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2003 del Sitio Web AgendaLatinoamericanaMundial
El consumo mundial de agua se está duplicando cada 20 años, más del doble de la tasa de crecimiento mundial de la población. Según la ONU, más de mil millones de personas carecen ya de acceso al agua potable.
Si la tendencia continúa, para el año 2025 la demanda de agua potable se espera que aumente un 56% más que la cantidad de agua de la cual se dispone actualmente. Las corporaciones multinacionales conocen estas tendencias y están tratando de monopolizar el suministro de agua en todo el mundo.
Monsanto, Bechtel y
otras grandes multinacionales mundiales están buscando controlar los
sistemas de agua y su abastecimiento.
La compañía Bechtel Enterprises de
San Francisco, EE.UU., fue contratada para hacerse cargo de la empresa de agua
de Cochabamba, luego de que el BM exigiera a Bolivia que la privatizara.
Cuando Bechtel comenzó a aumentar el precio del agua, toda la ciudad hizo
una huelga. Los militares mataron a un chico de diecisiete años y arrestaron
a los líderes huelguistas de los derechos del agua. Pero después de cuatro
meses de disturbios, el gobierno Boliviano sacó a Bechtel de Cochabamba.
Maude Barlow, presidente del “Consejo de Canadienses”, el grupo de apoyo estatal más grande de Canadá, declara:
Los estudios realizados
demuestran que comercializar el agua en mercado abierto tiene como
consecuencia que sólo llegue a las ciudades y a las personas ricas.
Estos acuerdos otorgan a las corporaciones transnacionales derechos sin precedentes sobre el agua. Los conflictos relacionados con el agua están surgiendo en todo el mundo. Monsanto planea obtener ingresos de 420 millones de dólares y una utilidad de 63 millones de dólares para 2008, con sus negocios de agua en India y México.
Monsato calcula que el agua se convertirá en un mercado
multimillonario en dólares en las décadas venideras.
Sin embargo los gobiernos están entregando la responsabilidad de este precioso recurso a las gigantes corporaciones transnacionales, quienes, en connivencia con el BM y con la OMC (WTO - World Trade Organization), buscan privatizar y hacer del agua un bien comerciable en todo el mundo, e imponer su comercialización en el mercado abierto para la venta al mayor postor.
Millones de ciudadanos del mundo están siendo despojados de
este derecho humano fundamental, y se está realizando un enorme daño
ecológico, a medida de que la industria masiva hace uso del agua que alguna
vez se utilizó para sustentar a las comunidades y abastecer la naturaleza.
Pero nuestra prensa convencional
generalmente apoya la globalización económica y estos acuerdos comerciales,
y sólo permitiría algunas denuncias selectivas de la oposición. Mi trabajo
sobre la conversión del agua en un bien comerciable, cuyo título es "Blue
Gold" (Oro Azul), fue publicado por el Foro Internacional sobre
Globalización (IFG) en 1999 en varios idiomas, y se vendió en todo el mundo,
pero fue ignorado por la prensa norteamericana.
Sin embargo cuando la prensa convencional escribe sobre este tema -lo cual no hace muy frecuentemente o con suficiente profundidad- raramente plantea la pregunta más importante:
Nosotros decimos que la tierra, pertenece a todas las especies y todas las generaciones futuras. Muchos de los que están en el poder tienen otra respuesta.
Llegó la hora de debatir.
En el ámbito local, los habitantes de Cochabamba están trabajando codo a codo con la nueva y reconstituida compañía de agua, SEMAPA, para extender el servicio de agua a más familias. En Alto Cochabamba, uno de los vecindarios más pobres de la ciudad, el tanque de agua de la comunidad había permanecido vacío por años y se había convertido en el basural de la localidad. Hoy el tanque está operando en su totalidad, brindando por primera vez al vecindario agua potable suministrada por el estado.
Los
activistas cívicos dicen que están construyendo una empresa de servicios
públicos que será manejada por la gente y no por los políticos corruptos o
alguna corporación que cobre sobreprecios que no son democráticos.
