Social discourses on environmental themes: water and mining in central west Argentina (original) (raw)

Since the nineteenth century, government policies in the province of Mendoza (Argentina) have favored the centralized distribution of water, to the benefit of the irrigated oasis and the wine industry, which have been controlled by the political elite and European immigrants. This distribution of water has been legitimized by arguments that postulated a supposedly scientific and universal rationality, subsequently connected to the care of water and nature. Given recent conflicts arising from large-scale mining projects that would use and pollute water on a large scale, we analyze government conceptions of socio-environmental relations, their contradictions and their political effects, on both the social distribution of resources and the environment. We conclude that the Government of Mendoza interprets nature according to its potential exchange value, under the rhetorical appeal to technological efficiency, development, modernization and consensus, at the expense of social and cultural rights.