Autonomy in a post-neoliberal era: Community water governance in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate /geoforum

Autonomy in a post-neoliberal era: Community water governancein Cochabamba, Bolivia q

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.08.013

q All translations by the author.⇑ Present address: Geography Department, University of California at Berkeley,

507 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA.E-mail address: [email protected]

1 An ayllu is an Aymara community structure. According to Andrew Orta, it‘‘denotes an explicitly indigenous Andean mode of social organization affiliating anarray of social groupings, extending down to the level of a conjugal household, into alarger regional polity through a set of mutually reinforcing administrative, ritual andeconomic practices’’ (Orta, 2013, p. 111).

Andrea J. Marston ⇑Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Available online 27 September 2013

Keywords:AutonomyPost-neoliberalismNeoliberal naturesEnvironmental governanceCommunityLatin AmericaBolivia

Bolivia’s leftward political shift, which is frequently described as ‘‘post-neoliberal,’’ is crucially linked tothe ideal of autonomy. While autonomy has a long history among leftist theorists and social movementsin Latin America, its contemporary importance is related to an ongoing effort on the part of scholars andactivists to identify an alternative organizational form that eschews both state actors and private entities.Drawing on fieldwork conducted with a group of community-run water systems in peri-urban Coc-habamba, this paper asks what autonomous water governance looks like in practice. By presenting a casein which the community water systems made a series of structurally limited ‘‘autonomous’’ decisionsthat ultimately bound them more closely to the local state and private sector, the paper argues thatautonomy faces socio-ecological limitations when conceptualized as a project of internal self-governance.Socio-ecological processes take place at multiple scales and over long time spans; a radical politics ofautonomy therefore necessitates a spatially extroverted project that focuses on building strategic alli-ances that strengthen community autonomy in the long-term.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Among the increasingly long list of Latin American countriesthat have purportedly entered a post-neoliberal era, Bolivia standsout for the links that various policymakers and activists havedrawn between the concepts of community and nation-state. Cur-rent President Evo Morales’s political discourse is saturated withreferences to indigenous organizational forms (such as the ayllu1)and values (such as suma qamaña, an Aymara principle that trans-lates roughly as ‘‘living well together’’ [Gudynas, 2011, p. 233]). Vicepresident and public intellectual Álvaro García Linera, whose politi-cal theory in large part underwrites national policy decisions, haslong argued that the Bolivian path towards socialism requires amobilization of indigenous, peasant, and other community organiza-tions alongside workers’ unions (Bosteels, 2013). Although Bolivia’sproceso del cambio has been variously called ‘‘indigenous neodevel-opmentalism’’ (Calderón, 2008), ‘‘indigenous nationalism’’ (Postero,2010), and ‘‘communitarian socialism’’ (Dieterich, 2006), there is

general agreement among scholars that it involves new articulationsof community-based formations within national space.

Crucially linked to the importance of community is the politicalsignificance of autonomy, or self-governance (autonomía or auto-gestión). Since Morales came to power in 2005, he and many ofhis key advisors have argued that the recognition of autonomousregions is compatible with the construction of a ‘‘re-founded,’’plurinational nation-state (c.f. Albó and Barrios, 2006). But auton-omy, paradoxically, is also a driving ideal for both progressive andreactionary groups that are trying to delineate their separationfrom the state. Although the call for autonomy is at present moststrongly associated with the conservative departments of theBolivian lowlands, it is also a key organizing principle for manyleft-wing and indigenous activists who have found the Moralesadministration to be less than fully satisfactory, especially on ques-tions of natural resource governance and environmental justice(Zibechi, 2010; Webber, 2011).

Among the collectives that such activists most frequently con-jure to exemplify autonomy, the community-run water systemsoperating around the city of Cochabamba stand out both for theirpast accomplishments and their present operations. In the year2000, these ‘‘water committees’’ (comités de agua) were activeinstigators of the city’s celebrated Water War (Guerra del Agua),an event that reversed the privatization of the city’s water supplyand is often identified as the catalyst of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalshift (Kennemore and Weeks, 2011; Bebbington, 2009). At present,the water committees’ continuous efforts to maintain control of

A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256 247

water infrastructure and decision-making processes – rather thancede power to SEMAPA, the public water utility – reveal the com-mittees to be notably anti-state as well as anti-privatization (Cre-spo, 2011).

Given the political weight of autonomy in contemporary Boli-via, it is appropriate to ask to what degree it exists as a practicalattribute among a group that is frequently called upon to epito-mize it. In practice, to what degree are the Cochabamba watercommittees able to operate autonomously from public, private,and other non-community influences? I explore this question bydrawing on primary data gathered in La Maica, a peri-urban regionof Cochabamba. In the face of challenges related to water scarcityand poor water quality, water committees in La Maica have en-tered into a series of partnerships with non-community entities;I show that the emerging inter-institutional partnerships constrainthe water committees’ autonomy even when ameliorating theirwater supply. I argue that there are socio-ecological limits to thedegree to which water committees – and other such attempts atcommunity resource management – can be autonomous in thesense of internally self-governing. Socio-ecological processes takeplace at multiple scales and over long time spans, and unqualifiedenthusiasm over internal autonomy occludes the external limita-tions imposed by (socially produced) inequalities in resource ac-cess and by the material reality of ecological cycles. TakingPickerill and Chatterton’s (2006) point that ‘‘autonomous geogra-phies’’ offer a uniquely productive starting point for identifying‘‘life beyond capitalism,’’ the broader aim of this paper is to suggestthat the struggle for resource autonomy must be conceived as anongoing, spatially extroverted project rather than an attempt tocarve out bounded autonomous places.

I begin by reviewing the debates around neoliberal natures, La-tin American post-neoliberalism, and the importance of autonomyin Bolivia historically and in its contemporary incarnations. Afterdiscussing the origins, geographical distribution, and political roleof the Cochabamba’s community water systems, I focus on onegroup of water committees in the peri-urban neighborhood of Mai-ca Central. In order to show the socio-ecological reasons why watercommittees interact with non-community entities – and the impli-cations of such interactions – I describe Maica Central’s water con-ditions and analyze a collaborative water project that was designedto address the region’s water challenges. Finally, I offer a re-con-ceptualization of autonomy that recognizes socio-ecological limi-tations and, I hope, is ample enough to contribute to thedevelopment of a theory of ‘‘post-neoliberal natures’’.

The empirical research for this paper was carried out betweenJune and October 2011. The data presented in Sections 4–6 reflecta variety of methods: 56 surveys conducted in the peri-urban zoneof La Maica, eight semi-structured interviews with water commit-tee presidents in La Maica, and over 40 semi-structured interviewswith a variety of water ‘‘experts’’ throughout Cochabamba and LaPaz, including academics, NGO leaders, activists, engineers, localstate officials, and representatives from state ministries and devel-opment entities.2 In addition to these more formal methods, I alsoattended water committee meetings regularly over the four-monthperiod, both in La Maica and in other peri-urban regions of Coc-habamba, and spent many days walking around La Maica with com-mittee leaders who explained how their water systems worked andpointed out specific water management challenges.

2 The surveys conducted in La Maica were conducted at the family level andfocused on water sources and uses; the main purpose was to identify primary water-related challenges faced by residents and the families’ strategies to address thesechallenges. All 56 surveys were given orally: 53 were conducted in Spanish by theauthor, and 3 were conducted in Quechua with the assistance of a research assistant/translator. The interviews with water committee leaders and water experts were allconducted in Spanish by the author.

2. Neoliberal natures and post-neoliberalism in Latin America

The past decade has been witness to an explosion of literatureexploring both the neoliberalization of environmental manage-ment practices and the environmental dimensions of neoliberal-ism writ large (Heynen et al., 2007; Castree, 2008a, 2008b;Himley, 2008; Harris, 2009). At its broadest, this body of scholar-ship asks how neoliberal policies are shifting the ways that bio-physical natures are commodified, managed, and imagined inrelation to society. Emphasis is usually placed on the co-constitu-tion of nature and political economy, but this ‘‘neoliberal nat-ures’’ literature is also increasingly signaling the technocraticcharacter of contemporary environmental management interven-tions. Indeed, the very use of the term ‘‘environmental gover-nance’’ suggests the depoliticization of nature–societyinteractions and the reduction of state actors to mere propertyguarantors (Castro, 2007). Environmental experts define theboundaries of ‘‘sustainable’’ and ‘‘efficient’’ governance, some-times in conversation with a broadly conceived civil societywhose opinions are extracted through designated ‘‘participatory’’mechanisms (Larner, 2007; Swyngedouw, 2005).

