justice campaigner, should read this book. Not just because it is an inspiring story of mass struggle and resilience, but because within that story many of the fundamental questions of strategy which face the global justice movement are concentrated.
Oscar Olivera, one of the key leaders of the struggle, and Tom Lewis, a member of the board of International Socialist Review (US), have done a tremendous service in writing it.
First the water war story. In 1999, at the 'suggestion' of the World Bank, the Bolivian government came forward with the proposal (Law 2029) privatise Cochabamba's water supply, and to sell it to a new company, Aguas del Tunari, a consortium of local and international capital, including Bechtel of the US (massive profiteers from the Iraq occupation) and Abengoa of Spain.
This was an almost pristine-pure example of David Harvey's description neoliberalism as 'acumulation by dispossession'. (1) For this was not just the privatisation of a nationalised or municipal company; 80% of the one million people in the greater Cochabamba area had their water supply provided by local non-profit associations whose charges just covered electricity and other basics. These local associations were just robbed. And not just that.
Local peasants, incredibly, were forbidden by law from collecting rainwater that henceforth became the property of Aguas del Tunari. Water bills shot upwards as the new company recorded massive (and impossible) water usage by households. This was in a poor country where a worker might make $80 a month, and thus where water became imposible to pay for.
The first group of crucial actors we come across in this story is the Fabriles (the Cochabamba Federation of Factory Workers), a broad trade union co-ordination which had tried to actas a centre for local struggles, and address contemporary problems of trade unionism in Bolivia, about which below. Oscar Olivera was a key leader of this co-ordination. At the end of 1999 peasants and workers urged the Fabriles to broaden their scope and take on the water struggle. Insurrection The Fabriles became a central component in the Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua and de la Vida (Coalition to Defend Water and Life) formed in November 1999.
The struggle began with a series of very militant actions, including roadblocks, marches and rallies. These were met with brutal repression, including bringing in riot police from La Paz, and the army, to put down the protests.
Between February and April 2000 the situation swung between rebellion, repression and open insurrection.
The book contains moving accounts of the "February Days' and the 'April days, in which the entire plebeian population organised itself through neighbourhood assemblies, sectoral assemblies and meetings of the Coordinadora, to build barricades, fight the cops and the army and - especially during the Last Battle of April 4 - to effectively seize the city.
"As we walked, however, we realised the entire city was blockaded. The citizens had armed themselves with bricks and stones, and television cameras were broadcasting everything live..." (p.35)
Rebellions like these reveal new levels of social (and intergenerational) solidarity; young people and old people all had a role, from barricades built by children to older people filling pots with water to fight the tear gas.
What had been built, on the basis of the popular assemblies and mass mobilisation, was virtually dual power at the level of the city. For a time, the populace held the city.
Faced with this rebellion, the government eventually caved in - not without having tried to trick the rebels with fake agreements, eventually unmasked.
Not only did the government cave in, but it was forced to concede that of the seven directors of the now de-privatised WatC company, SEMAPA, three would be elected from the population as a whole and one would represent the water workers union. Law 2029 was kaput.
In the space of five months, using the methods of popular assembly and decision making, mass participation and mass mobilisation, the Coordinadora, led effectively by militants from the Fabriles, had forced an embarrassing and spectacular retreat by the government and its foreign backers.
"For one week the state had been demolished. In its place stood the self-government of the poor led by their local and regional organizational structures." (p125) dilemma of all struggles for limited gains in which the masses begin to exercise their power; the results - in this case the winning of a municipal water company - seem terribly limited compared with the mobilisation and sacrifices made.
But the comments of this peasant woman confirm that only by a massive change of the government and the state, and of fundamental social relations, will justice for the poor be achieved.
In fact the Cochabamba struggle then led into other giant struggles, those of the cocaleros (coca growers) and against the theft of the nation's gas and petroleum reserves, struggles which eventually brought down the Sanchez de Lozada government, and which are still continuing today.
Among the leaders of these struggles the idea of convening a Constituent Assembly -a classic demand from the arsenal of the workers and popular movements - began to take hold.
It also led in 2003 to the formation of the Estado Mayor del Pueblo (Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People), and an attempt to create a national leadership structure for the anti-neoliberal struggles.
A large part of this book is taken up with reflection on the Cochabamba struggle, and what its organisational and strategic lessons might be. A basic problem for popular struggles in Bolivia is that since the introduction of the ironically named New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1985, the organised workers movement has suffered decithe state had been