Indigenous Peruvians Occupy 9 Oil Wells

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Canaan de Cachi­a­co

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Canaan de Cachi­a­co

By: Ronald Suarez, Pres­i­dent of the Net­work of Peru­vian Indige­nous Com­mu­ni­ca­tors, Ucay­ali  

*Cor­rec­tion: Maple Ener­gy is a com­pa­ny list­ed in Lon­don and Lima, Peru. It is not a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny.

Over 400 vil­lagers in the Native Com­mu­ni­ty of Canan de Cachi­a­co in the Ucay­ali region of the Peru­vian Ama­zon have tak­en con­trol of nine oil wells, belong­ing to oil com­pa­ny, Maple Gas, in oil lot 31B.

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers took over the oil wells on Sep­tem­ber 2nd, and con­tin­ue to hold them as a result of 37 years of oil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in their ter­ri­to­ry by the com­pa­ny.

The com­mu­ni­ty leader, Basilio Rodriguez Venan­cio, said the action was made nec­es­sary because the com­pa­ny did not con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment car­ried out by an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant.

One of the oil wells occu­pied by mem­bers of the Canaan de Cachi­a­co com­mu­ni­ty in the Peru­vian Ama­zon, Sep­tem­ber 2012

The com­mu­ni­ty is demand­ing that the com­pa­ny pay them com­pen­sa­tion for the use of their lands and for the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age they have suf­fered for 37 years. Such dam­age includes the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of their rivers, their only source of drink­ing water, and the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of their soils due to the company´s use of chem­i­cals and heavy min­er­als, which the pop­u­la­tion says has sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of their land.

Sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers tes­ti­fied that they have become sick due to the company’s neg­li­gence and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of their drink­ing water. There have been sev­er­al instances in the past years of can­cer and ¨unknown deaths¨ that the com­mu­ni­ty attrib­ut­es to com­pa­ny abus­es.

The com­mu­ni­ty awaits the arrival of state rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Ener­gy and Mines and Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment, sched­uled for Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 13th, to resolve this con­flict.

Mean­while the vil­lagers are still sta­tioned in the camp until author­i­ties set­tle their claims.

For more infor­ma­tion on the case of Canaan de Cachi­a­co, and the neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ty, Nue­vo Sucre, watch this video.