Estos grupos y otros también prometieron su apoyo para luchar contra
el último ataque de Bechtel, una demanda por casi $20 millones - la
compensación por perder su lucrativo contrato en Cochabamba. Esta es una
acción que enfrenta una de las corporaciones más ricas del mundo contra la
gente de una de las naciones más pobres de América del Sur.
Luego el año pasado Bechtel sigilosamente reorganizó los papeles corporativos para establecer su subsidiaria bajo registro Holandés, y de esa manera prepararse para tal acción.
Algunos grupos internacionales se están preparando para ayudar a los líderes de Cochabamba a luchar contra la demanda de Bechtel.
Los artículos del Centro para la Democracia, que salen principalmente en la prensa progresista y fueron distribuidos ampliamente por Internet, también atrajeron la publicación en matutinos dedicados al tema de algunas ciudades, tales como el San José Mercury, San Francisco Examiner, y el Toronto Star (gracias a la distribución realizado por el Servicio de Noticias del Pacífico).
Sin embargo, gran parte de la cobertura de la historia realizada por la prensa convencional se limitó a los despachos del corresponsal de Associated Press de Bolivia. El corresponsal, Peter McFarren fue a cubrir historias que repetían con mucha ansiedad los dichos del gobierno Boliviano y de Bechtel, acusando falsamente del levantamiento del agua a los "narcotraficantes".
Un lector de los artículos del Centro para la Democracia notó la diferencia en el reporte y descubrió que McFarren estaba, al mismo tiempo, haciendo lobby de manera activa para que el Congreso Boliviano aprobara un proyecto muy controvertido para llevar agua de Bolivia a Chile. Cuando este conflicto de intereses fue denunciado a Associated Press, de repente McFarren presentó su renuncia.
Más información sobre esta historia, incluyendo la suscripción
a los correos-e de noticias gratuitos en los cuales se originó la historia,
se puede encontrar en
democracyctr.org
por
Pratap Chatterjee
Raramente un día pasa sin que la compañía firme un nuevo contrato en algún lugar del mundo. Han trabajado en 19.000 contratos en 140 países en el último siglo, muchos de estos con plata de los contribuyentes. Sin embargo, un repaso extensivo de los contratos de Bechtel en los últimos 100 años muestran que una y otra vez la compañía fue encontrada culpable de realizar conexiones políticas corruptas.
De hecho, si existe un patrón de proyectos de los trabajos sobre empresas públicas de Bechtel es el siguiente:
Aún cuando estos costos excesivos salen en los titulares de los diarios, los impactos del medio ambiente y sociales de las actividades de construcción de la compañía raramente son mencionados, como ser:
La dirección de Bechtel se volvió loca cuando el personal de la casa central leyó la historia publicada en el San Francisco Bay Guardian y comenzaron a hacer preguntas.
Pudimos obtener un memo interno que explicaba al personal porqué la empresa había decidido no dar respuesta sobre la historia:
La prensa convencional a menudo escribe sobre los contratos que gana Bechtel y concluye, pero raramente ahonda para encontrar algo más sobre el impacto de estos proyectos.
Nunca investigaron con detenimiento sobre la historia de la compañía o intentaron adentrarse en los trabajos internos de la compañía: esto en parte sucede porque la empresa se niega a que los medios puedan acceder a su personal o a sus directivos.
from DemocracyCenter Website
Cochabamba became the front line in the growing international battle over the rules of economic globalization.
Standing down soldiers, resisting a declaration of martial
law, and rising up against a wave of worship the market economic theology,
South America’s poorest people evicted one of the world’s wealthiest
corporations and took back something simple and basic – their water.
Slave miners were sent into the pitch dark and stale depths for as long as
six months at a time. Many of those who survived went blind from re-exposure
to sunlight. Bolivia’s first lesson about globalization was this one – a
people blessed by the Earth with one of the largest single sources of
mineral wealth in the history of the planet ended up the poorest nation in
South America.
