The Trial and the Road to Justice

The courthouse stands four stories high along the main drag of Lago Agrio. Like all other buildings in the town, the weather has gotten the best of it. It is tropically dilapidated. The colors, off-white with yellow trim, are ruined. The cement shows signs of crumbling, and from up close the black mold appears to [...]

Continue reading...

Life Among Cacao Fields And Oil Contamination

…a local man named Donald Moncayo showed me around. Wearing white surgical gloves, he dug up a fistful of black mud and held it so that the sunlight caught the telltale blue-orange tint of petroleum. At one fetid pit in a jungle glade, he stepped gingerly onto the surface of the pool, where the solid [...]

Continue reading...

The Countdown to a Verdict in Ecuador Has Begun

The plaintiffs have submitted their final arguments — known as an “alegato” in Spanish — to the court in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, citing the “overwhelming” evidence of Chevron’s culpability for oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon and the impacts of that pollution on human health and the environment. The evidence was not entirely collected by [...]

Continue reading...