Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256

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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Autonomy in a post-neoliberal era: Community water governance

in Cochabamba, Bolivia q
Andrea J. Marston
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Bolivias leftward political shift, which is frequently described as post-neoliberal, is crucially linked to
Available online 27 September 2013 the ideal of autonomy. While autonomy has a long history among leftist theorists and social movements
in Latin America, its contemporary importance is related to an ongoing effort on the part of scholars and
Keywords: activists to identify an alternative organizational form that eschews both state actors and private entities.
Autonomy Drawing on eldwork conducted with a group of community-run water systems in peri-urban Coc-
Post-neoliberalism habamba, this paper asks what autonomous water governance looks like in practice. By presenting a case
Neoliberal natures
in which the community water systems made a series of structurally limited autonomous decisions
Environmental governance
Community
that ultimately bound them more closely to the local state and private sector, the paper argues that
Latin America autonomy faces socio-ecological limitations when conceptualized as a project of internal self-governance.
Bolivia Socio-ecological processes take place at multiple scales and over long time spans; a radical politics of
autonomy therefore necessitates a spatially extroverted project that focuses on building strategic alli-
ances that strengthen community autonomy in the long-term.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction general agreement among scholars that it involves new articulations

Among the increasingly long list of Latin American countries
that have purportedly entered a post-neoliberal era, Bolivia stands
out for the links that various policymakers and activists have
drawn between the concepts of community and nation-state. Cur-
rent President Evo Moraless political discourse is saturated with
references to indigenous organizational forms (such as the ayllu1)
and values (such as suma qamaa, an Aymara principle that trans-
lates roughly as living well together [Gudynas, 2011, p. 233]). Vice
president and public intellectual lvaro Garca Linera, whose politi-
cal theory in large part underwrites national policy decisions, has
long argued that the Bolivian path towards socialism requires a
mobilization of indigenous, peasant, and other community organiza-
tions alongside workers unions (Bosteels, 2013). Although Bolivias
proceso del cambio has been variously called indigenous neodevel-
opmentalism (Caldern, 2008), indigenous nationalism (Postero,
2010), and communitarian socialism (Dieterich, 2006), there is
q
All translations by the author.
Present address: Geography Department, University of California at Berkeley,
507 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA.
E-mail address: ajmarston@berkeley.edu
1
An ayllu is an Aymara community structure. According to Andrew Orta, it
denotes an explicitly indigenous Andean mode of social organization afliating an
array of social groupings, extending down to the level of a conjugal household, into a
larger regional polity through a set of mutually reinforcing administrative, ritual and
economic practices (Orta, 2013, p. 111).
of community-based formations within national space.
Crucially linked to the importance of community is the political
signicance of autonomy, or self-governance (autonoma or auto-
gestin). Since Morales came to power in 2005, he and many of
his key advisors have argued that the recognition of autonomous
regions is compatible with the construction of a re-founded,
plurinational nation-state (c.f. Alb and Barrios, 2006). But auton-
omy, paradoxically, is also a driving ideal for both progressive and
reactionary groups that are trying to delineate their separation
from the state. Although the call for autonomy is at present most
strongly associated with the conservative departments of the
Bolivian lowlands, it is also a key organizing principle for many
left-wing and indigenous activists who have found the Morales
administration to be less than fully satisfactory, especially on ques-
tions of natural resource governance and environmental justice
(Zibechi, 2010; Webber, 2011).
Among the collectives that such activists most frequently con-
jure to exemplify autonomy, the community-run water systems
operating around the city of Cochabamba stand out both for their
past accomplishments and their present operations. In the year
2000, these water committees (comits de agua) were active
instigators of the citys celebrated Water War (Guerra del Agua),
an event that reversed the privatization of the citys water supply
and is often identied as the catalyst of Bolivias post-neoliberal
shift (Kennemore and Weeks, 2011; Bebbington, 2009). At present,
the water committees continuous efforts to maintain control of

0016-7185/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
water infrastructure and decision-making processes rather than
cede power to SEMAPA, the public water utility reveal the com-
mittees to be notably anti-state as well as anti-privatization (Cre-
spo, 2011).
Given the political weight of autonomy in contemporary Boli-
via, it is appropriate to ask to what degree it exists as a practical
attribute among a group that is frequently called upon to epito-
mize it. In practice, to what degree are the Cochabamba water
committees able to operate autonomously from public, private,
and other non-community inuences? I explore this question by
drawing on primary data gathered in La Maica, a peri-urban region
of Cochabamba. In the face of challenges related to water scarcity
and poor water quality, water committees in La Maica have en-
tered into a series of partnerships with non-community entities;
I show that the emerging inter-institutional partnerships constrain
the water committees autonomy even when ameliorating their
water supply. I argue that there are socio-ecological limits to the
degree to which water committees and other such attempts at
community resource management can be autonomous in the
sense of internally self-governing. Socio-ecological processes take
place at multiple scales and over long time spans, and unqualied
enthusiasm over internal autonomy occludes the external limita-
tions imposed by (socially produced) inequalities in resource ac-
cess and by the material reality of ecological cycles. Taking
Pickerill and Chattertons (2006) point that autonomous geogra-
phies offer a uniquely productive starting point for identifying
life beyond capitalism, the broader aim of this paper is to suggest
that the struggle for resource autonomy must be conceived as an
ongoing, spatially extroverted project rather than an attempt to
carve out bounded autonomous places.
I begin by reviewing the debates around neoliberal natures, La-
tin American post-neoliberalism, and the importance of autonomy
in Bolivia historically and in its contemporary incarnations. After
discussing the origins, geographical distribution, and political role
of the Cochabambas community water systems, I focus on one
group of water committees in the peri-urban neighborhood of Mai-
ca Central. In order to show the socio-ecological reasons why water
committees interact with non-community entities and the impli-
cations of such interactions I describe Maica Centrals water con-
ditions and analyze a collaborative water project that was designed
to address the regions water challenges. Finally, I offer a re-con-
ceptualization of autonomy that recognizes socio-ecological limi-
tations and, I hope, is ample enough to contribute to the
development of a theory of post-neoliberal natures.
The empirical research for this paper was carried out between
June and October 2011. The data presented in Sections 46 reect
a variety of methods: 56 surveys conducted in the peri-urban zone
of La Maica, eight semi-structured interviews with water commit-
tee presidents in La Maica, and over 40 semi-structured interviews
with a variety of water experts throughout Cochabamba and La
Paz, including academics, NGO leaders, activists, engineers, local
state ofcials, and representatives from state ministries and devel-
opment entities.2 In addition to these more formal methods, I also
attended water committee meetings regularly over the four-month
period, both in La Maica and in other peri-urban regions of Coc-
habamba, and spent many days walking around La Maica with com-
mittee leaders who explained how their water systems worked and
pointed out specic water management challenges.
