THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE
"A WAR OVER WATER"
Volume 31 - FEBRUARY 4, 2000
Dear Readers:
Thank you for the many notes I received in response to the lighter piece which I wrote in November, reflecting on the experience of returning to California. Thank also to the Sacramento Bee and San Jose Mercury, both of which published the article over Christmas weekend.
The article below is clearly more serious, which I wrote this afternoon after returning home from the scene of a police/military takeover of the center of our city. The people of Cochabamba are in open rebellion over something vital and basic, access to water. The government has responded with tear gas and force. The details are below. I hope you will share this with others, so that what is happening here today does not go unnoticed.
Jim Shultz The Democracy Center
"A WAR OVER WATER"
I’ve decided that the term "tear gas" doesn’t quite capture the real experience involved. Even from close to a block away the white smoke pouring from the canister causes severe burning to your eyes and throat and immediately empties your nose of whatever snot you’ve accumulated for months. At ground zero the gas makes you vomit and nearly lose consciousness. Sometimes the canister projectiles hit people and split their heads open. Fortunately, this morning I found myself suffering from just the burning eyes and running nose class of symptoms. This morning tear gas was the Bolivian government’s official response to a huge popular revolt here, over something very basic: water. At this writing, local news stations report one person dead (from a tear gas canister to the head) and at least thirty five hospitalized.
WHEN WATER BECOMES A VEHICLE FOR PROFIT
In recent years "privatization" has become an economic theology in Latin America, driven by a set of commandments written by the U.S., and the U.S.-dominated lenders, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The commandments are simple. Thou shalt sell your public enterprises to private corporations and investors, almost always from abroad. Thou shalt allow those new owners to do what they will with prices, wages and products. In exchange, supposedly, those businesses will receive a fresh transfusion of foreign capital (and the IMF and World Bank won’t cut off your international loans). Bolivia’s most recent governments have been very obedient to these foreign commandments, selling off everything from the national airline to the telephone company (in a country where consumer protection is almost non-existent).
But then there was water. Last year the Bolivian government sold off Cochabamba’s public water system to a pool of British-led investors who promised to pour millions of new dollars into expansion and improvement. Last month the owners raised up their new signs ("Aguas de Tunari") on all their facilities and also raised up something else: water prices, in many cases by more than double. Our own water bill, for example, leapt from $12 per month in December to nearly $30 in January. Similar increases hit almost everyone we know. By U.S. standards that may not be much, but for the many Bolivian families who often earn as little as $100 per month, these increases were catastrophic. Cochabambinos, who had paid scant attention to the deal when it was being worked out behind closed doors, were sent into shock and into action.
In mid-January a four day "paro civico" (general strike) over the water price hikes left the city at a total standstill - no cars, no buses, no air flights or bus transport in or out of the city. It was the kind of action that can only happen with broad popular support and it culminated in a mass march to the city’s central plaza as thousands of angry water users, urban and rural, gathered and chanted just outside the windows of the government offices where protest leaders and officials were negotiating. Some of those in the talks were reportedly worried that the crowd might break down the door if they didn’t emerge with some acceptable agreement. In the end what they agreed to was time, to talk more.
A PEACEFUL MARCH MET BY RIOT POLICE
Today was the deadline for those talks, to be marked by a peaceful mass march once again to the city’s center. Last night the Bolivian government issued its response, sending more than 1,000 army and police in from outside Cochabamba and declaring the march banned and illegal, an especially loaded act from a President, Hugo Banzer, who in the 1970s had ruled for 7 years as an un-elected dictator, Bolivia’s companion to Augusto Pinochet. One of the protest’s organizers, labor leader Oscar Olivera, publicly declared that the government’s response was, "an expression of fascism that reflects a total incapacity of the government to have a dialogue." The government officially retorted that the marchers were just fringe troublemakers, not representative of the people of Cochabamba, and that the water increases had really been minor. Officials also asserted that the show of force was aimed at protecting "the public", an odd claim since it is the public which is marching.
This morning thousands of protesters marched toward the police lines. In the crowd I saw young and old, the poor and the middle class. They included a friend who works as an accountant at the local university and another who is a Catholic priest in his 70s, who walks slowly, even away from exploding tear gas. Many were people from rural towns who walked here on foot from ten miles and more away, despite government roadblocks aimed at keeping them out. Anyone dismissing this as a crowd of unrepresentative rabble rousers wasn’t paying very close attention.
The protesters were eloquent as reporters made their way through the gas clouds seeking interviews. "We’ve returned to the 70’s, to the dictatorship," said one man choking from the gas. "If they don’t want to serve the people why do they want to be in the government?" asked a caller to a radio program. Live TV newscasts showed an unarmed man being beaten by soldiers with a club and a long rubber whip. The national government official in charge was also interviewed. "We are not affected," he said of the protests.
JUST OBEYING ORDERS
During a calm in the conflict I spoke to some of the young riot police sent in from the Capital, La Paz, armed with canisters, gas masks, shields and rifles. "I just follow orders," explained Angelo, a 24 year old wearing a full outfit of anti-riot gear. Local police might have seen their own mothers or aunts in the protest crowds and may have been less obedient.
"If you were ordered to kill me right now, you would kill me?"
"Claro [for sure]".
"Don’t people here have a right to protest having the price of their water doubled."
"Yes, we all have rights…I’m following orders."
The question in Cochabamba this week is who, in reality, is initiating those orders. Is it a police captain sent here from out of town. Is it President Banzer? Or are those orders merely the natural consequence of an economic theology, developed from afar and run amok here, enough to send even old men and women into the streets facing tear gas and bullets just to keep having water they can afford?
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