Extreme Water Neoliberalism and the Commodification of Water in Milei’s Argentina.
Policies on the privatization of water resources in Argentina within the context of the extractivist offensive in Latin America.
By Emilio Taddei.
In mid-May 2026, Javier Milei’s Argentine government formally initiated the privatization of AySA (Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos S.A.), the country’s largest public water and sanitation distribution company and one of the largest in Latin America, with a network serving over 15 million people in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA) and 3.8 million direct users across its 3,363 km coverage area. This is the second privatization of the company, which was first auctioned off in the 1990s by the neoliberal government of Carlos Menem (transformed into Aguas Argentinas under the majority control of the French group Suez); it was stripped of its assets by the transnational private management and finally recovered in 2006 under state control and renamed AySA, S.A. by the government of President Néstor Kirchner. The attempt to re-privatize this iconic public company is one of many manifestations of the process of commodification, privatization and handover of water and water resources driven by the government of Javier Milei and by the governors of various provinces allied with the national government.
