Social Movements,Left Governments,and the Limits of Water Sector Reform in Latin America’s Left Turn

Water Movements

The advance in Latin America of democratic governance and market liberalism has generated new patterns of social and political mobilization. Social movements have come to constitute an essential element of politics in the region (Goldstone, 2004), and struggles against water privatization have been widespread since the late 1990s (Hall, Lobina, and de La Motte, 2005). Milestones have been the water war in 2000 in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, which halted the privatization of a public water utility, and the national referendum in Uruguay in 2004 that added the human right to water to the national constitution. The historic decision for the region and, indeed, the world is whether water should be treated as an economic good, as proposed by neoliberal policy prescriptions that seek increased private capital accumulation, or as a public good and commons, as is argued by social movements and many left governments. The movements are equally concerned with models of economic development, ownership of and control over resources and territory, and self-determination.

The contemporary social movements, under which we subsume also the so-called old social movements of the trade unions, can be characterized as struggles against accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005). Dispossession occurs when private capital takes over areas that were previously shielded from the capitalist market, such as public and community water management. Such social movements resist privatization and promote democratic development of public and community alternatives in the context of widespread public-sector crises engendered by neoliberal globalization (Parliamentary Forum WSF, 2006). The central demand has been for decommodification, universalization, and democratization (Terhorst, 2009). The goal of decommodification is to remove the production and delivery of goods and basic services, such as water systems, from the market economy because the market lies beyond the realm of democratic control (Spronk and Terhorst, 2012).

In this way, water movements understand themselves as agents for change that go beyond defensive struggles to seek the recovery of the public and community character of water systems: “With the same force with which we struggle against privatization, we defend and promote the creation of public, non-profit, community-based models of water management, in the service of the commons and the common good” (Red VIDA, 2009: 46). Thus water movements are challenged to play a new role. Defensive strategies against privatization and commodification need to give way to or be complemented by efforts to take charge of the renovation and expansion of infrastructure in order to universalize access to water and sanitation services and construct sustainable water resource systems (Castro, 2008).

Furthermore, the basis of water movements in a “commons” approach generates, according to Bakker (2008), a renewed reference point for the community and alternative community economies of water. The activists themselves see it as a new kind of politics, a new kind of economics, and a new model of life that has far-reaching implications for politics and society in general. Water movement organizations such as the continental Red VIDA represent a new type of social relationship with new values that promise a world in which all peoples have the right to a just and sustainable life.

Water as a Source of Power

Water politics and water systems concern themselves with service provision and water resource management and are set within broader economic, environmental, governance, and financial contexts (Terhorst, 2009). Swyngedouw, Kaika, and Castro (2002) explain the contemporary organization, management, and dynamics of the urban water cycle as a series of contested and contingent social and political relations of the production of nature. A typical scenario in Latin American cities, for example, is that pipe networks are built in upper- and middle-class neighborhoods but the infrastructure needs of poor neighborhoods are neglected, resulting in shortages of access to water and sanitation for the urban poor. They have to rely on community, self-help, and small-scale private providers of services. Urban water systems, therefore, are fractured ensembles that reflect diverse and divergent interests and actors. They organize and divide society by geography, class, and access to political decision making and in terms of different societal needs, interests, and forces.

Water systems are both a source and a mechanism of power—power to organize material, geographical, and political-ecological relations. Since water is required in the daily life of everyone, is an indispensable component of production, and is bound to a natural but threatened ecological system that needs to be carefully preserved, it occupies a unique space in the social relations of force. This is the source of its central role in the organization of modern societies and in political projects to transform these societies. Water is the element that intersects with all other human concerns. Water institutions and systems are therefore terrains of struggle and harbors where social movements can anchor and stabilize their projects.

But the social movements do not have the state’s knowledge of and access to the water sector organizational framework. The state is central in determining the external relations of production and social relations of force that sustain the reproduction and regulation of capitalist relations of which water systems are an integral part. For instance, communities may often be neglected by state institutions and their programs, creating the space and need for self-organization, but at the same time limited in their possibilities of organizing their water systems by the state’s politics, laws, regulations, and economics.

