Searching for Middle Ground

Searchingfor MiddleGround NativeCommunities andOil Extraction inthe Northern andCentral Ecuadorian Amazon, 1967-1993

PaulSabin

In September1993, two high-level United Statesgovernment officials appeared in a New YorkTimes photographbearing the featheredcrowns and large spearsof a small groupof Ecuadoriannatives, the Huaorani.These U.S. representativesplayed new roles in the changing dramaof internationalpetroleum development. By the early 199os, the balance of political power had shifted for the first time toward residents of the oil-producingregion, such as the Huaorani,and to national and internationalnongovernmental organizations(NGOs). This was the latest in a series of shifts:by the early1970s, powerhad moved decisivelyfrom industrialized consuming nations like the United States to the national governmentsof oil-pro- ducing countries like Ecuador. Why had the political climate changed so strik- ingly since the first major oil discoveryin remote eastern Ecuador in 1967? How should scholarsunderstand the nature of native opposition to oil development in the EcuadorianAmazon?' The local historyof oil extractionin Ecuador includes considerable exploitation and conflict. Dramaticlocal incidents suggeststaunch resistanceto oil development among indigenous Amazonian peoples. Communities have expelled seismic crews, harassedconstruction workers,and sequesteredgovernment officials in order to protest state and industry policies. A group of Huaorani even spearedto death three surveyworkers in the late 1970s.2But the historyof Amazo- nian oil development is not a simple tale of capitalist penetration and pristine native resistance. Such interpretationsmistakenly take these determined protests as an indicationthat Amazonian indigenous groupsoppose all development,wish- ing to remain in a purely "traditional,"unchanged culture. A more complex story emerges upon closer examination.Here, as in other instances of extractivedevel- opment, native groups complain that there has been too little of the right kind of development and too much of the wrong kind. Native leaders in the Amazon particularlycriticize the alliance between the Ecuadoriangovernment, the petro- EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 145

lemhomane andrther large plantatonaTi pcaowrfulnombiatinhaz y teaiclywokdagis teiteet o atv omuiie enfrig hi needfo securpropery titls and teir deIreAfOroal retdeooiee opment3~ ~ ~ ~~~~~A Rater hanexmplfyig ntie rsisanc t economIc chng thtoyo Ecuadoria oildevlopment oints toproblemsIntewyhacopisad 146 EnvironmentalHistory

nationshave developedpetroleum resources. The storyalso underscoresthe struggle of native communities to change how oil extractionoccurs. In Ecuador, as elsewhere, the conditions of extractionhave typicallyforced native groups to choose between no economic development and a form of industrialactivity that would undermine the foundations of native cultural and economic life. To extract oil cheaply and fulfill national strategicand economic goals, the oil industryand the national government ignored native concerns. Beginning in the 196os, they rode roughshod over local land rights, failed to mitigate or compensate for pollution damage, and allowed a sweeping processofAmazonian colonization that stripped native groups of large swaths of territoryand endangered their cultural and economic survival.In their opposition, native groupsfought to change these political, economic, and environmental conditions. Local residentsand fledgling political organizationssought to negotiate and participatefully in discussionswith multinational oil companies and national governments. By the late 198os, this strugglehad become roughlyanalogous to the triangular political dynamic described by historianRichard White in The Middle Ground: Indians,Empires, and Republics in the GreatLakesRegion, 165-1815. In White's study, none of the major players-the native Algonquians, the English, or the French-could get what they wanted from the othersthrough force. Instead,they had to seek cooperationfrom each other,and eventuallya "middleground" emerged between the competing empires of France and England. New, hybrid forms of cultural, economic, and political interactiontransformed the behaviorof the par- ticipants. For example, unable to unilaterallyimpose French law in the colonies, French officials found themselves awkwardlyadministering a hybridform of justice that combined elements of Algonquianand French custom into a new ritual.4 Two key featuresdistinguish a middle ground: its creation by at least three political forces, and its characteristicnature of accommodation. As in the colonial GreatLakes region, where the Algonquiansand Europeanscreated a middleground between nativepeoples and two competing Europeanempires, the middle ground emerging in modern Ecuador reflected not a meeting of equals, but rathera rela- tionship between groupsapparently unequal in power.To enhance theirpolitical and economic position, Amazonian native groups in Ecuador made crucial alliances with sympatheticoutsiders, including environmentaland indigenous rights organizations and international development agencies. These allies provided money, volunteers, and advice to supportthe native groups. Through advocacy, the internationalNGOs and aid groupscombined with nativeAmazonians to create a political force that constrained the scope of action for both oil companies and the Ecuadoriangovernment. This growingpolitical pressure partdy transformed oil industryactivity by the 1990s. Companies and governments had to pay new attention to the social and environmental impacts of future extractionand to the long-term development interestsof local communities. The Huaoranigarb worn by senior U.S. officials testified to these changing developmental politics, with local interests increasingly shaping policies and practices in the region. The Huaorani still did not fully control their destiny, but the politics of the middle ground gave them new influence over their fate. EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 147

At the sametime, the processof politicalmobilization and the encounterand accommodationwith outsidersalso transformedthe nativesthemselves as they movedonto the middleground. They learnednew languages,traveled to Quito andthe UnitedStates, met with industry and government officials or foreign activ- ists, created new indigenous federationsand political practices, engaged with in- ternationallaw and science, and modifiedlong-standing social and economic activities.The accommodationof the emergingmiddle ground thus connoted mutualtransformation, distinguishing it fromthe raw,one-sided exploitation of the earlypetroleum boom in Ecuador. The nativepeoples of the northernand centralEcuadorian Amazon did not rejectall oil extractionin the region,but ratherrepudiated the specificmodel of developmentimposed by multinationalcompanies and the Ecuadoriangovern- ment.Native people sought many benefits related to oil extraction,including employment,access to markets,and long-term investment in healthcenters, schools, andcommunity development. At the sametime, they struggled to establishcondi- tions for new projects, including monitoring of environmental pollution, estab- lishment of clear land rights, and sharing of profits from oil development. In particular,native Amazonians demanded stateprotection against illegal and often violent intrusionsby agriculturalcolonists from the Ecuadorianhighlands and by wood, mining, and agro-industrialcompanies, all of whom followed the oil companies into the Amazon. Historically,these conditionsfor developmentwere rarely fulfilled,forcing Amazonian natives to turnto dramaticpolitical resistance as their onlyrecourse. In sum,economic development and native interests were not necessarilymutu- allyexclusive. By analyzing oil extractionand other forms of economicactivity in the EcuadorianAmazon as the region'sresidents experienced it-as a complexset of costsand benefits whose cultural and economicimpact was politically negotiated-a morenuanced picture emerges. Not simplyvictims of the oil boom,Ama- zonian nativegroups sought to make the most of a complicatedand difficult situation.Native political opposition concentrated on changingexploitative conditionsand asserting a localvision of economicdevelopment. By the early1990s, afternearly thirty years of development,a modernmiddle ground haltingly began to emergein the EcuadorianAmazon. Whether the politicsof the middleground will fundamentally reworkfuture Amazonian development, or simply remain a tantalizing illusion, remains to be seen.

TheEcuadorian Oil Boom

Before Texaco and Gulf struck oil in Napo Province, the northern and central EcuadorianAmazon remained an economically slow-movingregion only weakly tied to the rest of the nation. Although linked with the Andean highlands since before the Spanish conquest, the region remained isolated by distance and a lack of transportationinfrastructure; a hazardous dirt road along the Pastaza River, constructedby Royal Dutch Shell in the 1930s and 1940s, providedthe only motor 148 EnvironmentalHistory

