The Corporation2003

Narrator:
The prospect that two thirds of the world's population will have no access to fresh drinking water by 2025, has provoked the initial confrontations in a world-wide battle for control over the planet's most basic resource. When Bolivia sought to refinance the public water services of its third largest city, the World Bank required that it be privatised, which is how the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco gained control over all Cochabamba's water, even that which fell from the sky.

Oscar Olivera:
All these laws and contracts also prohibited people from gathering rainwater. So rainwater was also privatised. Unpaid bills gave the company rights to repossess debtors' homes and to auction them off. People had to make choices: from eating less and paying for water and basic services, to not sending their children to school, or not going to the hospital and treating illnesses at home; or, in the case of retired people who have very low incomes, they had to go out and work on the streets. Then, with the slogan: "The Water is Ours, Damn it!" People took to the streets to protest.

Narrator:
The price this beleaguered country paid for World Bank loans was the privatision of the state oil industry, and its airline, railroad, electric and phone companies. But the government failed to convince Bolivians that water is a commodity like any other.

Oscar Olivera:
Then we witnessed how the government defended the transnational interests of Bechtel. People wanted water not teargas! People wanted justice not bullets!

Narrator:
Bolivia was determined to defend the corporation's right to charge families living on $2 a day as much as one-quarter of their income for water. The greater the popular resistance to the water privatisation scheme, the more violent became the standoff.

Oscar Olivera:
There were hundreds of young people, 16 or 17-year olds, who lost their arms or legs or who were left handicapped for life by brain injuries and Victor Hugo Daza was killed.