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[Catherina]

6. I don't know about Mexico but Bechtel tried it in Bolivia and it didn't go over well at all

Synopsis
The fresh clean water pouring freely from your spigot, shower head and garden hose isn't just a gift of Mother Nature. It's fast becoming a profit center. Savvy businessmen have been buying up water sources across America, hoping that one day our most precious resource will become their route to riches. Already, a few multinational companies have cornered the water market in countries like France and England, reaping billions in profit.

But what are the consequences of treating life-sustaining water as just another commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder? To find out, NOW teamed up with the new series FRONTLINE WORLD and sent producer David Murdock and THE NEW YORKER's William Finnegan to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where a fight broke out between the citizens who depend on water and a multinational corporation that depends upon it for profit...

http://www.pbs.org/now/science/bolivia.html

Oscar Olivera, Union Activist

Cochabamba is a town of 800,000 situated high in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia. Two years ago, a popular protest there turned into a deadly riot. The army battled civilians in the streets on and off for three months, hundreds were arrested, a seventeen year-old boy was shot and killed, the government of Bolivia nearly collapsed. The issue was water.
The spark was privatization. A private consortium, dominated by the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, had taken over Cochabamba's water system and raised water rates. Protesters blamed Bechtel for trying to "lease the rain."

NEW YORKER writer William Finnegan traveled to Cochabamba to learn about the water war and to see what lessons could be drawn about privatization, globalization and the growing anger in Latin America over economic inequality.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. 70% of its people live below the poverty line. Nearly one child in ten dies before the age of five. The Bolivian economy, never strong, was wrecked by hyperinflation in the 1980s.

Desperate for relief, Bolivia has been faithfully following the dictates of the international lending community for the past fifteen years -- selling its airline, railroads, mines and electric company to private -- usually foreign-controlled -- companies. The economic shock therapy tamed inflation but led to severe recession and massive unemployment.

In the 1990s, Bolivia, under pressure from the United States, eradicated its most lucrative export - coca - the leaf that is used for cocaine.

"Drugs, illegal as they may be, they were 3% of the GDP, 18% of exports," Luis Quiroga, Bolivia's vice president during the water war, tells Finnegan. "Bad as it was, damaging as it was, if you look at it from a purely business standpoint…It [the drug trade] was Milton Friedman heaven: all privately run, no taxation, no regulation and in essence -- if you want to look at it cynically -- duty free access to markets," observes Quiroga, who is now Bolivia's president.

Politicians like Quiroga fully supported the eradication of coca, but the loss of drug money made the country even more dependent on international financial institutions like the World Bank. The Bank advised the country to continue selling its remaining assets, including water.

MY GOODMAN: But could you explain, though it’s well-known in Bolivia, hardly known here at all, though it’s a U.S. company, what happened in Cochabamba? Talk about what Bechtel tried to do and what the people responded.

OSCAR OLIVERA: [translated] It’s not that Bechtel tried to do it. They did it. They increased the charges for water, the cost of water, by 300%, so that every family had to pay, for this water service, one-fifth of their income.

AMY GOODMAN: How did they get control of the water? I mean, here, you turn on the tap. You don’t pay.

OSCAR OLIVERA: [translated] The government, under a law that was passed, conceded control of the water under a monopoly to Bechtel in a certain area. So that means that Bechtel tried to charge a fee and had the monopoly power over a very basic necessity for people. The law said even that people had to ask, had to obtain a permit to collect rainwater. That means that even rainwater was privatized. The most serious thing was that indigenous communities and farming communities, who for years had their own water rights, those water sources were converted into property that could be bought and sold by international corporations.

In confronting that situation, the people rose up, confronted Bechtel, and during five months of mobilization, managed to defeat Bechtel, breach the contract and change the law. But the most important thing — and we need to remind Evo Morales of that today — was that that victory of the people in Cochabamba was the reason why Evo Morales could be president today. If that uprising in 2000 had not ended in a popular victory, Evo Morales today would not be the president.

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/10/5/bolivian_activist_oscar_olivera_on_bechtels

We be sick puppies indeed.