Abstract
There is a forceful new impetus toward mega-hydraulic projects in Latin America, which are booming but also highly controversial. They bring benefits to some social groups while many others are negatively affected. Technocratic discourses are dominant in the region; they strategically mobilize institutions, infrastructure, money, and knowledge to present particular hydrosocial territorial imaginaries—such as multipurpose dams—as natural, universal, and politically neutral. Meanwhile, affected local communities commonly envision and practice different discourses, values, and worldviews, based on contextualized notions of well-being and territoriality. Using a political ecology perspective, this article examines how the Daule-Peripa mega-hydraulic scheme—Ecuador’s “hydraulic heart”—has de- and repatterned the territory, producing new hierarchical relations and unequal distribution of socioenvironmental impacts. Though political discourses have changed throughout state-centralist and neoliberal époques, governmental policies and practices have continued and renewed their defense of mega-hydraulism. In turn, affected communities and families, through everyday territorial politics, respond and aim to rearrange the hydrosocial network in order to regain control over water, land, and territorial services.
Highlights
“They call Daule-Peripa . . . the Crown Jewel because it was a success! . . . It provides water for two provinces and energy for the entire national system, plus it is the hydraulic heart controlling the whole (CEDEGE), June 27, 2014
This article’s subject is relevant beyond the Ecuadorian case: regardless of socioenvironmental impacts, this controversial Latin American state-market model significantly financed a new boom of large dam constructions, legitimizing aggressive economic development, territorial transformation, and extractive industrialization in order to foster poverty reduction and “living well” (Gudynas and Acosta 2010)
By exploring the Daule-Peripa multipurpose dam, constructed under neoliberal governments, it contributes to a better understanding of mega-hydraulism as a sociotechnical construct from a repoliticized, contextual, and historical perspective
Summary
“They call Daule-Peripa . . . the Crown Jewel because it was a success! . . . It provides water for two provinces and energy for the entire national system, plus it is the hydraulic heart controlling the whole. While dominant rulers implement (by force or not) norms (e.g., land access and use regulations, fixed schedules for people’s access to transport, centralized logic of water supply) according to their own notions of hydrosocial territoriality, local actors’ rules and access to resources are affected and reconfigured. Under these logics, the Guayas River basin and the Daule-Peripa project were declared strategic and of national interest.. They are fundamentally battles over discourses and legitimate authority, which are structural to the reconfiguration of hydrosocial territories (see Zwarteveen and Boelens 2014; Hoogesteger, Boelens, and Baud 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
