Young Ecuadorian child captured in front of a Texaco oil barrel leftover from spillage. Photo courtesy of selva- vida sin fronteras
Children are bearing the consequences of the resource extractivism which has been leading to climate change consequences. They are a vulnerable population in the face of oil spills, sea level rising, and carbon emissions. In Ecuador, Texaco and Chevron left their carbon footprint on indigenous communities, because of this the children are forced to step into a role to take charge and speak on their rights to have their indigenous community protected and valued. From 1972 to 1992 Texaco, bought by Chevron in 2001, extracted oil in a 440,000 hectare concession area, depositing polluted waste water in oilfield pits, disregarding the indigenous community of Sarayaku. The state knowingly engaged in continuing environmental liability in high risk areas, disregarding children and the environmental harm it causes. The environmental inequality resulted from profit-maximization on the land of the indigenous by Texaco and Chevron.
Ultimately indigenous communities are infantilized by the Global North for being "underdeveloped," when it's the Global North's extractivist practices that are causing their suffering. Using the language of "underdevelopment" is a form of infantilization of Latin American countries and indigenous communities. When companies like Texaco and Chevron willingly poison the communities and as reparations for the damage done, it is handled with money. Carbon outputs are related to oil, but the environmental crisis that directly affects this community is the environmental toll of extraction, and not the consumption practices (later) that change climate conditions through carbon emissions. Ecuador's estimated total population in 2015 is 16 million. Of these, around 6 million are children and adolescents – that is, 36% of the total population, despite the fact that the majority of the population is not constituted by children or young people, the Ecuadorian people are treated in infantilized ways by oil corporations.
In Ecuador there are many children like the girl pictured above who are suffering from the Texaco oil company and its effects. Companies like Texaco and Chevron swoop into indigenous communities and pollute their waters. Environmental problems are local, yet, policies that (de)regulate corporate environmental actors are established at the regional, national and international level. Plans for colonization and agricultural production in the Ecuadorian region grew out of mobilization. Environmental discrimination, and distribution inequality emerged as a result of the “wasteland” (indigenous communities) that have been forced to have some areas developed for economic purposes.
Civilized vs. Savage
In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) awarded the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, in the central Amazon, $1.25 million, after a seventeen-year battle against Argentine extractive interests. Extraction caused environmental degradation and discouraged activism from citizens. There are organizations around the world who deem it their duty to help these indigenous people and the children in these communities, making programs to help them become more like modernized, “civilized” societies. Climate change and its consequences have a huge impact on the environment, specifically for children in Ecuador. We see that “civilized” governments look down upon those that carry out indigenous lifestyles. Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, in their classic 1971 book How to Read Donald Duck, introduced the concept of the brown child as savage versus the white child as civilized. In the chapter “From the Child to the Noble Savage”, brown children and brown people of color have been constructed through popular culture and media as playful, instinctive, like animals: “Thus the animal is considered to be the only living being in the universe inferior to the child.”[1] We see in Ecuador that the entitlement to indigenous land and children's right to live an environmentally equal life are disregarded for economic income.
Photos by Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak, who traveled to Ecuador to document the physical and emotional reality of those affected by pollution and their struggle for justice.
Child propaganda like the image above creates a craving to save and preserve an idealized version of vulnerable childhood. Specific issues generate a set of emotions, and such images produce views which detach children from the reality of “childhood”. The White Savior Industrial Complex "is not about justice, it’s about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege." There are people, organizations, and nations that deem it their duty to industrialize or civilize the “savage”. With the white savior complex, emerging “aid pornography” validates privilege and has become the excuse to mobilize aid quickly (and uncritically) to Latin countries. As Global North infantilizes the brown child, their depoliticized logic of ‘saving’ and ‘helping’ the less fortunate others in the global South, inherits such distinctions and reproduces them further.
The Fight is Not Over
Since 1996, Amazon Watch has preserved the rainforest and advanced the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. They partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems. Amazon Watch protects millions of acres of rainforest every year by partnering with indigenous peoples – the best stewards of the forest – to directly challenge the corporate and government powers that threaten the Amazon and our climate. The Amazon Watch campaign has fought vigorously alongside the indigenous people and children, amplifying their voice. Just recently on April 29th, 2020 indigenous peoples launched a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government and private and state oil companies in the wake of one of the country's biggest oil spills in over a decade. The indigenous gained this win without infantilizing themselves, or presenting themselves as vulnerable, in need of handouts or state protection, but rather introduced language of sovereignty or autonomy: “Indigenous and human rights organizations are denouncing the government’s failure to undertake a proper clean-up effort, provide communities with water and food, and provide timely information about the magnitude or scope of contamination to indigenous communities downriver.” (Staff)
Earlier this month, on April 7th, an estimated 15,000 barrels of crude oil gushed into two of the country's most important rivers following the rupture of two major oil pipelines in Ecuador's northern Amazon. The spill affects over 2,000 indigenous families and has left an estimated 120,000 people without access to the river's fresh water. The Ecuadorian government created an Emergency Committee charged with supervising the application of measures to mitigate environmental impacts caused by the spill and pipeline ruptures. Indigenous and human rights organizations are denouncing the government's failure to undertake a proper clean-up effort, provide communities with water and food, and provide timely information about the magnitude or scope of contamination to indigenous communities downriver. Moreover, indigenous peoples are concerned that the pipelines remain at risk for future spills, and experts are warning that fissures detected in the hydroelectric dam possibly caused by the same land erosion could lead it to burst and trigger yet another disaster of monumental proportions. The spill is estimated to be the largest since 2004 and follows a tragic legacy of over a half century of oil contamination and human rights abuses in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where nearly 70 percent of the rainforest has been leased to oil companies. This latest spill affects hundreds of miles of rainforest riverways, and will have devastating environmental impacts in one of the most bio-diverse areas on the planet.
In today’s Global South, the idea of civilizing through children has continued with the development of child-focused development projects, many of which depend heavily upon financial support from foreign donors. Such civilizing projects become even more visible in the context of development intervention targeting children of the global South, because they are linked to fundamental structural inequalities in the current global order. This implies a patronization not only of children and parents, but also of nations allegedly not able to take care of their own citizens. Many NGOs see themselves as defenders of human rights and as political watchdogs of governments and guardians/parents, both seen to be potentially exploitative towards children.
[1] Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, “From the Child to the Noble Savage,” How To Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, Trans. David Kunzle (New York: International General, 1975 [1971]): 41-47.