2
The surveys conducted in La Maica were conducted at the family level and
focused on water sources and uses; the main purpose was to identify primary water-
related challenges faced by residents and the families strategies to address these
challenges. All 56 surveys were given orally: 53 were conducted in Spanish by the
author, and 3 were conducted in Quechua with the assistance of a research assistant/
translator. The interviews with water committee leaders and water experts were all
conducted in Spanish by the author.
247
2. Neoliberal natures and post-neoliberalism in Latin America
The past decade has been witness to an explosion of literature
exploring both the neoliberalization of environmental manage-
ment practices and the environmental dimensions of neoliberal-
ism writ large (Heynen et al., 2007; Castree, 2008a, 2008b;
Himley, 2008; Harris, 2009). At its broadest, this body of scholar-
ship asks how neoliberal policies are shifting the ways that bio-
physical natures are commodied, managed, and imagined in
relation to society. Emphasis is usually placed on the co-constitu-
tion of nature and political economy, but this neoliberal nat-
ures literature is also increasingly signaling the technocratic
character of contemporary environmental management interven-
tions. Indeed, the very use of the term environmental gover-
nance suggests the depoliticization of naturesociety
interactions and the reduction of state actors to mere property
guarantors (Castro, 2007). Environmental experts dene the
boundaries of sustainable and efcient governance, some-
times in conversation with a broadly conceived civil society
whose opinions are extracted through designated participatory
mechanisms (Larner, 2007; Swyngedouw, 2005).
More specically, the neoliberalization of environmental gov-
ernance is usually understood as a series of interventions in re-
source management institutions (values, norms, laws),
organizational structure (decision-making bodies and hierar-
chies), and decision-making practices (Bakker, 2009, 2010). These
interventions generally refer to a combination of privatization
(full or partial), deregulation (and reregulation), commercializa-
tion, marketization, and re-scaled governance. Latin America, as
one of the most profoundly neoliberalized regions of the world
(Sader, 2011), functioned as a laboratory for numerous experi-
ments in neoliberal environmental governance throughout the
1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s (Liverman and Vilas, 2006). Most
notably, these experiments have included the privatization of ur-
ban water supply (Perreault, 2006; Budds, 2004), the acceleration
of industrial resource extraction (minerals and hydrocarbons)
(Bridge, 2002; Bury, 2005), the decentralization of forest manage-
ment (Klooster, 2003), and the intensication of export-oriented
agriculture (David et al., 2000).
Over the last fteen years, however, numerous Latin American
countries have elected left-leaning and often vocally anti-neolib-
eral administrations.3 These elections, which tended to follow on
the heels of widespread social mobilization in opposition to neolib-
eral governments, have in turn spawned a heated academic debate
over the possibility that certain Latin American countries espe-
cially Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, but also Argentina, Brazil,
Uruguay, Paraguay, and most recently Peru have entered a post-
neoliberal era (Sader, 2009; Brand and Sekler, 2009; Burdick
et al., 2009; Escobar, 2010; Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2009). At its most
general, the term post-neoliberalism signals a shift away from
though not necessarily a wholesale break with the neoliberal te-
nets of privatization, marketization, commodication, and deregula-
tion. Given the ambiguity of the term shift, academic debates
about post-neoliberalism have tended to focus on the relative utility
of the term in various Latin American contexts. For those who see
merit in the word, post-neoliberalism can be characterized mainly
by a search for progressive policy alternatives arising out of the many
contradictions of neoliberalism (Macdonald and Ruckert, 2009, p. 6
emphasis added). The focus here is on political discourse and policy
3
Generally, the start of the (electoral) pink tide in Latin America is associated
with Hugo Chvezs landslide victory in Venezuela in 1998 and his promise of a new
socialism for the 21st century (Macdonald and Ruckert, 2009, p. 1). Since then,
eleven other countries have followed suit. Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador are most
frequently referenced as representing the most fervent opposition to neoliberalism
(c.f. Escobar, 2010; Radcliffe, 2012).
248 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
reforms, including both constitutional and legal changes, and the
underlying conviction is that Latin American political experiments
are redistributing political and economic power in ways worthy of
cautious optimism, even if they do not involve transformations to
the material basis of society (Sader, 2011; Fuentes, 2012; Roberts,
2009; Harris and Roa-Garca, 2015).
By contrast, many scholars who focus on material and economic
relations have observed little reason to celebrate contemporary
political experiments. By far the most commonly cited reason for
denying the utility of term post-neoliberal is the persistent role
of natural resource extraction in supposedly post-neoliberal Latin
American economies (Webber, 2009; Bebbington and Humphreys
Bebbington, 2011; Arsel, 2012; Kennemore and Weeks, 2011).
Facilitated by the global commodity boom of the last decade, in-
creased exploitation of mineral and hydrocarbon reserves has pro-
vided the economic lubrication for many of the policy experiments
currently underway in Latin America. Not only does such large-
scale extraction frequently override indigenous territorial claims,
pollute huge stretches of water and soil, and involve the construc-
tion of highways through protected areas thus belying state
claims to be privileging the rights of indigenous people and
Pachamama (Mother Earth) but its centrality within Latin Amei-
can economies also shows signicant continuity with previous eras
of Latin American history, stretching all the way back to the colo-
nial era (Galeano, 1973; Kohl and Farthing, 2012; Perreault, 2012).
The apparent rupture between these two interpretations of con-
temporary Latin America can perhaps be overcome by distinguish-
ing between post-neoliberalism as a utopian-ideological project, as
reected primarily in political and academic discourse, and post-
neoliberalism an emerging set of policies and practices, as do Yates
and Bakker in a recent review paper (2013). According to the
authors, while the utopian project may reach towards a world after
neoliberalism, historically produced structural conditions con-
strain political practices to a variety of post-neoliberal paths. The
ongoing dialectic between utopian-idealism and material condi-
tions of possibility shape the kinds of post-neoliberal projects that
emerge in any given place. Such a conceptualization usefully
acknowledges the limits of political discourse without dismissing
its aspirational value: political ideology helps drive changes in so-
cial relations, even if its material outcomes are not equal to its dis-
cursive reach.
I draw attention to this dialectic primarily in order to explore
the relationship between post-neoliberal policy experiments and
natural resource management. When examining the potential
emergence of post-neoliberal or not-quite-neoliberal natures, I
propose that it is important to consider not only existing politi-
cal-economic conditions but also existing socio-ecological condi-
tions, which are in turn the product of interactions between
society with all of its unequal social structures and the materi-
ality of nature (Swyngedouw, 1996). What I am suggesting is that
post-neoliberal environmental governance strategies emerge as
the result of trialectical interactions between utopian political
discourse, existing political-economic formations, and ecological
materiality. Across the region that is commonly qualied as post-
neoliberal, changes in environmental regulation and resource use
are produced not only by political ideology but also by socio-eco-
logical conditions of possibility; these conditions sometimes re-
quire that ideologicalpolitical projects be re-imagined. As I will
show in the case of water governance, community autonomy is
limited by socially produced inequalities as well as waters insis-
tence on owing across political and social borders (Bakker,
2003). In the face of such challenges, the ideal of autonomy, as re-
fracted through Bolivias recent post-neoliberal experiments, re-
quires conceptual re-working that responds to socio-ecological
realities.
