Latin America

Two Indigenous Solar Engineers Changed Their Village in Chile

Liliana and Luisa Terán, two indigenous women from northern Chile who travelled to India for training in installing solar panels, have not only changed their own future but that of Caspana, their remote village nestled in a stunning valley in the Atacama desert.

“It was hard for people to accept what we learned in India,” Liliana Terán told IPS. “At first they rejected it, because we’re women. But they gradually got excited about, and now they respect us.”

Her cousin, Luisa, said that before they travelled to Asia, there were more than 200 people interested in solar energy in the village. But when they found out that it was Liliana and Luisa who would install and maintain the solar panels and batteries, the list of people plunged to 30.

“In this village there is a council of elders that makes the decisions. It’s a group which I will never belong to,” said Luisa, with a sigh that reflected that her decision to never join them guarantees her freedom.

Luisa, 43, practices sports and is a single mother of an adopted daughter. She has a small farm and is a craftswoman, making replicas of rock paintings. After graduating from secondary school in Calama, the capital of the municipality, 85 km from her village, she took several courses, including a few in pedagogy.

Liliana, 45, is a married mother of four and a grandmother of four. She works on her family farm and cleans the village shelter. She also completed secondary school and has taken courses on tourism because she believes it is an activity complementary to agriculture that will help stanch the exodus of people from the village.

But these soft-spoken indigenous women with skin weathered from the desert sun and a life of sacrifice are in charge of giving Caspana at least part of the energy autonomy that the village needs in order to survive.

Caspana – meaning “children of the hollow” in the Kunza tongue, which disappeared in the late 19th century – is located 3,300 metres above sea level in the El Alto Loa valley. It officially has 400 inhabitants, although only 150 of them are here all week, while the others return on the weekends, Luisa explained.

They belong to the Atacameño people, also known as Atacama, Kunza or Apatama, who today live in northern Chile and northwest Argentina.

“Every year, around 10 families leave Caspana, mainly so their children can study or so that young people can get jobs,” she said.

Up to 2013, the village only had one electric generator that gave each household two and a half hours of power in the evening. When the generator broke down, a frequent occurrence, the village went dark.

Today the generator is only a back-up system for the 127 houses that have an autonomous supply of three hours a day of electricity, thanks to the solar panels installed by the two cousins.

Chile Solar Mamas Barefoot College
The indigenous village of Caspana lies 3,300 metres above sea level in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The 400 inhabitants depend on small-scale farming for a living, as a stone marker at the entrance to the village proudly declares. Now, thanks to the efforts of two local women, they have electricity in their homes, generated by solar panels, which have now become part of the landscape. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

Each home has a 12 volt solar panel, a 12 volt battery, a four amp LED lamp, and an eight amp control box.

The equipment was donated in March 2013 by the Italian company Enel Green Power. It was also responsible, along with the National Women’s Service (SERNAM) and the Energy Ministry’s regional office, for the training received by the two women at the Barefoot College in India.

On its website, the Barefoot College describes itself as “a non-governmental organisation that has been providing basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities for more than 40 years, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable.”

So far, 700 women from 49 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America – as well as thousands of women from India – have taken the course to become “Barefoot solar engineers”.

They are responsible for the installation, repair and maintenance of solar panels in their villages for a minimum of five years. Another task they assume is to open a rural electronics workshop, where they keep the spare parts they need and make repairs, and which operates as a mini power plant with a potential of 320 watts per hour.

In March 2012 the two cousins travelled to the village of Tilonia in the northwest Indian state of Rajasthan, where the Barefoot College is located.

They did not go alone. Travelling with them were Elena Achú and Elvira Urrelo, who belong to the Quechua indigenous community, and Nicolasa Yufla, an Aymara Indian. They all live in other villages of the Atacama desert, in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta.

“We saw an ad that said they were looking for women between the ages of 35 and 40 to receive training in India. I was really interested, but when they told me it was for six months, I hesitated. That was a long time to be away from my family!” Luisa said.

Encouraged by her sister, who took care of her daughter, she decided to undertake the journey, but without telling anyone what she was going to do.

The conditions they found in Tilonia were not what they had been led to expect, they said. They slept on thin mattresses on hard wooden beds, the bedrooms were full of bugs, they couldn’t heat water to wash themselves, and the food was completely different from what they were used to.

“I knew what I was getting into, but it took me three months anyway to adapt, mainly to the food and the intense heat,” she said.

She remembered, laughing, that she had stomach problems much of the time. “It was too much fried food,” she said. “I lost a lot of weight because for the entire six months I basically only ate rice.”

