Fifteen Years of Community-Controlled Water in Bolivia

[marmar]

from ROAR!, via truthout:



This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the victory of the communities of Bolivia over private water corporations. Not only did popular power reverse the plan to privatize the water, but the many hundreds of communities surrounding Cochabamba managed to keep their water as a common good, controlled and managed by the community directly and democratically.

The past few decades have witnessed a massive increase in attempts to commodify natural resources across Latin America. Almost all these attempts have been met with powerful community mobilizations and resistance. There have been many victories, but also losses. Successes have taken place, for example, in Argentina with the defeat of Monsanto, three consecutive mining companies in La Rioja and a paper mill on the border with Uruguay.

Other places around the world have also been successful in at least holding back privatizations and mining, such as in Thessaloniki, with the struggle to keep water public and in the Halkidiki region of Greece. In these examples, as in so many others, the struggles are grounded in a particular form of popular power. As with the experience in Cochabamba, it was regular people and communities organized in the streets (not parties, unions or other sectors) using direct action and directly democratic assemblies to make decisions.

Important lessons can and should be learned in our struggles to defend the land and commons from what took place and continues to take place in Bolivia. While the Bolivian struggle is referred to as the Water Wars, this does not reflect all of what took place: it was not only a war over the privatization of resources, but, as will be explained below, it was and remains a struggle to maintain autonomy and self-organization — experiences that in some places go back hundreds of years. Cochabanbinos have not only kicked out private water companies but have been successful in maintaining their ways of organizing and being, while protecting their bienes comunes. ..................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31436-fifteen-years-of-community-controlled-water-in-bolivia

[awoke_in_2003]

1. And here in the land of the free and home of the brave

we allow privatization with nary a whimper.