c/o 445 Summit Road
Watsonville, CA 95076
February 3, 2000
Dear Vice President Gore,
I write to you as the girlfriend of Terence Freitas, one of
three human
rights workers kidnapped and assassinated last March while assisting
the
U'wa indigenous community of oil-rich northeastern Colombia. I
write to
you from Palawan, Philippines, where I too help provide crucial
environmental legal assistance to indigenous communities. I write
to
remind you of the various roles you personally have played in
the case
of the U'wa, including that of meeting Terence and the U'wa in
1997.
One year ago this week, as I unpacked moving boxes into the
apartment
Terence and I would have shared in Brooklyn, I found myself shelving
two
copies of Earth in the Balance: my own, and that of Terence. I
sat down
with the book again, rereading with marvel the poignant message
you
asserted in 1993. You insisted that policy makers and the general
citizenry alike must take into account environmental and social
costs of
our coveted northern affluence. Proudly, I thought back to the
time
Terence met with you in Washington D.C., at a gathering for the
1997
Goldman Environmental Prize recipients. Terence was instrumental
in
bringing the U'wa struggle against Occidental Petroleum to world-wide
attention. He accompanied U'wa leader Roberto Cobaria to your
office.
How strong a statement of solidarity, for the Vice President of
the
United States to meet with an indigenous leader from the cloudforest
of
Colombia, recognizing his peoples' adamant resistance to a US
multinational oil company. You, Terence, the U'wa leader, and
your
principles, standing there together in your office.
While I reread Earth in the Balance last February, Terence
was in the
U'wa cloudforest with Native American leaders Ingrid Washinawatok
and
Lahe'ena'e Gay on a cultural exchange. On February 18, Terence
called
from Cubara, Colombia. I told him about the two copies of Earth
in the
Balance. We discussed whether you could be tapped as a more vocal
U'wa
ally in the campaign against the pending ecological, cultural,
and
economic havoc oil exploitation would spell for the U'wa and Colombia.
We were hopeful about your potential leadership on this pressing
environmental case. That phone call was the last time I talked
to
Terence. One week later, on the day he was to return to New York,
he and
his companions were kidnapped by guerrillas who are allegedly
on
friendly terms with Occidental. One week after that, the bound
bodies of
these three human rights workers were found splayed and disfigured
by
rounds of bullets just across the Venezuelan border.
You came to my attention again during the blurry week following
the
murders. In response to the appalling delay of the US State Department
to fly the bodies home from Caracas, the families received word
that the
Office of the Vice President was trying to arrange Air Force transport.
I wondered at that time if you remembered meeting Terence. I was
hopeful
that your personal connection to the U'wa struggle would expedite
the
process of getting their bodies home. Unfortunately, it was almost
a
week later before we met the United cargo plane in Los Angeles
carrying
Terence's body box.
Seven months later, I read the Wall Street Journal's account
of your
family's lucrative inheritance from your father of Occidental
Petroleum
and Occidental subsidiary stock and your long-standing personal
relationship with Occidental directors (9/29/99, editorial page).
By
then I had experienced several such smacks of political double
speak
from most actors in the Colombian debate. In Washington, Representative
Gilman used the murders of the three American human rights workers
as a
"wake up call" for the United States to increase military
assistance to
the Colombian military, despite that military's abysmal human
rights
record spanning four decades of escalating civil war during which
guns
held by any side have never proven a viable means toward peaceful
resolution (see Washington Post editorial page, May 22, 1999).
In
Bogotá, on September 21, 1999, the Colombian Minister of
Environment
Juan Mayr --- himself a former Goldman Environmental Prize winner
--- issued
the license for Occidental Petroleum to proceed with drilling
the oil
under U'wa land. To justify his action, he claimed the
constitutionally-required community consent process and environmental
review complete, despite the fact that the U'wa community continues
to
voice its vehement opposition and have been privy to no such process
of
environmental review. In Los Angeles, on April 30, 1999, at Occidental
Petroleum headquarters, Public Relations Officer Larry Meriage
held
Terence's mother's hand, calling the guerrilla murderers atrocious,
despite the fact that his company's incipient oil operations in
U'wa
land are directly responsible for the intensification of violent
conflict in the previously peaceful region. Even given this prevalent
political milieu, in which action wildly contradicts expressed
values, I
am appalled and disheartened to see you, America's lead environmental
champion, living the antithesis of your espoused values by continuing
to personally profit from Occidental Petroleum's exploits.
I am the same age as your daughter. Terence was one year our
junior.
Like your daughter, Terence and I looked forward to joining the
legal
profession together. We were eager to apply the conflict resolution
and
community organizing skills we have gained abroad to help address
the
wealth of environmental justice conflicts brewing domestically.
Like
your daughter, Terence and I had a bright future. With unbearable
anguish, his family and friends buried him on his twenty-fifth
birthday
last spring. Think how much brighter your family's prospects,
as you
enter the candidacy, if you removed the shadow cast by your family's
complicity in the unspeakable horrors faced by our family and
those of
the U'wa because of Occidental Petroleum.
I implore you to divest your family from Occidental Petroleum
and answer
the requests from the U'wa Defense Working Group, a coalition
of
US-based environmental and human rights organizations, to explain
your
position on that company's actions in the U'wa territory of Colombia.
Further, I beseech you to engage your peers in Washington, at
the
development banks, in Bogotá, and the private sector in
the sincere
pursuit of alternatives to military escalation and natural resource
exploitation as the means to address Colombia's economic woes.
Guns and
oil have never spelled sustainable development or peace. Measures
such
as debt swaps and demonstrated multilateral commitment to Colombia's
locally-driven social and economic development would move the
country
closer to these goals. Don't let your silence on the U'wa-Occidental
conflict --- an emblem of the wider sustainable development debate
you
champion --- continue to corrode the standards you set for the
American
public with Earth in the Balance.
Look again at what stirred you to work for the earth in the
first place.
Take a minute from your campaign, go to the forest, any forest.
Take a
walk alone. Feel the pulse of your heart beating in time with
that of
the rivers running. Feel the soil underfoot, like your muscles
stretching, resilient and alive. Breathe in the blessing of being
alive.
Think of Terence and the U'wa working to defend that basic human
right,
of life. Think of the Colombian military last week forcibly removing
U'wa families from their ancestral and legally owned land to provide
armed and protected access to Occidental's equipment and staff
houses.
Think of the newly granted US budget for this very Colombian military,
the largest sum given in history, making Colombia the third largest
recipient of US military aid. Think twice about where you have
chosen to
put not only your family's money, but that of the taxpayer as
well.
Vice President Gore, you should have my vote and that of virtually
all
of my peers. We are young doctors, ecologists, policy analysts,
teachers, historians, artists, journalists, public officials,
development workers, and lawyers. We work for environmental and
social
justice. We should be your constituency. I urge you to demonstrate
to us
that you deserve it.
Sincerely,
Abby Reyes
abby1973@mindspring.com
Please take a moment to write an electronic letter to Al Gore,
please click here:
http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/oxy/gore.html