La « guerre de l’eau » à Cochabamba. De la réappropriation de l’espace politique à la reproduction d’un lieu symbolique de la contestation

• Main Author: Mathieu Uhel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes 2019-10-01
• Series: L'Espace Politique
• Subjects: water war; space reappropriation; politic of scale; symbolic place; Cochabamba
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/6288

In early 2000, the "water war" in Cochabamba (Bolivia) pitted a social movement, led by the Coordination for the Defence of Water and Life (CDWL), against the national government, over the concession of water services to a transnational private consortium, Aguas del Tunari. What politic of scale has enabled the CDWL to constitute a political subject able to impose its demands and challenge the scalar arrangement of domination? What become this high place of contestation in the reorganization of power relations resulting from the change in national political hegemony? The answers to these questions will be based on an analysis of the texts produced by the CDWL (and militant graffiti), combined with an ethnographic approach. In addition to observing the moments of commemoration of this popular victory, interviews were conducted with actors of the "water war". By adressing the "people of Cochabamba" in order to defend water and its territory, the discursive strategy of the CDWL legitimized the reappropriation of urban space by the segregated working classes, forcing the central state to temporarily cede control over the capital of the department. Over the following decades, the CDWL updated the memory of the "water war" by organizing events in Cochabamba, a symbolic dimension attached to the place that was subject of appropriation by the "government of social movements" of Evo Morales.