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Indigenous Water Governance In The Anthropocene: Non-Conventional Hydrosocial Relations Among The Wayuu Of The Guajira Peninsula In Northern Colombia, David A. Robles

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation problematizes the supremacy of a global water management regime while discerning and defending local Wayuu hydrosocial relations. The Wayuu relationship with water—considered non-conventional, unsanitary or insecure according to hegemonic Western standards—can also be characterized positively as alternative, resilient, sustainable, adaptive and exceptional. Contemporary water governance presents challenges yet also opportunities for the Wayuu and other Indigenous peoples to (re)assert and (re)establish contextualized and culturally specific practices, traditions and ways of knowing that have been historically silenced by conventional water management.

The Wayuu territory, located on the semi-arid Guajira Peninsula in northern Colombia, is widely considered a region suffering …