Using the contemporary tools of economic power – holding up loans, aid, and debt relief – the Bank and IMF influenced and outright coerced the Bolivian government into selling or leasing its public enterprises into corporate hands. One by one the Bolivian government sold or leased off the national airline, the railroad, and the electric company, often with disastrous results.
The Chilean purchaser of the railroad
dismantled it for parts and shut it down.
In public the Bank softens its tone, calling privatization just one option and,
Behind closed doors, however, Bank
officials are not so subtle.
Bank officials
would later claim that they didn’t like the details of the way Bolivia
negotiated the privatization, but the Bank’s role as the force behind it is
indisputable. The Bolivian government followed the Bank’s orders. In
September 1999, in a closed-door process with just one bidder, Bolivian
officials leased off Cochabamba’s water until the year 2039, to a mysterious
new company named Aguas del Tunari – which would later turn out to be a
subsidiary of the California engineering giant, Bechtel.
Tanya Paredes, a mother of four who supports her family knitting baby clothes, saw her water bill increased from $5 per month to nearly $20, a rise equal to what it costs her to feed her family for a week and a half.
After the blockades the rural
water users formed an alliance with urban users concerned about Bechtel’s
takeover of the city water system and on November 12, 1999 La Coordinadora for the
Defense of Water and Life was born.
The Coordinadora’s January action against the water price hikes was different. For three days Cochabamba was shut down tight as a drum. Blockades closed down the two main highways leading in and out of town, eliminating bus transportation and food shipments. The airport was shut. Roadblocks fashioned out of piles of rocks and tree branches cutoff all traffic in the city.
Thousands of Cochabambinos
occupied the city’s tree-lined, colonial central plaza. At one corner of the
plaza the Coordinadora set up its headquarters in the ragged offices of the
local factory workers’ union and hung a wide banner from the third floor
balcony. Bright red with white letters the banner carried the city’s new
rallying cry, El Agua es Nuestra Carajo!, The Water is Ours Damn It!
Coordinadora leaders gave the government
three weeks.
Several hundred protesters would march to the plaza, hear some speeches, prod the government to keep its word, and then go back to work..
The government announced that the protest was not going to be allowed and on
the morning of the 4th more than 1,000 heavily armed police and soldiers
took control of the city’s center, almost all brought in from other cities
(as Cochabamba police could not be counted on to take such a hard line
against their own relatives). For the people of Cochabamba, even those who
may not have been sympathetic to the water revolt before that, the invasion
of police was akin to a declaration of war. Not only was the government
refusing to rollback the company’s huge price hikes, now it was protecting
Bechtel’s increases with tear gas and guns.
I asked a young policeman if he would shoot and kill me if ordered to by his captain.
As the conflicts continued, the doors of middle class homes would open up and bowls of food and water would appear, an offering of support to those standing up to the government in the streets.
Almost all local radio programming converted into phone-in discussions about the battle in the city center, with caller after caller condemning the government and the company. In two days more than 175 people were wounded, most all victims of tear gas canisters or police beatings. Whatever public legitimacy the government had on the issue it lost. It announced an agreement with the company to invoke a temporary rate rollback for six months.
The Coordinadora had won its first victory.
Through members of Congress the Coordinadora was finally able to get a copy. After the February confrontations Coordinadora leaders began to examine the contract more closely, with the help of sympathetic economists and lawyers. They uncovered Bechtel’s guaranteed 16% profit, the fact that the company had won the concession with virtually no up-front investment, as well as other provisions which made clear just how bad a deal the government had agreed to.
The Coordinadora became convinced that they needed to switch their
sights from merely rolling back water rates to repealing the contract
altogether and putting Cochabamba’s water under direct public control.
The answer, by a vote of more than 90% was a resounding yes.
Cancellation of Bechtel’s contract now became
the Coordinadora’s official demand.
On Tuesday April 4th the threatened wave of protests began and Cochabamba was shut down again for the third time in four months.
On Thursday, after Cochabamba had been shut down for two days, government officials finally agreed to sit down to talk with Coordinadora leaders, in negotiations moderated by Cochabamba’s Catholic Archbishop, Tito Solari. Late that night Coordinadora leaders began their talks in the state’s offices, with the governor, the city mayor, the Archbishop and other officials.
