Ollantay Itzamná
La Igualdad Community. San Pablo. O.I.
We are water that walks, that loves, that thinks, that dreams. We are water that organizes itself socio-politically to channel our forces and become rivers of struggles for Life. That is what we are. Water.
Modern civilization, both in its liberal and socialist perspective, established two hegemonic conceptions about water.
Liberals assume that water is a natural resource that should be managed by private initiative to provide for those who have the capacity to pay for it.
Socialists assume that water is a natural resource that should be managed by states to guarantee access to water for the entire human population.
These two anthropocentric conceptions assume water as a resource (an element of the economy, just as they assume the forest or soils). They even assumed it as an infinite natural resource (that could not be exhausted), exclusive to humans.
Purulha. O.I.
Faced with the daily evidence of planetary imbalances, modern civilization, through the United Nations (UN), established, in 2010, access to water and sanitation services as a fundamental human right, at the initiative of the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. Since then, and even before, some states have incorporated this right as part of the human rights catalog in their legal systems.
In recent years, in view of the inability of modern knowledge and technologies to guarantee access to water for humanity, various options for water management have been tested. From the public policies adopted by some local governments to declare and recognize rivers and lakes as living beings, subjects of rights, to the repeated practices of privatization of water as a commodity that generates foreign exchange.
What is certain is that, at the moment, of the nearly 8 billion inhabitants of the world, more than 50% do not have access to clean water. And many of those who supposedly drink “drinking water” drink bottled “dead water”. Nearly one billion people are thirsty in the world!
Water is scarce, and what water there is, to a large extent, is contaminated or is being bottled for sale. The markets, year after year, demand more agricultural production. Thus, the dispute for water is increasing in rural areas, apart from the poisoning of water bodies by the use of agrochemicals…
In this difficult planetary water reality, it is important to turn our gaze and try to understand the non-modern conceptions and upbringing of water.
Although almost nothing is free from “mercantilization”, for the native peoples water is a living being with rights and obligations (it has the right to receive offerings and the obligation to provide life to the cosmic community, for example).
El Chorro. San Francisco Zapotitlán. O.I.
Water is the source, the origin, of the existence of the whole. There are the different legends that narrate the mythical origins of diverse civilizations emerging from and with water. Water is one of the divinities that gave origin and preserve life, in its different forms, in the cosmic community. Water is what makes it possible for Life to exist. And everything has life. In that sense it is a divine being.
Water is Mama Yacu (mother water, it is said in Quechua) that creates and procreates Life. Our Mother who breastfeeds us throughout our existence until more than 70% of our organism is composed of water. In that sense we are water. We have the identity and essence of Water.
We have been hiding this awareness and identity of water as we pursued modernity as a civilizing horizon. But now, faced with the limits of modernity to “manage natural resources” it is time to rethink our identity and spirituality of water. We are water that walks, that loves, that thinks, that dreams. We are water that organizes itself sociopolitically to channel our forces and become rivers of struggles for Life. That is what we are. Water.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 