Ecuadorians Demand Meeting | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Ecuadorians Demand Meeting

May 22, 2003 | Taunya English | Contra CostaTimes

The president of the Secoya Federation is a baby-faced 24-year-old who has traveled from the Ecuadorian rain forest to take on one of the Tri-Valley’s biggest corporate citizens.

Wilmer Marbin Piaguaje said ChevronTexaco Corp. and predecessor Texaco improperly disposed of waste during 20 years of drilling upstream from his village in Ecuador’s northeastern province of Sucumbios.

Four Secoya communities live along the Aguarico River downstream from hundreds of waste water pits. Many of the dump sites are unlined. Piaguaje said contaminants have polluted the creeks and waterways throughout the region, leaving them unfit for consumption or bathing.

“We walk all morning to find a spring with clean water,” Piaguaje said in Spanish. He shared his story through translator Atossa Soltani, the executive director of the environmental-humanitarian group Amazon Watch.

Piaguaje came to San Ramon with 11 other indigenous Ecuadorians who say the health and environment of their communities have been devastated by the legacy of oil drilling in the Amazon.

Ecuador’s Siona, Cofan and Huaorani federations also sent representatives, who tell nearly identical stories of unprecedented sickness and dwindling native populations.

The Secoya are plagued with high rates of stomach illnesses, tuberculosis and yellow fever, which Piaguaje believes are linked to exposure to the river water.

“We know these diseases were not among us before,” he said.

For nearly a week, the group has tried to get an audience with ChevronTexaco CEO David O’Reilly, who has been unavailable. So early Wednesday the group took their cause, posters and a mobile billboard to the corner Danville Boulevard and Las Trampas Road. They waved signs and tried to get the attention of residents headed to work or handed fliers to walkers on their way to Starbucks or the Squeeze Juice Cafe.

The billboard read, “Please clean up Ecuador before another life is lost.”

Amazon Watch believes that O’Reilly lives in Alamo. So the delegates said they brought their message to O’Reilly’s community in the same way they believe Chevron brought its pollution to theirs.

The group’s visit to San Ramon, ChevronTexaco’s world headquarters, comes just weeks after American attorneys, representing more than 30,000 indigenous people, sued Chevron in an Ecuadorian court. The suit asks Chevron to “clean up and pay up,” Soltani said.

Last week, a Chevron spokesman said the oil disposal practices have not been proved to cause health problems. He also said it is inappropriate for the Ecuadorian delegates to seek a meeting with O’Reilly on an issue that is still in litigation.

The ranks of the Secoya are shrinking, Piaguaje said, and his people’s way of life is also in jeopardy. Many Secoya are subsistence farmers who grow their own food on small community plots. But since the oil companies built roads to the territory, Piaguaje said, the people and the land have been boxed in.

“We are left with nowhere to go,” said Piaguaje, who on Wednesday wore a bright blue tunic, traditional dress for men in his community.

Failing to sit down with O’Reilly, the delegation made the rounds in the Tri-Valley, meeting with the San Ramon City Council, local religious groups and high schools students, picking up supporters at each stop.

Piaguaje, who represents nearly 350 Secoya, said, “We want a strong, solid alliance of local people, and for them to not just leave it up to the attorneys.”

For more information on the delegation or the suit, visit www.amazonwatch.org.

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