I’m from an organization called REDES which networks from Uruguay. Uruguay is a small country in South America that borders Argentina and Brazil. There are three million people who live in Uruguay, and you can travel from one side of Uruguay to the other in six hours, by car. I’d like to tell you about a campaign we launched in 2002, that triumphed in 2004. I’m not going to dwell too much on that successful campaign, because I’m more interested in sharing with you about the strategies and tools for our future and ongoing work. Our campaign responded to the problem of privatization of water in a region of Uruguay and the threat that privatization being extended to the country as a whole. In response to this privatising threat, we created a very broad coalition of social movements and organizations in Uruguay. This coalition was called the national commission in defence of water and life. The coalition included unionists, environmentalists, small farmers, grassroots organizations, consumer organizations, and networks of users of public services.

The solution that this coalition came up with to confront the privatization of water was to call for constitutional reform. We came up with this idea, not just based on our own reality but because we learned from the lessons, experiences and solutions proposed by other social movements in other countries of Latin America. If you look at the decade of the 1990s, in Uruguay there was at least on popular referendum each year, and we lost a lot of those. One of the key characteristics of the National commission for water and for life was its tremendous diversity and the diversity of its constituents. Another key characteristic of our commission was its relationship with other movements both internationally and regionally and throughout Latin America that were fighting privatization as well. They key characteristics of our movement and commission that made us powerful and effective, the diversity of our movement, the high number of constituencies that it represented, the regional work and alliance building that we did and the tools of resistance. As far as the key problems that we came up against, I would say our greatest challenge was social communication, which was, how we could explain to the public at large, what our reform consisted of. And we were up against an almost total media blackout. What we did, and this turned out to be very successful, was to use popular media. And we did a lot of workshops, chats and discussions in the most remote corners and villages of Uruguay. We were successful in our campaign, in October 2004, 65% of voters voted in favour of constitutional reform. Since then the privatization of water is now illegal in Uruguay. Any new policy or measure that has to do with water has to comply with a socially participatory process and guarantee the sustainable use of the resource.

A real problem is that a lot of people thought that when we won the referendum, we won the war, which is not the case. We hadn’t really triumphed because the multinational and trans-national companies that wanted to privatize the water were not giving up. These trans-national companies had been threatening the government if they followed through with the constitutional reform that the referendum binds them to do. I’m referring specifically to something that is called the International centre for resolving differences. This is a conciliation body under the World Bank that private countries, multinationals use precisely to pressure governments that was created with the signing of free trade agreements. Because the multinational companies were pressuring the government, our movement had to take stock of the situation, reorganize, and come up with new strategies for our struggle, to make sure that the results of the referendum were actually implemented. Fortunately, we were able to do that, and the two companies were finally kicked out of the country. But, the struggle is never over. The latest challenge is to make sure that the constitutional reform in fact takes place and that the criteria of sustainability that is stipulated in the reform be respected. Specifically what we are up against right now has to do with the forestry policy, because there are a lot of paper companies and pulp production that threatens the forests themselves, and negatively impacts the use of water resources. So, my parting comment is that I gave you a summary of our struggle. What I want you to take away from my testimony is the necessity of constantly rethinking our strategies and adapting them to an ever changing situation, and to have the ability and creativity to do that so our strategies dialectically respond to the transformations of our social contexts.

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The speeches from Regaining Control of the Commons: WSF 2007 are provided for information and educational purposes. The transcription has been undertaken on a volunteer basis. Due to resource limitations we are unable to provide a complete transcription. We apologise for the breaks in the text.

Disclaimer: The view in this and the other articles do not (neccessarily) represent the position or views of Friends of the Earth Australia nor Friends of the Earth International.