Bolivia's water wars coming to end under Morales

knightridder: Living on the barren outskirts of the fastest growing city in Latin America, Hilda Tintachipana doesn't expect many modern comforts.

Raising and selling rabbits pays the bills for the 27-year-old woman and her young family. They live in a dank, two-room house with spotty electricity, but that's just a fact of life, she said.

But Tintachipana draws the line at water.

It's a disgrace, she said, that she must tap the muddy spring outside her house or collect rain to feed and bathe her young children. She blames the foreign company that promised her water years ago, but never delivered.

"We've been waiting for service in this part of town for a long time," she said. "We even have the pipe running down the middle of the road, but it's dry. Without water, there is no possibility of life."

Such complaints can be heard throughout Latin America in countries that privatized water and other resources during the 1990s, only to see whole populations react with outrage.

The reaction was strongest in Bolivia, where opposition to foreign control of water and natural gas set off an explosion of civil unrest that brought down presidents Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa.

Peasant leader Evo Morales rode that wave of protest to assume the presidency last month. One of his first proposals was to kick out the last foreign company delivering water to the impoverished, 9 million-person country - the French firm Suez, which serves the capital of La Paz and the adjacent city of El Alto. Read more