Portal de Murcia
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Corongo is a city in northern Peru that has a tradition that is lost at the origin of time: that of controlling water supply and land management and maintaining the historical memory of agricultural traditions that date back to pre-Inca periods .
Like the Council of Good Men of Murcia or the Court of Waters, they go back centuries, until the Middle Ages, in their role as mediators in the problems arising from the use of water.
The two Spanish institutions were recognized ten years ago by UNESCO as intangible heritage of Humanity, while the Corongo Water Judges System achieved this distinction in 2017.
The system on which they base their judgments is based on solidarity, fairness and respect for a nature that remains the queen in much of their country.
And all with a fundamental objective: that the water supply be equitable and sustainable, as commented by Jorge Patrocinio Trevejo Méndez and Pedro César Zúñiga Paredes, Judges of the Water of Corongo, who were at the University of Murcia to participate in the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the UNESCO recognition of the Council of Good Men on a day that took place yesterday and has been coordinated by the UMU professor Rosa Mª Hervás Avilés.
Jorge Trevejo and Pedro César Zúñiga observe many similarities between the Murcia court and that of Peru: "justice and equity in water problems are the issues on which we work both courts," says the first, to add that "there is a piece of land in which perhaps we differ quite a bit: everything that has to do with the ritual themes related to Andean pre-Inca tradition "," but the other issues add-, among them what is related to the administration of the channel, the conflicts generated by the distribution of the water, canals, land plots or flood irrigation method are shared by Murcia and Corongo. "
They affirm that in their demarcation there are three months of torrential rain and nine months of drought, that is precisely the period in which more conflicts occur, those in which the shortage must be administered, that is the period in which the judge has to intervene more, "they say, to supply the 800 hectares that make up the irrigated territory of Corongo.
They comment that it was the Spaniards themselves, upon arrival in Peru, who first reported on the existence of these water judges, and that the Peruvian culture, both in its Inca and pre-Inca stages, had a very important water culture, and He had a great knowledge of hydraulic engineering.
They comment that neither agriculture nor the irrigation system has varied greatly in the region during the last five centuries: the same technology is used, although the products have changed: "in the last decades modern potatoes have arrived, which have displaced to the native potatoes, but now there is an attempt to return to the traditional cultivation, the one of all the life: potato, corn, barley… and to the methods of always ".
The UMU professor Rosa Hervás is pleased to have been able to make this reality so distant and at the same time so close at the University of Murcia, and proposes that "cultural links be established between these two geographical realities, of which both parties we have a lot to learn ", something in which the two Peruvian water judges agreed, making vows to start a collaboration, who do not doubt that it will be fruitful for the two populations, through the University of Murcia and its Peru area.
Source: Universidad de Murcia
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