It was Terry Freitas, however, who was leading the trip. He had visited the U'wa five times since 1997. The bilingual project was just one part of a larger campaign, called the U'wa Defense Working Group, that Freitas, along with other international activists, had launched to help the U'wa in a bitter fight against the California oil multinational Occidental Petroleum. Occidental believes the oil field holds about 1.5 billion barrels of oil - enough to satisfy U.S. domestic demands for about three months. It's such a black and white, right and wrong, David and Goliath situation where all this people is asking is to be left alone, to protect their land.
Oil occupies a special place in the U'wa cosmology.
They believe oil is the blood of mother earth and that their role is to keep the earth in balance. Occidental's drilling plans would destroy the earth's balance, affecting the entire planet and cosmos, not just their land. All rights reserved.