3. Nature and autonomy in Bolivia
From the start, the recent leftward turn in Bolivia was tightly
bound up in questions of environmental politics and justice. The
most frequently identied post-neoliberal turning point was the
2000 Cochabamba Water War, but this event was quickly followed
by a series of other struggles. In 2003, there was widespread mobi-
lization against natural gas extraction and exportation by private
companies, and in 2005 the twin city of La Paz-El Alto followed
Cochabamba in ousting its foreign private water company (Spronk
and Webber, 2007; Perreault, 2006). Meanwhile, cocaleros (coca
cultivators) from the province of Chapare were organizing in oppo-
sition to US-led coca eradication programs; at their helm was an
activist by the name of Evo Morales, who soon transitioned to
party politics (Kohl, 2010).
It was widely assumed that Moraless 2005 presidential victory
would herald a new era of naturesociety relations in Bolivia, as he
rose to power championing the rights of Pachamama and indige-
nous groups, but Bolivias resource sectors under Moraless party,
the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo; Movement toward Socialism)
have been notable more for their continuity with previous models
of exploitation and distribution than for their radical, post-neolib-
eral transformations. The rate of resource extraction has increased
(Bebbington and Humphreys Bebbington, 2011; Webber, 2009),
the nationalization of extractive industries has been incomplete
(Kaup, 2010; Kohl and Farthing, 2012), indigenous territories have
been only irregularly protected (Anthias and Radcliffe, 2015), and
the water needs of extractive industries have been prioritized over
both potable water and irrigation (Bustamante et al., 2012).
In the soil of growing disappointment in the Morales adminis-
tration, the ideal of autonomy has grown new roots. Autonomy,
it should be underscored, is far from a new ideal for leftist theorists
or social movements in Latin America. While a full history of Latin
American autonomous theory and practice is impossible here, it is
worth noting some of the links that were cultivated between
strains of Marxism and ongoing resistance struggles by indigenous
people and peasants. As preeminent historian Silvia Rivera Cusi-
canqui argues, autonomy has been a driving ideal behind indige-
nous resistance movements since the colonial period: Indian
autonomy (territorial, social, cultural, linguistic and political) is
the starting point for building a new egalitarian, multi-ethnic na-
tion. These ideas were present in the struggles of Manqu Inka in
1536 [at the time of conquest] and both Amaru and Katari in
1780 [during a period of indigenous uprisings] (Rivera Cusicanqui,
1991, p. 7). These ideas did not evaporate after 1780, but rather
interacted with a Marxist language of autonomy in the 19th and
20th centuries. Latin American Marxists have long struggled to
construct a theory that would articulate largely self-governing
indigenous groups within a class-based revolutionary project,
and the ideal of autonomy has been central to their work. Cele-
brated Peruvian Marxist Jos Carlos Maritegui was arguing in
the early 20th century that the Andes needed a unique model of
socialism that was based on the communally governed landhold-
ings of indigenous people (Mignolo, 2012; Maritegui,
2011[1929]). Ren Zavaleta Mercado, who has been one of Bolivias
most inuential Marxist gures since the late 1950s, used the
expression formacin social abigarrada (mixed social formation)
to describe the process by which multiple modes of production
and social groups could be articulated within a single society;
according to contemporary Bolivian scholar Luis H. Antezana, this
idea was crucially linked to the self-determination (auto-
determinacin) of multiple groups within Bolivian society (Antez-
ana, 2009[1991]). Current Bolivian Vice President lvaro Garca
Linera, who was at one time inuenced by the autonomous Marxist
theories of Antonio Negri (Bosteels, 2013, p. 308), argues that
 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
communism will have to be constructed through the self-organiz-
ing capacities of society, through the processes of communitarian
wealth generation and distribution, through self-governance
(Garca Linera, 2009, p. 75). All of these theorists have articulated
their ideas with and through the self-organizing principles of var-
ious (mostly highland) indigenous social formations, whose anti-
colonial struggles echo autonomous sentiments across the
centuries.
Within this history of thought, however, can be found the ker-
nels of disagreement over the denition and utility of the word
autonomy. Whereas most Latin American Marxists were theoriz-
ing a variety of relative autonomy that could be mobilized within a
larger nation-building project, indigenous people and other com-
munities were often using autonomy to describe their separation
from the state and national projects. Groups voicing these diver-
gent meanings of autonomy have at times joined political forces,
but there remains a fundamental contradiction between those
who see autonomy as a means of guaranteeing (limited) self-gov-
ernance at the sub-national level and those who see it as part of a
larger anti-statist project. State recognition of autonomous areas
actually impedes movement towards this latter project, as it places
limits on the kinds of autonomies that can be practiced.
Despite these internal disagreements, however, autonomy has
historically been an ideal associated with (various factions of) the
Bolivian left. This status has been somewhat confounded in recent
years. Since the 1990s, wealthy landowners and business leaders in
Bolivias eastern lowlands have been calling for departmental
autonomy in an effort to protect themselves against what they
view as the threat of emerging indigenous politics (Eaton, 2007).
According to Bret Gustafson, this elite use of autonomy as a plat-
form from which to demand economic, political, and territorial
protection from the Morales administration and its supposed al-
lergy to private capital accumulation is markedly different from
the calls for indigenous autonomy that preceded it: whereas the
struggle for indigenous autonomies has at its heart an aim to trans-
gress territorial borders and build a plurinational nation-state, the
elite desire for departmental autonomy seeks to harden bound-
aries through its enclosure of the region and concepts of citizen-
ship within a territorial enclave (Gustafson, 2009, p. 1010).
While left-leaning intellectuals in Bolivia have dealt with the
tension between these two uses of autonomy by drawing an unsta-
ble line between progressive autonomies (indigenous) and reac-
tionary autonomies (departmental), the Bolivian state addressed
both simultaneously with the 2010 passage of the Law of Autono-
mies and Decentralization (Law No. 031). As is the case with most
forms of state recognition of internal difference, this law had the
effect of dening the limits of autonomy, rendering it less a polit-
ical ideal and more an administrative category. A legally recog-
nized autonomous region is, at best, only autonomous to the
extent that its actions do not conict with ofcial state agenda.
Vice President Garca Linera made this limitation explicit in an
interview with the magazine Nueva Sociedad:
...[N]either departmental autonomies nor indigenous [autono-
mies] can question the material base of general unity. They can-
not question, as some do, the basis of unity: armed forces and
national police, money, international relations, and natural
resources, including land and energy... We must avoid having
autonomy become an excuse for self-enclosure and harming
the country (Natanson, 2007, emphasis added).