vehicle access from the highlands. Aside from the Puyo-Tenaroad completed in 1963,land access to Napo in 1967 had changed liffle since pre-Columbiantimes. From the capital of Quito, a new road extended to a few kilometers beyond Papallacta,from which point only a muddyhorse trailwound its way pastBaeza to Archidona and Tena. Over thirtyother roadsbegan in highland sefflements with the aim of reaching into the EcuadorianAmazon, but all petered out in the rough terrainof the easternAndes. The rewardsof reaching the lowlands just could not entice greater capital investment in infrastructure.From the Andean foothills, agriculturalproducts such as naranjillas(a fruitused to make drinks),aguardiente, and unrefined sugarwere carriedby mule; beef cattle were walkedup the pathsto highland marketsor flown out from Tena. Furthereast, where oil towns like Lago Agrio and Shushufindiwould soon emerge within the dense rain forest,the weak links with the Andean foothills meant that the small native communitiesand haci- endas historicallytraded with more accessible Peruvianmarkets downstream (see map).5 Most native communities in the northeast-primarily the estimatedsixty thousand Quijos and Canelos Quichua spreadfrom Pastazato the Columbian border, the twelve hundred Huaoraniliving south of the Napo River,and the seven hundred and fifty Siona-Secoyaand six hundred Cofan located around the Aguarico River-actively engaged in tradefor staples such as rice or for steel tools like machetes, fish hooks, and firearmsduring this period. At the same time, they sub- sisted not on trade goods, but on shifting agricultureand hunting and fishing. At one end of a continuum, some Quichua had been employed by Royal Dutch Shell during its exploratorywork and now made seasonal migrationsto the Pacific coast to find wage work on banana plantationsand road building projects;at the other end, the Huaoranimaintained almost total isolation from marketsand wage work until the late 1960s. For almost all of these native people, however, links to the marketwere secondaryto their reliance on subsistenceagriculture or hunting and gathering.6 Nevertheless, interchangewith outsidershelped shape their history.Taking the primaryelement of their economy for granted,many native peoples altered their settlement patternsand economic behaviorin responseto secondaryfactors. After the Ecuadorianmilitary cut off trade with Peru following a 1941war, many of the more isolated eastern indigenous groups turned increasinglyto missionariesfor key manufacturedgoods. Catholic and evangelical Protestantmissionaries drew native groups into nucleated settlements with promises of schools, health care, and access to trade.When the oil boom ignited in 1967, the complicated world of the EcuadorianAmazon was thus alreadyin motion, though impedimentsto trans- portation, small populations, and the absence of valuable trade productsleft the region with little political or economic power in Ecuador. Military personnel, missionaries,traders, and hacendadosdominated the region and its people, while native subsistence production provideda substantialrefuge from dependence on outsidersand foreign goods.7 Texaco and Gulf's jointdiscovery of a largeoil field in the northeasternAmazon rain forest in 1967 quickly transformedthis relativelysleepy region into a whirl- EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 149

wind of development activities. Petroleum from the Amazon became Ecuador's single most valuable commodity,providing almost half of the nation'sexport earn- ings for much of the 1970S. The Texaco-Gulf consortium, with the help of the Ecuadorian govemment, built a 315-mileoil pipeline over the Andes from the LagoAgrio oil field to the Pacificcoast. National crude oil productionsoon jumped from five thousand to over two hundred thousand barrelsa day.The militarygov- emment established in 1972quickly increased national control over the industry and made Ecuadora small but active member of OPEC. With oil reservesalready identified and a substantialforeign investment made, the government possessed the leverage to force foreign companies to renegotiateconcessions. Ecuador'soil boom thus coincided with the international shift of power from oil companies accustomed to paying low royaltiesfor rich concessions to national govemments determinedto reap more profitableharvests from extractivebooms. Many companies withdrewsoon afterward,due to disappointingfinds, dissatisfactionwith the new contracts,or cancellation of agreementsby the state. The newly formed state oil company purchased 25 percent of the Texaco-Gulf consortium in 1973, and then purchased Gulfs share in 1977, giving the state 62.5 percent ownership.As the principal operatingcompany, however, Texaco remained responsiblefor the execution of most Ecuadorianoil development until the mid-198os.While profit- sharingshifted and the nationalityof the company employees changed somewhat, the state generally allowed Texaco free range in its operations. In addition to its participationin the Texaco consortium, the state oil company founded an independent agency, PetroOriente(later PetroAmazonas), to develop new wells in the late 1970S and early 198os. City Investing Company also developed a number of wells in the 1970s. Then, in the mid-198os,a second round of contractsbrought new companies into the country to explore south of the original northeasternpetroleum zone.8 Severalwaves of oil development have occurred throughoutthe northernand central EcuadorianAmazon, with differentgeographic areas and cultures being affectedat differenttimes. Explorationin the Amazon began in the Puyo region in the 1920S and ended there with Shell's withdrawalin 1948 after it failed to find sufficient reservesof commercially exploitablepetroleum. Texaco dominated the first period of sustained extraction, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, but PetroOrienteand City Investingalso engaged in production;this took place in the northern part of Napo province (now the new province of Sucumbios), an area known as the northeasternpetroleum zone. The Siona-Secoyaand Cofanes bore the brunt of the development in the 1970s, although the Quichua and Huaorani also felt the impact of largerprocesses of change. In the late 1980s, development shifted to the south, with a more direct impact on the Huaoraniand the Quichua who lived in Napo and Pastaza.Since the late-196os,however, renewed national interestand activityin the northernand centralEcuadorian Amazon, largely stimu- lated by the oil boom, has led to region-wide economic, political, and environmental change. The oil industrysparked the rapid transformationof the old Napo province after 1967. Oil companies directlyaffected native communities through oil pollu- 150 EnvironmentalHistory

tion and land seizures. During the 1970S and most of the 1980s, industrialpollution remained largely unregulated and consequently unmnitigated.The national government established a small environmental agency only in 1984, while the state petroleum company did not create an environmental unit until 1986. Pits of drilling muds overflowedas a result of the rains, spilling contaminants into the Amazon's waterways.Texaco and other companies did not dismantle many old wells and did not rehabilitateareas surrounding production sites. Extractionpro- duced a large quantityof highly toxic wateralong with the oil, and the companies either dischargedit directlyinto wetland areasand waterways,or storedit in poorly maintained pools that frequentlyoverflowed. A 1992 studyof the Cuyabeno Wild- life Reserve,home to an extraordinaryvariety of fauna and floraas well as oil wells, found 70 percent of the industrywaste pools in poor condition. Over half the wells showed oil spills into the surroundingarea.9 Industrialpollution also went unchecked in an economic sense. In an ideal situation where industrypaid all the costs of doing business, the oil companies would have compensated residentsof the petroleum region for pollution damages to their health, their water sources, and their crops and animals. The desire to avoidsuch costs might have led then to cleaner practices.But because the statedid not recognize indigenousland ownershipin the Amazon, and because of the inac- cessibility of the courts to these indigenous groups, the petroleum companies paid virtuallyno fines or compensation for decades. When the national environmental agency finally did fine Texaco and the state oil company in 1991 (a mere $2,000, the maximum allowed by law), the fine was overturned,and the environmental subsecretary,Carlos Luzuriaga,was forced to resign.Just as they could not gain compensation for pollution damages, local residentscould not intervene in the planning for explorationand development, despite the location of the oil reserves under their traditionallands. This exclusion resultedpartly from a law that claimed subsurfacemineral resources as nationalproperty. Often the firstwarning of new activity would come with the arrivalof surveyingcrews or the establish- ment of a company camp. The Ecuadoriangovernment captured a high percent- age of profitsthrough production royalties and income taxes,but the affectednative communities received practicallynothing.10 The direct impacts of oil extraction are not fully measurable historically,although the anecdotal evidence of pollution is quite extensive.The indirectconse- quences of new infrastructure have proved more profound and more easily ascertained.For reasonsof "landreform," national security,and economic development, the Ecuadorian government encouraged the agriculturalcolonization and deforestationof the Amazon, declaring it a "nationaltask." Oil roadsenabled hundredsof thousandsof highlandand coastalEcuadorians to flood into the newly accessible Napo province. Alternatepolicies, such as the acknowledgmentof indigenous land reservesor the promotion of sustainable agro-forestry,clashed with the territorialand economic objectives of the Ecuadoriangovernment."1 In the 196os and 1970s, Ecuadorianpolicymakers had little intention of entrust- ing the valuable petroleum region to the Siona-Secoya, Cofanes, or Huaorani, native peoples whose national allegiance they did not trust. Only a few decades EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 151 before, in 194i, Ecuador had lost almost half of its claimed Amazonianterritory to Peru. The military feared further losses in this resource-richregion that still remained outside effective national control. The native residentsdid not participate activelyin nationalpolitical life and remained largelyunknown to highland Ecua- dorians.Most of these indigenous people did not speak Spanish, and many lacked national identification. Some, like the Siona-Secoya, crossed freely over the border between Peru and Ecuador, with relativesliving on both sides. Others prac- ticed shiftingcultivation and thus rotatedtheir village sites throughout their territory. The government did not know their number and did not recognize the extensive territorialclaims made by these villagers.2 In the years immediately following Texaco'soil strike,the government encouraged colonization by soldiersand formerconstruction workers. For a shortwhile, the military was so determined to increase the Ecuadorian presence around the Texaco-Gulfdevelopment that they flew in vagrantsand delinquents from the cit- ies and left them there to colonize with little equipment or advice. Before long, of course, colonists followed the new roadsof their own accord. Many firstworked for the oil companies and then found sites along the roads; others established homesteads directly,growing coffee or raising cattle to sell in regional markets. Metaphorically,colonists hitched a ride on the backs of the oil companies. They also quite literallyrelied on company vehicles for transportto and from their isolated farms.As a resultof this migration,Napo province experienced extraordinar- ily high population growth,approximately 14 to 15percent annuallybetween 1974 and 1982.13 The government'seconomic vision and its security concerns undermined native economies by ignoringnative claims to traditionallands. Agrarian reform laws declared that inefficiently utilized land could be expropriated.The national government increasinglycame to view the easternAmazon as an outlet for highland and coastal population pressures;in 1977, the agricultureand livestock minister announced optimisticallythat there were vast tractsof fertile, empty land in the Amazon, "sufficientto fit more than double the current population of Ecuador." To protect their claims under the agrarianreform laws, native landholders and colonists had to develop at least half of their land. Most turned to cattle ranching in order to use the land extensively,aided by generous credit providedby the national development bank. Rapiddeforestation has been one resultof this mix of oil industryinfrastructure, colonization, land law, and credit. Tremendous conflict over land ownershiphas been another result, producingclashes, for instance, between native communities and colonists and between both those groupsand economic interestslike the Africanpalm plantations,which produceda valuablepalm oil.4 Accordingly,as the oil boom opened up the northernand central Ecuadorian Amazon, the political, legal, and economic context workedto advance the interests of highland colonists, agro-industry,mining companies, and wood companies over those of indigenous residents who lacked secure title to their lands and the political and economic powerto protect their claims. 152 EnvironmentalHistory

