Green Planet
When Indigenous peoples in Ecuador complained to Chevron about oil pollution, the company told them that its toxic waste pits were like "milk" and had vitamins.
A horrific crime that Chevron tries to hide
https://x.com/Elizabeth_Ruler/status...71661844795743
https://www.desplazados.org/chevron-...ictoria-cruda/
Chevron in Ecuador, the impunity of a raw victory
WRITTEN BY:M.A. FERNÁNDEZ POSTED ON: 20 MAY 2026 CATEGORIZED IN
UBLISHED IN PIKARA MAGAZINE
"I still believe in justice so as not to give up," says Consuelo Piaguaje, daughter of one of the plaintiffs against the oil company for years of pollution in the Amazon. The Ecuadorian government has to compensate her after an international arbitration.
displaced world.org Chevron in Ecuador, the impunity of a raw victory
(Pikara Magazine, 05-20-26, Ecuador)
https://www.pikaramagazine.com/2026/...ictoria-cruda/
Chevron in Ecuador, the impunity of a raw victory
"I still believe in justice so as not to give up," says Consuelo Piaguaje, daughter of one of the plaintiffs against the oil company for years of pollution in the Amazon. Despite a historic sentence against the transnational company, which has not yet been executed, the Ecuadorian Government has to compensate it after an international arbitration.
There are hits that are raw, sour. Historical judicial sentences that, due to their non-execution, remain in the momentary celebration, not in the restoration they were looking for. The indigenous peoples of Siona, Siekopai, Cofán, Waorani, Kichwa, Shuar and peasantry of the Ecuadorian Amazon managed to convict the oil multinational Chevron for years of pollution and destruction of their lands and health, but the latest news reports that the State of Ecuador is going to pay the American company 220 million dollars (almost 190 million euros). In the middle, an unexecuted sentence that sentenced the company to pay 9.5 billion dollars (more than 8 billion euros) to carry out an environmental repair and compensate the affected communities.
The before and after is necessary. A turning point that at the moment seems infinite. "We lived very comfortably; without noise or injuries, the jungle was a paradise. In the year 41 there was no white, there was only jungle. Our daily market was the jungle, there was a lot of fishing in the rivers. We had extensive territories where we walked, we had no limits. We had our rituals and encounters with the powers of the jungle." This is how the Amazon pre-oil exploitation remembers an indigenous person who participated in the study 'The words of the jungle', carried out by the Hegoa Institute in 2009.
"Many got sick with stomach pain and children died with diarrhea"
Then the panorama changed to pain and death. "The animals to die, we lost the cattle, because on all sides of my farm, and in the middle pass the tubes that burst, the oil was watered in the grass and the cows ate it and got sick after a few days and died (...). Many got sick with stomach pain and children died with diarrhea and others peeled their body from the itching, the disease seemed strange," other testimonies point out.
The story is long and complex, sticky, like that oil that lies in the bowels of the jungle and that its careless exploitation has caused it to be hooked on the lives of thousands of people for more than half a century. The Union of Affected by the Oil Operations of Texaco (UDAPT) explains it in a summery way in a triptych. In 1964, Texaco (now Chevron) began its activity in the Ecuadorian Amazon: "For 20 years these practices caused one of the greatest environmental crimes in the history of the country." 60 billion liters of toxic water dumped into rivers, abandonment of 880 oil tries and spills of more than half a million barrels of crude oil, they detail schematically. Because explaining that black spot is so unacceptable that a few lines and also 30 years of litigation can serve. Sometimes metaphors help to size: Lago Agrio is called the city that opens the doors to the Ecuadorian Amazon, a city created in the 70s as an oil field and which bases its toponymy on the Sour Lake of Texas.
María Aguinda and 75 other residents of the Ecuadorian Amazon, on behalf of 30,000 people, filed a lawsuit against Texaco before the Southern District Court of New York in November 1993. The father of Consuelo Piaguaje, from the Siekopai town and neighbor of the Shushufindi canton, was one of the plaintiffs when he was only 18 years old. "Today he continues to suffer from spills and environmental pollution," says his daughter, a member of UDAPT.