Thus when water movements engage with the water sector they cannot help but take positions with regard to the state and the form of power they seek. They are faced with the strategic choice between seeking state power and warding off the state. Left governments need to find progressive ways of exerting state power to promote commons-based alternatives and the participation of social movements. A traditional Marxist perspective argues that movements cannot rely on electoral politics to create revolutionary change but must take state power through a unifying political program and organization (see, for example, Veltmeyer and Petras, 2005). In contrast, autonomists like Raúl Zibechi (2010) argue that movements should aim at the construction of forms of power based in communities that not only fight against the state but also negate it, seeking to prevent new forms of hierarchical power from emerging within or as a result of these movements. This conundrum has so far not been resolved, but at least the left turn has called attention to the fact that movements and governments are inextricable actors in the economic and sociopolitical relations of the water sector.

Our investigation takes the perspective that public and community water systems are material condensations of past and current (class) struggles in which differing (counter-) hegemonic left factions operate with their own particular logics of power and goals for reform. These aspects are determined not only by internal characteristics but by dependencies on broader political and economic structures. The projects may involve alliances of various subaltern and progressive-democratic currents or constellations of hegemonial conflict within the left. These struggles among different types of actors—social movements, political parties, and state governments—have wide-ranging consequences for the success or failure of water sector reform.

Water Politics Under Neoliberalism

For the past two decades, global water policy has overwhelmingly focused on promoting privatization, public-private partnerships, and commercialization (Balanya et al., 2005). During that period unsustainable water use and contamination by extractive industries, industrial agriculture, and bio-fuel industries, often without compensation or democratic participation, increased significantly in Latin America (Ruiz, 2011). Water has also been privatized through land reforms that did not recognize water rights, mega-projects (dams), and large-scale irrigation systems that monopolize water use and reduce common access (Marín, 2006).

By the late 1990s neoliberalism was in retreat in the region, and the volume and number of privatization contracts decreased significantly. As public criticism and resistance grew, more and more contracts had to be renegotiated, and many were canceled (Lobina and Hall, 2007). By the mid-2000s, transnational corporations had been forced to withdraw from Buenos Aires, Cochabamba, and other cities. Castro (2007) explains the failure of water privatization by arguing that the focus was not on providing services but, as part of neoliberal globalization, on developing new areas for private capital accumulation. Profits were prioritized over sustainable water infrastructure development and increased access to water and sanitation for marginalized populations. Despite their failures, privatization, commercialization, and corporatization of water remain, as shown by the Inter-American Development Bank’s interest in private-sector participation.

Even with the left turn, effects of neoliberalism remain. These effects include a tendency to overemphasize economic efficiency over service delivery and to neglect social control, transparency, and participation (Castro, 2007). Furthermore, after decades of private-sector-oriented reforms precedence is given to corporatization and centralization instead of collaborative solutions and to expensive high technology over more suitable local solutions. Often the results are systems that do not fit local needs and do not operate adequately. Neoliberal public-sector reforms such as new billing modalities have disempowered people by transforming them from citizen-users with a political right to water into paying customers who accept market relations and cease to resist the commercialization and privatization of water (Bond, 2005).

The Challenge for Alternatives

Despite the fundamental changes in water politics in many left-turn countries, the democratization of water (resource) management is still far from a reality, and the political opportunity for alternatives remains problematic (Red VIDA, 2009: 39): there are “rarely sufficient means or tools, or support by governments, state institutions, donors, and international organizations, despite extraordinary potential and many inspiring examples.” There are several reasons that a political decision in favor of public water policies by left governments may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for developing effective water alternatives. The first is that the above-mentioned legacies of neoliberalism need to be overcome by institutions and organizations characterized by a great deal of inertia and resistance to change (Terhorst, 2009). The second is that commons-based alternatives are hampered by the structural constraints under which left-turn governments realize their reform projects (see, for example, Kohl, 2010). To overcome these difficulties and constraints will require interaction, however complicated, among social movements, organized communities, and left governments. This collaboration will inevitably include actions inside, outside, and beyond the state and actions based on wielding and resisting state power.

