Just a Little Drop of Water: How a community based theater in Bolivia addresses the problem of water privatization

by Eve Tulbert [En español]

From "La Asamblea de Los Dioses de Agua" (The Meeting of the Water Gods), a community-based performance piece by Teatro Trono in the El Alto barrio of La Paz, Bolivia. View slideshow of images from project.

As a community-based artist in the U.S., I haven't thought too much about water. I don't have to. Everyday I can turn on a tap, and fill up a glass with clean, fresh drinking water. All that changed when I came to work with Teatro Trono of Bolivia. I have found that for millions of people all over the world, water is both an everyday dilemma and a political struggle. Private multinational corporations are buying up water contracts all over the Global South. They invest in "blue gold" to turn a profit - at the expense of those who just want a bit of clean water.

So, is water a source of income or a human right? Who has a right to the control the water? Is it people, or profit, or perhaps la Pacha Mama, the mother earth spirit that gave us water in the first place? This is the dramatic question that sparks "La Asamblea de Los Dioses de Agua" (The Meeting of the Water Gods), a community-based performance piece by Teatro Trono.

"We Believe in the Art of the Excluded"

Teatro Trono is more than a community theater group. It's a movement. "We want to break the myth that art and beauty are privileges of the rich only," explains Ivan Nogales, the theater's artistic director.

Trono was founded ten years ago in the El Alto area of La Paz. They began their work with street kids in the city's detention centers. Their style is physical, vibrant and funny. It comes from a collective directing process in which all of the youth add their ideas to the final product. Their work focuses on the stories of everyday life in one of the poorest areas of Bolivia. Ivan always reminds the youth in his workshops: "Our everyday stories are as amazing as those of great works of literature!"

With this philosophy, Trono founded a community arts center in El Alto that teaches theater, circus, dance and visual arts to the children of the barrio. They use play as a way to speak on the social questions that surround them - gender equity, globalization, life in poverty, government corruption and, now, water rights.

Like art, "water is not something to gain from. It's a necessity of life," says Nogales. This is the spirit that drives Teatro Trono to question the water policy that surrounds them. As artists confronted by the daily dilemma of water privatization, the group decided to create a mythology of water - a tale in which "water for profit" and "water as spirit of life" come face to face.

At the Miner's Plaza

All around the city of El Alto are lively public plazas. On a sunny Sunday morning, people congregate to shop, chat and flirt. But the cast of the Water Gods is all business. From the theater's big truck, bicycles, drums and masks are handed down to the ground below.

The youth are busy readying their puppets. Curious children stand in awe. They watch giant colorful figures come to life before them. Luis Vasquez, a 16-year-old actor with Trono, shouts, "Hey where's the bag of nuts and bolts?"

"Has anyone seen Saldumi's other arm?" It's hard to keep track of all of the body parts for seven giant water gods - especially when the cast includes 30 actors from eight to 25 years old!

Half an hour later, the crowd gathers. Stray dogs settle down in the sun.

Women in indigenous dress sell helados and pipocas to the spectators. The crowd hushes as the music begins. Over a loudspeaker we hear the birdlike trill of a single quena, or traditional Bolivian flute.

At first we see just a long blue sheet carried in by four young actors. The fabric luffs in the wind as they set it down onto the pavement below. There is a crash of drums and cymbals, and the actors begin to dance and sing. They mime washing clothes, brushing teeth, splashing one another and taking a long cool drink. The actors transform the scene. We are now on the shore of a playful, rushing river.

With another drumbeat enters a very comic empresario. Vladimir, a young man of 20 years, transforms his body into a hunched and sinister businessman. He points at the river and asks the villagers, "How much is it?" Each one holds out a hand to accept a bit of money from this sinister businessman.

The empresario bunches up the river; it is now his own. The crowd of villagers enters again, now to ask him one by one for a drink of water. A girl takes off her golden earrings and hands them over to the empresario. He takes The World's Tiniest Cup out of his pocket and dips it into the river. All of the thirsty actors must share this little drop of water.

Selling the Rain

Water is the stuff of life. Like air, sunlight and sustenance, it is one of our most basic human needs. These days, water is also "one of the world's greatest business opportunities." According to a recent report in Fortune magazine, "Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th." "Blue Gold" is a lucrative investment - everybody needs it, and it's impossible to refuse the seller.

Fifty-six countries around the globe now have contracts with private, for-profit corporations to run municipal water systems. This growth has been largely due to the policies of the World Bank. The Bank gives developing countries special loans if they privatize more of their national industries. Contracts to run water systems are noncompetitive - they go to just six multinational companies worldwide.

This means that for billions of people in the developing world, every time we flush the toilet, brush our teeth or drink a glass of water, a profit goes overseas to Britain, France or to the U.S.