Despite recognizing autonomous regions, the state thus main-
tains monopoly control of the economy, natural resources, and vio-
lence. This tension has not gone unnoticed by critics, who
emphasize the potential compatibility of state-recognized auton-
omy and state centrism. Andrew Orta, for example, argues that
249
neoliberal development ofcers and planners in Bolivia tend to
see indigenous communities as an inchoate democracy to be
tapped for new civic participation such that autonomous territo-
ries are effectively articulated within a semi-neoliberal state
(Orta, 2013, p. 109). Pablo Regalsky takes this argument one step
further, arguing that the goals of such articulation are the neutral-
ization of potentially troublesome instances of self-governance and
the re-legitimation of the nation-state, the foundations of which
were severely shaken by the protests of the early 2000s (Regalsky,
2010).
These critiques are symptomatic of a more general trend by
which Bolivian scholars and activists are shifting their political
investment away from the MAS and towards extra-statal organiza-
tional structures such as the indigenous ayllu system, El Altos
FEJUVE network,4 and Cochabambas water committees (Choque
and Mamani, 2001; Crespo, 2011; Fernndez Osco, 2010). To be pre-
cise, this might be better considered a shift back, as such commu-
nity-based organizations helmed the protests that swept across
Bolivia in the early 2000s. According to activist and scholar Raquel
Gutirrez Aguilar, the rise of the MAS in 2005 corresponded with a
diminished interest in anti-statist mobilization and an increasing
tendency towards nationalist-populism and electoral victories (Gut-
irrez Aguilar, 2008). Current disenchantment with the MAS seems
to have pushed the pendulum in the other direction. This is the con-
tinuation of an ongoing struggle between autonomy as compatible
and autonomy as incompatible with the modern nation-state.
In its current anti-statist incarnation, autonomy signals both
independence from the state and the ability to make unimpeded
collective decisions about internal operations. How exactly such
autonomy can be exercised in practice and in the long term, how-
ever, has not yet been explored. The research that I present in the
following sections shows that there are signicant socio-ecological
challenges to community autonomy, but my goal is certainly not to
dismiss autonomy as a political ideal. As Yates and Bakker point
out, post-neoliberal practice is rarely a perfect reection of its
accompanying ideology. By bringing an ideal that is so fundamen-
tal to Bolivias post-neoliberal era into conversation with the prac-
ticalities of resource governance, I hope to suggest that autonomy
cannot be understood as a process of drawing lines between com-
munity and non-community entities. Rather, it must be practiced
as a set of strategic partnerships that will support community
autonomy in the long term.
4. The socio-ecological waterscape of Cochabambas zona sur
The city of Cochabamba is divided into 14 political Districts that
vary considerably in terms of access to potable water and sanita-
tion (see Fig. 1). The zona sur, or southern region of the city, is gen-
erally acknowledged to have the least access. According to Carmen
Ledo, only 22.2% of the 250,000 residents in Districts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
and 14 have connections to the public water utility, SEMAPA (Ledo,
2008, p. 82). The zona sur is also experiencing the citys highest
population growth rate, and SEMAPAs ability to keep pace with
the rising demand is notoriously poor (Antequera Durn, 2007).
Water and sanitation coverage rates fall far below those of the
countrys two other major metropolitan areas, La Paz/El Alto in
the highlands and Santa Cruz in the lowlands (MMAyA, 2009, pp.
2425).
Water scarcity has been a problem in city and surrounding val-
ley for decades, given limited groundwater availability, a precipita-
tion gradient that favors the northern zones of the city, and
4
FEJUVE stands for Federacin de Juntas Vecinales de El Alto, or Federation of
Neighborhood Councils of El Alto. FEJUVE comprises several hundred neighborhood
associations and was the organizational platform of both the 2003 Gas War and the
2005 La Paz-El Alto Water War.
250 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
Fig. 1. Bolivia, the city of Cochabamba, and La Maica. Cartography by Eric Leinberger.
watershed that drains westwards, away from the city (Vera Varela,
1995). SEMAPAs water is drawn from both surface water and
groundwater sources, with the former meeting 40% of the utilitys
demands. Two systems of dams and storage facilities capture sur-
face water and deliver it to the northern and central areas of the
city, while four sets of (highly contested) wells to the west of the
city deliver water to the central and (in a limited sense) to the
southern regions (SEMAPA, 2003).
For the many houses in the peri-urban south of the city that
either lack public connections or receive insufcient quantities of
water, there are two main sources of potable water: aguateros,
small-scale vendors that sell water of questionable quality at exor-
bitant prices, and community-owned supply systems, also known
as water committees. While aguateros travel in tanker trucks and
make their way throughout the zona sur, the existence of water
committees is dependent on the quality and quantity of groundwa-
ter available in a given neighborhood. Cochabamba has highly un-
even groundwater distribution, with the (generally wealthier)
northern areas of the city sitting atop plentiful aquifers and large
parts of the (generally poorer) southern region without any fresh
groundwater at all.
Where water is available, community-owned wells and distri-
bution networks supply water to between 20 and 300 families.
These communal networks have varied origin stories: while some
were completely grassroots projects born out of a shared need for
water, others were established with the help of religious, non-prof-
it and international aid organizations. The governance structures of
the groups are correspondingly different, although most have a
committee presidents and secretaries (either elected or appointed
on a rotating system) and charge committee members nominal
fees for electricity and well maintenance.5 Importantly, the water
committees overlap and interact with Organizaciones Territoriales
de Base (Grassroots Territorial Organizations; OTBs), units of political
participation that were recognized in 1994 through the Ley de
5
The surveys conducted in La Maica indicated that water committees charge
between 0.50Bs and 1.00Bs (between USD $0.07 and $0.14) per cubic meter of water
(1000 L). Aguateros, by contrast, charge 35.00Bs (USD $5.00) per cubic meter of water.
 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
Participacin Popular (Popular Participation Law; LPP). This omnibus
law was passed during the presidency of Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada,
a mining magnate whose legacy is closely associated with the neo-
liberalization of Bolivias economy (Perreault, 2008). The LPPs pur-
ported goal was to decentralize decision-making processes in order
to shift government resources to neglected rural towns. It created
more than 300 municipalities and earmarked 20% of the national
budget for them; OTBs can access these funds by proposing commu-
nity development projects to their local government branches.
Where the water committees have favorable relationship with their
OTBs (and this is not always the case), the two organizations can col-
laborate to access municipal funding to improve water supply
infrastructure.
