Municipal Services Project Blog

El reportaje "Por el derecho a la Salud" aborda el proceso neoliberal de reforma y privatización del sector salud mexicano, impulsado hace casi 30 años. Las políticas de salud en el país han sido reorientadas hacia la mercantilización de los espacios que pueden dejar ganancias económicas. El impacto de esa situación se expresa en una profundización de las inequidades y desigualdades en salud, sustentadas en un modelo excluyente que tiene como base la injusticia social.

Yanira Cortez, the Deputy Attorney for the office of the Human Rights Ombudsperson, describes the water crisis in El Salvador as “a ticking bomb.” In a recent report, environmental and social justice activists describe how they are in a race against time to push for legal reforms that can help to preserve what are left of El Salvador’s dwindling freshwater supplies.

Corporatization is one of the most popular forms of the renewed interest in government ownership of utilities. Corporatized agencies are fully owned and operated by the state but have separate legal and financial status. Water and electricity utilities are common examples, but the practice extends to a much wider range of goods and services. Is this covert privatization or can this trend serve progressive goals?

In the face of systematic dispossession, everything seems to prevent workers and communities from uniting in the global struggle for better public services: organizational culture, geographical distance, class politics. Yet last month in Antioquia, Colombia we saw the most heterogeneous group come together as one to find practical solutions to preserve ‘public’, community ownership of water.

Public water systems, including community-based water systems, were back in operation immediately after the typhoon to re-establish basic services, repair damages to facilities and reconnect people to potable water supply. Beyond these immediate needs, reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts toward building better public water systems (including community-based ones) are now focusing on climate resiliency.