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Water and Poverty in Argentina

Norma Giarracca Rural Studies Group, University of Buenos Aires. With the assistance of Mario Tome

Argentina’s rich natural resources – land, water and minerals – have led to many problems, especially in the last few decades.   During the 1990s, a broad program of privatizations backed by President Carlos Menem resulted in privatization of potable water services by large French transnationals.  La Compagnie General des Eaux (subsidiary of Vivendi, now Veolia) did not last long in the north of the country because a significant movement of neighborhood associations working from 1995 to 1998 succeeded in expelling them from the privince of Tucuman.  A similar situation occurred with the company Azurix, a subsidiary of the U.S. company, Enron, that provided water to 71 localities in the Province of Buenos Aires.  Challenged by organized consumer movements, the company left the country in 2002.

The water provider for the most populated region of the country, the city of Buenos Aires, is Aguas Argentinas, a joint venture of the French transnational Suez.  Up until 2003, when the new government of Dr. Nestor Kirchner assumed power, there had not been huge resistance to the rate hikes and mediocre service of the company.  But problems began when the new government entered into contract negotiations and refused to accept the arrogant pretensions   of the company.  During September and October there had been many problems of water scarcity and quality in the capital city.  Entire city zones in Buenos Aires had been left for many hours without water service or with discolored water. For the first time the national government fined the company the equivalent of US$400,000 for the service failures.

For many years Aguas Argentinas, has had a different standard of service in the poorest outer zones of Buenos Aires, where customers receive the lowest quality services.  We interviewed members of a neighborhood organized by the movement of the unemployed which has a number of interesting initiatives such as organic gardens and other undertakings.  The production from the gardens, since the beginning, has been for the restaurants and soup kitchens of the neighborhood and has been an initiative of both men and women.

When we interviewed the women they informed us that the majority of the inhabitants of the neighborhood could not afford the water rates charged by Aguas Argentinas and since it is not possible to live without water they made their own “informal” connections.   The officially connected families complained about the quality of the water.  The women interviewed who were in charge of the gardens were suspicious of the quality of the water from Aguas Argentinas because of the high number of gastro-intestinal diseases among children and adults in the neighborhood.  A second serious problem is the storm drains that, due to lack of investment by the company, overflow and flood the neighborhood during the winter.

In summary, Aguas Argentinas is distrusted in the poorest neighborhoods not only because of the pressure to raise water rates that the company is exercising over the new Argentine government authorities, but also because even in the context of the social polarization of recent years the company has not responded with a “lifeline rate” for the poorest neighborhoods nor with a service equal to that provided to the central city of Buenos Aires.

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