“I hope they’re listening,” says Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, referring to Citi’s annual shareholders’ meeting on April 30. It is there he will present a proposal calling on the bank to report on its “policies, practices and performance” in respecting internationally recognised human rights standards for indigenous peoples.
Mancias says the oil and gas companies that banks like Citi finance are destroying what paradise used to be. He is referring to the fossil fuel industry in Texas, which he says has destroyed the land and created a place with almost no suitable water. A new liquefied natural gas pipeline is also planned near his tribe’s ancestral lands which span the delta region where the 1900-mile Rio Grande river meets the Gulf of Mexico.