More specifically, the neoliberalization of environmental gov-ernance is usually understood as a series of interventions in re-source management institutions (values, norms, laws),organizational structure (decision-making bodies and hierar-chies), and decision-making practices (Bakker, 2009, 2010). Theseinterventions generally refer to a combination of privatization(full or partial), deregulation (and reregulation), commercializa-tion, marketization, and re-scaled governance. Latin America, asone of the most profoundly neoliberalized regions of the world(Sader, 2011), functioned as a laboratory for numerous experi-ments in neoliberal environmental governance throughout the1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s (Liverman and Vilas, 2006). Mostnotably, these experiments have included the privatization of ur-ban water supply (Perreault, 2006; Budds, 2004), the accelerationof industrial resource extraction (minerals and hydrocarbons)(Bridge, 2002; Bury, 2005), the decentralization of forest manage-ment (Klooster, 2003), and the intensification of export-orientedagriculture (David et al., 2000).

Over the last fifteen years, however, numerous Latin Americancountries have elected left-leaning and often vocally anti-neolib-eral administrations.3 These elections, which tended to follow onthe heels of widespread social mobilization in opposition to neolib-eral governments, have in turn spawned a heated academic debateover the possibility that certain Latin American countries – espe-cially Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, but also Argentina, Brazil,Uruguay, Paraguay, and most recently Peru – have entered a ‘‘post-neoliberal’’ era (Sader, 2009; Brand and Sekler, 2009; Burdicket al., 2009; Escobar, 2010; Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2009). At its mostgeneral, the term post-neoliberalism signals a shift away from –though not necessarily a wholesale break with – the neoliberal te-nets of privatization, marketization, commodification, and deregula-tion. Given the ambiguity of the term ‘‘shift,’’ academic debatesabout post-neoliberalism have tended to focus on the relative utilityof the term in various Latin American contexts. For those who seemerit in the word, post-neoliberalism can be ‘‘characterized mainlyby a search for progressive policy alternatives arising out of the manycontradictions of neoliberalism’’ (Macdonald and Ruckert, 2009, p. 6emphasis added). The focus here is on political discourse and policy

3 Generally, the start of the (electoral) ‘‘pink tide’’ in Latin America is associatedwith Hugo Chávez’s landslide victory in Venezuela in 1998 and his promise of a ‘‘newsocialism for the 21st century’’ (Macdonald and Ruckert, 2009, p. 1). Since theneleven other countries have followed suit. Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador are mosfrequently referenced as representing the most fervent opposition to neoliberalism(c.f. Escobar, 2010; Radcliffe, 2012).

,t

248 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256

reforms, including both constitutional and legal changes, and theunderlying conviction is that Latin American political experimentsare redistributing political and economic power in ways worthy ofcautious optimism, even if they do not involve transformations tothe material basis of society (Sader, 2011; Fuentes, 2012; Roberts,2009; Harris and Roa-García, 2015).

By contrast, many scholars who focus on material and economicrelations have observed little reason to celebrate contemporarypolitical experiments. By far the most commonly cited reason fordenying the utility of term ‘‘post-neoliberal’’ is the persistent roleof natural resource extraction in supposedly post-neoliberal LatinAmerican economies (Webber, 2009; Bebbington and HumphreysBebbington, 2011; Arsel, 2012; Kennemore and Weeks, 2011).Facilitated by the global commodity boom of the last decade, in-creased exploitation of mineral and hydrocarbon reserves has pro-vided the economic lubrication for many of the policy experimentscurrently underway in Latin America. Not only does such large-scale extraction frequently override indigenous territorial claims,pollute huge stretches of water and soil, and involve the construc-tion of highways through protected areas – thus belying stateclaims to be privileging the rights of indigenous people andPachamama (Mother Earth) – but its centrality within Latin Amei-can economies also shows significant continuity with previous erasof Latin American history, stretching all the way back to the colo-nial era (Galeano, 1973; Kohl and Farthing, 2012; Perreault, 2012).

The apparent rupture between these two interpretations of con-temporary Latin America can perhaps be overcome by distinguish-ing between post-neoliberalism as a utopian-ideological project, asreflected primarily in political and academic discourse, and post-neoliberalism an emerging set of policies and practices, as do Yatesand Bakker in a recent review paper (2013). According to theauthors, while the utopian project may reach towards a world afterneoliberalism, historically produced structural conditions con-strain political practices to a variety of post-neoliberal paths. Theongoing dialectic between utopian-idealism and material condi-tions of possibility shape the kinds of post-neoliberal projects thatemerge in any given place. Such a conceptualization usefullyacknowledges the limits of political discourse without dismissingits aspirational value: political ideology helps drive changes in so-cial relations, even if its material outcomes are not equal to its dis-cursive reach.

I draw attention to this dialectic primarily in order to explorethe relationship between post-neoliberal policy experiments andnatural resource management. When examining the potentialemergence of post-neoliberal or ‘‘not-quite-neoliberal’’ natures, Ipropose that it is important to consider not only existing politi-cal-economic conditions but also existing socio-ecological condi-tions, which are in turn the product of interactions betweensociety – with all of its unequal social structures – and the materi-ality of nature (Swyngedouw, 1996). What I am suggesting is thatpost-neoliberal environmental governance strategies emerge asthe result of ‘‘trialectical’’ interactions between utopian politicaldiscourse, existing political-economic formations, and ecologicalmateriality. Across the region that is commonly qualified as post-neoliberal, changes in environmental regulation and resource useare produced not only by political ideology but also by socio-eco-logical conditions of possibility; these conditions sometimes re-quire that ideological–political projects be re-imagined. As I willshow in the case of water governance, community autonomy islimited by socially produced inequalities as well as water’s insis-tence on flowing across political and social borders (Bakker,2003). In the face of such challenges, the ideal of autonomy, as re-fracted through Bolivia’s recent post-neoliberal experiments, re-quires conceptual re-working that responds to socio-ecologicalrealities.

3. Nature and autonomy in Bolivia

From the start, the recent leftward turn in Bolivia was tightlybound up in questions of environmental politics and justice. Themost frequently identified post-neoliberal turning point was the2000 Cochabamba Water War, but this event was quickly followedby a series of other struggles. In 2003, there was widespread mobi-lization against natural gas extraction and exportation by privatecompanies, and in 2005 the twin city of La Paz-El Alto followedCochabamba in ousting its foreign private water company (Spronkand Webber, 2007; Perreault, 2006). Meanwhile, cocaleros (cocacultivators) from the province of Chapare were organizing in oppo-sition to US-led coca eradication programs; at their helm was anactivist by the name of Evo Morales, who soon transitioned toparty politics (Kohl, 2010).

It was widely assumed that Morales’s 2005 presidential victorywould herald a new era of nature–society relations in Bolivia, as herose to power championing the rights of Pachamama and indige-nous groups, but Bolivia’s resource sectors under Morales’s party,the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo; Movement toward Socialism)have been notable more for their continuity with previous modelsof exploitation and distribution than for their radical, post-neolib-eral transformations. The rate of resource extraction has increased(Bebbington and Humphreys Bebbington, 2011; Webber, 2009),the nationalization of extractive industries has been incomplete(Kaup, 2010; Kohl and Farthing, 2012), indigenous territories havebeen only irregularly protected (Anthias and Radcliffe, 2015), andthe water needs of extractive industries have been prioritized overboth potable water and irrigation (Bustamante et al., 2012).

In the soil of growing disappointment in the Morales adminis-tration, the ideal of autonomy has grown new roots. Autonomy,it should be underscored, is far from a new ideal for leftist theoristsor social movements in Latin America. While a full history of LatinAmerican autonomous theory and practice is impossible here, it isworth noting some of the links that were cultivated betweenstrains of Marxism and ongoing resistance struggles by indigenouspeople and peasants. As preeminent historian Silvia Rivera Cusi-canqui argues, autonomy has been a driving ideal behind indige-nous resistance movements since the colonial period: ‘‘Indianautonomy (territorial, social, cultural, linguistic and political) isthe starting point for building a new egalitarian, multi-ethnic na-tion. These ideas were present in the struggles of Manqu Inka in1536 [at the time of conquest] and both Amaru and Katari in1780 [during a period of indigenous uprisings]’’ (Rivera Cusicanqui,1991, p. 7). These ideas did not evaporate after 1780, but ratherinteracted with a Marxist language of autonomy in the 19th and20th centuries. Latin American Marxists have long struggled toconstruct a theory that would articulate largely self-governingindigenous groups within a class-based revolutionary project,and the ideal of autonomy has been central to their work. Cele-brated Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui was arguing inthe early 20th century that the Andes needed a unique model ofsocialism that was based on the communally governed landhold-ings of indigenous people (Mignolo, 2012; Mariátegui,2011[1929]). René Zavaleta Mercado, who has been one of Bolivia’smost influential Marxist figures since the late 1950s, used theexpression ‘‘formación social abigarrada’’ (mixed social formation)to describe the process by which multiple modes of productionand social groups could be articulated within a single society;according to contemporary Bolivian scholar Luis H. Antezana, thisidea was crucially linked to the self-determination (auto-determinación) of multiple groups within Bolivian society (Antez-ana, 2009[1991]). Current Bolivian Vice President Álvaro GarcíaLinera, who was at one time influenced by the autonomous Marxisttheories of Antonio Negri (Bosteels, 2013, p. 308), argues that

A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256 249

‘‘communism will have to be constructed through the self-organiz-ing capacities of society, through the processes of communitarianwealth generation and distribution, through self-governance’’(García Linera, 2009, p. 75). All of these theorists have articulatedtheir ideas with and through the self-organizing principles of var-ious (mostly highland) indigenous social formations, whose anti-colonial struggles echo autonomous sentiments across thecenturies.

