Yes for Ecuador! Or, Confessions of a Fired Chevron Contractor October 15, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Environment, Latin America.Tags: amazon oil spill, chevron, chevron texaco, corportate culture, Ecuador, environment, oil spill, proposition 87, roger hollander, supa strika
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A resounding cheer for the US appeals court that ruled on September 19, 2011, that Chevron cannot escape an $18 billion fine on behalf of Amazonian residents for the corporation’s massive pollution of the rain forest. Needless to say, Chevron will appeal the decision; it has been doing so for 18 years. If it manages to crawl out from under this fine, it will not be for lack of effort by activists who keep the spotlight on Chevron for this and other practices that damage the environment and the communities that depend on it.
I was a Chevron subcontractor during George W. Bush’s second term, and there were many mornings I’d honk and wave to friends as I drove to work while they protested corporate polices at the gates of Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California.
My first day on the job coincided with Bush’s re-election. It was impossible to miss the expressions of corporate jubilation in the hallways, break rooms and offices that day; someone wrote “WAR” and drew a smiley face on the whiteboard in my office, too.
Over two years, I successfully implemented a global web site located in a building east of Chevron headquarters. My job performance was good enough that, on completion of that project, I was offered another in corporate headquarters – one floor below then-CEO David O’Reilly, where I rubbed elbows with Chevron’s corporate publicists and marketing mavens.
One of my first responsibilities was to put a “lighter, brighter face” on the public web site Chevron devotes to explaining its side of the Ecuador story. My foreboding about my new role was matched by that then-dark and dreary site, which was branded with Texaco’s black and red palette. Moreover, it was populated with self-serving legal rhetoric about why Chevron was blameless in the horrors that oil spills and lax environmental controls visited upon Ecuador’s forests and on its people.
It was difficult to pretend to enjoy my work or that I had much in common with my colleagues. As a lifelong social justice activist, I was aware of corporate malfeasance around the globe, and I was not good at keeping my emotions hidden. Moreover, my only son was serving in the US Army – to my mind, the element used to project US might in foreign lands and safeguard oil fields for corporations like Chevron. (Eventually, my son was honorably discharged after serving one tour of duty in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.)
I was fired within three months. Had I been a true believer, I’d have fired someone with my attitude, too. For example, meeting with the marketing team in 2006 about Chevron’s strategy to beat Proposition 87 – the Clean Alternative Energy Act – I quipped that Chevron should create a marketing campaign to promote a new gas standard: instead of miles to the gallon, I suggested, the standard should use number of dead Iraqis to the gallon. (Chevron contributed over $34 million to “No on 87″ – and won: that Clean Alternative Energy Act failed.)
My experiences convinced me that corporations like Chevron act like cults. There’s the isolation: believers do not mix with nonbelievers; isolation ensures believers do not doubt or question the corporate mission or the corporation’s role in their lives.
For days before protesters would arrive at Chevron’s gate for a permitted protest, employees and contractors would be sent emails decrying the action, warning about traffic congestion and frustrations, and offering assurances about personal safety, which implied protesters were intrinsically violent people. (Actually, the majority of left activist groups espouse and practice nonviolence as a matter of course.)
Corporations pay (or donate?) decent salaries that allow members to entertain themselves shopping, consuming and keeping up with the Joneses. The threat of being cut off from the corporate tit is terrifying, and employees obey and believe the corporate messaging – in Chevron’s case, the concept of “Human Energy” – even when faced with conflicting evidence.
In 2005, the ChevronToxico Campaign for Justice in Ecuador somehow convinced the management of Mudd’s Restaurant, right across the street from Chevron Headquarters, to exhibit “Crude Reflections: ChevronTexaco’s Rainforest Legacy.” This series of 50 photographs documented the human and environmental impact of what experts believe is the worst oil-related environmental disaster on the planet. Few, if any, Chevron employees attended.
Who Is Supa Strika?
I have never hidden from my activist friends that I contracted with Chevron – or any corporation. Indeed, I believe that those of us who espouse “left” ideologies ought to work in corporations at least once. Then, when we challenge corporations’ activities around the globe, we also understand how the mindset operates at home, how employees’ minds are colonized by fear: fear of losing their jobs, fear of knowing, and fear of speaking the truth in meetings. Fear keeps publicists and marketing mavens churning out campaign messages that white- or green-wash corporate misdeeds too.
I chose Supa Strika as my pseudonym partly because I am fearful: publicly criticizing the corporate hand that feeds does not put bread on my table. (I’ve been underemployed for more than two years as it is!)
Additionally, Supa Strika is a wildly popular comic series in Africa, South America and Asia Pacific that features a fictional soccer team – all brown-skinned – that sports Chevron’s Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys. I grew up in South Africa, so I know that the vast majority of soccer-crazy South African children cannot afford real soccer balls; they improvise by stuffing plastic bags that litter the streets into other plastic bags until they form something hard enough to kick. Instead of Caltex and Texaco jerseys, they wear rags.
Ironically, Supa Strika editions originate in the very Chevron headquarters office in which I worked, where employees churn out and distribute thousands of these colorful and well-executed comics to hoodwink children. Indeed, Chevron has taken global sponsorships to a whole new level with an innovative animated version of Supa Strika for television. Chevron reports that this “extends beyond traditional sports sponsorship and results in significant brand recognition.”
But activists can, and do, fight back. We expose these companies’ internal workings and understand what keeps employees enthralled; then we support decisions like that of the recent appeals court.
What’s our message? Corporations like Chevron might hide for 18 years or more, but they will not escape their fines.
Court Ruling Backs Ecuadorian Effort to Hold Chevron Accountable for Amazon Pollution September 21, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Environment, Latin America.Tags: amazon rain forest, amazon watch, atossa soltani, belo monte, Brazil, brazilian amazon, chevron, chevron texaxo, dilma rousseff, Ecuador, ecuador rainforest, ecuadorian amazon, environment, environmental contamination, oil spillo, roger hollander
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www.democracynow.org, September 21, 2011
A U.S. appeals court has ruled oil giant Chevron cannot escape an $18 billion fine for massive pollution of the Amazon rain forest. Amazonian residents won the damages in an Ecuadorian court earlier this year, and Chevron says it will appeal the decision. It is the latest development in a complex, 18-year legal battle that has gone before judges not just in Ecuador and the United States, but also The Hague. We speak with Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, which has worked closely with the Amazon residents suing Chevron. Atossa Soltani is in New York City this week to draw attention to environmental causes in the Amazon in conjunction with two major gatherings, the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Nations General Assembly.