Uruguay: Corporatist Reforms, Stable but Limited Results

In 2004 the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), the oldest left party coalition in Latin America, won the Uruguayan general elections and a constitutional referendum ended water privatization and established the human right to water. The Comisión Nacional de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (National Commission for the Defense of Water and Life—CNDAV), a broad alliance of social movements including environmental NGOs, trade unions, academics, neighborhood committees, and some public officials, was the major organizing force for the referendum.

With the referendum’s success, the social movements took on a more active role in water politics, becoming a recognized, constructive influence. According to Carlos Sosa, the president of the water sector union Federación de Funcionarios de Obras Sanitarias del Estado (Federation of State Sanitary Works Employees—FFOSE), the CNDAV constitutes “the articulation instrument that can move forward the process to establish a real water policy that concretizes what was implanted in the institutional reform” (quoted in Terhorst, 2006: 212). Despite the fact that the referendum set a new agenda and triggered a far-reaching transformation of the Uruguayan water sector (Taks, 2008), these changes have not been without disappointments and risks for the movements.

For example, the ongoing political influence of the social movements has been subsumed under the left government’s political project, which prioritizes international trade and continues the corporatist tradition of the Uruguayan state, thus limiting the scope of reform and restricting participation by civil society and the water sector trade union (Terhorst, 2009). The new constitution strengthened the role of Obras Sanitarias del Estado (State Sanitary Works—OSE) as the national water services operator under public ownership and sanctioned more participation in utility management. While informal mechanisms of participation between the CNDAV, the FFOSE, and OSE were effective at various moments, for instance, in the creation of a social program within OSE and the development of an international solidarity strategy of public-private partnerships, other, more innovative mechanisms of union and civic participation have been barred by the government and the utility management.

Despite the opportunity for structural change presented by the new constitution, the Frente Amplio reinforced historical patterns of corporatism and statism to build on its power base within the public administration. For example, the Dirección Nacional del Agua y Saneamiento (National Directorate for Water and Sanitation Services—DINASA) and the Comisión de Agua y Saneamiento (Advisory Commission on Water and Sanitation—COASA) created to implement the constitutional right for participation in the water sector permit only weak consultations. This has prevented social movements from proposing and creating change in the water sector or gaining any independence from the power structure. In effect, the government has subsumed the water movement’s participation into its own political project. Even OSE, while shielded from direct privatization, is at risk of being reorganized according to private-sector management techniques and the prioritization of economic efficiency through outsourcing and reduction of public participation. For example, there is currently a proposal to outsource the construction of a new sewage treatment plant. The Frente Amplio has also passed a law for public-private partnerships that puts pressure on all public services sectors. The CNDAV fears that such tendencies will threaten the newly gained public-sector ethos and undo progressive reforms in water management.

Further, while the referendum called for an end to water privatization, the government has prioritized international trade over its strict implementation. While a number of private-sector contracts were canceled, they were ended not in the spirit of the referendum but on other grounds, such as incomplete contractual obligations, in order that the left government could present itself as adhering to international trade rules. In fact, one contract with a national consortium in Maldonado remains in effect until it expires. Not only has the left turn in Uruguay accommodated preexisting economic and trade policies but export-oriented policies have been intensified. Paper production through eucalyptus monocultures and a paper mill on the La Plata River, for example, disregard the new principles of resource conservation and public participation while enabling the privatization of land and water resources through mono-crops and industrial pollution.

The case of Uruguay demonstrates that water struggles are important in gaining political power for the left but that, once in office, left governments rely on established institutional channels that undermine popular forms of hegemonic representation and policy formation from below. Despite the weakness of community water movements and a history of state corporatism, the Frente Amplio succeeded in bringing together a relatively stable hegemonic constellation in the water sector that yielded substantive reforms. These reforms were, however, largely limited to political projects that fell within corporatist and developmentalist logics.

