29 - Narrating Water Conflict With Data and Interactive Comics

Summary

Abstract

How we developed an interactive comic to narrate the findings of a journalistic investigation into the water war in Peru against a big mining company.

Keywords: water conflicts, data journalism, environment, comic, interactivity, Peru

Everything in the comic La guerra por el agua (The war over water) is real (Figure 29.1). The main characters—Mauro Apaza and Melchora Tacure— exist, along with their fears and uncertainties. We found them on a hot September day of 2016. It was noon and there were no shadows, no wind. She was weeding the soil with her hands, he was making furrows on the rough ground. For over 70 years they’ve grown food on a small plot of land in the Tambo Valley, an agricultural area in southern Peru where there are proposals for a mining project. The history of this couple, like that of thousands of farmers and Indigenous communities, tells of disputes between farmers and the powerful industries working to extract one of the world's most strategic resources: Water.

How to narrate this confrontation in a country like Peru where there are more than 200 environmental conflicts and the national budget depends heavily on income from this sector? How to approach a story about tensions between precarious farmers, the interests of multinational companies and those of a government that needs to increase its tax collection? What narrative can help us to understand this? How is it possible to mobilize people around this urgent issue? These questions prompted The War Over Water—the first interactive comic in Peru, developed by OjoPúblico.

The piece integrates data and visualizations into a narrative about this conflict.

Why an Interactive Comic?

The project began in July 2016. We set out to narrate the conflict from an economic perspective, but to approach the reader from the perspective of two farmers, through a route that mimics an intimate trip to one of the most emblematic areas of the conflict. The interactivity of the format allows the audience to discover the sounds and dialogues of the conflict, across and beyond the strips.

We chose the story of the Tia Maria mining project of the Southern Copper Corporation—one of the biggest mining companies in the world, owned by one of the richest individuals in Mexico and in the world, German Larrea.