The controversy over the two oil spills in the Peruvian
Amazon has been steadily increasing over the last month. In the initial
aftermath of the spill, Peruvian state-owned oil company Petro-Perú thoroughly
botched its messaging regarding the cause of the spills and the company’s
response.
On Monday, actor Leonardo DiCaprio heightened
the controversy even more by using his Instagram account to publicly call
for Peru to clean up the 3,000 barrels of oil. This level of publicity
could prove disastrous to Petro-Perú’s attempts to demonstrate that it is
completely in control of the situation. The Hollywood activism could bring
increased international scrutiny of an issue that, to this point, had been
covered only at the local level.
The Peruvian government has declared
a water quality emergency in 16 indigenous communities as a result of the
spill. The government recommended that the communities not drink the water for
a minimum of 60 days. One local told
Al Jazeera that her family is no longer able to eat fish from the river, and
has been forced to subsist exclusively on bananas and yucca.
Petro-Perú however has continued its tone-deaf response to
the crisis. Victor Huarcaya, the leader of Petro-Peru’s emergency response
team, appeared to place blame on the indigenous victims for the food crisis: “As
Petro-Perú, we say it's safe to bathe and you can eat the fish, but the
population distrusts us because they don't know oil and its behavior.” Why
would the local communities trust Petro-Perú’s recommendations when the oil
company has already violated that trust by spilling 3,000 barrels of oil?
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