It took Oscar Olivera two decades to rise from humble machinist in Bolivia to international hero of the anti-globalization movement.

That path took Olivera, 47, to San Francisco this week, where he picked up a prestigious environmental award and led a protest to the headquarters of Bechtel, the giant construction and services company that is often a target of anti-globalization activists.

Olivera, a Bolivian labor leader, rose to international attention two years ago, when he led a public revolt against the privatization of the water system in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city.

The 1999 privatization had put the waterworks under the control of a consortium led by Bechtel of San Francisco. The protests the following year paralyzed the city and eventually led the Bolivian government to end its contract with the foreign consortium, forcing Bechtel out of the country.

Now Olivera's group hopes to broaden its fight against globalization and privatization.

``This fight is not a matter of local resistance. It has to be a global resistance,'' said Olivera through a translator.

At a Wednesday ceremony, Olivera received the Goldman Environmental Prize, a $125,000 award given to each of six people annually by the Goldman Environmental Foundation of San Francisco. (Olivera actually was selected for the award in 2001).

Olivera's protest group ``achieved the first major victory against the global trend of privatizing water resources,'' Goldman officials wrote.

Olivera also has won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards from the Progressive Institute for Policy Studies.

Such celebrity might seem unlikely for the small, soft-spoken Olivera. He was born in rural Bolivia, the grandson of a tin mine worker. As a child, he moved to Cochabamba, when his father got a construction job. By the early 1980s, Oscar Olivera had become a shoe factory machinist.

In 1985, at the urging of the World Bank, the Bolivian government embraced a policy of privatizing factories, utilities and other assets -- often putting them under the control of foreign corporations.

Many Bolivians were outraged. As executive secretary of the Cochabamba Federation of Factory Workers, Olivera organized the protests over water -- a fight that united farmers, laborers, students and intellectuals, he said.

Even as Cochabamba's population had exploded to 600,000, the city's creaky water system hadn't kept up. Access was sporadic or non-existent for many.

The Bolivian government, despite having received only one privatization bid, had transferred control of the waterworks in November 1999 to a group called Aguas del Tunari.

A Bechtel subsidiary called International Water owns 55 percent of Aguas; the rest is owned by a Spanish water company and four Bolivian firms. Bechtel owned all of International at the time but has since sold 50 percent of its ownership to an Italian company.

The first bills from Aguas in January 2000 included rate hikes averaging 35 percent that Bechtel officials say were approved by Bolivian regulators to make upgrades mandated by the Bolivian government.

``Some of the things being said led people to believe that Aguas del Tunari just decided to raise the rates one day,'' said Jeff Berger, a Bechtel spokesman. ``The truth is that more than half of the rate increase -- which was rolled back -- stemmed from the requirements asked for by government.''

Nonetheless, outrage cut across all parts of Cochabamba society, Olivera said, and led to the formation of the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life, with Olivera as spokesman. The coalition staged repeated protests in early 2000.

Years of popular frustration over globalization and privatization had finally boiled over, said Olivera.

The Bolivian government quickly rolled back the rate hikes and in April 2000, Aguas officials were forced to leave Cochabamba after the Bolivian government said it could no longer guarantee their safety. Bolivian officials returned control of the water system to a government-run agency.

Bechtel and Aguas have filed for arbitration in an international court claiming they are owed millions by the Bolivian government for breaking the contract. Berger said the company is still open to negotiating a settlement with Bolivian officials.

But Olivera led a group of 125 protesters to Bechtel headquarters on Tuesday and met with a company spokesman the next day to ask Bechtel to drop its demands.

``If they don't leave the people of Cochabamba alone, if they don't drop their demands,'' Olivera said, ``then the Cochabamba people won't leave Bechtel alone.''