The wáter as an ally

If Egypt was a Nile’s Gift, then the water determines the identity and the development model of the people.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

We are amid a desert. It seems neverending when the entire sand sheet gets suddenly interrupted by a water flow. If we follow it, the first houses surrounded by plantations will appear at a determined moment. The big buildings will appear beyond, some of them still continue ontop almost four millennia later. As the river is wide, an intensive fishing is developed at its rims.

 

That is the common frame of the most influent cultures of ancient world. Everyone has existed due to the presence of water. The basic liquid determined their life and even their victories or defeats. It also allowed their length or vanishing in space and time.

 

Today is known that Sicán people, located in Ferreñafe Province, Lambayeque Department, was devastated by La Leche River’s overflow caused by el Niño during the 1^st millennium A.D. In fact, geographers say the Peruvian Coast would be a great desert unless 52 water constant flows that interrupt it and allow the life to flourish and the towns to organize.

    

Chira River

Coming from the north, Chira Valley is the third of Peruvian Coast in order. Chira River begins in two different nascents: the first one locates in Loja Province, Ecuador, and the second one is at the highlands of Ayabaca Province toward its borderwith Huancabamba Province.

 

From Ecuador, Catamayo River joins Macará River, that marks the border of that country with Peru, then both form Chira. Already in that course, it receives water coming from the east through Quiroz and Chipillico Rivers. Hundreds of creeks and torrents do the same along both banks.

 

Later, it doesn’t receive important downloads until leading to the Pacific Ocean, Colán District, Paita Province. Only in Piura Department, Chira Basin means a Little more than 40% of the territory, and unlike Piura Basin, its water load is permanent. The third basin of Piura –Huancabamba—that has the same Peruvian nascents like Chira, gives its load to Amazon. The reason of this river dispersion is at Andean Range.

 

 Sullana

Just in the place where the river stops to flow to the southwest for taking a west course is Sullana City. Re-founded by the Bishop Baltasar Martínnez de Compañón in 1783, it has grown until forming a compact Urbis with Bellavista City, that expanding to the wwest, was already joined to Jíbito Town, Miguel Checa District, and unless the river, it would be joined to the conglomerate formed by the towns of Marcavelica and Mallaritos. It’s Sullana Metropolitan Area.

 

Martínez de Compañón also founded Tambogrande Cityjust weeks after done in Sullana. However, the water factor influenced in the difference of progress level of both cities. In 1911, the Representative Benjamín Huamán de los Heros (Huancabamba) pulled the creation of Sullana Province, beginning with two districts separated from Amotape District, Paita Province, the largest of Piura that time. So Sullana turned the capital city of its own district and province’s, that also contained Querecotillo District.

 

Eventually, Sullana Province got to actual time divided in eight districts including the two original with more than 1800 sq mi surface, where more than 330,000 inhabitants live according to the demographic projection at 2020. Sullana is the second most populated province of the department.

 

    

The water-people binome

The constant of Sullana is Chira River. If for a wile, we could disappear all that water flow (see animation), all the fertility and green characterizing us wouldn’t have a reason to be. The influence of the valley is such that inclusive it benefits with the leaks coming from Amotape Sierra, where the only national park in the Peruvian Coast is located.

 

At its upper course, Poechos reservoir was built, designed to store 1 billion cubic meters of water, now reduced to the half due to sedimentation. If Sullana proposes any type of development model, it can’t prescind nor damage the Chira. Putting it in danger would mean to put in risk the life of all the communities along its course. And we don’t only consider the human communities – different specialists have documented a big diversity of flora and fauna not only inside the valley but the surrounding dry forest.

 

There are already experiences of eco-friendly business that require a bigger management vision that assures its sustainability. The Middle Chira is today an organic banana exporter. Amid the controversies, there are many entrepreneurships on bio-fuel at Lower Chira.

 

It’s necessary to add the dry forest, where the goat cattle may be the key for more developments extending to other fields inside the dynamics of the forest itself. More than incoming money to the people for working, it’s necessary to teach them the tools for they generate, manage, and develop their own jobs looking for their organizational independence, although not leaving to consider their connections to the markets and their duties to the government. It doesn’t depend only on enthusiasm and good will – it requires studies in detail and the summoning of citizenship itself and its technical community for proposing real and successful solutions .

 

Sullana’s political community must unlock the useless processes that don’t allow that kind of entrepreneurships, and guaranteeing the most bbenefit in a self-sustainable way, leaving out the patronage and promoting the coexistence in harmony with the environment. In other words, to propose our own sustainable development model.

 

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