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August 22, 2003
Let who decide?
Nicaraguans now refer to their country as ´the bullseye of Central America´´. The crosshairs are made up of the canal that is planned by neoconservatives like their leader, and ours, and the other line is the super highway that is on tap to run through Central America. As I said in my first entry, there are some people in Nicaragua who are very excited about changes such as this-- they see it as enormous progress. Based on what I´ve seen so far, it is far from a majority applauding.
To date, I have talked to only one Nicaraguan who thinks that the solution to Nicaragua´s water woes might come from huge multinational companies taking things over. Distribution, quality, and other issues have been discussed with people from a variety of backgrounds. In relative terms, there is a tremendous amount of fresh water in Nicaragua, though much of it is badly in need of treatment.
Why the lack of trust in ´letting the market decide´? Well, one surprise for me has been that Nicaraguans don´t even need to look outside their own country to answer that question. I came here thinking that they might make reference to what happened in Cochabamba, Bolivia a couple of years ago when the people there protested increased prices and worse accessiblity under Bechtel than what they had with public water. (One aside; a very reliable source stressed to me recently that the people of Cochabamba did not ´riot´ as our mainstream media stated. They protested-- nonviolently.) In fact Nicaraguans can simply point to other utilities that have been privatized in their country recently. Higher prices, decreased accessibility. Why should they believe that water will be any different? And since water is so essential to life, why should they ´take their chances´?
Posted by Joe Public at August 22, 2003 03:30 PM
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