Defeating the Multinationals Is Just the Start of the Problem for Anti-Globalization Movements

By Jeff Conant, AlterNet. Posted January 9, 2009.

But, when it came time for the people of Cochabamba to elect SEMAPA's citizen directors, scarcely 4 percent of eligible voters turned out, and nobody seemed to know why. In a move typical of countries where corruption historically filters through all levels of society, the first elected director filled the company with friends and family and was removed from office by popular fiat in 2005. The second director did much the same and was removed two years later. When I asked one SEMAPA worker who had been active in the water war and remains active in the water workers' union what could be done to root out corruption, he said, "We threw out two directors already. If the next director is corrupt, we'll throw him out, too."

SEMAPA continues to suffer from all of the problems that plague public utilities throughout the developing world: unmanageable debt, leakage and infamously poor service. Local researchers now say that, if SEMAPA serves as a model for anything, it's a model of what can go wrong in public water management.

Making Progress

As a spokesman for the forces that ousted Bechtel in 2000, Oscar Olivera has a profound stake in the future of water management in Cochabamba. When I spoke with him in his office at a corner of the Cochabamba's central plaza, he was disarmingly honest.

"The truth is," he said, "I feel a mix of anguish and sorrow at the state of our movement. There's a sense of impotence, that what we've done isn't enough. There are a lot of questions about where to go. Because, essentially there have been two movements. One is a movement to expel the transnationals, a movement that managed to break free of the economic model that wants to privatize everything. The second is a movement to construct a new kind of social action, a new concept of development, a new way to measure well-being. It's a movement to establish a new society, one in balance with nature. I always like to point out that, behind the fight for water lies the struggle for democracy.

"We're in the midst of a struggle to preserve life itself. The problem is, we know how to resist. But we are only now learning how to construct something new."

Waxing hopeful, Olivera spoke of the water committees that had developed spontaneously in the Zona Sur, a sprawling neighborhood at Cochabamba's southern flank.

"The water committees have begun establishing a new kind of social organization, a new kind of conviviality, that, while it's not always optimal in terms of efficiency -- largely because of a lack of financing -- it has a tremendous component of solidarity, of transparency; the participation of these committees opens spaces that are very political, very combative and very clear in their defense of the common good."

That's what led me to visit Angel Hurtado, Education Director for ASICA Sur.

Hurtado met me outside his office, auspiciously located above a Cuban medical clinic in a neighborhood called Primero de Mayo. In a neat button-down shirt, gray wool vest, pleated trousers and gold-rimmed glasses and with his cell phone at his belt, Hurtado looked the part of a midlevel water utility manager. But he proved to be much more than just that.

"When I arrived here, in the '80s," Hurtado told me, "there was no water, no clinics, no schools. We had a spring, up the hill, and two natural wells, and the whole neighborhood drank from these sources. So we began building tanks and taps. From this effort was born, over time, the Association of Community Water Systems of the Southern Zone -- ASICA Sur. There was no one to help us. We had to do everything ourselves." Down the hill a group of men operated a large drill spitting up mud and soil, perforating a new well. "This project, it's taken months to get it going," Hurtado hollered over the shrieking of the drill. "We have our problems. But it's going."

Residents of Primero de Mayo, a sprawl of hilter-kilter concrete houses tumbling down the eroded slopes of the Cochabamba Valley, played a key role in the water war, and Hurtado's voice registered a quiet pride as he shared the story.

"We were militant," he said, "and very unified. We held a general assembly, and three of us were chosen to lead the mobilizations. I was in charge of security and making sure everybody had food and medicine. We marched every day, 14 kilometers into Cochabamba to fight in the streets, and 14 kilometers home at night. We had to fight every day, because the goal of the authorities was to destroy our leadership. But it didn't go so well for them. After months of fighting, we finally won."

Before coming to the Cochabamba Valley, Hurtado was a miner in Oruro, a high, barren province bereft of agriculture but rich in silver, copper, tin and tungsten. Like many others I would talk to over the course of two weeks in Cochabamba, Hurtado traces his history to a turning point in 1985. It was then that the country's New Economic Policy deregulated the mining industry, just as tin prices collapsed on the world market, throwing hundreds of thousands of Bolivian miners out of work. The mass migration that followed, known as the relocalization, produced the sprawling, informal growth that has become Cochabamba's Zona Sur. It also produced a revolutionary underclass that forms the backbone of Bolivia's fierce social movements.

See more stories tagged with: bolivia, water, bechtel, water privatization, water justice, cochabamba, water democracy

Jeff Conant is the International Research and Communications Coordinator for Food and Water Watch.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace! Sign up now »