Within this history of thought, however, can be found the ker-nels of disagreement over the definition and utility of the word‘‘autonomy’’. Whereas most Latin American Marxists were theoriz-ing a variety of relative autonomy that could be mobilized within alarger nation-building project, indigenous people and other com-munities were often using autonomy to describe their separationfrom the state and national projects. Groups voicing these diver-gent meanings of autonomy have at times joined political forces,but there remains a fundamental contradiction between thosewho see autonomy as a means of guaranteeing (limited) self-gov-ernance at the sub-national level and those who see it as part of alarger anti-statist project. State recognition of autonomous areasactually impedes movement towards this latter project, as it placeslimits on the kinds of autonomies that can be practiced.

Despite these internal disagreements, however, autonomy hashistorically been an ideal associated with (various factions of) theBolivian left. This status has been somewhat confounded in recentyears. Since the 1990s, wealthy landowners and business leaders inBolivia’s eastern lowlands have been calling for departmentalautonomy in an effort to protect themselves against what theyview as the threat of emerging indigenous politics (Eaton, 2007).According to Bret Gustafson, this elite use of autonomy as a plat-form from which to demand economic, political, and territorialprotection from the Morales administration and its supposed al-lergy to private capital accumulation is markedly different fromthe calls for indigenous autonomy that preceded it: whereas thestruggle for indigenous autonomies has at its heart an aim to trans-gress territorial borders and build a plurinational nation-state, theelite desire for departmental autonomy ‘‘seeks to harden bound-aries through its enclosure of the region and concepts of citizen-ship within a territorial enclave’’ (Gustafson, 2009, p. 1010).

While left-leaning intellectuals in Bolivia have dealt with thetension between these two uses of autonomy by drawing an unsta-ble line between progressive autonomies (indigenous) and reac-tionary autonomies (departmental), the Bolivian state addressedboth simultaneously with the 2010 passage of the Law of Autono-mies and Decentralization (Law No. 031). As is the case with mostforms of state recognition of internal difference, this law had theeffect of defining the limits of autonomy, rendering it less a polit-ical ideal and more an administrative category. A legally recog-nized autonomous region is, at best, only autonomous to theextent that its actions do not conflict with official state agenda.Vice President García Linera made this limitation explicit in aninterview with the magazine Nueva Sociedad:

...[N]either departmental autonomies nor indigenous [autono-mies] can question the material base of general unity. They can-not question, as some do, the basis of unity: armed forces andnational police, money, international relations, and naturalresources, including land and energy... We must avoid havingautonomy become an excuse for self-enclosure and harmingthe country (Natanson, 2007, emphasis added).

4 FEJUVE stands for Federación de Juntas Vecinales de El Alto, or Federation oNeighborhood Councils of El Alto. FEJUVE comprises several hundred neighborhoodassociations and was the organizational platform of both the 2003 Gas War and the2005 La Paz-El Alto Water War.

Despite recognizing autonomous regions, the state thus main-tains monopoly control of the economy, natural resources, and vio-lence. This tension has not gone unnoticed by critics, whoemphasize the potential compatibility of state-recognized auton-omy and state centrism. Andrew Orta, for example, argues that

neoliberal development officers and planners in Bolivia tend ‘‘tosee indigenous communities as an inchoate democracy to betapped for new civic participation’’ such that autonomous territo-ries are effectively articulated within a ‘‘semi-neoliberal’’ state(Orta, 2013, p. 109). Pablo Regalsky takes this argument one stepfurther, arguing that the goals of such articulation are the neutral-ization of potentially troublesome instances of self-governance andthe re-legitimation of the nation-state, the foundations of whichwere severely shaken by the protests of the early 2000s (Regalsky,2010).

These critiques are symptomatic of a more general trend bywhich Bolivian scholars and activists are shifting their politicalinvestment away from the MAS and towards extra-statal organiza-tional structures such as the indigenous ayllu system, El Alto’sFEJUVE network,4 and Cochabamba’s water committees (Choqueand Mamani, 2001; Crespo, 2011; Fernández Osco, 2010). To be pre-cise, this might be better considered a shift back, as such commu-nity-based organizations helmed the protests that swept acrossBolivia in the early 2000s. According to activist and scholar RaquelGutiérrez Aguilar, the rise of the MAS in 2005 corresponded with adiminished interest in anti-statist mobilization and an increasingtendency towards nationalist-populism and electoral victories (Gut-iérrez Aguilar, 2008). Current disenchantment with the MAS seemsto have pushed the pendulum in the other direction. This is the con-tinuation of an ongoing struggle between autonomy as compatibleand autonomy as incompatible with the modern nation-state.

In its current anti-statist incarnation, autonomy signals bothindependence from the state and the ability to make unimpededcollective decisions about internal operations. How exactly suchautonomy can be exercised in practice and in the long term, how-ever, has not yet been explored. The research that I present in thefollowing sections shows that there are significant socio-ecologicalchallenges to community autonomy, but my goal is certainly not todismiss autonomy as a political ideal. As Yates and Bakker pointout, post-neoliberal practice is rarely a perfect reflection of itsaccompanying ideology. By bringing an ideal that is so fundamen-tal to Bolivia’s post-neoliberal era into conversation with the prac-ticalities of resource governance, I hope to suggest that autonomycannot be understood as a process of drawing lines between com-munity and non-community entities. Rather, it must be practicedas a set of strategic partnerships that will support communityautonomy in the long term.

4. The socio-ecological waterscape of Cochabamba’s zona sur

The city of Cochabamba is divided into 14 political Districts thatvary considerably in terms of access to potable water and sanita-tion (see Fig. 1). The zona sur, or southern region of the city, is gen-erally acknowledged to have the least access. According to CarmenLedo, only 22.2% of the 250,000 residents in Districts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,and 14 have connections to the public water utility, SEMAPA (Ledo,2008, p. 82). The zona sur is also experiencing the city’s highestpopulation growth rate, and SEMAPA’s ability to keep pace withthe rising demand is notoriously poor (Antequera Durán, 2007).Water and sanitation coverage rates fall far below those of thecountry’s two other major metropolitan areas, La Paz/El Alto inthe highlands and Santa Cruz in the lowlands (MMAyA, 2009, pp.24–25).

Water scarcity has been a problem in city and surrounding val-ley for decades, given limited groundwater availability, a precipita-tion gradient that favors the northern zones of the city, and

f

Fig. 1. Bolivia, the city of Cochabamba, and La Maica. Cartography by Eric Leinberger.

5 The surveys conducted in La Maica indicated that water committees chargeetween 0.50Bs and 1.00Bs (between USD $0.07 and $0.14) per cubic meter of water000 L). Aguateros, by contrast, charge 35.00Bs (USD $5.00) per cubic meter of water.

250 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256

watershed that drains westwards, away from the city (Vera Varela,1995). SEMAPA’s water is drawn from both surface water andgroundwater sources, with the former meeting 40% of the utility’sdemands. Two systems of dams and storage facilities capture sur-face water and deliver it to the northern and central areas of thecity, while four sets of (highly contested) wells to the west of thecity deliver water to the central and (in a limited sense) to thesouthern regions (SEMAPA, 2003).

For the many houses in the peri-urban south of the city thateither lack public connections or receive insufficient quantities ofwater, there are two main sources of potable water: aguateros,small-scale vendors that sell water of questionable quality at exor-bitant prices, and community-owned supply systems, also knownas water committees. While aguateros travel in tanker trucks andmake their way throughout the zona sur, the existence of watercommittees is dependent on the quality and quantity of groundwa-ter available in a given neighborhood. Cochabamba has highly un-even groundwater distribution, with the (generally wealthier)northern areas of the city sitting atop plentiful aquifers and large

parts of the (generally poorer) southern region without any freshgroundwater at all.