In some cases, water privatization leads to devastating effects. In South Africa, when a metered water system broke down, people gathered their water from polluted Lake Emshulatuzi. This led to one of the worst cholera outbreaks in African history. In Argentina, a private company dumps millions of tons of untreated raw sewage into the ocean each year - they're allowed to do so in their government contract.

The private companies argue that they can bring better technology and system improvements to third-world water. "We are in the business of being professionals in water and in solving the problems of the electoral bodies who have the responsibility for the water. ... We bring new technologies to sophisticated demands in terms of water problems -- not just access to drinking water, but sophisticated access to drinking water," says Oliver Barbaroux, chief operating officer for Vivendi Water Corp. But can a profit motive ever meet a basic human need?

"He's a maldito empresario," says Vladimir, talking about the water salesman that he plays in the piece. He hunches his shoulders and sneers as he explains his artistic inspiration. "When I act this role, I think about an old boss that I had when I worked at a restaurant. He would dock our pay; he poured cold water on your head if you weren't working hard enough. This guy only cared about money - that's what made him so mean." Do the multinational corporations do much better?

So What Do the Gods Say?

Fourteen-year-old Ximena Flores Vargas is sitting on top of a giant bicycle seat that's been mounted on top of a fruit cart. She's playing Lydia, goddess of amniotic fluid. She's a character like Mother Earth, or Pacha Mama in Bolivian terms. "The first time I got up here, I felt terrified. I thought that I would fall. But now I can concentrate on my role -- to be a good goddess who protects the earth!" She waves her arms, and the contraption sways precariously to one side.

I ask her what she thinks of the play. "It's about the fight over water," she tells me. "We always get the water dirty. We see it as something to buy."

In the world of the play, the villagers and the empresario must face the consequences for polluting and selling the waters. They are transported to a magical place where the Gods of Water tower over them, deciding what to do.

They meet an assortment of giant characters: Are, the goddess of reflections; Granizo, the god of ice and hail; Negron, the god of pollution; and Botellon, the god of trapped and bottled water. Different aspects of the nature of water take on different forms with bright costumes, artful masks and towering puppets. The gods decide that humans must face a flood and a drought.

"It happens that way," explains Ximena. "Like sometimes it doesn't rain for a long time, and then it floods." Vladimir chimes in, "Just last February, there was a big hail storm in La Paz. There was over a meter of hail. There were deaths, and problems with the water system. It was terrible." In the countryside, the same torrential rains caused the worst crop devastation in years. With not enough to eat, many campesinos of the Andean highlands deserted their farms and moved to the city of El Alto.

The cities of El Alto and La Paz are built on the Choqueyapu - a convergence of 300 rivers. But you wouldn't know it from walking around here.

Ivan's partner Ana tells me, "The rivers are covered over with cement. They run under the city, and they're polluted with garbage, chemicals and dead dogs. These are the same waters that people have to use for their crops and animals downriver in the countryside. It's a shame"

With this kind of treatment of water resources, it is easy to believe that flood and drought might be an intentional punishment from a higher power. "Our experience with the water here in Bolivia - it's in our collective consciousness," says Ivan. "There's the privatization issue, but also the droughts, floods, pollution. We've learned that we can't abuse the water without repercussions."

This is the driving force behind the Water Gods. The play connects the political and environmental struggle over water to the deeper, underlying forces in the natural world and in Bolivian mythology. Teatro Trono looked deep into its own culture and environment to collectively design the characters. "We were inspired by the indigenous beliefs of Latin America. We did research, we read tales, we visited the Lake (Titicaca). We wanted to know how our ancestors before us thought about this natural resource," explains Doris Mamani, company manager.

Members of the company developed puppets to reflect the different forms water can take - ice, rain, polluted waters and the fluids of the human body.

Together, and with the help of director Berith Danse and staff from Embassy Theater (based in Holland), they sewed, hammered and welded these Gods of Water into life. As a spectator, one wouldn't guess that the gods were made out of just nuts and bolts, scrap mettle, old bicycle parts and fabric found at a local market. They are, in a word, divine!

Luis, an actor and puppeteer, talks about the process. "I constructed Saldumi; it's the tallest one. He's the God of All Waters - salt, mineral and sweet." His friend Caleb adds, " It was a hard process. It took us two months to make the gods. They started to break, and we thought we'd only make it through a few shows, but we learned how to fix them. The rehearsals cost us sweat, and the puppets cost us time and money."

For Caleb and Luis, 16- and 17-year-olds, the process of making the gods was both spiritual and educational. "We've forgotten our traditions. We're alienated from our culture. But our gods exist - every year there's a time of rain and a time of sun. This is where our gods come from. We have to learn to honor them again," says Caleb.

So, if there truly are spirits of earth and water, then, what would they say to the multinational corporations that are selling the world's water? From her high-up roost, Ximena tells me this: "If Pacha Mama could talk, she would tell us, 'Stop polluting, and stop selling the water,' but she can't talk, so we have to speak for her. That's why we made the play!"