Bolivia and Ecuador: Controversy and Constraints in Water Sector Reforms

The left turn in both Bolivia and Ecuador was marked by periods of failed neoliberal economic prescriptions followed by waves of popular, especially indigenous, support for and elections of left-wing parties (Garcia, 2008). These governments, of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, have progressive discourses and were launched with widespread support. At the forefront of movements forging their countries’ new history were traditional trade unions, public-interest and people’s-rights groups, and novel forms of social organization. In Bolivia, these new forms included the Coordinadora del Agua, the water committees of the Southern Zone of Cochabamba, the irrigation farmers, and the coca farmers’ unions, and in Ecuador they included the Confederación de Nacionalidades de Ecuador (Confederation of Nationalities of Ecuador—CONAIE) and the Confederación de Pueblos de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador (Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality—Ecuarunari). Since 1999 these organizations have strengthened the movement for water justice and pressured governments to develop new environmental and water policies. They have championed a dynamic political agenda that has, for example, enacted new legislation and forced public investment to repair, maintain, and expand existing water systems.

While many groups focused on sector-specific demands, the water movement was able to transcend specific agendas (Olivera and Lewis, 2004). This commitment to broader change enabled policy changes for other natural resources, such as natural gas, petrol, and coca. In Bolivia what began as struggles for water and gas resulted in a new political constitution whose recognition of the plurinational character of the state transformed the relation between the population and the state. The indigenous movements helped Ecuador enact a similar change.

Alliances between movements and left parties secured water as an indisputable human right in Bolivia and Ecuador, though the impact of this historic victory is uncertain. The generality of the constitutional language (“Every person has the right to water and food” and “The human right to water is fundamental and inalienable”) provides opportunities for citizens to participate in their water future while also allowing the state to strengthen its control over natural resources. The specific regulations necessary to implement these new constitutional norms will continue to be a source of conflict between society and the state.

The left turn has also forced water movements to rethink their alliances. Some, such the Bolivian irrigation farmers, were absorbed by the state into the new bloc of power. By promoting historically rooted cultural systems they were able to renegotiate the institutionalization of rural water governance and reconfigure long-standing power asymmetries (Perreault, 2008). But the political claims of Bolivia’s peasant irrigators and their discourse of traditional customary practices of water management have also met with criticism because placing the political construction of these water rights within the government’s purview has reduced conscious confrontation and meaningful communication between different social groups, in particular those excluded from traditional water rights (Boelens, Bustamante, and de Vos, 2007). More recently some factions/blocs of the irrigation farmers have withdrawn from the government coalition in response to certain laws. Others, such as the environmental NGOs and the oil and gas movements, often now find themselves in antagonistic relationships with the new government. The territorial water-sector organizations are kept in a more ambiguous position by their dependence on the state, and all social movements critical of the government are weakened or silenced by the claimed legitimacy of the left governments.

One major hope for the new Bolivian constitution—direct democratic, collective decision making on water issues—remains unfulfilled. Despite constitutional guarantees of consultations with affected populations before new projects begin, such discussions, as in the case of the Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Securé (Isiboro Securé Indigenous Territory and National Park—TIPNIS), have yet to be conducted (Isiboro Securé, 2011). Another example of this failure can be found in the demand for popular participation in the Water Ministry founded in 2006 under the MAS government. A social-technical council was established as a place where water movements could help determine and set political objectives for the ministry, but this council does not function. In addition, the ministry lacks the necessary resources and is highly dependent on international aid. In fact, Bolivia as a whole still significantly depends upon foreign financial assistance for its water and sanitation, which, even after the country’s divorce from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, comes with conditions that prevent any radical reform in the water sector. A new law is being drafted with the intent, according to Oscar Olivera (2012), of placing all community water committees under the direct supervision of the government and eviscerating public participation in water management. Such a measure would essentially eliminate the primary goal of the water movements, autonomy from the state, and could easily lead to privatization and renewed conflict between the state and the social movements.

Another reality has been the increasing repression of water activists and citizen movements. Indigenous groups, left groups, and even NGOs have been attacked by Morales and Correa as major threats to the revolution (Constituyente Soberana, 2011). In Ecuador, CONAIE (2011) lists 72 indigenous activists who have suffered political persecution and holds the government responsible for the death of the indigenous water-rights activist Bosco Wisuma. In Bolivia the MAS government detained protesters against the Madera River dam projects and 25 people involved in the TIPNIS protest have been charged with attempted homicide and kidnapping.

