Ads by Ecuadoran Plaintiffs Accuse Texaco of Racism
9/23/99
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Title: Ads by Ecuadoran Plaintiffs Accuse Texaco of Racism
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 23, 1999
Byline: Grant McCool
NEW YORK, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Ecuadoran rainforest Indians suing
Texaco Inc. (NYSE:TX - news) for allegedly polluting their water and
land with oil and waste, Thursday began a newspaper, TV and radio ad
campaign in the U.S. charging the company with racism.
A spokeswoman for the White Plains, N.Y.-based company, which made a
record $176.1 million settlement in 1996 with black U.S. employees
who sued for racial discrimination, accused attorneys for the
Ecuadorans of ``continued use of the media and even the World Wide
Web to level unsubstantiated allegations against the company.''
An ad published in The New York Times Thursday is headlined, ``Racial
discrimination and Texaco Chapter 2.'' It outlines the charges filed
in Manhattan federal court by the Committee for the Defense of the
Amazon against the company in 1993 and says, ``bluntly put, Texaco
does not create this level of devastation near white people.''
The ads were made for the committee, which was formed by residents of
the Oriente region of Ecuador in the Amazon rainforest who have
reported increased rates of cancer, spontaneous abortions and
respiratory infections.
COMPANY SAYS IT ACTED RESPONSIBLY
``Texaco acts and operates responsibly wherever we are in the world.
And we acted responsibly in Ecuador,'' Texaco spokeswoman Faye Cox
said in response to the ad's charge of racism. Cox said Texaco had
been a minority partner in a consortium including the state-owned
company Petroecuador and had not operated there for 10 years.
The rainforest Indians alleged in their lawsuit that a Texaco
subsidiary dumped an estimated 16 million gallons of crude oil and 20
billion gallons of toxic waste water there between 1964 and 1992,
destroying their way of life.
``Before Texaco came to the Ecaudoran Amazon, indigenous communities
fished out of the rivers because there were so many fish and they
would live from the tropical rainforest, hunting animals and eating
fruits and vegetables,'' committee leader Luis Yanza said in an
interview in New York.
``But after the petroleum exploration, the fish started to die and
people could not adequately nourish themselves and couldn't get
natural medicines from the
jungle.''
The lawsuit said that instead of pumping the substances back into
emptied wells under the industry standard, Texaco dumped them in
local rivers, directly into landfills or spread them on dirt roads.
ALL AWAIT U.S. JUDGE'S DECISION
After six years of legal wrangling, parties to the lawsuit are
awaiting a judge's decision on whether the case should be heard in
the United States or sent to Ecuador, where the company would have to
consent to being sued in court.
A TV ad also released Thursday shows a white family outside their
suburban U.S. home being sprayed with black oil by a Texaco worker.
``Texaco. Skin color matters to them,'' says the voice-over for the
ad. ``Texaco would never do what you're about to see to people who
look like this. But this is what Texaco did in the rainforest in
Ecuador.''
Steven Danziger, one of the U.S. attorneys representing the
Ecuadorans, said: ``It is a heavy charge, but we can't come up with
any other explanation because how do you explain why a company would
do this in an area where people were living. They didn't consider
these people to be equal to them.''
Representatives of the group said the 30-second ad was scheduled to
appear on CNN and that it had the support of four U.S.-based
environmental groups -- Amazon Watch, Environmental Defense Fund,
Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth.