Oilfield in Colombia disappears after Indio prayers
May 2002
In 1995, the US oil company Occidental Petroleum, Oxy, bought the concessions to mine for oil – in one of Latin America’s supposedly biggest oilfields – at the border of the territory of the U’wa tribe in north-eastern Colombia.
Near the bore hole, the natives started to pray to their god Sira, asking to hide the oil from the white man, deep in the underworld. And indeed, no more oil could be found. The company has spent about 100 million dollars since, drilling to a depth of 3600 metres (!) but the oil is gone. And Oxy is leaving for good.
Is it possible for an entire oil field to disappear? No question for the U’wa tribespeople. ‘The king of money is merely an illusion,’ they say. Capitalism which destroys everything reckons us crazy. And that’s what we’d like to remain, if it allows us to keep on living on our beloved Mother Earth.’ In their cosmology, the oil is the ‘blood of the Earth’. It rests in the depth where the earthquakes come from and holds all life in equilibrium.
Over just a few decades, the U’wa have been heavily decimated to about 5,000 people by diseases imported by the white man. The neighbouring tribes call them the ‘thinking people’ and their noble task is to ‘sing the world into being every morning’. In 1996 their fight was supported by a young Californian eco-activist, Terry Freitas, who was murdered three years later. But by then the U’wa had already matured to global eco-heroes by making efficient use of the internet, road blockades, and court hearings. Two years ago they exposed US vice president Al Gore who had inherited Oxy shares from his father.
Now, the Colombian state company Ecopetrol has announced its intention to go looking for the oil themselves.
source: Der Spiegel [German news magazine], no. 21, 2002
