Jul 22 2010
Kristina Aiello
On July 1 the Peruvian government notified Father Paul Mc Auley, an environmental activist in the Loreto Department of the northern Peruvian Amazon, that the Ministry of the Interior was rescinding his residency, which he has held since 2006, in a country he has called home for the past 20 years. The order to expel the British priest comes on the heels of his efforts to ensure accountability for the massive June 19 oil spill of PlusPetrol, an Argentine oil company with a safety record equal to that of British Petroleum. This company is a political powerhouse with allies at the regional and national governmental levels. PlusPetrol has been the target of many of Mc Auley’s activist efforts since he began his work in the region 10 years ago.
This is not the first time that Mc Auley has faced expulsion. His work has resulted in repeated threats to his person, as well as prior efforts from the García administration to kick him out of the country. Such efforts indicate the existence of an unofficial governmental policy to stifle voices that highlight the social and environmental costs of the country’s resource development agenda by criminalizing and/or expelling the agenda’s principal critics. The resolution against Mc Auley was based on a 2009 police report that cited his participation in “different activities of a political character, like protest marches . . . and other acts that constitute an alteration of the public order.”
In 2005 Mc Auley founded the Red Ambiental Loretana (RAL), an all-volunteer, non-governmental organization that was established in response to the growing environmental damage caused by the many extractive and timber companies operating in Loreto. One of RAL’s first works was to organize against former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo’s decision to auction off sections of the Amazon forest to foreign timber companies for a meager 30 cents per hectare without the necessary environmental impact studies or an understanding of the forest inventory. The organization was also outraged at the ability of oil and gas companies operating in the region to pollute the environment with seeming impunity. One of the worst offenders was PlusPetrol, whose daily discharges into the Corrientes, Tigre, and Pastanza rivers consisted — and still consist — of approximately 1,200,000 barrels of water contaminated with residue from chemicals used during its oil drilling processes. The company’s oil production activities have also resulted in 78 spills between 2006 and 2009, 57 of which were considered major.
The impact of the contamination on the surrounding 34 indigenous communities that rely on the rivers for drinking water, cooking, and fishing has been devastating. According to a 2006 report of the Ministry of Health, 98% of the communities’ minors register levels of cadmium beyond the permitted limits while 21% of adults and 66% of minors have levels of lead beyond the allowed limits. While the local communities have assumed all the risks, they have received limited economic benefits from the resource development in their region with most of the residents continuing to live in conditions of poverty. Moreover, past community efforts to protest PlusPetrol’s activities have often met with swift repression.
On June 19, a PlusPetrol oil rig leaked 400 barrels of crude that contaminated 100 kilometers of the Marañón River. Neither the government nor the company informed the communities that relied on the Marañón for water about the ecological disaster. Their residents only realized the danger after more than 60 individuals ended up at the local health center with illnesses related to contact with the oil.
During the days before receiving his order to leave the country, Mc Auley was responding to the oil spill at the request of a private investment oversight body of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), to inspect the operations of PlusPetrol. Apparently, his calls for a thorough investigation were not well received by the García administration whose initial response to the disaster was an attempt to minimize its importance. Echoing BP’s CEO, MEM Minister Pedro Sánchez Gamarra argued that the 400 barrels of oil “was a very small amount compared to what occurred in the Gulf of Mexico.” He added, “a very small thing should not be the cause for alarm.”
https://nacla.org/node/6674