Echoes of Cochabamba: Legacies of the Water Wars in Bolivia

Lessons from the greatest people’s victory against corporate neoliberal capture in Latin America.

Water is life! From the frontlines of the greatest popular rebellion against the privatization of water comes the triumphant grassroots story of ordinary people in Cochabamba, Bolivia who became water warriors. As Echoes of Cochabamba shows in vivid detail, the 2001 ＂water wars＂ was an explosion of democracy and human rights regained by the masses, which won popular control of water supply and defied all odds by driving out the transnational corporation that had stolen their water in the first place.

Oscar Olivera, a trade union machinist who helped shape and lead a movement that brought thousands of ordinary people to the streets, powerfully conveys the perspective of a committed participant in a victorious and inspirational rebellion.

Olivera relates the selling of the city’s water supply to Aguas del Tunari--a subsidiary of US-based Bechtel--the subsequent astronomical rise in water prices, and the refusal of poverty-strapped Bolivians to pay them. Olivera brings us to the front lines of a movement, chronicling how the people organized an opposition and the dramatic struggles that eventually defeated the privatizers.

With hard-won political savvy, Olivera reflects on major themes that emerged from the war over water: the fear and isolation that Cochabambinos faced with a spirit of solidarity and mutual aid; the challenges of democratically administering the city’s water supply; and the impact of the water wars on subsequent resistance.

Twenty-five years later, Cochabamba teaches us that the real issue is not the capture of state power, but the creation of new pathways from the grassroots up.

Oscar Olivera is president of the Cochabamba Federation of Factory Workers and 2001 winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Raul Zibechi is a radio and print journalist, writer, militant and political theorist. He has contributed to the weekly newspaper Brecha. He is author of Constructing Worlds Otherwise.

Massimiliano Tomba’s work focuses on time and temporalities, Marxism, critical theory (especially the first generation of the Frankfurt School), and modern and contemporary political thought. He is author of Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity.

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar is an organizer who has participated in numerous struggles and uprisings in Latin America over the last four decades. From the civil wars in Central America in the 1980s to Indigenous-led uprisings in the Bolivian altiplano, she has contributed to struggles both as an active participant and as a theorist of movement strategies, horizons, and possibilities. She is the author of In Defense of Common Life.

Marcela Olivera is a water commons organizer based in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Since 2004 she has been helping to develop and consolidate an inter-American citizens’ network on water justice named Red VIDA. She is also member of the Platform for Public and Community Partnerships of The Americas (PAPC), an organization that promotes knowledge exchange among water utilities based on solidarity and horizontal cooperation.

Alexander Dwinell is an organizer, editor, designer, and artist. He is a former member of the South End Press collective and founding bookseller of The Word Is Change.