Tragicomedy in the Ultra Oil Fiefdom
The chronicler aspired to become a champion of the Indigenous peoples, exposing the evil Ultra Oil, which had polluted the waters of the O... River basin with cadmium and lead. But when he arrived at the scene, what awaited him was very different from what he had seen on TV.
Two Indigenous women head to their plantation in the morning in one of the villages affected by the spills.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in the issues 183 and 184 of Cáñamo magazine, March and April 2013.
I don’t want to remember the Amazonian country where I wandered around with Quixotic airs when I met, in Big City, some aid workers showing a documentary about the O River… I was moved by the old indigenous man bitterly crying out against the destruction of the jungle, the pollution of the rivers, the diseases affecting people and animals; I was enraged by the owners of the big pipe that poured the oily black manna into a once pristine lagoon connected to the great fluvial network of the world. I decided I would join the indigenous struggle, denounce abuses, and mock the evil oil company Ultra Oil. Spill images, being black and spectacular, usually guarantee gasps of astonishment (and money), I thought. I would find my own spill and my own angry old man, and publish a report to boast about among socially conscious people.
From Big City, I traveled to Jungle City to interview the Indigenous Leader, President of the True Organization, at whose headquarters I found a two-meter-tall Dutchman, a woman so blond she was surely Scandinavian, and other foreigners who made up the international advisory team armed with an arsenal of cameras and computers but so busy they ignored me, especially the blond woman. They let me into the meeting room with the Indigenous Leader President and his Honorable Executive Council, all very well dressed. They only granted me five minutes because they had to meet with other elegant gentlemen from the regional government. They spoke with sleepy reluctance, except when the Indigenous Leader President claimed his achievement, mine mine, I I—a deal with the oil company and the government: Fifteen million dollars will be invested in the affected area for hospitals, health, and development plans, they will return what they have taken from us, this is a great struggle, tomorrow I am going to Lima. Fifteen million dollars? Fifteen.
The future oil pipeline, piece by piece, on a boat on the O River…
BEER SPILLS
The next day I boarded the organization’s boat, donated by the evil oil company as part of the agreement. Suspended in a hammock, I read some of the documents that the Leader President had kindly shared with me. I learned that there had been oil activity for four decades, without any control, that spills were constant, and that the activity was highly polluting for many other reasons. That in the O… river basin, two-thirds of the population had blood levels of cadmium, lead, and zinc above biological tolerance limits. That a year before my visit, in a joint action, the indigenous people from the X, Y, and Zeta ethnic groups took over the company’s facilities and paralyzed the activity; only then, through violence, did the government and company agree to negotiate. That with the fifteen million dollars promised in the agreement, a comprehensive development plan would be launched, a hospital would be built, and intense environmental remediation work would be carried out.
Between reading and drowsiness, workers from Ultra Oil and its accomplice companies Petrosa, Amuleto, and Edén boarded the boat. One of them had a strange malformation on one arm (perfect: a malformed person is a classic that sells very well, I thought I should photograph him, but I didn’t manage to). I asked them about spills and they talked about the Authentic Organization, which had been born to denounce the corruption of the True Organization; I asked them about the agreed investments and they said the Indigenous Leader President had gotten rich, traveled the world, and forgot about his people; I asked them about remediation and they claimed it was useless, that only the surface was cleaned but the oil penetrated the earth; I inquired about the social struggle, and they said everyone lived off the oil companies in the O… river basin, and no one reported spills for fear of being blacklisted.
The only spills on the boat were of beer and hard liquor; some got pretty drunk.
The other side of Petroleros, headquarters of the company Ultra Oil.
For three days we navigated the O… river, flanked on both sides by dense jungle; scattered here and there in clearings of one or two hectares appeared the traditional domestic units: the large wall-less house of an extended family, surrounded by the chagra [indigenous plantation], where women in long floral skirts and colorful blouses busily pulled weeds. A simple life, of autonomy and freedom, for centuries... And then, by mid-20th century, the harsh reality—the reality of crude oil.
Everything was different in Petroleros, the town located beside the company’s base; hours before arriving, a bubble of orange light could be seen in the distance, breaking the darkness of the night. On one side of the river, in the town, paved streets crowded with people, multi-story houses, street lighting, commerce, bustle, sound systems, techno-cumbia concerts until late at night, alcohol, cable TV... And on the other side, The Other Side, as the workers reverently and almost mystically called it: the Ultra Oil facilities, barely visible but intimidating with their meticulous arrangement of guard posts, fences, flower beds... and their oppressive silence.
