WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

initiatives do not succeed in halting these developments.
Socio-political movements and citizens’ associations have achieved
a great deal in the past few years in their struggle for control of water
supplies, especially with regard to legislation. Their protests have led
to important sections of the Potable Water Law being amended and
drinking water supply and distribution systems being made more customer-friendly
and returned to local authority control, a move which
also safeguards and protects the rights of indigenous farmer irrigationalists.
Regardless of these breakthroughs, Bolivian governments of the
pre-Morales era continued to support the policy of privatisation, pursuing
it in an underhand manner – for instance, by bypassing their
obligation to consult with citizens’ organisations and by misleading or
withholding information from the public.
The protests in Bolivia are more than just a passing phenomenon.
They represent a new development which might well serve as an
important lesson to other countries, showing them the way forward.
The successful outcomes in the fight against the sell-out of resources and
the brawn of the big companies have given people new self-confidence
and the will to organise their own living conditions for themselves.
With extraordinary courage, skill and staying power, social movements
have managed – within the space of two years – to put an end to water
privatisation deals, first of all in Cochabamba, and later in El Alto and
La Paz, bringing about the fall of two presidents and subsequent new
elections.
Equally remarkable is the resoluteness with which resistance groups
fought not only for self-determination of local water supplies but also
for a fair share of the nation’s own resources, such as oil and gas. The
campaign to convene a legislative assembly in times of peace, with the
aim of revising the issue of the right of possession of natural resources,
as well as the basic principles underlying the provision of essential
public services, is a signal that grassroots democracy is truly alive.
Here in Germany, people have been striving unsuccessfully for more
than 50 years now to secure the introduction of a national referendum
system. Against this background, it might well be worth contemplating
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