As Ecuador rushes to boost exports with a new pipeline - and US oil companies show no scruples about exploiting a unique environment - the country's rainforest and its indigenous peoples face catastrophe, reports John Kavanagh.
The rainforest of Ecuador, containing some of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth, is under increased threat as oil companies are awarded further concessions to exploit the uniquely fragile land. It is also home to several indigenous peoples, such as the Shuar, Ashuar, Cofan, Colorados, Quichua and Huaorani, who are now becoming endangered species. In 1976, anthropologist Norman Whitten wrote: "When the might of international petroleum companies descended on eastern Ecuador in the 1960s, many native peoples witnessed catastrophic change. Most of those who observed the process cried genocide."
Oil exploration continues to inflict irreversible and indiscriminate destruction on large tracts of rainforest, with serious contamination of the river systems. But it is not just the pollution that affects the forest- dwellers. Land speculators, loggers, colonists and the military have followed the oil roads appropriating indigenous land and destroying the wildlife.
In 1990, Robert F. Kennedy Jr visited Ecuador and, appalled at the pollution and destruction he witnessed, wrote: "Like most United States citizens, I like to believe when American companies go abroad American values go with them. This hasn't happened in Ecuador. Today, American-owned companies are leaving an ugly legacy of poverty and contamination in one of the most important forests on Earth".
In their haste to get the oil flowing, Ecuador's governments did little to protect the interests of the forest-dwellers. Anxious to increase the value of oil exports from its current 50 per cent of total exports to an all-time high of 60 per cent, the government has now begun to construct a new pipeline from the jungle to the Pacific coast. And it is this new pipeline, funded by German bank Westlandes, that has again raised serious environmental and moral questions concerning the oil industry in Ecuador's Amazon region.
Accion Ecologica and Oil Watch, two environmental groups in Ecuador's capital, Quito, point out that the new pipeline is planned to pass through several seismic and environmentally important areas. Similar problems with the building of the first pipeline have resulted in millions of gallons of crude oil spilling into pristine forests.
Earlier this year, Nick Jones, an Irish environmentalist activist, was among the latest group of people arrested in Quito after peacefully protesting against the construction of the second pipeline from the rainforests to the Pacific coast. But this is not the only group to protest.
In October 1992, shoppers and commuters on Quito's fashionable Avenida Amazonia were astounded when up to 80 naked Huaorani people camped outside the offices of the US-based oil company, Maxus. It had taken many of them three weeks to reach the capital. At the time, I spoke with Maxus's manager of the environment and public affairs, Jorge Jimenez, and he spoke about proposed agreements with the Huaorani which would safeguard their interests and the environment. I mentioned that previous companies had often spoken with "forked tongues" and asked whether a company that had been involved in the manufacture of the orange defoliator used against the Vietnamese people would be any different. He replied that his company would not follow the standards set by other oil companies.
But little has changed and the oil companies still refuse to deal in a meaningful way with the owners of the land. A recent report in the Ecuadorian newspaper, El Comercio, described a deal between an oil company and the Huaorani people as the equivalent of exchanging mirrors for vast wealth. The oil companies will, however, point to the schools and medical centres they have established in several villages.
In April, Telmo Gualinga, a member of the community of Sarayacu, was abducted and tortured for allegedly collaborating with the CGC oil company, which had begun explorations in its territory. There were also confirmed reports that four loggers had been killed in the region of the Curaray River.
For many years, the authorities in Ecuador paid little attention to the country's Amazon region, which they referred to as the "empty land", but this all changed when large deposits of petroleum were discovered in the mid-1950s. In the process of extracting oil, the lives of the indigenous people have been immeasurably complicated, and in many cases destroyed.
Shell was the first oil company to commence exploration on a large scale in Ecuador's rainforest in the 1950s. From the start, it sought the backing of the armed forces to protect its rigs and rid the area of the "troublesome Indians".
Later, it would encourage the US religious fundamentalist group, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), to establish itself in the area, forging a symbiosis that continued when Texaco succeeded Shell as the largest oil company operating in the rainforest. The high degree of co-operation was exposed in documents taken from the offices of the Ecuadorian state oil company, CEPE, which revealed serious collaboration between Texaco and SIL. The religious dependence created by the missionaries allowed the oil companies to take over indigenous land without having to resort to a high level of violence. The missionaries who controlled the villages would often withhold oil company jobs and medicines from recalcitrant Indians.
Luciano Aragon, who taught in the village of Tonapare, told me that poorly paid jobs and unequal access to gifts had destroyed community unity and created tensions within families. The dubious benefits of these jobs were highlighted by a medical report in Coca, which noted that the children of indigenous oil workers suffered a high rate of malnutrition.
But the violence continued as missionaries and oil workers were killed and indigenous people fell victim to disease, contamination and poverty. It was genocide on a grand scale - hidden behind a green curtain.
In July 1987, however, the green curtain was partly lifted when the Bishop of Coca, Alejandra Labaca and a Capuchin nun, Inez Arango, were killed by a group of Huaorani. The missionaries had attempted to intervene when it appeared likely that the Indians were at risk from a military attack. Their unfortunate deaths, however, succeeded in opening up a world debate, although it did little to stop the destruction.
The debate moved to the US courts in 1993 when a $1.5 billion suit was filed on behalf of 30,000 indigenous people, charging Texaco with deliberately using sub-standard technology in the Amazon, damaging the health of local people and the environment. The oil company has succeeded in stonewalling the case by claiming that it should be tried in Ecuador - where a previous agreement between the government and Texaco would invalidate the claim.
The oil industry in Ecuador, never far from controversy, now faces a new threat from the FARC movement in Colombia. The left-wing terrorist group recently discovered a new cash crop in the kidnapping of oil personnel. These incursions and the consequent movements of the armed forces of Ecuador and Columbia also affected the lives of the indigenous people. In the oil town of Coca, on the great Napo River down which Francisco Orellana sailed in 1591, oil workers guarded by armed police are served Nescafé with jugs of hot water in La Mision Hotel. Outside, coffee beans ripen on the hot paths.
On November 24th, Ecuador's electorate will decide between wealthy banana exporter Alvaro Noboa, and ex-army chief Lucio Gutierrez, who failed in a coup attempt in 2000. But the election of a new president, the sixth in six years, will not change the corruption and incompetence that has plagued this beautiful volcanic country. With debts of $16 billion, and pressure from the US to increase the oil flow, the new government will again place the oil industry before the rights of the forest-dwellers and the environment.
Economists have warned that reliance on oil revenue is a dangerous economic game. "When the oil is gone, we will face absolute poverty," predicts Bayardo Vobar, of the Institute of Economic Investigation in Quito. The indigenous people in the Amazon face a bleak future.
With at least 25 years of oil reserves remaining, neither the Ecuadorian government nor the oil companies are willing to take their heads out of the wells. When they do, they will truly see an "empty land".