Introduction

Through the consumption of water, populations satisfy countless immediate needs, so the degree of access to this resource determines their standard of living. In this sense, limited access to and inadequate management of water sources have a direct impact on the state of health of the populations, as well as on their socio-economic strength; and this is a global phenomenon. According to the United Nations Development Programme (^{UNDP) (2006a}:2), approximately "1.1 billion people in developing countries lack adequate access to water..." And the origin of this deficit lies not in the lack of availability, but in the institutional and policy structure of each country/region. In this context, ^{Padilla (2012)} points out the need to differentiate between drought, as a natural process, and scarcity, as a social construction expressed through inequality in access to water and a series of disasters for populations. These disasters are explained by the social construction of scenarios that combine natural and anthropogenic aspects (^{Garza, 2004}; ^{Meli, 2001}:7). In this case, disasters related to water scarcity must be understood from this perspective.

Latin America is a region that possesses abundant water resources (with 15% of the planet's surface, captures almost 30% of precipitation and generates 33% of global runoff) and, according to its population and distribution (less than 10% of the world's population), could offer a quantity of water per inhabitant (28 000 m³/habitant/year) higher than the general average (8 000 m³/habitant/year) (^{Ávila, 2002} cited in ^{Guzmán & Calvo, 2013}:6), however, access to these resources is extremely different (socially, geographically and environmentally) from one another regions, generating one of the regions with the greatest socio-environmental tensions, especially along offshore Pacific Ocean (^{Temper, Bene, & Martínez, 2017}).

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ^{(FAO) (2000)}, the regions that makeup Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean (including Mexico) comprise countries that are below or close to the water scarcity limit set by Haiti, 1 759 m³/hab/year. In this group, we can include Dominican Republic (2 593 m³/hab/año), Cuba (3 444 m³/hab/año), El Salvador (4 259 m³/hab/año), and México (4 850m³/hab/año), among others.

In this context, El Salvador is a country with the lowest values in terms of availability of internal renewable water resources (IRWR), 18 km³/year, and availability of total renewable water resources (TRWR), 25 km³/year (^{FAO, 2000}: 182). Although it is part of a tropical zone, it is the second country (after Belize) with the lowest average annual rainfall in the region, 1 784 mm³ (^{FAO, 2016}). This is expressed in the disposition of the liquid per capita. In the mid-1990s, water availability was 3 500 m³ per year, the lowest in Central America (^{UNDP, 2006b}: 11).

On the other hand, according to the Water Scarcity Index (which contemplates the variables: existing water resources, access to said resources, access capacity, use of the resource, impact on the environment) (^{Lawrence, Meigh, & Sullivan, 2002}), El Salvador is among the group of countries characterized by a high level of water scarcity (according to the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme (^{WWAP, 2016}:16), three levels of water stress are distinguished: When drinking water supplies are less than 1 700 m³ per capita per year, the degree of stress is considered regular; when these supplies fall below 1 000 m³, the degree of scarcity is considered chronic; absolute scarcity is when these drinking water supplies are below 500 m³ per capita, so by the year 2050, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the International Hydrological Program (UNESCO-IHP), this country will be experiencing an significant water stress (^{UNESCO-PHI, 2006}: 9).

According to ^{Quiñónez (2017}: 50), the total projected consumption for water use in El Salvador, taking into account its use for irrigation, industrial, thermoelectric, livestock, aquaculture, hotel and tourism, between 2005 and 2050, will be 188.45%. On the other hand, human consumption of water will increase, in the same period, around 320%, which will generate new pressures on the management of the liquid.

In this context, El Salvador has been a country that, in its social and historical development, has presented low levels of development; however, there have been important changes in terms of access to public services. For example, in the third decade of the 20th century, access to public services, such as electric lighting and sanitary services, visibly improved, with the number of households electrified increasing from 60% to 86%, and in the case of sanitary services from 29% to 62%. This improvement was also observed in the number of households with piped drinking water, rising from 57% to 69 % (^{UNDP, 2013}: 83).

This situation was aggravated by the Civil War, which reduced access, to those services, approximately 40%. However, once the war was over (1979-1992), and through different scenarios of social decomposition (socioeconomic marginalization, delinquency, and concentration of wealth) derived from post-war processes (^{Córdova, 1996}), the "new" social mobilization was characterized by a reivindicative struggle for social rights and the environment for human life, against mining, against dams, against deforestation, for water and for the conservation of native seeds (^{Menjívar, 2009}:8). One of the results of these processes was that between 1991 and 2012, the number of households with access to drinking water, by home connection, increased to 83% (^{UNDP, 2013}: 96).

