Tribe Delivers Message at Shareholder Meeting | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Tribe Delivers Message at Shareholder Meeting

April 22, 2004 | Jenalia Moreno | Houston Chronicle

Wearing his traditional headdress made of toucan feathers, tribal leader Pablo Tsere asked Houston-based Burlington Resources to stay out of his back yard — the Amazon rain forest.

Tsere is chief of the 80,000-member Shuar tribe of southeastern Ecuador. About 50,000 of the Shuar people live on two pieces of land where Burlington and Argentina’s Compania General de Combustibles, known as CGC, plan to drill for oil.

While Burlington’s drilling plans were not on the agenda for Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting, Tsere used the forum to express his people’s opposition to the plans. Tsere held the proxy for some Burlington shares.

“We Shuar are an ancient people who continue to live in our territory according to our customs,” Tsere said in Spanish. His comments were interpreted by Shannon Wright, executive director of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit group supporting the Shuar and two other indigenous groups in their campaign against Burlington and CGC.

Tsere, 37, asked Burlington to immediately withdraw from the rain forest.

After the meeting, Burlington officials met with Tsere and Amazon Watch leaders in an informal closed-door meeting.

Burlington officials said they will drill only after they have the consent of the majority of the people in the area. The company’s representatives in Ecuador have met with the elected leaders of 55 communities in block 24, Burlington spokesman James Bartlett said.

“We believe the vast majority support responsible development,” he said. “We’re not going to enter the block by force.”

Burlington has owned drilling rights in that block for about five years.

Burlington also holds a 50 percent interest in the area known as block 23. CGC controls the other half of that block and operates it.

While Burlington has not done much work in the block it operates, CGC tried to conduct environmental impact and seismic studies in its area beginning in 1997, said Ricardo Nicolás, CGC’s manager in Ecuador.

But before CGC workers could even estimate the area’s potential for oil and begin drilling, violence erupted between the military and the indigenous people.

CGC officials accuse another group of indigenous people living in the area of everything from kidnapping workers to stealing explosives.

And Amazon Watch leaders accuse the Ecuadorian military and CGC of everything from torturing to kidnapping indigenous people.

In the meantime, CGC, which has spent more than $11.5 million on its block, has pulled its workers from the area.

“Now we are paralyzed by this situation, and we don’t know until when,” Nicolás said.

In a meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Tsere said his people are also prepared to fight to keep Burlington workers out.

“If it comes to the last resort, we will defend our territory,” said Tsere, whose term as Shuar chief ends in 10 months when he has to hand the headdress over to the next chief. The Shuar consider that headdress as a crown that holds power.

He fears the people will continue to lose their identity if Burlington wins the battle and drills.

If Burlington agrees not to drill, the Shuar plan to go back to making handicrafts such as beads and searching for medicine in the rain forest.

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