Water Wars, Climate Wars and change from below.

AuthorSolnit, David
PositionReport

In spring 2000, the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia rose up against the privatization of their water, forcing out the US-based corporation Bechtel and making Bolivia's neo-liberal government back down. The rebellion opened up new political space in Bolivia, catalyzing the most powerful, radical, visionary mass movements and mobilizations on the planet.

My friend and collaborator Mona Caron, a public muralist from San Francisco, and I spent six weeks in Cochabamba, a city in central Bolivia, during March and April, 2010, co-creating art and visuals with local communities and organizations. We came at the invitation of the organizing committee for the International Feria del Agua (Water Fair), commemorating the ten-year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Water War. We also participated with 30,000 others in the World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, organized by the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales.

For many, Bolivia serves as a model and an inspiration to those fighting for change in the US and around the world. Bolivian social movements are among the world's most sophisticated and powerful and, although Bolivia is very different, those of us seeking change in our own communities can learn much from what is occurring there.

Bolivian social movements have practiced two different paths of social change: taking government power, as Evo Morales and his political party MAS (Movement towards Socialism) have done; or change from below as proposed in the visionary proposal for a Constituent Assembly, and in the well-organized, directly democratic and strategic practices of the movement organizations and mobilizations. Neither model fits into simplistic old ideological boxes--anarchist, socialist or progressive.

I returned with a complicated view of Bolivian social movements, particularly the contradictions of movements for radical change becoming governments, as well as the Bolivian government taking leadership globally on addressing climate and ecological crisis with its own economy based on resource extraction. Social movements opened up the space for Evo Morales to be elected as the first indigenous president in a majority indigenous country. In office, he has enacted many positive changes and contributed to the demise of right-wing elites and parties.

However, trying to radically change our communities and world by having left parties assume the power of the state has mostly resulted in social and ecological disasters. Conversely, the practices and experiments of movements around the world creating change from below--especially in Latin America--thereby avoiding the trap of state political power, offer a hopeful path that we can study and learn from.

Seattle 1999 and Bolivia's Water War

Bolivia's "Water War" began the month after the November-December 1999 Seattle WTO shutdown and culminated in April 2000, when thousands of us in the US were occupying downtown Washington DC to disrupt IMF and World Bank meetings.

Cochabamba was much more intense and sustained than Seattle, but both mass actions opened new political space within each country and marked an escalation against corporate globalized capitalism.

As Mona led the painting of a 128-foot water war mural, and we both facilitated art-making workshops at the factory worker-owned complex Complejo Fabril, we spoke daily with Oscar Olivera.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Oscar was a shoe factory worker who became a rank and file union leader and acted as spokesperson, key organizer and strategist for the Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (Coalition in Defense of Water and Life) that coordinated the mobilizations and strategies that won the Water War, which took on ferocious intensity leading to the government's collapse.

Oscar is Bolivia's most profound critic of his former fellow organizer Evo...

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