AMY GOODMAN: The oil giant Chevron has been dealt a setback in its bid to escape responsibility for massive pollution in Ecuador’s rain forest. On Monday, a U.S. appeals court vacated a ruling that allowed Chevron to avoid enforcement of a fine of up to $18 billion. Amazonian residents won the damages in an Ecuadorian court earlier this year. Chevron is appealing the decision in Ecuador, and in March won a U.S. court order blocking the plaintiffs from claiming their damages abroad, including in the United States. Monday’s ruling freezes that judgment until the appeals court is able to weigh in on the case.
It’s the latest development in a complex, 18-year legal battle that’s gone before judges not just in Ecuador and the United States, but also at The Hague. Chevron has also filed counter-suits in the case, accusing the plaintiffs and their attorneys of fraud. In a statement, Chevron said, quote, “[We] remain confident that once the full facts are examined, the fraudulent judgment will be found unenforceable and those who procured it will be required to answer for their misconduct.”
Well, we’re joined right now by Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, which has worked closely with the Amazon residents suing Chevron. Atossa Soltani is in New York this week to draw attention to environmental causes in the Amazon in conjunction with two major gatherings, the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Nations General Assembly.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Atossa.
ATOSSA SOLTANI: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this ruling that just came down.
ATOSSA SOLTANI: Well, I think this ruling affirms what we’ve been saying and what the plaintiffs have been saying for a decade, that—for over a decade, that Chevron is guilty of massive environmental contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon. A decision was handed down in February against Chevron, ruling that Chevron is guilty and ordering the company to pay $18 billion in damages. And what Chevron did is run to find a sympathetic venue—in this case, Judge Kaplan’s court here in New York—that would protect it from justice. And what we saw yesterday was a decision that blocks the injunction against the Amazonian communities and their legal team to be able to enforce this judgment against Chevron.
And I think what it says is that it’s really time—it sends a message. It’s a legal victory. It’s a victory for rule of law. It’s a victory for the communities that are fighting against Chevron for the last two decades, that Chevron needs to stop its abusive PR tactics and deceitful PR and its legal fireworks, and address the health and environmental catastrophe that it created in the Amazon, and pay up. And, of course, this is not yet—you know, it’s not yet ready for—we have one more hurdle to go, which is the appeals court, the appeal—Chevron’s appeal of the decision in the Ecuadorian court. So we’re still waiting for that decision. But really, this is a—you know, wipes off two years of, you know, legal—backhanded legal maneuvering by Chevron in the U.S.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what happened. Chevron bought Texaco, so this is when Texaco was in the rain forest.
ATOSSA SOLTANI: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain what actually took place. What areas are we talking about?
ATOSSA SOLTANI: We’re talking about the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, where Texaco arrived in the late ’60s and started drilling for oil in a way that would have been illegal to do in the United States, dumping huge amounts of production waters and drilling waste and causing a significant area—18 billion gallons of toxic waste and over 20 million gallons of crude waste that was spilled in this area. Some 30,000 people live here, including five indigenous tribes, who have been systematically poisoned over the last 30 years. And there is a public health crisis. There’s epidemics of cancer, birth defects, all kinds of health problems related to the oil pollution. People here don’t have drinking water, so every day they’re drinking the water from the rivers and streams and poisoning themselves in the process.
So, the case was brought initially in the New York courts against Chevron. And for nearly a decade, Chevron argued that this case should be heard in Ecuador. And then it went to Ecuador. Once Chevron bought Texaco, it assumed the liabilities. The case was taken to Ecuador, and that’s where it’s been for the—since 2003. So now it’s ironic that after nearly, you know, a decade of arguing the case should be heard in Ecuador, Chevron is back in the New York courts looking for a sympathetic judge to block enforcement. It’s lost the first round of this historic trial. And we believe that Chevron needs to, you know, stop its tactics of trying to allege fraud, and address the real health crises that are facing the communities in the region.
AMY GOODMAN: During arguments on Friday, U.S. Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch asked a Chevron lawyer, quote, “Are you saying that a New York court is in charge of deciding that we will not tolerate a South African judgment, procured by fraud, and enforced in Russia?” What does that mean?
ATOSSA SOLTANI: Well, basically, you know, Judge Kaplan was giving a global injunction to prevent lawyers for the communities in the Amazon to enforce this decision that the Ecuadorian judge made against Chevron. So it’s basically legal imperialism, preventing—basically saying that a U.S. district court could—you know, a U.S. district court could prevent a sovereign court in another country from finding an American company guilty of crimes. And that is legal imperialism, and I think that’s what the district court—the court of appeals found yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Brazil. You’re here at the United Nations. What is happening in Brazil? Talk about your work there?
ATOSSA SOLTANI: Well, two-thirds of the Amazon rain forest is in Brazil. And currently, there’s a triple threat in Brazil coming initially from the Belo Monte Dam, which would be the third-largest dam in the world, planned for the Xingu River. You have also a big debate happening in the Brazilian congress over the forestry code, which rules how much a landowner can clear of its forests, under law. And there’s a backsliding. There’s a proposed law that would, you know, rule back the forest code. And then you have a rise, a significant rise, in murders and death threats against activists. So this is a triple threat. It is a critical moment for the Amazon. And the Amazon is important to the entire planet. It is really the engine of the global weather system. It’s the rain machine for the planet. And we cannot afford to lose the Amazon at the rate that it’s going. We’re approaching the tipping point of ecological collapse.
So you have President Dilma Rousseff, who’s the first woman president of Brazil. She’s actually opening up the General Assembly here tomorrow for the first time a woman head of state has done that. And under her, you know, current administration, we’re seeing a significant rise in deforestation rates, in crimes against activists. And now, with the—in June, the license for the Belo Monte Dam was issued, and this is causing significant environmental damage. This dam would be—would destroy 60 miles of the Xingu River. It would displace some 40,000 people. The bulldozers have started to arrive in the city of Altamira. There is chaos ensuing. People are being displaced from their land without compensation or even consent. Their homes are being destroyed. Actually, just recently, there have been people whose houses have been burned by the police. And you have a situation of significant conflict in an area that already has the highest deforestation rate, and crime is up. You know, there’s literally chaos ensuing in the cities and the towns around this dam. And there are many promises the government made that this dam—the environmental impacts of this dam would be addressed, that haven’t been met, and those promises haven’t been met. So, just yesterday, the municipality of Altamira called on the Dilma government to suspend this dam project. And this is a municipality that was previously in favor of the dam. So what we have is, you know, we have a crisis. We have—in this area, which is Pará, the state of Pará, you also have the heightened—where the activists were murdered a few months ago. Six people have already been murdered in recent months.
