The end of the “trial of the century” is closer: Aguinda vs. Texaco.

Ecuadorian courts force Chevron to pay 19 billion dollars. Argentine courts seize all its assets. The end of the “trial of the century” is near.

In an unprecedented process in the world, in January 2012 the Ecuadorian justice system confirmed the sentence issued a year earlier: the oil company Chevron-Texaco is guilty of having dumped millions of tons of toxic material into the Amazon rainforest and must pay a bill of 19.2 billion dollars, the highest figure in the history of judicial compensationThe lawyers of the 30,000 indigenous people and peasants who make up the Assembly of People Affected by Texaco were quick to initiate proceedings to collect the money. But not in Ecuador, where the US company withdrew its assets some time ago, but in Canada, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.

It was in this last country where the procedure gave its first results. On November 7, the Argentine courts ordered the seizure of all the company's assets.. Investors were not particularly pleased by this news: the world's ninth largest oil company started December with sharp falls on the stock market. The first step towards repairing one of the largest toxic spills in history has already been taken.

 The first barrel of oil

On June 27, 1972, the first barrel of oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon arrived in Quito, where it was received with all the honors of a head of state. Placed on a cushion on top of a tank, the procession advanced to the Military College's temple, amid a multitudinous parade. On the sides of the streets, Quito residents gathered to welcome a new "era of prosperity," according to the nasal voice of the National News.

Forty years later, the region from which the oil that filled that barrel was extracted It is the poorest in Ecuador and has the highest rates of cancer in the entire country. The air smells like gasoline, the earth smells like gasoline, the water smells like gasoline.

In a café in the centre of Lago Agrio, the capital of this oil-producing region, Hermenegildo Criollo tells us about his first encounter with Texaco. Criollo was born in the Cofán community of Dureno. He is old enough to remember. The rivers surrounding the village provided water to drink and plenty of fish. The forests provided animals to hunt and natural medicines.

They arrived with helicopters. “Everyone was scared, we had never seen anything like that in our lives, flying through the air, and we hid in the jungle.”It was 1964. Texaco was beginning to build the infrastructure for the first well, Lago Agrio I. “We walked there and saw five hectares of cleared forest. They called us to come over there.” In those years, they didn’t speak a word of Spanish, says Criollo. Much less English. They were given three plates, some food and four spoons. That was the only payment they received in exchange for hundreds of thousands of hectares.

A few days later, the Cofán noticed a change in the noise coming from the machines. The company began drilling. One morning on the river bank, very close to the community, a large black spot appeared.
"What is this? Where does it come from?" they asked in the community. Neither the elders nor the shamans had ever seen an oil spill.

“We didn’t even know what oil was,” says Hermenegildo Criollo. The toxic spills and discharges ended up flowing into the river that the Cofans used for drinking, bathing, watering their crops, and where their animals drank. “We moved the oil to the sides and took the water from below. We didn’t know that the water was contaminated,” says Criollo.

“And then the stomach aches and headaches started. We would bathe in the river and our whole bodies would break out in rashes. These were illnesses we had never seen before.” His first child passed away at six months due to growth problems. The second was born healthy, but things soon went wrong. “When he was three years old, he could already swim and walk. One day I took him to the river. And the boy, while he was bathing, drank contaminated water. When he got home he started to vomit. He ended up vomiting blood. Within 24 hours he died. Two children. From then on I said, what can I do? How can we protect ourselves from diseases that come from all sides?”

The case of the Dureno community was not an isolated one. When Texaco left Ecuador in 1992, it forgot to take 60.5 million liters of oil that it had spilled into the Amazon ecosystem and 68 billion liters of toxic water that it had dumped into rivers. Not to mention the 235 billion cubic feet of gas that it had burned in the open air.An environmental and social disaster comparable only to the greatest in history: Chernobyl, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Bhopal or the Exxon Valdez. Although in this case it was not an accident, but a deliberate action to save costs, as determined by the court ruling.

One of the main obstacles to confronting Texaco was the mistrust between the two main groups affected by pollution: indigenous peoples and settlers, settlers from the Ecuadorian highlands who had come to the region in search of work as Texaco gained ground in the jungle.

Humberto Piaguaje belongs to the Secoya people. There are only 445 members of their ancient culture left, threatened by wastewater and forced changes in their way of life. “It was a very difficult construction process at the beginning,” he says. He remembers when Luis Yanza, one of the first leaders of the settlers, began to call meetings: “People said: 'Gosh, how are we going to unite with the colonizers? They also came to destroy our forest.'”The river banks, from which they obtained water and fish, were constantly covered in oil. Diseases, for which there was no cure, decimated the population, bringing their customs, language, stories and beliefs to the brink of extinction.

“We felt very alone in this. But we said: 'No, then, We have to fight beyond all that, we have to face it by uniting all of us. Despite having so many conflicts, not knowing the culture, speaking other languages, we created the Amazon Defense Front”, says Humberto Piaguaje.