BeondNafive Viclmizaffon

Industrialpollution and the seizureand subsequentdeforestation of land by industryand colonistscreated daunting and at timesoverwhelming economic and environmentalhazards for Amazonian natives. These oppressive conditions repre- sent the most importantregional consequence of Ecuadorianoil development. The oil industryand the nationalgovernment clearly repudiated their responsi- bilitiestoward local residents. Yet these native residents were not merely victims of the oil industry;they also used it to theiradvantage. In so doing,they complicated the typicallypolarized development debate. Most obviously, native adults sought employmentwith the oil companies.Among the moreacculturated Quichua, for example,anthropologist Norman Whitten reported that "native response to the oil boom was immediate.From virtually every family of the PuyoRuna, young men signedon to workwith the explorationcompanies. Unless recalled by their families,many spent 1 to 2 yearsin a forestzone. They didthe majorpart of the initialcamp clearing, built helicopterpads, and clearedthe io feet wide jungle paths."'5 By 1979,even among the Huaorani,the mostisolated social group, 6o percent of the men studiedby anthropologist James Yost had worked for an oil companyat leastonce, clearingtrails for the seismicsurveys. For many Quichua, the oil boom provideda sourceof cashincome that seemed more favorable than slave-like debt peonageon haciendasalong the Napo River.Padre Jose Miguel of the Catholic missionin Coca recalledgoing to the haciendaswith representatives of a seismic surveyingcompany, a concertedstrategy against the hacendados.They arrived at one haciendajust before the riceharvest and managed to luremost of the workers awayfor seismic work. For most of Huaoranimen, as for the Quichua,the venture intoshort-term employment proved as much a culturalexperience as an economic one. The radiosand clothingmany purchased quickly fell apartwhen brought to theirrain forest homes. The primarysource of sustenanceremained the landcul- tivatedby the familyor food collected and caught in the rainforest, though wages didprovide for shotguns, machetes, sugar, and other staples.16 The intenseoil exploitationof the 1970S reshapedregional politics as well as local economies.During the 196os and early1970s, nativepolitical organizing rapidlyincreased. The firstgeneration of leadersof newnative organizations came predominantlythrough the schools of theCatholic Church, where they were teach- ers,students, or employees.Some nativeorganizations began with direct church sponsorship,while others, like the Organizacionde PueblosIndigenas de Pastaza (OPIP),began over the staunchopposition of the DominicanChurch, which saw the movementas radical and "communist." Seeking to buildsupport for oil extraction,the oil companiesand the flush national govemment financed secular schools, healthcenters, and even the headquartersfor some native federations, thus weak- eningthe power of thepatrones and the Catholicmissions while enhancing native politicalindependence. The new tradecenters and infrastructurealso provided Amazoniannatives with easier access to marketsand cheaper goods, unmediated by patrones, missionaries,or intermediarytraders. By the 198os, new technology, EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 153

such as solarpanels for electrical power, enabled regionalpolitical organizing.For example, the Siona-Secoyacould now communicate by radiowith a regional federation based more than a day'sjourney away, in Puyo.17 Finally, complicating the situation further,native peoples in the Amazon also joined in the colonization processand began to transgresstraditional land bound- aries. Some groups under pressurefrom mestizo colonists, like the Quichua and the Shuar, also had growingpopulations of their own. With the assistanceof government credit supportedby petroleum revenues, some Quichua had turned to ranching in orderto protect their land claims. Others joined the migrationto the northeast,where they conflicted with other native groups;Quichua and Shuar colonists invaded Huaorani lands on the right bank of the Napo, for example, while Quichua immigrantsfrom the Tenaarea seffled on landsclaimed by Quichua groups of the lower Napo River."S In short, as a growing native population sought political independence, economic opportunity,health, education, and interculturalexperience, they revealed a strikingwillingness to participatein a changing Amazonian economy. At the same time, they also tried to change the terms of economic development to con- tain it within the frameworkof their personallives and their communities.As they tried to navigate a path between the Scylla of economic stagnation and the Charybdisof industrialexploitation, they pushed the oil companies and the national govemment towarda new paradigmfor economic development, one where both native communities and outside forces might transformeach other. There, on the modern middle ground, nativegroups would modifymany traditionalprac- tices as they partiallyand successfully entered the marketeconomy. Oil companies and the state would rearrangedevelopment plans partlyaround local social needs, democraticallydetermined, ratherthan pure profitand national security. Beginning in the late 1970s, native groups in Ecuador pushed to incorporate local concerns into the planning and execution of multinational development projects. In part, they sought to readjustthe distributionof costs and benefits. To preventdamage, they called for respect of their land claims, for compensation for industrypollution, and for guaranteesof clean production.To increase their benefits, they demanded investment in long-term regional development, including education, land-use studies, health programs,and infrastructure.Costs and benefits, of course, are culturally defined, which partly explains why this political struggletook on the characteristicsof a middle groundbetween differentcultures. Increasinglyduring this period, indigenous groups sought local control over development projects in order to fit them into the long-term trajectoryof their community life. Native leaders wanted bilingual education and health programs that mixed Westernand traditionalmedicine. The call for environmental moni- toringsimilarly reflected their distinctculture; ratherthan preservethe rain forest as some inviolate "wilderness,"they struggledto safeguardvalued economic activities like farming,hunting, and fishing.'9 Politicalaction taken by the Cofanes of Dureno partiallyillustrates this push to change the conditionsof oil extraction.The Cofanes complained about the loss of wood, flight of animals, and contamination of water that resulted from Guanta 154 EnvironmentalHistory

No. 8, a well near their settlement. The Cofanes blocked road construction in January1988, demanding compensation for damages. They also demanded an- nual appropriationsduring the years of production within Cofan territory,with the money to be invested in training,ecological rehabilitation,and environmental research.The Cofanes also sought additional help for the community to de- fend its land against colonists. According to one report, Texaco's response was brusque: "Youare not a government that we have to ask permission from."In contrastto that attitude, leaders such as the Secoya native Celestino Piaguaje of- fered a frankindigenous perspectiveon such situations:"These companies come on the lands without consultation. I believe this isn't rational,rational people go firstto the owner of the lands to ask permissionbefore using them, that'swhat the well-mannereddo." Highlighting native attemptsto teach propermanners to outsidersneither sanc- tifies local knowledge nor suggeststhat all native groups inherently formed communities with visions of a sustainable future. Sufficient examples exist of local political divisionsover development. Individualsdefied their communitiesby selling lands or cutting communal timber. Similarly,indigenous political organizations expressedconflicting notions of appropriateand advisabledevelopment. Some divisionswere ideological, while other splitswere purelypolitical, as organizations and individualsmaneuvered to receive national and internationalfinancial support and to carryout community-levelprojects. For example, from September 30 to October 4, 1988, fifty Huaorani from Tonfampareoccupied Zapino 1, an Esso Company oil well in Block 8, demanding infrastructureas compensation for petroleum exploitation. The Huaorani particularlywanted their airstripto be ex- panded in size so that largerplanes could land and villagerscould more easilytake products to market. The protests revealed the split between the regional indigenous federation,CONFENIAE, dominated by the Quichua and Shuar,and this group of Huaorani. Spurred on by Dayuma, the woman leading the Huaorani settlement,the protestersforced CONFENIAE leadersto leave at spearpoint when the state oil company and governmentrepresentatives arrived to discussa possible airstrip.The Huaorani insisted that all aid go directly to the settlement, without being filteredthrough the regionalgroup. CONFENIAE criticizedthe close links between Dayuma, the oil companies, and evangelical Protestants.2" Despite such local divisions,contending indigenous political organizations sought in similar ways to shape outside forces to serve local needs. The evangelical Prot- estant group of Pastaza,the Associacionde IndfgenasEvangelicos de Pastazay la Region Amazonica (AIEPRA),broke awayfrom the secular OPIP in 1980 to work largelywith evangelical aid organizations.AIEPRA pushed its backersto sponsor small-scaleeconomic development in the setflements in an effortto enable com- munitymembers to produce commodities for the market,including cattle, coffee, and cacao. During the exploratoryphase in Moretecocha, AIEPRA negotiated with the Atlantic-RichfieldCompany, urging the corporationto invest in projects that would endure at the local level, such as schools, a communal house, pumps for clean water, and a landing strip.AEIPRA president Pablo Grefa declared his intention to stand firm and to protect the valued rivers and forests against the hazardsrevealed previouslyin the northeasternpetroleum zone. A primarycon- EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 155