AMY GOODMAN: Atossa, I wanted to break in, because we’ve just gotten this breaking news from Georgia. Clemency has been denied for Troy Davis. The Board of Pardons and Parole has denied clemency, which means, unless anything changes, he will be executed on September 21st—that’s Wednesday night—7:00 Eastern Standard Time in Jackson, Georgia. Again, clemency has been denied for Troy Anthony Davis.
We’re going to wrap the show right now. I want to thank you very much, Atossa Soltani, for joining us. Latest news out of Brazil is that Brazilian authorities have arrested two brothers in connection with the murders of two Amazon environmental activists, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo. He predicted he would be killed when he went back to Brazil. He said, “I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment.” Those are the words of José, who was executed.
That does it for our broadcast. Again, the latest news in this country, Troy Anthony Davis’s appeal for clemency has been denied. He is set to be executed September 21st, Wednesday, at 7:00 p.m. in Georgia.
Alberta can help save the planet September 1, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Ecuador, Environment.Tags: alberta, biodiversity, Canada, climate change, Ecuador, environment, eucador yasuni, fossil fuels, guillermo granja, roger hollander, tropical biodiversity, yasuni
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Hoatzins perch on a tree at the Yasuni National
Park in Ecuador. The park and the nearby Tiputini Biodiversity Station
sit on top of some 846 million barrels of oil. Alberta could improve its
reputation and help protect the region by contributing to a fund that
would invest in renewable energy instead of oil, a reader writes.
Photograph by: Guillermo Granja, Reuters, File, Edmonton Journal
August 30, 2011
Re: “Ecuador’s climate plan worth a look,” The Journal, Aug. 24.
Over
the last 10 years, we have been blessed to be able to escort biology
students to the most remarkable place on our planet – Tiputini
Biodiversity Station in Eastern Ecuador.
TBS is located in
pristine, primary lowland tropical rainforest, right beside Yasuni
National Park. Yasuni has been named a UNESCO heritage site because of
the biological treasures it houses and because it is the home of
indigenous Warani people who live traditionally in harmony with their
environment.
Our students (mostly second-year science students)
who venture to TBS as a field experience for their tropical biodiversity
course, start out with some trepidation – after all, most people think
about poisonous snakes and countless insects with fear.
After a
couple of days in the rainforest, however, they have an epiphany. When
they see their first scarlet macaw (one of 550 different species of
birds), or their first golden mantled tamarin (one of 12 types of
primates there) or they climb to the canopy of one of the giant trees
(there are about 1,500 species at TBS – 500 per hectare) or they swim in
the Tiputini River with pink river dolphins, the students are changed
forever. This is the magic of TBS.
Besides housing the richest
biodiversity in the world, TBS and Yasuni Park are important to Ecuador
for another reason, however. They happen to sit on top of some 846
million barrels of oil.
Even if developed in the most
environmentally sustainable way possible, oil extraction will have
drastic consequences on the landscape, biota and native people. When we
were there in May, we saw and heard helicopters flying over the forest
every day. In addition, extraction and burning the fossil fuels will
contribute to our global climate change.
This conundrum, whether
to develop the oil resources that lie under the richest biological area
in the world, or not, has been solved by the people of Ecuador.
At
a meeting of the United Nations, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
suggested his country would leave the oil where it is if developed
countries like Canada and the United States gave $3.6 billion U.S. to a
fund managed by the United Nations. This amount was equal to about half
of the revenue that the Ecuadorian people would be forgoing.
So
far, this suggestion has been resoundingly disapproved by the government
of Canada. But consider this – we in Alberta will spend more than $3
billion defending oilsands development, contributing to unproven CO2
sequestering technology and providing oil extraction companies with
subsidies.
That’s just Alberta. Imagine the benefits we could
derive by contributing at least some of this money to the Ecuadorian
plan. Our tarnished environmental reputation would immediately be
improved and our participation would encourage other countries to
participate as well.
In addition, we just might help to address the global problems of climate change and loss of biodiversity.
For once, we Albertans would be seen as stewards of the planet rather than as pillagers.
Michael Stock, department of biological sciences, Grant Mac Ewan University; Rick Lewis , director, MacEwan International
No Justice, No Peace: Canadian Mining in Ecuador and Impunity April 27, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Energy, Environment, Human Rights, Latin America.Tags: Canada, canadian mining, carolos zorilla, copper mesa, cyril mychalejko, Ecuador, environment, human rights, intag, Latin America, mining, mining industry, roger hollander, tsx
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| Written by Carlos Zorrilla and Cyril Mychalejko |
| Tuesday, 26 April 2011 21:20 |
 Intag residents lose much more than a lawsuit against the Toronto Stock Exchange and Copper Mesa
On December 2, 2006, 14 paramilitaries armed with 38-caliber guns and pepper spray fired into a group of unarmed Ecuadorian campesinos from a community that has been resisting a copper mining project for over a decade. Thankfully no one was killed, but there were several injuries, not to mention the psychological suffering caused by such a vicious attack. This assault led three of the local campesinos from Intag, Ecuador to file a lawsuit against the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and Copper Mesa Corporation, the Canadian mining company responsible for hiring the “security firm” that sent the paramilitaries to intimidate the anti-mining residents of the region. “I ask the noble people of Canada,” said Ramírez when she filed the lawsuit in March 2009, “that you demand from your elected authorities significant changes in your national legislation so that what has happened with Copper Mesa in Intag will never happen again, not in Intag nor in any other part of the world.” John McKay, a Liberal Member of Parliament from Canada, actually introduced legislation that would have been a concrete first step in holding Canadian mining companies accountable for their behavior overseas. Bill C-300 would have sanctioned the Canadian federal government to investigate human rights and environmental complaints filed against companies with the authority to cancel any governmental funding if found guilty. While some activists and NGO’s leveled criticism against the bill for being too tepid, most supported the legislation. Unfortunately the Canadian government, largely perceived to be in the pockets of the mining industry, did not and the bill was voted down. Catherine Coumans, research coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, has charged the government with “aiding and abetting” the industry’s inhumane, if not criminal, behavior. Injustice and Impunity Continues “Do Canadians really want to have their legal system on the one hand authorize Canadian mining companies to go abroad to developing countries, and then on the other hand totally absolve the directors in Canada of any responsibility whatsoever for human rights abuses those companies may perpetrate there?”asked Murray Klippenstein, legal counsel for the Ecuadorians, who is also legal counsel for a widow in Guatemala whose husband was murdered by the head of security of a Canadian mining subsidiary because of his outspoken concerns about the activities of the company. But the ruling also produces another very unsettling effect, or better put, reinforces a widely-held belief in the extractive industry resistance movements overseas: that it is a waste of time, energy and funds to try to use the judicial system in order to have their rights recognized and communities protected. The implications are troubling.
