Word: ecuadorian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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BUENOS AIRES: Deposed Ecuadorian president/showman Abdala Bucaram is simply not ready to fade to black. The dancing, singing "El Loco" is in Argentina, trying to wrangle some support from president Carlos Menem, but his chances aren?t good. Earlier this week, Menem had advised his ambassador in Quito not to attend new president Alarcon's swearing-in ceremony, accusing Ecuador's Congress of acting inappropriately in sacking Bucaram. But with Alarcon in place and Ecuador at peace, Menem's loyalty to his friend seemed to fade with the concerns of state. Wednesday night, Menem issued a signed statement supporting Ecuador...
...Texaco discovered oil in the depths of the Ecuadorian Amazon. A treasure chest of biological diversity, this area is also home to several indigenous groups, including the Huaorani, the Secoya, the Shuar and the Quichua. Under Ecuadorian law, these groups have no rights to subsurface minerals on their land, so the oil was sold by the government without their consent. When the oil company tried to enter the area, its trucks were blocked by irate local villagers. Only with the help of the military was Texaco able to begin drilling...
...Ecuador in 1972. From 1972 to 1989, 1.4 billion barrels of oil passed through the pipeline. Over those 17 years, 27 spills occurred, releasing an estimated 16.8 million gallons of crude oil into one of the world's biodiversity hot spots and the traditional home of thousands of Ecuadorian natives. Judith Kimerling, a Yale-educated attorney and the author of Amazon Crude, estimates that, even today, 4.3 million gallons of untreated toxic wastes are being released into the watershed every...
Texaco transferred control of the pipeline to the Ecuador state petroleum company, Petroecuador, in 1989. In 1993, a lawsuit was filed against Texaco on behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of the Ecuadorian Amazon, seeking damages of over $1 billion for the degradation of the local environment. Elias Piyaguaje, leader of the Secoya people, described the extent of the damage: "Our rivers have been poisoned. We cannot drink. We cannot bathe. We cannot believe in the future of our existence." The lawsuit is still pending...
Much like the Ecuadorian Amazon, the area of Burma across which the pipelines cut is biologically rich and home to many disenfranchised ethnic minority groups. The Tenasserim rain forest is the largest intact rain forest in southeast Asia, home to such endangered species as the white rhinoceros and the tiger. Texaco's track record in Ecuador demonstrates that the corporation is not likely to be a good environmental steward; no independent environmental impact assessments have been conducted in the pipeline region...