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Ecuador:
Swedish Construction Versus Indigenous Survival in the Amazon (I)
Waorani people protest against the oil exploration
By
Agneta Enström
Waorani
people protest against the oil explorationAs late as a mere
generation or so ago, the Waorani people in the Amazon
basin of Ecuador had succeeded in surviving colonialism’s
numerous rushes to extract natural resources. But then oil
deposits were discovered on their rainforest lands, and ethnic
annihilation and ecological destruction ensued. No longer
free to exist as semi-nomadic hunter–gatherers, they
are now forced to live on contaminated land and on reserves
under the military control of multinational oil companies.
It is in
this context of devastating exploitation that the Swedish
company Skanska operates in the Amazon basin. Skanska,
one of the biggest construction companies in the world, conducts
operations in cooperation with multinational oil companies
in the Ecuadorian rainforest – despite local resistance,
illegal conditions and the fact that its operations cause horrific
ecological and cultural destruction. The Waorani people are
only one of several indigenous peoples whose existence is threatened
in the region in which Skanska has made itself notorious.
Traditionally, the Waorani people are rainforest nomads who
live by hunting and gathering, and researchers believe they
have lived in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin for tens of thousands
of years. The history of their culture is difficult to document,
however, since their sustainable lifestyle has not left any
noticeable traces in nature. This lack of evidence of indigenous
cultural history has jeopardized the land rights of indigenous
groups across the globe and caused their right to exist to
be questioned by political and economic players with interests
in their lands. Today, the Waorani people are condemned to
live on the edge of annihilation because of the consequences
of oil exploitation in Ecuador.
After intense struggles to achieve political recognition as
an indigenous people, in the past few years, the Waorani people
have regained territorial and self-determination rights under
national laws and international conventions (such as the UN
Convention ILO: 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples
in Independent Countries).
Destruction
in former forestHowever, despite this victory and the fact
that their land is in the UNESCO recognized Yasuni
national park, unbridled oil exploitation of their land is
taking place. The oil industry’s activities in the Amazon
basin are often unlawful and companies have brutally occupied
the rainforest by taking advantage of wide-spread corruption
and the absence of full regulatory permission. Skanska’s
cooperation with the Petrobras oil company in the Yasuni national
park is clear-cut example of this kind of abuse.
A low-Intensity War
To circumnavigate
the indigenous people’s right to self-determination,
the oil industry has resorted to strategies of a low-intensity
war. Various ways of wielding power are used to frighten, divide
and manipulate a local population. The exercise of oil industry
power over the Waorani people’s Amazon basin manifests
itself in the rampant militarization and paramilitarization
of the region, manipulation of indigenous organizations, and
the use of threats and violence.
Networks
and organisations like Oilwatch and Acción
Ecológica, which fight oil exploration in sensitive
ecosystems and on indigenous land, have shown how the oil companies
typically proceed to swindle indigenous peoples like the Waorani.
Tribal people (with little or no prior contact with civilization)
have been enticed into entering into agreements with the oil
companies by signing contracts with finger imprints when they
could not read, write or understand Spanish – a practice
that is, of course, entirely illegal.
According
to Alicia Cahuiya, former leader of Amwae, the Waorani women
organization, the Waorani people have been tricked by
the companies in various ways. She relates instances where
the companies have given indigenous villages items such as
soccer clothes and candy in return for permission to drill
for oil on their land. “Companies have often bought villages
off with small gifts,” says Cahuiya, “because the
villagers have not understood what was going on when the company
representatives came calling. Later, when people have become
sick from contamination caused by the oil extraction and begun
to protest, the military have rushed in to support the companies…Obviously,
we are afraid of their retaliation – they have established
military control around the entire territory and, if anything
happens, we can neither leave nor enter our villages without
their approval. Even government agencies are not always allowed
to pass.”
Private
security at oilfieldWhen political scientist Hanna Dahlström and I investigated the oil industry and Skanska’s
operations in the Amazon basin, our picture of this type of
manipulation, control and violence has been reinforced. By
socializing with Skanska employees while under cover, we managed
to get ourselves invited to one of Skanska’s oil fields
(block 18), a site the company shares with Petrobras. We were
driven to the oil field in a Skanska jeep, accompanied by regional
general manager Milton Diaz and a heavily armed guard (who
always joins the Skanska boss on trips to the field). Diaz
explained that “the Indians can be violent at times” and
that there are “rebel groups” in the area.
