RAVE: A David Called Maria

A diminutive Quechua lady in a remote part of Ecuador has become the David in a mammoth struggle between her community and the Goliath that is Chevron, in what has become one of the biggest environmental stories in recent years.

Maria Aguinda has no legal background and doesn't even speak the official language of her country, Spanish. But what she has been is at the forefront of a momentous class action suit by her community in Orellana province against Chevron for the years of environmental pollution and devastation to the surrounding rain forest by big oil polluter, Texaco, which was bought out by Chevron in 2001.

The case is known as Aguinda vs Chevron. A poor indigenous woman in a remote part of a poor South American country takes on one of the biggest, richest multinationals in the world, Big Oil itself. This is about as David-versus-Goliath as it gets.

Texaco operated in the area between 1964 and 1990 and created an environmental holocaust with its lax and sub-standard oil drilling techniques. Billions of gallons of crude oil were dumped into the rainforest and surrounding areas. Marshes are clogged with oil, rivers are dead, local fisheries have all but died out, and local communities have suffered huge rates of cancer and other health ailments.

Says Maria Aguinda, "When Texaco came we never thought they would leave behind such damage, never. Then it began to drill a well and set up burn pits." "It changed our life: hunting, fishing, and other food, it's all finished."

Last week an Ecuadorian court slapped Chevron with a fine of $9.5-billion, one of the largest ever awarded in an environmental lawsuit anywhere in the world.

Even so, Maria's community claims that at least $27-billion or more will be needed to allow for proper restitution from the resulting and devastating environmental and health impacts from the crude oil pollution.

Disappointed in the outcome she may be, and the environmental devastation in her area may continue, but Maria Aguinda has nevertheless accomplished that which so few of us would even dare to dream of doing. She is the epitome of believing in one's cause, for fighting for what is right, however long that may take, for not allowing the powers that be to get away with what is nothing less than murder.

The words of Mark Twain seem very apt here:

                                 

                             It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. 

 Thank goodness then for Maria Aguinda.