Oil, Indigenous Rights, and You

OIL, INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, AND YOU A zine by Sarah Hillenbrand

STATE OF EMERGENCY: WHY DID INDIGENOUS RIGHTS ACTIVISTS PROTEST IN JUNE 2022 IN ECUADOR? In June of 22, protesters took to the streets in cities around Ecuador.

As of June 24th, four people were dead, four had disappeared, and over a hundred were injured.

(Brown & Schmidt, 2022)

“The protesters burned a police station and patrol cars, tried to loot a bank and attacked civilians, [Interior Minister Patricio] Carrillo told journalists, blaming the incidents on radical groups.

‘We cannot guarantee public safety in Puyo right now – they have burned the entire police infrastructure and the entrance to the city is under siege,’he said.”

WHAT DO THEY WANT? First, let’s take a look at WHO is protesting.

Indigenous people are demanding their rights under the banner of an organization called CONAIE.

(Reuters in Quito, June 22, 2022)

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What is CONAIE, and why was the leader of the organization arrested?

CONAIE is the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, led by Leonidas Iza. CONAIE has led the protests, and on June 14th, Iza was arrested (Plummer, 2022). The police accused him of sabotage. He was released less than a day later (Al Jazeera, 2022)..

Meanwhile, protestors blocked roads leading to the country’s capital, Quito, using piles of dirt, tree branches, and flaming tires.

CONAIE is powerful–they have been responsible for chasing three presidents out of office from 1997-2005, and they now have Ecuador’s current conservative president, Guillermo Lasso, in their sights (Al Jazeera, 2022)..

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CONAIE’S DEMANDS This flyer lists the demands in the original Spanish.

The demands are translated on the next page. →

Rising fuel prices are the #1 issue protestors are angry about (Radio Las Nieves, 2022), but their ten demands point to a much broader set of social problems.

Demands #1 and #5 are related to oil, gas, and mining. Climate justice is an intersectional project, so let’s take a jump back in time to look at how Ecuador’s complicated past with oil companies has contributed to inequality between indigenous and non-indigenous folks for decades.4

CONAIE’S DEMANDS

(English from El Comercio, 2022) 1.

Fuel prices: Reduction and no further increase in fuel prices.

Freeze diesel at USD 1.50 and extra gasoline and ecopaís at USD 2.10, repeal decrees 1158, 1183, 1054, and enter the process of targeting sectors that need subsidies: farmers, peasants, transporters, fishermen, etc.

2.

Debt moratorium: Economic relief for more than 4 million families with a moratorium of at least one year and renegotiation of debts with a reduction in interest rates in public and private banks and cooperatives. No to the seizure of assets such as houses for non-payment.

3.

Product prices: Fair prices for farm products: milk, rice, bananas, onions, fertilizers, potatoes, corn, tomato and more; No royalties on flowers. No FTA signatures that destroy national production.

4.

Labor rights: Employment and labor rights. Policies and public investment to curb job insecurity and ensure the sustainability of the popular economy. Demand payment of debts to the IESS.

5.

Mining extraction: Moratorium on the expansion of the mining/oil extractive frontier, audit and comprehensive reparation for socio-environmental impacts. Repeal of decrees 95 and 151.

6.

Collective rights: Respect for the 21 collective rights: Bilingual Intercultural Education, indigenous justice, prior, free and informed consultation, organization and self-determination of indigenous peoples.

7.

On privatizations: Stop the privatization of strategic sectors, heritage of Ecuadorians. (Banco del Pacífico, hydroelectric plants, IESS, CNT, highways, health, among others.

8.

Product price control: Price control policies and speculation in the market of basic necessities made by intermediaries and price abuse in industrialized products in supermarket chains.

9.

Health and education: Urgent budget against hospital shortages due to lack of medicines and personnel. Guarantee youth access to higher education and improvement of infrastructure in schools, colleges and universities.

10.

Security policies: Security, protection and generation of effective public policies to curb the wave of violence, 5 assassination, crime, drug trafficking, kidnapping and organized crime that keeps Ecuador in captivity.

Ecuador’s relationship with oil companies began in the late 1960s, before Texaco was bought by Chevron..

For hundreds of years, the Ecuadorean Amazon was home only to indigenous people who had no contact with outsiders.

The country’s main export was bananas. Then, in 1967, Texaco struck oil (Keefe, 2012). At that time, the area was so remote all of the equipment had to be choppered in.

It was not long before roads and an airport were built, and the roads were strewn with the bodies of people killed by paid assassins and paramilitaries.

In Yasuni National Park, fighting between the Waorani people, oil workers, and other uncontacted tribes. Dozens were killed, but the tribes could not keep Texaco out forever.

