Radio Mundo Real

The Spanish company Repsol YPF has been operating unscrupulously in Argentina to plunder non renewable hydrocarbon resources, while violating national and international regulations, in addition to their own concession contracts, according to the Foundation of Social and Political Research (FISYP) from Argentina and the Mapuche Confederation from Neuquen Province.

Repsol has caused impacts on the environment, the lives and culture of the inhabitants of the regions where the company is operating, especially indigenous communities, state the organizations in a complaint filed to the Permanent Peoples´ Tribunal which will be held in Madrid, Spain, in May 14-15.

This non-binding tribunal promoted by social movements and organizations from the Bi-regional Network Europe- Latin America and the Caribbean Enlazando Alternativas, will try several European companies due to their criminal operations in the South.

The FISYP and the Mapuche Confederation from Neuquen point out that Repsol has extracted everything it could from Argentinian oil deposits to obtain profits. “The irrational use of resources has meant the loss of large part of the Argentinian natural wealth. Hydrocarbon sources (that belong to all Argentinan people) have been unsustainably reduced and are victims of abandonment and speculation”, the organizations state.

They also highlight the attacks to the rights of communities living for centuries in the lands exploited by the Spanish corporation, among them the Lonko Puran Mapuche community in Neuquen. Their rights, protected by the National Constitution, and UN and ILO agreements, are systematically violated by Repsol in Cerro Bandera oil deposit.

Local, national and international regulations protect the “ethnic and cultural pre-existence” of the indigenous peoples, the right to have the State recognize their communities, the right to ownership of “lands traditionally occupied by them”, and the right to “participation on the management of their natural resources and other interests that affect them”.

Therefore, these regulations should be respected. “Mapuche ancestral culture and values, and their way of living and their relationship with nature, are being attacked by Repsol, which is not only risking this way of living, but also the survival of the community, with pollution, destruction and abandonment”, they state.

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