 One example to illustrate this point is the infamous Chevron-Texaco case where 18 long years had to pass before the 30,000 Ecuadorian indigenous and campesino plaintiffs got a favorable sentence in an Ecuadorian court for their lawsuit based on the grave health impacts from years of petroleum extraction- and contamination- in the Amazon. The destruction has been such that it’s been labeled a “Rainforest Chernobyl”. But even now the case could be held up in courts for an additional decade from appeals, meaning that many of the plaintiffs will have died before the possibility of collecting what is due them.Canadians don’t hear too much about the environmental destruction and social upheaval their oil, gas and mining industries are spreading overseas. In spite of countless reports of human rights violations all over the world, Canadian corporations have been very successful at greenwashing the news back home and replacing it by images of the “socially responsible” Canadian corporate citizen bringing wealth and development abroad.
However, if the lawsuit contributed to the company being expelled from the TSX, as it was on February 2010, leads to its bankruptcy, and as a result pressures the judicial system in Canada to open itself up to legitimate lawsuits brought by communities overseas against their extractive industries, then it was very much worthwhile. If, in the long run, it will contribute to bringing about legislative reforms that will effectively reduce or stop the murders of anti-mining activists, like what happened in El Salvador and Mexico, and other human rights, social and environmental abuses, then it will have been a major victory. Much depends on how much information is able to filter through to the average Canadian, and what it will take to get them outraged to demand such changes.
The question that begs answering is: When the judicial system so utterly fails to guarantee minimum justice in cases of clear abuses by transnational corporations, or when the litigation is economically so out of reach for the majority of effected people, what other route is there for communities to seek justice? (The costs of the Canadian case was over a $100,000, although luckily it was all pro bono thanks to the law firm Klippensteins in Toronto.)
Communities understand, not only at a gut level but also through experience, that they are politically and legally outmatched by powerful corporations with deep pockets and decades of experience thwarting justice by manipulating the court systems. Rulings such as Ramirez vs. Copper Mesa only reaffirm this belief.
Therefore, many communities could read into the defeat of the lawsuit that their only practical (and affordable) solution to the threats that mining and other extractive industries pose on their rights, land and cultures lies in physically standing up to these projects – even at the risk of being labeled terrorists or saboteurs. Ramirez vs. Copper Mesa will reinforce the idea that direct, physical resistance is the only way to prevent community members from being murdered, indigenous cultures from being annihilated, and the environment from being decimated. This, at a time when special laws are being enacted in countries rich in natural resources, such as Ecuador, to judicially categorize acts of civil disobedience as terrorism. As of today, there are nearly 300 activists in Ecuador facing terrorism and sabotage charges for standing up to mining and other extractive activities that threaten the livelihood, or well-being of communities and the environment. Over half of these targeted activists are indigenous, including the leaders of the most important indigenous groups in the country. Ironically enough, this happens in the context of Ecuador’s progressive Constitution, which recognizes that nature has rights, and that Ecuadorians have the right to a good life (Sumak Kawsay). Take away the only effective tool that communities and indigenous people have to protect these rights from transnational corporations and you have the making of a major, and sustained, human rights nightmare supported by the State. This is why the court decision in Canada matters, not just in Ecuador, but throughout the world. Carlos Zorrilla is director of DECOIN, Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag (Intag Defense and Environmental Conservation). Cyril Mychalejko is an editor at www.UpsideDownWorld.org. He worked as a human rights observer in solidarity with the mining resistance in Intag.
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Another Victory for the Mining IndustryMiami Herald Catches Chevron in Lie about Ecuador Well Site April 24, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Environment, Latin America.Tags: amazon rainforest, chevron, Ecuador, environment, miami herald, oil spill, roger hollander, toxic waste
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| Written by Amazon Defense Coalition |
| Wednesday, 20 April 2011 21:04 |
| Reporter finds oil sludge in “remediated” pit that’s part of Chevron’s fraud, plaintiffs say
The Miami Herald has caught Chevron in a blatant lie about its sham “remediation” in Ecuador that the company uses to defend against an $18 billion judgment in a case brought by indigenous groups. In a story published in today’s newspaper [April 19], journalist Jim Wyss said he witnessed “thick oil slicks” only a few feet into the ground of a dirt-covered storage pit at well site Sacha 53 that Chevron told him the day before had been remediated. Company lawyers have used the well site, as well as others, as examples of Chevron’s “remediation” that supposedly absolves the company of further liability. After watching a man dig into the ground at the well site, Wyss wrote, “Within a few inches the dirt gives off the pungent odor of petroleum. Within a few feet the dirt glistens with oil residue. When a few handfuls of the soil are dropped into a bucket of water, a thick oil-slick coats the surface.” The Herald article is significant because Chevron has claimed to U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District Court of New York that the site is proof that Chevron is the victim of a racketeering scheme cooked up by the plaintiffs and their American and Ecuadorian lawyers. The plaintiffs claim it is Chevron who is trying to cover up unlawful conduct in Ecuador, which led to the deliberate discharge of billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon, killing off indigenous groups and causing an epidemic of cancer. The so-called Chevron clean-up, which took place between 1995 and 1998, has been found to be fraudulent by an Ecuadorian trial judge who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The judge’s ruling, which came in a 188-page decision issued Feb. 14, was a massive blow to Chevron. The company could be liable for more than $18 billion in damages, with a final determination to be made by an Ecuador appellate court. In a series of rulings over the last several months, Judge Kaplan – without having visited Ecuador and without even conducting an evidentiary hearing – has found that Chevron’s purported “remediation” might allow him to conclude the judgment from Ecuador is unenforceable in the United States. The plaintiffs in Ecuador have asserted they are free to enforce the judgment in any of dozens of countries around the world where Chevron has assets, regardless of what Kaplan decides. They also argue that Judge Kaplan has no jurisdiction over the Ecuadorian plaintiffs. In any event, the report in the Miami Herald is exactly the kind of firsthand evidence that Judge Kaplan is refusing to consider in his proceeding, said Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the plaintiffs. “The eyewitness account from the Miami Herald, along with massive evidence in the trial, puts the lie to Chevron’s claims to the U.S. court that it remediated the pits,” said Hinton. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have long asserted Chevron’s remediation, which covered only 16% of the 916 waste pits left by the company, was a fraud used by the company to try to avoid liability for creating what experts believe is the world’s worst oil-related disaster. Two Chevron employees and several Ecuadorian government officials are under criminal indictment in Ecuador for lying about the clean-up results. In 2002, Chevron had the case moved to Ecuador from U.S. federal court after submitting 14 separate affidavits claiming the court system in the South American nation was fair and transparent. The case was originally filed in New York in 1993. After the trial in Ecuador began in 2003, testing at dozens of the oil pits left by Chevron in Ecuador began to show extensive levels of cancer-causing toxins. By 2007, when overwhelming evidence began to pour onto the court docket, Chevron changed its tune about Ecuador’s courts and began buying advertising in Ecuadorian newspapers saying it was the victim of a conspiracy. Meanwhile, Judge Kaplan appears to have adopted Chevron’s view on the remediation agreement, writing in one opinion: “The release by Ecuador seems to have been intended to put an end to any claims or litigation concerning Texaco’s alleged pollution.” The Miami Herald’s Wyss has a different account. He begins his story this way: “Donald Moncayo (a plaintiffs’ representative) walks to the edge of a flat grassy field that once held two large pits that brimmed with a stew of water and crude from an oil-drilling operation. He lifts a heavy auger above his head and prepares to plunge it into the ground. “They (Chevron) always show you the shirt the coat and the tie,” he said of the area, called Sacha 53, which is now pastureland and spindly trees. “They never show you the tumor underneath the shirt.” After describing the oil he saw and smelled only a few feet into the soil, he quotes Moncayo again: “This is their remediation effort,” Moncayo says. “They’re no better than animals.” Chevron’s PR representative in Ecuador, James Craig, attempted to explain the oil by asserting it may have “occurred naturally” or the Ecuadorians may have “spiked” the ground. He even claimed that if it Chevron didn’t completely clean the pit, the oil wouldn’t hurt anyone anyway. In reality, thousands of Ecuadorians have suffered from cancer as a result of the exposure to Chevron’s pollution, according to several independent studies. |
Ecuadorian Court Rules Against Chevron in Historic Case February 17, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Energy, Environment, First Nations, Latin America.Tags: contamination, ecology, Ecuador, environment, indigenous, indigenous peoples, indigenous rights, Latin America, oil, roger hollander, sofia jarrin, standard oil, texaco
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(LOOK FOR THE DOCUMENTARY “CRUDE” AT A LOCAL THEATRE OR ON DVD)
| www.upsidedownowrld.org |  |
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| Written by Sofía Jarrín |
| Tuesday, 15 February 2011 22:08 |
 The military procession travelled from the end of the pipeline to the highlands of Ecuador, to celebrate the country’s first barrel of crude oil extracted from Lago Agrio, Sucumbios province, on July 26, 1972. Ecuador’s military running the government, dictatorship-style, was honoring the signed contract with Texaco Petroleum Company to fulfill the promise of economic prosperity and development for the small Andean country. Many present during the official ceremony dipped their hands in the thick substance to signal the beginning of a new era. That first barrel of crude oil is still sitting in a corner of the Military School “Eloy Alfaro” museum.
Forty years later, a court in the same small town of Lago Agrio, ruled against the oil company requiring Texaco, now Chevron Corporation, to pay $8.6 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon and permanently affecting the lives of thousands of villagers in the area. According to the plaintiffs, the environmental contamination left by the company in a span of 26 years is ten times worse than the Gulf of Mexico spill.
“We can tell our neighbors and those affected that justice exists. They can dream again of drinking clean water, not with oil residue like we’ve had to drink until now. We can dream that the cleanup of the land can begin and dream of a better way of life,” said Guillermo Grefa, an indigenous Amazon leader.
The residents of Sucumbios spent the last 18 years seeking justice for the environmental damages suffered in their territories by Texaco’s oil exploration. These are mostly indigenous people who before the oil company moved in, were hunters, gatherers, subsistence farmers who depended on the rivers as their main water source. Now the region has the highest incidence of cancer in the country, with an excess of deaths among men from all types of cancer 3.6 times higher in the villages closest to the oil fields, according to a study published in the Occupational Environmental Medicine journal. Child leukemia is three times the national average as well.
Worse stories can be found on the book Las palabras de la selva (The jungle speaks), a psychosociological report on the impact of Texaco’s oil exploration on the Amazon communities of Ecuador published by the Institute of Development and International Cooperation Studies. Based on ground analysis and oral testimonies, the researchers found that 72.4 percent of the population were affected by the land and water pollution generated by the oil fields, although most lacked information about what could be harmful to their health, such as eating dead, contaminated fish. From those interviewed, 87.8 percent reported to have lost their crops and 22.1 percent were forcibly displaced. Indigenous tribes went into a process of “forced acculturation” that meant to many, the loss of spiritual and cultural relations they once had with the rainforest. The introduction of money, alcohol and new diseases forever changed their way of life.
The researchers also found out that sexual violence was also a recurring problem, and despite cultural restraints of shame and silence around these issues, one in seven people said to have known personally, including the names of the victims and incidents details, cases of sexual violence against indigenous women and girls allegedly perpetrated by Texaco workers and settlers.
Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco drilled 399 oil fields in an area as big as 1 million acres (430.000 hectares) and extracted as many as 1,500 barrels of crude oil with a profit of around $30 billion. In the process, Chevron has admitted that Texaco dumped over 18.5 billion gallons of toxic water into streams and soil in the rainforest – about 4 million gallons daily at the height of its operation. According to the Amazon Defense Front, Texaco administered over 900 unlined, open-air waste pits out of the jungle floor and filled them with deadly toxins that were run off via a piping system into nearby streams and rivers. The company also burned or vented millions of cubic meters of natural gas into the atmosphere without adequate controls.
In a confidential memo dated July 17, 1972, Texaco gave specific instructions to its operational base in Ecuador by stating that “only major events as per Oil Spill Response Plan instructions are to be reported”, further clarifying that a major event is that “which attracts the attention of the press and/or regulatory authorities.” That was just the beginning of a series of attempts by Texaco and its parent company since 2001, Chevron, to shadow the truth about the environmental damage inflicted during a time when little regulations existed.
During the length of the trial, the company was accused of constantly manipulating the facts and other acts of corruption, among which the worst was likely the creation of a fake lab in Ecuador to make an “independent assessment” of the environmental damages that surprisingly contradicted the plaintiffs findings. Chevron also held an extensive lobbying campaign in the United States to pressure the Bush administration to force Ecuador to drop the case. There are accusations of case materials that have mysteriously disappeared, and confirmed death threats against the lawyers who represented the affected communities.
