WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

companies. Chile used the revenues to pay for its shipments of arms
from Europe.
Many crises and more than 150 coups have left their mark on
Bolivia, preventing the country from becoming politically stable.
In 1985, President Victor Paz Estenssoro issued a decree (Decreto
Supremo 21060) which paved the way for a “neoliberal” free-enterprise
economy. The nation’s fledgling domestic industry proved no match
for rival foreign imports and so it collapsed. In 2004, Bolivia, with a
population of almost nine million, was still the poorest country in
Latin America and had amassed foreign debts totalling US$5∙5 billion.
In order to repay these, 30 per cent of the gross domestic product had
to be expended.
In the 1990s, natural resources such as oil, and gas in particular – as
well as the relevant infrastructure services – were privatised and foreign
investors took control of extraction and marketing. After Venezuela,
Bolivia has the largest deposits of natural gas in South America. In
1997, the public water supply in the Andean cities of El Alto and La
Paz fell victim to the tidal wave of privatisation; the beneficiary was the
Aguas de Illimani consortium under the direction of the world’s largest
water company, the French Suez Group.
The World Bank subsidiary IFC (International Finance Corporation)
had an 8 per-cent share in this consortium, indicating that the World
Bank is also acting on behalf of its own economic interests and not simply
out of the altruistic desire to promote development in the countries of
the South, when it forces its Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP)
on them. The consortium’s shareholders also include its employees –
together they hold a modest one per-cent interest in the company! 7
The “water wars” of Cochabamba, which became famous
internationally, were waged in 2000, following drastic water price
increases. Another factor which led to the conflict was the way in which
multinational corporations used the country’s Water Act to strengthen
their efforts to seize municipal water systems and even natural sources
of water, such as wells. The U.S. Bechtel Group (the Aguas del Tunari
Consortium) had taken over the running of the municipal water
supply and raised the price of water to such an extent that a large
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