The main strategy was to notify the speculators who did not reside on their land that if within the next three months they did not come to justify their absence or take up residence there (fulfilling land social function), the property would be put up for resale to poor and young families at original price, cutting owners’ land gains. The resistance from the ‘owners’ of idle lots who resorted to lawsuits and even violence was met with vigils. However, all the ‘owners’ eventually left unoccupied land in favour of poor families.

The initiative has ended speculators’ abuse, and allowed finance for a small library, that has been opened to help children with their schoolwork. Ties of solidarity based on Ayni (a concept of reciprocity or mutualism among people of the Andean communities in agricultural work, constructions of houses and others) and the collective work of building houses according to plan were also strengthened. Residents provided technical resources themselves, such as tools for construction projects, and labour for construction projects was provided by the women and men affiliated to the community council.

From the community share of the small profits from the sale of the land, and another neighbours’ contributions, around US$40,000 was generated. Together with community work, the money was used to finance neighbourhood development such as the building, expansion and improvement of roads and storm drains, and amenities such as a soccer field, equipment for the local library and land housing for poor people – all achieved with no external help.

“This is the first experience I know that is using plus-value capture strategies [capturing the value of land for public investment] in areas of “informal” urban development. The explicit reference to traditional indigenous people collective mechanisms of land control/management (i.e. ayllus) is also inspiring, as well as efforts to protect and guarantee women’s housing rights though self-organized initiatives and strong networking at local, national and international level.”

– Evaluator Lorena Zarate

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Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Cochabamba, Bolivia: Confronting speculators and financing community infrastructure appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Originally published on Transformative Cities

An estimated 52% of Bolivia’s population have no access to sanitation and 80% of wastewater is not treated before re-entering the environment. The Water and Sanitation for All project aimed to guarantee the right to sanitation in the San Pedro Magisterio neighbourhood by successfully building and running a wastewater treatment plant and strengthening community management of the entire water cycle through the neighbourhood’s Cooperativa de Agua San Pedro Magisterio.

Pollution in Cochabamba’s river reached such high levels in 2012 that the government declared it an “environmental disaster”. The Water and Sanitation for All project was born from a demand and a request from a community: the San Pedro Magisterio cooperative felt the need to treat domestic wastewater in its area to avoid polluting the Rocha River and the environment.

Assemblies with all cooperative members were held to discuss the technical design of the water treatment plant, improvements to domestic use of the sewerage system, and the introduction of a new tariff structure guaranteeing the system’s economic sustainability – all of which encouraged the community to take ownership of the initiative. The cooperative committed to taking on the running of the treatment plant once built, and environmental awareness activities were held in the local school.

But it was not all plain sailing. The municipality, through its water operator, attempted to sabotage the project, criticizing the technical design of the plant and refusing to issue the environmental permits required to execute the project. It also tried to divide the community.

But the community’s unity and determination overcame this, challenging the state-municipal authorities by defending their right to manage water as a community, establishing alliances (with other neighbourhoods and public servants) to resist political pressure, and strengthening their participatory and transparent internal decision-making mechanisms. The project is now responsible for treating the wastewater from 300 families, and for improvements to the hygiene and sanitary conditions in the San Pedro neighbourhood.

“The collective (community-based) management of the basic public service is certainly transformative and inspiring, and it deserves worldwide attention. It has the potential of redefining the meaning of “public” as truly commons/common goods.”

– Evaluator Lorena Zarate

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us. Or visit fundacionabril.org/ and plataformaapc.org/

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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Johannes Euler: In Cochabamba, Bolivia, the lack of water has caused conflicts for decades. In 1999, Cochabamba’s public water supplier, SEMAPA, was leased to the international consortium Aguas del Tunari. The major shareholder of the consortium was the multinational company Bechtel. In the course of the privatization procedures, independent water and irrigation systems and autonomous water services were threatened with expropriation. Water prices rose steeply as a result. In response, several civil society groups formed the “Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida” (Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life). Protests against these policies were fierce, lasted several months, and raised the issue to national and international levels.

Eventually, Aguas del Tunari was expelled. Control of SEMAPA was transferred to representatives from the municipality, the trade union, and the Coordinadora (though these arrangements have subsequently changed). The statutes of the hybrid company were rewritten in a challenging participatory process, but SEMAPA is still known for its lack of efficiency and transparency. Moverover, the state is currently trying to extend its sphere of control into the water sector. However, the so-called Cochabamba Water War contributed to major changes in Bolivia’s water sector, the respective laws, the establishment of a national Ministry of the Environment and Water, and of the country as a whole.