The Morales and Correa governments have taken very progressive positions in international water politics, notably on Resolution 10967 of the United Nations General Assembly, in which the international community for the first time recognized the human right to water. But this progressive discourse on the environment and water has typically been accompanied by unilateral decisions, a lack of debate, and the criminalization and stigmatization of critical voices. The contradiction between philosophy and action has fragmented the social forces that brought these governments to power. The people’s demand for access to water and ecologically sound infrastructure is an essential part of the new models of economic development, and mobilizations for the defense of natural resources remain a critical element in controlling these left governments. Such development must emphasize the central importance of water and the construction of new state-society relations in the Andean states. But the search for new formulae for co-managing natural resources, of which water is a central component, has only begun. The left governments’ struggle to maintain economic stability through problematic modalities of economic growth that depend on extractive industries for export—especially mining and hydrocarbons, which mostly affect indigenous territories (Boelens, Panfichi, and Guevara, 2010)—make it very difficult to include popular demands for direct democracy. However, water movements also face challenges in improving water systems.

Cochabamba, Bolivia: Difficulties in Sustaining Water Reforms

In 1999, as a World Bank condition for debt relief, Cochabamba’s Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado (Municipal Water and Sanitation Services—SEMAPA) was sold to an international consortium led by Bechtel (Olivera and Lewis, 2004). Immediate massive price increases and community water system expropriation followed. The struggle against this privatization began with demands for price reductions and modification of the pro-privatization law. The Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life) brought together irrigation farmers, periurban water community systems, and the urban working class in a horizontal but powerful organization of the water struggle. It organized protest marches, a referendum, and open public hearings. Two cycles of massive protests and blockades were maintained throughout early 2000, paralyzing Cochabamba for weeks. In April 2000, the Bolivian government canceled the privatization contract and modified the national water law. By this time, the movement had expanded into a call for the social reappropriation of the municipal utility, SEMAPA, with popular participation, transparency, and social control (Gomez and Terhorst, 2005; Spronk, 2007). This victory marked the beginning of a new phase of the water struggle.

Reforming SEMAPA, with its inefficiency, its rundown urban water system, and its lack of access to sustainable water resources, would not be an easy task. SEMAPA’s development had left poor and periurban populations underserved. The Coordinadora became an agent of change inside the utility board when the social movements gained two of five seats on an interim board. By 2002 the board had implemented mechanisms for social control and popular participation. The direct election of citizen representatives to the board was a novelty of democratic governance but failed to motivate citizens, and the reforms necessary to combat the corruption and the technical, institutional, and financial weakness of SEMAPA were not achieved. That SEMAPA remains an ill-performing and poorly governed organization highlights the difficulties for social movements in effecting long-term change, particularly in the absence of a transformation of local political power relationships. The entrenchment of local right-wing elites in the municipal and regional governments, the lack of support by the trade union and middle management (including SEMAPA workers), and regulatory and financial limitations combined with the lack of governmental support to work against the reform, and the situation did not change with the emergence of the plurinational Bolivian state. The decade of unmet promises in Cochabamba has also proved that the Water Ministry is toothless and ineffective, particularly in its unwillingness to use state resources to overcome problems with public utilities, resolve resource conflict, or support community-driven water projects. In the end the institutional, structural, and political constraints of pervasive economic forces have hindered the social movement project.

One major lesson learned by the water movements was the impossibility under the existing rules of the Bolivian state of transforming the utility into one run autonomously by the people. This realization gave people strength to seek far-reaching political changes, and the water war became a point of departure for the struggle that brought the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) to power and rewrote the constitution. At the local level in Cochabamba, it fueled the organization of water committees—mainly small-scale, neighborhood self-help water distribution systems in the southern part of the city. These committees are critical of the MAS government and work toward autonomous, sector-based organizations as a means to resolve water problems, though the MAS has had some success in appeals to their leadership.

