David Versus Goliath in Cochabamba Water Rights, Neoliberalism, and the Revival of Social Protest in Bolivia by Willem Assies
ARTICLE LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES 10.1177/0094582X03252286Assies / DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH IN COCHABAMBA David versus Goliath in Cochabamba Water Rights, Neoliberalism, and the Revival of Social Protest in Bolivia by Willem Assies “Ours is a small country and it hardly owns anything any more. Our mines were privatized, the electrification company was privatized, and the airlines, the telecommunications, the railways, our oil and gas. The things we still own are the water and the air, and we have struggled to make sure that the water continues to be ours,” said Oscar Olivera, a trade-union leader from Cochabamba, Bolivia, addressing one of the assemblies protesting the annual spring meeting of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, DC, in April 2000. Olivera had been freshly flown in from the city that had been the scene of vio- lent protests that forced the transnational consortium Aguas del Tunari out of Cochabamba Department and called upon the Bolivian government to mod- ify Law 2029 on Potable Water and Sanitary Drainage, proclaimed only five months earlier. The assembly that protested the power of transnational capi- talism and neoliberal policies cheered him as a hero. “David has defeated Goliath,” claimed Olivera, and “thus set an example for the rest of the world.” From the early days of April Bolivia had been the scene of a wave of pro- tests such as it had not seen for several decades, prompting the Banzer gov- ernment, elected in 1997, to declare a state of siege. The day the state of siege was declared, 880 police mutinied to press wage demands and students pro- tested in La Paz, and later coca growers from the yunga region set up road- blocks to protest forced eradication.
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