Seven Years On

I am sitting here in my office on a Saturday, writing a Blog to avoid getting to work on the task that brings me here instead of enjoying a day off. I am supposed to be doing the final editing on my chapter on the Cochabamba Water Revolt for our new book, Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (UC Press, 2008).

Then it struck me on my way in that all those events happened exactly seven years ago this week. It was seven years ago today, the first Saturday in April, and around this same time, midday, that Victor Hugo Daza, a 17-year-old boy, became the Water Revolt's sole fatality. He was shot in the face by a military sharpshooter who was later acquitted by a military court and promoted. Justice Bolivian style.

The Water Revolt set so many things in motion. A chain of political events, from the protests against the IMF's belt-tightening demands to the uprising against Goni's cheap gas export plans, all of which eventually spilled into ballot politics and help make Evo Morales President. It was during the water revolt that I first met Morales, on Calle Heroinas. He might have been throwing a rock. I can't remember.

In the seven years since, Cochabamba has also played host to hoards of researchers, filmmakers and others all eager to get a little piece of the story to call their own. There is a romance to the Water Revolt by those who look at it from abroad. Some of it is deserved and some of it misplaced. I try to do justice to all of that in this chapter and I hope, I really hope, it is the last thing I will ever write abut the Water Revolt.

Seven years later, it remains a powerful story of a people waking up to global forces that were seizing control of their most basic resource. The people beat Bechtel, not once but twice. First they took to the streets to kick the US corporate giant out of town (after it jacked up water rates by more than 50% overnight). Then a global coalition beat back Bechtel's attempt, in a closed-door World Bank trade court, to take $50 million from Cochabambinos as a consolation prize.

It is also the story of how the social movements that led the romantic rebellion failed in the task afterwards of building a new public water company worthy of the sacrifices that people made to take it back from Bechtel. Cochabamba's water company has made some progress in expanding service to the poorer neighborhoods of the city, where spigots in the home are a dream. But seven years later that public water company is still hobbled by the same chronic inefficiencies and petty corruption that led to World Bank demands for its privatization. The Cochabamba Water Revolt, like my book chapter I suppose, remains an uncompleted task.

Note: For those interested in The Democracy Center's extensive writings on the Water Revolt, including reports from the streets while it happened, please see here. The photo above was taken by Tom Kruse and the full collection of his Water Revolt photos can be viewed here.