Key points of Bolivian policy reforms sparked by the Cochabamba Water War:

• In 2000, the pro-privatization Law 2029 was canceled and rewritten as Drinking Water and Sanitation Services Law (2066). It was the result of negotiations between social movements and the state during the water wars. It recognized marginalized communities’ rights to use water and differentiated them from capitalist activities, which had to be authorized and were subject to fees.
• In 2004, similar principles were applied to the irrigation sector (Law 2878), which recognized decentralized irrigation governance. Both laws support indigenous people and farm laborers from being dispossessed of water. At the same time, they contributed to the formalization of water management, which tends to favor commercial management over community management.
• The Bolivian constitution was changed in 2009. Prior to 2009, water supply concessions could be granted for up to 40 years. The new constitution considers water a basic right of life and bans the typical methods of privatization and leasing of water services to for-profit entities.

Sustainability and public participation are declared to be the responsibility of the state as well as universal access to water. To which extent these intentions will actually be reflected in reality remains to be seen, however. The responsibilities coming with this basic-rights approach demand action by the state and challenge community management at the same time.

Learn more from:

• Article on water laws in the Andes

Header image by kris krüg on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The post How a water war in Bolivia led to the reversal of privatization appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The following statement was originally posted on FocusWeb.org.

The Bolivian Government Must Stop Persecuting Those Defending Nature and Rights and Address the Real Problems

Pablo Solón, the Director of Fundación Solón, former Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, and former Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), is being targeted by the Bolivian government for his vocal criticism of the government and the construction of two hydro-electric projects, El Bala and El Chapete in the Amazonian region. Based on the studies done by Geodata, an Italian company hired by the government to identify where the dams will be built, Solón says they will “inundate an area five times larger than the city of La Paz, displace more than five thousand indigenous peoples, deforest more than one hundred thousand hectares and will not be profitable for the country with the current prices of electricity in Brazil.”

Solón resigned as Bolivia’s UN Ambassador in June 2011, and was succeeded by the Deputy Permanent Representative, Rafael Archondo. Archondo a very well known journalist, served as the interim representative for 14 months, until Sacha Llorenti, who was Minister of Government in September 2011 during the repression of the indigenous peoples’ march in defense of the National Park and Indigenous Territory of TIPNIS, was appointed as the new UN Ambassador. The Vice Ministry of Transparency and Anti-Corruption has now decided to bring criminal charges with jail sentences of up to 4 years against Solón and Archondo, alleging that Solón “illegally appointed” Archondo and that Archondo committed the crime of “prolonging functions.” Both the accused have publicly responded showing that Archondo was appointed by the President of Bolivia as Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN and that he did not prolong in his functions.

Send your message of support and solidarity to Pablo here

Why such charges are being brought against Solón and Archondo now, six years after their tenure in government, is clear. The Bolivian government aims to harass, intimidate and criminalize those who dare to challenge the government’s policies and strategies. As Solón has stated: “The news [of the criminal charges] was not a surprise. Following our critical analysis of the mega hydroelectric plants at El Bala and Chepete, several friends had warned me that they would leave no stone unturned to accuse me of something, intimidate me, and silence me.”

Despite the threat of imprisonment, Solón has re-affirmed his commitment to voice his opinions. He says, “we will not lose hope for a different Bolivia, where the Rights of Mother Earth and Vivir Bien are a tangible reality.”

We strongly condemn the efforts of the Bolivian government to harass and intimidate Solón for standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples, nature and public interest. We urge the Bolivian government to withdraw the sham charges against both Solón and Archondo. We stand in solidarity with them as they challenge these trumped-up allegations, and continue to fight for justice and nature.

Signed

(Add your name to the comments and we will include your signature)

• P2P Foundation
• Commons Strategies Group
• Michel Bauwens
• Silke Helfrich
• David Bollier
• Stacco Troncoso
• Eric Doriean
• Ana Maria Peredo
• Nicolas Krausz
• Alain Ambrosi
• Miguel Novik
• Peter Lipman
• Marie Venner, CatholicNetwork.US

The post In urgent support of our colleague Pablo Solón appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Many people associate this water war with a notion of real democracy. But a war – any war – means violence, a waste of energy and resources, deaths, and strife; in contrast, democracy (as we know it in the West) is supposed to avoid all this. The water conflict was not only a struggle to defend resources; it was part of a larger, historical struggle of Bolivian women and men to secure the right to make decisions about their own affairs through autonomous and horizontal procedures. The conflicts of the water war, then, were an expression of the urgent and repeatedly postponed desire for real democracy.

