Water Privatization in Bolivia

Gennesy Bustillos

Introduction

Whenever people think about South America, they think of the big countries such as

Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, but they forget about Bolivia. People tend to forget about it

because it’s not one of the most talked about countries and it’s landlocked by the bigger

countries like Chile and Argentina. It’s also one of the poorest South American countries.

However, what Bolivia lacks in wealth, it makes up for in the unification of its people. People

have been taking advantage of countries that lack financial security, especially Bolivia, but they

get greedy and unrealistic of the services they provide and the necessity of something so pure

and necessary for survival. Bolivians have fought and will continue to fight for water to be a

natural resource, and not an item for profit. It took a small and corrupt country to unite and fight

two giants, at separate times, to prove that just because something is small does not give people

the right to bully it and if they want a fight, it will gladly give up everything to prove what they

are doing is malicious and unjust.

Background

Due to money embezzlement and government corruption, Bolivia has had a poor

economy throughout most of its past. Currently there is an effort to improve its economy by

taking out loans from the World Bank, but the Word Bank had other intentions for the loan. They

“threatened to withhold $600 million in debt relief if Bolivia did not privatize its water utilities”

(Runyan, 2003). The World Bank knew that Bolivia could never repay them and that it needed

the money to stay afloat, so “in 1998, the World Bank, which has endorsed water privatization

schemes in many parts of the world, linked the renewal of a $25-million loan to the privatization

of water services in Cochabamba” (Barlow, 2001) and Bolivia’s water management went to

Aguas del Tunari, which was controlled by Bechtel, a U.S. company in San Francisco,

California. Once Aguas del Tunari gained control of the water systems, they started to raise the

water bill by 35%, but they didn’t improve the distribution of water around Cochabamba. There

were times the water would run less than 4 hours a day! Insufficient water flow and the increased

cost affected everyone in Cochabamba, especially the poor because “this meant that water cost

more than food; for those on minimum wage or unemployed, water bills suddenly accounted for

close to half their monthly budgets” (Barlow, 2001). Aguas del Tunari began to aggravate the

citizens of Cochabamba because “permits were required for all access to water, even [the water]

from community wells. Peasants and small farmers even had to buy permits to gather rainwater

on their property” (Barlow, 2001). The company, Aguas del Tunari, took ownership of rain

water, which is the lowest thing they could do. How could they think that they own rainwater?

Do their workers perform the water cycle, for them to have the audacity to charge people for

rainwater? The increase in the price for water services is preposterous given that most of the

people need water to farm to survive, and the increase in the price makes it harder for people to

pay for these services when the service itself is subpar and overpriced.

Methodology

The documentary, Water Rising, talks about the experience the people who live in El Alto

have to live and how their lives are with the privatization of water. The film follows Mrs.

Máxima Huanca, her husband, and her children, Juan José, Maria, Daymar, and their newborn

who live in the Barrio Solidaridad. They are struggling to provide water for their family because

of the high cost of water from Aguas del Illimani, which is owned by Suez, so their only source

of water is a pipe from the factory that pours out water, but it is not clean or safe because

“sometimes it’s full of insects, dust, dirt, and petrol” (De Barra, 2015). In the film the mother

said that “three children died from drinking the dirty water from there,” but that is their only

source of water. Dr. Hermes Fabio Mendoza is the local doctor in El Alto; he went to visit a

patient named Mrs. Luisa, who is a lady bedridden because she suffers from large ulcers in her

body. Her family is living in poverty and Dr. Mendoza said that the infection could have been

prevented if they had access to clean water. Her wounds can’t heal with dirty bandages because

they lacks a sterile environment to clean the dressings, so the family’s only solution is to

continue with the way they are and use the same bandages because they can’t afford new, clean

ones or water to clean them and they can’t afford a specialist to heal the ulcers. Mrs. Máxima’s

daughter Maria said she feels “bad because how can it be that the factory’s water is right beside

us, but we don’t have water? What we’re saying now is that we want a public standpipe but at

the moment we don’t even have a public standpipe in the area” (De Barra, 2015). Dr. Mendoza

had to borrow a car from a NGO to find the truck that sells water, because the roads are difficult

to drive in unless you have a four-by-four vehicle, and sometimes even if you find it, the water is

all sold out and he was to wait until the next day for water to clean the instruments at the clinic.

He also said that “one barrel costs almost between 5-10 Bolivianos, [which] is a lot for local

people water is expensive here” (De Barra, 2015). In the film, Carlos Rojas, the leader of the El

Alto Neighborhood Council, said that “they performed a massive protest where there was one

death and one injury in the Bolivian bridge their sacrifice will not be in vain” (De Barra, 2015)

and during a meeting Carlos Rojas said “on the issue of water, compañeros, it’s very critical. It

seems that there is an international political movement that is trying to take ownership of this

natural resource. I think we can’t stay like this, silenced” (De Barra, 2015). A survey conducted

in March of 2000, showed “ninety percent of Cochabamba’s citizen believed it was time for

Bechtel’s subsidiary to return the water system to public control, according to results of a

60,000-person survey” (Shultz, 2000). In the neighborhood Barrio Solidaridad there was a

meeting to talk about a donation from a Canadian Water activist, they donated 1,000 meters of

pipes, but the meeting was for which streets the pipes will be in, and to organize the community

on what jobs people will perform. Mrs. Máxima said that

“the work was done by all the neighbors sons, mothers, children, husbands, and wives.

