New York, NY – U’wa tribal chief accompanied by human rights and environmental activists demonstrated outside the offices of investment giant Bernstein/Alliance Capital today to protest the company’s holdings in the Los Angeles based-Occidental Petroleum (OXY)- under fire for drilling on the land of the traditional U’wa people in Colombia. Bernstein/Alliance Capital offices were also the target of non-violent protests in six other cities today, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Antonio, Dallas, Washington DC, and Chicago.
Following the demonstration U’wa leader Roberto Perez attempted to meet with Bernstein’s management after sending a written request earlier in the week, but was denied an audience. Instead he delivered a letter to company’s CEO expressing his tribe’s deep concern over their investment in OXY. In the letter he demands, as the U’wa’s representative, that the company uses its position as OXY’s largest investor to stop the drilling on the tribe’s sacred homeland.
Last year, OXY’s previous top investor, Fidelity Investments, divested more than half of its OXY stock following a hard-hitting public campaign targeting the mutual fund company over the U’wa controversy. Following the success with Fidelity, the U’wa and their supporters have now turned their attention to Bernstein/Alliance Capital and its majority owner AXA Financial as the central targets for activist pressure in the United States and Europe.
In the letter from December of 2000 addressed to Mr. Roger Hertog, Bernstein/Alliance Capital’s Vice Chairman, the U’wa leader stated, “Occidental’s drilling in our ancestral territory runs the risk of destroying the ancient culture of our ancestors that we have carried on from generation to generation. The drilling creates social, economic, and cultural deterioration that has and continues to lead to violence in our territory. For that reason, we demand that you divest entirely from Occidental.”
The U’wa who believe “oil is the blood of Mother Earth” are adamantly opposed to the oil project on their sacred land. They blame the project for escalating violence in the already conflict-torn region. In Colombia oil projects lead to tremendous environmental and cultural devastation resulting from oil spills from pipeline bombings and deforestation from new oil roads.
“We are urging Bernstein and other major Occidental Petroleum shareholders to follow Fidelity’s example and divest from OXY before they get dragged into the center of this controversy. Fidelity learned the hard way that being OXY’s business partner was a hazard to its image,” said Kim Foster of Boston Earth Action Network.
Bernstein/Alliance Capital has become the largest investor in OXY in recent months while Fidelity Investments has dropped some 18 million shares representing over $400 million following a campaign blitz earlier this year. That campaign included more than 75 protests at Fidelity offices worldwide and on-going demonstrations at the corporate headquarters in Boston. Last April, Bernstein’s Executive, Roger Hertog committed to the U’wa that he would seriously investigate the matter. Since then, his company has acquired an additional 10 million shares of Occidental stock.
The U’wa have also become a strong voice in opposition to Plan Colombia – the $1.3 billion US military aid package – and point out that one of the Plan’s major objectives is to protect oil interests. Just two days after the Plan was passed by US Congress, the U’wa homeland became heavily militarized and their peaceful blockade near OXY’s drill site was violently disrupted. Today, over a thousand soldiers guard the area. Meanwhile guerrilla bombings of Oxy’s Caño Limon pipeline have dramatically escalated since Plan Colombia took effect – to over sixty attacks so far this year. Fearing similar violence will further spread to the heart of their territory, the U’wa say that they will continue their uncompromising resistance.
