{"id":21,"date":"2022-04-28T15:09:36","date_gmt":"2022-04-28T22:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inquirefirst.org\/montanasyselva\/proyectos\/huellas-del-petroleo\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2022-07-18T11:11:52","modified_gmt":"2022-07-18T18:11:52","slug":"a-legacy-of-broken-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inquirefirst.org\/montanasyselva\/proyectos\/traces-of-oil\/en\/a-legacy-of-broken-promises\/","title":{"rendered":"A legacy of Broken Promises"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A legacy of
broken promises<\/h1>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n \n <\/i><\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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A man stands amid oil-soaked vegetation after an oil spill in the community of San Pedro, on the lower Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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By Barbara Fraser<\/span> and<\/span> Marilez Tello<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Lindaura Cariajano Chuje scrambled up the riverbank and strode into the forest, following a path only she could see. A step ahead of her, a young man with a machete cleared the way as she gave instructions: A little to the left, a bit to the right, now straight ahead. It was a muggy morning in September 2018, and the only sounds were the rhythmic buzz of cicadas and the muffled sound of the machete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few minutes later, there was a subtle change in the soft soil underfoot as the ground became uneven, with very slight depressions. Cariajano paused, resting her hand on a slim round wooden marker that was nearly invisible amid the tropical foliage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is my first daughter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lindaura-Chuje-en-cementerio\"
Lindaura Chuje rests her hands on the simple marker at the grave of her infant daughter in the cemetery near the Kichwa village of Vista Alegre on Peru\u2019s Tigre River. Photo: Barbara Fraser<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cariajano had been a young mother when the stream that provided water and fish for her and the other residents of Vista Alegre, a Kichwa Indigenous community along the Tigre River in northeastern Peru, turned black. Somewhere upstream, a well or a pipe in one of Peru\u2019s newest oil fields had leaked into the surrounding forest and waterways, and the crude had washed downstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long afterward, people in the village began to fall ill with stomach cramps. Many died, writhing in pain and vomiting blood. Among them was Cariajano\u2019s first child, 6-month-old Lisette. But she was not alone. Waving her arm in an arc, Cariajano gestured at the overgrown cemetery. \u201cAll of the children are here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tigre River winds through Peru\u2019s largest oil field, known now as Block 192, in a region inhabited largely by Indigenous Quechua, Achuar, Kichwa, Kukama and Urarina people. When prospectors struck oil there in 1971, government officials promised that the industry would bring development to a region that had languished since the rubber boom went bust half a century earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When oil exploration began in the northeastern Peru, near the border with Ecuador, Revista Proceso covered a visit to the region by then-President Juan Velasco Alvarado, who said the industry would bring development to Amazonian Peru.
Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a<\/figcaption>\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But 50 years of oil production have left deep wounds in the communities and in the land. Poorly regulated companies cleared forests to make way for oil wells and a network of pipelines connecting them to storage facilities in the region and on the coast, more than 500 miles away. Oil spills were ignored, while produced water \u2014the hot, salty, metals-laden water pumped out of the wells with the oil \u2014 was dumped into streams or onto the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this remote corner of Peru, where there still are no roads except the ones built to service the oil wells, most people still drink untreated water from rivers or streams. When the river turned black or the water tasted salty, those who could dug wells or hiked to cleaner tributaries. Those who had no choice pushed the oily slick aside and drew water that looked clean, without knowing it still contained hydrocarbons, heavy metals and other toxics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time Peru began implementing stronger environmental legislation in the 1990s, irreversible damage had already been done. As villagers came to understand the hazard posed by toxic waste from the oil operations, they began to organize to demand safe water, health care, cleanup of polluted sites and restoration of poisoned ecosystems. By then, however, their relationship with the oil companies was complicated, as the industry that provided jobs and some other benefits was the same one that had contaminated their land, waterways, fish and game and caused still-unknown harm to their health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the industry declines, with the oil fields playing out and climate change pushing the world away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy, the communities in Peru\u2019s Amazonian oil fields still lack safe drinking water, sanitation systems, electricity and decent health care and schools. With the war in Ukraine sending oil prices to record levels, government officials are trying to breathe new life into the industry. And although a recent study of Block 1AB<\/a>, as 192 was originally known, and another of nearby Block 8<\/a> have laid the groundwork for future remediation of polluted sites, that work \u2014 if actually carried out \u2014 would take decades and billions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But despite the uncertain future, time will not erase the memory of an industry that has left a lasting imprint on the region and its people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First signs of change<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Eight-year-old Lindaura Cariajano and other children were swimming when they heard strangers approaching through the forest. They fled in panic, leaving even their clothes behind. The men told them, \u201cWe\u2019re clearing trails. We\u2019re looking for petroleum.,\u201d she recalled. \u201cMy friend asked me, ‘What\u2019s petroleum?’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly afterward, more gringos<\/em> arrived in a helicopter \u2014 the first time villagers had seen such a machine. Georgina Vargas, a midwife in Vista Alegre, recalled taking refuge in her house, where she hid in a pile of clothes. But her husband, who had once lived far downstream, on the lower Amazon River, was unperturbed. He told her not to be afraid and he allowed the intruders to camp in their garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cariajano remembered the adults meeting and deciding to allow the men to build their work camp at the edge of the community. The workers offered children treats like crackers and jam \u2014 items they\u2019d never seen before \u2014 or gave them food that was left over after meals. Cariajano\u2019s mother warned her children not to eat the strange food, saying it was poisoned, and there were rumors that the outsiders were pelacaras, <\/em>creatures that would strip the skin from a person\u2019s face and suck out their body fat, which in the Amazon are often associated with fair-skinned outsiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As disturbing as they were, those initial encounters offered barely a hint of the drastic changes that would sweep rapidly across the fairly isolated region that included the Pastaza, Corrientes, Tigre, Chambira and Mara\u00f1\u00f3n watersheds, as thousands of workers flocked to develop what would become two of Peru\u2019s most productive oil fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First came the trocheros<\/em>, who cleared the paths, or trochas<\/em>, for seismic exploration<\/a>. The villagers heard explosions and felt the vibrations as the workers drilled holes and set off charges at 300-foot intervals along the paths, creating shock waves that allowed engineers to map the oil deposits.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A man fishes among the pillars of an abandoned drilling platform. The oil industry has left a legacy of pollution, deforestation and abandoned infrastructure.. Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a\n<\/figcaption>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