Looking at Liliana, she burst into laughter, saying “She also only ate rice, but she put on weight!”

Liliana said that when she got back to Chile her family welcomed her with an ‘asado’ (barbecue), ’empanadas’ (meat and vegetable patties or pies) and ‘sopaipillas’ (fried pockets of dough).

Chile solar mama barefoot college
The primary school in Caspana, 1,400 km north of Santiago. Two indigenous cousins who were trained as solar engineers got the municipal authorities to provide solar panels for lighting in public buildings and on the village’s few streets, while they installed panels in 127 of the village’s homes. Credit: Mariana Jarroud/IPS

“But I only wanted to sit down and eat ‘cazuela’ (traditional stew made with meat, potatoes and pumpkin) and steak,” she said.

On their return, they both began to implement what they had learned. Charging a small sum of 45 dollars, they installed the solar panel kit in homes in the village, which are made of stone with mud roofs.

The community now pays them some 75 dollars each a month for maintenance, every two months, of the 127 panels that they have installed in the village.

“We take this seriously,” said Luisa. “For example, we asked Enel not to just give us the most basic materials, but to provide us with everything necessary for proper installation.”

“Some of the batteries were bad, more than 10 of them, and we asked them to change them. But they said no, that that was the extent of their involvement in this,” she said. The company made them sign a document stating that their working agreement was completed.

“So now there are over 40 homes waiting for solar power,” she added. “We wanted to increase the capacity of the batteries, so the panels could be used to power a refrigerator, for example. But the most urgent thing now is to install panels in the 40 homes that still need them.”

But, she said, there are people in this village who cannot afford to buy a solar kit, which means they will have to be donations.

Despite the challenges, they say they are happy, that they now know they play an important role in the village. And they say that despite the difficulties, and the extreme poverty they saw in India, they would do it again.

“I’m really satisfied and content, people appreciate us, they appreciate what we do,” said Liliana.

“Many of the elders had to see the first panel installed before they were convinced that this worked, that it can help us and that it was worth it. And today you can see the results: there’s a waiting list,” she added.

Luisa believes that she and her cousin have helped changed the way people see women in Caspana, because the “patriarchs” of the council of elders themselves have admitted that few men would have dared to travel so far to learn something to help the community. “We helped somewhat to boost respect for women,” she said.

And after seeing their work, the local government of Calama, the municipality of which Caspana forms a part, responded to their request for support in installing solar panels to provide public lighting, and now the basic public services, such as the health post, have solar energy.

“When I’m painting, sometimes a neighbour comes to sit with me. And after a while, they ask me about our trip. And I relive it, I tell them all about it. I know this experience will stay with me for the rest of my life,” said Luisa.

This reporting series was conceived in collaboration with Ecosocialist Horizons. Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

amazon watch chevron

Chevron CEO Doesn’t Deserve “Distinguished Citizen Award”

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak with Marc [YoutubeiTunes, and Podbean] about how sustainability activists in the Global North can support indigenous peoples who are protecting the Amazon rainforest and our climate. Indigenous peoples make up four percent of the world’s population, but their territories encompass 80% of our planet’s biodiversity. Last year the World Resources Institute released a comprehensive study supporting Amazon Watch’s strategy of empowering indigenous peoples and other local communities as the best way to protect the rainforest.

Unfortunately, those forest guardians are facing increasing threats from governments and companies looking to exploit their resources and violate their rights. Nina Gualinga, a youth leader from the Kichwa of Sarayaku, a community that defended its territory from the incursion of multiple oil companies and won a landmark case against the Ecuadorian government, speaks about our collective responsibility to keep the oil in the ground.  Last month we released the Slimy Seventeen, the seventeen oil companies that are most destructive for the Amazon and the communities that call it home.

One of those companies is Chevron, a corporation that lost a $9.5 billion lawsuit for poisoning 30,000 indigenous peoples and campesinos in the Ecuadorian Amazon. While Texaco, the company’s subsidiary, has admitted to deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste water into unlined open pits, Chevron is now refusing to pay. Instead, it has tried to sue the indigenous people it poisoned, their lawyers, its own shareholders, and even NGOs like Amazon Watch that dare to call it out for its abuses. That’s why, as my colleague Paul Paz y Miño wrote:

We were surprised to learn that the Commonwealth Club of California – the “nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum” – plans to honor Chevron CEO John Watson as a “distinguished global citizen” who has “given back” to the global community. They’re actually going to honor Watson’s ability to abuse his power, wealth and corporate connections to evade accountability for the wide range of environmental and human rights crimes he has overseen as head of Chevron since 2010? WHAT?!

