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.
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
Community meeting in a small village in Ghana, where explosions in a nearby mine pit routinely shake people
Going out to visit farmers in villages displaced by mines is usually a sobering experience. I’ve done this in Ghana, Mali, Peru, and Honduras. A few farmers get a job at the mine, but they seem to be lucky. Most of the time the farmers tell me tragic stories:
The relocated community of San Andres, Honduras. Photo by Edgar Orellana / Oxfam America
A rock hitting a metal roof makes a certain sound.
When I heard it I was in a meeting in a small house in San Andres, Honduras, with a group of people who had been moved off their farms to make way for a large gold mine. They are now living in a tidy, well-laid out town built just for them.
When you talk to the people they say they are disappointed: “They gave us [building] plots, just three meters by 20 meters [about 10 feet by 66 feet], and there is no place to expand. We can’t have chickens or pigs, there’s just no room,” one man reluctant to give me his name said. “This is a place for middle class people, not poor people, it just does not work for us.”
Lorenzo Charupá and his wife Polonia Tomicha at a cattle cooperative in Monte Verde, Bolivia. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America.
What metal makes a super-light battery for a hybrid car, and also can alter your brain chemistry? That’s right, it’s lithium! There was a fascinating article about a huge deposit of lithium in the salt flats of southwest Bolivia in the New York Times on Monday. Reporter Simon Romero got a great comment from a local leader of salt gatherers and farmers looking to share in the revenues from lithium:
“We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants.” Read the rest of this entry »
Worn out shoes
The other day I took a good look at my shoes: they are wearing out because I am walking more and driving less. The price of gas keeps my 17-year-old car parked at the side of the road for two or three days at a time. I like to see how long I can go without driving it so I can exercise more, save money on gas, and cut down on the inevitable wear and tear (and repair bills) on my old car.
The price of gas is down a little this week following all the financial turmoil. But some of the reasons the prices have been so high recently have not changed: Some oil-producing areas are politically unstable, and there is a lot of corruption and violence. Many oil-rich countries are also paradoxically quite poor, and are descending further into violence and poverty despite the best efforts by some to use petrodollars responsibly. Cambodia and Ghana, two countries that recently discovered oil, are now considering what this means for their future. They have a lot to think about.
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