Repsol in the Huitiricaya

Notice of the Audiencia Pública in Kitepámpani

I arrived yesterday in Sepahua after three and a half weeks in Kitepámpani, which, despite the absence of some residents that has made work slow-paced at times, have been dedicated to the expansion of the text corpus that I began last year.  My lexical database now consists of more than 2,200 headwords (a recent favorite addition: teoki 'be buzzed') and over 3,300 lines of segmented and glossed text.  Although I will continue to do text work when I return, I will also be dedicating some time to anti-agreement, split intransitivity, and psych-predicates, the latter contributing towards my upcoming prospectus.  This year I have been lodged in the two-story cement house of my friend Jonas, who was absent from the community working for Walsh (see below) until July 21.  This has brought me physically closer to the residence group of which I have more or less become a part, and has facilitated evening visiting as my abilities in speaking Caquinte have improved.

Repsol Arrives in Kitepámpani
July 3, 2015

More important to Caquinte speakers than much of my work, however, was a recent visit (July 3-6) to Kitepámpani by representatives from Repsol, a major Spanish oil and natural gas company; Walsh, a consulting firm hired by Repsol to carry out the legally required environmental impact study; the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM, which, ironically, approves or disapproves the environmental impact study, not the Ministry of the Environment); and various other Peruvian governmental and indigenous entities (SERNANP, COMARU, etc.).  In total, eighteen individuals were flown in, including cooks, engineers, and a freezer (!) in four helicopters from Nuevo Mundo, the Matsigenka community on the Urubamba River where Repsol has its nearest base.  They were housed in an abandoned health post (built by Repsol in 2007).  These are major visits in both social (and influx of 18 individuals in a village of ~75 residents is substantial) and political terms, and this one had been preceded by a separate indemnification negotiation meeting on July 1, which included two Repsol representatives.

Map of Repsol's Activities in the Huitiricaya and Yori

The reason for the visit is a $958,000,000 gas extraction project at the sites Kinteroni and Sagari (the latter the Matsigenka word for a species of rat) in the concession known as Lot 57, most of which encompasses the basin of the Huitiricaya River, which empties into the Urubamba but the headwaters of which come close to the Yori River, which flows alongside Kitepámpani where it joins the Ageni to form the Mipaya.  The entire project is confined to the Huitiricaya basin except for a single wide trail that has been cleared, connecting the upper Huitiricaya and upper Yori, the future site of a industrial waste water pipe, which enters into Kitepámpani territory, and is upriver of frequent fishing sites used by Caquintes, and as such, is rightly feared as a source of significant contamination. Repsol has claimed that the trail was cleared by an unnamed subcontractor in error, without proper notification to Kitepámpani.  This was the subject of the July 1 meeting -- a disconcerting show of the fickleness and flippancy with which these corporations negotiate -- in which the community successfully managed to secure 600,000 soles in indemnification from Repsol.  The "error" is difficult to interpret, since the maps appended to the environmental impact report demonstrably show plans for clearing the abovementioned trail.

Repsol's Audiencia Pública in Kitepámpani
July 5, 2015

The larger July 5 meeting is known as an Audienca Pública, and is meant to present the results of a precirculated first draft of the environmental impact report and entertain questions related to that study, and (as was emphasized numerous times in highly condescending language throughout the meeting) not to indemnification, compensation, and the like, which are often more real and tangible concerns for Caquintes.  The meeting began at 10AM, consisted of an overwhelming deluge of slides touching on everything from local biodiversity to the nature of industrial waste water, and lasted, with the question period, 'til 9:30PM.  The entire proceedings were translated and/or paraphrased into Caquinte by an overworked and underappreciated community president, who had to preside for the entirety of the meeting.

Repsol's Environmental Impact Study
(Note the translations in Spanish and Caquinte.)

The  environmental impact report itself had also been translated into Caquinte, although without any concern given by Repsol as to the highly technical nature of the report; and no one present could tell me by whom or by what organization it was translated.  The efficacy of these meetings is dubious, and is arguably more a demonstration of corporate might and an assurance against claims of deception than anything else. More unfortunately, linguistic and cultural barriers abound in the extreme, particularly as concerns the bureaucratic structure of corporations like Repsol, as well as the nature of Western scientific inquiry.  (What is a genus?  What are elements?)  Such notions are certainly perfectly explainable, but not with the time or consciousness put forth by Repsol.  It remains to be seen how these upcoming developments will affect Kitepámpani materially, culturally, and in terms of the personal health of its residents.