ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER CRISIS IN HIGH ANDEAN COMMUNITIES IN PERU: IMAGINARIES AND ECO-SOCIOPOLITICAL PRACTICES OF LOCAL ACTORS

Quispe-Mamani E.; Chaiña-Chura F.; Belizario-Quispe G.; Quispe-Curasi S.C.; Mestas-Yucra E.E. · Scientific Culture (2025) · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11042547

Resumen

The enormous pollution of rivers and lagoons from various sources has led to an environmental and water crisis at the local and global levels. This phenomenon is a manifestation of the exhaustion of instrumental rationality, characteristic of modern Western society, driven by unbalanced power relations in the world, which over time has resulted in a global civilizational crisis. This situation is reflected in the environmental and water crisis in the area surrounding the Umayo lagoon in Puno, Peru. Based on the analysis and understanding of the crisis experienced in the high Andean communities of Puno, the objective of this article is to propose, from a critical Latin American perspective, a model/method for analyzing and interpreting this socio-environmental reality, based on the perspectives and practices of local actors. Based on a qualitative methodological approach, the study accounts for the sensitive and rational reasoning of local actors, who construct their meanings or social imaginaries regarding the socio-natural dynamics in the hydrosocial territory, expressed in the environmental and water crisis situation that affects the existence of humans and non-humans. Therefore, unlike other studies, this study proposes to approach the crisis phenomenon from the perspective of local actors, with an emphasis on the feelings, thoughts, social meanings, and actions developed around socio-natural entities (rivers and lagoons) as an eco-society, as a hydrosocial territory, as a subject, and as a movement. the perspective of post-human geography to displace the anthropocentrism that has predominated in Western civilization.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional del Altiplano