Peri-urban water committees, and especially those from the
southern part of the city, played a pivotal role in the Cochabamba
Water War. Although sometimes portrayed as a war between a for-
eign privately-owned water company and urban residents who re-
fused to pay skyrocketing tariffs,6 more nuanced analyses have
argued that the Water War was successful only because it drew to-
gether a historically antagonistic group of urban water users, peri-
urban water committees, and rural irrigators (Assies, 2003; Perrea-
ult, 2006, 2008). The latter two groups mobilized a discourse that ap-
pealed to conceptions of indigeneity by focusing on customary rural
water uses (usos y costumbres) and communal water governance.
This strategy proved highly successful, despite the facts that peri-ur-
ban communal water systems are technically on private land, a
number of the committees had been established with the assistance
of foreign NGOs, and many residents on the far outskirts of the city
had no access to groundwater at all (Laurie et al., 2002).7
The Cochabamba Water War has become an important symbol
for many anti-globalization social movements. Images of Quechua
women throwing homemade bombs at police on motorcycles are
burned on the shared retina of activists around the world. Despite
its celebrity, however, the material reality of water access in Coc-
habamba remains virtually unchanged since the pre-privatization
years. In restoring SEMAPA, Cochabamba restored a technocratic
utility that was semi-paralyzed by years of compounding debt
and fraught internal politics (Spronk, 2007). The water committees
and other social movement leaders placed much hope on the citi-
zen directorate (directorio ciudadano), the civil society representa-
tives who were elected to SEMAPAs board of directors
immediately following the Water War. These elected ofcials,
however, proved just as susceptible to SEMAPAs internal power
struggles as the other board members (author interviews), and vo-
ter turnout for their elections was appallingly low less than 2000
in a city of 650,000 (Bakker, 2008). In this context, SEMAPA has re-
turned to its pre-privatization strategy of using loans from interna-
tional development banks to nance massive development
projects, such as the Misicuni dam,8 that take decades to complete
and offer little immediate solace to residents of the zona sur. The
6
Anti-privatization organizers identied cases in which water prices had risen by
as much as 200%, though the private supplier Aguas del Tunari claimed that average
price hike was 35% (Bakker, 2008).
7
See Roa-Garca et al. (2015) for a comprehensive overview of the Water Wars
outcomes and subsequent water reforms.
8
The Misicuni dam is a regional project that has been under consideration since
the 1950s and under construction since 1996 (Vera Varela, 1995). According to recent
projections by the Ministry of the Environment and Water, once completed the
Misicuni dam will provide 68% of domestic water used in the Metropolitian Area of
Cochabamba (a region which includes six smaller municipalities). As a multiple use
project, the Misicuni dam will also produce hydroelectricity and increase available
irrigation water, though recent calculations indicate that it will not be able to meet
irrigation demand (MMAyA, 2013). The Ministry of the Environment and Water
projects that Phase 1 of the dam will be completed by 2016 and that Phase 2 will be
completed by 2021 (MMAyA, 2013). Despite its prolonged construction period, the
hopes and plans of key stakeholders in the water debates continue to rotate around
the axis of Misicuni (Laurie and Marvin, 1999).
251
Morales government, meanwhile, has not increased funding for ur-
ban water supply as promised and SEMAPAs ability to complete
its projects is nancially limited (Spronk, 2012).
In this context, the water committees have risen to prominence
both by virtue of their activity in the Water War and through their
perceived embodiment of an alternative form of water governance
that does not rely on either private or public provision. For exam-
ple, Bolivian sociologist Carlos Crespo explains the role of the water
committees in the Water War through a broadly anti-statist lens,
arguing that collective mobilization was directed less at reversing
privatization and more at preserving community autonomy:
The irrigators and the diverse communitarian potable water
systems (the most common kinds being water committees,
cooperatives, and associations) were not ghting for rights nor
citizenship, but were rather mobilizing in defense of their pre-
cious collective autonomy, which was threatened by the priv-
atization and mercantilization of water services, which
represented the continuation of Bolivian states long history of
working against communes (Crespo, 2011).
Given SEMAPAs poor performance in recent years, moreover,
many activists are suggesting a need to revisit the kinds of commu-
nitarian, non-state organizational forms that characterized mobili-
zation during the Water War. While this discourse is laced with
nostalgia, it is important to note the growing anti-statist senti-
ment. Oscar Olivera, who was one of the main leaders of the Water
War, declared in a recent newspaper interview:
We are working for a political option, and I dont mean electoral; a
third, totally autonomous political option, which would be inde-
pendent from all interference or subordination to any party or
caudillo. I repeat, the only unique way of effectively changing
the living conditions of the people is not through caudillos. In
the Water War there was no caudillo: Oscar Olivera [referring to
himself] was a spokesperson, and so was Omar Fernndez [former
leader of the irrigators union]. Who made the struggles of 2000
and 2003? The community (Bustillos Zamorano, 2012).
Oliveras third way is positioned in opposition both to private
and state control, but he focuses on the distinction between commu-
nity and state. He is attempting to explain why the Water War,
although it succeeded in subduing the threat of privatization, did
not result in the kind of resource redistribution and collective man-
agement that social movement leaders had foreseen. He identies
the problem as a return to the kind of strongman leadership for
which Latin American politicians (elected or otherwise) are famous.
The water committees, it should be noted, are not the only orga-
nizations in Cochabamba to be labeled as autonomous and self-
governing (autogestionario). These words are part of the broader re-
gional activist vocabulary and are also applied to a handful of other
exemplary organizational structures, such as cooperatives and work-
ers unions. For example, in August 2011 I attended the rst annual
International Workshop for Self-Governing Entities (Taller Internac-
ional de Empresas Autogestionarias), which was organized by the
activists who had led the charge during the Water War (notably, Os-
car Olivera gave the opening and closing remarks) and attended by
representatives of water committees, water cooperatives, and water
workers unions (i.e. SEMAPA employees). The purpose was to devel-
op and strengthen self-governing structures, and the water commit-
tees acted as one of a handful of such models.
All of this interest in the water committees and other such com-
munitarian organizations rests on the assumption that clear lines
can be drawn between the state, private entities, and community,
the latter of which can function autonomously from the rst two.
In the next few sections I show the socio-ecological challenges of
drawing such boundaries in relation to water governance.
252 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
5. Maica central: politics, economics, and water
Maica Central is a sub-section of La Maica, which is part of Dis-
trict 9 the only agricultural District in Cochabamba. Surveys
conducted here indicated that 87% of families in La Maica practice
some degree of small-scale dairy farming as either their primary or
secondary source of income. There are seven water committees in
Maica Central, each of which supplies between 36 and 290 mem-
ber-families. Six of these committees are at least 20 years old,
and were built with money and labor generated within the com-
munity. (The seventh committee, which amalgamates the others,
will be the subject of the next section.) Given their reliance on
dairy production and agriculture, residents of Maica Central rarely
use their community water connections for strictly domestic pur-
poses (drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing, washing clothes, etc.)
