizational matters, and participating in meetings with water users, and in this way, they also maintain their positions of authority.

However, when Miguel was invited to the capital to discuss a draft for the new water law, he experienced that his opinions were not taken seriously: ‘In Lima they look at us like cholos’, he said. Cholo is a term for ‘urban Indians’ who are seen as ‘unsuccessful immigrants from the countryside’ (De la Cadena, 2000: 182), and it is often used derogatorily about highlanders by people on the coast. While Arequipa usually is considered to belong to the highlands by people in the coastal capital Lima, the inhabitants of Arequipa city and the Majes Pampa consider themselves to belong to the coastal area, and therefore see themselves as different from people living in Colca Valley and the highlands of Caylloma province. In Arequipa, small-scale farming is still closely associated with indigeneity as a social condition, i.e. poor, uneducated, and ‘backward’ (Andersen, 2016; De la Cadena, 2000; Stensrud, 2019). Although ‘farmers’ or ‘peasants’ are often represented as a homogenous group in dominant popular discourse, the farmers in Colca differ significantly in their family background, experiences, education, ideas, interests and desires. A few have higher education and work as teachers or are elected mayors and councilmen in their districts. Depending on the relation and situation, they are variably considered to be mestizos, cholos or ‘indigenous mestizos’, who are socially seen as mestizos, yet they maintain cultural practices that are considered indigenous (De la Cadena, 2000). In addition to difference by education, ethnic identity, gender and age, they also differ by land ownership (class). Although the inequalities among farmers in Colca are relatively small – land tenure per family range between 1/3 and 7 hectares, with an average of 1.2 hectare, often distributed across several small fields – they seem to be increasing little by little. Because of the difficulties caused by climate change and the liberalization of the marked economy, many farmers move to the city and sell or rent their land to others. Social inequalities have also increased as a result from the formalization of water user licenses and individual property deeds, which have enhanced the value of some pieces of land more than others (Seemann and Boelens, 2014). This also leads to more conflicts between farmers who use water from the same source, for example more accusations of water theft and more discussion about the fairness of distribution systems. Elected leaders in local commissions often find it difficult to manage conflicts among their peer water users, and they might, like Alberto, try to build alliances with the state-employed by asking for help and support from them.

Conclusion

Management of water and hydraulic infrastructure is done in social encounters and relationships, which in the Andes are constituted and consolidated through gift exchange and the sharing of food and drink. The obligation to accept whatever you are offered and to reciprocate in one way or another is extremely strong. Therefore, the formal ‘division of power’ between the institutions in terms of regulatory matters is seldom transferred neatly to on-the-ground regulation practices. The overlap of social and professional relationships imply that boundaries between institutions are often blurred. I have argued that the engineers working in water institutions in the Majes-Colca watershed constitute a hydraulic bureaucracy that is not an impersonal and ‘despotic’ elite detached from society. On the contrary, engineering and bureaucratic work is embedded in sociality, relatedness and cultural values, just as irrigation and local forms of power have always been socially embedded in the Andes. Social relations in irrigation organizations and administration are also embedded in hegemonic race/class hierarchies and ‘coloniality of power’, which are reproduced as stigma in various situations in private and public life. Miguel, for example, was respected as an educated engineer in Colca Valley, but in Lima, he experienced being stigmatized as a ‘cholo’. Hence, there is no sharp line dividing a dominant class of bureaucrats from a homogenous class of water users in Arequipa. Engineers are differentiated socially, and many are connected to farmers through kinship and compadrazgo, while among the water users there are poor peasants, entrepreneurial farmers, agribusiness corporations, hotels and mines.

I suggest that these conclusions can be extended to hydraulic bureaucracies around the world; they are not neutral, but embedded in particular cultural and socio-economic structures and practices. Although state institutions aim to achieve legibility and coherency, actual practices of regulation are not linear and singular, but messy and arbitrary. The formal job of the hydraulic engineers is to be technocrats; to make sure rules are followed and that water is measured and regulated. In practise these regulations are performed in hydrosocial networks of connections and patronage, and the distribution of water is an issue of negotiations and struggles (cf. Anand, 2017; Barnes, 2014). The engineers are constantly balancing and negotiating the requirements of impersonal rationality and efficacy, and the social obligations of relatedness and reciprocity. Through these balancing acts, asymmetric power relations and state authority are also reproduced.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the theme issue editors Franz Krause and Lukas Ley for their comments to my first drafts of this article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful and constructive comments.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s)declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research leading to this article has received funding from the European Research Council Under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. (295843), and the Research Council of Norway, Project No. (222783).

Note

Astrid B Stensrud holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo and has done extensive ethnographic research in Peru since 2001. She is currently associate professor at the Department of Global Development and Planning at the University of Agder. Her research interests include climate change, water politics, state practices, kinship, rituals, moral economy and human–environmental relations, and she has published several articles about water and climate change in the Peruvian Andes.

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