Punata Valley offers important illustrations of water-based peasant mobilization and collective action. This demonstrates not only its agricultural importance but also the organizational capacity to mobilize around water. Organizations and collective action were formed and driven by demands, conflicts and vindicatory movements associated with reform. These were facilitated and supported by existing ties and relations around collective water management. In Punata several irrigation systems and related water distribution arrangements were already operated (many in conjunctions between haciendas and free communities) before the land reform that started in the early 1950s.
After land reform, in Punata, several peasant irrigation organizations or water committees formed transforming the hacienda-based water management arrangements into collectively managed systems. In the 1960s new peasant committees were formed around the Laguna Robada system and later for the Lluska Khocha dam. Communities from Punata also made the first attempts to capture and harness the lagoon waters of Ovejeria Khocha that later would become the Totora Khocha system in the late 1980s (Gandarillas et al., 1993) (see Figure 4-7). As part of the Inter-Valley Irrigation Project (PRIV) that aimed to implement irrigation projects to improve the infrastructure of the existing systems in the valley, in 1993 the water users organizations that had managed the Laguna Robada, Lluska Khocha and the new Totora
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Khocha irrigation system, joined organizationally and created the user based Punata Irrigation and Services Association (ARSP).
At the local level, farmers from different Punata communities, particularly in the northern valley, organized into small committees to get support from various governmental and non- governmental organizations to invest in drilling wells to access groundwater for irrigation. These systems started in the 1980s with state support and international cooperation to cope with severe drought conditions during that decade. Additionally, many farmers invested their money to create a new tube-well system. Thereafter groundwater use increased progressively in Punata, promoting formation of self-managed systems for irrigation, domestic drinking water or combined-use wells (Delgadillo and Lazarte, 2007b). In the late 90s, the groundwater dependent committees organized into the “Drilled-wells users' association of the Upper Valley” (AUPVA). AUPVA includes almost all Punata irrigation systems, several drinking- water or combined-use systems and also similar systems in other provinces. In Punata there are currently more than 300 systems with well committees.
Some communities in southern Punata, in the peri-urban area, started using wastewater from the urban area during emergencies. After the municipality installed a sewage system and wastewater treatment plant in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a new organization was formed, the "Association of Irrigation with Wastewater", which includes five communities that created their rights to use this source (Camacho, 2007).
In the end, Punata Valley’s different water sources are not able to cover water demand, and even less, distribute it uniformly for different areas and communities (Saldías et al., 2013). Beyond the 65 communities associated with the Totora Khocha dam and organized in the ARSP, there are many other communities downstream, south and southwest of Punata. These communities have no secure irrigation water, only sporadic flows when large river discharges arrive and fill the main river branches. To implement several new projects for the valley, they have formed a new organization, the “Association of Communities Without Irrigation" (Asociación de Comunidades Sin Riego). This organization continually competes and challenges existing organizations; making claims to get the Government's attention and get funding for their projects aimed at accessing irrigation. What is crucial to understand is that all this organizational development in Punata has resulted in an overlapping of organizations in different socio-territorial spaces. These organizations co-exist, compete and complement each other in different spaces of representation and political mobilization. Besides the participation in their own communities, this research has found that all peasant families living in different zones of Punata participate in at least two of these organizations. Families that are "closer to the water" may belong to four to seven of these organizations. Participation in these different organizations is an important strategy to sustain collective water-control which stands at the basis of household strategies for farm reproduction (see next chapter).
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Figure 4-2. Social organizations for water in Punata
(Source: Prepared by the author)
Figure 4-2 shows how, over the last three decades, organizational dynamics in Punata regarding water, and especially irrigation, have increased. It highlights the progressive development of an increasing number of organizational structures in Punata. These different structures overlap, compete, negotiate and complement each other in a context of increased organizational multiplicity. The following sections analyze specific examples of the organizational forms that have developed in this area and through which collective action for water control is mobilized in the area.
At present irrigators in Punata argue that the traditional agricultural and peasant unions "have
lost their strength" due to the increased influence of water centred organizations. However, in
the northen communites of Punata these organizations are still active and alive, in particular to organize water distribution for the Mitha system (basic river flow). Here, within each community (peasant union) there is a "committee" to distribute water from different sources (especially Mitha and water from reservoirs). As a result, at community meetings, the main topic addressed is irrigation. Other topics, such as basic infrastructure, schools, roads, etc. are also discussed, but in the background or in passing. That discourages some community members without water rights from attending community assemblies. The weakening of communities organized as solely agricultural unions coincides and contrasts with the
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emergence of what we can call "water communities", which have surpassed boundaries, geographical, timing and other ties rooted in the peasant organization. Some examples that illustrate this are the well systems in Punata and elsewhere in Cochabamba. In these, 20 to 50 families organize to invest, drill and operate a well system. This organization makes its own rules. These small collectives that comprises farmers from various communities are no longer linked with their community organizations to guarantee their access to water. Another clear example is the peri-urban water committees along all Cochabamba’s valleys (including Punata). There, communities or formalized Territorial Grassroots Organizations (OTBs) lost functionality, making room for water committees or associations (usually for domestic water- supply systems). These new organizations now deal with water and other communal tasks. They participate in municipal politics to demand resources and have in some way replaced OTBs and peasant unions.
In South Punata, in communities that have little or no irrigation water, communal organizations (agricultural unions) have still greater "force". This is because they are still the organizational basis to claim water whenever available, for instance to control the Rol-system water, sewage water, or claims for new (water) projects. Communal organizations, here, are the only hope that one day they also can join in water control benefits. This has also been visible in recent years, since these communities have begun to take control of Punata’s top-level organization (Peasant Sub central), dividing this valley’s peasant sector between irrigators (grouped in their own organizations) and communities without irrigation, strengthening union organizations and their supra-organizations. A similar situation to southern Punata is occurring in other zones of Cochabamba Valley, especially those with little water, such as Aiquile and Sacabamba, where paradoxically water issues are the main topics discussed at communal meetings.
4.3 Organizational diversity and development: change and adaptation for water