Armando Guevara-Gil Departamento de Derecho Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú aguevarag@pucp.edu.pe September 2011 The legal and not so legal practices of a development project. The improvement of the main canal of the Santa Rosa de Ocopa Irrigators´ Committee (Junin, Peru) Theme 2: Governance and the Politics of Order: Negotiating Legitimacy Panel 8: Clashing for Justice Chair: Ruchi Chaturvedi Jubilee Congress of the Commission on Legal Pluralism “Living Realities of Legal Pluralism” Cape Town South Africa September 8-10, 2011 Summary In this paper I provide a thick description of the legal and not so legal practices devised by a small Water User Association of the Peruvian highlands, with the help of a Catholic Church NGO funded by USAID, to implement a development project aimed at improving its irrigation infrastructure. By following the trail of these legal and illegal practices, my goal is to show that “project law” is not always a lawful new layer of regulations introduced by a development agent into a local legal field. It is, on the contrary, a set of rules, agreements and decisions that can clearly collide with both State and local definitions of legality. To handle this issue, the Water User Association applies an interlegal approach aimed, in the end, at strengthening its local autonomy.