Socio-spatial segregation and normative neutrality in community water management

Abstract

The rural community aqueducts demonstrate the popular initiative of water management, in search of the satisfaction of their domestic needs with a solidary and cooperative approach, constituting a solution to the difficulty in the provision of this vital liquid in contexts in which it is lacking. of the necessary infrastructure (Montoya, 2016). They operate without a regulatory protection that contemplates their differential conditions, since community aqueducts are forced to comply with the same regulations than large companies in the market, which represents a barrier between their material possibilities and legal requirements (Moncada, Pérez, & Valencia, 2013). In this asymmetric relationship, the monitoring of the technical conditions of the service prevails and the right to water, the state responsibility to guarantee fundamental rights and, therefore, to safeguard the lives of the most vulnerable communities, is displaced to the background. To these structural weaknesses, derived from state neglect and contextless inspection and surveillance, must be added the pressures generated by the expansion of urban tourist services towards the rural area of San Bernardo, which constantly aggravates the situation due to the incremental demand for the service of aqueduct with high health risk. There are no proposals for its solution, because no studies have been carried out to understand these rural organizational forms for community water management in the municipality of Ibagué. For this reason, the aqueduct of the San Bernardo village was selected, from whose study it is intended to generate some possibilities for the improvement of these rural associative forms that serve the defense of basic rights.