U'wa Battle U.S. Oil Company

by Paul Jeffrey

All the money in the world won't convince Gloria Tegria to give up her land.

An U'wa indigenous woman in the misty forests of northeast Colombia, Ms. Tegria and her small tribe are engaged in a life-and-death struggle against a giant U.S. oil company that wants to extract petroleum from under the mountains where the U'wa have lived for centuries. It's a story that has been repeated countless other places in the world -- Indigenous communities have been decimated in pursuit of progress and profit.

In a remote corner of Colombia, near Cubara where the mighty Andes Mountains begin to tumble down to the border with Venezuela, some 7,000 U'was are determined that history is about to change. Confronting the U'wa is Occidental Petroleum, commonly known in Colombia and the United States as "Oxy."

"What Oxy is doing is wrong," said Ms. Tegria, who is known by her U’wa name of U’dita. "It's destroying nature. It's wounding mother earth. If they would think about it a bit, they wouldn't do it, because we all depend on mother earth, not just the U'wa but the Whites and Blacks as well."

The U'wa say they have been offered millions of dollars in financial incentives to let Occidental drill on their land.

"We're not going to sell our mother for a few pieces of silver," Ms. Tegria said. "That's what western people would do. They would exchange their mother for money, because they care more about money than their mother. Their concept of the world is very different from ours."

Colombia's leading export is oil. In 1999, oil accounted for approximately 31 percent of the country's total exports and 24 percent of the central government's income. Colombia is the eighth largest supplier of foreign crude oil to the United States, with more than 330,000 barrels per day shipped primarily to Gulf-Coast refineries in Texas and Louisiana. Yet the well is beginning to run dry. Unless new reserves are discovered, Colombian officials claim they will have to import oil beginning in 2005.

Occidental geologists conducted seismic tests indicating an untapped pool of 1.3 billion barrels of petroleum may be buried underneath U'wa lands. To pursue that deposit, the Colombian government granted Occidental an exploration permit in 1995, despite a constitutional requirement that the U'wa be consulted first, something tribal leaders say did not happen.

When tribal leaders complained, the Colombian government tried appeasing the U'wa by dramatically enlarging the U'wa reservation. Tribal leaders point out that the sites where Occidental wanted to drill test wells were left out of the newly configured Indigenous territory. Moreover, the U'wa argue that the entire area once belonged to them, until Spanish missionaries and agricultural settlers began systematically encroaching on their land.

That erosion of U'wa territory has continued over the decades. One recent report showed that the Colombian government stripped the tribe of 85 percent of its land between 1940 and 1970.

As company geologists and engineers moved in, so did the Colombian army, which installed two military bases in the area and began to harass local residents. In February, when the U'wa blocked roads leading to company drilling sites, government troops beat and evicted the demonstrators. Two U'wa children reportedly died in a river as their mothers fled the confrontation.

In March, the U'wa won a temporary reprieve in the courts, but a higher court ruled against them in May. As Occidental began moving heavy equipment and materials to its Gibralter I drilling site near the village of Cedeño, the U'wa and local mestizo peasants again blocked area roads. While they permitted other traffic to pass, they lay their bodies in front of Occidental trucks. In June, the government sent in riot police and soldiers; 28 demonstrators were injured and 33 arrested, including Ms. Tegria.

Despite the repression, the U'wa remain determined to block Occidental's plans.

"The land is the root of who we are," said Roberto Cobaria, a former tribal president. "From the land we were born. To drill into the earth damages the land, the body of the world. Petroleum is like blood, running everywhere throughout the body of the earth. We are organized and demand that the government respect our culture and our sacred land. We demand respect.

"The U'wa people have a culture that goes far back, and land was always what produced life for us. Without land, there is no life. Without land, where are we going to sit? Where are we going to cultivate our crops? Where are we going to educate our children? Without land, there is no life for us."

Mr. Cobaria has traveled through the United States and Europe talking with politicians and activists, explaining the politics of oil.

"For the petroleum companies, progress means pumping out all the oil," he said. "But when it's all gone, what are we going to eat? Progress for them means taking all the petroleum to another world, leaving us here poor, leaving us with earthquakes. That's the law of nature, and you shouldn't play around with this."

The U'wa appeal for solidarity has borne fruit. In the United States, U'wa supporters have spoken out during Occidental shareholder meetings; banged drums outside the Bel Air, Calif., home of Occidental CEO Ray Irani; and picketed the offices of Fidelity Investments, the world's largest mutual-fund company, urging it to divest an estimated $500 million in Occidental shares.

Ms. Tegria said support abroad has meant a lot to the isolated tribe.

"We thought for awhile that we were alone," she said. "Yet we've come to realize that a lot of people help us, people who, like us, don't want to see mother earth die. This international solidarity has given us more respect inside the country. It's forced the government and the military and the insurgents to have to respect us."

U'wa supporters have also dogged the campaign trail of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, whose family has close business and personal ties to Occidental and its founder, the late Armand Hammer. While Mr. Gore has wined and dined with Occidental officials, he has rebuffed repeated requests for a meeting with U'wa tribal leaders who have traveled to the United States.

Occidental has been a generous donor to Democrats in recent years, and the Clinton Administration has quietly loaned support to the company.

According to an investigative report by Ken Silverstein, published in May in The Nation, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson traveled to Colombia in 1999 to meet with government officials on the company's behalf. Mr. Richardson hired a longtime Occidental lobbyist, Theresa Fariello, to serve as deputy assistant secretary for international energy policy, trade and investment. While working for Occidental, Ms. Fariello lobbied the U.S. Energy Department on behalf of the company's interests in Colombia.

