Interview with Oscar Olivera

Why did you get involved in the struggle to defend water and to fight privatization in Cochabamba.?

In the contract for the water concession with Aguas del Tunari and the Drinking Water Law they established measures that directly affected people in their daily lives. One of those was the dolarisation of water rates for people connected to the central network, another was the expropriation of alternative water systems that had been built by hundreds of cooperatives and thirdly you had the creation of a market in water that ended traditional uses and customs in water management and removed the rights of communities to their own water sources.

What’s more these rules established a fixed rate of return for the multinational of 16% and even forced the population to ask permission from the Superintendent of Sanitation to collect rain water.

A resident connected to the central network saw his rates triple in one day. People who weren’t connected could not get a service because the multinational had a monopoly.

The communal water systems constructed as a result of everyone’s work were handed over to the company without any compensation. They did exactly the same by handing over the lakes and rivers belonging to small farming communities. The privatization and policies of the World Bank affected everyone without exception because no-one can live without water.

Q. So how did you manage to throw-out Aguas del Tunari from Cochabamba?

First we discovered that the contract of concession, which was completely corrupt and done behind the backs of the population, completely favoured the multinational at the cost of the population.

Our first task was to see what type of contract had been signed and with whom because we didn’t know anything. We discovered that it was a company registered in the Cayman Islands, linked to the US company Bechtel, an Italian company Edison and a Spanish Abengoa. It had a derisory committed capital of ten million dollars to manage a project of 300 million dollars.

The second job was to inform people about the effects of privatization and thirdly to mobilize people to say that we don’t want this law or this contract and that Aguas del Tunari would have to leave.

Then we helped develop a law that guaranteed access to water as a public right. So our tasks were to research, communicate, evaluate, organize, mobilize and lastly propose.

Q. How far have you got in building a new model of water management?

There is still a great deal to do, but we have made some significant advances. For example without raising water rates and as a result of collective work of the communities, we have extended water and sewerage networks in outlying districts by hundreds of kilometers.

We established a trade union which is committed to the policies of SEMAPA [the public utility] and established the principal of citizen control through the election of residents’ directors. So there is a basic foundation for social control although there is still a lot to do.

What are still lacking are people to take political decisions and control the budgets of the company. We are still far off achieving this, and it will only happen if we change the rules of the game in the management of public companies.

For example, SEMAPA does not have its own independent budget. Instead it is approved by the Municipality, the Finance Ministry and Parliament. As a result it is not possible to build a public-social company. The Constituent Assembly will have to get rid of this legal maze which does not allow the development of a public-social company.

Why is it important that Bolivia has created its First Ministry of Water?

The Ministry of Water is a result of social struggles and can fulfill an important role because water is life, health and participation for people in cities and the countryside. According to popular wisdom, water isn’t the property of anyone, but rather a gift for all living beings.  The Ministry has to recover these forms of management and the ancient knowledge of indigenous communities and help to share them.

Most important of all, the Ministry must distance itself from party and government politics, because if an official is just a party hack and isn’t a technician or a committed social activist, it could have serious consequences.

It would be very bad if the Ministry of Water insisted that everyone had to be from MAS as this would be discriminatory and damaging to the possibility of popular participation.

Q What are the most important challenges for the Ministry?

There are many: the struggle against multinationals who want to establish forms of privatisation and do this with the constant threat of legal action in private World Bank courts.

There is also still a structure set-up in the State government for receiving the famed international communities’ aid for water projects, but it is strongly conditioned on imposing the formation of companies with a tendency to privatization whilst eliminating any civil society participation.

The international aid community takes a very paternalistic attitude because they believe that Bolivians are ignorant and used to waste water. The challenge is to change this vertical and pernicious relationship.

The other challenge is to create a national fund in order to finance basic services. In Bolivia there is a lot of water, we are one of the richest countries in this resource, but we have two major problems that cause a lot of harm: the crisis in distribution, and environmental contamination by mining and the hydrocarbons sector. I believe it is necessary to create a fund to resolve these two issues.

The third challenge is to change the regulations imposed by the Superintendents on how public companies and cooperatives can work. I believe that they must get rid of the Superintendents and from within Government encourage the creation of autonomous forms of water management within communities and neighbourhoods. To conclude, it will be vital to draw up forms of state management and goals tied to the traditional uses, customs and ways of the people.

Why has water become the axis of social struggles in Bolivia?

In Cochabamba, because of water scarcity and the cynical use that politicians made of peoples’ basic needs in order to get votes.

Secondly, for the underhand ways that a public asset was handed over to multinationals and private companies who as a result got a hold of a good that is essential for life. We are currently seeing indigenous and rural communities mobilizing against the contamination of their water sources.

The fact that concessions were given to petrol and mining companies which led to removals of communities and the removal of their water sources forced people to mobilize. Without water we can’t live, and that’s why no-one can appropriate this gift, which is the blood of mother earth, of Pachamama.

Water has led people, not only in Bolivia but from all over the world, to take action. Water is the last resource longed for by multinationals for profit, and we are obliged to preserve it for future generations.