TRUE cooperaTION
In Petroleros, the next morning I met Esperanza Concienciada, a volunteer from the True Organization who traveled from village to village explaining the consequences of oil activity and the rights of ancestral inhabitants. The situation was deplorable: constant spills, marginalized culture, fleeing animals, degraded vegetation. Esperanza aired the dirty laundry: that a mafia had formed, controlled by the authorities, to mediate the hiring of workers; that every mayor of Petroleros ended up in jail after their term for corruption; that Ultra Oil had financed the Authentic Organization to divide the Indigenous people and weaken the True Organization, the guarantor of the Victorious Agreement of the Indigenous Leader President; and that, on the other hand, the men of community A… had taken over the Amuleto subsidiary’s exploration camp, halting activity, and had taken a powerful speedboat, and that an economic agreement was later reached whose terms remained unknown—though rumor had it the chief received ten thousand dollars and, since then, community A… had left the True Organization and was feared to be on the brink of joining the Authentic Organization.
While treating me to a lavish breakfast with international cooperation funds, Esperanza Concienciada suggested I visit said community A… (which had suffered severe spills in recent years), community B… (where a chiefs’ assembly was to be held), and community C… (the most affected currently and recently aligned with the deceitful Authentic Organization). To do so, I had to immediately board the same boat that had brought me to Petroleros, which I did in haste with all manner of dashes and balancing acts like in a Harold Lloyd movie with a cheerful, playful soundtrack. On the boat I met Kind Indigenous, who, upon learning the reason for my visit, recited: This mansion that is the jungle… Here we breathe pure air. This nature we want to preserve. Our ancestors also fought for this land so there would be no pollution, but they couldn’t read or write and were deceived. Of course, his speech wasn’t very compatible with the cattle ranching project he proposed to me right afterward, which would require clearing about fifty hectares of jungle. I dodged giving him a direct no because our boat was slowly passing another cargo vessel moored at the shore, loaded with large cubic tanks. Careful with the cigarettes, shouted the pilot. Are you carrying chemicals? someone asked. Lead, came the reply.
A shipment of lead on its way to one of the oil wells.
the spit from surly chief
We arrived before dawn at community B…, where I was supposed to find a canoe to take me to A… I stepped onto the small concrete platform that served as the port and stood dazed amid the stevedore frenzy: new engines, mountains of soda and beer, sound systems, machetes, large plastic buckets, bags of bread, and brown cardboard boxes with indiscernible contents. Spanish could no longer be heard. Kind Indigenous, who continued upriver in the boat, understood my helplessness and, aware of my plans, approached a stout man with a thick neck and brooding expression, explained my intentions, and asked him to take me along. The man was Surly Chief, the strategist behind community A…’s victory over Amuleto. Surly Chief merely glared at me with ill will, and it seemed a miracle to later find myself aboard his canoe, loaded to the brim with goods, as he downed one beer after another for breakfast while we glided along a lovely creek toward A… If we passed other canoes, Surly Chief smiled, raised his hand, and rubbed his thumb against his index finger: money. The neighbor’s smile would light up.
And what beauty, the little creek nestled between tall, lush hills.
And how peaceful A… was, with its wall-less homes scattered among small chagras, the green glowing in the golden warmth of the morning.
And how welcoming Surly Chief’s wife was in her flowery skirt.
And how delicate the murmur of the X language.
And how cheerful his seven children were, how thrilled when their father gave them toys and treats, and how afraid they were of me.
And how the neighbors came to Surly Chief’s house, sat on little stools, drank masato [cassava beer], and stamped their fingerprints on the receipt to collect their envelope of money. Some also took a peke peke motor or a box. Then the Chief was Smiling, but once they left, he became Surly again, and when I asked him, flatteringly, about his victory over Amuleto and the perks obtained, he struck me with lightning from his eyes. What? Surly replied. I asked again, but all I got was a discouraging series of coughs, expectorations, and spit.
Surly Chief, drinking masato (cassava beer).
