Focusing on the implications of the Majes Irrigation Project MIP for Quechua-speaking farmers in Peru, and how they make claims to the water springing from the mountains, Stensrud analyses the conditions that make land claims in Majes possible. Their claims are connected to notions of belonging and ownership that emerge from particular ontological compositions of water, mountains, personhood, and earth-beings that are not deliberately invented as part of an indigenous strategy to stop extractivism.
Rather, these compositions form part of relationships that are continuously nurtured as part of ongoing life projects that conflict with the extractivist and modernising project of colonising water by turning it into an economic resource. As of , 15, hectares have been irrigated, while the upcoming second phaseβin which the remaining 38, hectares will be irrigatedβhas been delayed due to various reasons like shifting governments, economic crisis, and, after , protests against the new dam in the highlands.
The war of the Peruvian state wasβand still isβnot only against topography and nature, it is also a war against the other-than-human beings who inhabit the steep mountain landscape that seem hostile to engineers and politicians, yet is home to thousands of peasant farmers and their alpacas and other animals.
Indigenous life projects are excluded from the design of megaprojects of modernity, and they are considered to be irrelevant and dispensable in the war against underdevelopment and in the pursuit of progress. People in poor rural areas in the Andes tend to welcome megaprojects because they hope for employment and benefits such as improvements of roads, construction of schools, and other material gains, yet they often perceive development projects to be intrusive and as causing trouble.
It is important to note, however, that hydraulic infrastructure is not unknown to farmers in Colca Valley, where farmers use a complex network of canals and pipes to bring water from the mountain springs to their ponds and cultivated fields.
