Indians threaten mass suicide to safeguard
oil-rich land
By LESLIE
WIRPSA NCR Staff Los Angeles
It was a collision of wildly contrasting worlds that occurred on
May 6: in a Beverly Hills corporate office Roberto Cobaría, the council
president of 23 communities of the indigenous U'wa people of Colombia, sang a
song in the language of his people to three top executives of the Occidental
Oil and Gas Corporation.
Cobaría said the U'wa teach the song to their children to
help them learn the importance of respect -- for family, for others, for
life.
Cobaría traveled in early May to New York, Washington and
Los Angeles from his rural community, which embraces sections of five
departments in northeastern Colombia, bearing a somber message: If Occidental
insists on exploring and drilling for oil in territory the 5,000 U'wa claim is
theirs, the Indians, in accordance with their oral history, will commit
collective suicide by leaping from a cliff in the Andes.
According to Cobaría, this ultimatum was decided upon by
tribal elders after contradictory rulings from two Colombian courts left intact
Occidental's government-granted license to operate on land claimed by the
Indians under ancestral titles.
"I told [the executives] I came with an attitude of respect. I
asked them to excuse me for coming to bother them but that it wasn't the fault
of my people that I had to come," Cobaría said at a news conference
after the meeting.
An environmental lawyer who sat in on the meeting said he believed
Cobaría's song affected the executives. "I think they realized that it
is not just a bunch of people they are dealing with, but a whole culture," he
said.
Cobaría's U.S. trip, sponsored by Amazon Watch, the Action
Resource Center and the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment,
is indicative of a growing activism among Latin American indigenous and
grassroots organizations in the international arena. As globalization of the
economy redefines the roles of governments and private investors, and as
capital crisscrosses continents more freely, nongovernmental organizations are
taking the lead in dealing directly with the economic actors that affect their
lives. In this case, an Indian from a remote area of Colombia got a
face-to-face meeting with executives of the largest oil developer operating in
Colombia.
Ultimatum on hold
For now, both the U'wa's collective death threat and Occidental's
seismic exploration in Colombia's contested Samore area have been placed on
hold. Cobaría and his legal adviser, Edgar Mendez from the National
Indigenous Organization of Colombia -- ONIC -- have returned to the Andean
foothills and the eastern Colombian plains to consult with the werjaya
-- the U'wa shamans -- and elders. Occidental's executives back in California
are contemplating an invitation from Cobaría to visit the U'wa homeland.
They are also digesting the Beverly Hills encounter.
"We learned that this is a complex matter. We got into a
discussion with Mr. Cobaría of the [U'wa] spiritual views of the world,
of how the U'wa react to the environment -- the weather, the sky, the earth,
what's under the earth -- of what's important in their society and culture. It
was quite interesting," said Lawrence P. Meriage, vice president of executive
services and public affairs for Occidental, in a telephone interview from the
corporate world headquarters in Bakersfield, Calif.
No more 'easy places'
Occidental, Meriage said, is "committed to see what we have to do
to find solutions." He said inviting third party mediators into the negotiating
process, "academics, not activists," might help Occidental and the U'wa strike
an agreement to allow oil development with respect for the indigenous culture
and land. Under Colombia's 1991 Constitution, indigenous communities must be
consulted in decisions about natural resource development projects that will
affect them.
Tensions like those between Occidental and the U'wa are likely to
multiply in the future as economies that previously restricted capitalist
development seek paths out of poverty by integrating into global markets.
The increase in demand for energy has begun to place greater and
greater pressures on culturally and environmentally sensitive areas. According
to Meriage, "All of the easy places to find oil and gas have been
explored."
Meriage pointed to Occidental's programs in the Ecuadoran Amazon
as "model operations of how things should be done in environmentally sensitive
areas." There, he said, the company backs micro-enterprise development -- fish
farms and chicken hatcheries -- in surrounding communities. He claimed
companies like Occidental are learning to use "state of the art technology" to
"leave the smallest possible footprint behind them" in such regions.
But environmental activists and advocates of indigenous
communities tell another story. Lucy Braham, from the Malibu, Calif.-based
Action Resource Center, was critical of Occidental's track record in the Andes.