We have dug, we’ve put down the pipes, we’ve covered it over and we’re carrying on

with the work. If you don’t work now, you’ll have to pay a fine no matter whether you

can or can’t work you still have to work” ( De Barra,2015).

No one will have it in their houses, but they will be able to get it from the street, if there is a way

to get it in your house it will be a separate charge. Mrs. Máxima said their reason to fight is

because “we do it so our kids won’t suffer as much as we have. We’ve been completely

controlled and we don’t want that for our children. We want everything here that is ours, for our

children to have” (De Barra, 2015).

First supporting case/example

According to YES! Magazine, there was an incident where the Bolivian people

protested/revolted against the unfair distribution of water in the city of Cochabamba. The people

of Cochabamba had enough of the injustice, this caused people of all class levels to unite in the

fight against the multinational corporation, Bechtel. Yes! Magazine spoke of a humble man who

had taken part in the protest, Oscar Olivera, as “a machinist-turned-union activist, a broad-based

movement of workers, peasants, farmers, and others created La Coordinadora de Defensa del

Agua y de la Vida (Coordinator in Defense of the Water and of Life)” (Barlow, 2001). It all

started in January when “Cochabambinos staged strikes and blocked transit, effectively shutting

their city down for four straight days. The Bolivian government then promised to lower rates, but

broke that promise within weeks” (Shultz, 2000). The Cochabambinos next strike was “on

February 4, when thousands tried to march in peaceful protest, President Banzer had police

hammer protesters with two days of tear gas that left 175 people injured and two youths blinded”

(Shultz, 2000); this caused Bolivia to go under martial law. Things accelerated when “a 17-year-

old boy named Victor Hugo Danza was shot in through the face and killed by the military”

(Barlow,2001) for participating in the protest. Due to all the protests, the death of the boy, and

everyone’s hatred of Bechtel, “on April 10, the directors of Aguas del Tunari and Bechtel fled

Bolivia, taking with them key personnel files, documents, and computers, and leaving behind a

broken company with substantial debts” (Barlow,2001). However, that was not the end of

Bechtel in Bolivia, because they ending up “suing the government of Bolivia for close to $40

million in the World Bank's International Court for the Settlement of Investment Disputes,

claiming NAFTA-like investor-state rights” (Barlow,2001). The revolt in Cochabamba helped

set an example for future fights against multinational corporations with a goal to gain control of

Bolivia’s water management.

Second supporting case/example

Another article I read spoke of another incident that occurred. This time it took place in

La Paz, Bolivia where Bolivian citizens had to fight for their right to water, when the water rate

rose 35 percent because the water services were being controlled by the French water company

Suez. Bolivian families were outraged because “the cost for El Alto households of hooking up to

water and sewage services is now equivalent to more than six months' of the national minimum

wage” (Cochabamba, 2005). The next step was a “three-day civil strike organized by local

neighborhood organizations in January 2005 [that] forced then-President Carlos Mesa to cancel

the contract with French multinational, Suez” (Spronk, 2008). “In 2008 an audit confirmed that

Aguas del Illimani failed to meet its contractual obligations and a new public water service,

EPSAS was established” (De Barra, 2015). “ EPSAS has promised to install over a quarter of a

million new water connections in El Alto by 2012”( De Barra , 2015).

Analysis

Cochabamba and El Alto are two cities that fought the injustice of the multinational

corporations Bechtel and Suez. Some similarities that they have are that they both had activists

who were passionate about the cause, and that they protested and used blockades to demonstrate

that they didn’t approve of what was happening. They wanted a solution to the increase in price

of water and for the service of water to expand more around the regions. Both of them felt that

these big companies didn’t understand the citizens of Bolivia and the Bolivians wanted them

both out of Bolivia and out of their water systems. The differences between them are that

Cochabamba’s revolt was more impactful and it paved the way for the protests in El Alto, and in

Cochabamba, after Bechtel left, they sued the Bolivian government breaking a contract. After

news of Bechtel’s lawsuit to Bolivia, news articles about the situation spread around the world

and this caused Bechtel to be viewed as the villain. Privatization of water does create jobs, and

maybe in another country this may work, but Bolivians view water as a resource and a necessity,

and not as a commodity.

Conclusion

The two water battles helped to show the world that if you believe in something and fight

for it, then you can defeat anything that gets in way. The citizens of both cities were brave

individuals who went through a lot to fight for something that they believed in and that they were

living. The two water wars were examples of citizens working together and despite being from

different social groups, they still stood together to fight a bigger problem. Bechtel and Suez were

taking advantage of the people of Cochabamba and El Alto by increasing the cost for water, in a

country that has high unemployment, to such an extent that most people had to choose between

food and water because they could not afford both. The high cost of water forced people to find

other ways of getting water, like drinking dirty water, getting sick, or revolting and fighting for

water.

References

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http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/reclaiming-the-commons/429

COCHABAMBA MARK II AS BOLIVIANS REJECT WATER MULTINATIONAL. (2005).

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De Barra, M., & Crudden, A. (2015, February 04). Water Rising - Full Documentary. Retrieved

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Spronk, S. (2008, April 29). After the Water Wars in Bolivia: The Struggle for a "Social-Public"

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Picture

Kruse, T. (n.d.). Street protests during the Cochabamba Water War [Digital image]. Retrieved

May 02,2016,from http://democracyctr.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Gente-

enojada-San-Martín.jpg