Water Regimes and Infrastructures: A Transhistorical Archaeology of the Desaguadero River, Bolivia

Abstract

This article uses tensions over the construction of a flow-regulation infrastructure built to control outflow from Lake Titicaca into the Desaguadero River, on the border between Peru and Bolivia, as a case study to explore the ways that relationships to water emerge and are contested. We argue that a nuanced understanding of tensions arising from this infrastructure requires us to recognize the long-term history of how the river accumulated practices, meanings and materials. Adapting the work of Arturo Escobar, we use the concept of ‘water regime’ to think about how engagements with the river are based in different spatiotemporal frameworks that have developed transhistorically and come into tension around the materiality and dynamism of the river itself.