They were not afraid to kill oil workers with spears, but the oil companies dropped lighted dynamite over one village, Bameno, to clear the area. They were going to drill one way or another (Korn, 2019).

A leader of the Cofán people, Ermenegildo Criollo, recalls seeing one oil spill (Korn, 2019):

“It painted the river black.”

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LAGO AGRIO: The biggest environmental disaster you’ve never heard of

“Texaco’s legacy in the region amounted to a

‘rain-forest Chernobyl.’”

(Keefe, 2012) When Texaco left the region in 1992, they left toxic black sludge to sit in open pits everywhere. The people suffered increased rates of miscarriages, birth defect, and cancer, and dead fish and livestock told the tale of the harm done by the company’s pollution (Keefe, 2012).

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Meet Steven Donziger

After Texaco left in 1993, indigenous groups known as “Los Afectados” spent nearly 20 years putting Texaco, then Chevron, on trial. Chevron, the U.S.’s third largest corporation, makes four times as much money as the entire country of Ecuador each year (Keefe, 2012).

“The dispute is now considered one of the nastiest legal contests in memory, a spectacle almost as ugly as the pollution that prompted it.” (Keefe, 2012) Steven Donziger is a New York-based lawyer who represented Los Afectados. He faced an uphill battle as Chevron denied the pollution itself, and denied the negative health effects it caused. Furthermore, bribing police and judges was common practice, and Donziger worried about Texaco’s outsize influence. They had hired hundreds of lawyers—and those lawyers had bodyguards (Keefe, 2012).

When the judge finally ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, Chevron struck back, suing Donziger for extortion 8 and fraud (Keefe, 2012).

“This is the first time that a small developing country has had power over a multinational American company.”

-Steven Donziger (Keefe, 2012) Donziger kept the case going through fundraising and publicity, hoping to set a precedent for small countries to hold large corporations accountable for human rights violations. Ultimately, however, the outtakes from a documentary captured him expressing a lack of faith in the Ecuadorean court system and its potential for corruption, and this led many to question the case he was building (Keefe, 2012, Grullon Paz 2021).

Donziger has been called a “fraud” by oil companies, despite maintaining hero status in the eyes of activists and indigenous people in Ecuador (Burdyk, 2022, Richmond Standard, 2022).

He was sent to prison in 2021 after being found guilty of contempt of court (Grullon Paz, 2021).

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“One of the largest judgments ever imposed for environmental contamination in any court”

In 2011, Chevron was ordered to pay $9 billion in damages.

“The award against Chevron ‘is one of the largest judgments ever imposed for environmental contamination in any court,’ said David M. Uhlmann, an expert in environmental law at the University of Michigan…

The 2009 film CRUDE documented the damage done to the Amazon, leading to this judgment: Part of Donziger’s effectiveness came from his ability to court celebrities and generate publicity: he was the one who approached the filmmakers to pitch the idea! The film was later criticized by Chevron as “propaganda” (Keefe, 2012).

‘Whether any portion of the claims will be paid

by Chevron is less clear.’”

(Romero & Krauss, 2011) In 2011, Chevron vowed to appeal this decision, claiming this sum was inflated and unenforceable (Romero & Krauss, 2011).

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Summer 2022: Crisis averted?

Despite Ecuador exporting so much oil, fuel prices and food shortages caused by road blockades still affected people all over the country.

By the time the protests ended, six people were dead (Sands, June 27, 2022).

The protests seemed to end in part when fuel price cuts were promised (BBC, July 1, 2022).

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After 17 days and over 14,000 people participating, the protests were called off in July of 2022 (Sands, 2022).

"We have achieved the supreme value to which we all aspire: peace in our country," said the conservative president Guillermo Lasso (Sands, 2022).

Just like in 2011, when Chevron was ordered to pay billions, it remains to be seen whether Lasso will uphold his promises.

In September of 2022, at the end of a lengthy negotiation, Lasso agreed to stop approving new oil and mining projects on indigenous people’s lands, including archaeological zones and areas under environmental protection (Valencia, 2022).

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New oil companies, Same old problems

In December 2022, in the village of Dicaro, members of the Waorani blocked a road, insisting on their constitutional right to decide whether the state-run oil company PetroEcuador can drill there (La Prensa Latina, January 2023).

In 2023, even as Ecuador struggles to get out under its debt and make concessions to indigenous communities, workers at Petroecuador are protesting against low wages, corrupt appointed leaders, and reduced production affecting their livelihoods (Valencia, 2023).

