Cochabamba

Cochabamba's defining moment came not from what it built but from what it refused to surrender. In 2000, the Bolivian government privatized the city's water system, granting a 40-year concession to a subsidiary of Bechtel Corporation. Within weeks, water rates increased by as much as 200%. A city where many residents earned under $2 per day was suddenly paying $20 monthly for water. The resulting uprising—the Guerra del Agua, or Water War—became a global symbol of resistance to privatization and helped launch Evo Morales's political career.

Beyond its political fame, Cochabamba is Bolivia's third-largest city and agricultural heartland. Sitting at 2,558 meters in a fertile valley between the Andes' eastern and western cordilleras, the city enjoys a temperate climate that earned it the nickname 'City of Eternal Spring.' The valley's agricultural output feeds much of Bolivia, making Cochabamba a breadbasket city where food production rather than extraction drives the economy—a rarity in a country defined by mining and gas.

The city's economy mixes agriculture, light manufacturing, and a growing service sector. Cochabamba hosts Bolivia's largest open-air market, La Cancha, which sprawls across dozens of blocks and functions as the country's informal commercial nervous system. The informal economy dominates—over 70% of Bolivian workers operate outside formal employment—creating an economic ecosystem that functions through social networks rather than corporate structures.

Cochabamba's Water War revealed a principle that ecologists understand intuitively: commons resources—water, air, shared grazing land—cannot be privatized without triggering immune responses from the communities that depend on them. The city proved that social organisms defend shared resources with the same ferocity that biological organisms defend territory.