'Shock Doctrine' in Action: Vital Freshwater Resources Under Attack by Privatization Capitalists

http://www.alternet.org/water/155878/%27shock_doctrine%27_in_action%3A_vital_freshwater_resources_under_attack_by_privatization_capitalists/

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Set in South America's breathtaking Andes landscape, the visually sweeping new documentary Patagonia Rising bills itself as a frontier story of water and power. But both its frontier and its story nevertheless belong to anyone on the planet that needs water to live.

We are countless compared to the infinitesimal contingency who live to profit off of water. For the purposes of Patagonia Rising, screening now in New York and beyond, that includes the privatization capitalists of HidroAysen, which is planning to build five hydroelectric power plants (marketspeak for dams) to choke off Chile's glacially fed Baker and Pascua rivers, two of the planet's purest. Signed by President Sebastien Pinera, the first billionaire to be sworn into the Chilean presidency, but stalled thanks to vigorous protests, HidroAysen would effectively hand over almost all of Chile's energy market to a duopoly run by Spain's Endesa and Italy's Enel. And they're not exactly hiding their distaste for environmental impact of five dams cornering the prize jewel of Patagonia's freshwater business.

"This exploits the best use of water," a HidroAysen executive argues in Patagonia Rising. "That's sustainability."

"One of the most twisted things I learned while making Patagonia Rising is that the companies behind the building of dams in developing countries are mostly from Europe and China," Oakland, Calif.-based director Brian Lilla told AlterNet. "Ninety percent of Chile's water rights were sold off by Pinochet and are now controlled by Spanish and Italian energy conglomerates."

Naomi Klein's indispensable The Shock Doctrine broke down that rapacious process, wherein so-called First World politicians, economists and other disaster capitalists plundered the resources and sovereignty of the Third World, using puppets like Pinochet as hammers and shovels for development and the disappeared alike. Patagonia Rising takes sobering stock of the Chilean aftermath, whose continuing political and economic instability has been exponentially problematized by global warming. A catastrophic equalizer, it will tear down whatever facades remain between disaster capitalists in America, China and Europe from the just-fine-thanks corners of the world yet to submit, paraphrasing HidroAysen's executive, to the dream of sustainable exploitation.