Ecuadorian Indigenous Village Threatens to “Die Fighting” Against Oil Company — 15th Jan

 

An indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty in the Ecuado­ri­an rain­for­est says they “will die fight­ing to pro­tect the rain­for­est” after they say they were swin­dled by an oil com­pa­ny into sign­ing away rights to 70,000 hectares of one of the most bio­di­verse areas in the world.

But the state-backed oil com­pa­ny, PetroAmazonas—backed by the Ecuadore­an army—plans to begin prospect­ing the Kich­wa vil­lage on the Napo Riv­er on Tues­day, The Guardian reports.

PetroA­ma­zonas, one of the biggest oil com­pa­nies in South Amer­i­ca, orig­i­nal­ly offered the vil­lage a new school, uni­ver­si­ty places for vil­lage chil­dren and bet­ter health­care, but dropped those pro­vi­sions before the chief of the vil­lage signed away the rights to the land for $40 per hectare.

But the com­mu­ni­ty sec­re­tary, Klid­er Gualin­ga, said 80 per­cent of the vil­lage oppos­es the deal, which he says has not yet been final­ized. “Peo­ple think it is dis­hon­est and the oil com­pa­ny is treat­ing them like dogs. … They’re very upset and wor­ried. We have decid­ed to fight to the end. Each land­hold­er will defend their ter­ri­to­ry. We will help each oth­er and stand shoul­der to shoul­der to pre­vent any­one from pass­ing.”

“If there is a phys­i­cal fight, it is cer­tain to end trag­i­cal­ly,” Shaman Patri­cio Jipa said. “We may die fight­ing to defend the rain­for­est.”

He con­tin­ued:

It makes me feel sad and angry. Sad because we are indige­nous peo­ple and not ful­ly pre­pared to fight a gov­ern­ment. And angry because we grew up to be war­riors and have a spir­it to defend our­selves. I wish we could use this force to fight in a new way, but our men­tal strength is not suf­fi­cient in this mod­ern world.

[…]

There is huge con­cern the oil com­pa­ny will move quick­ly to clear the land. When that hap­pened else­where, they used armed troops, beat­ings and abduc­tions to remove those who stood in their way.

Jipa and his wife, Mari Muench, a British busi­ness­woman, are fight­ing the plan.

Sci­en­tists say a sin­gle hectare in this part of the Ama­zon con­tains a wider vari­ety of life than all of North Amer­i­ca. The Ama­zon rain­for­est and oth­er trop­i­cal forests are also among the earth­’s best defens­es against cli­mate change, absorb­ing some 20 per­cent of car­bon diox­ide pro­duced by burn­ing fos­sil fuels.

“Pro­tect­ing the Ama­zon basin, which con­tains the largest trop­i­cal rain­for­est on the plan­et, is crit­i­cal to our plan­et’s cli­mate sta­bil­i­ty,” accord­ing to Ama­zon Watch.