As was mentioned above, uses and customs denote specific features of water management in peasant irrigation systems. These features are molded by or adapt to physical-environmental, cultural and socio-political conditions in each locality, and are continually renegotiated when such conditions change. Ultimately, one of the most concrete expressions is in water rights, both collective and individual, defining who can and cannot use water and existing infrastructure. These usos y costumbres are also manifested in day-to-day practice in the system and reinforce the perceptions or images that water users have of themselves vis-à-vis other people or groups that do not use their system’s water (Gerbrandy and Hoogendam, 1998; Boelens, 2008a; Seemann, 2014). This section discusses these different expressions or images
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of usos y costumbres, taking as illustrations irrigation systems in Punata again that receive the water from three different dams (Totora Khocha, Laguna Robada and Llusk’a Khocha) (see Figures 1-4 and Figure 4-7) showing their multi-tiered (nesting) nature and the different repertoires that comprise such expressions.
The Totora Khocha system’s usos y costumbres are perceived and project different images for different actors. Among users of this system in Punata, the image of usos y costumbres is the investment that water users must assure, year after year, both in work and in monetary contributions for system operation and maintenance, to have access to one or at most two irrigation turns per year. This image could be summarized as communities and water users’ effort, investment and sacrifice. Some users view this effort as beneficial, others as an "overload" because only one or two turns a year offer them somewhat disappointing benefits. This “internal” expression is different for different user communities. For users in remote communities far away from the main intake, who have access only to Totora Khocha, water is essential for land preparation (fallow) and/or complementary irrigation17 of maize or alfalfa.
Work and money investments for these users are then essential to cultivate at least one cycle of grains or fodder crops. For users and communities located near the main intake, other water sources in the zone are more secure. Totora Khocha offers these peasants an additional resource to negotiate with third parties about water, agricultural products or any need that families may face.
Also for Laguna Robada, usos y costumbres are expressed among irrigators in Punata as resulting from sacrifice, effort, organization and self-management. It is a right that they inherited from their grandparents (with historical roots, based on communal heritage and family effort), and have a direct link to their own family history, reflecting the abuses suffered during the time of the hacienda regime. Stories about this dam tell about the deaths that occurred during its successive restorations, which increases the historical and symbolic value of these
usos y costumbres.
For Llusk’a Khocha-Muyu Loma system, the water source’s usos y costumbres and the link with their grandparents’ efforts are less visibly expressed. Ten communities in Punata use this source. Because of the long distance to convey water from the reservoir to the irrigated area and due to new settlements along the river, water availability is decreasing year after year. Some users claim that in this system "the organization is declining" and that they have to invest increasing efforts to control water conveyance. The next chapter, on collective action for water control, will discuss this case in terms of the close link between organizational and operational (technical) water control.
In Punata, 65 communities use Totora Khocha. These communities feel their reservoir’s usos
y costumbres reflect “ownership", vis-à-vis communities without irrigation surrounding
17 Complementary irrigation is understood here as the irrigation that is practiced just before or during the rainy
season. In this case, water application to plots, either for land preparation or for a specific crop, plays a complementary role, together with rainfall. Neither the irrigation nor the rainfall are enough to fulfill water requirements.
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Punata: Totora Khocha “… is our dam…” which has been built "…for us", “…with funding
directed to us…" and built “through our own efforts". "We got funding...” (…) “and those who did not take the risk, or who dropped out at the beginning…have no right to use these waters…”. These fragments of a local leader’s testimony in Punata express the clear image that
Totora Khocha’s users want to project towards “external” communities. Their usos y
costumbres mean ownership.
For a decade, as part of discussions to possibly extend the Totora Khocha system (by building the Vandiola water transfer project), these expressions of usos y costumbres show increasing notions of ownership. Communities with water rights to this system argue that, if the dam is extended, their children and those with no water rights in their communities would be new beneficiaries, but not people from other (external) communities … “we do not negotiate with
non-users".
The territorial dimension of usos y costumbres. Punata’s reservoir systems have their dams
and the catchment located outside the jurisdiction of the user communities. They are located in communities at the upper part of Pucara watershed, in the jurisdiction of other municipalities outside Punata (Llusk’a Khocha-Muyu Loma and Totora Khocha in Tiraque and Laguna Robada in Colomi). In recent years, the demand and interest of communities in the upper parts of the watershed in using water from these sources, has notably increased, and therefore tensions and conflicts between them and the users in Punata are more and more evident. The upstream communities are forcefully increasing their demands and claiming "territorial rights" over water sources. They use different mechanisms to exert pressure on downstream communities. They started requesting the diversion of a small portion of the flow, a practice that every year was accepted by Punata organizations, but not without going through long negotiation processes. In recent years however the upstream communities prevented the passage of water crossing their lands and did not allow Punata irrigators to even approach to the dams. These conflicts have been mediated in some cases by municipal authorities, by government agencies and by the Federation of Irrigators of Cochabamba (FEDECOR).
As a strategy, irrigation organizations from Punata also claimed "territorial rights", not originating from their own but from the former landowners’ hacienda, arguing that "... these
dams belonged to our bosses ...", "... they were people from Punata not from Tiraque, they were the owners of those dams and we have inherited those water sources... " (interview with Punata
user). Here, peasant leaders use different regulatory frameworks plus historical "images" and symbols, which can sometimes seem contradictory. An image of the hacendados as exploiting peasants may be replaced by an image of "ownership and control" attributed to those same
hacendados, yielding their usos y costumbres and especially territorial rights over these
sources.
In recent years, these rights or territorial claims, in Tiraque, in Punata, and other dam systems in the valleys, are being fiercely contested, placing historic agreements between upstream communities and lower-basin user communities back on the table. This is exacerbated by the irrigation law which demands water rights (usos y costumbres) registration for formal
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recognition by the national irrigation authority (the National Irrigation Service), and for new investments to construct dams (Seemann, 2014).
In short, collective water rights, expressed as usos y costumbres in irrigation systems in which water sources are located in places other than where water is actually used, are in growing dispute, based on territorial claims. Although there are no cases (yet) in which downstream communities have lost their rights, conflicts are evident. These conflicts show a change or new imbalance in power relations between upstream and downstream communities. Irrigation systems that seemed to be strong in their organizations and in consolidating their water rights, as is the case of Punata’s organizations, are increasingly vulnerable to new water demands (real or fictitious) in the headwaters. Ultimately, claims based on territorial arguments, and the physical control that upstream communities have over these water sources, appear to control water more effectively than (only arguments based on) usos y costumbres regarding current use or historical agreements between upstream and downstream communities.
Complexity in expressions of usos y costumbres, rooted in culture, in social relationships between the group of people sharing a water source and their history, or between these users and third parties, show how important relations are between and within irrigation systems. Social networks intermingled with water networks and the water cycle reveal hydro-social networks and territories (Boelens et al., 2016), transcending geographical, political- administrative or hydrological boundaries. The results of these complex inter-relationships show that hydro-social networks’ boundaries are not fixed in physical-geographical terms, much less in political-administrative or social terms. In time and socio-space, these boundaries are re-defined continually. We also see that territorial arguments are increasingly important in defining usos y costumbres, as a foundation for defining water access, water rights, and in general water management. This, in turn, shows how different territorial notions “overlap”, molded by water management and control, assuring that some have water access and others are excluded (cf. Hoogesteger et al., 2016).