Where water is available, community-owned wells and distri-bution networks supply water to between 20 and 300 families.These communal networks have varied origin stories: while somewere completely grassroots projects born out of a shared need forwater, others were established with the help of religious, non-prof-it and international aid organizations. The governance structures ofthe groups are correspondingly different, although most have acommittee presidents and secretaries (either elected or appointedon a rotating system) and charge committee members nominalfees for electricity and well maintenance.5 Importantly, the watercommittees overlap and interact with Organizaciones Territorialesde Base (Grassroots Territorial Organizations; OTBs), units of politicalparticipation that were recognized in 1994 through the Ley de

b(1

A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256 251

Participación Popular (Popular Participation Law; LPP). This omnibuslaw was passed during the presidency of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada,a mining magnate whose legacy is closely associated with the neo-liberalization of Bolivia’s economy (Perreault, 2008). The LPP’s pur-ported goal was to decentralize decision-making processes in orderto shift government resources to neglected rural towns. It createdmore than 300 municipalities and earmarked 20% of the nationalbudget for them; OTBs can access these funds by proposing commu-nity development projects to their local government branches.Where the water committees have favorable relationship with theirOTBs (and this is not always the case), the two organizations can col-laborate to access municipal funding to improve water supplyinfrastructure.

Peri-urban water committees, and especially those from thesouthern part of the city, played a pivotal role in the CochabambaWater War. Although sometimes portrayed as a war between a for-eign privately-owned water company and urban residents who re-fused to pay skyrocketing tariffs,6 more nuanced analyses haveargued that the Water War was successful only because it drew to-gether a historically antagonistic group of urban water users, peri-urban water committees, and rural irrigators (Assies, 2003; Perrea-ult, 2006, 2008). The latter two groups mobilized a discourse that ap-pealed to conceptions of indigeneity by focusing on customary ruralwater uses (usos y costumbres) and communal water governance.This strategy proved highly successful, despite the facts that peri-ur-ban ‘‘communal’’ water systems are technically on private land, anumber of the committees had been established with the assistanceof foreign NGOs, and many residents on the far outskirts of the cityhad no access to groundwater at all (Laurie et al., 2002).7

The Cochabamba Water War has become an important symbolfor many anti-globalization social movements. Images of Quechuawomen throwing homemade bombs at police on motorcycles areburned on the shared retina of activists around the world. Despiteits celebrity, however, the material reality of water access in Coc-habamba remains virtually unchanged since the pre-privatizationyears. In restoring SEMAPA, Cochabamba restored a technocraticutility that was semi-paralyzed by years of compounding debtand fraught internal politics (Spronk, 2007). The water committeesand other social movement leaders placed much hope on the citi-zen directorate (directorio ciudadano), the civil society representa-tives who were elected to SEMAPA’s board of directorsimmediately following the Water War. These elected officials,however, proved just as susceptible to SEMAPA’s internal powerstruggles as the other board members (author interviews), and vo-ter turnout for their elections was appallingly low – less than 2000in a city of 650,000 (Bakker, 2008). In this context, SEMAPA has re-turned to its pre-privatization strategy of using loans from interna-tional development banks to finance massive developmentprojects, such as the Misicuni dam,8 that take decades to completeand offer little immediate solace to residents of the zona sur. The

6 Anti-privatization organizers identified cases in which water prices had risen byas much as 200%, though the private supplier Aguas del Tunari claimed that averageprice hike was 35% (Bakker, 2008).

7 See Roa-García et al. (2015) for a comprehensive overview of the Water War’soutcomes and subsequent water reforms.

8 The Misicuni dam is a regional project that has been under consideration sincethe 1950s and under construction since 1996 (Vera Varela, 1995). According to recenprojections by the Ministry of the Environment and Water, once completed theMisicuni dam will provide 68% of domestic water used in the Metropolitian Area oCochabamba (a region which includes six smaller municipalities). As a ‘‘multiple use’project, the Misicuni dam will also produce hydroelectricity and increase availableirrigation water, though recent calculations indicate that it will not be able to meeirrigation demand (MMAyA, 2013). The Ministry of the Environment and Waterprojects that Phase 1 of the dam will be completed by 2016 and that Phase 2 will becompleted by 2021 (MMAyA, 2013). Despite its prolonged construction period, thehopes and plans of key stakeholders in the water debates continue to rotate aroundthe axis of Misicuni (Laurie and Marvin, 1999).

t

f’

t

Morales government, meanwhile, has not increased funding for ur-ban water supply as promised and SEMAPA’s ability to completeits projects is financially limited (Spronk, 2012).

In this context, the water committees have risen to prominenceboth by virtue of their activity in the Water War and through theirperceived embodiment of an alternative form of water governancethat does not rely on either private or public provision. For exam-ple, Bolivian sociologist Carlos Crespo explains the role of the watercommittees in the Water War through a broadly anti-statist lens,arguing that collective mobilization was directed less at reversingprivatization and more at preserving community autonomy:

The irrigators and the diverse communitarian potable watersystems (the most common kinds being water committees,cooperatives, and associations) were not fighting for rights norcitizenship, but were rather mobilizing in defense of their pre-cious collective autonomy, which was threatened by the priv-atization and mercantilization of water services, whichrepresented the continuation of Bolivian state’s long history ofworking against communes (Crespo, 2011).

Given SEMAPA’s poor performance in recent years, moreover,many activists are suggesting a need to revisit the kinds of commu-nitarian, non-state organizational forms that characterized mobili-zation during the Water War. While this discourse is laced withnostalgia, it is important to note the growing anti-statist senti-ment. Oscar Olivera, who was one of the main leaders of the WaterWar, declared in a recent newspaper interview:

We are working for a political option, and I don’t mean electoral; athird, totally autonomous political option, which would be inde-pendent from all interference or subordination to any party orcaudillo. I repeat, the only unique way of effectively changingthe living conditions of the people is not through caudillos. Inthe Water War there was no caudillo: Oscar Olivera [referring tohimself] was a spokesperson, and so was Omar Fernández [formerleader of the irrigators’ union]. Who made the struggles of 2000and 2003? The community (Bustillos Zamorano, 2012).

Olivera’s ‘‘third way’’ is positioned in opposition both to privateand state control, but he focuses on the distinction between commu-nity and state. He is attempting to explain why the Water War,although it succeeded in subduing the threat of privatization, didnot result in the kind of resource redistribution and collective man-agement that social movement leaders had foreseen. He identifiesthe problem as a return to the kind of strongman leadership forwhich Latin American politicians (elected or otherwise) are famous.

The water committees, it should be noted, are not the only orga-nizations in Cochabamba to be labeled as ‘‘autonomous’’ and ‘‘self-governing’’ (autogestionario). These words are part of the broader re-gional activist vocabulary and are also applied to a handful of otherexemplary organizational structures, such as cooperatives and work-ers’ unions. For example, in August 2011 I attended the first annualInternational Workshop for Self-Governing Entities (Taller Internac-ional de Empresas Autogestionarias), which was organized by theactivists who had led the charge during the Water War (notably, Os-car Olivera gave the opening and closing remarks) and attended byrepresentatives of water committees, water cooperatives, and waterworkers’ unions (i.e. SEMAPA employees). The purpose was to devel-op and strengthen self-governing structures, and the water commit-tees acted as one of a handful of such models.

All of this interest in the water committees and other such com-munitarian organizations rests on the assumption that clear linescan be drawn between the state, private entities, and community,the latter of which can function autonomously from the first two.In the next few sections I show the socio-ecological challenges ofdrawing such boundaries in relation to water governance.

252 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256

5. Maica central: politics, economics, and water

Maica Central is a sub-section of La Maica, which is part of Dis-trict 9 – the only ‘‘agricultural’’ District in Cochabamba. Surveysconducted here indicated that 87% of families in La Maica practicesome degree of small-scale dairy farming as either their primary orsecondary source of income. There are seven water committees inMaica Central, each of which supplies between 36 and 290 mem-ber-families. Six of these committees are at least 20 years old,and were built with money and labor generated within the com-munity. (The seventh committee, which amalgamates the others,will be the subject of the next section.) Given their reliance ondairy production and agriculture, residents of Maica Central rarelyuse their community water connections for strictly domestic pur-poses (drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing, washing clothes, etc.)In fact, at the time of research, four of the seven wells in MaicaCentral were pumping water that was either too salty or too con-taminated for human consumption. In such cases, the primary pur-pose of connections is to supply water for dairy cows, each ofwhich consumes upwards of 60 L of water per day.

