In January 2000 a pipeline owned by the U.S. energy corporation Enron spilled 29,507 barrels of oil and gasoline into Bolivia's Desaguadero River. The petrochemical mix spread more than 100 miles downstream contaminating the highland lakes of Uru Uru and Poopó.

During that same month, protests in Cochabamba against the privatization of the city's water supply - the Water War - captured international headlines as a symbol of popular discontent with free-market economic policies. This talk will use the case of the oil spill (so often overshadowed by the Cochabamba Water War) to explore the contradictions of turn-of-the-century neoliberal democracy in Latin America: seeming electoral advances paired with growing economic inequality.