El Salvador does not have long historical statistical series on access to public services, but dividing access to piped drinking water in urban and rural areas shows an increase in service access from 57% to 91% in urban households between 1961 and 2012. In the same period, this access was from 1% to 70 % in rural households (^{UNDP, 2013}: 100). This access, between 2005 and 2012, was more than 21% (see Table 1).

Despite this increase in the number of Salvadoran households with access to public services such as drinking water, the development models applied to countries such as El Salvador have not managed to build human development processes that generate an improvement in the standard of living of the population, so there are still large sectors that lack adequate public services, such as the service of distribution of drinking water through pipes, a service that has begun to face difficulties due to the quality of the liquid available. In relation to the above, although access to public services, such as water and drainage, has increased in recent years in El Salvador, water resources have decreased increasing pressure due to two determining variables:

Since the late 1980s, more than 90% of surface and groundwater sources have moderate to high levels of pollution by organic, industrial and agrochemical wastes (^{Ibarra, Campos, & Rivera, 2002}:31), with a wide range of pollutants: fecal coliforms and Escherichia coli, among others (see Table 2), which has caused gastrointestinal diseases such as gastroenteritis, dysentery, cholera, and typhoid (^{Sanfeliú, 2001}). According to ^{UNDP (2003}:95-96), in 2002, among the main causes of morbidity were intestinal parasitism, diarrhea, and gastroenteritis of infectious origin. Also, the main sources of organic pollution come from the food and beverage industry (^{UNESCO, 2006}: 281).

According to the 2002 Multipurpose Survey (EHPM) of the General Directorate of Statistics and Censuses of the Ministry of Economy of El Salvador (DIGESTYC), 34% of Salvadoran houses were supplied with water through pipes, wells, water eyes, among others. In turn, 18% of households in the country were supplied with water from unreliable sources and did not carry out any type of purification; this situation is aggravated in the case of rural households since 26% doubt that it is a safe liquid to drink and 41% of rural households drink water from unreliable sources without purifying it (^{UNDP, 2003}: 96). The latter highlights a differentiating dynamic in the supply of drinking water, and a possible cause of this would be, rather than the provision of water, how the institutional system responsible for its management is structured.

Materials and methods

This research was carried out on an ethnographic basis, that is, it described and reconstructed, analytically, the forms of life and social structure of a certain social group, making a "portrait" of its way of life (^{Rodríguez, Gil, & García, 1999}: 44). For this purpose, qualitative and quantitative information was collected in 2008 and 2017. The instruments used to collect the information were bibliographic search, questionnaires and interviews with key informants. The items that allowed to construct the discussion were the following: a) perception about costs and benefits of the processes, b) decentralization of the water management system; c) infrastructure (drinking water network); d) identification of water supply sources; e) conflicts over water; f) characterization of water management practices; g) perception of drinking water users about the costs and benefits that water management practices have for their quality of life. The information was collected in the following cantons and hamlets: Sicahuite, La Ceiba, La Laguna, Las Vueltas, Los Naranjos and San José de la Montaña. The method used for sample selection was simple random without replacement. 10% of households in the municipality were surveyed. In 2017, the population surveyed comprised a larger universe (537 people) than in 2008 (351 people). The sample for the first year was 170 people and for the second year 126 people. The formula used was as follows:

Where Z is area under the curve related to the confidence level; p, probability of occurrence of the analyzed variables; q, probability of no occurrence of the analyzed variables; E, predicted error; n, sample size. The parameters of the formula are as follows: Z, 95%; p, 90%; q, 10%; E, 3.25 % (3.75% by 2017).

Results and discussion

The department of Chalatenango is located to the north of the country, border with Honduras, has a territorial extension of 2017 km², distributed in 33 municipalities (one of which is Las Vueltas) (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Apartments in El Salvador. Source: Geographical viewer of El Salvador. Retrieved from http://www.cnr.gob.sv/geoportal-cnr/ 

