| In Bolivia's Cochabamba valley, many sectors have turned to groundwater to alleviate chronic water shortages. As such, small-scale farmers have formed cooperatives to install deep irrigation wells and electric pumps. Likewise, they have devised institutions to manage the wells and the distribution of groundwater. Despite descriptions in the popular media and development literature of a chaotic process, the farmers' groundwater exploitation has not emerged in a cultural vacuum. Instead, Andean surface water irrigation has a long history and a rich body of cultural principles that inform it, although these principles appear in variant forms in different contexts.; This research analyzed the emergence of property rights and the institutional arrangements that order the use and management of groundwater by farmers in Cochabamba, with a focus on the manner in which Andean concepts of natural resource management, local history, and non-materialistic valuations of property affect the institutions. Research was conducted in a rural community over a one-year period, from August 2001 to September 2002. Participant observation, informal and formal interviewing, archival research, and a survey were the primary means of obtaining data.; Economic, cultural, and historical factors were found to contribute to the creation and evolution of the institutions employed in Cochabamba's communal groundwater irrigation. The irrigators drew on their vast experience in surface water irrigation and applied, adapted, and shifted the principles that have informed their irrigation for centuries. While several institutions in Cochabamba's groundwater irrigation systems are common cross-culturally, many are uniquely Andean. In particular, groundwater irrigation's monetary context leads to differences in surface water and groundwater irrigation institutions. Moreover, groundwater carries different sentiments and expectations than surface water, leading to differences in how the two types of water are held, viewed, and managed, and the manner in which Andean concepts of natural resource management are manifested in each. |
