BOLIVIA: Cochabamba’s ‘Water War’, Six Years On

By Franz Chávez Reprint | | Print |

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Nov 8 2006 (IPS) - Six years after the people of Cochabamba reversed the privatisation of the city water company, access to water has improved and rates have been raised only slightly. However, there is still a long way to go.

The capital of the Valley of Cochabamba, 400 km southeast of La Paz, is a city of residential water pumps used to fill rooftop tanks due to the low water pressure in the water mains, which distribute water only five days a week. On the other two days, air circulates through the pipes at such high pressure that it can break the needle on water metre dials.

The colonial-style architecture, which contrasts with the modern designs of banks and other commercial buildings in this city of 900,000, still bears the marks of the battle waged in April 2000 against the privatisation of the local water utility.

For four days, protesters closed down the city, going on strike and setting up roadblocks.

The local residents were protesting against Aguas del Tunari (owned by the U.S. transnational company Bechtel along with Italy’s Edison and Spain’s Abengoa corporations), which hiked water rates by as much as 200 percent after winning a 40-year concession in closed-door negotiations.

After privatisation, water bills amounted to 20 or 30 percent of the income of poor households. Families earning as little as 80 to 100 dollars a month began to be charged 20 dollars a month for water.

Even wells that had been dug by local communities or cooperatives as a solution to their lack of piped water came under the control of Aguas del Tunari, which thus acquired the right to charge for the water from the community wells that it had not even dug itself.

In the protests, 17-year-old demonstrator Víctor Hugo Daza was killed after he was hit in the face by a bullet fired by an army sharpshooter in civilian clothes, who was caught on film shooting into a crowd of unarmed protesters. The officer, Captain Robinson Iriarte, was acquitted by a military tribunal, and later promoted to major.

The protests came close to toppling the second government of Hugo Banzer (1997-2001), who was accused of blindly following International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank prescriptions for privatisation.

The municipal water and sanitation company, SEMAPA, in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city, was privatised in 1999 in compliance with conditions set by the international lenders.

But groups of local residents and civil society organisations came together in the Coordinadora por la Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (Coalition in Defence of Water and Life) to oppose the privatisation.

The Coordinadora, which got Aguas del Tunari thrown out of Cochabamba, became a worldwide symbol of the struggle against free-market reforms and structural adjustment policies, and its techniques began to be emulated in other cities in the region, such as the sprawling working-class city of El Alto, next to La Paz, and Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.

After the April 2000 protests, the Aguas del Tunari contract was cancelled, and the company filed a claim seeking 25 million dollars in compensation that was heard in a trade court run by the World Bank. In January, a settlement was reached and no compensation was paid.

After Aguas del Tunari was forced out, the municipal company SEMAPA was reinstated, although it was badly weakened, underfunded and with little prospect of becoming the kind of company demanded by the local residents.

“SEMAPA is not living up to the demands for water, even though ‘citizen directors’ (representatives of the social movement) have been named to the board of directors,” Gonzalo Maldonado, one of the founders of the Coordinadora, told IPS.

“The company has fallen into the hands of politicians who have distorted the ‘water war’,” added Maldonado, a water engineer who has written several books on the issue.

Amparo Valda, who lives in central Cochabamba, told IPS that she has to store water in containers in preparation for the two days a week when there is no water supply. In addition, she has to buy bottled water, at a price of 2.50 dollars a litre, for drinking and cooking, because of the questionable quality of the piped water.

“But even if the social mobilisation did not achieve optimal results, water distribution has improved substantially, although there is a lack of commitment by citizens for participating in administering the municipal company,” Congressman Gabriel Herbas, another founder of the Coordinadora, remarked to IPS.

Independent analyst Vincent Gómez-García told IPS that the “water war” had heightened SEMAPA’s problems of inefficiency and poor administration, due to heavy politicisation of the company.

Prior to the April 2000 conflict, attempts had been made to improve the professional level of the company’s management. But now, the groups behind the “water war” have demanded jobs in the company, which has lowered the quality of administration to extremely low levels, argued Gómez-García.

That view is at least partially shared by Maldonado, who said he has found serious problems in the municipal water company, like the loss of 50 percent of water supplies due to pipe leakage, theft and privileged treatment received by people with political influence.

The hiring of 700 employees rather than the 270 that were needed, fighting over the distribution of jobs in the company among the “citizen directors” and the lack of a complete register of the company’s installations are other difficulties identified by Maldonado, who suggests immediate investment of some 120 million dollars to resolve the urgent problems of expanding the water distribution network and reducing leakage.

SEMAPA’s web site admits that “water service is not continuous and shows marked rationing that has become habitual since water supplies began – the result of a semi-arid climate, constant population growth, and insufficient infrastructure for the distribution of water to the centres of consumption.”

Perhaps the current conditions in this company that was expected to become a model of administration and citizen participation was one of the reasons that the leader of the April 2000 protests, union organiser Oscar Olivera, avoided two IPS requests for an interview and did not respond to a short email questionnaire.

Herbas said that besides the cancellation of the Aguas del Tunari concession, achievements by the social movement have included the fact that water tariffs have been raised very little.

However, he complained that people have taken a “conformist” attitude and are reluctant to participate in the company’s decision-making processes.

The five percent hike in water tariffs adopted in May brought household rates to between 2.00 and 15.60 dollars a month, with the highest rates charged in middle- and upper-income neighbourhoods.

The rate hike was applied as part of an agreement between SEMAPA and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which promised an 11.5 million dollar loan for expanding water services to poor districts in the city.

Gómez-García said “the economic-financial logic is cold, and the only way to make investments possible is by raising rates.”

The image of Cochabamba since 2000 is that of the people rising up against transnational corporations, and activists around the world have taken their success against the privatisation of the city waterworks as a model to be emulated.

The government, meanwhile, is keeping close tabs on what happens in SEMAPA, because on the last day of this year, the French corporation Suez, which owns Aguas del Illimani that operates in La Paz and El Alto, will pull out, thanks to another “water war” waged in those cities in January 2005.