PACIFIC
RUBIALES AND VENEZUELA
Talk
given at the “Report Back from the People’s Tribunal in Colombia”
Organized
by: CASA
August
20, 2013, OISE, Toronto
Maria
Páez Victor
In the name of the Louis Riel Bolivarian Circle, and in my own, I want to thank
the organizers of this event for giving us , and myself, the chance to express
publicly our solidarity, indeed our love, for the Colombian people, who are our
own people of Our America, and to accompany them, even if only in this
miniscule way, in their struggles for social justice and peace.
We are living at a crossroads of history, a very
unsettled and dangerous time. We
are witnessing the destruction of the international order, that is, of the
international laws that up to now, uphold the sovereignty of nations, that set
out limits to war, namely the Geneva Convention, and the laws that uphold Human
Rights and democracy itself.
Today we are talking of the corporation Pacific
Rubiales, but this issue, which is a matter of life and death for the
populations, as well as of the ecosystems, as we have heard here today; but is
much greater and much more sinister that that which involves Colombia or
Venezuela. And, there is a special cautionary tale for us here in Canada too,
the mining capital of the world.
We see how a powerful corporation is capable of
wielding state power to oppress citizens in one country and of threatening the
legitimate state of another nation. We are looking at the sheer power of an
amoral corporation bent on usurping not just natural resources, but the powers
that belong only to the people and the governments they legitimately elect.
Almost 400 years ago, in 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia, ended a
bloody 30 Years War in Europe. It was a muddled conflict between many states
(Spain, France, Holland, Sweden, several German Princes, Switzerland), with two
supra-national entities intervening, the Holy Roman Empire and the Vatican.
This Treaty brought about the basis of our modern international laws as it
recognized the concept of the Nation-state and its Sovereignty, by which was
meant:
·
territorial
integrity
·
non-intervention by other states, and
·
political determination that included
the right of nations to determine their own official religion and governance,
and as well recognized the freedom of religion of dissenters.
After the Second World War, even when the United
Nations was created as a supra-national assembly whereby nations would discuss
their conflicts in order to avoid war, it was still based on the concept of the
sovereignty of the nation state. These laws have not always been kept, as we
all know very well, but at least they were there as a compass and as a light.
The advent of the extreme right-wing agenda based
on free market ideas of Milton Freidman, executed by powerful politicians such
as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, brought about the age of Corporate
Capitalism, or as President Chávez called it, savage capitalism. Today, of the world’s 100 largest
economies, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries.
We are witnessing an assault on the very idea of
the nation state, and of democracy, and the enemy is the corporation and its
instruments include international trade deals and arbitration tribunals, and
the idea always floating about, of a supposed need for a “world government”,
which we all know that means the government of the powerful. For example, the World Trade
Organization gives corporations veto power over states’ environmental and
labour laws.
Corporations are global, they respect no boundaries
or democracy. Ironically they have managed to obtain
rights pertaining to human beings as they have been declared “persons” but once
people enter a corporation, they cease to have those basic rights.
It was Ronald Reagan who maligned the nation state
by saying: “The government is the problem not the solution” and Margaret Thatcher who,
trashing all of social science, said: ”There is no such thing as society.” They ushered in the age of
selfish individualism that denies the common interest, and opened the door to
the deification of private enterprise embodied in the corporation, and the
denial of the “common interest”. It is truly Hobbes’ infernal vision of a world
of man against man.[i]
The people become oppressed by governments that do
not represent their interest, let alone their best interest. Corporations can
unduly influence states, and especially those in developing countries, under
the guise of “helping their development”, of “bringing prosperity”, of
“promoting economic growth”. Every time pubic social services are cut or
privatized, is a weakening of the
legitimate role of government.
Corporations working in developing countries target the workers’ unions, indigenous
and rural communities, environmental and human rights ,NGOs, as all these are seen as an obstacles to its profit making.
All in the name of “progress” , “development” and “economic growth”.
