Within the theme of the Anthropocene as multiple crisis, we structure this volume about water around problems that each can encapsulate certain periods of time. Two beliefs brought us to propose this structure. First, both between the ones who first minted the term and the Latin American investigators that use it, it is mutually understood that the Anthropocene began at the end of the 18th century with the creation of the steam engine (i.e. the beginning of industrialization) (Svampa, 2019; Vernadksy, V., 1945), and that, after the Second World War, proceeded to produce the "Great Acceleration." Second, we consider that there exists an important continuity between the colonial period and the immediate postcolonial present, and that the large-scale transformations in technology (steam engines, electricity, and other technologies dervied from the World Wars) and in politics (independence) have made apparent the paradoxes associated with the relationship between society and nature that constitute our long-standing socio-enviornmental crisis in Latin America. These are periods associated with the emergence and consolidation of modernity in Europe, that, in general, has its correlations to the colonial world system and, in particular, to the colonization of nature in Latin America and the Caribbean (Quijano, 2000). The currents of transformation in the connection between human beings and nature were simultaneous with the unequal integration of Latin American societies into the international economic system between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

In the anaylsis of the crisis of water in the Anthropocene, the spatial and temporal dimensions are a constant, dicalectical, and necesessary wellspring of tension and antagonism for the social sciences and the humanities. Because of this, the editorial team of this volume considered it appropriate to address the construction of thought and action with respect to the Anthropocene and the crisis of water. We bear in mind the long history of coloniality, but also the long history of struggles and resistance in critical thought, actions of liberation and empancipation constructed under subaltern conditions in the university, and the populations that still fight from Latin American and the Caribbean, without letting ourselves be determined by them. This means that, in reflections and dialogues, knowing and recognizing that the international division of nature is an intrinsic and consubstantial element of the power and knowledge of modernity and coloniality, which has exerted itself in the new global order from the 16th century (with the arrival of Europeans, colonization, and internal colonialism) to the first two decades of the 21st century on the continent.

On these grounds, we structure the volume around three main problems connected with water in Latin America and the Caribbean, proposing that the chapters address some of these and framing them as much as possible around three historical periods: 1) The Colony, 2) 19th Centruy-1949 and 3) 1950 to present. The central themes and problems that we intend to address in this volume are grouped into three main categories: Processes of Urbanization, Productive Use of Water, Conflicts and Fights. These problems bring together the processes associated with the large transformations in the political, the sociocultural, the economic, and  the bio-geophysical orders that have impacted the relationship of Latin American and Caribbean societies with water from the colony to now. The conflicts and fights associated with water derive from the first two problems, which have historical examples going back to the colonial period, when the processes of urbanization truly begin and bring in models that correspond to different social and environmental configurations. They introduce activities that require high water usage, which spawns a growing competition for water sources (Castro, 2018).

The problems of water in the international division of nature, through all the time periods we consider, will be associated with the transformations produced by the international division of labor, knowledge, and geopolitical wisdom.

Framed by these problems, we identify some specific questions that have presented themselves with transformations and continuities through the historical process that constitues the socio-hydric crisis in Latin American and the Caribbean. The authors will also integrate and articulate other corresponding themes to the problem that they decide to address.

1.  Processes of Ubanization

Transformation of the bio-geophysical environment and landscape

Access and Dispossession

Regulation, Managment, Distribution, Privitazation

Migrations, Displacements.

2. Productive Use of Water (Urban and Rural Enviornment)

Mining, Industrialization, Irrigation, Energy, Fracking

Mega Projects

Contamination and Explotation in Subterranean Waters and Surface-level Waters

Drought, Extractivism, and Dispossession

Use and Transformation of Aquatic Resources (Wetlands, Rivers, Lakes)

3. Conflicts and Fights

Managment, Regulation, Distribution

Community Managment

Hydric and Environmental Justice

Access and Quality

Epistemicide, Cultrual Drought

Fights for water, Fights for access to water