Reply #14: They had a whole revolution in Bolivia over being charged for collecting rainwater.

[Peace Patriot]

Now they have a new leftist president, with a 70% approval rating--Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely indigenous country)--a new Constitution, voted on by the people, which, among other things, sanctifies water as a human right; it also makes coca leaf chewing and tea drinking (a traditional medicine in the Andes) a Constitutional right--and many other wise and humanistic things.

Bechel Inc. came in there, invited by the previous rightwing government, privatized the water system in the city of Cochabamba, and immediately jacked up the price of water for the poor of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater. The people of Bolivia rebelled, with peaceful but unstoppable protests, and rallied to Morales, a coca leaf farmer and head of the coca leaf growers union, and elected him president. Morales re-negotiated Bolivia's international gas contracts, and increased Bolivia's gas revenues from $1 billion/year to $2 billion/year, to be able to pay for social programs, for instance, a small pension for the elderly, universal medical care and schools. He also was able to settle a hundred year old dispute with Chile, and gained access to the sea for landlocked Bolivia, and attracted a project that Brazil and Venezuela are helping to fund, to build a new highway from the Atlantic coast of Brazil, across South America, and through Bolivia, to the Pacific Ocean, which will turn Bolivia into a major trade route between Africa and Asia, and up and down both South American coasts.

This last September, the U.S. (Bushwhack) ambassador in Bolivia and the DEA instigated fascist riots against the Morales, in which they trashed government and NGO buildings, beat up indigenous people, blew up a gas pipeline and machine-gunned some thirty unarmed peasants. They were trying to split off Bolivia's gas/oil rich eastern provinces into a fascist mini-state in control of the resources. Morales threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia, and all of South America rallied to his side. All the leaders held a meeting in Chile of their new, all-South American 'common market'--UNASUR--formalized only a few months before, and unanimously backed the Morales government, and sent delegations to Bolivia, where they successfully negotiated a peace agreement with the saner faction of the white separatists, and helped Bolivia to peacefully hold the Constitutional referendum.

Evo Morales said something, about two years ago, that really stuck with me. He said, "The time of the people has come."

It all came from Bechtel privatizing the water and charging for collecting rainwater. I don't know if things will ever come to such a pass in Colorado, but, if they do, remember this story, and what Evo said, who was given a special blessing from the tribes of the high Andes, upon his investiture as president of Bolivia, at which he wore a wreath of coca leaves around his neck: "The time of the people has come."