Calm the rivers, tame the waters: historical considerations on the ways of relating with the water regime in Catamarca (Argentina).

consideraciones históricas sobre los modos de vinculación con el régimen hídrico en Catamarca (Argentina).

Abstract

This work will go over some of the forms adopted by the hydrosocial cycle in Catamarca city and valley (Argentina) through different historic moments. To that end, we will focus in a particular type of practices that, we sustain, condense meanings and allow us therefore characterize relations with water in different historical periods. Using two long-term researches, one centered in the 17^th and 18^th centuries and the other in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, we aim to identify, describe and analyze water-appeasing practices. With this term we refer the task of reducing the excessive behaviors of rains and rivers: flood and draught, two markedly stational states of the water regime that over the centuries have earn the denomination of “enemies” (17^th century) and “rebels” (20^th century) for Catamarca rivers.

In the analytic paragraphs we will focus in three types of practices: prayers, canalizations and dams.  These should not be understood as mutually excluding, but as parts of a relations palimpsest that, nevertheless, allows us to track and describe some of the most relevant transformations in the forms of relation with water and, therefore, characterize hidrosocial cycles.