In contrast to Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador are marked by unstable hegemonic constellations within the left that so far have yielded only inconclusive and incomplete water sector reforms. The Andean countries are marked by a transformation of popular representation based on community water economies that drive policy formation from below and challenge the governments’ hegemony within left constellations. Boelens, Panfichi, and Guevara (2010), for example, demonstrate that the social contestation and political construction of water management are not limited to the national level but rooted in daily struggles in communities, local water use systems, and local policy institutions. We found that some water movements, notably the Bolivian irrigation farmers, became integrated into the bloc in power and thereby gained political results at a national level, while other, more autonomous water movements have remained counterhegemonic within the left turn. The various community water movements gained power to act on alternatives at the community level and projected this power into the national sphere. In Cochabamba one of the successes of the water war, in addition to defeating the privatization of the water company, was the increased visibility of water committees and the possibility for them to form networks. These networks created complex hegemonic constellations that the new left blocs in power find difficult to deal with or to regulate.

Water Struggles in the Left Turn

These case studies demonstrate that the policies being pursued are not what the water movements hoped for. The changes that are taking place in the water sector are limited and contradictory. Water movements have achieved recognition as political actors, architects of new agendas and alternatives for providing urban and rural water and sanitation services, water resource policies, and governing institutions, and they have established the human right to water and the commons as guiding principles. Their capacity to induce material changes has, however, proved limited. Left politics have so far failed to develop movement-government relations and hegemonic constellations conducive to more thorough change. The relations between left governments and social movements tend to be marked by conflict that destabilizes emerging hegemonic constellations of the left or by the incorporation of water movements into the new bloc in power, which blunts social action and vision. While social movements have sometimes failed to develop strategies for effectively intervening in the water sector, left governments have blocked the participation of social movements and the development of nonhierarchical forms of power.

A fundamental policy turn toward the water commons would require a change in the way power is exercised. Because of the central importance of water, commons-based alternatives require the collaboration of social movements and progressive governments. The former must not only mobilize social forces but direct state power while warding off the state. The latter must drive change in the public sector while opening up new forms of popular participation and representation beyond the classic state. Most important, equitable state-society collaboration needs to be based on autonomous communities and movements and states working to reduce the centralization of power. This, however, presupposes a break with long-standing structural dependencies and modes of accumulation and regulation. Left-political countries are far from such structural-political and macroeconomic shifts, and therefore equitable movement-government collaboration remains a distant vision. The structural limitations of the dominant regimes of accumulation have not been overcome. Some progress toward public alternatives has been made, but the conditions of their success and failure place in doubt the capacity of left governments to implement commons-based alternative visions and practices in the water sector.

Conclusions

“We won but we lost” is the way Raquel Gutiérrez (2010), borrowing from the CONAIE, describes the results of the Bolivian and Ecuadorian struggles, and the description fits many water struggles across Latin America. Gutiérrez argues that acknowledging this contradiction “is important because it helps us understand our struggles better—to see that they are not black and white, not just about winning or losing but rather about seeing the rhythms of our actions, the meanings they produce and the reach of their effects.” We have shown that left turns in Uruguay, Bolivia, and Ecuador have resulted in what Carlsen (2005) calls “political experiments with contradictory results.” Despite the bold claims of left governments to promoting equality and transforming the way power is exercised (Beasley-Murray, Cameron, and Hershberg, 2010), Latin America and its water systems remain stuck in traditional forms of the exercise of power and problematic accumulation models. This has remained the case even as political centers have shifted and social groups other than capitalist elites have gained political power. As Boelens, Panfichi, and Guevara (2010) point out, water policy debates are fierce because they relate not only to the struggle for access to water but also to the political construction of legitimate authority. We have found that hegemonic constellations within the emerging blocs in power may be highly conflicted and competitive or may be subsumed by left governments’ political projects and therefore structurally dependent on the state.

Our findings therefore support the argument by Petras and Veltmeyer (2006) that a radical politics of mass mobilization is a prerequisite for advancing the struggle for social change in Latin America. While the state has a role to play, it is the popular power of social movements that is the necessary foundation. What is more, the dependence of the water sector on the state for investment and regulation makes it essential that the different types of publics and forms of power—the state, the municipality, the community—create ways of collaboration that respect the autonomy of the people, reduce capitalist dependencies, and transform the state.