[Ed. Note: This article is reproduced with permission from
the "Multinational Monitor", Vol XV, No. 4, April 1994]
F U E L I N G D E S T R U C T I O N
I N T H E A M A Z O N
An Interview with Luis Macas
Dr. Luis Macas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), is a Quechua Indian from
the Saraguro region in the Andean highlands. A lawyer by
training, he has been instrumental in leading the Indigenous
people in Ecuador through their recent struggle for human
rights and environmental protection. In April 1994, Dr. Macas
was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, given
to "grassroots heroes," for his role in negotiating the
transfer of 3 million acres of rainforest back to indigenous
control.
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR: Why was CONAIE formed?
MACAS: CONAIE was formed in November 1986 to carry on the
struggles of the indigenous peoples' movement in Ecuador,
including the fight to recoup our lands and to rescue our
language and culture. Above all, it was formed to search for
unity among all the indigenous nations through these common
struggles, where before they had fought for their rights in
isolation. CONAIE fights for the rights of human beings and
for the life of the natural world, and works for a future of
justice, equality, respect, liberty, peace and solidarity. It
is an autonomous organization forged from the grassroots
through a democratic process of active participation.
MM: What are some of the major issues facing indigenous
peoples in Ecuador?
MACAS: The problems facing indigenous peoples are deeply
connected to the issue of land ownership. When the colonizers
arrived, they cleared out the Indians. Today, land is
concentrated in the hands of the few, and many of our people
don't have any land.
In the Amazon region, there is a crisis caused by the
presence of oil and mining companies and their violations of
indigenous peoples' rights. The displacement of people from
their homes has made it impossible for indigenous people to
meet basic living conditions.
The oil companies have not only caused the decomposition
of our communities and the decomposition of our culture but
also the destruction of the ecology. The fight for land is
thus extended to the struggle for maintaining the ecology.
The Seventh Licensing Round [in which the government
grants land concessions to oil companies] now taking place
will affect 85 percent of the Amazon region in Ecuador,
including many territories of indigenous peoples. Yet this
process includes no input from indigenous peoples. My concern
is rooted in the 20 years of experience we've had with Texaco,
which has shown us that vertical decision-making cannot
adequately deal with our concerns.
Land ownership is also the central issue in the
highlands, and it is an issue that must be resolved through
negotiations. What often happens is the government tells the
community that they should try to buy their land from
landowners who then put a very high price on this land.
In the general uprising in 1990, many indigenous people
in the highlands gained recognition of their rights to
extricate themselves from feudal oppression and to acquire
communal land title. But there is still much work to be done
so that these people will have just conditions to be able to
live a secure life on their land.
For example, agro-business companies who cultivate
flowers for export are continuously pressuring our people to
leave their lands. We have criticized these companies because
large-scale extensive cultivation of flowers does not feed
people. The profits of these companies merely enrich
individual businessmen.
We believe agriculture should not be oriented this way.
Instead, it should be geared toward self-sufficiency, to feed
our people first, instead of being oriented toward export.
In the coastal area the principal problem is the cutting
of the forests and the tricking of community leaders into
allowing this to occur. The lumber companies are trying to get
concessions of large areas to cut down the forests. The Chachi
people, for example, who live in one of the last forest
reserves in the western region, are constantly being pressured
to lease their lands to lumber companies.
Commercial shrimp farmers have also destroyed indigenous
lands in the coastal region, as well as having wiped out the
few remaining mangrove forests along the coast.
These are the historic problems of Amazon indigenous
peoples. But I think that they are broader and more complex
given the neoliberal economic approach in Ecuador today. We
are living in a process of structural adjustment in which the
rise in prices for necessities affects all Ecuadorians, but
the situation is even more serious for those most affected by
structural adjustment -- indigenous peoples, who don't have
any insurance, salary or other protection.
The policies of structural adjustment wear the mask of
modernization. But this modernization is really just
privatization of government agencies and our natural
resources. It's a way to hand them over to private interests.