According to ^{UNDP (2005a}: 469), in 2004, Chalatenango had a total population of 202 300 inhabitants, of whom 41.9 % were in total poverty, which represents 7.4 % above the national average. The Human Development Index calculated for El Salvador is 0.732; however, in the case of Chalatenango, said index is much lower (0.680), situation that is expressed in other indicators, such as life expectancy at birth, which, at departmental level, is 67.2 years (3.7 years below the corresponding national estimate); the percentage of adult literacy is 76.3 % (6.7 % below the national estimate) and the GDP per capita is $4045 ($1.046 less than the national estimate) (^{UNDP, 2005a}: 467). According to ^{Gómez, García and Kandel (2002)}, historically, the department of Chalatenango has been marginalized from public programs and policies, as well as from the country's economic trends, making it one of the areas that expels workforce, mainly agricultural, and promotes social mobilization. According to ^{Lara (2003)}, Gómez et al. (2002), this region stands out for its organizational history. Since the 1970s, the political activity of religious organizations, the support of the guerrilla movement and the emergence of the peasant movement (a response to the high levels of poverty) have made this department one of the areas with the greatest capacity for social organization in the country, capacity that has extended to issues such as the defense of land against the extractive industry of the mining companies (^{Spalding, 2011}) or against the privatization of the health sector (^{Almeida, 2010}). One of the results of this organizing process was that 86.08% of the Chalateca population had access to an improved water source. In urban areas, this access amounts to 98.34% and in rural areas to 78.22% (^{UNDP, 2005b}).

Conclusions

The drinking water distribution system in the municipality of Las Vueltas was distinguished by evolving in the shadow of three processes: decentralization, repopulation and urbanization of the municipality. This generated different levels of organization. At first, management was in the hands of the mayor's office; later, this process became the responsibility of the communities through ADESCOS and local water boards. Although the mayors are still the main providers in rural areas and the ones regulated by the local water boards, ADESCOS determines the community organizational processes. This led to different levels of decision-making about the drinking water distribution system. Part of this situation was generated by an issue of corporate governance, which meant a thinning of the state, and a transfer of responsibilities to the private sector, causing processes of concentration and diversion of water resources to areas with a higher profit margin, which affected rural areas and marginal urban areas.

On the other hand, the drinking water management system in Las Vueltas was set up based on immediate needs generated by population growth. To this end, pipe networks that had existed since the civil war were repaired. This allowed to have an infrastructure in operation and to be provided with the necessary liquid but generated, in the long term, more problems by a continuous need of maintenance to the infrastructure as mentioned earlier.

However, it was in rural areas where there was greater growth in access to water through their pipes, which reduced the use of water from other sources (river, spring, etc.). On the other hand, water quality, in particular terms (depending on its origin, treatment and consistency, and for almost half of those surveyed) is considered inadequate. In 2008, the urban population is more critical concerning the water consumed, not so much in rural areas. This changed by 2017, since in urban populations the percentage of population indicating adequate water increased relatively; however, in rural populations, it has a significant decline. This correlates with the number of people who became ill from consuming the water distributed by pipes, which increases, for urban areas, in the period analyzed, 0.4%; however, for rural areas, the increase was 13.6%, indicating a process of decomposition of the system analyzed.

A certain diversity of methods of treatment of the consumed water was observed, this indicates, in a direct way: a) a certain distrust with respect to the quality of the water received in house; b) a lack of unified methods with respect to the potabilization of the water, determined by the diverse situations of each household, but also c) the lack of knowledge, on the part of the users, of specific practices of health on the liquid to consume. Because of the above, it is necessary to generate public policies and a permanent community culture on the notion of prevention. A large part of the population interviewed pointed out that the water supply service, in its infrastructure components, service coverage and quantity of water received, has improved, although it has not been the same in terms of maintenance, since the percentage that indicated that the infrastructure did receive maintenance had a negative behavior (mainly in rural communities), indirectly reflecting people's perception of the public investment made in infrastructure maintenance. On the other hand, the general perception of the cost of the water distribution service indicates that it is adequate, although, particularly at the level of urban and rural spaces, this perception changes. At the level of the former, there is a growing opinion about the adequacy of the cost of the service, but not in the latter, where the perception that the cost is inadequate visibly increases from 8.8% in 2008 to 20.8% in 2017.

The history of El Salvador, like many Latin American countries, on policies and models of human development, has been ambiguous; however, the historical events of recent years lead to a review of these issues, since the probable expulsion of 200 000 Salvadorans from the United States to El Salvador (^{Jordan, 2018}), will imply an addition of about 3% of the total population, therefore, greater and more complex challenges in the management of resources such as water.

Given this, it is recommended to strengthen citizen participation (through organizational processes) and public participation (in administrative processes) to improve the water management system in the communities of El Salvador. That is, the creation and implementation of participatory community monitoring models (with universities, community groups and government institutions) for the continuous evaluation of the water management and distribution system in the areas distinguished as labor expelling zones in El Salvador. This, in itself, would be a valuable lesson for Latin American countries that will be facing, in the future, unprecedented problems in the access and management of water resources.