Virtually all of the families who have dairy operations also growseveral hectares’ worth of crops for their livestock – usually oats,alfalfa, corn, and pasto lolium. This last crop is a type of grass thatwas introduced into La Maica within the last 15 years because itgrows well in saline soil is considered highly nutritious for cows(Ampuero Alcoba, 2009). Pasto lolium prefers damp soil and re-quires frequent irrigation; although Maica Central is technicallyserved by a shared irrigation system that draws water from thenearby lake La Angostura, in dry years there is rarely enough waterto reach the entire area. This shortage has led to the widespreaduse of sewage water as an irrigation supplement (Ampuero Alcoba,2009; Medrano Vargas, 2001). La Maica is situated immediatelyalongside Alba Rancho, the city’s only wastewater treatment plant,which currently receives wastewater so far in excess of what it iscapable of treating that it discharges mostly untreated sewage di-rectly into the river (Ghielmi et al., 2008). Depending on the loca-tion of their fields, farmers in La Maica either access sewage waterindirectly by pumping water from the river or directly by (illegally)tapping the pipes that lead to Alba Rancho. The polluted water actsas a fertilizer for pasto lolium, but these advantages will likely befleeting, Wastewater has high salt concentrations, and its continu-ous use as irrigation water eventually turns fertile soil into unpro-ductive white deserts.

Beyond soil salinization, the decision to irrigate with wastewateralso puts community-owned wells at an immediate and pressing riskof contamination. Indeed, a recent study conducted in District 9 indi-cated that the practice of irrigating with partially treated sewagewater represents one of the top two risks for wells in the region,along with leachates from K’ara K’ara, the city dump. Extremely highlevels ammonium nitrate, sulfates, iron, and magnesium have beenfound in many of the community-owned wells, as have above aver-age levels of acidity and salinity (Ghielmi et al., 2008).

The two major challenges facing Maiqueños in terms of water gov-ernance, then, are scarcity and pollution. In a sense, both of these aresocially produced. The connection is clearer in the case of pollution: itis the city’s non-functional wastewater treatment plant that is pollut-ing a source of irrigation water, and it is the city’s rapidly growingdump that is leaching into the aquifer. Although it is true that manyresidents prefer to use the polluted water as irrigation because of itshigh fertilizer content, this benefit would be safely obtained if theAlba Rancho plant actually treated all the wastewater that passedthrough it. Other residents are simply using it because they haveno alternative when La Angostura runs dry.

But scarcity is also socially produced, both in the sense thatdwindling groundwater is caused by human-induced stress andin the sense that water is not equitably distributed. The water

shortage in Cochabamba is not absolute: some northern regionsof the city have artesian springs that supply unlimited water, andresidents often dig private wells in their backyards to supplementthe service they receive from SEMAPA. The public network shouldbe able to transport sufficient water from the north to the south,but is stymied by an ancient network of pipes that ‘‘resembles abasket, losing water from every point,’’ (author interview with Car-los Crespo Flores, 2011). Moreover, the proliferation of privatewells across the city presents an unquantified drain on the city’sgroundwater (author interview with Rocío Bustamante, 2011). Inboth those ways, scarcity is produced through human (in)activity.

Whether produced or not, however, water pollution and scar-city remain part of the daily lived experiences of most residentsin Maica Central. Addressing these large-scale challenges as a sin-gle water committee would be extremely challenging, if notimpossible. Instead, the strategies that the water committees havedeveloped often involve leaning on non-community entities forsupport.

6. Aguatuya and the Maica central project

In this section I focus on a project that was coordinated mostlyby an NGO called Aguatuya. I chose this project both because itsimpact was highly visible in La Maica (and in many other partsof the zona sur) and because it exemplifies the kind of inter-insti-tutional alliances that I wish to explore. It should be noted thatthere are a number of other local and international NGOs that alsowork with water and sanitation in peri-urban Cochabamba, andthat they engage in this sort of alliance building to varying degrees.

Aguatuya was conceived in 2002 as the Programa Aguatuya, aside project of the private company Plastiforte, manufacturer ofindustrial plastic pipes. According to Aguatuya’s director, GustavoHeredia, members of Plastiforte had started to notice that a largesegment of their clients were coming from the zona sur to buypipes for their community water systems, but that many of thesecustomers could not afford the high quality pipes that were mostsuitable for the quantities of water that they needed to transport.Programa Aguatuya was formed to provide financial assistance tothis population. Within three years, the program had proven sosuccessful that Aguatuya broke away from Plastiforte and becamea foundation, though it maintained strong connections to the pri-vate company (author interview with Gustavo Heredia, 2011).

In 2004, Aguatuya launched its flagship project, Agua Para To-dos, which was based on an inter-institutional alliance betweenAguatuya, the municipal government of Cochabamba, SEMAPA,and the UNDP. The mandated goal was to assist in the constructionof new water distribution networks for peri-urban communities‘‘with the idea of connecting to the central municipal system inthe future’’ (Aguatuya, 2011). With this long-term goal in mind,specific tasks were assigned to each of the participating members:the UNDP was primarily a financing agency, the municipal govern-ment assisted in identifying demand, and SEMAPA assured that thedesigns met the municipal water system’s technical specifications(ibid).

Heredia describes the process by which sites were selected asbeneficiaries of the Agua Para Todos project as ‘‘demand-driven.’’Rather than approach peri-urban residents with a plan, theywaited for residents to approach them. Aguatuya, however, had acouple of specific conditions for its partners. First, the partnershad to be OTBs rather than water committees, as the work wasto be financed in part through the LPP funds that had been ear-marked for OTBs. Second, the partners had to be willing to con-struct water distribution networks that conformed to SEMAPA’stechnical requirements, such that if SEMAPA were to one day be-come capable of supplying water to the zona sur, it would be able

A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256 253

to absorb the independent water system into its larger network.This is a very contentious issue in Cochabamba, as many watercommittees remain distrustful of the public utility and the munici-pal government whose actions led to the privatization of urbanwater supply in 2000.

At the time that Agua Para Todos project was being consoli-dated, Maica Central had six water committees that together sup-plied water to around 280 households, but increasing demandcoupled with leaky distribution networks was resulting in severeshortages. When the Maica Central OTB held a monthly meetingin early 2007, discussion turned to ways to boost water supply–not just for a single committee, but for the whole OTB. Thoughtswent to a well that Maica Central had drilled four years before-hand, a well that had been intended for irrigation but that had beenabandoned due to governance conflicts. Because the well had beenbuilt for high-volume use, people speculated that it would be capa-ble of providing water to every household in the region. All thatwas needed was a new distribution network – a network thatwould be the size of all the other six networks combined. For a pro-ject of this scale, the Maiqueños needed economic support, as eventheir combined financial resources would not have been sufficient.

According to both the director of Aguatuya and the president ofthe OTB Maica Central, it was the OTB that found the NGO, not theother way around. The president of the OTB (who was also thepresident of one of the water committees) explained that he andothers had gone ‘‘knocking on doors’’ looking for support fromthe municipal government and various NGOs, but was having dif-ficulty attracting interest. In Cochabamba, as in many cities, sup-port for projects that explicitly engage with productive water useis limited, as the division between domestic and productive wateraffects not only the purviews of public institutions but also themandates of non-governmental organizations.

Eventually, however, representatives of Maica Central ap-proached Plastiforte, whose directors pointed them to Aguatuya.Maica Central signed onto the Agua Para Todos project in 2009.Over the course of the next year, Aguatuya and residents of MaicaCentral dug trenches, installed a system of underground pipes totransport the water, and connected households to the new system.The pipes, of course, were purchased from Plastiforte. Residents ofMaica Central began calling the new system Manguera Azul, or BlueHose, after the color of Plastiforte’s plastic tubes. The funding camefrom a mixture of sources: the municipal government, Maica Cen-tral’s LPP funds, Aguatuya, the UNDP, and the community. Resi-dents of Maica Central provided all the labor, overseen byAguatuya and SEMAPA. To complete the system, Aguatuya donatedwhat the president of Maica Central described to me as ‘‘themother of all water towers,’’ which was capable of pumpinggroundwater at a much faster rate than the pumps in the smallwater systems.

In the first year, the project proved a huge success from a statis-tical point of view: 290 households had been connected to theManguera Azul system, the volume of flow was sufficient for allthe region’s dairy cows, and the quality was high enough for mosthousehold needs – cleaning, washing, and cooking (it was slightlytoo saline to drink). Everyone surveyed and interviewed in MaicaCentral praised the system and spoke of the relief that they feltto have a stable source of water for their dairy cows.

7. The socio-ecological challenges to autonomy

In signing onto the Agua Para Todos project, Maica Central drewa complex network of actors into its territory, tightening thestrings that attached it to the rest of the city. What does this implyfor the autonomy of Maica Central and its water committees?

Here it must be underscored that, while Maica Central collec-tively chose to approach Aguatuya, this decision was made in a

context of structurally limited options. The water committees ofMaica Central needed technical and financial support in order toaddress socio-ecological challenges that had been produced at lar-ger scales, including scarcity and pollution. Their apparentlyautonomous decision resulted in a relationship that would con-strain their future autonomy. This can be demonstrated in at leastthree ways.