LEAKING WELL
Hours passed, days passed, and Surly Chief continued to ignore my request to visit the nearby oil wells that had caused so much harm to his people. Not far from his house, in his own yard, I discovered with sensationalist morbid curiosity that his daughter had a malformed big toe (I took a photo), and his son had a strange bump near his nipple (I didn’t take a photo). Other neighbors I spoke with told me of similar cases in nearby communities. Surly only spoke to me once, one night, to invite me to join him in a vomiting ritual at four in the morning—a tribal custom that, as a participant observer ethnographer, I was supposed to experience. But laziness got the better of me, along with a certain revulsion at the copious retching sounds heard throughout the village at dawn, in strange concert with the crowing roosters. But I hadn’t come all this way to leave without my photos, and I insisted so much that Surly Chief eventually tasked Young Stoic Hunter with the duty of taking me to Battery 7 [a cluster of wells], recently shut down, and to another battery abandoned for decades.
We crossed the lovely creek and walked a narrow path through the dense forest, going up and down gentle slopes, crossing small streams, always alert for animals that Stoic Hunter hoped to shoot with his shotgun. Contaminated, he said after an hour, pointing to a small stream coated with an oily film, just before we emerged onto a vast clearing—an arid wasteland of dry grass, the air thick with the stench of crude oil. In the center stood the metallic mouth of an unused well, coated with petroleum that dripped heavily from several joints. The liquid fell onto the concrete ground and flowed through an underground pipe to the next point Stoic Hunter showed me, already back in the thicket: a small concrete basin (inspection chamber, he explained), which overflowed and spilled downhill into a bright red creek—oxidized—falling into a polluted lagoon. Then we followed for a hundred meters the wide road that connected the well to the river and returned.
On the way, Hunter shot a partridge.
Young Stoic Hunter, next to an abandoned and leaking well.
FAtal ACCIDENT
Surly Chief’s mistrust did not wane, no matter how much he purged his ills at four in the morning; perhaps I should have shared in the ritual vomiting to earn his sympathy, but laziness... It took another two days of patience for him to lend Stoic Hunter the motor he would use to take me to a well that had been shut down decades earlier, where the company had abandoned chemicals and various materials. This time, joining the expedition were Surly Chief’s son, named Shy Barefoot, and his cousin Funny Barefoot, neither of whom spoke Spanish.
We traveled up the creek for about thirty minutes; it narrowed so much that at times the trees on either side touched over our heads. We pulled up to the shore and followed a small trail through the dense forest, where remnants quickly appeared: a rusted pipeline, concrete markers, broken-down wheelbarrows, pipes… Shy led the way; Funny, barely three years old, brought up the rear. After twenty minutes the group came to a halt. Salado, said Stoic Hunter, pointing to a muddy patch, rich in salts that fed the animals that in turn fed the hunters. Do people still hunt here? I asked. Not anymore. Chemicals, he said, tapping the ground with his foot. I tapped too; we weren’t standing on earth, but on sacks with a dense, compact content. Stoic Hunter tore one open and used a stick to extract a khaki-colored substance with a foul smell. Chemicals, he repeated.
They explored over there, I was taking pictures over here. I found an old, fallen, rusted iron sign and tried to lift it for a more iconic composition. I crouched down, grabbed the sign from the back, and as I raised it, I felt a sharp sting that instantly turned into a burning pain. I screamed. I looked at the sign and was terrified to see a very ugly spider remaining motionless, staring menacingly. I panicked like a three-year-old and squealed toward my companions: Spider. Ah… Spider. They came over. Stoic Hunter crushed the spider with a stick. My hand trembled; the pain had reached my shoulder. It was not a good place to receive a potentially deadly spider bite. My heart was racing. Stoic Hunter looked at me with concern. Bad? I asked, fearing the worst. Bad, he agreed. Don’t you have medicine? I asked. No, he didn’t have an antidote. Shy flipped the sign over and found the nest: a ball of web he opened; inside, thousands of tiny spiders writhed. A grim certainty overwhelmed me: Problem? I muttered. Problem, Stoic answered, nodding. I was about to ask how much time I had left when he beat me to it: At five. At five I die? I asked Stoic Hunter, feeling the venom spreading relentlessly from my shoulder toward my torso. And for the first time, Stoic laughed: No, at five it passes.
The toxin told me that poor Mama Spider had been calmly resting with her young, and then a human came to mess it all up; she defended herself bravely; they all ended up dead.
The well of the fatal accident (for the spiders).
In the afternoon, back in the community of A…, something unusual happened. While I was bathing in the creek, a distant rumor turned into a helicopter landing on the soccer field. Photo, photo—I hurried up, but only managed to catch a group carrying several sacks full toward Surly Chief’s house.