Years later, in 2001, the organization expanded with the creation of the Assembly of People Affected by Texaco. Today, Piaguaje serves as legal sub-coordinator of This organization brings together 30,000 indigenous people and settlersThe main objective of the Assembly became to obtain justice through the courts and reparation for all the environmental and social damage caused by Texaco in its 28 years of oil activity.

In 1993, a group of lawyers, settlers and indigenous people had already started a lawsuit in New York against Texaco. But The trial was systematically blocked by the company's multimillion-dollar team of lawyers. The oil company's main argument was that the trial should be held in Ecuador. "Texaco believed that justice here is very corrupt and that they could buy the judges with any penny," explains Alejandra Almeida, from Acción Ecológica. In 2002, Texaco achieved its goal: the trial from New York was moved to Ecuador.

But things did not go as the company expected, says Almeida: "They did not count on the fact that the mobilization would be vigilant all the time and that would put pressure on the judges so that they could not be sold. With hundreds and hundreds of indigenous people at the door of the Court, no judge is going to think of doing something outrageous.. In Ecuador, trials are won in the streets. Texaco had not counted on that.” The media began to talk about the “trial of the century.”

On June 23, 2003, the process against Chevron-Texaco in Lago Agrio began. The young man Pablo Fajardo was an assistant to the lawyers representing the 30,000 victims. He was born into a humble family of settlers and was about to finish his law studies by distance learning.

“I was assisting two very prestigious lawyers from Quito. One lived in the US, the other in Quito, but he fell ill during the trial. And in 2005, it was my turn to take on the case. I had only been a lawyer for a year at the time. “There were eight Chevron lawyers in front of me. The youngest had 25 years of experience,” says Pablo Fajardo in his office in Lago Agrio. More than two entire rooms are needed to store all the trial material: 230,000 pages containing the testimonies of those affected, the analyses on the ground and the data from 18 years of litigation.

It is hard to imagine a more unequal trial. From the beginning of the process, Chevron has spent more than $1 billion on lawyers and expert reports. “We have had to scrounge for every last cent to continue this battle. And not only is this difference considerable, but they have the resources to manipulate any information, to buy governments, to bribe journalists, they have enough money to control the entire world,” says Fajardo.

These differences and his inexperience as a lawyer did not seem to be an obstacle for the Chevron-Texaco lawyers. He was supported evidence of contamination that the company itself did not bother to deny at any time. At most, he attempted to qualify its scope.

Between 2003 and 2010, the trial progressed without good prospects for the multinational. Its team of lawyers did not stop trying any tactic. First it tried to challenge the trial because the Assembly of Affected People was a “criminal association” dedicated to extorting the company. Then it tried to have the trial returned to the United States because in Ecuador the conditions for a fair trial were no longer met.

It didn't work. The pressure outside the courts was constant. As were the marches to Quito., supported by environmental groups, the indigenous confederation of the Amazon and the indigenous confederation of all Ecuador. There were also constant mass assemblies, occupations of the Attorney General's Office and security guards, all hours of the day, every day of the year, to prevent unwanted contacts between company representatives and judges.

On February 14, 2011, the Ecuadorian courts finally issued a verdict. They repeated it in January 2012: Chevron-Texaco was guilty. It had to pay 19.2 billion dollars, the highest compensation in the history of humanity. But the affected people did not expect to become millionaires surrounded by pollution and misery. The 30,000 claimants decided that the money would not be distributed individually but collectively. Most of the compensation will go towards environmental restoration, with the rest going towards hospitals, schools, drinking water supplies and other investments for the development of the region.

Now all that remains is to collect the money, which is not easy, since Chevron has no assets in Ecuador. “We have to force Chevron to pay for the crime committed by law. Wherever Chevron has assets, we will go,” says Pablo Fajardo. The Argentine justice system has been the first to accept the Ecuadorian claim. But more countries will be needed to complete the repair. Canada, Brazil and Colombia are some of the countries where the fight to compensate for the damage caused by Texaco between 1964 and 1992 will continue.

Regardless of what happens with the compensation, The trial is already “historic,” says FajardoFor this lawyer, this process not only affects Chevron, the plaintiffs and the Amazon. “What is at stake is an entire corporate system that for decades has committed enormous crimes with total impunity in Latin America, Africa, Asia and everywhere else in the world. This trial could change the rules of the game,” he says.

Pablo Fajardo speaks of a “war of almost 50 years” in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The first 28 years were a “constant massacre” by Texaco, 28 years in which it was “bombarding the air, the water, the land, the jungle with toxics.” “The last 18 years we have been reacting little by little and we have been able to confront this real power. Until a few years ago, people in Ecuador and around the world thought it was impossible for a group of indigenous people, farmers, poor people from a 'third world' country to confront a powerful company like Chevron.We are showing that it is possible and that it can be done, that it is possible to go much further, that things can be changed, that they are not untouchable, that they are not invincible.”