There are a myriad of reasons why presenting such an award to Watson is outrageous. Massive pollution and health crises in Ecuador, death and destruction in Nigeria, lying to shareholders, abuse of the justice system, trampling free speech in the U.S., dumping millions into local elections to undermine democracy…the list of Chevron’s violations goes on and on. Watson has either overseen or has taken a personal role in advancing strategies that attack Chevron’s critics and has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid accepting responsibility for Chevron’s well documented actions of harming both people and the planet. It took less than a day to find almost 40 human rights and environmental organizations ready and willing to denounce this decision. If we had taken a week it would easily have been well over 100.

How is it then that none of this leaves a sour taste in the mouths of the Board of Governors at the Commonwealth Club?

Yes, this is all clearly a way for the Commonwealth Club to have a very successful fundraising gala. You present a symbolic award to someone like Watson and all his friends and colleagues come to dine and celebrate, donating thousands to the Club and paying exorbitant amounts for dinner and drinks at the Ritz Carlton. But just how far does someone need to go before it becomes in bad taste to “honor” them, despite how much money it may bring in? Would Bill Cosby be invited to the dinner alongside Jennifer Siebel Newsom as she talks about her work and film project on behalf of women and girls? I think not.

Yet Watson and Chevron’s acts to criminalize free speech and attack their critics were recently condemned by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and a host of other respected groups. Chevron famously lost in its effort to buy the elections in Richmond, hoping to completely undermine the democratic process. Why? Because their new puppets in Richmond would then drop the city’s lawsuit for the deadly refinery fire of 2012.

When Watson took over Chevron in 2010 his company’s handling of its Ecuador disaster took a very different and distinctly aggressive tone. Watson had been one of the architects of Chevron’s merger with Texaco years before. He was there when Amazon Watch warned Chevron not to proceed because of the enormous liability in Ecuador. He knew that Texaco admitted to deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the pristine inhabited rainforest. He knew Texaco documents were uncovered proving the company’s policy of hiding leaks and not reporting spills during its operations. Apparently, just as the Texaco executives decided that it was worth the human and environmental toll to save $3 per barrel by dumping the waste for decades instead of lining their open toxic waste pits, Watson decided the merger with Texaco was worth the cost. He literally agreed to own Texaco’s mess.

When Watson took over from David O’Reilly in 2010, he had a choice. He could have ushered in a new era for the company. He could have apologized to the people of Ecuador. He could have negotiated a settlement and agreed to clean up the Amazon wasteland his company had created. True – to do so would have cost a tremendous amount of money. But in addition to being the right thing to do, and stemming the wave of deaths from cancer, it would have also been fiscally responsible. And it would have earned Watson a legitimate reason to be recognized by a group like the Commonwealth Club.

For in the end, Chevron has spent over a billion dollars already just fighting to avoid its responsibility. Lawyers have built careers (and billed more than the affected communities in Ecuador make in a lifetime) providing legal defense for Chevron. When all is said and done, and Chevron finally pays for the clean-up, when it realizes that the resolve of the affected communities and their many global allies in supporters is stronger, then it will have paid twice over for its acts in Ecuador. Thousands more will have died from cancer, however. They are suffering and dying at this very moment.

Will Watson or anyone at the Commonwealth Club gala give a moment’s thought to them on April 2nd?

We could all shrug our shoulders and write this whole event off as just more of the rich patting themselves on the back and move on. But there is a real danger here. The danger is that this isn’t just a pro-oil company lobby group celebrating Watson’s acts to thwart renewable energy programs. This is an institution founded for debate and discussion on the issues of the day granting legitimacy to a known corporate criminal who is free from accountability only because he and his company are rich enough to hire 60 law firms and over 2000 legal professionals to drag on the legal saga for ages in hopes that the affected communities will literally die out and their supporters will exhaust the resources to assist them any more. That act must be protested. The standard that allows Watson to stand next to people acknowledged for actually trying to better the world must always be condemned. That is why we register our outrage. It is on behalf of those sick and dying in Richmond, Nigeria, Ecuador and elsewhere, who John Watson could have assisted – and didn’t.

It probably won’t be until the day Chevron finally pays the Ecuadorian judgment when the reckoning comes for Watson. Perhaps only when the bill at long last arrives, when Chevron’s assets are seized and Watson can’t hide that he’s cost shareholders billions of wasted dollars, that organizations like the Commonwealth Club will keep the name of Watson off the list. At that point it would just be in bad taste.

Read more