With eyes red with fatigue, Pablo Fajardo stood in front of a room of activists in Toronto, Canada explaining the plight of the more than 30,000 indigenous peoples and farmers whose lands in the Ecuadorian Amazon are covered in toxic sludge. Fajardo was presenting evidence that the pollution stems from decades of oil extractions by Chevron-Texaco, one of the world’s largest oil companies. He and his clients are fighting a drawn-out legal battle that is part of a growing list of high-profile cases brought by indigenous communities against extractive industries, a list that includes the Dakota Access Pipeline project opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and the case of the Navajo Nation versus the Environmental Protection Agency over the contamination of the Animas River from the Gold King Mine.
Fajardo, an Ecuadorian lawyer representing the affected people, is not only worn out from the four days of hearings in Toronto in September, but from the 23-year legal battle that seems to have no end.
“This was not an accident like Exxon or BP in the Gulf of Mexico. This was on purpose,” says Fajardo, pointing to images of thick, sticky tar coating a Delaware-sized section of once-fertile farmland.
“We’ve won in the Supreme Court of Ecuador, the court that Chevron chose to be tried in. We won against their 2,000 lawyers. We won $9.5 billion in settlements. We want to see that judgement... Read More
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