They are gifts for the children, brought by Amuleto’s helicopter, a man told me. Hours later, after hearing his story, I named him Depressed Fish Farmer. He came from a distant town where he had lost his job; his brother-in-law was the teacher at A…’s school and had called him to participate in a productive project that Amuleto’s accomplice wanted to finance for Surly Chief and Very Corrupt Leader (another community member from A… I had already heard of). The project was a fish farm; Depressed Fish Farmer was a technician specialized in the area. Depressed met with Surly and Corrupt in Jungle City, and after reaching an agreement, Amuleto paid their very expensive passage on Ultra Oil’s private plane to Petroleros, then on a very expensive hovercraft to A… Very Corrupt Leader did not accompany them because he had to respond to a corruption complaint in Jungle City. Depressed explained to me that Amuleto would invest in productive projects managed by Corrupt Leader, in a health post (where Depressed hoped his nurse wife would work), and in an expansion of the school. Mr. Moneybags had already installed running water pools near each house, and would soon bring a modern boat powered by two 85-horsepower outboard motors.
The next day I said goodbye to Surly Chief feeling great admiration for him; I will never forget his loud way of shaping spitballs and violently ejecting them like cannonballs; I will never forget how, between one spit and another, he didn’t give me the slightest damn: absolute disdain exists, it’s not just an unattainable ideal. His son took me to B… where the assembly of all the basin chiefs was planned, which had been delayed because Important White from the Government had not yet arrived. He was going to explain how the twelve million dollars from the upcoming health program would be used.
One of the local elders riding one of the foreign donations.
millions of dollars
In B…, I finally met Bribed Leader, President of the Integral Development Plan of the O… River Basin, who was responsible for administering three of the fifteen million dollars committed in the Victorious Agreement. Those three million were bureaucratically held by the regional government, Bribed explained to me, but he had no liquidity problems: a few minutes later I witnessed how the school teacher, representing Amuleto, handed him in cash an amount higher than what a school principal earned.
The assembly was suspended because the chiefs didn’t think Important White was so important as to wait four days for him, which he was already late. During that time, I met talkative people. There were two favorite rumors: the first, that all the leaders (President, Surly, Bribed, etc.) were corrupt, lied, and pocketed the money; I had already heard enough of that. The second, that the spills were constant and habitual despite Ultra Oil’s promises and guarantees; that was new to me. It’s necessary to document the spills to strengthen the fight with international public opinion pressure! I urged; I didn’t believe it (and neither did they), but I lacked a photo of the spill, which had to open the report spectacularly. Grumpy Fat, chief of the D… community, invited me to visit with him a terrible spill that had affected a vast area of his territory a month earlier—a layer of more than thirty centimeters of crude oil—but the day the assembly was definitively suspended, he left without me despite my desperate calls from the shore and offers of extra gasoline made by my supporter, Kind Indigenous, who was then in B…
Following the majority advice, I decided to visit C…, the community most affected by intense and prolonged extraction activity. I traveled in the same boat that brought me, with Kind, who upon arriving at C… got off for a few minutes and introduced me to Conscious Teacher with the task of taking me to the chief. Conscious shook my hand four times in five minutes and accompanied me to a half-finished house where I settled. He put me in context with a phrase of regret: Here the people have placed their hopes in the company; they can no longer live without the company. He came from another community where hunting, fishing, and farming still took place, and the people, producing their own food, remained autonomous, independent. Here food is bought with money, he lamented. His small children arrived and clung to his legs. How cute, I admired. Yes, cute when they don’t get sick. He recalled that a few months earlier there had been an outbreak of an indeterminate disease: They start to bleed from the nose and mouth; it looks like they’re going to burst. He explained that in those cases they were taken to the company, which evacuated them by fast boat to Petroleros and if necessary by plane to Ciudad Selvática. Everything is the company, he concluded resignedly.
"Everything is the company," he said with resignation.
It was getting dark when the chief arrived, uniformed and drunk, tall and corpulent; his name was Good Simpleton. His understanding clouded by alcohol, he managed to articulate to my request to visit recent spills: We have to coordinate with the secretary and the vice chief, because I have a meeting now. Then he went off to sleep off his drunkenness. The secretary, named Formal Procedure, took charge of the situation. He spoke of precision in decisions, support from authorities, official documents, general coordination. Then he asked if I came on behalf of the True Organization. I said I was independent. The True Organization is corrupt, and Indigenous Leader President has enriched himself at the expense of all the indigenous brothers, but the Authentic Organization is doing good work.
