Water for All: Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia

Water for All chronicles how Bolivians democratized water access, focusing on the Cochabamba region, the country’s third largest city and most important agricultural valley. Covering the period from 1879 to 2019, Sarah T. Hines examines the conflict over control of the region’s water sources, showing how communities of water users increased supply and extended distribution through collective labor and social struggle. Through analysis of a wide variety of sources from agrarian reform case records to oral history interviews, Hines investigates how water dispossession in the late nineteenth century and reclaimed water access in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries prompted, shaped, and strengthened popular and indigenous social movements. The struggle for democratic control over water culminated in the successful Water War uprising in 2000, a decisive turning point for Bolivian politics. This story offers lessons in contemporary resource management and grassroots movements for how humans can build equitable, democratic, and sustainable resource systems in the Andes, Latin America, and beyond.