From 1964 to 1992 Texaco operated oil mines and extracted more than three thousand million barrels of oil from Ecuador. Unfortunately what the local residents of the area were left with was not money but polluted waters and soils, destroyed rainforests, cancer, and illness.

So what happened?

Rather than disposing of the waste from the oil production in the same safe ways being practiced by Texaco in North America and in other countries, the company took very little care in preserving the safey of the people and the environment. By the time the company left in 1992, they left over 70 billion litres of waste in over 600 unlined pits spanning an area of 5,180 km and destroying over one million hectares of rainforest! In the "clean-up" process done by Texaco upon leave Ecuador in the 1990s, the company simply pushed dirt over top of contaminated sites but at the bottom of countless lakes and rivers still lies thick toxic sludges of oil. In rural reas such as these, the very lakes and rivers that are contaminated are the place where villagers fish, drink, bath and wash their clothing.

The people suffer...

One study done in an area of Ecuador called San Carlos indicates that the cancer rates among those individuals are 30 times higher than average. Exposure to the oil pollution occurs in many ways, including through the skin, through food, through water, and through breathing contaminated air.

In 1993 a lawsuit was filed by members of communities affected by the oil waste demanding damages of 6 billion dollars. Texaco, of course, is denying any wrong-doing.

Some have called this atrocious act of negligence essentially slow genocide, as indigenous peoples watch their populations die...