In September, Cochabamba’s Municipal Drinking Water Supply and Wastewater Management System (Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Cochabamba, SEMAPA) was sold to the corporation Aguas del Tunari, whose largest shareholder was the US construction and project management company Bechtel. The sale must be understood in the context of the long-term structural adjustment programs that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have imposed on Latin America – including Bolivia – since the mid-1980s. These programs have facilitated the sale of common assets to private investors and corporations.

Following the privatization of Cochabamba’s water system, the people living in the Cochabamba Valley saw excessive price increases; the cooperatives and the water committees actually managed the water, but they did not have state concessions to do so. That meant that Aguas del Tunari was able to sue them on the grounds of illegal competition and even take over the committees’ administrative structure. These dismal realities were the reason why the “Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life” (Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y la Vida), popularly known as the “Water Coordination” (Coordinadora del Agua), was established. After several months of negotiations with the government and confrontations with the army, the Coordinadora succeeded in driving out Aguas del Tunari.

Many things came to light only as a result of this water war in 2000 – for instance, the countless forms of organization, including the Cochabamba water committees, that are not supported by structures of Western democracy. Since the clashes at the beginning of the millennium, these committees have played a very important role in the work of the Water Coordination, together with the other population groups actively involved in the struggles.

Although the Cochabamba water committees are based mostly in the southern part of the city, they do exist throughout the urban periphery. Half the city’s population – more than 200,000 people – lives in the southern part of the city, which is divided into six districts. In this area alone, there are between 100 and 120 water committees; according to Stefano Archidiacono of the nongovernmental organization CeVI, there are 400 more across the entire city. In other words, this is a remarkable phenomenon of social participation: thousands of people organizing themselves to manage their water supply.

While two structures in Bolivia rarely function in precisely the same way, it is still clear that the water committees share the same basic commitment to water as a living being, as something divine, as the basis for mutuality and complementarity. Water is considered a being that belongs to everyone and no one. It is the expression of the greatest possible flexibility and adaptability; it helps nature to constantly create and transform life. Without it, social reproduction would be impossible. Accordingly, this understanding as well as the customs and traditions of the communities are mirrored in the ways in which the water committee meetings are conducted; they serve as a vehicle for forming urban communities similar to those in rural areas.

In the past, the water was distributed in different ways in Cochabamba. Even though in the city itself, the urban water utility was the main supplier, almost two-thirds of Cochabamba’s urban districts or neighborhoods drew water directly from rivers, wells or rainwater collection systems. In some neighborhoods, the residents pooled money to establish their own water supply systems and to secure their operation and maintenance. Other communities fall back on cisterns or even private supply systems in large containers as a kind of water truck. The emergence and the success of these commons provide people with the opportunity to decide for themselves how the water is obtained – whether and where cisterns are built, a well is drilled, or (partial) connections to the municipal water supply are desired.

The origins of the autonomous practices used by the water committees today can be traced back to the Inca empire. They are hardy social norms that outlived the colonial period. For this reason, the committees are often understood as a kind of modernized communitarian practice. In an article, “The State and Autonomy in Bolivia: An Anarchist Interpretation,” published by Bolpress, Carlos Crespo explains this understanding of autonomy: “It is not an ideal that is to be achieved, but rather a daily practice of the ethnic groups, communities or user groups” (Crespo 2001). These horizontal processes have always been the social and political practice when dealing with the state and the powers governing at any particular time: since the days of the Incas, all through the colonial period, during the republic, as well as today in the plurinational state of Bolivia. That is also the message of a manifesto published by factory workers during the Cochabamba water war: “Neither public nor private. Managed by the people themselves!”

The water committees represent a vision of autonomy and independence from the state; this is also linked to the fact that they are established in the so-called poverty belts at the city’s edges. Farmers who have settled there and have brought their Andean tradition (known as ayni) of working in turns and in solidarity to their new urban communities, encounter miners who live there. They have brought their organizing experience to the local communities in these neighborhoods forgotten by the state.

The water committees are also a product of self-empowerment and effective processes of autonomy. They are based on practices recognized neither by the state nor by the international community – and that need no recognition in order to exist. The members of each community distribute among themselves the roles and tasks that have to be shared to supply each neighborhood with water. The committees network with one another, and they exchange information about their strategies for action in order to learn from each other. They do not organize in opposition to the public utilities, but for their competence to decide for themselves how and to what extent they want to be connected to the public supply systems. They are a genuine expression of the autonomous shaping of a political community.