cern for the evangelicals, as well as for the more prominent OPIP,was the protection of land againstthe intrusionsof colonists and industrialpollution. Such concerns were rooted in local economics, not in desires for ethnic or environmental purity.' While their long-termvisions for the Amazon remained distinct, colonists and indigenous groups demonstrateda common interest in a greaterreturn of petroleum revenues to the region, the speedy conclusion of land titling, and the im- provementof environmentalpractices by the oil companies.Colonists also endured contaminated waterways,challenged company behavior,and sought compensation for damages;like Amazonian natives, they sufferedfrom the poor infrastructure typical of boom towns, which lacked safe water, sewage systems, reliable electricity,health care, and other services. Leadersof a broad-based,month-long strikeby indigenouspeople and coloniststhroughout the petroleum region in 1984 demanded bridges, paved roads, electricity, regional health services, and a law allocating a portion of petroleum revenues to the Amazonian political districts. The govemment refusedto earmarkpetroleum revenues to the area,but responded to the pressureto invest in regional infrastructureand community development projects.23 Native groups challenging oil extractionquestioned the terms of industrialactivity more than industryitself. Like their colonist counterparts,native residents sought to refocus development prioritiesaround the concerns of the people living in resource-producingareas. But not all communities made the same calculation of economic and cultural costs and benefits. The Siona-Secoya who live in Ecuador'sCuyabeno National Parkopposed any extension of oil industryactivity because of past experiences with colonization and pollution, and because they enjoy a fairlysecure, and growing,alternative source of income - employment in ecotourism. Ecotourism provides cash employment while allowing continued engagementin traditionalsubsistence activities. The Cofan of Siabalomade a similar calculation.As they establishedhuts in theirvillage for the ecotouristsof the 199os, the Cofan saw nearby oil development as a dangerous threat to the settlement's new business and to highly valued traditionalsubsistence activities. Of course, opportunitiesin ecotourism are not available to all communities, and the clash with the oil sector is something of an irony since the oil companies and the military facilitated ecotourism through the construction and maintenance of basic transportationinfrastructure.24

Oiland Sustainable Development: Charting a MiddleGround

The Ecuadoriangovernment and the oil industrymight have extractedoil as part of a sustainable regional development plan. While oil itself is a nonrenewable resource,and thus not "sustainable,"properly invested oil revenuesmay have contributed to long-term social and economic development. Attention to environmental justice-to the interplaybetween industrialactivity and local economnies and environments-could have transformedthe conditionsof extractionand made the oil industrymore compatible with the well-being of the region'sresidents.25 156 EnvironmentalHistory

Integratingnew industrialactivity into long-termregional development means, among other things, increasinglocal participationin projectplanning and execution, expanding the local investment of resource rents, and recognizing and ac- commodating local lifeways.Such modificationseither make oil extractionmore expensive or involve a transferof money and political or cultural power to local entities.26Such changes can be achieved only through a negotiated political ap- proachto oil development, with many featuressimilar to the searchfor accommodation that occurs in White's Middle Ground. The Algonquians achieved their goals in partbecause of competition between two richer European powers.In the recent internationalpolitics of development, the ongoing strugglebetween determined industries and national governments on the one hand, and Ecuadorian and internationalNGOs and development agencies on the other, helped to create a fresh terrainfor independent, native political action. As in the imperial contest for the Great Lakes region of colonial North America, local struggles became potent issues in the politics of distant countries. The force of local political organizing and alliances between local groups and sympatheticoutsiders created this modern middle ground. In turn, the politics and practices of the middle ground partiallytransformed the actions of government and industry,as well as the traditional ways of native communities. Some tentative steps onto a modern middle ground have been taken in Ecua- dor since the late 1980s. The government has recognized native land claims in communal territorialportions far larger than the 5o-hectareportions allocated to mestizo colonists. Similarly,town-meeting-style local councils in Amazon native communities operatein a consensus manner, unlike political entities elsewhere in Ecuador, yet are largely recognized as legitimate political institutionsby the national government.These hybridforms of land ownershipand governmentexem- plify the shifting terms of cultural and political power in Ecuador. Similarly,the Conoco Oil Company's environmental management plan revealed a tentative attempt to institutionalize a middle ground in corporatepolicy. In its consider- ation of the Huaorani,the plan recognized a Huaoranipolitical organization,but also acknowledged that the president and vice-presidentof the organizationdid not command decision-makingpowers comparableto an elected American offi- cial. "Waorani[sic] society remains highly egalitarian"the plan noted. "Com- pany-sanctionedcommunications must recognize that there are no leaders and that all Waoranihamlets must participate in decisions."Business with the Huaorani could not simply proceed on a strictlyWestern basis, with quick, direct negotiations.27 Conoco's "Guiding Principles"illustrated a new morality precariouslyestab- lishing itself in the rain forest region, leading to the recognition of new cultural practices:

The Waoranihave the rightsdue anyhuman population and among those rights is the rightto decidefor themselves what they want from life andhow to pursueit. The Waoranihave the capabilityto makesuch decisionswithin their own cul- turalframework. Their way of livingwithin their environment in the territorythat EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 157

hasbeen theirhomeland for centuries deserves the utmostrespect. They should not be forcedto act accordingto the rulesof outsideinterests?.2

As the enunciationof "guidingprinciples" suggests, the modernmiddle ground betweenthe companiesand the nativepeoples involves an overt,legalistic struggle overthe termsof engagement.This legalismdiffers from the ambiguityand cultural"misunderstanding" that White describes for colonial North America. Where colonialpolitics consisted of impromptumeetings that followed uncertain codes of conduct,the nativeaccommodation with oil companiesand governments usu- ally takesthe formof writtenlegal contractsbetween native federations and oil companiesor the Ecuadoriangovemment. Yet in Ecuador,as in thecolonial Great Lakesregion, the culturaland political concessions resulting from this process of negotiationaltered all partiesinvolved, transforming the practicesof industry,the state,and nativepeoples. With this mutualtransformation, the modernmiddle groundplayed itself out not onlyin twoU.S. officialsdressing in Huaoraniaccou- trements,but alsoin the actualform of development.29 Ecuador'semerging middle ground developed over the courseof severalde- cades.First came carelessdevelopment by Texaco,other oil companies,and the Ecuadorianstate in the 1970s.This roughlycoincided with the organizingof nativecommunities into local and regional associations, as well asthe emergenceof a strongenvironmental and humanrights movement internationally. Struggles overland claims, pollution, and culturalfragmentation characterized the 1980s. Nativeorganizations grew stronger, and the firstEcuadorian environmental orga- nizationsemerged, sponsored by internationalaid from governments and NGOs. Ecotourismgrew as an industry,increasing international familiarity with the Ama- zon andits people and creating a new economicinterest in the rainforests. In the early199os, the changingpolitical climate yielded the firstsubstantive arrange- mentsbetween native communities, environmental groups, and the stateand oil companies.Though far from standard practice, the accommodationof the middle groundbecame real and demonstrated at leastsome potential for reconciling tensions between economic development and regional cultural, political, and envi- ronmentalchange. Inthe late 1980s andearly 199os, thecontroversy over the Conoco Oil Company's planto developpetroleum concession Block 16 in easternEcuador represented a criticalturning point. The failedConoco effort revealed how a middleground is morethan an economiccompromise forced upon nativepeoples. The practical aspectsof the Conocoplan attempted to addressmany concerns about the environmentaland social impacts of newextraction. A largeregional trust fund prom- isedto investunprecedented sums of moneyin socialand economic development projects.Yet these substantivechanges could not alterthe generalsense among manynative political leaders that the Conocoproject had been drivenforward by externaldemands. Many felt that it wouldnot address key local cultural, political, and economicconsiderations. The Conocoplan ultimatelycollapsed under native suspicionand dissatisfactionabout the proposedarrangement and pressure fromEcuadorian and international environmental groups. The advancesand limi- 158 EnvironmentalHistory

