La lucha por el agua en el Azuay y el movimiento indígena: el caso de las comunidades de Tarqui y Victoria del Portete

Abstract

In the last two decades, the pressure for the establishment of mining projects in the Azuay province, specifically in Kimsacocha, have triggered high mobilizations by community members. These people supported by the indigenous movement have defended the water arguing that mining will cause serious pollution damage, mainly in water sources that are essential for human consumption and for agricultural and livestock sustenance. Consequently, a relationship has been formed through the ecological posture of environmental rationality with the ideals of the indigenous movement, symbolic characteristics and cultural identification with the water and ethnicity within communities through discourse. Therefore, this study analyzes the organization and relationship of the communities of the Tarqui and Victoria Del Portete with the indigenous movement. This is achieved through an ethnographic methodology based mainly on ethnographic interview and observation, within a fieldwork that has been allowed to identify the different singularities of the fight for water. These may be: reasons for affinity with the movement, community decisions on mining, the population involved in this fight, the conceptions of water, community reciprocity processes, political and religious influence, indigenous cultural appropriation and building a water culture that has allowed activists to transcend at the political juncture at the provincial and national levels