The experience of the community water committees in Cuetzalan, Puebla

Abstract

The community water committes, that make up a vast network in the zone of Cuetzalan, in the northern mountain range of Puebla, México, are an example that water management can exceed the instrumental rationality and bussines logic. On the contrary they point to a metabolic and more harmonious relationship with nature. Of course, this relationship is not pure in its entirety, and is not exempt from contradictions and tensions. These contraditions and tensions are accentuated when confronting, through new technologies, the inclemencies of time and geography, as well as the threat of dispossession and destruction represented by the extractive projects of capital. The following essay seeks to account for this experience, its tensions, contradictions and daily tasks, with no other objective than to describe and underline the complexity of the process carried out by these committees, in what we think can be translated and understood as a struggle for reproduction of life, represented in water, against a system of death.