Global Power Systems, Corporations And Native Populations

There are many threats affecting the indigenous populations of the world. Living on such a small scale, native peoples do not have the political resources available to compete for equality in the current dog-eat-dog arena of worldwide power systems. With even less of a hold on, let alone a disdain for, industrial resources, they have little to offer the global market as well. Forces like corporatism, capitalism, and globalization have displayed rampant overextension. This is detrimental to third-world nations that by now wholly depend upon the work provided and thus just barely survive by accepting first-world trade (albeit blatantly devious) ideologies, yet it is far more dangerous for economically obsolete indigenous populations that could be classified as fourth world, or the bottom of the barrel.

The specific threats put on indigenous tribes differ among geographic regions, but the intention of those in power remains the same especially when dealing with unreceptive fourth world economies. In Bolivia, natives fought for basic human rights against the multinational giant Bechtel. The company was privatizing the water in the area of Cochabamba and selling it back to villagers at a 200-percent premium. Even the rain from the sky that fell on corporate land was privately owned. This is the kind of reach corporations have in this day with the help of laws, loopholes, and policies gone awry. The ensuing events surrounding the Bechtel debacle led to a 17-year-old boy getting shot and killed by police in one of several street protests. The Bolivian government eventually had to bend from the pressure and end its forty-year contract with the US-based company.

As far as most media coverage goes, violence has long been the highly publicized response of natives to outside powers. The Huaorani tribes of the Amazon have been fighting an uphill battle for their public image with government and media since a tragedy that occurred more than fifty years ago. On an excursion entitled “Operation Auca”, five Christian missionaries were ambushed and killed by Huaorani tribe’s people on January 8, 1956. The five American missionaries, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, and Nate Saint, who landed via seaplane in the Ecuadorian territory, were planning to Christianize the tribe and made the immediate mistake of getting too close to Huaorani women. They were seen as a threat and were dealt with in the most decisive way the natives saw fit at the time. An extremely saddening event that developed into an only more heartrending incident as the perspective of the Huaorani has been mostly ignored since the controversy began.

For the most part the global press has played a condescending, somewhat instigative role in things. Native resistance has almost always been attacked by corporate-owned news for obvious reasons. As with all transnational businesses the large media conglomerates have an agenda, profit margin, and a public standing to maintain. But as more independent films came to the market and pointed research came out on the Huaorani and other tribes, the syndicated media has calmly smoothed out many of its spikes.

Resistance strategies vary between every small-scale group and the results range just as widely, but perhaps the greatest story of hope and better insight is the struggle and successful organization of the Huaorani against a crude pipeline and the correlated interests of multinational oil companies. The stage was that of the Yasuni National Park, a 982,000 hectare (almost 2.5 million acre) refuge that is home to the Huaorani, Taromenane, and Tagaeri tribes and contains the greatest number of tree species per hectare in the world. In 1989 the national administration gave nearly sixty percent of the land to multinational oil companies in 200,000-hectare chunks to drill and exploit at their own discretion, disrupting the ecosystems, forests, and native peoples forever.

Within a few months of the opening of Yasuni to contractors, effects of the drilling endeavor were taking a grisly toll on the tribe’s people; alcoholism, sexual violence, labor conflicts, and family division were just a few of the many unfavorable effects on the rise within the community. To add to the unbearable social dilemmas and dissolutions, a slew of chemical and biological sicknesses began to take reign. Cases of Syphilis and Hepatitis B and C began to arise, as did side effects from the extensive dumping and contamination by the oil companies. Once-clean water became polluted and undrinkable because contractors continually dumped residue in wells and rivers, and not having anywhere else to put them, coated the roads with carcinogen-laden additives that could cause cancer.

With things going from bad to worse and their traditional way of life disappearing before their eyes, the Huaorani were struggling for options. Disease and violence were on the rise as the family-community dynamic, the very core of Huaorani existence, was losing itself in the midst of all the commotion. The tribe formed the “Council of the Huaorani Nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon”, an organization that would dedicate itself to three main ends: ceasing all affairs with the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, discounting an older agreement for infrastructure financing made between Petrobras and the Onhae (Huaorani council) leaders, and thwarting the company from further incursions in to their land.

To add to the organized effort the Huaorani also started the Association of Huaorani Women. Headed by Alicia Cahuiya, The Association was built on the belief that Huaorani mothers could not raise their children in polluted areas where the land and food staples like yucca and bananas were rapidly becoming toxic. The female-led association contested the past Onhae agreement and the future construction of a freight road that was planned to run along the Napo River. The Association put forth that such a road would cause fragmentation of the land and further destruction to wildlife, as well as promoting prostitution and alcoholism.

The organizing efforts of the Huaorani paid off. In 1990 the government conceded, sanctioning off over 612,500 hectares, giving rights to the tribe, plus laying out a protected area between Huaorani property and their old rivals the Tagaeri. Despite this tremendous win for the underdogs and its reverberations throughout the world, Petrobras and other companies still managed to keep the subsoil mineral rights. This meant that although the tribes seemed to have “won back” a section of land, the territory could still be dug up and drilled by the corporations. Nearly twenty years after Yasuni National Park was partitioned, the struggle continues.

Indigenous peoples throughout the world should not have to be compensated for lost land or pollution or disease; things should never have to get to this point. Two of the most important concepts I have learned in studying anthropology has been that small-scale societies are just as vital to the world as any other and that human life on the global forum should be about so much more than just one’s socio-economic status compared to the next. The agendas of many nation-states and private companies have the ability and sometimes the interest in hindering more vulnerable entities. But thanks to the lessons taught by native and other local community organizing strategies, passionate people with a cause can not only win concessions but make a real difference in the face of great obstacles.

Sources  

"Ecuador: Yasuni Park, oil and indigenous resistance." WRM. July 2005. World Rainforest Movement. 16 Dec. 2008 <http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/96/ecuador.html>.  

Graham, Billy, comp. "What do you have about the five missionaries killed by the so-called Auca Indians in Ecuador in 1956?" Wheaton.edu. 2 Nov. 2006. Wheaton College. 16 Dec. 2008 <http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/faq/6.htm>.  

Harris, Paul. "Bechtel, Bolivia resolve dispute." Bilaterals.org. 19 Jan. 2006.San Francisco Chronicle.16 Dec. 2008 <http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=3612>.