Cuninico is a native community in the Amazon region of Peru where the indigenous Kukama Kukamiria people live. This portion of land where the Marañón River passes, which rises from the Andes and marks the rhythm of life of the peoples, is supported by fishing and agriculture. But what is most known about Cuninico is the damage left by the oil industry.
In the last 25 years, around 560 oil spills have affected the Peruvian Amazon, according to Oxfam Peru. There is extensive research that shows the presence of heavy metals in the channels of the Marañón River that affect the health of its inhabitants.
“When you think of an oil spill, the first thing you think about is that people start to feel symptoms such as headaches, but in the case of these communities that are so dependent on natural resources, they see changes throughout the ecosystem,” said Fiorella Parra Mujica, one of the authors of the research “Oil spills and effects on maternal and child health in indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon.”
In 2019, Parra Mujica, an economist by training, together with sociologists Hernán Manrique López and Vania Martínez Zavala carried out this research for the Economic and Social Research Consortium (CIES). They documented the health effects of strokes from a gender perspective. A pioneering work because there was not enough specialized information on the subject.
In the process, they found that the repercussions on the environment and physical health are related to problems in mental health, food security and the division of labor in the Cuninico community. Mostly in women, girls and boys.
“When a spill occurs, changes begin in the land, which becomes less fertile for crops, and in the water, when the fish are no longer in the river then men have to go fishing farther away. All of this affects the food system, which, at the same time, affects social relationships within the community and the physical and mental health of women (who are left with responsibility for the home and care). This is more than you would think if there was an oil spill,” Parra Mujica explained.
The indirect
The Amazon is a region that for decades has been explored for the extraction of gas and oil. During the peak of exploitation in the early years of 2000, concessions occupied up to 48% of the area.
Spills by State and private companies range from type 1, which generate soluble and volatile toxic compounds that evaporate in a couple of days, to type 4, which contain heavy crude oils with low dissolution capacity, damage to water streams and difficulty cleaning.
For maternal and child health research, the June 2014 spill was taken as a reference in which 2,358 barrels of oil were dumped near the Cuninico ravine, located near the Marañón River and the buffer zone of the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. It is one of the biggest and most serious events that have occurred in recent years.
PetroPerú, which is the state's oil company, began cleaning work in early July of that same year. Initially, 91 workers from three native communities participated, most of them from Cuninico, who stated that they were not given any equipment to recover the dumps and dispose of hydrocarbon waste. Among them were women, some in the first months of pregnancy, and minors.
“The Peruvian State doesn't really guarantee the right to health to anyone, much less to indigenous peoples, that's not new,” said Hernán Manrique López, another author of the research.
Hernán Manrique and Fiorella Parra agree that one of the problems is that even before the oil spills occurred, indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon had no access to health centers and specialized medicine. In addition, there is no information from the authorities for those who are affected.
“Maypuco's health personnel did not explain to them the consequences of being exposed to heavy metals or the appropriate preventive measures to avoid contamination. The interviewees commented that some of the doctors who visited the area recommended that they - without any kind of scientific support - only drink water to eliminate heavy metals from the body,” they said in the research.
As a result, medical and water quality studies were conducted in later years. In 2018, the National Center for Occupational Health and Environmental Protection for Health demonstrated that those over 12 years of age had levels of 4.9% above the allowed levels of lead, 22% of arsenic and 27.5% of mercury, among others. While those under 12 exceeded the lead level by up to 22%.
This led to other, less visible impacts. “With our study, we found other effects, such as the increase in the workload within the home for women or the impact on their mental health knowing that every day they have to be feeding and bathing their children with water that is contaminated,” said Fiorella Parra.
“One of the factors behind affecting women's emotional peace of mind is the overload of tasks they face as a result of the stroke. The fieldwork showed that the amount of time that mothers spend in these activities has increased after the spill. This causes women to experience an overload of tasks, which are due to the scarcity of water in the community, which complicates care tasks such as cooking and grooming children, and to the absence of a partner,” the research adds. 
In 2015, the communities of Cuninico, Nueva Esperanza, Nueva Santa Rosa and San Francisco began a lawsuit against the Peruvian State for the damages. Three years later, the Civil Chamber of the Loreto Superior Court of Justice ordered the Ministry of Health and the General Directorate of Epidemiology to implement an emergency public health strategy to serve all affected people. The challenge is still optimal implementation, researchers say.
“There are judicial victories, but at the time of implementing these things it is not possible to do it. These are very complicated bureaucratic processes that the same bureaucrats don't even understand, neither do people from Social Sciences, so how do you get what was said here (in the courts) to be implemented in the community,” explained Hernán Manrique, who continues to work on the issue of spills and reparation.
Usually, the main measure that has been implemented in cases of spills is to set up mobile health care facilities for a few months. Although these continue to be repeated at different levels.
“It only happens when there is enough pressure from citizens, but that remedy is done in the worst way,” added Manrique López.
As part of the research focused on maternal and child health, a series of recommendations were included that would contribute to improving the situation. The first is to investigate from different disciplines and methods the problems generated by oil spills in the Amazon; the second, to deal immediately with emergencies through specific plans and training; and the third, to strengthen food security.
All of these recommendations emphasize the inclusion of women from communities in action plans, since their perspective would be indispensable for finding solutions.
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