The Bolivian water wars: social and economic aspects

Abstract

My research covers the story of the water wars in Bolivia. Water is a natural monopoly and it expects very high costs for infrastructures technologies, indeed its market cannot be competitive. Bolivia is a country in which Indigenous heritage is still strong in language and other aspects of everyday life. The commonest water management system in the Andes region among the Aymara and Quechua was that of “Communal Waters”. It originated in the Incan period, and was organized considering the intensity of rain and the needs of every family, based on equity and reciprocity. Bolivia confronts the two cultures of water: western and indigenous. The management of water, until 1999 in the hands of SEMAPA, was privatized and entrusted to the American Multinational Bechtel. It was investing to modernize the water network and drainage system and to extend it to the favelas. The loans were guaranteed by the World Bank and as there was no money in the public fund, the tariffs would sustain the reimbursement of the loan, but it was unaffordable by the majority of Bolivians. Soon people rose against the water privatization. In January 2000, a strike paralyzed the country in the name of the right to water; the government reacted harshly, imposing the martial law. The multinational was sent away and the administration belonged to the people. Soon people realized that the problem was not Bechtel or the law on privatization, it had to do with social conflicts, ethnic and economic that are Bolivian. In 2009 the Bolivian changed their constitution, which now proclaims that water is a human right and bans its privatization. Under Morales government the Water Ministry was created in 2006, to integrate the functions of water supply and sanitation.