Colombia Allows Oil Exploration on U'wa Land
9/21/99
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Title: Colombia Allows Oil Exploration on U'wa Land
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 21, 1999
Byline: Jared Kotler
BOGOTA, Colombia -- The Colombian government granted Occidental
Petroleum a license to explore for oil next to Indian lands Tuesday -
a step a tribe says could spell death for its people and culture.
Calling the cultural threat and the environmental impact minimal, the
government said it granted the license to promote Colombia's economic
development.
Environment Minister Juan Mayr announced the decision to allow the
Los Angeles-based company to conduct exploratory drilling just
outside a 543,000-acre reserve inhabited by the tiny U'wa Indian
nation of 8,000 members.
Last month, the government expanded the tribe's reservation nearly
four-fold. The semi-nomadic U'wa fish and farm in the hilly forested
territory near Colombia's border with Venezuela.
Mayr denied the U'wa were given the land to make them favorably
disposed toward the oil exploration permit.
"No way. They are totally different issues," the minister told a news
conference.
The Indian group, which in 1997 threatened mass suicide to prevent
oil drilling on its lands, isn't ready to back down.
"The U'wa people are rejecting and condemning this decision,"
spokesman Ebaristo Tegria told The Associated Press by telephone from
tribal offices in Cubara, just outside the reserve. "This spells
cultural and environmental genocide."
A major oil project so close to U'wa lands would attract the same
kind of violence and environmental destruction that plagues oil-
producing regions throughout Colombia, Tegria said.
Rebels hiding in the jungle have kidnapped oil executives and have
carried out 55 dynamite attacks on pipelines this year, sending oil
gushing into the jungles. Thousands of soldiers have been detailed to
guard the installations.
Occidental Petroleum has tried for several years to obtain permission
to drill for oil in the so-called Samore bloc, believing it could
contain as many as 2.5 billion barrels of crude.
After first applying to explore directly on U'wa lands, the company
backed down last year amid heavy international criticism by activists
riveted by the U'wa suicide threats. The group considers oil the
sacred "blood of mother earth."
In October, the company resubmitted its application, this time to
drill two to three miles outside the U'wa territory. The permit
skirts constitutional requirements that grant Indians to power to
manage their resources.
If sizable petroleum deposits are found in the area, the company will
have to reapply for a license to take the oil out of the ground.
Oil is Colombia's top source of foreign exchange, but government
officials say a drop-off in business investment could make the
country a net oil importer by 2002.
Mayr claimed the government could ensure the U'wa are shielded from
any violence associated with the oil industry's coming.
That's almost impossible to guarantee, said David Rothschild,
director of the Amazon Coalition, a Washington D.C.-based
environmental group that has backed the U'wa cause. "The Colombian
government has shown no ability to keep violence out of these areas.
So the promises are hollow."
Three American activists working with the U'wa were kidnapped near
the reserve and killed in March by a unit of the rebel Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.