Dave Hartley, Senior VP http://www.earthcomp.com Pres., Asheville Computer -][- Tri-Cities Computer 86 N. Lexington Ave. -][- 200 W. Oakland Ave. Asheville, NC 28801 -][- Johnson City, TN 37604 (828) 285-0240 -][- (423) 952-0983 http://www.asheville-computer.com/ =============================================== http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/headlines/2000/122.html Bolivia: Bechtel Corporation at the Root of Civil Unrest ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jim Shultz of the Democracy Center Pacific News Service April 12, 2000 Bolivia, that landlocked country high in the Andes, which few in the U.S. ever think about, has been in the news. A week of enormous, often violent, civil uprisings here left at least seven people dead, more than a hundred others injured and flashed pictures of the nation abroad that made government leaders here very nervous for their and the nation’s foreign image. Quick to put blame in the easiest place possible, government spokesman, Ronald MacLean, told the few international reporters here Monday, ''I want to denounce the subversive attitude absolutely politically financed by narcotraffickers.'' For reporters and editors who have never been here it may be an easy line to swallow, but it would take about two minutes on the ground to figure out how big a lie the Bolivian government seeks to spin. The issue in the past week’s uprisings had nothing to do with drugs, it was about water. The culprits weren’t narcotraffickers hiding out in the jungle but the well-tailored executives of the Bechtel Corporation sitting smugly in their downtown San Francisco offices a hemisphere away. The roots of the uprisings here began last year when, under heavy pressure from the World Bank, the Bolivian government sold off Cochabamba’s public water system to a Bechtel subsidiary, ''Aguas del Tunari''. The details of the deal are secret, with the company claiming the numbers are confidential ''intellectual property''. What is very clear, however, is that Bechtel’s people here were intent on getting as much as they could as fast as they could out of the people’s pockets in South America’s poorest country. Within weeks of hoisting their new corporate logo over local water facilities the Bechtel subsidiary hit local water users with rate hikes of double and more. Families earning a minimum wage of less than $100 per month were told to fork over $20 and more, or have the tap shut off. Tanya Paredes, a mother of five who supports her family as a clothes knitter was hit with an increase of $15 per month. For Bechtel’s CEO, Riley Bechtel, that’s snack money at Fisherman’s Warf. For Parades it’s her family’s food budget for a week and a half. It should have come to nor surprise to Riley Bechtel or the Bolivian government that increases like these would send people into the streets, which it did. In January Cochabambinos shut down their city for four straight days with general strikes and transportation stoppages. The Bolivian government promised to force rates down to put, seeking to end the protests, promises broken within a few weeks. When thousands tried to march peacefully here on February 4th, President Hugo Banzer (Bolivia’s Pinochet-style dictator for most of the 1970s) returned to his old ways, calling out the police and hammering people with two days of tear gas that left 175 injured and two youths blinded. After months of promises made and broken by the government and Bechtel’s company, the people of Cochabamba made it clear they’d had enough. In a popular survey of more than 60,000 residents last month, 90% said it was time for Mr. Bechtel’s subsidiary to go and return the water system to public control. When residents here staged a final city shutdown starting last Tuesday, the Bolivian government came to the corporation’s rescue, saying the company must not leave. When the protest, overwhelmingly supported by people here, refused to back down after four days the Bolivian government declared a ''state of siege'' arresting protest leaders from their beds in the dark of night, shutting radio stations down in mid-sentence, and sending soldiers into the street with live bullets. On Saturday afternoon when 17 year old Victor Hugo Daza was killed by a shot through his face it had finally come to the ultimate penalty for challenging Bechtel’s control of local water - death. As protest leader Oscar Olivera said in a statement afterwards, ''The blood spilled in Cochabamba carries the fingerprints of Bechtel.'' It is true that the strength and international attention of Cochabamba’s water protests did embolden, and become linked with, other protests around the country, marches by people in the countryside over a new law taking away control of rural water systems, a police strike in the capital city of La Paz, complaints about unfinished highways in other areas of the country. But when people marched 70 miles on foot from small towns to joint the protest, when women came door to door in my neighborhood gathering food donations to cook and take to the people at the conflict’s center, narcotrafficking had about as much to do with it as Elian and Fidel. In the middle of the protest, the mayor of a small town outside of the city explained to me, ''This is a struggle for justice, and for the removal of an international business that, even before offering us more water, has begun to charge us prices that are outrageously high.'' Late Monday it appeared that Bolivians had gotten their way, as government officials released a letter it had sent to company executives, accusing them of fleeing the country and therefor nullifying the contract they signed last year. Tuesday morning Bechtel released a statement of its own. Like the Banzer government, Bechtel sought the pin the blame on anything but themselves. ''We are also dismayed by the fact that much of the blame is falsely centered on the government's plan to raise water rates in Cochabamba,'' said the $12 billion per year corporation, ''when in fact, a number of other water, social and political issues are the root causes of this civil unrest.'' Bolivians may be mad about a lot of things, but it was Bechtel’s greed and Bechtel’s price hikes that was the centerpiece of the protests this past week, and the damage and death left behind. If Riley Bechtel has any doubt about that he can come here. There are about 100,000 angry Bolivian mothers who would love nothing better than to steer him straight. Jim Shultz, executive director of The Democracy Center (www.democracyctr.org) lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia. -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">Free @Backup service! Click here for your free trial of @Backup. @Backup is the most convenient way to securely protect and access your files online. Try it now and receive 300 MyPoints. </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/6348/16/_/475667/_/970503237/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------_->
