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The
prime forest of the Amazonian region of the Ecuador over thousands years
has developed an impressive biodiversity.
But
the oil companies have discovered immense oil fields of crude and are
destroying these unpolluted bastions, the last on earth. Among the victims
of this violence against environment there is the population of the
Huoarani.
"They
started off digging out oil without our acknowledge", Juan Huamone tell
us, the President of the ONHAE, the Huoarani National Organization of
the Ecuador's Amazonian forest. He welcomes me in the very small office
of the ONHAE, at Tena, a little town bordering the Amazonian forest.
"Contracts were already stipulated, agreements already undersigned",
he goes on. His face is round and bronze-coloured and his body is stocky
and muscular, typical of the Amazon Indians. "Our tribes, attacked by
irruption, were compelled to abandon their territories and to move to
other zones. Finally the situation became intolerable and we decided
to react".
First
to react was Taga, the leader of a clan of Huoarani since ever in opposition
to the uncontrolled intrusion into their territories. He made everybody
knows that his warriors will kill anybody that tries to violate someway
their territory. Now for the multinationals the Tagaeri territory is
"off limits".
Before
withdrawing they required military forces to do something against this
rebel clan. Militaries refused. Tagaeri cater for possible intrusions
by Peruvians. The populations living here in the great forest know the
light biologic equilibrium of nature and by moving periodically allow
forest regenerating. This cultivation mode of the forest known as "permaculture"
is an ecologic agriculture system creating an environment that fits
plants and animals.
Nanto,
another member of the ONHAE, is the tribe councillor responsible for
the educational plans of the tribe and offers us to accompany us in
the reserve. "Missionaries of the different churches, protestant and
catholic, play the role of opening the territory", he says, when we
are on a motorized canoe passing quickly over the Napa river to bring
us in the heart of the territory of the Huoarani. "The problem about
missionaries is that we have got used to live next to the missions,
because the give us food. This way from nomadic we turned into sedentary.
When the government take us away the sizeable territory it did it by
saying that we did not make use of it. Following, many missions closed
up and the land they gave us is not enough to eat".
Till
few time ago the leaders of the several clans had the authority to undersign
twenty-year contracts and digging agreements. Today, after a long legal
struggle carried out by the Houarani leaders and a winding bureaucratic
procedure supported by environment groups, it has been enforced a law
stating that before acceding to the Huarani territories, it must be
required the approval of the tribal council of the ONHAE. According
to environment estimations it is the Bloque 16 the oil well provoking
the greatest ecological damage to forest and to the tribe. The situation
has decayed furthermore when the multinational Maxxus Energy Corporation
sold the whole installation, 200.000 hectares of virgin forest in whole
with 120 digging wells, to the multinational YPF. The Maxxus was aware
that it was too expensive operating in a clean way by the ecological
point of view.
"Those
of the Maxxus wanted to seem environmentalists in front of their shareholders,
taking it earnest the environment safeguard, but they realized that
the exploitation of the oil resources is not eco-compatible" Nanto says.
"The Argentina YPS instead maximises profits by saving just what gringos
expended to minimize the environment impact".
In
1996, due to a bad maintenance of an oil duct, five thousand oil barrels
of crude flowed into the Tiguino River. If the oil ended in land or
in the water-bearing stratum or if a basin, plenty of dangerous chemical
substances, drains or overflows, the event is hidden and the damage
is minimized. A consequence even worse than pollution is the fact that
along the streets opened by the oil companies, thousand woodcutters
and farmers enter and burn the forest to make place to their cultivation
fields and also gold prospectors arrive and pollute rivers with mercury
to separate the golden dust from the residual mud. Other well weighting
negatively over the environment balance in this area are the Pozo Amarillo
of the Petroecuador, at Comunidad Ngugneno, the Bloque 21, known also
as the Yuralp Well and the Bloque 22 of the Conoco.
Nowadays
the several groups that form the Huoarani population must deal with
economic, military, anthropological, tourist and religious interests
they are not able to manage. Too hard is the impact that has catapulted
them, in few ten-year, from the nomadic hunters world to the industrialized
world. The decay provoked by the intrusion of the civilized world is
shown by the fact that in any Huarani camp I visited, it dominates filth,
misery and poverty. And the forest around the village is strangely silent.
I expected the singing of the parrots and the yells of the monkeys.
Once I heart a toucan, but he was far and he was the only great bird
of the forest I succeeded in sighting in almost a week.
Sadly,
the "syndrome of the empty forest" affects the whole region, and it
has become usual for almost all the Amazonian forest. Workers, starved
for proteins, chase the last peccaries, monkeys and fallow deers. Thousand
farmers, woodcutters, gold prospectors and miners nourish themselves
almost only with the game they succeed in hunting. In this century,
this wild area, as great as a continent and inhabited by hundred native
populations has turned into a dying forest that waits for the coup de
grace of the chain saw and the digging wells.
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