tations inherent in the Conoco plan revealedhow dramaticallythe political land- scape of Ecuadorianoil development had changed since the 196os. The plan'sfate also hinted at the new trends of the 1990s. Followingan opening by the Ecuadoriangovernment to foreignoil companies, Conoco led a consortium of investors in a risk service contract signed in 1986. Conoco agreed to invest $44 million in explorationexpenses over four years in order to drill six exploratorywells. Following exploration, the company would have the option of developing the discoveredreserves through a profit-sharingar- rangement with the Ecuadorian government. By 1989, five of the six wells had struckoil, provingtwo hundredmillion barrelsof heavycrude oil reserves.Conoco and the-Ecuadorian government opened negotiationsover the terms for development of concession Block 16.30 In responseto growingpressure to minimize the social and environmentalcon- sequences of rain forest oil development, Conoco sought to win the support of internationaland Ecuadorianenvironmental and indigenous rightsgroups for an innovativeenvironmental management plan. In fact, Conoco and its parentcom- pany, Du Pont, with reputationsto protect, had no choice but to work with the internationalgroups because of theirgrowing political power,particularly because Block 16 lay within YasuniNational Parkand also extended into territorybelong- ing to the Huaorani. Conoco's environmental management plan contained seven main provisions intended to minimize deforestation,water contamination, and health effects: (1) centralized production facilities;(2) cluster well sites (eight to twelve wells each); (3) reinjectionof all produced waterinto the same reservoir;(4) safety,health, and environmental protection programs;(5) management of soil erosion and replant- ing; (6) air emission control;and (7) waste minimizationand disposal. Deforesta- tion for the constructionof roadand pipeline right-of-waysand well sites would be minimized by making the right-of-waysnarrower, using plastic ratherthan local treesto build the roadbed, and reducingthe numberof roadsand well sitesthrough cluster drilling. Other major problems, such as the water contamination associ- ated with the dumping of formation water in Amazonian waterways,would be avoided by reinjecting the water into the geologic formation.3' In additionto new environmentalpractices, Conoco claimed that it would take innovative steps to minimize impacts on local native peoples. The company argued thata rigorousplan to controlspontaneous colonization, enforced by Conoco and the Ecuadoriangovernment, would breakthe link between petroleum extraction and native land loss. "It will be impossible [for settlers] to come in on our road,"declared EdwardJ. Davies, the president of Conoco Ecuador.In addition to protectingagainst settler invasion, the company also planned measuresto protect the Huaorani from the influence of company activity.Company policies to prevent disease transmission,alcohol use, and hunting and fishing by company employees would reduce the impact of extractionon local peoples.32 Finally, Conoco showed a willingness to finance a regional foundation that would provide independent oversightof company compliance with the environmental management plan and would channel economic benefits back into native EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 159

communities of the region. The proposed foundation emerged from discussions between Conoco and two AmericanNGOs, the NaturalResources Defense Coun- cil (NRDC) and Cultural Survival.Believing that the Block 16 oil development was inevitable given Ecuador'sprecarious financial situation, the NRDC, led by senior attorneysJacob Scherr and RobertKennedy Jr.,and Cultural Survival,led by projectsdirector Ted MacDonald, decided to explore the possibilityof making the Conoco development a model of social and environmental responsibility.In the winter of 1991,Conoco and the two organizationsdiscussed the idea of estab- lishing a foundation financed by somewhere between $5 million and $25 million from Conoco. In addition to overseeing Conoco's compliance with its environmental management plan, the foundation would use its resourcesto supportthe development projectsof the region'snative communities, includingthe Huaorani, as well as the regional native federation,CONFENIAE.33 Conoco never createdthe foundationor executed its developmentplans. Nego- tiationsbetween the NRDC, Cultural Survival,and Conoco collapsed followinga withering attackby American and Ecuadorianenvironmental groups. Denounc- ing the two NGOs for having"sold out" to the enemy,groups such as the Rainforest Action Network,the SierraClub, and the Ecuadorianlegal organizationCORDAVI insisted on absolute opposition to any development of Block i6. Simultaneously, the supportthat the NRDC and CulturalSurvival had receivedfrom CONFENIAE and from the Huaorani evaporatedamidst internal dissent and suspicion. Faced with continuing opposition from the environmental groups that it had hoped to assuage, Conoco's enthusiasm for the Block i6 project dwindled. The company decided in the summer of i992 that its production development funds would be better invested in new areas such as the former Soviet Union or the North Sea. Conoco withdrew,selling its operatinginterest in Block 16 to an American-based company, Maxus Energy Corporation. Conoco's departurein 1992has been interpretedboth as a tentative victoryfor opponents of Amazonian oil development and as a lost opportunityto create a model for the clean development of oil resources in tropical rain forests.Robert Kennedy Jr.,who argued the latterperspective in a WashingtonPost editorial following Conoco's withdrawal,criticized the campaign for "ideological purity"in Ecuador. He arguedthat oil is "potentiallyless damagingto rainforeststhan other economic activitiessuch as mining, forestry,or cattle ranching."He declared the need for environmentalgroups to adopta more sophisticatedapproach that would "allowus to negotiate with those corporationswilling to commit themselves to the highest environmentalstandards."34 While Kennedy recognized some of the complexities of the Amazon situation, including the tensions between regional poverty,economic stagnation, and desires to protect the Amazonian environment, the failure of the Conoco plan sur- prisedhim. The negotiationswith Conoco had dissolvedin partbecause of absolute opposition to oil development in the Amazon, led principallyby the environmental groups. But the deal also died because indigenous leaders deemed it insuffi- cient. The plan negotiatedby Conoco, the NRDC, and Cultural Survivaloffered money and mitigation, two goals of the region's indigenous groups, but the deal 160 EnvironmentalHistory

did not guaranteethat the company would fulfill its promises.Nor did it yield any control so that native residentscould shape the project according to their needs. The Conoco plan also did not satisfactorilyaddress land ownership, an issue that only negotiations between the indigenous groups and the national government could resolve.35 Conoco's proposalsfor modifying the Block i6 development can be seen as a tentative movement towarda modern middle ground, but the failed negotiations revealed some of the limitations of dealmaking solely between companies and native groups. Without concessions by the Ecuadorian central government, key political and economic decisions about the pace and geographic spread of oil extractioncould not be effectivelyaddressed. Similarly, the companies and communities alone could not resolve the core question of land control that underlay some hazardsof oil development, such as the problem of sefflers,the inabilityto monitor and preventpollution, and the filing of claims for compensation arising from damage. A middle ground also had to be reached between the native groups and the state. Accommodation with the state occurred to some extent in PastazaProvince, where in 1992the national government gave 2.1 million hectares of land over to the management of the province'sprincipal native organizations.The largestland area fell to one of the more radicaland best-organizedof the provincialorganiza- tions, OPIP,a Quichua organizationbased in Puyo. The government'sconcession resultedfrom yearsof political struggleby indigenouspeople in Pastaza,culminat- ing in a large 1992 march from Puyo to Quito, the national capital. Pastazahad been the firstarea in theAmazon affectedby the searchfor petroleum in Ecuador, beginning in 1921with the arrivalof the Leonard ExplorationCompany. Royal Dutch Shell followed Leonardin 1928,and Shell built the firstmotor roadinto the Amazon, fromAmbato to Mera, near Puyo. As with the Texaco-Gulfdevelopment in the 196osand 1970s, up throughShell's withdrawal in 1948the company'sactivi- ties broughtmestizo and foreigncolonists and land speculatorsto the newly accessible area. Shell's explorationwork combined with other historicaltrends to make the Puyo area, with the largestpopulation and most developed infrastructure,the center for business,government, military, and Protestantmissionary activity in the EcuadorianAmazon. The influx of outsidersand the new road access resulted in new land conflicts.36 During the 1970S and 198os, while what is now the province of Sucumbios teemed with oil wells, roads, and colonists, the native leaders in Pastazamosily watched the havoc from afar, though Pastaza communities also struggled with problemsof territorialand civil rightsand culturalchange. In the late 1980S, as the oil companies turned once more to the south, OPIP and its community leaders became determined to shape and control any development that might occur in their region. One of OPIP's largest and leading settlements, Sarayacu,drew national attention to the problems of Amazonian oil development when it held hos- tage representativesof the state oil company, the land reform agency, and the office of the president for ten days. Leadersdemanded the completion of discussions over land rights and petroleum development. The resulting SarayacuAc- EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 161 cords,signed by governmentofficials and indigenous leaders in May1989, called fora cessationof seismicwork until the region'snative peoples obtained secure title to theirlands. The agreementalso demandedimmediate compensation for the ecologicaldamage caused by openingtrails, cutting wood, and detonating explosivesfor seismic work.37 Governmentofficials quickly repudiated the promisesmade in Sarayacu,but Quichualeaders in Pastazacontinued to workon theirown list of conditionsand goalsfor regional development, and for petroleum extraction in particular.They called for environmentalmanagement plans that includedthe participationof indigenoustechnicians. They wantedto participateeconomically through "seri- ous negotiation"as ownersof naturalresources to betterensure the autonomous developmentof indigenouscommunities. They calledfor the controland plan- ningof monitoring,including established norms and sanctions, with the participation of indigenousgroups in the levyingof sanctions.Quichua leaders generally did not planfor the expansionof the petroleumfrontier, but rathersought to im- provethe developmentof areasalready leased. In otherterritories, they called for a moratoriumon the leasingof newblocks for fifteen years. The delaywould allow nativegroups to consolidatecontrol over their territory and would declare certain areasoff-limits to oil development.Finally, they demandedthat the companies stayout of localpolitics to preventthe playingof one localgroup against another. Allof theseconditions constituted OPIP's attempt to interjectlocal socioeconomic andpolitical concerns into the developmentprocess. According to Quichualeader LeonardoViteri, OPIP's efforts drew on the examplesof othernative peoples, includingthe Navajos,Samis, and Canadian groups, who have had some success in theirpush for autonomy and in negotiatingguarantees of environmentalmoni- toring,participation in planning,and royalties.This strategicborrowing underscoresthe internationalnature of the recentpolitics of the Amazon.38

