Santa Clara de Uchunya: A Divided Community

Deforestation caused by Plantaciones de Pucallpa was recorded within the ancestral territory that the community claims as theirs. Screenshot. Source: Video UCHUNYA: Where Will We Live?

The company was denounced and, in September 2015, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MINAGRI) ordered the preventive suspension of its activities. Despite this, the company continued to operate and, in April 2016, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) also ordered it to halt its operations on a preliminary basis until it issues a final decision on the case.

In response, the company put its assets up for public auction and, in October 2016, withdrew its RSPO membership, claiming to have divested all its oil palm properties and no longer have a stake in the industry. In April 2017, the RSPO would release its final decision, concluding that the company had deforested primary forests in contravention of its code of conduct.

But let's go back to 2016. That year, Ocho Sur was created after acquiring the assets of Plantaciones de Pucallpa and Plantaciones de Ucayali, which at the time were under investigation by the Ucayali environmental prosecutor's office on charges of deforestation.

With the arrival of Ocho Sur, the complaints of land invasion and deforestation in Santa Clara de Uchunya did not stop. On the other hand, complaints of harassment against people who reported these events began to appear.

The case of Santa Clara de Uchunya reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) which, in 2020, ordered the Peruvian state to protect the community against threats and land invasions.

But while the leaders of Santa Clara de Uchunya continued their struggle in defence of their territories, something within the community began to generate the first frictions among its inhabitants.

It was the support that the Ocho Sur company had begun to provide to the community, appealing to its policy of social responsibility. Testimonies gathered for this report point to this moment as the beginning of the communal division.

Communal division

One of the first offers that arrived in Santa Clara de Uchunya in mid-2021 was a proposed agreement to fix the main road that links the community with Nueva Requena.

 

"They made a tripartite agreement (company, municipality and community) and they needed the community to sign it. As Ocho Sur was involved, the community didn't want to do it," says a local communicator.

 

Later, the company wanted to donate a truck, but for that it needed a deed signed by the president of the community. The then interim chief, Efer Silvano Soria - who covered for Carlos Hoyos Soria - refused.

This fact was not overlooked. "There were community members who were uncomfortable, they didn't want to lose that truck because it would be useful for transporting their products or for travelling outside the community," says an Indigenous leader.

Ocho Sur's offers - which came through a Nueva Requena councillor and member of the community - generated friction in the community which, at the beginning of 2022, had to elect its new president.

With the elections of the community's Board of Directors just around the corner, in December 2021 Ocho Sur was once again present in Santa Clara de Uchunya, this time to bring hampers and panettones for Christmas.

 

"It was noticeable that as the elections approached, the company began to help more intensely, bringing donations, repairs to educational institutions, refurbishments, furniture deliveries, as if it were a campaign," says the local communicator.

 

All this support earned Ocho Sur the backing of several community members who began to look favourably on the company.

It was in this context that, on 17 January 2022, Wilson Barbarán was elected as the new president of Santa Clara de Uchunya, and since then he has been in favour of the Ocho Sur company.

In order to mitigate the presence of only people in favour of Ocho Sur on the Board of Directors headed by Barbarán and registered in the Public Registers, the community members who continue to demand the territory of which they had been dispossessed, had no other option but to insert their voices on the board, winning three of the seven seats on the board.

The election of Barbarán was also questioned and taken to court by one sector because it was allegedly held without complying with the community's statutes, something that the justice system has yet to determine. 

Two established groups

With the arrival of Wilson Barbarán to the presidency and his notorious support for Ocho Sur, the division in the community became more pronounced, with two groups established: those in favour and those who remain against the company.

Those who remain against, reject the presence of Ocho Sur, demand accountability for the deforestation and invasion of their lands, and fight for territorial expansion with the support of Indigenous organisations and non-profit associations.

This group is organised in the Frente de Defensa por los intereses de la Comunidad Nativa Santa Clara de Uchunya (Front for the Defence of the Interests of the Native Community Santa Clara de Uchunya), which is made up of more than 30 community members.

Those in favour, on the other hand, are grateful for Ocho Sur's support, maintain that the community has no more territory to recover, and reject that Indigenous organisations and NGOs are using the community's name "for their own interests".

In addition, they recently facilitated the signing of an agreement between the community and Ocho Sur in which part of the communal territory is made available to the company under the form of a conservation agreement for 1,200 hectares of forest for 25 years. This type of agreement would supposedly help the company to obtain the approval of its Environmental Adaptation and Management Programme (PAMA) from the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation (MIDAGRI), an instrument that the company claims to be processing in order to operate in accordance with environmental standards.

