Defending water and life: domestic ecologies and social reproduction in Buenaventura

Abstract

During the last four decades, communities in the city of Buenaventura, Colombia’s main seaport, have mobilized in order to access public water services. Privatization, poor infrastructural maintenance, and intermittence have made access to water a matter of concern. In this context, the Committee for the Defense of Water and Life came into being in 2014, as an urban grassroots organization, making calls on the city’s population to mobilize for their right to clean water. In this article, however, we argue that the acts of defending water are not limited to the realm of collective action and overt activism against national and local governmental decisions. Rather, defending water in places such as Buenaventura is also an everyday gendered practice where water is secured and protected against other beings such as microbes and/or mosquitoes. Drawing on collaborative work, we document how women protect water in less visible scenarios such as the home. These women engage in a repertoire of domestic activities and techniques in order to obtain, store and keep water clean, as stored (and therefore stagnant) waters are never only water but are also home to large and threatening communities of organisms such as microbes and mosquitoes on their water stages. We bring political ecology indoors to reflect on how gendered domestic spaces become a dynamic and crucial ecological and political arena for the defense of water and life.

Keywords:

• Water
• domestic ecologies
• mosquito-borne diseases
• political ecology
• social reproduction
• stored water

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation

Acknowledgements

The research project upon which this article is based was funded by the DUPC2 Water and Development Partnership Programme, project number 109356. The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude to the people of Buenaventura. Their generosity in sharing their time, knowledge, and experiences was crucial in the completion of this research project. We are particularly grateful for their willingness to work with us and for their invaluable contributions to our understanding of the meaning of water in their homes, communities, and activism. This project would not have been possible without their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Water and Development Partnership Programme DUPC2. Grant No. 109356.

Notes on contributors

Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero

Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero is an engaged researcher and educator from Santander, Colombia. She currently works as Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University, where she forms part of the Environmental Governance Group. Her work is situated broadly at the intersection of urban studies and political ecology. She was recently awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study the home as a place of social and ­ecological processes.

Alejandro Camargo

Alejandro Camargo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Social Sciences at Universidad del Norte, in Barranquilla, Colombia. He is an environmental social scientist who is broadly interested water-land-society relationships in fluvial environments, agrarian relations, and the environmental history of development.

Clara E. Roa-García

Clara E. Roa-García teaches at the Faculty of Engineering and Administration at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Palmira campus. She holds a Ph.D. in Soil Science at the University of British Columbia. She is interested in water resources, environmental governance, land use, and sustainable development.

María Cecilia Roa-García

María Cecilia Roa-García is an Associate Professor and researcher at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her research focuses on environmental justice from transdisciplinary perspectives, especially on issues related to water, extractive frontiers and environmental democracy.