The Ecuadorian rainforest is one of the most biodiverse locations on our planet.

The Andes (Photo: Brad Mering)

As one leaves the snow covered peaks of the Andes, running down the spine of the country, you find yourself in the Amazon basin within a couple hours. The road from the mountains, on which I travelled, led me down a corridor of waterfalls. As the trees grew larger, so did the falls, and so did I. Eventually the sheer magnitude of your surroundings swallows you. It’s a transformation in climes that stuns the senses and leaves you awe struck by the unadulterated beauty our world contains.

I recall thinking; this must be where they shot Fern Gully. What I did not know was this is where Texaco and Petro-Ecuador dumped over 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, dwarfing the Exxon-Valdez spill.

Crude, a film by Joe Berlinger, chronicles this darker history of the Ecuadorean rainforest, and the indigenous peoples’ struggle to achieve justice.

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Texaco–now merged into Chevron–came to Ecuador and signed an agreement with the government to drill for oil in the local rainforest. They maintained the contract until the mid-90’s, when it was handed over to the national company Petro-Ecuador. As they handed over the sites, Texaco was required to remediate the land, which means clean-up the oil, remove waste, and replant vegetation. Much of the legal back and forth in this film hinges on which oil company is responsible for the obvious pollution all over the rainforest: Texaco or its predecessor, Petro-Ecuador, and whether or not Texaco fulfilled its requirements to remediate the land.

The film alternates between scenes of horrid ecological and human devastation and an almost childlike bickering between the two side’s attorneys. As the film progresses, we see how awareness of the issue reached the international stage, garnering attention from the likes of Vanity Fair, and even the well known musician, Sting. All of this creates a David vs. Goliath narrative in which this grassroots organization of indigenous persons slowly but surely gain ground on the incredibly well-backed corporation of Chevron. While the case is still ongoing you are left feeling that the rainforest and its peoples will someday see justice. However, throughout the film we see both sides struggling to win the battle of the press almost more than the court case, leaving an uneasy feeling that it may be perception and not truth that will carry the day.

Crude could not have asked for a more sympathetic ear to its cause. I came into the film believing that oil companies are pretty much always wrong and need to make good for the damage they caused. I have worked on many environmental campaigns and I have visited the rainforest in Ecuador; fell in love with it, felt alive in it, and feel extremely passionate about preserving it. Even with all of this being said, the film never convinced me that this is a clear cut issue, because the director neglected to include relevant facts and figures. Crude gives us snippets of interviews with a scientist from Chevron who states that they did extensive testing, applying U.S. EPA, and World Health Organization standards and that the water and soil samples were all considered healthy for human consumption. The images of children covered in sores would certainly lead you to think otherwise, but would it have been too much trouble to offer one scientific rebuttal to a very qualified scientist?

If you didn’t already, after watching Crude, you will really, really dislike Chevron and its representatives. Having said that, Steven Donziger, a U.S. attorney, working with the indigeous persons legal team, at times seemed self-serving and borderline exploitative; the very traits that lead to devastating a rainforest and its people. The film makes it clear that even in helping the tribes of the Amazon, the American attorneys are looking to make a profit and a name.  These attorneys ignore the motivations that brought about this environmental disaster in the first place, namely the exploitation of those unable to defend themselves. In the end the facts I walked away with were that a beautiful land was devastated, that a way of life has been brought to the brink of extinction, and that international justice is anything but just.

And it burns, burns, burns.

The film opens with an indigenous woman lamenting the oil company’s arrival in the forest. “We used to adorn ourselves in traditional dress and decorations. Since the company arrived we are ashamed to wear our traditional clothing…” Her words convey so much more than environmental travesty. This was a robbing of innocence, and an expulsion from the Garden of Eden through no sin of their own doing. Where Crude succeeds is in painting the picture of a people stripped of their freewill, and their right to live as they so choose. The tribes, like the land they lived upon had no recourse to prevent this from happening, and Chevron is trying their hardest to continue to deny them justice. Even if they eventually win their case against Chevron, I wonder if too much may have already been taken away.

Crude is, above all, a gripping, important documentary, and one I highly recommend viewing. Its limitations leave the viewer space to explore more complex difficulties in how we deal with matters of environmental and international justice. Somewhere in between legal ambiguity and linguistic acrobatics, an indigenous tribe is left empty handed, justice is yet to be served, a portion of rainforest the size of Rhode Island has been decimated, and people are dying from the consequences of someone else’s profit. Our multi-national corporations operating in South America helped build the wealth of the United States by decreasing the standard of living for many in other countries. Crude is a powerful reminder to us that these past injustices still cry out for redress, and that as the world becomes smaller and smaller we need to remain vigilant for the peoples of tomorrow.

Crude will be showing at 7:15 this Wednesday at The Naro.