Agua regadora y bebedora: debates en torno a la ciudadanía hídrica entre los siglos XIX y XX en Catamarca (Argentina)

Abstract

This article analyzes a series of disputes associated with water management in the Catamarca Valley (Catamarca,
Argentina), especially in the decades of 1950-60. As a starting point, we will focus on the documentary records of a "round
table" convened in the capital city by the Club de Leones to discuss the city's water supply problem. The debate brings
together national and provincial engineers and officials, and is part of a broader controversy that we wish to explore: the
place of dams in hydrosocial projects (Swyngedouw 2014) in the mid-20th century. The dams are protagonists of the dispute
between two ways of proposing water policies: one focused on city and water supply to their population as a fundamental
right; another focused on the productive territory and irrigation water provision as an unavoidable necessity of Progress. We
argue that these two projects are part of a tension that can be traced in the sources since colonial times, as a dichotomy
between irrigation water and drinking water. Such a historical projection could allow us to think of the productive land and
superior law binomial as the articulating axis of the conflicts linked to water management in arid zones, articulating with
another contemporary phenomenon: the questioning of city as the Civilization protagonist space.