Solange Adum Abdala

The province of Talara is the most prolific area for oil extraction along the Peruvian coastal shoreline. Of all the districts in the region, only the small town of Organos has hosted four international formal oil companies.

Al Lado del Petróleo [At Oil’s Side] consists of two parts. The first, Lado A [Side A], shows the spaces abandoned by the different oil companies. Among warehouses, homes, and offices, the documentation of vacant lots represents the consumerist and predatory behaviour that humans display toward the environment and natural resources. The second, Lado B [Side B], focuses on the direct consequences for the original inhabitants of Organos. As a result of the occupation and the lack of use of these deserted structures, the residents, mostly dedicated to fishing or tourism, find themselves confined within their own birthplace, having to adapt their homes and workplaces to the limited spaces available in the desert.

Thus, Al Lado del Petróleo reveals the extractivist logic under which many foreign corporations operate in Peru: the appropriation of territory and natural resources, followed by abandonment and the imposition of new forms of precarity on the region’s original inhabitants.