If I could cut a short stream of consciousness film of the last 24 hours – and include some of my own memories from several years ago – it would look like this:
I am standing beside Peas Peas Ayui in a large palm-thatched communal house in the territory of the Achuar people in the remote northern Peruvian Amazon. He is drinking masato, a manioc beer. His face is painted with large red arrows pointing to his mouth – a sign that everyone in the Assembly must listen to him. He says, “I dreamt that I would speak strongly, so I have drawn arrows to my mouth.” Peas Peas is speaking in front of the Assembly now. The heat is livid and overwhelming. His voice rises and falls in short choppy bursts. Everyone is listening. He says “If we allow the company to operate here, then we will lose our territory, and if we lose our territory than we will have no life.” We are now heading downriver. Peas Peas spots a large tortoise on the banks of the river. He becomes overwhelmed with excitement, and he falls off the canoe into the Huitoyaco river, laughing hysterically.
It is now early morning in Calgary. It is snowing and the wind is whipping like a snake against the windows. Peas Peas is bundled in a large down jacket with a furry neck. He finds the cold of Canada to be literally unbelievable. Actually, impossible. We drive past an elementary school, and he is dumbfounded that there are actually children playing in the snow. He says: “Canada is not a place for playing, I think. It’s too cold.”
We are driving into downtown Calgary towards the Talisman Energy building. Peas is wearing a toucan feathered crown. He has not painted his face, but he has dreamt. “I had a strong dream last night,” he says, “I dreamt about planting a garden and chopping down big trees. That means we will be triumphant.” I wondered what the CEO of Talisman dreamt about last night. I’m sure it wasn’t about planting a garden.
We are sitting in the Talisman lobby on the 20th floor. There is a coffee table book, titled Amazonia Perdida (Lost Amazon). Peas looks at the pictures without any sense of irony. I take a picture of him looking at the pictures filled with irony.
We ascend to the Executive Suite on the 36th floor, where the CEO of Talisman, John Manzoni, is waiting for us. He enters the room with an air of self-admiration, “Good Morning Gentleman.” He reminds me of a prince. The prince of oil.
The meeting is filled with dark twists and turns, and moments of brilliant light. Peas Peas stands to speak. He carries the courage of his people. He talks about what it means to be the leader of the Achuar. How he is representing the will of his people. And that the Achuar know that “a people without territory are a people without life.” He says, “we need to think for the future. 50-100 years ahead.” No, the oil company is definitely not thinking of the future generations of the Achuar people. Peas asks Mr. Manzoni: Why do you think we would ever mistreat our animals? Or our rivers? Or our forest? We use the forest to survive. We must protect it.” Peas concludes: Talisman thinks you can find strategies to divide us or convince us that you should operate in our lands, but we will not let a single company operate in our territory.”
The meeting concludes without concluding. The Achuar want Talisman to withdraw from Block 64. Talisman wants to profit off of Block 64 and convince the communities that they will profit respectfully. For the Achuar the stakes are survival. For Talisman, money.
We descend from the upper echelons of the Executive Suite, and return to ground level, where the air feels empty and cold between the glass and cement buildings. We are still surrounded by the white collars of the oil industry here in Calgary. Peas says, “Manzoni doesn’t want to understand. We will make him understand.”
It is dusk now. We are in the sterile yellow lights of a lecture hall at the University of Calgary. The room is filled with nearly one hundred supporters. My colleague and friend, Gregor MacLennan, stands beside Peas Peas in the front of the room and they begin (as they have been doing for the last week in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa) to tell the story of the Achuar people and their fight for a future free of oil. Gregor zooms in on a projected map of the Achuar territory and begins meticulously explaining where the Achuar bury their dead, the important hunting grounds, the sacred waterfalls, the flooded forests, the villages, the trails…and where oil has been discovered.
After the presentation, a kind supporter offers Peas Peas a slice of strawberry vanilla cake, and he declines, saying he would prefer chicken.