How does that work in practice? During a meeting in 2008, a neighborhood in the south of Cochabamba decided to find out the best way to bring water to their area. They collected their knowledge and their insights and then discussed whether it would be better to urge the local municipal company to lay pipes for their neighborhood or to build a huge cistern themselves and to negotiate a fixed-price contract with a private water tank company so that it would be full at all times.

The water committees always approach and solve the most important social questions at the level of the community (comunidad), which is why they have a different perception of social movements than the state, which tends to present them as merely making demands on the state. People organize in the committees in order to take their own matters into their own hands, not to ask the government for favors. They organize in other areas besides water, too. Even if water concerns were the catalyst for establishing the water committees, they also deal with many other issues, such as individual members’ well-being, community security, parties, soccer and more. One committee member explained it in these words: “When someone dies, we sit down and think about how we can make a donation to the family, or at the end of the year, we present each committee member with a basket of everyday consumer goods. During our meetings, we also talk about private matters” (Zeballos 2013). The water committees are so independent in their actions that in some places, they are called “zones liberated from the state.” The people do not organize in order to make demands on the state or to negotiate their rights, but in order to determine and shape the conditions of their own lives themselves.

The current situation in Bolivia is complex, and the numerous water committees are reaching both technical and financial limits. Their negotiations with the state on questions of their autonomy are often full of obstacles. The technical problems concern everyone in their processes of organization and consolidation, which is why there are very deliberate reflections on such issues, including discussions of the community’s own limits. An example of this is Gastón Zeballos, a leader of the committee of San Miguel Km 4, participating in the first international meeting of water management organizations from Uruguay, Colombia, and Bolivia (URCOLBOL) in Montevideo in October 2013. During this meeting, the Bolivian participants were more interested in technical questions such as chlorination, drinking water purification and wastewater treatment than in any other topic. As Gastón Zeballos explains, “We are interested in the technical aspects mostly because we have the social aspects under control. In our committees, we have active participation and equal rights, social control and rotation. What we’re lacking is the other part.”

By that, Zeballos means money, especially when indispensable projects are on the agenda that are absolutely beyond the committees’ own means, such as investing in sewer systems in the areas for which the individual committees are responsible. Such projects require support and investments by the state, a form of support that must manifest itself in the will to respect the autonomy of the water committees and their specific view of what the community in question needs. That implies actually making the investments in water supply and water management available and affordable for all, rather than benefiting a specific constituency, especially during the political campaign season.

When Evo Morales became president in 2006, it was hoped that his government would strengthen and broaden the social movements’ autonomy and their processes of self-organization. The opposite was the case. The state expanded its sphere of influence, including in water management, increasingly intervening in matters that were previously beyond its reach, resulting in a highly centralized political and technical administration. The most recent water management laws give the state the power to intervene in the communitarian systems – which it previously did not recognize – and to make decisions about them.

In the Convention on the Right to Water,¹ which the Bolivian government put forward at the United Nations, and the Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, the Morales government gave nature the status of a bearer of rights, simultaneously creating a “rights” framework that transfers the responsibility and power over water management from the people affected to the state. Although these efforts were widely applauded internationally, and Evo Morales is considered a pioneer concerning environmental reforms, it is precisely this strategy that weakened the forces of self-government. The traditional forms of management are rendered null and void, and anyone needing access to water can only turn to the state or appeal to laws and courts.

The water committees are faced not only with technical and economic challenges, but must also deal with the attempts by the state to co-opt them. Yet their success to date shows that Bolivians organizing on an equal footing with one another have retained their ability to manage their common resources autonomously. They have also established their own counterpowers and a concept of democracy seeking to maintain existing structures.

References

• Crespo, C. 2001. Estado y autonomía en Bolivia, una interpretación anarquista, bolpress.com, http://www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2011041902
• Zeballos, G. Interview with the author, August 2013.

This essay is based on an article that originally appeared on the North American Congress on Latin America website, Fall 2014.

Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources.

Marcela Olivera (Bolivia) is a water commons organizer in Bolivia and Latin America. After graduating from the Catholic University in Cochabamba, Bolivia, she worked for four years in Cochabamba as the key international liaison for the Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life, the organization that fought and defeated water privatization in Bolivia. Since 2004 Marcela has been developing and consolidating an inter-American citizens’ network on water justice named Red VIDA.

Photo by mjk4219

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