We walked toward the vice chief, among closed houses roofed with zinc sheets: in one, a TV played a Bruce Lee movie; in another, a warehouse disco... The streets were wide, well outlined, without trees or gardens. Spanish was heard much more than in A… or B… The secretary explained that most of the town’s people had arrived recently (including himself) and worked rotating shifts for Ultra Oil, who operated 17 wells in the nearby Battery 5. The streetlights allowed us to see a small crushed snake on the ground with white and black stripes. It’s the nacanaca; if it bites you, you die in two hours, but we call the company and they send the vehicle and give you the antivenom and that’s it, explained Formal Procedure.
We found the vice chief, Ready Scared, just out of the bathroom. I explained the purpose of my visit: to photograph recent spills. We will have to ask permission from the company, he said unconvincingly, and Formal Procedure agreed enthusiastically. I pointed out that they wouldn’t allow me to enter. Then I gave them a stern lecture, talking about injustice in the world, about the dispossession suffered by indigenous cultures... Ready Scared and Formal Procedure reacted bravely: This is our territory and no one can tell me where I can go and where I cannot, said one. We have to denounce, said the other. And he told me about community E…, which had halted operations and managed to get an electricity generator better than the one in C…
We agreed that the next day they would come for me at dawn to take me on an excursion.
Of course, no one came, but I expected it and pursued the chief to get the operation going. At that hour, six in the morning, at the doors of the houses, the community members came out with their neat uniforms, helmets, various tools, waiting for the company vehicles that would take them to their workplace. The chief, with little conviction, looked for the vice chief and asked him to take me to Battery 4, closed some time ago and recently remediated by one of the environmental companies. The vice chief passed the responsibility to two other young men. We went down the river for half an hour and landed at a metal structure of undefined use.
As we were about to get ashore, a man of about fifty years, white skin toasted by the sun and with airs of a chief, came out of the guardhouse that protected the place and barked at me: Have you taken photos? I was holding the camera at the ready. No, I answered grumpily to Bad Guard. Where are you going? he asked Apocado, my young companion. To the aguajal, he said, although it was not the tasty aguaje fruit we sought, and Bad Guard, who didn’t buy it, drew his walkie-talkie and communicated with Worse Guard at headquarters, but we had already entered the jungle.
Battery 4 offered me photographs similar to those I already had (leaking wells, tanks full of crude, pipelines among vegetation, oily streams), but it allowed me to verify that the remediation was, as I had been warned, superficial. In a small, apparently clean lagoon, it was enough to scrape the bottom with a stick for the surface to become speckled with black stains that shimmered all around.
The supposedly remediated areas were oozing with oil.
SHAMELESS RETREAT
I stayed several more days in C…, persistently but unsuccessfully urging the authorities and other community members to show me recent spill sites. But I only received evasions. No one wanted to risk being caught in my company. The days were oppressively hot, rainless, under a blinding white light. An unstoppable diarrhea and a painful ear infection that was worsening put me in a terrible mood. Sometimes I was outraged by the passivity of the locals, their acceptance of abuse and pollution; in truth, I was annoyed that they didn’t submit to my delusions of being a righteous journalist.
My animosity toward the company softened when the chief informed me that the only way to reach the town of Petroleros was by Ultra Oil’s boat. Understanding my needs, Good Simpleton wrote by hand the letter that would allow me to travel.
I had no shame presenting myself the next morning at the Ultra Oil port—the evil oil company I was going to expose—and sitting comfortably in the waiting room until the fast boat departed. Entering the port, fenced off by security, was like entering a parallel world of order and discipline. Trucks from Battery 5 arrived loaded with workers who were also traveling, wearing a wide variety of uniforms: from denim outfits for unskilled workers, mostly indigenous, to extremely expensive coveralls with the wearer’s name finely embroidered and the legend Drilling Team – You are a member of a high quality performance team, which I read on the chest pockets of four friendly white men who sat next to me waiting for uncertain materials.
The boat arrived from Petroleros, and about twenty passengers disembarked the gangway. Three executives received special attention, with their dark briefcases and elegant clothes; the jungle seemed to have conformed to their attire, Ultra Oil’s executives looked like the owners of the place. They knew the Drilling Team men and discussed everyday matters with them, with the condescension of understanding bosses: If you’re eating the eight-dollar lunch, that’s bad, pronounced Powerful Baldy, because you’re entitled to the twenty-four-dollar menu, and you have the right to change it.