In fact, at the time of research, four of the seven wells in Maica
Central were pumping water that was either too salty or too con-
taminated for human consumption. In such cases, the primary pur-
pose of connections is to supply water for dairy cows, each of
which consumes upwards of 60 L of water per day.
Virtually all of the families who have dairy operations also grow
several hectares worth of crops for their livestock usually oats,
alfalfa, corn, and pasto lolium. This last crop is a type of grass that
was introduced into La Maica within the last 15 years because it
grows well in saline soil is considered highly nutritious for cows
(Ampuero Alcoba, 2009). Pasto lolium prefers damp soil and re-
quires frequent irrigation; although Maica Central is technically
served by a shared irrigation system that draws water from the
nearby lake La Angostura, in dry years there is rarely enough water
to reach the entire area. This shortage has led to the widespread
use of sewage water as an irrigation supplement (Ampuero Alcoba,
2009; Medrano Vargas, 2001). La Maica is situated immediately
alongside Alba Rancho, the citys only wastewater treatment plant,
which currently receives wastewater so far in excess of what it is
capable of treating that it discharges mostly untreated sewage di-
rectly into the river (Ghielmi et al., 2008). Depending on the loca-
tion of their elds, farmers in La Maica either access sewage water
indirectly by pumping water from the river or directly by (illegally)
tapping the pipes that lead to Alba Rancho. The polluted water acts
as a fertilizer for pasto lolium, but these advantages will likely be
eeting, Wastewater has high salt concentrations, and its continu-
ous use as irrigation water eventually turns fertile soil into unpro-
ductive white deserts.
Beyond soil salinization, the decision to irrigate with wastewater
also puts community-owned wells at an immediate and pressing risk
of contamination. Indeed, a recent study conducted in District 9 indi-
cated that the practice of irrigating with partially treated sewage
water represents one of the top two risks for wells in the region,
along with leachates from Kara Kara, the city dump. Extremely high
levels ammonium nitrate, sulfates, iron, and magnesium have been
found in many of the community-owned wells, as have above aver-
age levels of acidity and salinity (Ghielmi et al., 2008).
The two major challenges facing Maiqueos in terms of water gov-
ernance, then, are scarcity and pollution. In a sense, both of these are
socially produced. The connection is clearer in the case of pollution: it
is the citys non-functional wastewater treatment plant that is pollut-
ing a source of irrigation water, and it is the citys rapidly growing
dump that is leaching into the aquifer. Although it is true that many
residents prefer to use the polluted water as irrigation because of its
high fertilizer content, this benet would be safely obtained if the
Alba Rancho plant actually treated all the wastewater that passed
through it. Other residents are simply using it because they have
no alternative when La Angostura runs dry.
But scarcity is also socially produced, both in the sense that
dwindling groundwater is caused by human-induced stress and
in the sense that water is not equitably distributed. The water
shortage in Cochabamba is not absolute: some northern regions
of the city have artesian springs that supply unlimited water, and
residents often dig private wells in their backyards to supplement
the service they receive from SEMAPA. The public network should
be able to transport sufcient water from the north to the south,
but is stymied by an ancient network of pipes that resembles a
basket, losing water from every point, (author interview with Car-
los Crespo Flores, 2011). Moreover, the proliferation of private
wells across the city presents an unquantied drain on the citys
groundwater (author interview with Roco Bustamante, 2011). In
both those ways, scarcity is produced through human (in)activity.
Whether produced or not, however, water pollution and scar-
city remain part of the daily lived experiences of most residents
in Maica Central. Addressing these large-scale challenges as a sin-
gle water committee would be extremely challenging, if not
impossible. Instead, the strategies that the water committees have
developed often involve leaning on non-community entities for
support.
6. Aguatuya and the Maica central project
In this section I focus on a project that was coordinated mostly
by an NGO called Aguatuya. I chose this project both because its
impact was highly visible in La Maica (and in many other parts
of the zona sur) and because it exemplies the kind of inter-insti-
tutional alliances that I wish to explore. It should be noted that
there are a number of other local and international NGOs that also
work with water and sanitation in peri-urban Cochabamba, and
that they engage in this sort of alliance building to varying degrees.
Aguatuya was conceived in 2002 as the Programa Aguatuya, a
side project of the private company Plastiforte, manufacturer of
industrial plastic pipes. According to Aguatuyas director, Gustavo
Heredia, members of Plastiforte had started to notice that a large
segment of their clients were coming from the zona sur to buy
pipes for their community water systems, but that many of these
customers could not afford the high quality pipes that were most
suitable for the quantities of water that they needed to transport.
Programa Aguatuya was formed to provide nancial assistance to
this population. Within three years, the program had proven so
successful that Aguatuya broke away from Plastiforte and became
a foundation, though it maintained strong connections to the pri-
vate company (author interview with Gustavo Heredia, 2011).
In 2004, Aguatuya launched its agship project, Agua Para To-
dos, which was based on an inter-institutional alliance between
Aguatuya, the municipal government of Cochabamba, SEMAPA,
and the UNDP. The mandated goal was to assist in the construction
of new water distribution networks for peri-urban communities
with the idea of connecting to the central municipal system in
the future (Aguatuya, 2011). With this long-term goal in mind,
specic tasks were assigned to each of the participating members:
the UNDP was primarily a nancing agency, the municipal govern-
ment assisted in identifying demand, and SEMAPA assured that the
designs met the municipal water systems technical specications
(ibid).
Heredia describes the process by which sites were selected as
beneciaries of the Agua Para Todos project as demand-driven.
Rather than approach peri-urban residents with a plan, they
waited for residents to approach them. Aguatuya, however, had a
couple of specic conditions for its partners. First, the partners
had to be OTBs rather than water committees, as the work was
to be nanced in part through the LPP funds that had been ear-
marked for OTBs. Second, the partners had to be willing to con-
struct water distribution networks that conformed to SEMAPAs
technical requirements, such that if SEMAPA were to one day be-
come capable of supplying water to the zona sur, it would be able
 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
to absorb the independent water system into its larger network.
This is a very contentious issue in Cochabamba, as many water
committees remain distrustful of the public utility and the munici-
pal government whose actions led to the privatization of urban
water supply in 2000.
At the time that Agua Para Todos project was being consoli-
dated, Maica Central had six water committees that together sup-
plied water to around 280 households, but increasing demand
coupled with leaky distribution networks was resulting in severe
shortages. When the Maica Central OTB held a monthly meeting
in early 2007, discussion turned to ways to boost water supply
not just for a single committee, but for the whole OTB. Thoughts
went to a well that Maica Central had drilled four years before-
hand, a well that had been intended for irrigation but that had been
abandoned due to governance conicts. Because the well had been
built for high-volume use, people speculated that it would be capa-
ble of providing water to every household in the region. All that
was needed was a new distribution network a network that
would be the size of all the other six networks combined. For a pro-
ject of this scale, the Maiqueos needed economic support, as even
their combined nancial resources would not have been sufcient.
