What is Bechtel?
Betchel is a San Francisco-based construction and civil engineering company. Bechtel is the parent company of Aguas del Tunari, which received an exclusive, 40-year contract to operate Cochabamba's water system. The Bolivian government later terminated this contract following the public uprisings.
Betchel is a San Francisco-based construction and civil engineering company. Bechtel is the parent company of Aguas del Tunari, which received an exclusive, 40-year contract to operate Cochabamba's water system. The Bolivian government later terminated this contract following the public uprisings.
In 2005, Bechtel released an official statement on the Cochabamba Water War in which it described its version of events. It begins with a description of the water distribution problems that Cochabamba was faced with before the publicly owned water company, Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado (SEMAPA), was privatized.
The statement also addressed the questions raised about the rates that Bechtel introduced upon taking over the water system. It said that the hike in water prices was to accommodate the debt that SEMAPA had incurred before Bechtel took over. Bechtel also said that the payments were structured so that wealthier people were paying more than poorer people.
In 2002, Jeff Berger, Bechtel’s Public Communications Manager at the time, wrote a letter to the editor of Businessweek in response to a review of Blue Gold, a book about the Water War. In it, he said that the water rates that Aguas del Tunari had introduced were 20 percent lower than the South American average of water prices.
In addition to narrating a positive connotation to its presence in Cochabamba, Bechtel said the protests were triggered by a number of local social, political, and economic difficulties, including the new water laws, which, Bechtel pointedly stated, had nothing to do with their work in Bolivia.
All of the above narratives demonstrate Bechtel’s use of the “spin” framing technique: focusing on a set of details that create a positive or negative connotation. These narratives attempted to create the impression that the organization’s presence in Bolivia had been a good thing. Unfortunately, the failure to acknowledge crucial details about Cochabambinos’ economic hardships backfired because it made Bechtel appear insensitive to the people’s plight. This was amplified by the case that it filed with the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Though a spokesperson for Bechtel, Gail Apps, said it was not a lawsuit, but an effort to resolve the issue in a manner that “preserved the rule of law”, many viewed it as a bullying action by a giant corporation (Langman, 2002).
The statement also addressed the questions raised about the rates that Bechtel introduced upon taking over the water system. It said that the hike in water prices was to accommodate the debt that SEMAPA had incurred before Bechtel took over. Bechtel also said that the payments were structured so that wealthier people were paying more than poorer people.
In 2002, Jeff Berger, Bechtel’s Public Communications Manager at the time, wrote a letter to the editor of Businessweek in response to a review of Blue Gold, a book about the Water War. In it, he said that the water rates that Aguas del Tunari had introduced were 20 percent lower than the South American average of water prices.
In addition to narrating a positive connotation to its presence in Cochabamba, Bechtel said the protests were triggered by a number of local social, political, and economic difficulties, including the new water laws, which, Bechtel pointedly stated, had nothing to do with their work in Bolivia.
All of the above narratives demonstrate Bechtel’s use of the “spin” framing technique: focusing on a set of details that create a positive or negative connotation. These narratives attempted to create the impression that the organization’s presence in Bolivia had been a good thing. Unfortunately, the failure to acknowledge crucial details about Cochabambinos’ economic hardships backfired because it made Bechtel appear insensitive to the people’s plight. This was amplified by the case that it filed with the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Though a spokesperson for Bechtel, Gail Apps, said it was not a lawsuit, but an effort to resolve the issue in a manner that “preserved the rule of law”, many viewed it as a bullying action by a giant corporation (Langman, 2002).