Texaco in Ecuador
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BUILDING CONSENSUS
The Assembly of Delegates of Communities Affected by Texaco was established in February 2001 as a way to educate people and raise awareness about environmental issues and communities' rights.
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| Assembly of Delegates meeting in Lago Agrio. By: Coco Laso/Oxfam |
About a third of the 30,000 people involved in the Texaco case are indigenous people. For them, the rainforest has a significance that goes beyond simply being the place where they live. It is also central to their religion, it is the place where their ancestors are buried, and it is their source of life and sustenance.
Over the years, Ecuador's indigenous peoples have developed a strong sense of their identity and fought to defend their rights. The indigenous and colonist communities affected by the damage worked with the Amazon Defense Front (FDA), to create a representative organizations that would help them maintain unity, and prevent the company from arranging inadequate settlements with individual communities.
"Workshops were held in the communities to inform people about the case and its future prospects," says Luis Yanza, who was head of the FDA at the time and is now the front's liaison with the affected communities. "The people were asked how they wanted to proceed and how they wanted decisions to be made. Everyone's ideas were listened to, and more than 90 percent of the people said they wanted to form a representative assembly."
Read the complete interview with Luis Yanza
The result: The Assembly of Delegates of Communities Affected by Texaco was established in February 2001. It consists of representatives of four indigenous nationalities affected by the disaster—the Siona, Secoya, Cofán and Huaorani—as well as about 20 representatives of non-indigenous peasant communities. Each of the non-indigenous delegates represents three or four communities. The president of the FDA is also a member of the Assembly's Executive Council.
The communities affected by the disaster are very poor and transportation is both difficult and expensive for them. Oxfam America has been supporting the Assembly and has helped the FDA carry out an evaluation and strategic planning to make its work more effective.
"Oxfam America has supported the entire process, and that support has been very important," says FDA president Ermel Chávez. "It has specifically supported the Assembly of Delegates of Communities Affected by Texaco, helping to strengthen that organization."
Read the complete interview with Ermel Chávez
The community delegates meet every other month in the Assembly, then return to their communities to discuss what happened and listen to the opinions and ideas of local residents. The style is very democratic. Major decisions—such as whether to accept a settlement that Texaco once offered and whether to continue with the case in Ecuador—must be made by consultation with all the communities involved, and the assembly makes its decisions by consensus rather than by majority rule.
Those ground rules have kept the group united throughout a long and often difficult process, and have made the organization extremely important in keeping the case alive, and complement the work of the legal team without letting the legal process overtake their ability to advocate on their own behalf. The communities are decision makers with the legal team.
"What's so astounding is the way the indigenous groups, as well as non-indigenous settlers who live in the area, have come together and formed an organization where every single affected community is represented and everybody cooperates," Donziger says. "As lawyers from the north, we simply would not have been able to carry forward a case like this without that level of organization, unity and commitment."
Besides decision-making, Yanza sees the Assembly as an important way of educating people and raising awareness about environmental issues and communities' rights. It's a useful model for other communities that need to learn how to complement their own work to claim their rights with a legal strategy that still leaves the communities some control, instead of allowing the legal strategy to completely take over.
"At the meetings, when we report on and analyze the legal aspects of the case, people are not only receiving information, they're getting an education," Yanza says.
The Assembly of Delegates has been forged into a solid, unified group that will continue to work together even if the court case is resolved. "After the court decision comes the hard work of carrying out the sentence, doing the environmental cleanup, implementing the compensation," Yanza says. "That needs to be done in coordination and with the participation of the affected communities. Even if we lost the trial, it would have to continue, because we still need to find a solution to the people's environmental and health problems. The situation can't go on like this."