The struggle we're involved in is to avoid the impacts of
structural adjustment, as manifested in the policies of
privatization, multinational corporations and the upward
adjustment of prices by the Ecuadorian government.
Strategically, there are two main directions in which we
work: to fight for our rights as indigenous peoples and to
help work for proposals for political change, together with
other sectors of society. Therefore, we have made concrete
political proposals not only for indigenous peoples, but for
all of Ecuadorian society.
MM: What has been the role of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund in promoting the neoliberal
approach?
MACAS: I think that the government follows the directives of
the World Bank and the IMF very closely, and these are
policies that impact indigenous peoples throughout Latin
America. The Ecuadorian government has to accept the
conditions of the IMF and World Bank in order to obtain new
credit. And it doesn't matter if this negatively affects a
great majority of Ecuadorians. What matters is that they do
what is necessary to obtain credit. These are policies imposed
from outside, but they create problems inside our country.
It's really part of a global problem that is very
complicated. But we are questioning the priorities of
multilateral banks and government agencies and will encourage
them to intervene and affect the situation in Ecuador. We want
multilateral development banks to see the impact of projects
that are carried out in Ecuador. Loans for the modernization
of the oil sector, for example, directly affect indigenous
peoples by encouraging hazardous oil development on their
lands.
MM: What are CONAIE's main demands of the government?
MACAS: A permanent demand to the government is that they
genuinely legalize the ownership of indigenous lands in the
Amazon. This would also serve as a way to preserve the
environment. Despite the fact that indigenous lands are
legalized -- with written land title -- the government still
hands over the rights to take oil out of these lands to
multinationals, claiming government ownership of what is under
the land.
We are also asking for a complete investigation of what
has happened until now with oil development, not only in terms
of ecological impacts but also what has happened to our
peoples, because what we are really talking about is the
extinction of a people.
It is the position of CONAIE and other organizations
representing indigenous peoples of the Amazon that the Seventh
Licensing Round should be postponed and a moratorium on oil
development be put into effect until there are measures to
protect the people of the Amazon.
MM: How has the government responded to your demands?
MACAS: The government has vacillated. They have never
satisfied the aspirations of indigenous peoples. They have
never engaged in a serious dialogue, so we have not had
answers to our concerns. Moreover, the government has tried to
manage and distort information both in Ecuador and in the
international media by creating entities in order to control
the indigenous movement. They claim to be "helping" indigenous
peoples, but in reality, they are doing nothing to help. For
example, without any discussion with indigenous organizations,
the government recently created a Secretariat of Indigenous
Affairs. For all the problems of the indigenous peoples to be
reduced to just one office is absurd. Even when we are going
through structural adjustment cutbacks, the government is
creating these new bureaucratic entities. This is both
contradictory and cynical.
MM: What has been the effect of Texaco's operations in the
Ecuadorian rainforest?
MACAS: In terms of environmental impact, this is one of the
greatest disasters that has taken place in the Ecuadorian
Amazon. It is well known that the resources -- the
biodiversity -- cannot be recuperated. There is no way to
bring this back; it is now a biological desert.
Besides provoking a disappearance of species, there has
also been a decomposition of communities in the Amazon. Texaco
poisoned the places where people lived and worked and threw
away its wastes in a totally irresponsible way.
Texaco is extracting a resource that brings tremendous
wealth, but in the places where it has been extracted there is
only poverty and slums that are not fit for human habitation.
Indigenous and environmental groups are now seeking to
hold Texaco accountable in the U.S. courts. We have chosen the
United States to air our concerns since that is where Texaco
makes its decisions. There is no violation of Ecuadorian
sovereignty, since the principal headquarters of Texaco is in
the United States. Yet there has been a very violent reaction
on the part of the Ecuadorian government to try to move this
case to Ecuador. But from a legal and the political
perspective it is appropriate to hear the case in the United
States.
CONAIE will continue to press the Texaco case because
among the plaintiffs are the Cofan peoples, who are members of
CONAIE.
MM: What are the other elements of your campaign against the
company?