The case, Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco, began on November 3, 1993, when 30,000 people from Ecuador’s Amazon filed a class action suit against Texaco in New York federal court. The trial was then forced to move from New York to a local court in Ecuador in 2002, alleging that any decision required national jurisdiction.
In Ecuador, two local judges were removed from the case under direct pressure from Chevron which accused the courts of being corrupt, unfair, and inadequate. This forced each incoming judge to review tens of thousands of documents, as Ecuador’s legal proceedings rely on written instead of oral statements. The third, Nicolás Zambrano, was considered to be a more conservative judge, but he finally ruled against Chevron ordering the company to pay $8.6 billion in damages and twice that amout if they refuse to “publicly apologize to the victims of the Ecuadorian Amazon for the crimes committed.”
“No amount of money will give their lives back and the damage caused by the pollution. However, this amount is not enough to remediate what has been affected,” said Luiz Yanza, co-founder of the Amazon Defense Front. “We have to remember that water, life, the earth were damaged. That many people died. That is why we believe that amount must be reviewed.”
The plaintiffs have announced they will appeal the decision to demand the $27 billion they think is needed to repair the damages done to the environment and improve people’s health in the region. Chevron Corporation has also vowed to appeal, calling the court’s ruling the product of fraud, and is leaning on a recent jurisdiction by a New York judge that blocked any award from this case for 28 days citing the “company [is] of considerable importance to our economy.”
In a statement released by Pablo Fajardo, one of the best-known attorneys representing the indigenous tribes said that rather than accepting responsibility, Chevron continues its campaign of warfare against the Ecuadorian courts.
“We call on the company to end its polemical attacks and search jointly with the plaintiffs for common solutions. We believe the evidence before the court deserves international respect and the plaintiffs will take whatever actions are appropriate consistent with the law to press the claims to a final conclusion,” he said.
Image from www.ChevronToxico.com.
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The Policeman Cometh:Yesterday’s insurrection by the police is over, but the results are far from certain. October 2, 2010
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Latin America.Tags: Ecuador, ecuador coup, Ecuador Government, ecuador protest, gerard coffey, Latin America, latin america politics, lucio gutierrez, mpd, Rafael Correa, roger hollander
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Gerard Coffey
Quito . 1st October
Yesterday’s insurrection by the police is over, but the results are far from certain.
It felt strangely like a film, a very long film. It was exciting, at times dangerous, and had a good ending. The good President (Rafael Correa) was rescued after a gun battle between the army and the police, returned triumphant, and denounced the evil ex President (Lucio Gutierrez) as being the influence behind police units that took him hostage. So at ten o‘clock, when it was all over, I switched off the television and went to bed.
This morning it doesn’t seem quite so clear cut . On the radio I can hear talk about the next time, about the police and the military joining up with the civil servants affected by the new legislation that supposedly sparked yesterday´s insurrection. A friend warns me: “in Latin America “, he says “these semi coups are often followed by real ones”. He’s probably thinking about Chile in 1973. It was a long time ago though, and things have changed. Maybe. His words are worth pondering.
On the radio I can hear a repeat of yesterday’s pronouncements by the head of the joint military command, General Ernesto Gonzalez. He’s saying that the fault lies with the imposition of the legislation. Correa is not mentioned by name, but it’s evident that he’s the one implicated. General Gonzalez also suggests that the legislation be amended or shelved. It’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the government or a condemnation of the police. On another station, someone asks why the military took so long to act. We don’t know. It could have been nothing more than logistics. But the question is valid. It took from the time for the General’s declaration, around three in the afternoon, until about eight at night for the special forces to get to the hospital where the President was being held.
Once there, it has to be said that they did their job well. There was a lot of shooting. A lot. In total the confrontation lasted about five hours. Some members of the military were taken hostage by the police. But there was little bloodshed (only two police and one soldier died- More recent figures but the overall total at 8 dead and 193 injured). The president was successfully rescued, ‘carried out like a corpse’ as he put it later. And if anyone seriously doubted that this was an attempted coup (at least by some elements of the police), then the long drawn out gun battle needed to get Correa out of the hospital must have put those reservations to rest. There seems no other explanation. This was not the result of a dispute over piece of legislation.
Today, there is some police presence on the streets, but little evidence of the military apart from the odd helicopter flying overhead. Things are quiet. Relief is the general sentiment. People are talking, exchanging stories. commenting on the events of the day before: the looting and bank robberies in Guayaquil; the robberies in Quito, where two banks were also broken into; the aggression of the police. A friend who took part in the march to the hospital where Correa was being held, says he´s never seen so much tear gas. I had my own stories. I was knocked over when I tried to intervene to save a man who being attacked by about ten police; I later had to escape when police charged with guns drawn and firing live ammunition into the air, as far as we could tell. There wasn’t much point in hanging about to make sure. So we all ran, like hell. I saw one man lying on the ground surrounded by a few friends. He looked seriously injured (he now appears to have died). There was no way to know; at that moment the police reinforcements arrived: a phalanx of motorcycles that chased the crowd into the park. I took shelter on the other side of the street. My neighbor has his own account. He’s about 65, works as a carpenter´s assistant and can only be described as having humble origins. He tells me he was in the main square until eleven at night listening to the President when he returned triumphant. “We said we were going to stay and die there or wait till Correa came back” he tells me.
I was also there, but earlier in the day. The square was full, and most of the people were like my neighbour, working class, although that’s a bit of a misnomer. Most of them likely don’t have full time work, are sub employed as they say. The same thing couldn’t be said for the people I met a little later outside the National Assembly. They were evidently protesting and the red flags led me to think, somewhat naively, that they were Correa supporters. But no. These were judicial workers, also affected by the new Civil Service legislation, and they were also angry, and all well dressed. The flags belonged to the Marxist Leninist party and its political wing, the MPD, which seemed to be behind the demonstration. I asked one woman if they supported the police. She said yes. The world was off its axis. I shook my head and walked away. On television I saw images of other MPD supporters confronting ‘a palos’ as they say, a group of Correa supporters.
For Correa this is part of the problem. In his four years in office he has made a lot of changes , mainly for the good, but also a lot of enemies. He has never courted the social movements and they’re not on his side. Despite what the woman said to me outside the National Assembly it seems unlikely that the unions, the indigenous groups, the environmentalists , the majority of teachers , or even the majority of civil servants, actively support the police. There is general agreement that they are dangerous, often in league with thieves and recently the subject of accusations of Human Rights violations made by the Truth Commission. But these groups definitely don’t like Correa that much. His major support is amongst the poorest least organized sectors, and that could be a bit of problem if it comes to another confrontation.
