The rights of the Wayúu people and water in the context of mining in La Guajira, Colombia: demands of relational water justice

Abstract

This article addresses how water is being represented and positioned by Wayúu people in order to claim and defend water’s territorial rights against the expansion of the Cerrejón coal mine, in La Guajira, Colombia. In a semidesertic region in Colombia, Cerrejón (the largest open-pit coal mine in Colombia and Latin America, and the 10th biggest in the world) has created environmental inequalities and control and infrastructure arrangements that transform local water dynamics, affecting Wayúu people in a differentiated way. Cerrejón has intervened the territory technically and environmentally, affecting the river Ranchería and its water streams, which has dispossessed and transformed Wayúu peoples’ cultural and daily relationships with water’s territories. In response, the organization Fuerza de Mujeres Wayúu (FMW) has not only proposed water defense strategies and resistance against mining, but also opened debates about water’s territories and water’s rights. For the FMW the defense of water’s territories (sacred places in which the spirits of water inhabit) implies that Wayúu territories and water are in an embedded relationship which is not possible to fragment or separate either by mining processes or by institutional policies. Their proposals allows us to rethink the notion of water justice, and access to water by humans and nonhumans.