The demonstrations began in Cochabamba, the nation's third-largest city, over government plans to raise water rates by as much as 35 percent. Rates now average $30 a month--10 to 15 percent of the average household income.

The protests rapidly spread to La Paz, San Joaquin, and other regions throughout the country. Peasants set up roadblocks on several national highways in five of the nine provinces, demanding the government not pass a bill currently being debated in Congress that would force them to pay for water they currently obtain for free. University students in the central city of Sucre initiated a hunger strike.

The demonstrators demanded a halt to the $200 million waterworks investment project by the consortium Aguas del Tunari that would send water prices skyrocketing. The government insists it must guarantee the interests of foreign investors. The consortium--led by the London-based International Water Limited (IWL)--is jointly owned by an Italian utility, Edison, and the U.S. company Bechtel Enterprise Holdings.

In response to the protests, IWL announced April 9 that they were canceling the contract.

The government's state of emergency gives Bolivian president Hugo Banzer special powers for the next three months to arrest without a warrant protesting workers, peasants, and students, to establish a curfew, and impose severe restrictions on travel and political activity.

"We find ourselves with a country with access roads to the cities blocked, with food shortages, passengers stranded, and chaos beginning to take hold in other cities," said Information Minister Ronald McLean .

The government's first act was to raid the headquarters of the Bolivian Workers' Central Union. Scores of union activists and a leader of a major farmers' organization were rounded up and confined in the remote town of San Joaquin on the border with Brazil. Police seized radio stations to deter independent reporting on these developments.

Military police in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets at thousands of demonstrators in Cochabamba. The body of one activist shot and killed by the police was carried through the streets of this town as protesters hailed him as a martyr.

Thousands of Aymara Indian farmers clashed with soldiers in the Andean towns of Achacachi and Batallas. Two farmers and three soldiers were killed and dozens injured in the confrontations.

Bolivia, a country of 8 million people, is one of the poorest in Latin America. Working people there face rising unemployment and are saddled with a $4.1 billion debt owed to banks in the imperialist centers.  
 
 
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