Suddenly police under orders from the national government in La Paz burst in and put the Coordinadora leaders under arrest.
Bishop Solari locked himself in his own office for the night, telling reporters
that if the Coordinadora was under arrest so was he.
The atmosphere in the city was incredibly tense, especially in the central plaza where news of the arrests the night before had drawn a gathering of more than 10,000 people. Many came from the city but thousands of others had marched in long distances from the countryside and had been there for days. Community by community they arrived, to great cheers, each group carrying a banner bearing the name of their pueblo.
One rural town official, who had marched 70 kilometers to get to Cochabamba, told me,
A meeting was announced for 4pm between the Governor and the Coordinadora, to be mediated by Archbishop Solari. After mid-day it was announced that the Governor would sit down once more with Coordinadora leaders, this time in the offices of the Bishop. When word spread that the Governor had failed to show, people in the plaza feared the worst.
A half dozen teenage boys climbed to the bell tower of the city’s Cathedral, tying ropes to the bells so that they could be rung as a warning when soldiers started to invade the city. Even amidst the thick tension, however, Bolivia’s natural humor came through. An ice cream seller circulated through the dense crowd, carrying a white styro-foam ice chest across his front.
One of the protesters from the countryside crouched down behind him and yelled loudly,
In his plaza office Governor Hugo Galindo could hear the angry crowd outside. Windows had already been broken on the front of the building. A fire was set against the giant wooden main entrance door. At the hour he was supposed to have met with Coordinadora leaders, instead he telephoned his superiors in La Paz.
He explained that he saw no alternatives except
cancellation of the contract or an all out war between the people and
government. He recommended that the contract be canceled. Banzer’s people
were noncommittal. Galindo then called Archbishop Solari, sitting in his
office with Coordinadora leaders. He told the Bishop that he had urged the
President to cancel the contract. When Bishop Solari relayed that message to
Olivera and other Coordinadora leaders it got transformed into something
more dramatic – that the company was leaving.
He
thanked the neighborhoods, the transportation workers, people from the
countryside, university students, and others who had made the battle and the
victory possible. Cochabambinos celebrated in the streets. Archbishop Solari
presided over a packed service of celebration in the Cathedral.
Bands of police started to appear at the doors of Coordinadora leaders and their families, arresting all those they could find.
Seventeen people in all
were put on a plane in Cochabamba and flown off to a mosquito infested jail
out of the way in Bolivia’s remote eastern jungle. Those that escaped
arrest, including Fernandez and Oscar Olivera, went into hiding.
At that same time an unarmed seventeen year old boy,
Victor Hugo Daza, was shot and killed with a bullet through the face. In the land of the
Incas the battle over globalization, tragically, had its first martyr. His
companions brought his bloody body to the plaza and held an angry, emotional
wake. [5]
The people of
Cochabamba were also not about to back down. The streets were only getting
fuller.
We used The Democracy Center large e-mail
network to send alerts to thousands of activists worldwide, calling on them
to pressure Bechtel to leave the country. We also gave them the personal
e-mail address of Bechtel’s President and CEO,
Riley Bechtel.
The national official responsible for the Bechtel agreement released a letter he had sent to Bechtel officials,
They city celebrated as it would have a World Cup soccer
victory, with cars parading along Cochabamba’s avenues with horns blaring.
The Coordinadora’s leaders came out of hiding and were flown back from their
jail in the jungle, greeted as heroes.
Management and system problems remained, but a series of new neighborhoods were added to the water grid and the company accomplished something else extraordinary. Even at the old pre-Bechtel rates, Cochabamba’s water company was operating in the black. It also began qualifying for loans, from the Inter American Development Bank and others, to allow for expansion of the water system.
Even the powers of international finance had begun to accept
that, in Cochabamba, the water was to remain in public hands.
Why was Cochabamba different? Why did Cochabambinos resist? Why did they win?
