Global Warming and the U’wa People

by Global Ministries | published on Oct 10, 2014

Scott Nicholson – Colombia

The state of Arauca is located in a very beautiful region of Colombia that is suffering the curse of our addiction to oil. The U’wa people, in the eastern range of the Andes, have been struggling for the past 15 years to prevent oil drilling in their territory.

I traveled to the Gibraltar 3 site in U’wa territory on January 28 with a national and international commission. Ecopetrol had begun transporting equipment to the site two weeks before and the drilling tower was being assembled. I returned to the site on July 7 with a Witness for Peace delegation – the tower was up and exploration had started.

Scott Nicholson – Colombia

The U’wa have witnessed the destruction of the Guahibo people and their territory by Occidental Petroleum’s Caño Limón oilfield. The Lipa Lagoon was a sacred site for the Guahibo and they lived in the area around the lagoon. Oxy (Occidental) drained the lagoon in order to install their oil wells and displaced the Guahibo from their territory. The Guahibo culture has been destroyed and the Guahibo people that still exist live in abject poverty.

Oxy then announced their plans to drill for oil in U’wa territory. The U’wa consider oil to be the blood of Mother Earth and they launched a national and international campaign to prevent the drilling. Terence Freitas traveled here from the U.S. in 1996 to accompany the U’wa in their struggle. Terence and two other U.S. indigenous rights activists, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe’ena’e Gay, were kidnapped and killed by FARC guerrillas in February 1999. When we met with the leaders of the U’wa on July 7 they expressed their ongoing grief about the murder of their three friends.

Thousands of U’wa and supporters from the Arauca social organizations blockaded the road leading to the Gibraltar site for two months in 2000 to prevent the entry of the drilling equipment. The U’wa leaders told us that the military tried to violently break-up the blockade four different times.

During one of those attempts, as people were running away in panic, two indigenous children drowned in the Cubugon River.

Al Gore was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination at that time while holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. His father, Al Gore Sr., had been a close friend of Oxy founder Armand Hammer and served on Oxy’s board. A national campaign in the U.S. urged Gore to take action to stop Oxy’s plans to drill in the territory of the U’Wa. The inconvenient truth is that Gore did nothing – no book, no movie, not a word on behalf of the U’wa and the environment.

In response to the campaign here in Colombia and internationally, Oxy sold their drilling “rights” to Ecopetrol (the Colombian government-owned oil company). Ecopetrol started bringing equipment to the Gibraltar site in January of this year. If Ecopetrol discovers a significant deposit of oil, it will probably assert that it lacks the capital to develop the field and needs a “strategic partner” for that work. That partner would likely be Oxy or Repsol (a Spanish corporation active in Arauca). Luis, the president of the U’wa Association, spoke before the Inter American Human Rights Court on July 19 and again expressed the opposition of the U’wa to any drilling in their territory.

“We want to live in peace, and we want our land that has been invaded to be returned to us,” Luis and Armando told us. “This struggle is not just for the U’wa people. Because of global warming, this is a struggle for the life of the planet.”

In love and solidarity,
Scott
Scott Nicholson serves as a Short-term Volunteer with the Social Organizations of Arauca, Colombia. As a part of the process of accompaniment, Scott works as an advisor/consultant in the administration of productive projects in the rural communities.