HYDROSOCIAL CONFLICTS DUE TO ALIENATION OF ENDOGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGIES: ANALYSIS OF A COLOMBIAN ANDEAN TERRITORY

This investigation examined social and environmental conflicts in peasant territories due to rural modernization common to the Colombian Andean region. For this purpose the author chose a constructivist analysis instead of the conventional paradigm about the water cycle, in order to question approaches alien to peasant social realities and their territorial dynamics. Therefore, the study criticizes from the conventional approach its assumed separation between humans and nature, its exclusive material and profit oriented valuation of water and surrounding territories, and its discrimination of other cultural, social, political, and biological valuations of water. Subsequently, the research applied a conceptual and methodological framework based on hydro-social cycles and participatory action research to analyze peasant territories in San Lorenzo (Tuluá, Colombia, South America) and identify alienation mechanisms of ancestral and endogenous epistemologies related to the social and environmental management of their territory. This has led to a marginalization of peasant communities and to a weakening of their identity and autonomy. The research also offered an analysis of the challenges faced by these communities to subsist in a context of climate variability and territorial globalization