Cochabambinos had endured one privatization after another, always with resistance by those directly affected – the airline workers union, for example – but never with enough force to make a difference. The revolt over water was a revolt over everything, a reaction to official corruption, economic decline, and the clear and broad belief that the government was looking out for everyone but the people.
In one neighborhood a sixteen year old boy explained to me how he received his political awakening over a piece of bread.
When the Coordinadora came to his neighborhood to organize resistance to the water privatization, he saw his chance to do something.
Water was also something essential to life, not like an airplane or even electricity in a poor country. People knew that if they lost control of their water they lost control of their lives. The Coordinadora gave people a hope that was new.
After years of protest that seem to accomplish nothing, the Coordinadora gave people hope that they could actually come together and win. It also unified people from the rural areas and people from the city, which was absolutely key.
Inadvertently both Bechtel and the Bolivian government helped the revolts success enormously. If Bechtel had raised rates slowly over time, the revolt would never had gained the broad support that it did. If the Bolivian government had let the February protest take place without resistance, it would not have ignited the fierce public anger that made virtually everyone a Coordinadora loyalist.
In the end it was a revolt not just about water but about arrogance, against an attitude by the World Bank, Bechtel and Banzer that said,
And it was as a revolt against arrogance
that the Bolivian revolt over water had such deep and powerful resonance
with the larger battle over globalization imposed from on high.
Cochabamba became synonymous with the struggle for global economic
justice, a source of great inspiration and hope. How the water revolt went
from being a local struggle to an international icon is a story in itself,
the product of the Internet, a great story, and the luck of great timing.
How far and fast these
spread through the Internet was astonishing. My reports were syndicated by
Pacific News Service and picked up by publications all across the US and
Canada. These stories later sparked other writers, from the New Yorker, the
San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere to write their own stories.
They sent pictures of the event to us in
Cochabamba which we gave to the local press. One Cochabamba daily, Gente,
dedicated its first three pages to the story, amazing Cochabambinos with the
fact that their local rebellion was drawing the attention of the world.
With Oscar Olivera in hiding to avoid government capture, my
colleague Tom Kruse came up with the idea that we could buy him some
political protection by getting groups in the U.S. to invite Oscar to attend
the events in Washington. The idea was never that Oscar would go but that
these invitations, which we gave to the Bolivian press, might make the
government hesitant to arrest someone who now had an international profile.
On Thursday morning Oscar went to the local passport office which, by chance, was run by an old schoolmate, and has his passport in less than an hour. Later that same morning Oscar and Tom flew to La Paz to attempt the doubtful task of convincing the US Embassy that it ought to grant an immediate entry visa to a man with wearing a Che Guevara wristwatch who had just led the booting out of a major US corporation.
While Oscar sat in the Embassy waiting area, back in Cochabamba I received a call from a reporter for a major newspaper chain in the U.S., begging for help to secure an interview with Oscar. I suggested a bargain. If he would agree to call the US Ambassador and ask if she were going to give Oscar a visa, I would set up the interview. He agreed and a few hours later Oscar strolled out the Embassy doors with the seal of the USA stamped in his fresh passport.
On Friday Oscar, Tom, and I flew to Washington.
On Saturday, Oscar was among a group that went to the home of World Bank President James Wolfensohn, with media in tow, to deliver a message about the real impact that Bank policies have on poor countries.
On Sunday, still wearing his leather worker’s cap, Oscar addressed a rally of 10,000 on the Washington Mall, just beyond the White House. That afternoon Oscar was at the head of a procession of thousands through the streets of the capital of the most powerful country in the world. Just a week earlier he had been in hiding, Victor Hugo Daza was being buried, and Bolivia was under a state of martial law.
Walking next to him I asked Oscar,
Bechtel’s aim, it says, is simply to get back what they invested.
Just as the water revolt
became an international symbol for the abuses of privatizing basic services,
Bechtel vs. Bolivia has become an international symbol for everything wring
with rigged international trade law.
Bechtel is masquerading as a Dutch company, shifting its Bolivian
registration to an Amsterdam post office box in hopes of getting covered by
a Bolivia-Holland treaty that makes the Bank the arbiter of their investment
disputes.