The men spent weeks at a time hacking paths several meters wide or more through the dense tropical vegetation, and clearing larger areas at intervals to allow helicopters to land. They were accompanied by \u201cdeafening machinery, consisting of portable drills, electricity generators, air compressors, chainsaws, outboard motors, land vehicles and helicopters, a constant racket,\u201d indigenous rights lawyer Lily la Torre wrote in her book, All We Want is to Live in Peace.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entire villages were displaced to make way for worker camps, and the trocheros<\/em> laying the seismic lines sometimes cut straight through a community. Over the next two decades, more than 6,200 miles of seismic lines were cleared in the oil field known first as Block 1AB and later as Block 192, which was in the hands of Occidental Petroleum, and more than 3,000 miles in neighboring Block 8 and 8X, operated by state-owned Petroper\u00fa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debt labor and toxic rivers<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The disruption brought a cascade of changes to the Quechua, Achuar, Kichwa, Kukama and Urarina villages along the rivers, according to Ecuadorian anthropologist Mar\u00eda Antonieta Guzm\u00e1n-Gonz\u00e1lez, who has studied the impacts of the oil industry, especially in the upper part of the Tigre River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe arrival of the oil company meant the arrival of many people \u2014 many workers, but also merchants, who arrived and settled in the area, as well as traders,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traders and loggers had already visited those watersheds, but with the arrival of the companies exploring for oil, those activities intensified, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Graphic: Ferm\u00edn Garc\u00eda<\/figcaption>\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Initially, the companies did not hire Indigenous people as laborers, but traders paid villagers to provide game meat and other products, under a debt-labor system that had existed at least since the rubber boom that swept the western Amazon earlier in the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trader would equip the hunter with supplies, which would be discounted from his payment when he delivered the agreed-upon goods. With the trader\u2019s thumb on the scale, however, the hunter often ended up with an infinite debt. The combination of noise from boats, helicopters, construction and seismic charges, along with clearing forest for camps and new villages to accommodate the influx of settlers, caused game animals to flee from areas that had traditionally been communities\u2019 hunting grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hunting and fishing to feed so many people also depleted wildlife populations, while loggers arrived along with the companies, taking advantage of the opportunity to cut and sell trees like mahogany and cedar, skimming the forest of the large, slow-growing trees that produced the most valuable timber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Amazon Basin, life centers around rivers. In many villages, houses are arranged in a row along the river bank, and although there are no fences, it is understood that the area in front of each house is the family\u2019s port \u2014 the place where they tie up their canoe and carry out daily tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day often begins early with children fetching buckets of water for cooking and ends with the family bathing in the river when the day\u2019s work is done. In between, women wash clothes, clean fish and bathe babies on small log rafts. People fish in nearby lakes, and children play in the water in the heat of the day. In most communities, rivers and streams are the only source of water for drinking and cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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Aging oil fields, toxic waste<\/h3>\n