According to both the director of Aguatuya and the president of
the OTB Maica Central, it was the OTB that found the NGO, not the
other way around. The president of the OTB (who was also the
president of one of the water committees) explained that he and
others had gone knocking on doors looking for support from
the municipal government and various NGOs, but was having dif-
culty attracting interest. In Cochabamba, as in many cities, sup-
port for projects that explicitly engage with productive water use
is limited, as the division between domestic and productive water
affects not only the purviews of public institutions but also the
mandates of non-governmental organizations.
Eventually, however, representatives of Maica Central ap-
proached Plastiforte, whose directors pointed them to Aguatuya.
Maica Central signed onto the Agua Para Todos project in 2009.
Over the course of the next year, Aguatuya and residents of Maica
Central dug trenches, installed a system of underground pipes to
transport the water, and connected households to the new system.
The pipes, of course, were purchased from Plastiforte. Residents of
Maica Central began calling the new system Manguera Azul, or Blue
Hose, after the color of Plastifortes plastic tubes. The funding came
from a mixture of sources: the municipal government, Maica Cen-
trals LPP funds, Aguatuya, the UNDP, and the community. Resi-
dents of Maica Central provided all the labor, overseen by
Aguatuya and SEMAPA. To complete the system, Aguatuya donated
what the president of Maica Central described to me as the
mother of all water towers, which was capable of pumping
groundwater at a much faster rate than the pumps in the small
water systems.
In the rst year, the project proved a huge success from a statis-
tical point of view: 290 households had been connected to the
Manguera Azul system, the volume of ow was sufcient for all
the regions dairy cows, and the quality was high enough for most
household needs cleaning, washing, and cooking (it was slightly
too saline to drink). Everyone surveyed and interviewed in Maica
Central praised the system and spoke of the relief that they felt
to have a stable source of water for their dairy cows.
7. The socio-ecological challenges to autonomy
In signing onto the Agua Para Todos project, Maica Central drew
a complex network of actors into its territory, tightening the
strings that attached it to the rest of the city. What does this imply
for the autonomy of Maica Central and its water committees?
Here it must be underscored that, while Maica Central collec-
tively chose to approach Aguatuya, this decision was made in a
253
context of structurally limited options. The water committees of
Maica Central needed technical and nancial support in order to
address socio-ecological challenges that had been produced at lar-
ger scales, including scarcity and pollution. Their apparently
autonomous decision resulted in a relationship that would con-
strain their future autonomy. This can be demonstrated in at least
three ways.
First, the use of Plastiforte plastic tubes locked Maica Central
into being a long-term Plastiforte client, as Plastiforte tubes are
not standard size and damaged pipes cannot be replaced with
any other brand. If residents of Maica Central ever need to repair
or expand the water network, the decision of which tubes to use
and at what cost will already be made. This threat has elicited
much criticism in Cochabamba, where several activist and aca-
demic interviewees spoke of the dangers of breeding dependence
on NGO interventionism; it can also be read as yet another round
of capital accumulation in the guise of a humanitarian project.
From the autonomy perspective, moreover, it represents a clear
constraint to Maica Centrals ability to dene and adjust its future
governance strategies.
Second, SEMAPAs role as technical overseer represents a disci-
plinary force in Maica Central. SEMAPA engineers, for the most
part, have been trained to understand water supply on a municipal
scale, both from economic and infrastructural perspectives, and
tend to see the water committees as stop-gap supply mechanisms
along the road to universal, single-network coverage (author inter-
views). Their presence in Maica Central asserts expert and state
authority by determining how the regions future water supply
should look. This is not an immediate concern for Maica Central,
as SEMAPA does not yet have enough water in its network to reach
the zona sur. If this situation should change, however as will
likely occur with the eventual completion of the Misicuni dam pro-
ject then Maica Centrals ability to maintain any semblance of
self-governance will be severely restricted.
Third, the fact that municipal funds can only be accessed by
working through the OTB a unit of administrative politics that
was created as part of a neoliberal decentralization project im-
plies that water committees remain economically dependent on
access to this state-sanctioned space. If the water committees must
work with their OTBs to access public funding, they are necessarily
conceding authority to the OTB, and, by extension, to the state. In
combination with the demand that the new water system be com-
patible with SEMAPAs network, moreover, the favoring of OTBs
registers very clearly as neoliberal entrenchment: it is administra-
tive decentralization coupled with increased centralization of deci-
sion-making power.
These points reveal certain inconsistencies between the way
that the water committees are framed in activist rhetoric and the
reality of water governance in Maica Central. Given their economic
means and their socio-ecological embeddedness within the wider
urban context of water scarcity and pollution, the governance op-
tions available to these water committees entailed a long-run in-
crease in inuence of the local state, the private sector, and
assorted technocratic actors. In the end, the Agua Para Todos pro-
ject bears a much closer resemblance to a publicprivatecommu-
nity development model which scholars such as Bob Jessop
(2002) and Nikolas Rose (1999) associate with neoliberal govern-
mentality than to the third way form of community organiza-
tion dened by Olivera as being separate from both public and
private spheres.
Although the Cochabamba water committees are an extremely
heterogeneous group of actors, the problems of water quality and
quantity are shared, to varying degrees, throughout the zona sur.
These are problems produced at larger socio-ecological scales:
pollution owing down the river, leachates from the city dump,
and unequal access to SEMAPAs public network all stem from
254 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
interactions between socio-economic inequality and the hydrolog-
ical ows of water above and below ground. Although the strate-
gies that water committees use to deal with these problems vary
signicantly, I would hazard that any effective strategy would re-
quire the water committees to enter into alliances that would al-
low them to address socio-ecological challenges on the same
scale as (or at least a more similar scale to) those at which they
were produced.
The challenge is identifying the kinds of alliances that will dee-
pen community autonomy in the long run rather than threaten it.
The Maica Central case underscores the fact that, rather than cele-
brating the immediate protection offered for autonomous collec-
tives by outside actors, attention must be paid to the conditions
of that support. Taking autonomy seriously as the basis of a radical
politics means acknowledging both the immediate advantages of
inter-institutional alliances and their long-term implications for
decision-making processes. Key to working within this contradic-
tion is strengthening trans-local extra-statal networks that allow
water committees (and other autonomous collectives) to speak
for shared interests with a unied voice.