The price of menus, work coveralls, facilities, boats, gifts for the children, helicopters, compensation for communities, hundreds of workers… The Big Business, the Big Investment, the Money, the Power before which I also bent: when asked curiously about my presence, I said I was an anthropologist researching ancestral customs. Had Bad Guard spread the word about me?
It was eight hours of waiting until Sergeant Inflexible, the person in charge of boarding, called the travelers. He asked for documents, checked names on the list, and granted access. But I was not on the list, and the letter Good Simpleton gave me was worthless without the signature of Ultra Oil’s Human Resources manager. Inflexible’s unyielding coldness plunged me into a wave of frustration. I begged and reasoned. I can’t break procedure; it must be signed by Human Resources, he concluded, indifferent to my fainting, my ear infection, and my growing discomfort under the harsh midday sun. I returned to the waiting room, and one of the drilling team members took the opportunity to tell me about the time he traveled to the Kingdom of Spain as a tourist and was sent back by authorities. Here we don’t do that, here the treatment is humane, you’ll get out, you’ll see, he said with a tone that sounded like revenge.
In the mornings, a procession of workers files toward the Ultra Oil facilities.
ultra oil christmas present
I boarded one of the trucks heading to the center. The driver asked me to fasten my seatbelt. We moved slowly. The dirt road was wide, full of signs, well compacted. Along one edge, three pipelines ran parallel. On both sides, but kept at a distance, the vegetation rose. A beeping sound broke the silence. That goes off when the truck exceeds 40 km/h, it’s like a black box, the driver said gravely. These Ultra Oil folks, they’re very strict—they don’t allow us anything, not even to talk to people in town, and with women, nothing at all, of course.
We arrived at the center, a clear expanse where simple and functional buildings belonging to different companies stood. The driver pointed out the head of human resources. His name is Suspicious, he informed me. I prayed that Bad Guard hadn’t reported my intrusion to Suspicious, and I was preparing an exculpatory story just in case. Suspicious looked me up and down. There’s only space for people from the community. The chief writes this request, but he doesn’t say who you are, what you’re doing here, said Suspicious. I’m an anthropologist, studying ancestral customs, I said, putting on the face of a diligent student. Suspicious, who was as white as I was, took the paper and signed it with indifference. Despite being Suspicious, at that moment I really liked him; I felt like hugging him, and I started to think better of the oil industry.
After a comfortable and fast trip, rich in safety measures, prohibitions, and procedures, I arrived at Petroleros. My diarrhea got worse, and my ear infection became worrying when I found out that there wouldn’t be a boat to Jungle City for weeks. The only way out of that contaminated land, I was told, was on the Ultra Oil plane. It was once again Kind Indigenous who got me a paper from the local authorities requesting a seat on one of the three daily flights Ultra Oil made to Jungle City. So every morning, for four days, I crossed the O... River to Ultra Oil’s base and sat waiting for the person in charge of flights to make room for me among the seats reserved for company workers and indigenous people who needed to be transferred to the hospital in Jungle City. I played the part of a helpless sick man in a faraway place as best I could. Four days of waiting, watching dozens of indigenous people come and go in Ultra Oil’s boats, receiving their Christmas baskets, requesting medical attention, feeling insignificant, hating the Great Power of Oil, and longing for its favors.
And it was on the fourth day that Super Friendly Savior, the flight coordinator, upon seeing me arrive that morning with my backpack, made an unmistakable gesture with his arm. You’re on the second flight. Grab your stuff, we have to check in. And I almost hugged him. Then, throughout the day, I had time to take in the clean and orderly facilities, the flower beds, the strict discipline, the English punctuality... The company’s meticulous method represented exactly the opposite of oil spilling uncontrollably through the jungle and contaminating people and animals, exactly the opposite of the profound unraveling that money had caused in the simple indigenous societies.
I boarded the plane grateful for Ultra Oil’s efficiency, cursing them secretly, and remembering that satirical little verse written four centuries ago by a hardened skeptic named Quevedo, which could very well apply to the indigenous people of the O... River and to this pitiful chronicler:
Mightier in peaceful season
(And in this his wisdom showeth)
Are his standards, than when bloweth
War his haughty blasts and breeze on;
In all foreign lands at home,
Equal e'en in pauper's loam,—
Over kings and priests and scholars
(And in this his wisdom showeth)
Are his standards, than when bloweth
War his haughty blasts and breeze on;
In all foreign lands at home,
Equal e'en in pauper's loam,—
Over kings and priests and scholars
Rules the mighty Lord of Dollars.
Translation of Quevedo's poem by Thomas Walsh
