Acueductos comunitarios y distritos de riego en el Sumapaz: historia ambiental como resistencia a la acumulación y la eficiencia

The multiple dynamics and interests in the municipalities of Fusagasugá and Pasca in Cundinamarca (Colombia) overlap like converging layers but also present frictions between them. This produces unequal access to water in rural and peri-urban areas, which have historically joined to form community aqueducts and irrigation districts, advocating community water management. These associations are threatened by discourses of water scarcity promoted by the mayor’s office of Fusagasugá and other departmental entities that promote initiatives to regionalize the public aqueduct service with the construction of a reservoir for water accumulation in order to manage it based on a vision of efficiency and control of its use. I consider these types of proposals to be hydro-political projects, as they implement a unique vision of water and territorial management, where the former takes a central role. Against this background, I explore how interactions around water emerge and continue based on a look at some community organizations in these municipalities. Through the construction of a collage with the voices of their members and using an analytical framework of environmental history, I perform a memory exercise on the processes of conformation and support in the territories that serve as cohesion to resist the implementation of hydro-political projects but also as a means to promote the articulation between them and build second-level organizations to defend the basins, territories, and processes themselves.