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Crude
Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and
Neoliberalism in Ecuador by Suzana Sawyer.
Since the discovery of oil in Ecuador's Oriente region
in 1967, the country has seen it's economy become dependent
upon export of the crude substance, making up nearly half
of the country's GDP. This situation is severely complicated
by the fact that the discovery and exploitation of oil-rich
land not only lies within the Amazon basin -- one of the
most environmentally important areas in the world -- but
also in areas long inhabited by various indigenous groups.
Suzana Sawyer's account of indigenous organization's conflicting
with Ecuador's national oil company and overseas, corporate
oil interests elucidates this situation while also relating
it to similar situations in the rest of the world.
Sawyer -- an assistant professor in anthropology at UC-Davis
-- spent years with indigenous organizations. Here she focuses
on a time in the mid-1990s when Ecuador would grant additional
oil concessions to those from three decades previous, as
well as reworking agrarian law in favor of large landholders
and corporations. Her account follows the indigenous groups
as they marched from the Oriente to the capital of Quito,
as they demonstrated in that city's plazas, and as they
blocked roads in their home province, all in an effort to
have their voice heard and stop the neoliberal agenda affecting
Ecuador via oil companies like ARCO and AGIP.
What appears to be about oil and the environment from a
neoliberal perspective is much deeper to the indigenous
peoples, encompassing transnational equality, historical
continuity, and social customs. Sawyer's account, while
not wholly objective -- perhaps stemming from the time she
spent with the indigenous groups as well as her academic
background -- illuminates the tactics the corporations and
government use to play down these other issues of importance.
And even though the oil concessions and agrarian reforms
were enacted in compromised forms, the indigenous groups
can take pride in not swaying from their foundation of democratic,
historical, and social considerations. But most importantly,
they became a force to be reckoned with in a country (and
a world) that will see more conflicts like these in the
future when their voice will be heard once again.
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