But the stakes in this case go well beyond Bolivia.
The World Bank’s secret trade court is the
prototype for the proposed Free Trade Act of the Americas (FTAA). The same
tool Bechtel is using today against Bolivian could be used by other
corporations to repeal of environmental laws in California, health
regulations in New Hampshire, and worker protections in Venezuela – all in
the name of knocking down barriers to trade.
References
da Antonio Mazzeo Redazione Terrelibere.org dal Sito Web CamaraDeComercioVenezolanaItaliana
Qualche mese dopo l'amministrazione di San Pedro
Sula firmava l'infausto contratto con il consorzio Astaldi-ACEA-AMA & Soci e
tre anni più tardi, ancora una volta sotto la presidenza di Ricardo Maduro,
il Congresso onduregno approvava la nuova legge quadro sull'acqua che
legittimava l'avvio dei processi di privatizzazione del settore e la
svendita della risorsa al capitale transnazionale. Sfortunatamente anche
l'Unione europea ha deciso di intervenire direttamente per facilitare la
transizione al "libero mercato" dell'acqua grazie ai propri programmi
regionali di "aiuto alla ricostruzione" del dopo l'uragano Mitch.
Qui l'Astaldi, in partnership con la società boliviana ICE Ingenieros, avrebbe dovuto realizzare un mega tunnel idrico di 19 chilometri per il collegamento alla diga e alla centrale idroelettrica del Río Misicuni che alimenta la città di Cochabamba. Incautamente si decise di scaricare gli ingentissimi costi dell'infrastruttura sulle tariffe dell'acqua erogata alla popolazione, previa concessione del servizio al consorzio privato "Aguas del Tunari" (vedi informe sopra).
L'epilogo della vicenda è noto a livello mondiale: per lunghi mesi del 1999 la città fu al centro di violenti scontri e manifestazioni di piazza, fino a quando, uno dopo l'altro, fuggirono gli "investitori" stranieri.
Astaldi fu la prima ad abbandonare il progetto per "insormontabili" difficoltà esecutive dei lavori di scavo in galleria. Poi fu la volta di IWL - International Water Limited, l'azienda con sede a Londra detentrice del pacchetto di maggioranza del capitale di Aguas del Tunari, accanto ad ICE Ingenieros (partner Astaldi nel Progetto Misicuni).
Azionisti di IWL, rispettivamente con una quota del 50%, il complesso industriale-militare e delle costruzioni Bechtel (Stati Uniti) e la italiana Edison S.p.A., nata dalle ceneri di Montedison ed oggi in mano alla famiglia Agnelli, Tassara, Banca di Roma, Banca Intesa, IMI-San Paolo e alla compagnia elettrica francese Edf.
Il mondo è proprio piccolo: la Bechtel, maggiore contrattista per la ricostruzione in Iraq, ha concorso - sconfitta dalla connazionale Parsons Transportation Group - alla gara per il Project Management Consulting in relazione alle attività di controllo e verifica della progettazione definitiva, esecutiva e della realizzazione del ponte sullo Stretto di Messina.
Dietro la Edison, invece, alcuni degli
azionisti di riferimento e le maggiori banche creditrici di Impregilo General Contractor del Ponte sullo Stretto. La Banca di Roma, oggi in
Capitalia, detiene infine il 4,6% delle azioni del Gruppo Astaldi.
from AcademicWebPagesAtEvergreen Website
In her book Water Wars, the Indian author Vandana Shiva lists nine principles underpinning water democracy. At least two of these principles are directly compromised by the privatization of water.
Point number four states that,
When private companies try to make large profits through high water prices, it denies the poor the inalienable right to the most necessary substance for life. In accordance with this fact, point number seven states,
How can one justify claiming
water as their own through contractual agreement while letting another human
being go thirsty? Water is a commons because it is the basis of all life.
Water rights are natural rights and thus are usufructuary rights, meaning
that water can be used, but not owned. As far fetched as water ownership may
seem, it is happening at an increasing rate around the globe.