First, the use of Plastiforte plastic tubes locked Maica Centralinto being a long-term Plastiforte client, as Plastiforte tubes arenot standard size and damaged pipes cannot be replaced withany other brand. If residents of Maica Central ever need to repairor expand the water network, the decision of which tubes to use– and at what cost – will already be made. This threat has elicitedmuch criticism in Cochabamba, where several activist and aca-demic interviewees spoke of the dangers of breeding ‘‘dependence’’on NGO interventionism; it can also be read as yet another roundof capital accumulation in the guise of a humanitarian project.From the autonomy perspective, moreover, it represents a clearconstraint to Maica Central’s ability to define and adjust its futuregovernance strategies.

Second, SEMAPA’s role as technical overseer represents a disci-plinary force in Maica Central. SEMAPA engineers, for the mostpart, have been trained to understand water supply on a municipalscale, both from economic and infrastructural perspectives, andtend to see the water committees as stop-gap supply mechanismsalong the road to universal, single-network coverage (author inter-views). Their presence in Maica Central asserts expert and stateauthority by determining how the region’s future water supplyshould look. This is not an immediate concern for Maica Central,as SEMAPA does not yet have enough water in its network to reachthe zona sur. If this situation should change, however – as willlikely occur with the eventual completion of the Misicuni dam pro-ject – then Maica Central’s ability to maintain any semblance ofself-governance will be severely restricted.

Third, the fact that municipal funds can only be accessed byworking through the OTB – a unit of administrative politics thatwas created as part of a neoliberal decentralization project – im-plies that water committees remain economically dependent onaccess to this state-sanctioned space. If the water committees mustwork with their OTBs to access public funding, they are necessarilyconceding authority to the OTB, and, by extension, to the state. Incombination with the demand that the new water system be com-patible with SEMAPA’s network, moreover, the favoring of OTBsregisters very clearly as neoliberal entrenchment: it is administra-tive decentralization coupled with increased centralization of deci-sion-making power.

These points reveal certain inconsistencies between the waythat the water committees are framed in activist rhetoric and thereality of water governance in Maica Central. Given their economicmeans and their socio-ecological embeddedness within the widerurban context of water scarcity and pollution, the governance op-tions available to these water committees entailed a long-run in-crease in influence of the local state, the private sector, andassorted technocratic actors. In the end, the Agua Para Todos pro-ject bears a much closer resemblance to a public–private–commu-nity development model – which scholars such as Bob Jessop(2002) and Nikolas Rose (1999) associate with neoliberal govern-mentality – than to the ‘‘third way’’ form of community organiza-tion defined by Olivera as being separate from both public andprivate spheres.

Although the Cochabamba water committees are an extremelyheterogeneous group of actors, the problems of water quality andquantity are shared, to varying degrees, throughout the zona sur.These are problems produced at larger socio-ecological scales:pollution flowing down the river, leachates from the city dump,and unequal access to SEMAPA’s public network all stem from

254 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256

interactions between socio-economic inequality and the hydrolog-ical flows of water above and below ground. Although the strate-gies that water committees use to deal with these problems varysignificantly, I would hazard that any effective strategy would re-quire the water committees to enter into alliances that would al-low them to address socio-ecological challenges on the samescale as (or at least a more similar scale to) those at which theywere produced.

The challenge is identifying the kinds of alliances that will dee-pen community autonomy in the long run rather than threaten it.The Maica Central case underscores the fact that, rather than cele-brating the immediate protection offered for autonomous collec-tives by outside actors, attention must be paid to the conditionsof that support. Taking autonomy seriously as the basis of a radicalpolitics means acknowledging both the immediate advantages ofinter-institutional alliances and their long-term implications fordecision-making processes. Key to working within this contradic-tion is strengthening trans-local extra-statal networks that allowwater committees (and other autonomous collectives) to speakfor shared interests with a unified voice.

Although it is far from perfect, Cochabamba does have such atrans-local network: many water committees have coalesced un-der the banner of ASICASUDD-EPSAS (Asociación de Sistemas Comu-nitarios de Agua del Sud, Departamental y Entidades Prestadoras deServicio de Agua y Saneamiento; Association of Community WaterSystems of the South, of the Department, and Provider Entities ofWater and Sanitation Services). This organization, which wasformed by water committee leaders in 2004, offers training ses-sions to and acts as a spokesperson for participating water com-mittees. Its proposal for the water committees’ interaction withSEMAPA is one of co-gestión (co-governance), which would essen-tially involve SEMAPA selling water in bulk, at reduced prices, towater committees that would then control the distribution ofwater within their own neighborhoods. Experiments in co-gestiónhave already begun, and there is evidence of initial success (Mehtaet al., 2014). Importantly, ASICASUDD-EPSAS acts as a powerfulmediator between individual water committees and SEMAPA,allowing the former to maintain control over their internal deci-sion-making processes instead of being swallowed by the exten-sion of SEMAPA’s network. The water committees of MaicaCentral were are not members of ASICASUDD-EPSAS primarily be-cause their water needs were agricultural as well as domestic andbulk purchases of SEMAPA’s treated water would be too expensivefor irrigation and dairy cows; nevertheless, ASICASUDD-EPSAS stillprovides a model for the kinds of inter-institutional agreementsthat avoid strengthening the positions of state and private entities.

As many scholars studying the post-neoliberal shift in LatinAmerica have suggested, there are just as many post-neoliberalpaths as there are sets of contradictions arising out of neoliberal-ism. When it comes to post-neoliberal environmental gover-nance, an important factor in determining the relative successof a path is its ability to respond to the scale and materialityof the environmental problem at hand: it is the place-specificinteractions between post-neoliberal ideology and socio-naturalconditions of possibility that defines an experiment’s relativeprogressiveness. In the case of the Cochabamba water commit-tees, the interaction between urbanization and hydrological cy-cles is key. Water’s propensity to flow makes it particularlyresistant to privatization, marketization, and commodification(Bakker, 2003); the same quality makes water difficult to manageautonomously at a sub-urban scale. A single water committeecannot adequately address the pollution and access inequalitiesproduced at larger scales, and a water committee that formsindependent alliances with more powerful entities (the localstate, SEMAPA, private companies, etc.) might be compromisingits autonomy in the long run.

Rather than rejecting autonomy as a post-neoliberal ideal, how-ever, I want to suggest that its interaction with the materiality ofwater (with all of its associated socio-ecological inequalities)forces a re-conceptualization of autonomy as a project of solidarityrather than a project of internal self-governance. To address thechallenges created by the materiality of water’s flow, a communityas small-scale as a water committee has to look for outside sup-port. Such a community, however, cannot form alliances on anequal footing (economic or political) with state agencies and pri-vate companies. A spatially extroverted conception of autonomy,which focuses less on the autonomy of a single community andmore on the links between various extra-statal and communitarianorganizations, would allow such small-scale collectives to engagewith larger state and private actors. This re-conceptualization,moreover, would help distinguish the post-neoliberal use of auton-omy from liberal definitions of the ‘‘autonomous subject’’ and re-lated reactionary uses of autonomy that seek to tighten socio-political borders, as is the case with departmental autonomists inthe Bolivian lowlands.

As Andrew Orta notes, there is at present a ‘‘curious synergy’’between neoliberal models of governance and calls for autonomyin Bolivia (Orta, 2013, p. 109). Orta describes the articulation ofautonomous territories within the liberal nation-state as a ‘‘semi-neoliberal’’ process; in the language of this special issue, such anarticulation might be described ‘‘not-quite-neoliberal’’. A morespatially open conception of autonomies, one that takes socio-eco-logical processes into consideration and seeks to build communitysolidarities rather than community autarky, might help shiftautonomy away from a not-quite-neoliberal ideal and closer to apost-neoliberal practice.

8. Conclusion

Water committees from Cochabamba’s zona sur are frequentlyconjured as exemplars of autonomous governance in Bolivia’spost-neoliberal era. The socio-ecological reality of water distribu-tion in Cochabamba, however, limits the degree to which watercommittees can govern their water resources independently. Themain challenges that the water committees face – water pollutionand water scarcity – are socio-ecologically produced in relation tothe larger urban context, and addressing these challenges meansworking at a larger scale, with pooled economic and politicalresources.

But not all strategies to work at a larger scale are createdequally: in the long run, some alliances strengthen communityautonomy, whereas others threaten it. In the case of Maica Central,water committees dealt with the challenge of water scarcity bydrawing in a network of outside actors whose presence then influ-enced the committees’ internal organization. A long-term obliga-tion to do business with the private company Plastiforte, thedisciplinary presence of SEMAPA’s technical requirements, andthe need to seek funding as an OTB rather than as independentwater committees all helped shape the kinds of decisions thatthe water committees will be able to make in the future. The MaicaCentral water committees entered into this partnership as the leastpowerful party in the multi-institutional alliance, and their long-term autonomy was compromised.

