Content area
Full Text
Oscar Olivera in collaboration with Tom Lewis, jCochabamba! Water War in Bolivia (Cambridge, MA: South End Press 2005)
THE BOLIVIA "Water War" of 2000 has become an iconic example of the power of social movements to resist corporate globalization. In April 2000, a widespread coalition of small farmers, coca growers, factory workers, the unemployed, and small business people shut down the city of Cochabamba, protesting the privatization of public water resources. After a dramatic standoff between protestors and the military that left one young man dead, the government finally backed down, amending the national water legislation, rescinding the contract it had signed with the private consortium, and granting control of the local water utility to the network of social organizations that emerged to coordinate the protests, the Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life, known as "the Coordinadora."
The Cochabamba Water War is widely regarded as the first major victory won by social movements after fifteen years of neoliberal structural adjustment programs in Bolivia, and as the authors claim in the introduction to this book, "the first great victory against corporate globalization in Latin America." (xiii) This inspiring book documents the triumphant struggle that kicked American transnational corporation, Bechtel, from Bolivia. Divided into four sections, the first, third, and fourth sections are primarily based on interviews with Oscar Olivera, the main spokesperson of the Coordinadora, that have been compiled and translated by collaborator Tom Lewis. The second section consists of chapters written by other activists and intellectuals about what happened after the Water War that place the new forms of struggle that have emerged in Bolivia in their political-economic context. Raquel Gutiérrez and Luis Sánchez-Gomez contribute chapters that describe the challenges of operating the city's water service in the interests of local residents rather than for profit. In the latter section, Tom Lewis contributes a chapter that chronicles the activities of the Coordinadora from the Water War in...