The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security - Unu-inweh ...

4. Water Policies and Their Impact in Indigenous Territories
Neo-liberal policies in Latin America brought about the exploitation of mineral resources, the production of exportation
crops, the building of communications and hydraulic infrastructure, and the expansion of urban settlements. Because of
these developments, the defense of territory and natural resources became central demands to the indigenous movement
(Gentes, 2009). The lack of acknowledgment of indigenous territories by the state and the fragmentation of rights linked
to land and water favoured pillage and dispossession in the absence of an inclusive norm. This is due to the indigenous
conception of territory as including all associated natural resources such as land, water, wetlands, forests and grasslands;
in contrast, the legal conception of land by the state disarticulates these elements in different land tenure regimes and
through licenses given to individuals.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Latin American states made structural reforms to give impetus to an economic model
based on free-market principles, with a dominant participation of the private sector in strategic areas of the economy
and corresponding accordance of legal certitude of private property of natural resources, such as land and water. To
give sustenance to the implemented national public policies, changes were made to the relevant legal and institutional
frameworks. The implications of these legal reforms in the territories of indigenous people have led to fragmentation
and to the private benefit ownership – not by local people – of common goods that are nevertheless part of their landwater-forest
socio-cultural matrix.
5. Conflicts for Access to Water in Indigenous Peoples’ Territories in
Latin America
In the presence of the constant violation by states of human and indigenous peoples’ rights, the scenario of social conflict
for water is intense and complex in the Latin American region. These circumstances have been worsened by structural
reforms that have led to a decreased role of states, which are expressed through more flexible legal and normative
frameworks that favour the ascension of the private sector to a prominent role, and in increased incentives for private
investments in strategic areas such as energy, water, mining and urbanization.
Many of the conflicts occurring at present fall within such a category and are not necessarily the result of a water crisis and
its ‘feared wars’. Rather, they are an expression of omissions and direct actions of the state and of other actors or economic
stakeholders that have made vulnerable the essential rights of the poorest and marginal sectors of the population: the
indigenous peoples (Boelens et al., 2006).
Therefore, in the last 15 years a variety of conflicts over water in the indigenous regions of Latin America have emerged,
which demonstrate a tension due to the modification of rights (both recognized and unrecognized) over the control of
territory and the management of natural resources, as well as negative social and environmental impacts associated
with public and private investments undertaken to favour the dominant economic model and the urbanization process.
Among the socio-environmental conflicts connected with water access are those associated with: the expansion of mining
in indigenous regions of North, Central and South America (the Huichol, Nahua, and Mixteca peoples in Mexico, Maya
peoples in Guatemala, and Andean peoples in Peru); the privatization of water in Bolivia (indigenous peoples of Los Altos
and Cochabamba regions); the construction of hydroelectric dams in Brazil (the Amazonian Kayapo peoples), Brazil-Bolivia
(the Karitana, Karipuna, Oro Bom, Cassupá, Salamai, Katawixi, Uru-eu-Wau-Wau peoples), Chile (Mapuche Pehuenche
peoples), Ecuador (Afro-Ecuadorean peoples), and Panama (the Naso and Ngöbe peoples); the construction of highways
in Bolivia (Moxeño, Yuracaré, Chimán peoples); the supply of water from one watershed to another for urbanization
purposes in Mexico (the Mazahua, Nahua, and Yaqui peoples) and Peru (peoples of the Huancavelica region); and, the
expansion of tourist projects in Mexico (the Maya, Purépecha, and Nahua peoples).
Access to Water and Conflict: An Indigenous Perspective from Latin America
Part 3
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