Although it is far from perfect, Cochabamba does have such a
trans-local network: many water committees have coalesced un-
der the banner of ASICASUDD-EPSAS (Asociacin de Sistemas Comu-
nitarios de Agua del Sud, Departamental y Entidades Prestadoras de
Servicio de Agua y Saneamiento; Association of Community Water
Systems of the South, of the Department, and Provider Entities of
Water and Sanitation Services). This organization, which was
formed by water committee leaders in 2004, offers training ses-
sions to and acts as a spokesperson for participating water com-
mittees. Its proposal for the water committees interaction with
SEMAPA is one of co-gestin (co-governance), which would essen-
tially involve SEMAPA selling water in bulk, at reduced prices, to
water committees that would then control the distribution of
water within their own neighborhoods. Experiments in co-gestin
have already begun, and there is evidence of initial success (Mehta
et al., 2014). Importantly, ASICASUDD-EPSAS acts as a powerful
mediator between individual water committees and SEMAPA,
allowing the former to maintain control over their internal deci-
sion-making processes instead of being swallowed by the exten-
sion of SEMAPAs network. The water committees of Maica
Central were are not members of ASICASUDD-EPSAS primarily be-
cause their water needs were agricultural as well as domestic and
bulk purchases of SEMAPAs treated water would be too expensive
for irrigation and dairy cows; nevertheless, ASICASUDD-EPSAS still
provides a model for the kinds of inter-institutional agreements
that avoid strengthening the positions of state and private entities.
As many scholars studying the post-neoliberal shift in Latin
America have suggested, there are just as many post-neoliberal
paths as there are sets of contradictions arising out of neoliberal-
ism. When it comes to post-neoliberal environmental gover-
nance, an important factor in determining the relative success
of a path is its ability to respond to the scale and materiality
of the environmental problem at hand: it is the place-specic
interactions between post-neoliberal ideology and socio-natural
conditions of possibility that denes an experiments relative
progressiveness. In the case of the Cochabamba water commit-
tees, the interaction between urbanization and hydrological cy-
cles is key. Waters propensity to ow makes it particularly
resistant to privatization, marketization, and commodication
(Bakker, 2003); the same quality makes water difcult to manage
autonomously at a sub-urban scale. A single water committee
cannot adequately address the pollution and access inequalities
produced at larger scales, and a water committee that forms
independent alliances with more powerful entities (the local
state, SEMAPA, private companies, etc.) might be compromising
its autonomy in the long run.
Rather than rejecting autonomy as a post-neoliberal ideal, how-
ever, I want to suggest that its interaction with the materiality of
water (with all of its associated socio-ecological inequalities)
forces a re-conceptualization of autonomy as a project of solidarity
rather than a project of internal self-governance. To address the
challenges created by the materiality of waters ow, a community
as small-scale as a water committee has to look for outside sup-
port. Such a community, however, cannot form alliances on an
equal footing (economic or political) with state agencies and pri-
vate companies. A spatially extroverted conception of autonomy,
which focuses less on the autonomy of a single community and
more on the links between various extra-statal and communitarian
organizations, would allow such small-scale collectives to engage
with larger state and private actors. This re-conceptualization,
moreover, would help distinguish the post-neoliberal use of auton-
omy from liberal denitions of the autonomous subject and re-
lated reactionary uses of autonomy that seek to tighten socio-
political borders, as is the case with departmental autonomists in
the Bolivian lowlands.
As Andrew Orta notes, there is at present a curious synergy
between neoliberal models of governance and calls for autonomy
in Bolivia (Orta, 2013, p. 109). Orta describes the articulation of
autonomous territories within the liberal nation-state as a semi-
neoliberal process; in the language of this special issue, such an
articulation might be described not-quite-neoliberal. A more
spatially open conception of autonomies, one that takes socio-eco-
logical processes into consideration and seeks to build community
solidarities rather than community autarky, might help shift
autonomy away from a not-quite-neoliberal ideal and closer to a
post-neoliberal practice.
8. Conclusion
Water committees from Cochabambas zona sur are frequently
conjured as exemplars of autonomous governance in Bolivias
post-neoliberal era. The socio-ecological reality of water distribu-
tion in Cochabamba, however, limits the degree to which water
committees can govern their water resources independently. The
main challenges that the water committees face water pollution
and water scarcity are socio-ecologically produced in relation to
the larger urban context, and addressing these challenges means
working at a larger scale, with pooled economic and political
resources.
But not all strategies to work at a larger scale are created
equally: in the long run, some alliances strengthen community
autonomy, whereas others threaten it. In the case of Maica Central,
water committees dealt with the challenge of water scarcity by
drawing in a network of outside actors whose presence then inu-
enced the committees internal organization. A long-term obliga-
tion to do business with the private company Plastiforte, the
disciplinary presence of SEMAPAs technical requirements, and
the need to seek funding as an OTB rather than as independent
water committees all helped shape the kinds of decisions that
the water committees will be able to make in the future. The Maica
Central water committees entered into this partnership as the least
powerful party in the multi-institutional alliance, and their long-
term autonomy was compromised.
Why would a community such as Maica Central enter into such
an alliance? I propose that the root problem is a theory of commu-
nity autonomy that is limited to internal decision-making capacity,
ignoring the external conditions that determine which decisions
are possible. Socio-ecological conditions mattered most in the case
of Maica Central, but a range of other political, economic, and social
factors also determine the options available to any given commu-
nity. Focusing on autonomous places of self-governance overlooks
 A.J. Marston / Geoforum 64 (2015) 246256
the material reality of unequal resource distribution, and, I would
argue, falls into a liberal trap of assuming that every individual
(or in this case, every individual community) makes decisions in
a vacuum. A radical politics of autonomy must be predicated on
a redistribution of material resources and decision-making author-
ity across, between, and within collectives; this long-term aim is
actually made more difcult by drawing boundaries around com-
munities that can be designated as internally autonomous. In other
words, the struggle for autonomy must also address the broader
socioeconomic and political processes that have produced the lim-
ited choices from which supposedly autonomous collectives must
choose.
The material ows of water governance thus compel a re-con-
ceptualization of autonomy that is adequate to the practicalities
of resource governance in the post-neoliberal era. These practical-
ities are the sediment of various eras of policymaking, and they
show themselves in La Maica in the form of contaminated well
water, frothy yellow river water, and the very smell of sewage that
wafts up from the elds. I have explored the interaction between
such historically produced inequalities and the ideal of autonomy,
but other post-neoliberal ideals will undoubtedly experience a
similar re-shaping in the face of existing socio-ecological condi-
tions. Across Latin America, emerging experiments in resource gov-
ernance will have to adjust post-neoliberal ideals to respond to
material realities. As is the case with autonomy, it is possible that
the ideals will be improved through the interaction.
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful for the feedback given by Karen Bakker,
Leila Harris, Donald Moore, Corin de Freitas, Cynthia Morinville
and three anonymous reviewers. Thanks also go to Roco Busta-
mante and the other scholars from the Centro Andino para la Gest-
in y Uso del Agua for supporting my eldwork, and to Yhasmany
Medrano for being an indispensable community liaison. This study
was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-
search Council of Canada. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Interviews
Bustamante, Roco. Interview with the author, July 2011.
Crespo Flores, Carlos. Interview with the author, July 2011.
Heredia, Gustavo. Interview with the author, August 2011.