Conclusion

Asthe storiesof Blocki6 andPastaza suggest, new alliancesbetween native orga- nizationsand internationalnative rights and environmentalgroups partially re- shapedthe struggleover oil developmentsuch that the mid-197osexploitative strategiesof Texacobecame untenable fifteen years later. Other indications of sub- stantive change include the alliance between indigenouspeoples and the ecotourismindustry that successfully pressured the governmentin 1993to tempo- rarilyhalt exploratorywork in the fragileCuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. The "Oil IndustryOperating Guidelines for Tropical Rainforests," published by an interna- tionaloil industryworking group in 1991,also illustrates how international political pressurehelped force international petroleum companies to addressquestions of industrialpollution, colonization, and indigenousland rights. The guidelines includerecommendations for the expandeduse of helicoptersinstead of roadac- cess,cluster drilling and wastewater reinjection, spill contingency plans, complete plansfor the abandonmentof wells,and colonistcontrol policies. None of these 162 EnvironmentalHistory

guidelinesnecessarily indicate that an adequatedevelopment strategy will govem futureoil extractionin Ecuador,but they do revealhow native activism and pressurefrom international environmental and humanrights organizations created alternativepolitics of developmentin the EcuadorianAmazon.39 The ouflinesof the modemmiddle ground emerging in Ecuadorcan also be foundin recentnegotiations over oil and gas developmentin the UnitedStates andCanada. Mariane Ambler's Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian ControlofEnergy Developmentreveals how NativeAmerican "energy tribes" in the UnitedStates struggledto linkthe developmentof reservationenergy resources to the socialand economicdevelopment of the reservationas a whole.Tribes such as the Northern Cheyenne,Navajo, Blackfeet, and Jacarilla Apache followed a trajectorysimilar to thatoccurring in Ecuador,on a slighilyearlier timetable. As nativegroups and theirleaders asserted themselves over the course of the 196os and1970s, theysought to imposetheir own orderon energyprojects. As with OPIP,the energytribes oftenpushed for moratoriums to allowthemselves time to preparefor the onsetof development.The NorthAmerican tribes also demandedstrict environmental monitoringand planning and the localdistribution of jobsand investment capital. A similarprocess took place in Canada'sNorthwest Territories from the 1960S to the 1990S.40 Justas elementsof the fragilemiddle ground in contemporarynatural resource politicscan be foundin nativeNorth America, so too can the Amazonianstory speakto the historyof resourcedevelopment outside of nativecommunities. Rec- ognizingthe complicatednature of localopposition to industrialdevelopment in easternEcuador points to a reformulationof otherhistorical conflicts over economicdevelopment. Rather than interpretingthem as absolutebaffles between romanticizedsubsistence cultures and demonized market cultures, the focuscan shiftto people'sstruggle to bettertheir political and economic situation. This ap proachsuggests a fundamentalquestion: under what conditions do localitiesenter the marketeconomy and with what success do theywrest benefits from it? Such an inquirywould more accurately reflect the complicatedbalance sought by many individualsand localities between the continuitiesof traditionand the opportuni- ties of historicalchange.

PaulSabinis a doctoralcandidate in historyatthe Universityof Califomia,Berke- ley, wherehe is completinga dissertationon the role of law andpolitics in the Californiaoil economyfrom 1900 to 194o. His article,"Home and Abroad: The TwoWests' of Twentieth-CenturyUnited States History' (Pacific Historical Re- view, August1997), received the W TurrentineJackson Prize from the Pacific CoastBranchofthe AmericanHistoricalAssociation for the bestgraduatestudent essay of 1997. EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 163

Notes

Specialthanks to PaulArellano, Margaret Chowning, David Engerman, David Igler, Gre- goryKnapp, Douglas Southgate, and RichardWhite. A CharlesP. HowlandFellowvship fromYale University supported research in Ecuadorin 1992-93.

1. The twoofficials were Katherine McGinty, the WhiteHouse director for environmental policy,and James Mack, the Americancharge d'affaires in Ecuador.James Brooke, "Oiland Tourism Don't Mix, Inciting Amazon Battle," New YorkTimes, 26 September 1993,3. In Ecuador,the Amazonianprovinces are collectivelyreferred to as the "El Oriente"or "theEast." To minimizeconfusion for the English-speakingreader, I have used"Ecuadorian Amazon" or "AmazonianEcuador." 2. Since 1983,Abya-Yala Press has publishedKipu: El Mundo Indigenaen la Prensa Ecuatoriana,collected articles from the Ecuadorianpress about Ecuadorian indigenouspeoples [hereafter Kipu]. For the Cofanesof Durenoblocking road construction by the CEPE-Texacoconsortium, see Hoy,27 January1988, in KGpu10 (1988): 159. For the sequesteringof governmentofficials in the townof Sarayacuin 1989,see Hoy, ii May1989, in Kipu12 (1989):274-76. Forthe Huaoranispearing, see El Comercio,5 November1977, in Kipu9 (1987):224. 3. Union de Nativosde la AmazoniaEcuatoriana, Problematica Social y Agrariaen el OrienteEcuatoriano: Reflexiones nacidas al interiorde la UNAE(Quito: Union de Nativosde la AmazonfaEcuatoriana, June 1985), 9. See also AnthonyBebbington, "ModemizationFrom Below: An AlternativeIndigenous Development?" Economic Geography69 (1993):274-92, and Anthony Bebbington et al., "FragileLands, Fragile Organizations:Indian Organizations and the Politicsof Sustainabilityin Ecuador," Transactionsof the Instituteof BritishGeographers 18 (1993): 179-96. 4. RichardWite, The MiddleGround: Indians, Empires, and Republicsin the Great LakesRegion, 165-1815 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1991). I discussed somedimensions of this"modern middle ground" in a previousarticle. See PaulSabin, "Voicesfrom the HydrocarbonFrontier: Canada's Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (1974-1977),"Environmental History Review 19 (1995): 17-48. For two recent efforts to developWhite's concept of the middleground, see Beth A. Conklinand LauraR. Graham,"The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics," Ameri- can Anthropologist97 (1995):695-710, and Darcee McLaren,"Living the Middle Ground:Two Dakota Missionaries, 1887-19127 Ethnohistoiy43 (1996): 277-305. Conklin and Grahamnicely analyzethe symbolicpolitics of the modem middleground in Brazil,looking particularly at the waysthat the intemationalenvironmental commu- nityhas misrepresentednative ambitions while adoptingthe nativecause as its own. This essaydetails another side of the triangularpolitics of the middleground, i.e-., the relationshipbetween native peoples and the stateand oil companiesin the Ecuadorian Amazon. 5. Udo Oberem,Los Quijos: Historia de la transculturationde un grupoindigena en el OrienteEcuatoriano, trans. from the 1962German edition (Otavalo, Ecuador: Instituto Otavalefiode Antropologia,1980), 29; R.J. Bromley,"Agricultural Colonization in the UpperAmazon Basin: The Impactof Oil Discoveries,"Tijdschrift voor Economische en SocialeGeografie63 (1972): 281. The eastemregion experienced substantial change duringthe centurypreceding the 1967discovery of oil.An earlier rubber boom brought "'rubberbarons" up the riversfrom Peru;they enslavedand employedlocal people 164 EnvironmentalHistory