A lot of people have been affected by Correa’s confrontational, steamroller style. He´s a man in a hurry. And that causes problems. But because of it there have major positive changes. He far outshines the other do-nothing governments I’ve know. The country is no longer the banana republic it was for example in the time of President Bucaram, in the mind nineties. But the opposition, of whom many previously spent a lot of time calling for governability, doesn’t seem to understand that in a democracy the ruling party implements its agenda, and there is little the rest can do about it except shout. Or maybe they do understand. They just don’t like it. Which is fine, but even for them actions such as yesterday’s can hardly be called democratic. The police have no business taking control of the streets.
For their part the media are calling for more democracy, more dialogue, although it’s hard to understand what that means, unless you take it as a call for Correa to implement what the opposition wants. And for better or worse, ´dialogue´ is not Rafael Correa´s strong point. As for the agents of law enforcement, no one seems sure of what will happen. What do you do with a group of armed and dangerous people in uniform? In the long term the rebellious elemants, the kidnappers, have to cleared out and dealt with. But in the short term it’s hard to imagine thatmuch can, or even should, be done. No one wants a repeat of yesterday, and that is still a possibility. It´s still a delicate situation. There is undoubtedly a lot of resentment. There is also the question of relations between the police and the military. The police will undoubtedly feel aggrieved that their ‘legitimate’ protest was put down by the army. But if the police do decide to take to the streets again, there is a feeling that the support of the military may not be that firm the next time around.
The most important point is that government is back in control. Plans will likely include a large scale march of support for the President, bringing people in from all parts of the country. Correa himself is still very popular nationally, with approval ratings over sixty percent , and this may help to dissuade any further troublemaking. But things do need time to cool down. And for the time being at least, a more rational, less confrontation approach would seem the wisest course of action.
Coup Attempt in Ecuador Is a Result of Sec. Clinton’s Cowardice in Honduras September 30, 2010
Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy, Ecuador, Latin America.Tags: al giordano, CONAIE, coup d'etat, democracy, Ecuador, ecuador coup, Ecuador military, Ecuador police, hillary clinton, Honduras, honduras coup, Latin America, millenium challenge, Rafael Correa, roger hollander
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(For interesting coments on this article, please go to the original at: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/4138/coup-attempt-ecuador-result-sec-clintons-cowardice-honduras)
By Al Giordano
Oh, crap. Another year, another coup in Latin America. And while today’s attempt by police forces in Ecuador went so far as to fire tear gas at elected president Rafael Correa, the military brass in the South American country have sided with the democratic order – its top general is on TV right now strongly backing the elected government – and this one isn’t likely to go as well for the anti-democracy forces as last year’s did in Honduras.
First, because the Ecuadorean people are far more advanced in social and community organization than their counterparts in Honduras were last year. Second, because the events last year in Honduras caused other center-left governments in the hemisphere to prepare for what everybody saw would be more coup attempts against them in more countries.
Additionally, we can expect in the coming hours that the police leaders responsible for todays events – you don’t need to understand Spanish to get a pretty good idea of what went down this morning by watching live coverage - will be rounded up and brought to justice, as would happen in any other country, including the United States.
But, kind reader, do you know why this is even happening? Because the same unholy alliance of Latin American oligarchs who can’t stomach the rising wave of democracy in their countries – from the ex-Cubans of Miami to the ex-Venezuelans and others who have joined them in recent years – along with international crime organizations seeking new refuges and members of extreme rightist groups in the United States and elsewhere, saw their scheme work in 2009 in Honduras and took note of how quickly, after US President Barack Obama denounced the Honduras coup, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began playing both sides of it.
It was this newspaper, through reporter Bill Conroy’s investigations, that broke the story last August that the State Department-controlled Millennium Challenge Corporation had poured extraordinary amounts of money into Honduras in the months leading up to the June 29, 2009 coup d’etat. And in story after story, we demonstrated with documented fact how Clinton’s Millennium Challenge Corporation went so far as to violate the ban on US aid to the Honduran coup regime. Clinton’s later endorsement of farcical presidential elections and her over-reaching attempts to pretend nothing had happened in Honduras are precisely the signals that were received by today’s coup plotters in Ecuador when they made a run at toppling the democratic government there.
At present, thankfully, the coup in Ecuador seems more likely to fail than to succeed. And there will be hell to pay for those behind it. But it didn’t have to get that far. That only happened because, last year, the US Secretary of State pulled off a kind of “silent coup” in US foreign policy while her commander in chief was buried with the urgent domestic tasks stemming off economic collapse and, as everyone knows, small nations get little attention almost always anyway.
This time, the White House would do well to put a much shorter leash on its Secretary of State, because her horrendous and unforgivable anti-democratic behavior regarding the Honduras coup only fueled, and continues to fuel, understandable speculation that if the United States doesn’t walk its talk about opposing coups d’etat, then it must have been an active participant in plotting it. The mishandling of the Honduras situation last year did lasting damage to President Obama’s stated hopes to turn the page in US relations with its closest neighbors after decades of abuse and neglect. A single misstep by Secretary Clinton today and in the future regarding the events in Ecuador, like those she repeatedly made regarding Honduras, now that the hemispheric coup plotters have moved from Central America to larger South America, will further erode the cause of democracy in the entire hemisphere. I don’t trust her. Nobody south of the border does. And nor should you, Mr. President.
Update: Narco News has translated today’s Statement from the Office of President Rafael Correa.
Update II: If it holds, this will be the first time in the history of the hemisphere that the Armed Forces of a country stood up against a coup d’etat from the first moment. Now, that would be democracy at work.
Update III: The situation in Ecuador today is further complicated by the disillusion that the very social forces that elected President Correa have with his actions in office. The CONAIE (Federation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) is the leading national indigenous movement with strong alliances with labor and other social forces) held a press conference today to say that it is neither with the police forces nor with President Correa. The CONAIE and its hundreds of thousands of participants is not only responsible for Correa’s election, but its mobilizations caused the rapid-fire resignations of previous presidents of Ecuador in this century.