A struggle from the last century
"The trial began in 1993, but for nine consecutive years Chevron claimed that New York judges were not competent. Finally, in 2002 the judges referred the case to Ecuador. And in Ecuador another 20 more years passed, until February 2011, when we had the first sentence," Pablo Fajardo, UDAPT's lawyer, tells Pikara Magazine, when asked if the delay in the procedure is not a way of impunity. It's one of many, he also says. "There is political pressure, media pressure, there is communicational stigmatization, there is an impressive architecture," he points out, and recalls that "Chevron has used the United States, or the United States to Chevron, to try to prevent trade agreements between Ecuador and the United States on our judgment." Fajardo also names the international financial system that "wanted to force the Government of Ecuador to end this case," and scientists and academics "mercenaries," he says, "of transnational companies, who investigate what suits them."
Chevron left the country and left just 300 dollars in his accounts so as not to assume responsibilities and not to pay
After the first judgment, those of the National Court of Justice came and in 2018 that of the Constitutional Court, 25 years after the beginning of the litigation. But the company left the country and left only 300 dollars in its accounts so as not to assume responsibilities and not to pay; but it did spend money on lawsuits against defenders and social organizations, whom it tried to discredit. He also requested an international arbitration, which now condemns the State of Ecuador. A strategy that from the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America (OMAL) Juan Hernández calls the legal architecture of impunity.
Consuelo Piaguaje continues to trust in justice, with reluctance. “At some point there will be a person who acts in coherence with the laws and there may be justice for indigenous peoples; I want to think that I continue to believe in justice so as not to give up and have hope; fighting against this great monster that is the Texaco-Chevron company is complex, but I know that one day there will be true justice for us,” he explains to Pikara Magazine.
"The theory of Chevron and the arbitrators is that the plaintiffs have no right to trial because the State had reached an agreement with the oil company. In 1995, some contracts were signed and the State of Ecuador released Texaco, now Chevron, from all responsibility and promised never to sue him again. Obviously, that contract never involved the rights of third parties, of the peoples, communities and indigenous peoples that we are living in Ecuador," Fajardo contextualizes.
A "very serious" payment
As long as a historic sentence that took years to be obtained is not applied, the transnational will receive compensation from the State. Things that they call ISDS or investor-State arbitration system and that, as Entrepueblos-Herriarte, an entity that supports UDAPT, explains, is "a mechanism included in international investment treaties that allows companies to sue governments when they consider that their profits have been harmed."
"It is outrageous that the Government now intends to pay 220 million dollars to a company that polluted our rivers, our jungle, our way of life"
Lawyer Pablo Fajardo goes further: "The problem we have had in the last 8 or 9 years is that the governments of Ecuador are completely in consube with Chevron. President [Daniel] Noboa is a strategic ally of the United States and, if that implies that he has to go against his population, then he does it directly. Opinion shared by Consuelo Piaguaje: "It is outrageous that the Government now intends to pay 220 million dollars to a company that contaminated our rivers, our jungle, our way of life. For me, this money would have to be to at least start the repair of our territories, the soil, the culture. Doing this payment process is very serious because it means recognizing that this company has not caused anything in our territories and is leaving it unpunished for its repair obligations."
Binding treaty?
Next October, at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, there will be a new working session, and there are already twelve, to get a binding treaty approved that legally regulates the activities of transnational companies and obliges them to answer for their damages.
The process started strongly in 2014 driven, paradoxically, by Ecuador. More than ten years later, the process has weakened and governments have changed. "I have been traveling to Geneva for 11 years to negotiate this treaty so that no one has to go through what so many communities in the world have gone through," Fajardo wrote less than a year ago in an article in El País. And he added: "If there were a strong and effective international standard, Chevron would not have escaped and we could avoid these disasters in the future. Communities urgently need real access to justice.”
Piaguaje's tone dances between discouragement and hope, but after a sigh the second is imposed: "We have to continue with more strength and desire to seek justice and reparation. There is a new generation that rises."
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