whenpossible, driving other native groups to seekrefuge. Following the declineof the rubbertrade, oil explorationin the 1930S and1940S brought road construction, employment,and coloniststo areasaround Puyo. Then, in 1941,Peru invaded Ecuador from the east,seizing half of Ecuador'sAmazon territory, including most navigable rivers. The warsparked increased activity by the Ecuadorianmilitary, which shutdown the exchangeof rainforest and haciendaproducts with Peruvian traders. See NormanE. WhittenJr., "Amazonia Today at the Baseof theAndes: An EthnicInterface in Ecologi- cal, Social,and Ideological Perspectives;" in Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in ModernEcuador, ed. NormanE. WhittenJr. (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1981), 121-61. 6. Populationestimates from the early1990S shouldbe takenas roughguides, since no one knowswith certainty what the populationsare today, much less in 1960.For population statistics,see Chapter2 of Nelson Gomez et al., Tempestaden la Amazonia Ecuatoriana(Quito: CIESA, 1992); Whitten, "Amazonia Today"; and Lucy Ruiz, "Pueb- los Indigenasy Etnicidaden la Amazonia,"in Indios: Una reflexion sobre el levantamientoindigena de 1990 (Quito:Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales, 1991), 451. For far higher population estimates of the Quichua, see CONFENIAE,Estructura de la CONFENIAE(Quito: CONFENIAE, 1980). The Huaoranidid not engagein tradeuntil the late1960s, and one subgroupof thatpeople, the Tagaeri,does not engagein tradeeven today.Still, foreignproducts played an importantrole, and the Huaoranioften stole manufactured goods from company camps. The Huaoraniare atypicalin theirisolation, although their culture has undergone dramaticchange since evangelicalmissionaries encouraged many of them to settle morepermanently in a smallpart of theirformer territory. David Stoll, Fishers of Men or Foundersof Empire?.:The VVycliffeBible Translators in LatinAmerica (Cambridge, Mass:Cultural Survival, 1982); James A. Yost,"Twenty Years of Contact:The Mecha- nismsof Changein Wao('Auca') Culture," in CulturalTransformations and Ethnicity in ModernEcuador, ed. NormanE. WhittenJr. (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1981),677-704; Joe Kane, Savages (New York: Knopf, 1995); Laura Rival, "Social Trans- formationand the Impactof FormalSchooling on the Huaoraniof AmazonianEcua- dor"(Ph.D. diss., London School of Economics,1992). 7. See NormanE. WhittenJr., Sacha Runa: Ethnicity and Adaptationof Ecuadorian JungleQuichua (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1976); Sicuanga Runa: The Other SideofDevelopmentin Amazonian Ecuador (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1985); andthe scholarlywork of the authorswho contributed articles to CulturalTransforma- tionsand Ethiicityin ModernEcuador, ed. NormanWhitten Jr. (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1981). For the QuijosQuichua, see Oberem,Los Quijos;Theodore MacDonaldJr., "Processes of Changein AmazonianEcuador: Quijos Quichua Indi- ansBecome Cafflemen" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois,1979); and Blanca Muratorio, Rucu-yayaAlonso y la historiasocial y economicadel Alto Napo (Quito:Abya-Yala, 1987).An interestingSecoya perspective can be foundin AngelCelestino Piaguaje's commentaryon missionaries,trade, local politics,and development,in ECORASA: Autobiografiade un Secoya(Shushufindi,Ecuador: Ediciones CICAME, i19o). A worth- while collectionof narrativeaccounts examining key pointsin the twentieth-century historyof the Orientecan be foundin LeonirDall'Alba Ballardin, ed., Pioneros, Nativos y Colonos:El Doradoen el sigloXX (Quito:Ediciones Abya-Yala, Petroecuador, and MisionJosefina de Napo, 1992).For an accountof the Cofan,see Scott Robinson, 'Towardan Understandingof KofanShamanism" (Ph. D diss.,Cornell University, 1979). EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 165

8. GeorgePhilip, Oil and Politicsin LatinAmerica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 276-78; Jose V. Zevallos7 El Estado Ecuatoriano y las Transnacionales Petroleras:Ochoafnos dealianzayconflicto, 1972-1979 (Quito:La UniversidadCatolica, 1981). 9. Carlos Quevedo and Jorge Medina, "La Contaminacion en las Actividades Hidrocarburiferasen el Ecuador,"paper presented at Primero Congreso Ecuatoriano del Medio Ambiente, Quito, Ecuador, 7-14 February1987, 12, 14, i6; Hoffinan, Jurado, Sandoval, Consultores Cia, Ltda., "Contaminaci6n ambiental hidrocarburiferaen la Reservade Produccion Faunisticade Cuyabeno" (Quito: Hoffinan, Jurado,Sandoval, Consultores Cia, Ltda., April 1992), 89; Judith Kimmerling, "DisregardingEnviron- mental Law:Petroleum Development in ProtectedNatural Areas and IndigenousHome- lands in the EcuadorianAmazon," Hastings In temational and ComparativeLaw Review '4(1991): 849-903; Chris afJochnick, Roger Normand, and SarahZaidi, Righb Viola- tions in the Ecuadorian Amazon: The Human Consequences of Oil Development (New York:Center for Economic and Social Rights, March 1994), 16-20. See also JudithKimmerling, Amazon Crude (Washington, D.C.: National Resources Defense Council, 1991). 10. Hoy, 3 June iggi, in Kipu i6 (1991): 139; Douglas Southgate and Morris Whitaker, Economic Progressand the Environment: One Developing Country'sPolicy Crisis (New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1994); Carlos Luzuriaga,interview by the author, Quito, Ecuador, 15November 1992.Since this incident, the environmentalagency has successfully fined the oil companies, though the fines have tended to be more sym- bolic than punitive. i. Oliverio Vasconez Salvador, La Colonizacion de la Region Amazonica Ecuatoriana: Obra Nacional (Quito: Ministerio de Agriculturay Ganadarfa,1977). u. El Comercio, 17 December 1986, in Kipu 4 (1986): 18; William T. Vickers, "Indian Policy in Amazonian Ecuador,"in Frontier Expansion in Amazonia, ed. Marianne Schmink and Charles H. Wood (Gainesville: Universityof Florida Press, 1984),27; D. A. Eastwood and H. J. Pollard, "AmazonianColonization in Eastern Ecuador: Land Use Conflicts in a Planning Vacuum," SingaporeJournal of Tropical Geography 13 (1992): 103-17. 13. Bromley, "AgriculturalColonization;' 287; Fundacion Natura, Development Policy Issues for Ecuador's Amazonia (Quito: Fundaci6n Natura, 1988), lo; Instituto Ecuatorianode ReformaAgraria y Colonizacion, ProyectoPiloto de Colonizacion Nor- Oriente (Quito: IERAC, Secci6n Colonizacion Empresorial, 1971); Henri Barral, Informe sobre la colonizaci6n en la Provinciadel Napo (Quito: ORSTOM, 1978), 5S. 14. Legislation passed in the 1960s to reform land tenure (primarilyin the highlands and along the coast) effectively declared much of the Amazon empty and open for colonization. Agrarianreform laws passed in 1973further pressured traditional land use practices by declaring that inefficiently utilized land could be expropriated.Salvador, La Colonizacion, 33. Colonization of these lands substitutedfor the agrarianreform that the government had shied away from elsewhere in the country. See Theodore MacDonald Jr.,"Indigenous Response to an ExpandingFrontier: Jungle Quichua Eco- nomic Conversion to Cattle Ranching,"in Cultural Transformationsand Ethnicity in Modem Ecuador, ed. Norman E. Whitten Jr. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981),356-83; Jorge E. Uquillas, "Social Impacts of Modernization and Public Policy, and Prospects for Indigenous Development in Ecuador'sAmazon,' in The Human Ecology of TropicalLand Settlement in Latin America, ed. Debra Schumann and William Partridge(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989), 407-31, and "Colonization and 166 EnvironmentalHistory