MACAS: Indigenous and environmental organizations have managed
to make people in Ecuador aware of the necessity to defend the
environment and also national sovereignty, because it runs
against our national interest to hand over a vast area -- for
example, 5 million acres under the new licensing round -- to
multinationals. But also, importantly, an international
network with ecological and human rights groups has been
created in support of the human rights of indigenous people
who are affected directly by oil development.
Fundamentally, we have tried to work for solidarity both
inside and outside of the country. The response has been very
positive and has led to a broad-based and concrete campaign
against Texaco. When dealing with a multinational, it is
important to look for help on an international level, and
we've been able to find it. A great interest in solidarity
organizations, with environmental groups on the national and
international level, has meant that there has been a lot of
help provided.
Our objective is to put pressure on oil companies in the
United States, since the companies that are in Ecuador are
U.S. companies. We want to make people in the United States
aware that in Ecuador there are indigenous people who want to
set a different course and have some say in what's going on.
This campaign has had a lot of success and we hope it will be
more fruitful in the future.
MM: What is the role of the Ecuadorian government in oil
development?
MACAS: Unfortunately the national government has tried to
transfer all aspects of the operation, exploration,
exploitation and even the administrative part of oil
development to foreign companies. The role of the government
has been no more than to hand over extensive territories for
prospecting and all the other steps of oil development. There
has been no legislation or rules that would enable the
government to exercise control over environmental impacts that
are caused and there are no instruments that force the
companies to comply with anything that would control the
social and ecological impacts.
MM: Does Petroecuador, the state-owned oil company, act more
responsibly than the multinationals?
MACAS: Petroecuador took charge of Texaco's operations. I do
not believe that Petroecuador will impose policies for what
can really be termed a true "development" of oil resources for
the benefit of Ecuadorians. Working with the World Bank, the
principal objective of Petroecuador has been to privatize the
mechanisms of oil development into the hands of private
companies.
MM: How has the military treated indigenous people in Ecuador?
MACAS: Until now, the military has said that the indigenous
struggle is against the law of national security, so
indigenous peoples have remained under constant threat. The
military has worked to guarantee the security of the companies
and they watch over and guard the companies' operations.
They say they care about national security, but
obviously, the moment that they allow a company to fence off
an extensive territory, they are handing over our sovereignty
to foreign interests. When we protest this, the military says
it is we who are threatening national security.
MM: Can you describe the role of multinationals in the
agrarian sector?
MACAS: There is currently a plan that they call
"modernization" in the agricultural sector, which is being
processed by the Inter-American Development Bank. The plan's
goal is to create a system which is run by agro-industry that
would encourage agricultural production for export,
disregarding the basic food needs of the Ecuadorian people.
MM: What is your alternative vision?
MACAS: CONAIE's agrarian reform proposal now in the
Ecuadorian Congress is derived from the way that indigenous
people see this question. It's meant to benefit not only the
indigenous people but the entire agricultural sector. The
first aspect is a restructuring of land ownership. It's
impossible to talk about agricultural development when land is
in the hands of the very few.
The second chapter deals with making production more
dynamic and sustainable. The goal is not only to try to meet
the needs of the farmer and his community, but the internal
needs of all of Ecuador. This part of the law is directed at
encouraging sustainable development of the Amazon, but it
would also be applied in the coastal region.
The last part deals with the democratization of
government institutions overseeing the agrarian sector in
order to increase the participation of indigenous peoples and
farmers, because now there is no democratic participation in
these institutions. It is all a personal decision of the
president.
MM: There's been a backlash of sorts against the indigenous
movement in Ecuador. Can you describe the backlash and where
its roots lie?
MACAS: There are various sectors that are involved in this
reaction. They include the government, which has always tried
to defame the aspirations of the indigenous movement, as well
as the Agricultural Chamber of Commerce, the large landowners,
the armed forces and the political interests of the right that
have always fought against the indigenous movement. But now
the public as a whole is understanding our problem. They are
understanding that it is a national problem, not only an
indigenous one.
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