So a corporation like Pacific Rubiales, is allowed
to reach such strength and magnitude that it account for 41% of the growth in
the oil production of Colombia, and furthermore, uses its power to unduly
influence the Colombian government and to undermine the neighboring state, the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Pacific Rubiales, a Canadian oil company, is the
largest independent oil company operating in South America. It is directly implicated and denounced
by numerous Colombian NGO sand unions, for usurpation of natural resources,
environmental degradation, forced displacement of indigenous and rural
communities, blatant violations of human rights, economic damages and impoverishing
and harassing the labour force and its union. It is implicated in paramilitary
violence including murders, disappearances and death threats. We have heard
here today examples of these nefarious dealings. [ii]
The fact that it works along with the Colombian state oil company ECOPETROL is
used to their advantage as PR, as they also give a good “nationalistic” spin to
their enterprise. In other words, as corporations erode democracy, they become
facilitators of state terrorism.
And, now this corporation is entering into the area
of international conflict. The
President of the Venezuelan state owned oil company PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez,
warned last Sunday that this transnational Canadian oil company Pacific
Rubiales “finances and conspires openly “ against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela. ‘This
is a very dangerous company”, he said, “the attack against PDVSA is really an attack
against our oil policies because PDVSA is an instrument of our sovereignty.” [iii]
Pacific Rubiales is exploring for oil all along the
Venezuelan frontier having built already 55 exploratory wells at a cost of $355
m. It is believed they are preparing to dig horizontally to tap into Venezuelan
oil fields across the border.
Pacific Rubiales , which operates in the largest
oil area of Colombia has in its Board of Directors ,Venezuelans, former PDVSA
executives who were responsible for the oil lockout of 2002 and 2003 which
brought down the economy of the
country and caused US$ 25,000
million dollars damage. [iv]It
was an economic coup d’etat, to try to bring down the legitimate government of
President Chávez by paralyzing the economy with sabotage, destruction of
computer operations, dangerous fires and blocking exports. These men should be
behind bars for their crimes against the people of Venezuela.
Mr. Ramírez , who is also Minister of Energy and
Petroleum, denounced by name, these board directors responsible for the sabotage. If they ever came to power
again they would hand over PDVSA to Pacific Rubiales.
The directors include:[v]
Ronald
Pantin, an
industrial engineer who worked in PDVSA for 23 years , one of the orchestrators
of the oil sabotage
Jose
Franciso Arata
another important ex-PDVSA executive, geologist and engineer with 20 years
experience in oil exploration
Miguel
Rodríguez who was
an important figure in Venezuelan banking and behind the oil sabotage.
Augusto
López Valencia,
representative of the powerful Grupo Santo Domingo enterprises.
Serafino
Iacomo, an expert
in capital investment who was the one to chose Colombia as the place to go with
his former colleagues
Miguel
de la Campa,
economist who studied at Georgetown USA and was behind the inclusion of the
company on the stock markets in Toronto, Sao Paulo and Bogotá.
Among
the directors is an ex-CIA agent, Neil
Woodyer, in charge
of CIA expansion and, to Canada’s shame, Dennis Mills, former cabinet minister during Pierre Trudeau’s
government.
Minister Ramírez, however, expressed his faith in
the oil workers whom he said “were conscious and prepared to defend PDVSA.
Our oil industry is in patriotic hands. And those plans of the opposition fills
us with determination and mobilizes us.”
It is right that he be optimistic about the oil
workers because, after all, it was they who saved PDVSA from destruction during
the oil lockout. They defiantly showed that the workers were capable of
operating the very complex and highly technological enterprise without top or
even the middle management that had walked out. Thousands of ordinary workers,
hundreds of former workers and executives, and a handful of electronic engineer
students from the universities came out to save the industry, indeed to save
the Venezuelan economy.
It was a magnificent moment of Venezuelan history
because in the midst of grave danger, in the face of almost despair the workers
themselves saved their country, their oil company, their economy.
Oil workers became heroes overnight. And this pride
in their collective accomplishment gives them strength in the face of the
conspiracy of the traitors who conspire against Venezuela through Pacific
Rubiales.
