“Careful with the plants, careful with the trees, careful with the animals,” her grandfather would repeat.
Traveling to the southern region of Colombia as a young child, Paula García remembers being taught by her elders about the deep interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. During visits, her family would echo the teachings of their ancestors, perspectives that García still carries with her today.
As early as the 1920s, United States-based oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil began exploring and exploiting Colombian oil, starting with ExxonMobil’s acquisition of the Tropical Oil Company of Colombia in 1920. The subsequent decades brought expansion, commercialization and ultimately a boom of oil production in the Huila region, where García’s family lives. Communities there were often not aware of the contracts or projects until troves of…
Read the full article originally published at blog.ucsusa.org.