Why would a community such as Maica Central enter into suchan alliance? I propose that the root problem is a theory of commu-nity autonomy that is limited to internal decision-making capacity,ignoring the external conditions that determine which decisionsare possible. Socio-ecological conditions mattered most in the caseof Maica Central, but a range of other political, economic, and socialfactors also determine the options available to any given commu-nity. Focusing on autonomous places of self-governance overlooks

A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256 255

the material reality of unequal resource distribution, and, I wouldargue, falls into a liberal trap of assuming that every individual(or in this case, every individual community) makes decisions ina vacuum. A radical politics of autonomy must be predicated ona redistribution of material resources and decision-making author-ity across, between, and within collectives; this long-term aim isactually made more difficult by drawing boundaries around com-munities that can be designated as internally autonomous. In otherwords, the struggle for autonomy must also address the broadersocioeconomic and political processes that have produced the lim-ited choices from which supposedly autonomous collectives mustchoose.

The material flows of water governance thus compel a re-con-ceptualization of autonomy that is adequate to the practicalitiesof resource governance in the post-neoliberal era. These practical-ities are the sediment of various eras of policymaking, and theyshow themselves in La Maica in the form of contaminated wellwater, frothy yellow river water, and the very smell of sewage thatwafts up from the fields. I have explored the interaction betweensuch historically produced inequalities and the ideal of autonomy,but other post-neoliberal ideals will undoubtedly experience asimilar re-shaping in the face of existing socio-ecological condi-tions. Across Latin America, emerging experiments in resource gov-ernance will have to adjust post-neoliberal ideals to respond tomaterial realities. As is the case with autonomy, it is possible thatthe ideals will be improved through the interaction.

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful for the feedback given by Karen Bakker,Leila Harris, Donald Moore, Corin de Freitas, Cynthia Morinvilleand three anonymous reviewers. Thanks also go to Rocío Busta-mante and the other scholars from the Centro Andino para la Gest-ión y Uso del Agua for supporting my fieldwork, and to YhasmanyMedrano for being an indispensable community liaison. This studywas funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-search Council of Canada. The usual disclaimers apply.

References

Aguatuya, 2011. Día y noche hay agua: Documentos de Sistematización delProyecto: Sistema de Agua Potable de Uso Múltiple Maica Central. Aguatuya,Cochabamba.

Albó, X., Barrios, F.X., 2006. Por una Bolivia plurinacional e intercultural conautonomías. IDH Bolivia, La Paz.

Ampuero Alcoba, R.G., 2009. Re-uso de aguas residuales en la agricultura: Unarealidad en los márgenes del Río Rocha en el Valle de Cochabamba, Bolivia. In:Espinoza, A.S. (Ed.), Justicia Ambiental y Sustentabilidad Hídrica. CGIAB,Cochabamba, pp. 119–148.

Antequera Durán, N., 2007. Territorios Urbanos: Diversidad cultural, dinámica socioeconómica y procesos de crecimiento urbano en la zona sur de Cochabamba.CEDIB/Plural Editores, Cochabamba.

Antezana, L.H., 2009[1991]. Dos conceptos en la obra de René Zavaleta Mercado:Formación abigarrada y democracia como autodeterminación. In: Sader, E. (Ed.),Pluralismo Epistemológico. Muela del Diablo Editores, La Paz, pp. 117–142.

Anthias, P., Radcliffe, S., 2015. The ethno-environmental fix and its limits:indigenous land titling and the production of not-quite-neoliberal natures inBolivia. Geoforum 64, 257–269.

Arsel, M., 2012. Between ‘Marx and Markets’? The state, the ‘left turn’ and nature inEcuador. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 103 (2), 150–163.

Assies, W., 2003. David versus Goliath in Cochabamba: water rights, neoliberalism,and the revival of social protest in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives 30 (3),14–36.

Bakker, K., 2003. An Uncooperative Commodity: Privatizing Water in England andWales. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Bakker, K., 2008. The ambiguity of community: debating alternatives to privatesector provision of urban water supply. Water Alternatives 1 (2), 236–252.

Bakker, K., 2009. Commentary: neoliberal nature, ecological fixes, and the pitfalls ofcomparative research. Environment and Planning A 41 (8), 1781–1787.

Bakker, K., 2010. The limits of ‘‘neoliberal natures’’: debating green neoliberalism.Progress in Human Geography 34 (6), 715–735.

Bebbington, A., 2009. Latin America: contesting extraction, producing geographies.Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 30 (1), 7–12.

Bebbington, A.J., Humphreys Bebbington, D., 2011. An Andean avatar: post-neoliberal and neoliberal strategies for securing the unobtainable. NewPolitical Economy 16 (1), 131–145.

Bosteels, B., 2013. ¿Puede pensarse hoy la actualidad del comunismo? Reflexionesen torno al pensamiento teórico de Álvaro García Linera. Revista Boliviana deInvestigación 10 (1), 293–323.

Brand, U., Sekler, N., 2009. Postneoliberalism: catch-all word or valuable analyticaland political concept? Aims of a beginning debate. Development Dialogue 51,5–13.

Bridge, G., 2002. Grounding globalization: the prospects and perils of linkingeconomic processes of globalization to environmental outcomes. EconomicGeography 78 (3), 361–386.

Budds, J., 2004. Power, nature and neoliberalism: the political ecology of water inChile. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 25 (3), 322–342.

Burdick, J., Oxhorn, P., Roberts, K.M., 2009. Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America?Societies and Politics at the Crossroads. Palgrave MacMillan, New York.

Bury, J., 2005. Mining mountains: neoliberalism, land tenure, livelihoods, and thenew Peruvian mining industry in Cajamarca. Environment and Planning A 37(2), 221–239.

Bustamante, R., Crespo, C., Walnycki, A., 2012. Seeing through the concept of wateras a human right in Bolivia. In: Sultana, F., Loftus, A. (Eds.), The Right to Water:Politics, Governance and Social Struggles. Earthscan, New York, pp. 223–240.

Bustillos Zamorano, I., 2012. Nos falta una tercera vía, autónoma ante partidos ycaudillos. La Razón, La Paz.

Calderón, F., 2008. La inflexión política en el cambio sociocultural de AméricaLatina. In: Calderón, F. (Ed.), Escenarios Políticos en América Latina. Programade las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD)/Siglo XXI, Buenos Aires, pp.15–102.

Castree, N., 2008a. Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation andreregulation. Environment and Planning A 40 (1), 131–152.

Castree, N., 2008b. Neoliberalising nature: processes, effects, and evaluations.Environment and Planning A 40 (1), 153–173.

Castro, J.E., 2007. Water governance in the twentieth-first century. Ambiente &Sociedade 10 (2), 97–118.

Choque, M.E., Mamani, C., 2001. Reconstitución del ayllu y derechos de los pueblosindígenas: El movimiento indio en los Andes de Bolivia. The Journal of LatinAmerican Anthropology 6 (1), 202–224.

Crespo, C., 2011. Estado y autonomía en Bolivia, una interpretación anarquista.Bolpress. <http://www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2011041902> (retrieved06.05.13).

David, M.B.de A., Dirven, M., Vogelgesang, F., 2000. The impact of the new economicmodel on Latin America’s agriculture. World Development 28 (9), 1673–1688.

Dieterich, H., 2006. Evo Morales, Communitarian Socialism, and the Regional PowerBlock. MR Zine. <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/dieterich070106.html> (retrieved 06.05.13).

Eaton, K., 2007. Backlash in Bolivia: regional autonomy as a reaction againstindigenous mobilization. Politics & Society 35 (1), 71–102.

Escobar, A., 2010. Latin America at a crossroads. Cultural Studies 24 (1), 1–65.Fernández Osco, M., 2010. Ayllu: decolonial critical thinking and (an)other

autonomy. In: Blaser, M., de Costa, R., McGregor, D., Coleman, W.D. (Eds.),Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights for a Global Age. University ofBritish Columbia Press, Vancouver, pp. 27–46.

Fuentes, F., 2012. The Morales Government: Neoliberalism in Disguise?International Socialism (134). <http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=803> (retrieved06.05.13).

Galeano, E., 1973. Open Veins of Latin America. Monthly Review Press, New York.García Linera, Á., 2009. El ‘‘descubrimiento’’ del estado. In: Stefanoni, P., Ramírez, F.,

Svampa, M. (Eds.), Las vías de la emancipación: Conversaciones con ÁlvaroGarcía Linera. Ocean Sur, México, DF, pp. 74–88.

Ghielmi, G., Mondaca, G., Luján, M., 2008. Diagnóstico sobre el nivel decontaminación de acuíferos en el distrito 9 del municipio de Cercado en laciudad de Cochabamba y propuesta para su protección y control. Acta Nova 4(1), 51–86.

Grugel, J., Riggirozzi, P., 2009. Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America.Palgrave-MacMillan, New York.

