Oxfam America Blog

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.

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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.

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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 »

Last winter, my husband and I took our annual trip to see our parents out West. I’m from Southern California and John’s parents moved out to Arizona a few years ago. So, we can usually see both sets within a couple weeks. And, luckily for us, the trips usually bring warmth and beauty into our lives during Boston’s dreary winters; we spend our time road tripping to places like the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Big Sur.

A photo from my trip to the Grand Canyon. This beloved national park may have natural resources, but does that mean they should be exploited? Andrea Perera / Oxfam America.

I was thinking about that trip yesterday morning when reading the news that the new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has cancelled oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land in southeastern Utah. This move reverses the Bush administration’s decision to allow drilling on about 130,000 acres near Nine Mile Canyon, Arches National Park, and Dinosaur National Monument. When I look back at the photos from my trip to the Grand Canyon, I can’t imagine what it would be like to drop an industrial oil operation in the midst of that type of unmarred landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

After putting up my last post that included Nina Palomino, the young woman in Peru, I realized something: I have some video of her working at her loom, which you can see here. Read the rest of this entry »