Michael L. Cepek's Books

A Future for Amazonia

Randy Borman and Cofán Environmental Politics

By: Michael L. Cepek

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A Future for Amazonia

Randy Borman and Cofán Environmental Politics

By: Michael L. Cepek

Blending ethnography with a fascinating personal story, A Future for Amazonia is an account of a political movement that arose in the early 1990s in response to decades of attacks on the lands and peoples of eastern Ecuador, one of the world’s most culturally and biologically diverse places. After generations of ruin at the hands of colonizing farmers, transnational oil companies, and Colombian armed factions, the indigenous Cofán people and their rain forest territory faced imminent jeopardy. In a surprising turn of events, the Cofán chose Randy Borman, a man of Euro-American descent, to lead their efforts to overcome the crisis that confronted them. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research, A Future for Amazonia begins by tracing the contours of Cofán society and Borman’s place within it. Borman, a blue-eyed, white-skinned child of North American missionary-linguists, was raised in a Cofán community and gradually came to share the identity of his adoptive nation. He became a global media phenomenon and forged creative partnerships between Cofán communities, conservationist organizations, Western scientists, and the Ecuadorian state. The result was a collective mobilization that transformed the Cofán nation in unprecedented ways, providing them with political power, scientific expertise, and a new role as ambitious caretakers of more than one million acres of forest. Challenging simplistic notions of identity, indigeneity, and inevitable ecological destruction, A Future for Amazonia charts an inspiring course for environmental politics in the twenty-first century.

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Page Count

273

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292745729

ISBN 13

9780292745728

Life in Oil

Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia

By: Michael L. Cepek

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Life in Oil

Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia

By: Michael L. Cepek

Oil is one of the world’s most important commodities, but few people know how its extraction affects the residents of petroleum-producing regions. In the 1960s, the Texaco corporation discovered crude in the territory of Ecuador’s indigenous Cofán nation. Within a decade, Ecuador had become a member of OPEC, and the Cofán watched as their forests fell, their rivers ran black, and their bodies succumbed to new illnesses. In 1993, they became plaintiffs in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that aims to compensate them for the losses they have suffered. Yet even in the midst of a tragic toxic disaster, the Cofán have refused to be destroyed. While seeking reparations for oil’s assault on their lives, they remain committed to the survival of their language, culture, and rainforest homeland. Life in Oil presents the compelling, nuanced story of how the Cofán manage to endure at the center of Ecuadorian petroleum extraction. Michael L. Cepek has lived and worked with Cofán people for more than twenty years. In this highly accessible book, he goes well beyond popular and academic accounts of their suffering to share the largely unknown stories that Cofán people themselves create—the ones they tell in their own language, in their own communities, and to one another and the few outsiders they know and trust. Their words reveal that life in oil is a form of slow, confusing violence for some of the earth’s most marginalized, yet resilient, inhabitants.

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Page Count

303

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

147731508X

ISBN 13

9781477315088

Life in Oil

Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia

By: Michael L. Cepek

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Life in Oil

Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia

By: Michael L. Cepek

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

303

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

147731508X

ISBN 13

9781477315088

Book's by Michael L. Cepek

A Future for Amazonia

A Future for Amazonia

Life in Oil

Life in Oil

Life in Oil

Life in Oil

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