In Ecuador and Peru, she said, "there is a pattern of disregard for indigenous
communities in favor of company profits." Texaco and the state oil concern,
Petroecuador, came under fire from U.S. and European environmental
organizations for their track record in the Ecuadoran Amazon.
Meriage said in the U'wa case, Occidental has offered scholarships
to eight or 10 indigenous students annually and has discussed setting up
health, education and other development programs in local communities. He said
that after a string of negotiating sessions, the U'wa had previously agreed to
allow Occidental to go ahead with seismic activity on the U'wa reservation.
ONIC's Mendez said many indigenous communities have been "bought
off" with "schools and cement structures." He said "outboard motors and
prefabricated houses" are the "mirrors" of today, referring to the Spanish
conquistadores' use of such objects as mirrors and trinkets in business deals
with Indians when they arrived in the Americas over 500 years ago.
Mendez said policies used by multinational companies have created
divisions among some indigenous communities. Some leaders, he said, have been
co-opted into signing agreements. "Many Indians have forgotten their
traditional, mythical world and negotiated, even though they believe, like the
U'wa, that the death of the earth will bring their death. In many communities,
they have been bought off, deceived."
Cobaría insisted that oil production on U'wa land must not
go forward. In U'wa cosmology, the land is the flesh of the mother, the root of
creation, the sustenance of life and the font of collective memory and spirit.
"Oil is the blood of our mother earth. ... It is not negotiable," he told
reporters in front of Occidental's Beverly Hills offices. "If Occidental moves
in by force, there will be a suicide."
'We cannot negotiate'
Cobaría said no dialogue took place with Occidental
representatives during the May 6 meeting. "No one took any positions. They gave
us no answers and they did not commit themselves to giving an opinion. We can
hold thousands of meetings like this, but this is a lost cause. We cannot
negotiate," he said.
Mendez said the meeting served to clarify previous comments from
Occidental representatives linking the U'wa people to Colombian guerrillas.
Operating near U'wa territory are rebels from the Armed Revolutionary Forces of
Colombia -- FARC -- and the National Liberation Army -- ELN. One of the pillars
of the ELN's political platform is the nationalization of natural resources,
especially petroleum. The rebels have bombed oil pipelines at least 460 times
since 1985. Other guerrilla practices include the kidnapping of oil company
executives and the extraction of bribes -- often referred to colloquially as
"war taxes" -- from foreign investors operating in Colombia.
"We regard the U'wa as victims of the guerrillas. We have been
victims of the guerrillas. We have had seismic workers killed, Colombian
nationals working for Occidental," Meriage said. A chronology of the Samore oil
scheme provided by Meriage lists instances where rebels reportedly threatened
the U'wa, prompting them to postpone signing agreements with the
corporation.
Debra Delavan, from the Washington-based Coalition for Amazonian
Peoples and their Environment, said linkage of the U'wa to rebels is equivalent
to a death sentence for the Indians. "Given the situation in Colombia, any
allegations about involvement with guerrilla forces in Colombia can set up the
U'wa people for reprisal from the military and paramilitary forces," she
said.
A news release from the organization expressed concern about such
confusion "in light of New York Times revelations in 1996 that
Occidental pays the Colombian military millions of dollars each year for
security."
Meriage said the company does pay for some security, but that
Colombian troops are there only to protect people and assets, not in an
offensive capacity. "We are absolutely required to [provide money] out there if
we want any protection at all," he said. Ten percent of Occidental's operating
costs in Colombia, he said, go toward paying for a wide variety of security
measures.
Cobaría claimed that cultural, spiritual and physical
survival -- not rebel threats -- have inspired his people to maintain their
staunch opposition to Occidental's activities on their land. Standing in front
of Occidental's offices, flanked by a banner saying, "Stop the OXY-cution of
the U'wa," he employed a logic unfamiliar to a profit-driven world to try to
explain his community's resistance: "If the oil is theirs, from where did they
bring it? There is a reason oil has two names -- we call it duidia --
and it is older than the world itself."
National Catholic Reporter, June 20,
1997
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