The most notorious representatives of this group in favour of Ocho Sur are Wilson Barbarán, the current president of the community, and Washington Bolívar, a Kakataibo leader who arrived in the Shipibo community in 2014.

Until a few years ago, Barbarán was part of the group of community members fighting to recover their territory, as evidenced by his actions. For example, as a community member, he signed the minutes of the community assembly of 11 September 2020 that validated the action of writing about Ocho Sur’s human rights violations to the United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. A few years later, he would acknowledge this.

This was established in the minutes of the community assembly, dated 25 March 2018, signed, among others, by Wilson Barbarán, then municipal agent. Today, sympathy for Ocho Sur has brought them together again.

Communications resources

The two opposing sides in Santa Clara de Uchunya over the presence of Ocho Sur use a variety of resources to communicate their positions, which Servindi reviewed and found striking facts.

On the one hand, the group against the company issues communiqués that are disseminated by Indigenous organisations such as the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) and the Federation of Native Communities of Ucayali and its Tributaries (FECONAU).

Meanwhile, the group in favour of Ocho Sur, expresses its position through communiqués that are published on a Facebook page that bears the name of the community, created on 2 March 2023.

Although the page bears the name of the community, it does not represent the opinion of all the members of Santa Clara de Uchunya, as can be understood at this point knowing that there is a group with an opposing position on Ocho Sur.

However, this page is the one that Ocho Sur usually quotes to deny that members of the community are questioning the company and to affirm that they maintain a good relationship with the community.

A striking fact about this page is that on the same day it was created, it published a post announcing the inauguration of a health centre in the community "thanks to a donation from the Ocho Sur Group".

Subsequently, the page has been used to publicise activities in the community and the management of its leaders, but also to reject Indigenous organisations and NGOs that question Ocho Sur. For all these reasons, there are community members who believe that this page is managed by the company.

Servindi also found that the position of this group is reproduced in local publications such as Diario Ahora and, more recently, in national television media such as Latina and Willax TV.

Diario Ahora disseminates news about Santa Clara de Uchunya from the anti-organisational stance of the current administration of Wilson Barbarán. In addition, it has publications that highlight the social work of the company Ocho Sur.

 

"Diario Ahora has practically become a 'spokesperson' for Ocho Sur and the community. We suspect that the publications made by this local newspaper are not free," says a communicator from Ucayali.

 

In the case of Latina and Willax TV, the media outlets that went to Santa Clara de Uchunya, the position was that calm prevails in the community and there are no problems with the company Ocho Sur, whom they thank for their support.

This was made clear in a dispatch made by Latina on 11 March for the programme "Arriba Mi Gente" and in a report on the Sunday programme of Willax TV, Contracorriente, broadcast on 7 April, both in the year 2024.

In the Latina dispatch, the company Ocho Sur's support to the community is explicitly acknowledged. Servindi identified that on the days when this dispatch was recorded, the Community Relations Manager of the Ocho Sur Group, Ulises Saldaña, was seen close to and talking with the Latina team.

In the case of the Willax TV report, Wilson Barbarán and Washington Bolívar, leaders who maintain a close relationship with the company Ocho Sur, are responsible for raising the aforementioned position.

Other media outlets that have reproduced the group's position in favour of Ocho Sur and against the NGOs that question the company are Trome, Agro Perú, Expreso, Perú 21 and Lampadia.

Undeniable division

Each of the groups - for and against Ocho Sur - has its own arguments to explain its position and they often end up confronting and responding to each other in communiqué after communiqué.

The difference, as can be seen, is that the position of the group in favour of Ocho Sur is getting more and more coverage in the regional or national media.

The Front for the Defence of the Interests of Santa Clara de Uchunya has warned about this situation in which the media only report the version that favours the company, ignoring the demands of this other group.

 

"We don't have enough money to publish on social networks, in the spoken or written press, as do those who are in favour of deforestation and the growth of oil palm in the territories of native communities where there are still forests", said this group at the end of 2023.

 

The community's Defence Front presumes that this is a strategy by Ocho Sur to silence their demands for justice for deforestation and the expansion of their communal territory under secure tenure.

Ocho Sur has denied responsibility for the events in Santa Clara de Uchunya, although this will have to be determined by an investigation currently being carried out by the organised crime prosecutor's office in Lima.

The company has also denied being responsible for the division in the community and recently denied sponsoring the smear campaign against former Indigenous leaders and organisations of which it is accused.

What can no longer be denied is that there is a division in the community caused by the company's entry. The social fabric of Santa Clara de Uchunya is broken and this is not good news at all.

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*Indigenous leaders and communicators interviewed for this report preferred to keep their names confidential for fear of reprisals.