Last Friday, the Venezuelan Foreign Minster Elias
Jaua, informed that soon when President Maduro meets President Santos, he will
present to him evidence of the conspiracy that is being plotted, not by his
government, but in Bogotá, against Venezuela, which includes economic sabotage,
paramilitary operations and the 18 fighter planes that the rightwing Bogotá
conspirators have bought in the USA to be taken to a Colombian air base in the coming months. [vi]
Of course, the Colombian government itself has
strong, armed forces that have 50 years experience of conflict and they are
twice as large as Venezuela’s and further they have the backing of the USA
forces. So if it came to open war
between the two countries, undoubtedly Colombia would have a huge advantage.
But, because of the now important consolidation of
Latin America that President Chávez ushered in, with integration instruments
such as CELAC, UNASUR, MERCOSUR, ALBA, BANCO DEL SUR, PETROCARIBE and PETROSUR,
Colombia feels such pressure to be part of the new regional infrastructure. As
well, due to President Chavez’ unprecedented peace overture to Colombia and its
people, and due to the risk to the billion dollar trade between the two
countries, the chances of open formal conflict between the nations has receded.
This is also helped by the fact that Uribe is no longer the president of
Columbia as his excessive and obsessive antagonism to Venezuela was a true
danger to both nations.
Therefore, the elements of the hard right that wish
to see the end of the Bolivarian Revolution and its government in Venezuela
take recourse in underhand, covert, actions such as use of paramilitary force,
the buying of private fighter planes and economic destabilization with also the
power of Pacific Rubiales.
Such a conspiracy is specifically forbidden by the 1981
UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility and Intervention in the Internal Affairs
of States, which stresses the “imperative need
for any threat of aggression, any recruitment, any use of armed bands, in
particular mercenaries, against sovereign States to be completely ended, so as
to enable the peoples of all States to determine their own political, economic
and social
systems without external interference or control.”
We must all act with consciousness, awareness of
the forces that are working towards the subjugation of humankind and the
destruction of the planet’s ecosystems.
We here in Canada have the opportunity to try to
influence our government to demand social, environmental and political
responsibility from Canadian companies that work oversees. When they harass
workers and unions, use paramilitary to kill, disappear and threaten people,
when they displace indigenous and rural communities, when they become part of
assassinations and conspiracies, they do it in our name – because they are
known as being a Canadian company.
We have the opportunity also to try to dissuade the
Canadian board member, Dennis Mills. He is a member of the Liberal party, a
former minister under the Pierre Trudeau, representing the riding of Danforth;
he organized the Rolling Stones concert in 2003 to counteract the SARS epidemic
impacts, and as a Roman Catholic, he organized the World Youth Day that had
Pope John Paul II come to Toronto in 2002. He is also CEO of Racing Futures, an
organization of horse racing. I urge you all to send him a message, not a
threatening message, but one of genuine information. Let us give him the
benefit of the doubt that he does not know the sinister company he is associated
with. At least, in the end, he will not be able to say “I did not know of the
murders, assassinations, displacements, rights violations and death threats”.
We
must work for the unity in Latin America that was urged so passionately by our
beloved heroes, the great Liberator Simón Bolívar and our Eternal Comandante,
Hugo Chávez Frías. And we must work hard so that corporations do not unduly
influence our government, undermine our democracy, and do not
contribute to the oppression and misery of Latin American people.
[i] Thomas
Hobbes, “Leviathan” 1651
[ii] Telelsur,
17 August 2013
[iii] “Gobierno
venezolano denuncia conspiración de empresa Pacific Rubiales”, TELESUR, 30 June
2013
[iv] La
Trinchera, interview with Will
rangel, Presdient of the oil union, Central Bolivariana Socialista de Trabajadores Petroleros,
http://www.latrinchera.org/foros/showthread.php?38519-MULTADOS-EXTRABAJADORES-DE-PDVSA-POR-DAÑOS-CAUSADOS-A-LA-NACION
[v] Alfredo
Oliva, aporrea 24/03/2013
[vi] AVN /
domingo 16 de junio 2013