SpontaneousSettlement in Ecuador;' in FrontierExpansion inArnazo4ia, ed. Marianne Schminkand Charles H. Wod (Gainesville:University of FloridaPress, 1984), 261-84. Forconflicts over land ownership, see El Comercio,6 October1985, in Kpu i8 (195): 27, and 26 October1985, in Kpu 21 (1985):23; Hoy, 23 December1985, in Kpu 23 (1985):21, and29August 1986, in KGpu17 (1986): 29; KiitheMeentzen, "Resisfing Lnd Grabbingin Ecuador:Quichua Indians Threatened by Development"Cultural Sur- vivalQuarterly lo (1985):30-32; "CONFENIAEDenounces Agribusiness in Ecuador: An Open Letter,"Cultural Survival Quarterly io (1985):33-37. See alsoEl Comercio, z6 May1986. in Kpu 8 (1986):24. 15. Whitten,Sacha Runa, 252. i6. Yost "Twentyyears of Contact)'699; Padre JosC Miguel, interview by the author,Fran- cisco de Orellana,9 March1993. For Quichua debt-servitude in the lowerNapo, see FranciscoJavier Beghin, "Condiciones de ServidumbreVigentes en Haciendasdel OrienteEcuatoriano Planificacidn1 (i963):81-96; Theodore MacDonald Jr., "Join- ing the Navyto See the World CulturalSurvival QuarterlY 7 (i983): 42-43. 17. The Quichuaof the Tenaarea initially concentrated their efforts on civil justicefor indigenouspeople, land legalization, struggles with white colonists, and efforts to con- vince familiesto sendtheir children to the nission school.See Fundaci6nFriedrich- Naumann,La Cultura Tradicional Indgena en la ProvinciadelNapo (Quito: Abya-Yala, June1991). The Quichualeaders in Pastazawent through the Catholicschools, though the actualorganization was opposedby the Dominicans.The ShuarFederation re- ceivedconsiderable help from missionaries. Tito Marino, interview by the author, Puyo, 3 December1ggz; JuanSanh, interview by the author,Puyo, 3 December1992. For school infrastructure,see El Comercio,21 July1985, in Kpu 14 (1985):29;Amanecer Indio,3o December1985, in Kipu8 (1986):27. In 1984, the Ministeriode Bienestar Socialprovided FOIN with funds for the secondstage of constructionof its headquar- tersin Tena.Kpu 5 (1984):z4. Nativefederations also increasinglyreceived aid from foreignenvironmental, development and indigenousrights organizations, further lib- eratingthem from the missionswhile placing them in relationto new ideologicalpres- sures. i8. MacDonald,"Processes of Changein AmazonianEcuador"; El Comercio,15 April 1985, in KIpu7 (1985):29; Joe Kane,"Letter From the Amazon:With Spears from All Sides)'New Yorker,27 September1993,634. The Cof4nand Siona-Secoya also found themselvesconstrained by new Quichuasefflements, as well as by mesfizocolonists. 19. See, forexample, Crist6bal Tapuy, president of CONFENIAE,quoted in Hoy,1i Sep- tember1985, in Kpu 17(1985): 28. Nationally,the pushfor bilingual education among Ecuadorianindigenous groups exemplifies the attemptto increasecontrol over the termsof integrationinto the nationalsociety. 2o.AAmanecerIndio, January 1988, in Kipu10 (1988):164; Hoy, 5 January1989, in Gpu 12 (989): 247-48; Dereclos del Pueblo,March 1986, in Kpu 9 (1986):22; Piaguaie, ECORASA79. It is importantto recognizethat CofAin behavior in the late 198oswas influencedby outsiders,including Protestant missionaries and their children, anthro- pologists,and environmentaland indigenousrights groups. 21. WilliamVickers, "Informe preliminar sobre las culturasSiona, Secoya, y Cof6ny su situacionde la tierra7in Infonnepara la delimitaci6nde territoriosnativos Siona- Secoya,Coan, y HuaoranhINCRAE publicacion No. 39, ed. JorgeUquillas (Quito: INCRAE,1982), i2; Hoy, 5 October1988, in Kipuil (1988):213-4; Hoy,4 November 1988,in Kpu ii (1988):219; Kane,Savages. 22. PabloGrefa, president of AIEPRA,interview by the author,Puyo, 3 December1992. EcuadorianNatives and Oil Extraction 167

23. El Comercio, 20 July 1986, in Kipu14 (1986): 27; Jon McLin, Social and Economic Effects of Petroleum Development in Non-OPEC Developing Countries: Synthesis Report (Geneva: InternationalLabour Organisation, 1986), 23-24. See, for example, Asociaci6n de Pre-Cooperativas"Pacayacu" to Tribunalde GarantiasContitutionales, 14 July 19o (unpublished letter in possession of the author). See also the coverage of the strikein Hoy throughout the month of March. 24. Kane, Savages,191-96; Mike Tidwell, Amazon Stranger:A RainforestChiefBattles Big Oil (New York:Lyons and Burford,1996). 25. I describe the pursuit of environmental justice as a political and socioecononmicissue since there is liffle difference between environmentaland socioeconomic justice. The problems of environmentalhazards in poor and politically weak communities are simply differentversions of underfunded infrastructure,inferior housing, and the inequi- table provision of government services. In this sense, the environment serves as the medium for social and economic injustice. In the particularcase of communities living in the extractiveregion, I am combining the issue of the distributionof environmental hazardswith questionsof access to and control over resourcesand the course of development. Susanna Hecht and AlexanderCockburn make environmental justice a major theme in their book on the political ecology of the Amazon, The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyersand Defenders of the Amazon (London: Verso, 1989). 26. Economists Douglas Southgate and MorrisWhitaker calculated that improvedpollu- tion controls would add $6o million to preproductionspending, thus raising the cost per barrelby 45 cents. Economic Progressand the Environment,86-87. Texacoboasted in 1987 that it had maintained a cost of production in Ecuador near the lowest in the world,around $3.50 per barrel."Los 23 afios de TexacoPetroleum Company-Operadora del Consorcio CEPE-Texacohan sido positivospara el desarrollodel pais,"El Universo, 4 July 1987, Special Supplement, 6. 27. Conoco Ecuador Ltd., Environmental Management Plan, Block i6 (Quito: Conoco Ecuador Ltd., 22 January1991), 4. 28. Conoco Ecuador Ltd., The RelationshipBetween the Waoraniand Conoco: Guiding Principles (Quito: Conoco Ecuador Ltd., 2 November 1989), 1. 29. White, Middle Ground, x. But see also Conklin and Graham, "Shifting Middle Ground." 30. Susan E. A. Hall, "Conoco's'Green' Oil Strategy,"Harvard Business School, Case No. N9-392-133, 1992- 31. Conoco Ecuador Ltd., EnvironmentalManagement Plan, 2, 10-11. 3. EdwardDavies, quoted in JamesBrooke, "New EffortWould TestPossible Coexistence of Oil and Rain Forest,"New YorkTimes, 26 Februaryiggi, C4. 33. Recent writing on the Block 16 case includes Hall, "Conoco's "Green"Oil Strategy"; Kane,Savages; and MarcelaEnriquez Vasquez and ByronReal Lo6pez,VidaporPetroleo: El caso delparque nacional Yasunfante los Tribunales(Quito: Fundaci6n Ecuatoriana de Estudios Sociales, 1992). Kane reportsthat CONFENIAE sought $211million from the oil company. Savages,73. 3. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,"Amazon Sabotage," Washington Post, 8 August1992, A17. 35. Hall, "Conoco's 'Green' Oil Strategy,"17. 36. James Brooke,"Ecuador Gives IndiansTitle to Big Amazon Area,"New YorkTimes, 6 September 1992, 10; Viteri, interview;Whitten, Sacha Runa, 207-67. The Leonard ExplorationCompany was affiliatedwith StandardOil of New Jersey.Shell began to withdrawin 1948, although its agreement with the government was not scheduled to 168 EnvironmentalHistory

expire until 1953. Jaime Galarza, El Festin del Petroleo (Quito: Ediciones Solitierra, 1972), 79-83, 102-5- 37. "SarayacuAccords," 7 May 1989 and 9 May 1989 (copy in the possessionof the author). The agreementswere signed by Luis Luna Gaibor,executive directorof IERAC;Alfonso Calderon, advisorto the presidenton indigenous affairs;Manuel Navarro,CEPE; Jorge Aldaz, CEPE; Medardo Santi, presidentof Comuna Alama Sarayacu;Antonio Vargas, presidentof OPIP;Luis Vargas,president of CONFENIAE; Crist6balTapuy, president of CONAIE. The community of Sarayacuitself did not actually have exploitable oil reserveswithin its territory. 38. Viteri interview;Ruiz, "Pueblos Indigenasy Etnicidad en la Amazonia." 39. Southgate and Whitaker;Economic Progressand the Environment, 83; Brooke, "Oil and TourismDon't Mix"; Oil IndustryOperating Guidelines for TropicalRainforests, ReportNo. 2.49/170 (London: E & P Forum, April 1991).For recent accounts of devel- opments in the EcuadorianAmazon that fit within the context of the emerging middle ground, see JackEpstein, "EcuadoriansWage Legal BattleAgainst US Oil Company," Christian Science Monitor, 12 September 1995, 10; Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Greens Force Texaco To Clean Up," The Observer,7 May 1995, Business Section, 2; Julie Triedman, "Putting Scientific Know-HowTo Work For Clients," American Lwyer, March 1995,45; MatthewYeomans, "Fool'sGold: In Ecuador'sRain Forest,The Case AgainstTexaco is Clear-Cut,"Village Voice,4 February1997,46; "EcuadorSeeks U.S. Justice Dept. Interventionin Texaco Oil Spill Case," Business Wire, 22 January1997; Dudley Althaus, "Amazon'sEmpty Legacy;Big Oil Respondsto Environment;Toll on Rain Forest,Culture Still Unacceptable to Critics,"Houston Chronicle, 15 December 1996,27; Mario Gonzalez, "Ecuador-Oil:Maxus Suspension a RiskyMove by the New President?"International Press Service, 23 August 1996. 40. MarjaneAmbler, Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development (Lawrence: UniversityPress of Kansas, 1990); Sabin, "Voicesfrom the Hydrocarbon Frontier,"40-41.