The situation thus also shines a light on the growing rift in the hemisphere between the statist left and the indigenous left and related autonomy and labor movements. The CONAIE is basically saying to Correa, “you want our support, then enact the agenda you were elected on.” Whether one sees this as a dangerous game of brinkmanship or something that actually strengthens Correa’s hand by placing him in the middle zone ideologically, it is worth seeing this at face value and beware of getting led astray by some of the usual suspect conspiracy theorists of the statist left who are predictably out there barking that the CONAIE is somehow an agent of imperialism, dropping rumors of US AID funding but never seeming to exhibit the hard evidence. Sigh. What Johnny-One-Notes! They wouldn’t know nuance if it slapped them in the face. For them, you either line up lock-step with THE STATE (if it is “their” state) or you’re a running dog of capitalism. That kind of Stalinist purge mentality should have died with the previous century.
The CONAIE’s grievances happen to be very legitimate. Of course, they do not justify a coup d’etat, but the CONAIE is not participating in or supporting the coup d’etat. It is saying to Correa; we’ll have your back, when you have ours. This, like the Armed Forces support for Correa, is also a historical first in the region. And the plot thickens…
Update IV: A boilerplate statement from the US State Department:
We are closely following events in Ecuador. The United States deplores violence and lawlessness and we express our full support for President Rafael Correa, and the institutions of democratic government in that country.
We urge all Ecuadorians to come together and to work within the framework of Ecuador’s democratic institutions to reach a rapid and peaceful restoration of order.
Now let’s see if they walk that talk…
Update V: 9:30 p.m. Quito: Ecuadorean military troops have just rescued President Correa from the police hospital where he was sequestered all day. Looks like it was a pretty violent battle, but multiple media on the scene are reporting that the president is safe and the Armed Forces stuck with the democratic order.
Corporate Criminals – Chevron June 5, 2010
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Environment, Latin America.Tags: bp, burma, chevron, corporate criminals, Ecuador, environment, mynamar, oil industry, petroleum, pollution, roger hollander, royal dutch shell, slave labor
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BP is not the worst criminal conspiracy dressed as an oil company. Royal Dutch Shell (more later) and Chevron are much worse.
The Crimes of Chevron
Slavery, Vandalism, Murder by Proxy
Chevron is partnered with the Myanmar (Burma) military junta in building a gas pipeline project. Finding workers for this huge project was no problem – the Myanmar military simply impressed the indigenous people into slave labor gangs.
The recruiting system is simple. The junta burns their villages to the ground, herds the population at gunpoint into relocation (concentration) camps, doesn’t allow them to grown their own food and tells them the only way to eat is to work. They work clearing the forest, as porters (slaves are cheaper than trucks), and sex slaves for the project engineers. It should be noted that Chevron does not directly impress the workers. The Burma junta does the “hiring,” Chevron just profits from the arrangement. Chevron nobly claim they are providing “jobs” for the people in the region. Chevron neglects to note they are non-paying jobs with benefits that include torture and rape. Some reports say the workers are being paid a token for their forced labor. Burmese citizens who protest the pipeline project are murdered by the government. (See also Burma Digest about oppression in Karen State, End Human Trafficking on Chevron’s link to forced labor, the Free Burma Rangers, and Rebecca Tarbottom on the True Cost of Chevron in Burma)
In Ecuador, Chevron’s attack on indigenous people involves the destruction of their land and the poisoning of their rivers. When shareholders met last week in Houston, Chevron used the Houston police department to forcibly exclude shareholders who disagreed with management on its conduct in Ecuador from attending the annual meeting.
Chevron is an American corporation with headquarters in California. In California slavery is punished by at least three years in prison per count. What Chevron dumps in the Amazon River violates the Clean Water Act (if it were done in the US), it violates Ecuador law too.
Chevron has revenues of $167 billion last year and is the third largest business in the United States. Their CEO made nearly $9 million last year, 85% of it from non-salary bonuses and options.
EL CÓNDOR AND YASUNÍ: TWO EMBLEMS OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SOVEREIGNTY AND PACHAMAMA March 11, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Energy, Environment, Latin America.Tags: cordillera del condor, ecuacorriente, Ecuador, ecuador mining, environment, indiginous, native rights, pit mining, Rafael Correa, roger hollander, yasuni
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On 5 March 2012, President Correa slapped the faces of the Ecuadorian people and the international community by signing Ecuador’s first big mining contract. Unconstitutional and riddled with irregularities, the contract – with the Chinese-owned company Ecuacorriente (ECSA) – is for operations in the Cordillera del Cóndor
Adding to the insult, Correa signed the contract on Yasuni Day, exactly three years after indigenous peoples, municipal authorities and NGOs came together to announce their support for the initiative to keep oil in the ground in Yasuni National Park in the west of the country as a first step toward a post-petroleum Ecuador.
Yasuní and the Cordillera del Cóndor are two sides of the same reality. Both are indigenous territories and zones of high biodiversity – perfect locations for building sumak kawsay. But both have the misfortune of holding underground resources of great interest to international capital, oil in Yasuni and gold and copper in the Cordillera del Cóndor.
Both regions, too, are in the sights of the new Chinese capitalists. “The more they can lend us, the better,” Correa said on 16 February. “If they can make long-term loans to me, there are no limits.
China has a “surplus of liquidity and a shortage of hydrocarbons,” Correa went on, “while we have a surplus of hydrocarbons and a shortage of liquidity. China finances the USA and could pull Ecuador out of underdevelopment.”
If Correa is unlikely to allow the exploitation of Yasuni-ITT this year, it is only because to do so would endanger his re-election. But if he is returned to office, the area is probably doomed to an oily future.
The government has apparently learned nothing from the Texaco case and the high costs of reparation for environmental damage. Nor, seemingly, has it learned anything from the continent’s mining disasters, nor its experience of the close relationship between impoverishment and extractivism. The government’s actions are systematically in breach of the new Ecuadorian constitution, and Correa’s supporters continually display their racism and disdain of the indigenous world with slogans like “Down with those that want to continue living on top of a gold mountain!”
Nevertheless, we will continue working against the new 21st century extractivism. We hold to a different vision – of mobilization, popular consultations, and resistance.
THE YASUNÍ WEB PAGE IS OFF-LINE AS A PROTEST AND SIGN OF MOURNING ON THE OCCASION OF THE IMMENSE TRAGEDY OF THE SIGNING OF THE FIRST CONTRACT FOR LARGE-SCALE OPEN PIT MINING IN ECUADOR. WE WILL BE BACK ONLINE AT THE TIME OF THE ARRIVAL IN QUITO OF THE SOUTHERN PEOPLES’ MARCH DEDICATED TO RECLAIMING A COUNTRY OF PURE WATER, FORESTS, FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND LIFE.
_______________________________________________ Yasuni_en mailing list Yasuni_en@listas.amazoniaporlavida.org http://listas.amazoniaporlavida.org/listinfo.cgi/yasuni_en-amazoniaporlavida.org