Field Report: Engineers Without Borders Team Inspects ClearWater Systems In Ecuador, Day 3

This is part three of a series. Read part one here and part two here. Cofan Dureno day 2 After breakfast (white rice and yucca—again!) the women of the community laid out their finest wares for us. There was an amazing amount of beadwork on display—all of the beads being seeds that they dye different [...]

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Dignity Incarnate: Emergildo Criollo And The Ecuadoreans Standing Up To Chevron

This morning I accompanied Emergildo Criollo, leader of the Cofan people, from his home in the dusty outskirts of Lago Agrio (the oil camp turned boom town that Texaco founded) to a press conference in Quito regarding a ruling issued late yesterday afternoon by the appellate court in Sucumbios rejecting Chevron’s latest attempt to block [...]

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18 Years Of Fighting Chevron

Amazon Watch’s Mitch Anderson shared this story from Lago Agrio, Ecuador to mark the 18th anniversary of the lawsuit to hold Chevron accountable for its oil pollution. The sprawl of scorched pavement and crumbling cement buildings in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. This city, once a small oil boom town founded by Texaco in [...]

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Life Has Changed On Ecuador’s Aguarico River Since Chevron’s Arrival

The mighty Aguarico River is where the Cofán people have fished, bathed, and washed for many generations. The river also traditionally provided the community’s main source of drinking water. It was the lifeblood of the Cofán. But the Aguarico now holds a very different meaning for the Cofán and for Emergildo Criollo, a leader in [...]

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