hey ya´ll

this is interesting stuff i learned today while working in a 28-bed hospital in a little town in the Amazon called Shell.
shell and puyo (the town i´m living in) are the last towns on the way to all the tribes that still live in the jungle. its seems that there is a lot of oil under all that rainforest and as you can imagine it is highly prized. officially, the government of Ecuador owns all rights to it but the local tribes have been quite effective in asserting their ownership of the land. Oil companies from all over the world come in and decide they want to drill. They talk to the government and begin destroying the environment where these tribes live. So the tribes burn their offices ( last year they burned an oil co. office in Puyo) or take hostage their planes ( by surrounding them with logs so they can´t take off). The oil companies realize their job would be easier with support from the community so they provide access to healthcare, education and community development. what that means is that they build schools and hire recent teaching graduates from the Ecuadorian universities and suddenly the kids in the tribes get an education. Community developers teach about nutrition, growing gardens, eating vegetables, clean water etc. How i came in contact with all this is because for the past 3 days there has been a baby in the ICU of the hospital in Shell with hyaline membrane disease. The little hospital is not equipped to treat him so if the baby remains in the hospital without further treatment he will surely die. He had been brought in from one of the communities in the jungle by an oil company helicopter and now needed a flight to Quito. The oil company has been paying the hospital bill so far but refused to pay for the flight to Quito. When the village heard this, there was an uproar and today the baby got a flight. Apparently, villagers are regularly brought to the hospital via oil company helicopter.

this exchange - development for destruction- has become the standard relationship between oil companies and tribes. However, last year Chevron took the oil and ran after making huge promises to the community and basically dessimating the land. So now, the tribe is trying to file a lawsuit against chevron. The US refused to take the case in US courts but said that whatever the Ecuadorian courts decide will be upheld. Thats all fine but the Ecuadorian government and judical system is completely corrupt ( a man who has got second place in the last 4 presidencial elections has more money that the entire country combined and has made public statements saying he hasn´t paid taxes in the past 15 years. he´s in the fruit business among other things and this adds up to millions of dollars but he is never charged or brought to court because he just buys off the judges.) anyway, basically chevron can now just buy its way out of the lawsuit and leave the community in ruins.

on the other hand, in general the tribes are willing to have the land destroyed in exchange of healthcare/education/developement

so thats really all. no conclusions. just interesting. the doctors told me that once a kid was flown in with a nose bleed - helicopter flights cost like $500/hr or something crazy like that.

weird. i hope ya´ll are all well.
cariñosos
k