An oil spill in 2014 in the Kukama Indigenous community of Cuninico, on the Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River, as well as more than a dozen others\n since then, came from the Northern Peruvian Pipeline…\"\"<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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A pipeline crosses the Chambira River in the Urarina community of Nueva Uni\u00f3n, in Block 8, where\n there have been hundreds of oil spills since the oil field began production. Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a\n <\/figcaption>\n\n
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Aging oil fields, toxic waste<\/h3>\n

An oil spill in 2014 in the Kukama Indigenous community of Cuninico, on the Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River, as well as more than a dozen others\n since then, came from the Northern Peruvian Pipeline, which was built in the 1970s to transport crude\n from the country\u2019s then-new Amazonian oil fields across the Andes Mountains to the Pacific coast. The\n 687-mile pipeline was an engineering marvel at the time, but by 2014 it had aged and\n corroded. A government oversight agency determined that the pipeline had not been properly inspected and\n maintained.<\/p>\n\n

The two oil fields \u2014 Block 192, which was originally called 1AB, and Block 8 \u2014 are also crisscrossed by\n aging pipelines and riddled with pollution from spills that were never properly cleaned up. The fields\n have their roots in an oil boom that struck Amazonian Peru in the 1970s, engulfing scores of tiny\n communities that would suffer the consequences over the next half-century.<\/p>\n\n

At the time, the Peruvian government was anxious to compete with neighboring Ecuador, where the\n U.S.-based oil company Texaco had begun operating in 1967, and establish the national boundary more\n firmly in the wake of a vicious border war. Around the same time, an energy crisis triggered by\n production cutbacks by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had prompted U.S. oil companies\n to look for other sources.<\/p>\n\n

Petroper\u00fa struck oil in the Corrientes River basin in 1971, and U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum quickly\n followed suit nearby. New legislation gave foreign companies tax breaks in exchange for turning over to\n the Peruvian state half the oil they produced, and nearly a dozen obtained concessions in the next two\n years.<\/p>\n\n

Most of the oil was heavy crude, though, making it expensive to extract. The boom petered out, and most\n of the foreign companies were gone by the mid-1970s. Occidental Petroleum took over Block 1AB and\n Petroper\u00fa operated in Block 8, which included a fragile wetland area that is now part of the Pacaya\n Samiria National Reserve.<\/p>\n

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Workers in the community of San Pedro, in the lower Mara\u00f1\u00f3n Valley, clean up a spill from\n the oilpipeline operated by state-run Petroper\u00fa. Photo: Barbara Fraser\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/div>\n\n

In the early years, when production was highest, nearly two-thirds of Peru\u2019s oil came from the\n Amazonian\n fields in Loreto. Over time, however, that has declined, and in recent years the pipeline, built to\n transport around 100,000 barrels a day, has operated at barely one-quarter of its capacity.<\/p>\n

By the 1980s, even the Peruvian government recognized that Block 1AB was one of the most polluted\n places\n in the country, its ecosystems damaged or destroyed by inadequately protected waste dumps, spills\n that\n were never cleaned up, and produced water \u2014 the hot water, high in salt and metals, that is pumped\n out\n of wells with the oil \u2014 that was simply dumped into rivers and streams.<\/p>\n\n

Because the oil concessions have changed hands, responsibility for cleanup has become a matter of\n finger\n pointing, as it is difficult to prove which company was operating the lot when individual cases of\n pollution occurred.<\/p>\n\n

Block 1AB\/192 was operated by Occidental from 1971 to 2000, the Argentinian company Pluspetrol from\n 2000\n to 2015, and Canada-based Pacific Stratum, later Frontera Energy, from 2015 to 2021. The block is\n currently idle, but state-owned Petroper\u00fa has said it plans to operate it with a foreign partner.\n <\/p>\n\n

