Le Rutzil Wachaj rech le Nawal Ja': The Well-Being of the Water Spirit - Community-Based Water Organizations and the Discourse of Well-Being

Abstract

Nawal Ja’ is a small town in Guatemala where a popular mode of water distribution is the community-based water organization (CBWO). This thesis will argue that a discourse of well-being rooted in the CBWO model as citizens of Nawal Ja’ participate in them propagates logic that evades any prior epidemiological or hydrological discourses, while neither settling into any other purely anthropological, biographical, or mythological discourses. Nine interviews were completed with twelve respondents taking part, which will be analyzed to show how competing discourses of global health and development and K’iche’ Maya ways of being can both describe and yet fall short of the details these events of research present. Awareness of a new cultural logic model on well-being and its features will inform future endeavors’ understandings of Nawal Ja’ as a site for itself a synthetic whole, without any prior global or local discourses or logics winning over others.