The “water-tamers” and the construction of the hydraulic society in Mendoza, Argentina

MONTAÑA, ELMA

Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, Brazil

Congreso; XIV IWRA Water Congress: "Adaptive Water Management: Looking to the Future"; 2011

International Water Resources Association

In Mendoza, Argentina, as in other South American drylands, oases that appear as green islands in a vast desert space. The powerful oases celebrate the human conquest of a hostile na¬ture, while non-irrigated lands are a "no-man´s land" and subor¬dinate spaces. The paper presents the Mendocinean water bureaucracy (State, politicians, engineers, wine producers, businessmen) in shaping this hydraulic society and in building its contrasting territory in the context of a “modern” society-nature relationship paradigm that nurtured public policies oriented to “order” first and then to “progress”, what explains a good deal of the actual social and spatial inequities. An historical approach allows the understanding of the present territorial configuration of Mendoza as a result of social forces unfolded on water use and administration, ending up by presenting the new challenges faced by the water administration system in times of global environmental change and natural resources mercantilization.