Petroper\u00fa operated Block 8 until 1996, when Pluspetrol took it over. Pluspetrol, which is now based\n in\n Amsterdam, declared itself in liquidation in December, throwing the future of the block into doubt.\n In\n its announcement, the company blamed Peru\u2019s environmental oversight agency for holding it\n responsible\n for pollution that occurred while other companies were operating the block.<\/p>\n\n\n

Achuar communities on the Corrientes River sued Occidental Petroleum in U.S. courts in 2007 for\n environmental damage, reaching an out-of-court settlement for an unspecified sum in 2015. Other\n communities have sued in Peru over environmental damage and health problems, but the pollution\n persists.\n <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But when the drilling started in the oil fields, the rivers became toxic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore the company came, the river was clean,\u201d Vargas said. But she recalls a late afternoon when she went to the river to bathe after spending the day tending her crops in the tropical heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI felt that my body was sticky,\u201d she said. She touched her tongue to her skin. \u201cMy body had salt all over it. My hair was all salty.\u201d She found a stream with clear water where she could bathe to wash the salt away, and she and her husband realized they should stop drinking water from the river. Some people dug wells. But for those who had no streams close by, the rivers were the only option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decades of pollution<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A 687-mile pipeline \u2014 an expensive engineering marvel in its day, which has deteriorated over time \u2014 was eventually built to carry crude from the northern oil fields over the Andes Mountains to the port of Bayovar on the Pacific Coast, including a spur from the village of Nuevo Andoas, on the Pastaza River. Until the network of pipelines in the oil fields was completed, however, the oil was shipped downriver by barge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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Sources: Perupetro; La Torre, L.; PUINAMUDT; El Comercio; Gesti\u00f3n; La Rep\u00fablica; Mongabay. Graphic: Ferm\u00edn Garc\u00eda<\/figcaption>\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat crude that the barges carried sometimes spilled \u2014 that much spilled,\u201d Lindaura Cariajano said, holding her hands about a foot apart. \u201cThe river was black. The herons were covered with oil. They couldn\u2019t fly, so they died. The fish jumped and landed on top of the oil.\u201d No one had explained to villagers that crude oil and its byproducts were toxic, so people gathered up the fish and sometimes collected oil in containers, inserting a wick to make a small lamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two decades would pass before Peru began implementing environmental legislation, and yet another before the companies operating Blocks 192 and 8 would begin to reinject produced water back underground instead of dumping it into the environment. Meanwhile, billions of barrels of salty, contaminated water were pumped into the rivers and streams. In 2008 alone, an average of 363,000 barrels of produced water were discharged<\/a> into the environment each day in Block 8 and an average of 576,000 a day in Block 1AB\/192. Damage from oil spills has also persisted, sometimes long after any visible oil has washed away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If rivers and streams are vital for everyday life, it\u2019s the cochas<\/em>, or lakes, in Amazonian Peru that provide sustenance for villagers. As the rivers rise during the rainy season, water is pushed up streams and through low-lying forest into the cochas, which serve as fish nurseries. Migrating fish, such as the boquichico (Prochilodus nigricans<\/em>), palometa (Mylossoma duriventre<\/em>) and doncella (Pseudoplatystoma fasciatum<\/em>) take advantage of the abundant food supply in the flooded forest, then return to the river as the rainy season passes and the waters recede.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this ebb and flow, which spreads nutrient-laden sediment throughout the forest, can also stir up contaminants from oil spills that were never cleaned up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the day Lindaura Cariajano returned to her daughter\u2019s grave in the overgrown cemetery, Llerson Fach\u00edn, the young apu<\/em> or leader of Vista Alegre, stood on dried and cracked soil around the Cocha Montano. Once a key fishing ground for his community, the lake is now just a fraction of its former size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Apu-Llerson-Fachin-en-Cocha-Montano\"
Llerson Fach\u00edn, a leader in the Kichwa community of Vista Alegre, stands in the dried bed of the lake known as Cocha Montano in Block 192. Photo: Barbara Fraser<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis lake has a very sad history,\u201d he said. \u201cSince the 1980s, after a spill, the lake has been drying up. We\u2019re losing our lakes, which are very important for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Villagers recall the day the water in the Cocha Montano turned black from a spill at a well upstream. Oil covered the lake and flowed out of it and into the Tigre River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of fish died here. The surface was black, completely black, and the fish were floating,\u201d Fach\u00edn said, adding that contaminants from the area around the oil well still wash downstream into the lake when it rains. None of the companies that have operated in the oil field has ever cleaned it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing has been remediated. Nature alone has cleaned it up \u2014 the water, the rain, that\u2019s what has done the cleanup. As the water rose and fell, it got [the oil] out little by little,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the oil operations, he added, \u201cHaving those things has meant nothing more than death \u2014 death and the loss of our natural forest resources and wildlife, and many human lives that we\u2019ve also lost. I can\u2019t call this progress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mourning deaths of lakes and children<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

