By Pratap Chatterjee
CASHIRIARI, PERU, Jan 29 1997 (IPS)

A brown scar, some three hectares in size, has marked the highland forests near this tiny, remote indigenous village in central Peru in the last three months.

The scar is a clearing created by the Anglo-Dutch multinational company Shell to drill a natural gas well named Armihuari. It is the first of four that will disfigure these forests, home of the Machiguenga peoples who have hunted and fished around the Urabamba river for 5,000 years. Close by are the Kugapakori peoples who have lived in fierce, self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world.

Out of concern for the forests and the peoples of this region, Shell says it is going to great pains to design what it calls a model of environmental management and local participation.

But on closer inspection, the company appears to be creating problems for the people in this village and surrounding communities without offering much by way of compensation or security against pollution.

The company has come here in the hope of exploiting a gas field they have named Camisea, which they say contains 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 600 million barrels of natural gas liquids, capable of supplying enough fuel to meet a century of energy needs for the capital city of Lima, some 500 kms to the east.

But in exchange for the land for the first well in Armihuari, the village of Cashiriari has only been promised electricity for three communal houses so far, in addition to an assortment of other trinkets like tin roofs and a supply of medicines.

The month-old agreement for the use of two hectares of land (Shell admits that it has used more than agreed initially) does not guarantee any compensation in case of accident, contamination of the local rivers, or destruction of the forests.

Tomas Vargas, the treasurer of the village who also runs the local health clinic, reluctantly produced the document he signed with Shell, arguing that he was misled by company representatives.

Shell also has an agreement with Nuevo Mundo, another Machiguenga village a day’s journey downstream by boat. The company has agreed to pay the local community a monthly fee of 4,000 soles (some 1,600 dollars) for the right to construct an airport to receive flights directly from Lima to service the company’s operations centre situated next to the village.

The Nuevo Mundo deal was signed with Alquilino Rios, a local leader. This deal has been bitterly opposed by other local leaders, including Efrain Barazo and Job Korinti from the neighbouring village of Kirigueti. They suspect the company of making plans to encroach on their territory.

“The Shell maps showing the territory of Nuevo Mundo includes an old gas well called Mipaya that is on our land,” says Korinti.

Shell officials, however, say they have no immediate plans to exploit Mipaya.

Located near a tributary of the Urabamba river, which originates near the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco on the eastern flank of the Andes mountains, this region is host to the highest recorded number of animals, birds, plants and insects in the world and forms one of the vital headwaters of the Amazon Basin.

But in the last few decades Christian missionaries and oil companies like Shell, Total, and Petroperu have brought change to the more peaceful Machiguenga peoples, causing them to slowly settle into small villages.

Throughout the region, there are mixed feelings about Shell, which first worked in this region just over a decade ago when it drilled a series of wells in an effort to find petroleum. The company withdrew in 1986 when it only found gas and failed to strike an agreement with the Peruvian government.

Both Roman Diaz and Victoriano Melchor — the headmen of the villages of Camisea and Segakiato which lie between Cashiriari and Nuevo Mundo — allege that, at the time, Shell contract workers abused local women.

Human rights activists and environmentalists also say that the Shell operations attracted outside loggers who brought diseases that killed a major part of another indigenous community of Nahua peoples who have lived in isolation for centuries.

To avoid repeating such mistakes, Shell has hired one of the leading experts on the local communities, Peruvian anthropologist Alonso Zarzar, to help the company work with the communities.

Zarzar has drawn up two sets of detailed guidelines for Shell and has conducted workshops to ensure that the company’s 360 local and expatriate contract workers do not violate local customs or bring in disruptive practices. Shell is also seeking to ensure that all its workers and visitors are vaccinated so that new diseases do not enter the region.

The company has also drawn up extensive plans to make sure that their work does not disturb the surrounding forests. Instead of building roads, all supplies are brought in by air or by river transport. Staff who hunt or fish or simply wander outside the drilling area are to be fired immediately.

But Peruvian activists say that the company has overlooked their moral responsibilities to the local peoples who have no idea of what is happening at the drilling site or what the future operations might involve.

Doris Balvin, an environmental lawyer from southern Peru who has spent the last decade tracking the impact of mining operations, says that the compensation to Cashiriari amounts to nothing more than a Christmas present.

Earlier this month, she travelled around the local communities where she was asked to translate the maps that Shell has given to the community from English to Spanish, so that local leaders like Tomas Vargas could understand.

“If Shell really wanted to work with the communities, why have they not provided them with enough information? The agreement was signed in a hurry and the local people had no chance to consult a lawyer,” she says.

The anthropologist defends the agreement.

“It is extremely hard to work in this area,” says Zarzar. “For example, the communities keep their hunting grounds secret from other communities in order to protect scarce resources. How are we to decide what just compensation to give them when we cannot determine the exact impact on their life?”

“It’s my job to ensure that Shell provides appropriate benefits to the community,” he adds. “We have made sure that all the compensation will help the community as a whole and to make sure that we develop social capital for the long term.”

And while Zarzar acknowledges that the community has a right to a lawyer, he says it is up to their representatives to get such help. “I have even attended the regional meetings of the Machiguenga organisations to tell them about our plans months before this agreement was signed,” he points out.

Meanwhile, the activities of Shell have also exacerbated the existing divisions among the Machiguenga who have traditionally been represented by rival organisations.

The villages of Camisea, Nuevo Mundo, and Segakiato are represented by the Centre for Native Machiguenga Communities (CECONAMA), while the three other villages in the region — Cashiriari, Kirigueti, and Shivankoreni — are represented by the Council for the Machiguenga People of the River Urabamba (COMARU).

Shell helped create an “indigenous council” with these two groups as well as other local, indigenous, non-governmental groups. The plan fell apart recently when COMARU withdrew from the council, increasing tensions among the communities.

“We wanted to work with the communities in devising a mediation system to settle any complaints, but so far, we have not succeeded,” says Murray Jones, the environmental chief for Shell’s operations in Peru, who says he is willing to consider any alternatives.

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