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The pollution continues

“In a statement, Kevin Koenig, energy and climate director of the environmental group Amazon Watch, said, ‘This latest spill shows once again that Ecuador’s oil infrastructure is built to spill. Despite promises to use state of the art technology and alleged commitments to environmental responsibility, Ecuador is averaging two oil spills per week. … Government plans to double production and expand extraction deeper into the Amazon will only lead to more of the same.” (Romo, 2022)

Yasuni National Park contains over a billion barrels of oil, but it is also one of the most biodiverse places on the planet (Romo, 2022). This begs the question–which is more important, oil or preserving the environment that is home to people, animals, and plants ?

Ecuador struggles with debt and poverty, but the government gets more than ⅓ of its money from oil (Einhorn & Andreoni, 2023).

This battle is unlikely to end any time soon.

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But wait…this has nothing to do with ME, right?

WRONG.

Where do you think our gas comes from?

Our dependency on oil has far-reaching impacts.

(Romo, 2022)

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We can

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do better.

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References ●

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Al Jazeera (2022, June 15). Ecuador indigenous leader released after protest arrest. Al Jazeera.

Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/15/ecuador-indigenous-leader-released-after-protest-arrest BBC (2022, June 27). Ecuador promises fuel price cuts amid protests. BBC News. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61951632 Brown, K., & Schmidt, S. (2022, June 24). Indigenous protesters are paralyzing Ecuador. Here's why. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/ecuador-indigenous-protests-lasso/ Budryk, Z. (2022, December 28). Controversial activist Steven Donziger is a folk hero to the left, a fraud to Big Oil. The Hill. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3781933-controversial-activist-steve-donziger-is-a-folk-hero -to-the-left-a-fraud-to-big-oil/ Einhorn, C., Andreoni, M. (2023, January 14). Ecuador tried to curb drilling and protect the Amazon. the opposite happened. The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/climate/ecuador-drilling-oil-amazon.html El Comercio (n.d.). Gobierno y conaie: Frente a Frente Por protestas (Translated using Google Translate). Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://especiales.elcomercio.com/interactivos/gobierno-conaie-frente-protestas-manifestaciones-dialogo/ Grullon Paz, I. (2021, October 28). Lawyer who won $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron reports to prison. The New York Times. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/energy-environment/steven-donziger-chevron.html Keefe, P. R. (2012, January 2). Reversal of fortune. The New Yorker. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe Korn, P. (2019, October 2). A village in Ecuador's Amazon fights for life as oil wells move in. NRDC. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/village-ecuadors-amazon-fights-life-oil-wells-move La Prensa Latina (2023, January 21). Waorani maintain blockade of Amazon Oil Field demanding Petroecuador Honor yasuni agreement. CuencaHighLife. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://cuencahighlife.com/waorani-maintain-blockade-of-amazon-oil-field-demanding-petroecuador-hono r-yasuni-agreement/ Plummer, R. (2022, June 14). Ecuador police arrest protest leader Leonidas Iza. BBC News. Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61796430 Radio Las Nieves Chaguarpamba (2022, June 26). Agenda de Lucha Nacional. Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.facebook.com/LasNievesChaguarpamba/posts/informate-estos-son-los-diez-puntos-de-pedid o-por-parte-de-la-conaie-conoce-de-t/587395543007365/?locale=ms_MY Reuters in Quito. (2022, June 22). Ecuador facing food and fuel shortages as country rocked by violent protests. The Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/22/ecuador-protests Richmond Standard. (2022, May 21). Revisiting Steven Donziger's fraud against Chevron in Ecuador.

Richmond Standard. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://richmondstandard.com/chevron-speaks/2022/05/21/revisiting-steven-donzigers-fraud-against-chev ron-in-ecuador/ Romero, S., & Krauss, C. (2011, February 15). Ecuador judge orders Chevron to pay $9 billion. The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/world/americas/15ecuador.html Romo, C. (2022, January 30). Oil spill sprays crude into Ecuador's Amazon Rainforest. NBCNews.com.

Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/oil-spill-sprays-crude-ecuadors-amazon-rainforest-rcna14084 Sands, L. (2022, July 1). Ecuador protests: Indigenous leaders agree to call off strikes. BBC News.

Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62005216 Valencia, A. (2022, September 8). Ecuador reaches preliminary deals on oil, mining with indigenous groups. Reuters. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/negotiations-with-indigenous-groups-test-ecuadors-government2022-09-07/ Valencia, A. (2023, January 18). Petroecuador workers protest fall in oil output, company practices.

Reuters. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from 1 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/petroecuador-workers-protest-fall-oil-output-company-practices 8 -2023-01-18/

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5.

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7.

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8.

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9.

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10.

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11.

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12.

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14.

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15.

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16.

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17.

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20.

(Back cover) https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/ecuador-seeks-partner-stop-gas-flaring-ange r-rises-amazon-2022-06-17/

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“We’re going to keep fighting.”

-Leonidas Iza