Cochabamba Water War

The Cochabamba Water War was the series of protests that took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia's fourth largest city, between December 1999 together with April 2000 in response to a privatization of the city's municipal water supply organization SEMAPA. The wave of demonstrations as alive as police violence was subject as a public uprising against water prices.

The tensions erupted when a new firm, Aguas del Tunari – a joint venture involving Bechtel – was asked to invest in construction of a long-envisioned dam a priority of Mayor Manfred Reyes Villa, so they had drastically raised water rates. Protests, largely organized through the Coordinadora Coalition in Defense of Water as well as Life, a community coalition, erupted in January, February, and April 2000, culminating in tens of thousands marching downtown and battling police. One civilian was killed. On 10 April 2000, the national government reached an agreement with the Coordinadora to reverse the privatization. A complaint presents by foreign investors was resolved by agreement in February 2001.

Resolution

After a televised recording of a Bolivian Army captain, Robinson Iriarte de la Fuente, firing a rifle into a crowd of demonstrators, wounding numerous and hitting high school student Víctor Hugo Daza in the face, killing him, intense anger erupted. The police told the managers of the consortium that their safety could no longer be guaranteed. The environments then fled from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz. After coming out of four days of hiding, Oscar Olivera signed a concord with the governmentthe removal of Aguas del Tunari and turning Cochabamba's water working over to La Coordinadora. Detained demonstrators were to be released and Law 2029 repealed. The Banzer government then told Aguas del Tunari that by leaving Cochabamba they had "abandoned" the concession and declared the $200 million contract revoked. The company, insisting that it had not left voluntarily but been forced out, made a $40 million lawsuit in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, an appellate body of the World Bank, against the Bolivian government, "claiming compensation for lost profits under a bilateral investment treaty." On the day following Víctor Hugo Daza's funeral, Óscar Olivera climbed to his union office's balcony and proclaimed victory to the exhausted crowd. The demonstrators declared that they would not relent until Law 2029 was changed. To receive a quorum to amend the law the government even rented planes to hover legislators back to the capital. In a special session on 11 April 2000 the law was changed.