Gudynas, E., 2011. Tensiones, contradicciones y oportunidades de la dimensionambiental del Buen Vivir. In: Farah, H.I., Vasapollo, L. (Eds.), Vivir Bien:Paradigma No Capitalista? CIDES-UMSA/Plural Editores, La Paz, pp. 231–260.

Gustafson, B., 2009. Manipulating cartographies: plurinationalism, autonomy, andindigenous resurgence in Bolivia. Anthropological Quarterly 82 (4), 985–1016.

Gutiérrez Aguilar, R., 2008. Los ritmos de Pachakuti: Movilización y levantamientoindígena-popular en Bolivia (2000–2005). Tinta Limón, Buenos Aires.

Harris, L., 2009. Gender and emergent water governance: comparative overview ofneoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization, devolution andmarketization. Gender, Place and Culture 16 (4), 387–408.

Harris, L., Roa-García, M.C., 2013. Recent waves of water governance: constitutionalreform and resistance to neoliberalization in Latin America (1990–2012).Geoforum 50, 20–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.07.009.

Heynen, N., McCarthy, J., Prudham, S., Robbins, P., 2007. Neoliberal Environments:False Promises and Unnatural Consequences. Routledge, New York.

Himley, M., 2008. Geographies of environmental governance: the nexus of natureand neoliberalism. Geography Compass 2 (2), 433–451.

Jessop, B., 2002. Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: a state-theoretical perspective. Antipode 34 (3), 452–472.

Kaup, B.Z., 2010. A neoliberal nationalization? Latin American Perspectives 37 (3),123–138.

256 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246–256

Kennemore, A., Weeks, G., 2011. Twenty-first century socialism? The elusive searchfor a post-neoliberal development model in Bolivia and Ecuador. Bulletin ofLatin American Research 30 (3), 1–15.

Klooster, D., 2003. Forest transitions in Mexico: institutions and forests in aglobalized countryside. Professional Geographer 55 (2), 227–237.

Kohl, B., 2010. Bolivia under morales. Latin American Perspectives 37 (3), 107–122.Kohl, B., Farthing, L., 2012. Material constraints to popular imaginaries: the

extractive economy and resource nationalism in Bolivia. Political Geography31 (4), 225–235.

Larner, W., 2007. Neoliberal governmentalities. In: Heynen, N., Mccarthy, J.,Prudham, S., Robbins, P. (Eds.), Neoliberal Environments: False Promises andUnnatural Consequences. Routledge, New York, pp. 217–220.

Laurie, N., Andolina, R., Radcliffe, S., 2002. The excluded ‘Indigenous’? Theimplications of multi-ethnic policies for water reform in Bolivia. In: Sieder, R.(Ed.), Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, andDemocracy. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 252–276.

Laurie, N., Marvin, S., 1999. Globalisation, neoliberalism, and negotiateddevelopment in the Andes: water projects and regional identity inCochabamba. Bolivia. Environment and Planning A 31 (8), 1401–1415.

Ledo, C., 2008. El Agua Nuestra de Cada Día. CEPLAG, Cochabamba.Liverman, D., Vilas, S., 2006. Neoliberalism and the environment in Latin America.

Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31, 327–363.MacDonald, L., Ruckert, A., 2009. Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas. Palgrave

Macmillan, Basingstoke.Mariátegui, J.C., 2011[1929]. On the indigenous problem. In: Vanden, H.E., Becker,

M. (Eds.), José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology. Monthly Review Press, NewYork, pp. 145–150.

Medrano Vargas, W., 2001. Evaluación de la Calidad de Aguas Residuales de laPlanta de Tratamiento de Alba Rancho (SEMAPA) con Fines de Riego.Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Levantamiento de Recursos Hídricos,Cochabamba.

Mehta, L., Allouche, J., Nicol, A., Walnycki, A., 2014. Global environmental justiceand the right to water: the case of peri-urban Cochabamba and Delhi. Geoforum54, 158–166.

Mignolo, W.D., 2012. Mariátegui and gramsci in ‘‘Latin’’ America: Betweenrevolution and decoloniality. In: Srivastava, N., Bhattacharya, B. (Eds.), ThePostcolonial Gramsci. Taylor & Francis, New York, pp. 191–217.

MMAyA, 2009. Plan Nacional de Saneamiento Básico 2008–2015. Ministerio deMedio Ambiente y Agua, La Paz.

MMAyA, 2013. Plan Maestro Metropolitano de Agua Potable y Saneamiento del ÁreaMetropolitana de Cochabamba, Bolivia. Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Agua,La Paz.

Natanson, J., 2007. Las reformas pactadas: Entrevista a Álvaro García Linera. NuevaSociedad 209, 160–172.

Orta, A., 2013. Forged communities and vulgar citizens: autonomy and its Límites inSemineoliberal Bolivia. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology18 (1), 108–133.

Perreault, T., 2006. From the Guerra Del Agua to the Guerra Del Gas: resourcegovernance, neoliberalism and popular protest in Bolivia. Antipode 38 (1), 150–172.

Perreault, T., 2008. Custom and contradiction: rural water governance and thepolitics of Usos y Costumbres in Bolivia’s irrigators’ movement. Annals of theAssociation of American Geographers 98 (4), 834–854.

Perreault, T., 2012. Dispossession by accumulation? Mining, water and the nature ofenclosure on the Bolivian Altiplano. Antipode. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anti.12005.

Pickerill, J., Chatterton, P., 2006. Notes towards autonomous geographies: creation,resistance and self-management as survival tactics. Progress in HumanGeography 30 (6), 730–746.

Postero, N., 2010. Morales’s MAS government: building indigenous popularhegemony in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives 37 (3), 18–34.

Radcliffe, S., 2012. Development for a postneoliberal era? Sumak kawsay, living welland the limits to decolonisation in Ecuador. Geoforum 43 (2), 240–249.

Regalsky, P., 2010. Political processes and the reconfiguration of the state in Bolivia.Latin American Perspectives 37 (172), 35–50.

Rivera Cusicanqui, S., 1991. Pachakuti: The Historical Horizons of InternalColonialism. <http://www.web.ca/~bthomson/degrowth/pachakuti_cusicanqui_1991.pdf> (retrieved 06.05.13).

Roa-García, M.C., Urteaga-Crovetto, P., Bustamante-Zenteno, R., 2015. Water laws inthe Andes: A promising precedent for challenging neoliberalism Geoforum. 64,270–280.

Roberts, K.M., 2009. Beyond neoliberalism: popular responses to social change inLatin America. In: Burdick, J., Oxhorn, P., Roberts, K.M. (Eds.), BeyondNeoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads.Macmillan, London/New York, pp. 1–16.

Rose, N., 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, UK.

Sader, E., 2009. Postneoliberalism in Latin America. Development Dialogue 51, 170–179.

Sader, E., 2011. The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left. Verso, New York.SEMAPA, 2003. Programa de Gestión Empresarial: Informe Fase 1. SEMAPA,

Cochabamba.Spronk, S., 2007. Roots of resistance to urban water privatization in Bolivia: the

‘‘new working class’’, the crisis of neoliberalism, and public services.International Labor and Working Class History 71, 8–28.

Spronk, S., 2012. Post-neoliberalism in Latin America? Urban water supplymanagement in Bolivia under Evo Morales. Paper presented at the LatinAmerican Studies Association conference, San Francisco, CA.

Spronk, S., Webber, J.R., 2007. Struggles against accumulation by dispossession inBolivia. Latin American Perspectives 34 (2), 31–47.

Swyngedouw, E., 1996. The city as a hybrid: on nature, society and cyborgurbanization. Capitalism Nature Socialism 7 (2), 65–80.

Swyngedouw, E., 2005. Governance innovation and the citizen: the Janus face ofgovernance-beyond-the-state. Urban Studies 42 (11), 1991–2006.

Vera Varela, R., 1995. Misicuni: La Frustracion de un Pueblo? Aliaga, Cochabamba.Webber, J.R., 2009. From naked barbarism to barbarism with benefits: neoliberal

capitalism, natural gas policy, and the Evo Morales government in Bolivia. In:MacDonald, L., Ruckert, A. (Eds.), Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas. PalgraveMacmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 105–119.

Webber, J.R., 2011. From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, IndigenousLiberation and the Politics of Evo Morales. Haymarket Books, Chicago.

Yates, J.S., Bakker, K., 2013. Debating the ‘post-neoliberal turn’ in Latin America.Progress in Human Geography. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132513500372.

Zibechi, R., 2010. Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces. AKPress, Oakland, Edinburgh, Baltimore.

Interviews

Bustamante, Rocío. Interview with the author, July 2011.Crespo Flores, Carlos. Interview with the author, July 2011.Heredia, Gustavo. Interview with the author, August 2011.