From “Water Judge” to the quantification of the resource: the management’s transformations of the Departamento General de Irrigación (Mendoza, 1932-1943)

Abstract

The actions of the conservative leadership in the 1930s in Mendoza regarding water management implied developing a modernization project. One aspect of it was the realization of important hydraulic works, very necessary to respond to the productive needs of that time. But the modernizing will also implied other strategies within the agency in charge of managing water. A deep and detailed reconstruction from the perspective of analysis that observes the actions of the State and its agencies in a heterogeneous way, at times fragmented, with contradictory interests, and often permeable in its relationship with society, will allow us to notice how the Departamento General de Irrigación (DGI) -General Department of Irrigation in English- assumed a role more related to hydraulic planning than to the arbitration of lawsuits between users of the resource. This change implied reorganizing functions, creating new structures, redesigning nodal administrative processes, producing information and incorporating instruments for measuring the water supply. All these aspects of modernization in the DGI gave distinctive marks to the state professionalization process characteristic of the 1930s.