Father Marco Arana of Peru. Photo by Jessica Erickson/Oxfam America.
Over the past few years I have written several pieces (on this blog and in our magazine) about Father Marco Arana of Cajamarca, Peru. He’s one of about 30 people who TIME says are making a difference and is part of their “Heroes of the Environment” special section in the magazine this week.
If you’re an Oxfam supporter, you’re probably a fan of good movies about challenging subjects. If so, it’s time to get yourself to a theater to see “Crude” a new documentary about oil production in the Amazon. A hit at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, the film follows two lawyers — an American and Ecuadorian — and their 16-year-old suit against Chevron, which alleges environmental damages in the northeast Amazon region of Ecuador.
Cancer survivor Maria Garofalo reflected in the stream behind her home in the Ecuadorean Amazon. From the film Crude, directed and produced by Joe Berlinger. Photo Credit: Juan Diego Pérez.
Cotton famers load a truck in Sibirila, Mali. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America
The first time I went to Mali, about five years ago, I met with a group of cotton farmers just a few hours east of Bamako. It was near the harvest time, and you could see the white dots on the scrubby little plants all over the countryside, but there was not much optimism among the farmers in the cooperative I visited that day. Most of them reported that they work all year, sell their cotton to the government agency that exports all the cotton grown in Mali, and after they pay back their loans they don’t usually walk away with enough to make it worth the effort. Some years they would get just about $100. A relatively good year was $200 or $400.
Farmers in Mali told me they only grow cotton because they know their government will buy it from them for cash, which they need for health care, school fees, and other expenses. They can also get fertilizer from the government on credit — if they use it to grow cotton.
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Father Marco Arana:
Reports about recent conflict in Peru have me thinking about a day I spent last November, riding around in the back of a truck in Cajamarca. I was with Father Marco Arana, a Catholic priest, writing a story about his work for our magazine.
At one point we passed a contingent of heavily armed men. Father Arana whipped out his phone and called his office to report their location. The men were elite police officers, he explained to me after he’d hung up, part of a DINOES unit (Dirección Nacional de Operativos Especiales, sort of like a SWAT team). They are used to quell violence that occasionally flares up near the Yanacocha gold mine when local farmers and indigenous people protest a lack of water or other problems that they attribute to mining. This type of violence is part of a pattern: indigenous people, farmers—those without sufficient political clout to get their local government to address a problem—sometimes block a road, or seize an oil well, anything to get someone to pay attention. Hopefully their protest will spur an official to come and talk with them, maybe promise to fix a problem, and everyone can go home.
Or DINOES can come.
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In recent weeks indigenous people in Peru have been protesting against new laws that will allow the government to grant foreign companies access to oil, gas, and mineral resources on their community lands. Indigenous people have the right to be consulted about these sorts of decisions under international law, but the government says the resources belong to the entire country. This past weekend there were violent confrontations between the protesters and the police resulting in 50 deaths. Both sides are accusing the other of human rights violations.
Humberto Piaguaje, leader of the Secoya people in Ecuador. Photo by Coco Laso/Oxfam America
I sat down on the couch last night and turned on 60 Minutes to find a story on the court case against Chevron brought by the Amazon Defense Front and 30,000 people from Ecuador’s northeast Amazon region. This case has been dragging through the courts—first here in the US and then in Ecuador—for over 10 years. When I was in that area of Ecuador in 2004, I interviewed many of those affected by pollution that Texaco (now owned by Chevron) generated while drilling in the rainforest from 1964 to 1990. I had two particularly poignant conversations—one with local indigenous Secoya leader Humberto Piaguaje and another with attorney Pablo Fajardo of the Amazon Defense Front.
Indigenous woman in Cusco, Peru, shows visitors where her farm has been taken over by a copper mine. Photo by Diego Nebel/Oxfam America
Yesterday, my colleague Keith in Washington, DC, released a paper about violence in Peru over mining.
Over the years I have visited a few communities in Peru where violent conflict has erupted; I have spoken with people who’ve been beaten, imprisoned, or persecuted by the government for standing up for their rights. The alleged crimes vary. Refusing to sell your farm to a mining company—or holding out for a better price—comes up a lot. One indigenous woman from the highlands of Cusco told me how the police threw her in jail, accusing her of trespassing on her own land! Her farm is now part of a copper mine. It took two decades before she was compensated as part of a conflict-resolution effort Oxfam helped create. It took years to sort out the rights violations, relocate farmers, and set up a development fund.
Right now, the same mistakes are being made in northern Peru, where a British and Chinese mining company is trying to set up a copper mine in the Rio Blanco region. Read the rest of this entry »
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