These privatization programs started in the early 1990’s and have since emerged in India, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Nigeria, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, and the Philippines, to name a few.
In Chile, the World Bank
imposed a loan condition to guarantee a 33 percent profit margin to the
French company Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux while the company insisted on
a margin of 35 percent.
Supporters of privatization say that it has a great track record of success, increasing the efficiency, quality, reliability and affordability of services to the population.
Yet the industry has a track record of hazards and failures. For example, private companies most often violate standards of operation, and engage in price fixing without many consequences.
This leads to water stress
among the poor populations of these areas, causing people to drink water
that is often very contaminated and hazardous to their health (even though
case studies have shown that privatized water can be very contaminated as
well).
As is already evident, once these private water giants take over water services, prices skyrocket. After privatization, customer fees in France increased 150 percent while the water quality declined. In a French government report, it was revealed that over 5.2 million people had received “bacterially unacceptable water”.
In Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base in the Philippines, Biwater increased water rates by 400 percent. Water rates in England increased by 450 percent while company profits soared by 692 percent. CEO salaries for the private corporations behind the water supply increased by an astonishing 708 percent. As one can expect with such high price fixing, service disconnection increased by 50 percent.
Meanwhile, the British Medical Association condemned water privatization for its health effects because dysentery increased six-fold. Many of these examples of the failures of water privatization are occurring in developed countries, but the most severe effects have been on the developing world.
The high rises in pricing along with deteriorating water quality because of water privatization has led to much public scrutiny and uprisings by affected communities around the world.
However, in 1999 the World Bank recommended privatization of Cochabamba's municipal water supply company, Servicio Municipal del Agua Potable y Alcantarillado (SENIAPA).
This was to be done through a concession to one of Bechtel’s subsidiaries - International Water. Bechtel is a U.S. corporation based in San Francisco. This corporate giant is not even welcome in its hometown of San Francisco. In June, 2002 the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco voted to cancel a $45 million program management contract awarded to Bechtel for the reconstruction of the Hetch Hetchy public water system.
This vote took place after an investigation by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local alternative weekly newspaper, exposed that at least $5 million dollars of nearly $8 million pay out to Bechtel for its first year of service was a complete waste of money.
In one case, Bechtel took a city database of projects, resorted the information, changed the data into a different format, and sold it back to the city for almost $500,000.
In response to the World Bank recommendation, the Bolivian Congress passed the Drinking Water and Sanitation Law in October 1999, allowing privatization and ending government subsidies to municipal utilities. Soon after International Water took over the water services in Cochabamba, the monthly water bill reached $20 in a city where the minimum wage is less than $100 a month. These increases forced some of the poorest families in to literally choose between food and water ($20 is nearly the cost of feeding a family of five for two weeks).
For more information on the these price hikes, see HERE. In response to these price increases, an alliance of the citizens of Cochabamba called La Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (The Coalition in Defense of Water and Life) was formed in January 2000. Through mass mobilization, the alliance shut down the city for four days. Within a month of this, millions of Bolivians marched to Cochabamba and held a general strike, stopping all transportation.
The protesters then issued the Cochabamba Declaration, which called for the protection of universal water rights for all citizens.
In response to this, the Bolivian government promised to reverse the price hike. They never did.
So, in February 2000, La Coordinadora organized a peaceful march demanding the retraction of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Law, the termination of the water contract, the participation of citizens in creating a water resource law, and the cancellation of ordinances allowing privatization.
Slogans such as "Water Is God's Gift and Not A Merchandise" and "Water Is Life" were used by the protesters. These demands were strongly rejected by the government. The following April, the government declared martial law to try and silence the water protests. Activists were arrested, protesters were killed, and the media was censored. &nb |
In its aftermath, Cochabamba’s water revolt became an international symbol,
a modern day victory of a humble David against a giant corporate Goliath.
The water revolt drew broad international media attention. Oscar Olivera
(image right) was
awarded the prestigious international Goldman Prize for environmental
activism. 
