The privatization of water supply and sanitation in Bolivia took place during the second mandate of Bolivian President Hugo Banzer (1997–2001) in the form of two major private concessions: one in La Paz/El Alto to Aguas del Illimani S.A. (AISA), a subsidiary of the French Suez (formerly Lyonnaise des Eaux) in 1997; and a second one in Cochabamba to Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of the multinationals Biwater and Bechtel in 1999.
[1] Bechtel Corporation of the United States offered a deal with the Bolivian government in order to privatize water and profit.
In April 2000, Víctor Hugo Daza, a seventeen-year-old student, was shot in the face by the Bolivian Army while protesting the increase of local water rates due to privatization.
The man who killed him, Captain Robinson Iriarte, was trained as a counter-insurgent in the United States; he was acquitted of all responsibility for the murder in 2002.
Protestors comprised peasant irrigators, retired factory workers, union members, pieceworkers, sweatshop employees, street vendors, students from the University of Cochabamba, coca-leaf farmers and residential children.