A skeleton of a dog lies next to an oil pump in the Susha oil fields in
the Sucumbios region of Ecuador. Many animal have died do to the pollution of
the water from the oil. Picture taken Saturday, October 25, 2003.
Until now, few people outside of South America have
never heard of Lago Agrio, a crime-ridden oil boomtown in Ecuador's Amazon
rain forest, near the Colombia border. A trial began that's pits
California-base ChevronTexaco against 30,000 rain forest residents who allege
that from 1971 to 1992 a subsidiary of Texaco dumped massive amounts of oily
wastes in the region. Those wastes, they claim caused illnesses ranging from
skin rashes to cancer and contributed to the destruction of land inhabited by
indigenous cultures. It is a drama that some say has the potential to
recalibrate how major corporations do business throughout the region and
world.