But the death of Cocha Montano goes beyond the environmental devastation. It also marks the breakdown of the relationship between the Kichwa villagers and the natural world with which their lives are inextricably intertwined, in which the forests, rivers, fish, animals and all living things have madres<\/em>, literally \u201cmothers\u201d \u2014 spirits that nurture and care for them, and who will leave the humans bereft if they are mistreated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Julia-Chuje\"
Julia Chuje of the community of Remanente is among the Kichwa women who have buried children in cemeteries along the Tigre River. Photo: Juanjo Fern\u00e1ndez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery stream, every lake, has its madre<\/em>,\u201d said Julia Chuje Ru\u00edz, Cariajano\u2019s older cousin. \u201cSome are anacondas, some are caimans, some are rays, some are like z\u00fangaro<\/em> catfish, but big ones. Some are jaguars. Every place has its madre<\/em>. The river, too \u2014 every pool in the river has its madre<\/em>. But when the [pollution] comes, the madre<\/em> has to leave. Either she dies or she leaves. Who knows where she goes? And the lake dries up. That\u2019s what happened to Montano.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the oily slick washed downstream, blackening the lake and spilling out into the Tigre River, \u201ca giant caiman died there. A huge caiman left the lake. It passed by here, above Vista Alegre,\u201d Julia Chuje said, gesturing into the distance. \u201cThere\u2019s a pool in the river there. A huge caiman crossed there. It left the cocha, and maybe it died.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the lake dried up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMontano is a big stream, and it has smaller tributaries,” she added. “They also dried up. Because their madre<\/em> left. Their madre<\/em> died. Who\u2019s going to take care of them? They\u2019ve died, too. The cocha dried up. The stream dried up. There\u2019s nothing left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julia Chuje was 13 when the first oil workers arrived in Vista Alegre, clearing seismic lines that would change her life and those of her neighbors in ways they couldn\u2019t imagine. \u201cWhat did the company come to do?\u201d she asks. \u201cIt seems to me that it came to do away with us. So many deaths, and who is going to pay? Who is going to pay for the harm that\u2019s been done?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No comprehensive investigation was ever done, so no one really knows what killed most of a generation of children in Vista Alegre, along with some of the young recruits in a nearby military post, in a fairly short time. Jos\u00e9 Alvarez, who now heads the office of biodiversity at Peru\u2019s Ministry of the Environment, stumbled on the cemetery full of small graves in the early 1990s when he worked in the Tigre watershed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to experts he consulted at the time, the symptoms were consistent with hepatitis \u2014 probably brought to the area by workers in the oil camps, and possibly exacerbated by exposure to contaminants in the environment. The victims were buried on the outskirts of the community cemetery, and the families moved away. Some settled on the other side of the river, a short boat trip away, where Vista Alegre now stands, and some in the nearby community of Remanente or other villages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradually the forest reclaimed the graves, but it cannot erase the memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cemetery \u201cis abandoned, because it\u2019s far to come,\u201d Lindaura Cariajano said, standing among the trees. Besides her infant daughter, she later lost two other children, who are buried not far away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy children died vomiting blood,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel sad for my children. Even the tapirs died, drinking water from that stream. That contamination still exists. The government doesn\u2019t care. They\u2019re at peace \u2014 they eat, they drink, their children are fine, and we\u2019re screwed here with this contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She rested her hand on the slim wooden marker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is my first daughter,\u201d she said. \u201cShe would be 35 years old now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u00b4s note: Lindaura Cariajano Chuje died of skin cancer in 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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