While in
the jeep, Diaz received important calls telling him that
the situation at the oil field was not good. Just when
we were about to turn onto the bumpy road to the fields, we
were stopped by a homemade roadblock. It was one of the days
when local residents stage protests against the exploitation,
which they consider immoral, illegal and destructive to their
health. Diaz made call after call, explaining to us with irritation
that they’ll have to call for reinforcement “to
deal with the people.” We returned to Skanska’s
administrative base in the oil town of Coca, several kilometres
away, where we joined Skanska top brass for wine and food while
we waited for news of the tense situation.
Colonial Racism
A colonially
racist discourse pervades Skanska’s administrative
base – or rather luxury estate – behind its walls,
gates and armed guards. In the evening after our foiled trip
to the oil fields, there was a poolside party for Skanska and
Petrobras management. Company directors discussed “the
unreasonable demands of the local population” and the
high taxes companies are forced to pay in “these banana
republics.” They compared the local population to developmentally
disabled people and apes.
Production
at oil field 18 was down for a few days, after which we heard
from Diaz that the problem with local people “had
been resolved,” and normal operations resumed. What we
were not given any exact information about was how the situation
was resolved. Later, lawyers with the Amazonian Defense Front
(Frente de defensa de la Amazonia, FDA) received a steady stream
of eye-witness accounts of violations of environmental and
human rights laws from area residents.
An Industry of Death
Not much
remains today of the Ecuadorian rainforest and the places
where indigenous groups like the Waorani peoples have
lived for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. According
to Oilwatch, over 70% of the region is controlled by the oil
industry – which includes companies like Skanska.(1)
By fulfilling the technical and infrastructural needs of the
oil companies in the Amazon basin, Skanska is one of the pillars
of what is perhaps the most diabolically destructive industries
of our time. The indigenous people who live with the effects
of the industry have a single word to describe it: Death.
Road
block in the oil region Manuela Omari Ima, who is the new
chairperson
of Waorani women’s organization, Amwae,
has first hand experience in the devastating consequences of
oil exploration. “The indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian
Amazon have been decimated in just a few decades,” she
says. “The Waorani people alone numbered around 16,000
at the end of the 1960s, when the oil exploration began. Today,
there are no more than about a thousand of us left... I don’t
know how much longer we can survive under the current conditions.
Perhaps the industry will out-live us – judging by how
it has wiped out other tribal peoples in the Amazon. Maybe
the earth will have nothing left to give when the companies
leave.”
Altogether, an estimated 90% of the indigenous peoples in
the Amazon region of Ecuador have been wiped out over the past
few decades, according to the FDA.(2) Contamination from the
oil industry, forced relocations, militarized violence and
civilization-borne diseases are the critical factors behind
the process of extinction.
Today, there is an important resistance against oil exploration
in the Ecuadorian rainforest and on indigenous territories.
Together with the Waorani people and other local populations,
there are networks fighting against the devastating industry
in the region. Some of them are the international Oilwatch,
and the Ecuadorian Accion Ecologica and FDA. However, according
to Omari Ima, the existence of Waorani people and other tribal
people is doomed, unless the ravaging of raw materials ceases
today.
For more information:
Contact
Manuela Omari Ima of the Waorani Women’s group
(La Associación de Mujeres Waorani de la Amazonía
Ecuatoriana, AMWAE ) at tagaeri_wepe2001@yahoo.es
Oilwatch - http://www.oilwatch.org/
Accion Ecológica: http://accionecologica.org/webae/index.php
Frente de defensa de la Amazonia (FDA) - http://www.texacotoxico.com/
Agneta
Enström is
an editor and reporter at www.yelah.net.
Yelah is a Swedish independent media group, uncovering activism
and politics worldwide. She has recently worked in Ecuador,
researching Skanska and oil exploration on indigenous land.
(nettila@hotmail.com).Petroleumworld
does not necessarily share these views.
Editor's
note: This commentary was originally published by Upside
Down World, on Tuesday, 09 October 2007 . Petroleumworld
reprint this
article in the interest of our readers. Petroleumworld does
not necessarily share these views.
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