Water Wars Fought in the Streets

Out of the hundreds of water-system privatizations across the world, there was just one that didn't go as planned. This was in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. Just three years ago, people took to the streets to protest the takeover of their local water system by Bechtel, a U.S.-based multinational corporation.

In November of 1999, Bechtel signed a 40-year government contract to deliver water to the people of Cochabamba. Three months later, bills had skyrocketed so high that many families could no longer afford the water that they needed.

So, they took over the town. "For a month, we lived in the street. We ate in the street. We slept in the street," recounts Felipe Mamani Callejas, a Cochabamba resident. Businesses, schools and offices were all shut down. "The military tried to break our blockade, but we just made it again. I wasn't afraid, because there were so many people behind me."

For weeks, the Bolivian military used gas and rubber bullets try to end the blockades. Many Cochabambinos were killed in the confrontation. Protesters played traditional protest music to keep the spirit alive. "We just kept blowing on our instruments so that we wouldn't breathe in the gases. As long as we were playing music, the tear gas didn't affect us," says Lenny Olivera of the Coordinadora de la Defensa de Agua.

Several weeks later, the government gave in. They cancelled their contract with Bechtel, and turned the control of the water over to the Coordinadora and locally run citizen councils.

On the plaza, the huge Water Gods spin in circles, confronting one another and retreating. Their meeting has turned into a war. Loud clashes of cymbals, drums and rece rece come from the musicians. The God of Pollution begins to rain acid upon the battlefield. Fire-jugglers and fire-spitters walk among the warring gods, just missing the spectators with their flames.

The empresario enters the scene, followed by a woman with the blue river wrapped around her shoulders. She shows the river to the audience in the style of Vanna White, and carries a "For Sale" sign. Suddenly, there is a din from the other side of the stage. It is the villagers who enter marching and waving imaginary signs. The empresario waves at them, and they fall to the ground with a crash. They rise again, and now the empresario lights an imaginary bomb and throws it to the crowd. They fall once again. But in the end, they rise and march. They are determined to take back their river.

The violence in Cochabamba, just like violence in the play, reflects a deeper truth. There is an inherent violence in taking a life-giving resource from those who need it. To deprive people of water is to deprive them of life. Perhaps that is why people were willing to risk their lives over the Bechtel water contract

The Ending?

In the world of the play, the villagers are victorious. The "river" is spread out again across the plaza. The empresario returns to clean it up, and then everyone takes a good, long drink.

The crowd cheers. For many in El Alto, the story of the greedy empresario is all too true. After the performance, children gather to play with the huge puppets, and adults are heard engaging in conversation about water bills and government corruption.

But what would it mean if this fantasy ending was the real life ending, too?

"The Western model of privatization is wrong development. It's the wrong model. We've bought into some crazy ideas about progress, but there are ways to do it right." Enrique Hidalgo Clares explains his philosophy of "right development" to me as he shows me his work at El Poncho EcoCenter in Bolivia.

"We're experimenting with other models. Like here, we collect our rain water from the roofs. We make a simple filter out of carbon to clean the water. For our raw sewage, we send that to this field - that's a bamboo crop. It treats the sewage naturally."

At El Poncho, they live in adobe houses, take showers heated by solar power and drink clean water for free. And they do it all with natural materials, no pollution and no profit for a multinational corporation.

This kind of "right development" is perhaps what the Water Gods are trying to tell us about. Luis looks up at his towering puppet Saldumi as he talks to me about the play. "Nature is the earth, it's Pacha Mama, it's the whole world. The Gods are very old. People saw their reflections in the water and the rain. They believed that they were in the presence of something magical. The stories of the gods, they can show us the right way to live."

Epilogue

"The Meeting of the Water Gods" speaks to a larger question for arts activism.

In Bolivia, and in so many places around the world, it is clear to see what happens when multinational corporations and government corruption run rampant.

The logic of capitalism measures and prices things that weren't for sale before - trees are felled, water is bottled, elements are mined from deep within mountains. More than that, human lives are measured in hours and wages - here in Bolivia, many people are just earning enough to live. Corporations tell the stories of "efficiency, technology and development" when they describe their work.

Arts groups like Teatro Trono remind us of the spiritual value of the natural world that surrounds us. They remind us that some things must not be bought and sold. They teach us that, as artists, we can develop counter-mythologies. We can tell the stories that celebrate the gift of the natural world, and the pricelessness of human life.

Learn more about water privatization worldwide at Public Citizen, http://www.citizen.org Learn more about Teatro Trono by contacting the author: evetulbert@msn.com.

Eve Tulbert is a Chicago-based theater artist and teacher. She will soon be an MFA student at University of Texas, Austin.

Original CAN/API publication: May 2004