Cochabamba From Water War to Water Management

Raúl Zibechi | May 28, 2009

Through the water war of April, 2000, the poor of the city and countryside of Cochabamba succeeded in expelling the multinational corporation which tried to charge them for this most basic common good. Between 2003 and 2005, the poor of the entire country drove out the neoliberal model of water management. Now it is community management of water that is the unresolved challenge.

The pavement ends too soon in the barrios in the southern part of Cochabamba. At only five kilometers from the center, one can barely make out an irregular layer on the broad avenues that the cars traverse with difficulty. When one looks in the direction of the hills which dominate a wide, treeless valley, one sees only dust blowing over the streets and irrigation channels changed into parched ditches through which at least a thread of water ought to run.

Rows of houses appear climbing upward until they are lost to sight, nearly reaching the crest of the hills which is dominated by a very dry climate. We are in one of the most important barrios of the southern periphery, Villa Sebastián Pagador, or District 14, established 32 years ago by immigrants from Oruro. The southern zone, made up of six districts, includes half the city's population, some 250,000 inhabitants—the poorest inhabitants—who are the most affected by the inefficiency of the Municipal Potable Water and Sewer Service (SEMAPA).

Villa Pagador or District 14* According to the Census of 2001, Villa Pagador has 21,764 inhabitants. However many are counted within their communities of origin instead of in Villa Pagador so an estimate of 55 or 60,000 inhabitants doesn't appear to be an exaggeration. The infant mortality rate is 24% higher than the average of the city of Cochabamba and twice as high as that of District 12, one of the richest districts. Fifty percent of the women have their children at home and only 43% give birth in a hospital. Forty-four percent of the inhabitants of the entire zone speak Quechua and 11% Aymara. In Villa Pagador, 45% work for themselves and only 36% are salaried. Almost 60% of women work in commerce, selling in the local markets, and 48% of men work in construction or industry. In 2001, only 15% had water piped into their houses while 77% bought it from water trucks. * "Carpeta de Datos de la Zona Sur de Cochabamba," CEDIB, 2004.

The Bolivian state decided in its neoliberal period that only the rich and middle classes would have water; the essential service would therefore not reach the poor, in particular the immigrants of the last generation. To alleviate or even to possibly resolve this grave problem, neighbors in these communities decided to organize themselves, creating water committees, associations, and cooperatives, constructing distribution networks, storage tanks, and drilling the wells themselves using their scarce resources.

In the neighborhoods of southern Cochabamba 120 water committees are functioning, plus some 150 more in the peripheries of the urban zone and an even greater number in rural areas. These organizations regulate the use of water according to the habits and customs of the communities. In the urban zone to the south, between 70% and 80% of the population is not served by the municipal water company. As such, the water committees supply almost 30% of the population and the remaining residents receive water from water trucks. There are hundreds of thousands of people organized solely around the water issue, while a multitude of territorial organizations exist.

The celebrated "water war" can only be explained as the result of a community decision made by hundreds of thousands of people to defend a resource, a feat that was not created or administered by the state but rather by urban and rural communities themselves. In the city, the individuals that make up the community water systems come from many regions of the country, a mix of immigrant campesinos and relocated miners.1 "These two characteristics strongly contribute to the community organization around water," state two directors of the water movement.2

The immigrant campesinos contribute by sharing their Andean traditions of collective work run in shifts, known as the "ayni," while the miners bring their vast organizing experience in the labor unions of the mining industry. Each water system has an average of 200 families associated with it but some have no more than 30 or 40 users. The majority do not have legal status. The residents who have decided not to organize themselves, buy their water from water trucks which traverse the city all day charging excessive prices for water of dubious quality.

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6154