And the revolving door swings the other way. A former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and close aide to Mr. Gore, Scott Pastrick, was hired by Occidental in 1997 to lobby the Clinton Administration to support its Colombia operations.

For those who choose to support the victims of Occidental policies, solidarity can prove costly. Early in 1999, three Indigenous activists from the United States were kidnaped and killed while accompanying the U'wa. The three were assassinated by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Rebel leaders blamed a rogue local guerrilla commander for the killings, but U'wa leaders and independent observers in Colombia suggest more is at stake. They say the Revolutionary Armed Forces has constantly opposed the U'wa struggle, unlike Colombia's other main leftist army, the National Liberation Army, which has grudgingly honored the U'wa request to be left alone. Indigenous leaders throughout Colombia have been requesting a summit meeting with Revolutionary Armed Forces leaders to discuss how the guerrilla army treats Native Peoples.

The forces’ anti-indigenous posture may be influenced by payments from Occidental, a common practice in Colombia for companies wanting to do business in areas controlled by rebel forces. The only Occidental official in Colombia authorized to issue public statements, Juan Carlos Ucros, was not available to comment, despite repeated phone calls from Response. Occidental's vice president for executive services and public affairs, Lawrence Meriage, acknowledged before a U.S. Congress subcommittee last February that Occidental personnel regularly pay off guerrillas in exchange for being left alone.

Mr. Meriage claimed one benefit of Occidental operations in the U'wa region had been an increased presence of government troops. He said Occidental supported increased U.S. military assistance to Colombia, and urged the United States to expand its military operations in Colombia's northeast, where the U'wa stand in the way of its drilling operations. U.S. military operations in Colombia were focused on coca crop-eradication efforts in the south of the country.

In July, President Bill Clinton signed a $1.3 billion aid package for Colombia. Most of the money goes to further militarize Colombia's long-standing war with leftist insurgents and military-supported right-wing death squads. Included in the package is an increased presence of U.S. troops in Colombia, and the provision of 63 high-tech military helicopters to the Colombian military and police.

Fernando Montano, a lawyer with the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, said the expansion of Occidental's operations, with the help of the Colombian and U.S. governments and militaries, is typical of the effect of globalization on small Indigenous groups in developing nations.

"Our lands are up for sale to the highest bidder, no matter what we say, and no matter what the constitution says," said Mr. Montano, a member of the Zenu tribe, one of 84 Indigenous groups in Colombia. "The government has opened the doors to foreign corporations, inviting them to come and invest in mega-projects that don't respect our land or our culture. It's very clear in Colombia that the interests of capital take precedence over the interests of Indigenous Peoples."

Throughout Colombia and other parts of the Andes, Indigenous Peoples are paying with their cultures and lives for the economic prosperity of northern corporations. For example, in Bolivia last February, a massive oil spill left the Uru Morato Indigenous People on the brink of starvation. Pumped by an international consortium of companies including Shell and Enron, the oil severely damaged Lake Poopo in the Bolivian highlands near the border with Chile.

The Uru Morato number just 600 and depend entirely on hunting birds and fishing in Lake Poopo. Their protests to local authorities and oil company officials got them nowhere, so activists in the United States have asked the U.S.-supported Inter-American Development Bank, which financed some of the companies' activities in Bolivia, to intervene.

In the northern Colombian province of Cordoba, the Embera Indigenous group is struggling against the Urra Dam being built in their territory. Construction has begun despite a 1998 ruling by the Colombian Supreme Court that demanded the largely foreign-owned construction consortium consult with Indigenous leaders, provide an environmental-impact statement, and allow the Indigenous People to receive benefits from the dam's operations.

These experiences of other Indigenous Peoples lead the U'wa to be suspicious of promises made by foreign corporations. Occidental has made a series of promises to the tribe, but tribal leaders say the company's deeds speak louder than words.

They point to the nearby Caño Limón oil field, where Occidental extracts more than 100,000 barrels a day but where the Guahiba Tribe has paid a high price for Occidental's profits.

After Occidental opened roads into the jungle, mestizo settlers soon followed. Alcohol abuse and prostitution accompanied the construction workers who were brought in from the city. As construction progressed, the Guahiba watched the fish die in their sacred Lipa Lagoon, which Indigenous leaders claim was poisoned by contaminated runoff and grew stagnate after Occidental blocked the lake's outlet streams with its access roads.

Protests by the tribe reportedly led to aerial bombing by the U.S.-supplied military. Eventually, the Guahiba gave up, their culture and communities destroyed.

"Oxy wants to see the U'wa become like the Guahiba," said Ms. Tegria. "They want to see us reduced to picking up aluminum cans beside the highway. They want our girls and women to work as prostitutes. That's progress for them. But not for us. We'd rather die than give in."

Ms. Tegria's threat isn't made lightly. She and other U'wa leaders say tribal elders have raised the possibility of mass suicide if the tribe loses out in its struggle against big oil.

U'wa history offers a precedent. In the late 17^th century, a community of several hundred U'was jumped off a 1,200-foot cliff rather than submit to forced colonization by Spanish missionaries and tax collectors. The area was subsequently renamed the "Cliff of Glory."

Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America. He lives in Honduras. He traveled to Colombia this summer and filed this article from there.

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