From: Reuters
The award-winning documentary Crude, which chronicles the compelling 16-year
struggle of indigenous groups in Ecuador`s Amazon rainforest to hold Chevron
accountable for the world`s largest oil-related contamination, opens in the
nation`s Capitol Friday during a time of intense scrutiny of a trial where the
oil giant faces a $27 billion liability that could eat up one-fifth of its
market value.
The movie - praised by The New York Times as "intelligently and artfully made" -
is being released at a time that Chevron is the subject of three official
investigations by prosecutorial authorities into whether it violated laws
related to its conduct in Ecuador. The lawsuit alleges that Texaco (bought by
Chevron in 2001) deliberately dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste
into the Amazon from 1964 to 1990, decimating indigenous groups and poisoning an
area the size of Rhode Island.
Experts for the plaintiffs have concluded the disaster is at least 30 times
larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, and that any clean-up would dwarf the
largest decontamination effort ever undertaken. The trial has been featured
recently on 60 Minutes and in several major newspapers, including The New York
Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. (Watch the complete 60 Minutes`
report on the contamination abandoned by Chevron at
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4988079n.)
Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), who visited the affected area last year and who is
scheduled to attend the film premiere, wrote a letter to President Obama where
he described the situation in Ecuador as a "terrible humanitarian and
environmental crisis". McGovern said in the letter: "As an American citizen, the
degradation and contamination left behind by this U.S. company in a poor part of
the world made me angry and ashamed." (See
http://amazonwatch.org/documents/crude-press-kit/mcgovern-to-obama.pdf to read
Rep. McGovern`s letter to President Obama.)
President Obama has also become a bit player in the long-running conflict, which
began when the lawsuit was filed in U.S. federal court in 1993. In 2006, after
the legal case had been shifted to Ecuador at Chevron`s request, Sens. Obama and
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) signed a letter to the United States Trade Ambassador
opposing a lobbying effort by Chevron to cancel Ecuador`s trade preferences in
retaliation for letting the lawsuit proceed in its courts. In that letter, Obama
and Leahy said: "While we are not prejudging the outcome of the case, we do
believe 30,000 indigenous residents of Ecuador deserve their day in court." (See
http://chevrontoxico.com/assets/docs/obama-letter.pdf for the complete letter
from Senators Obama and Leahy.)
In late August, as part of its campaign to discredit Ecuador`s courts, Chevron
posted secretly-recorded videotapes on YouTube that purport to show a bribery
scheme involving a trial judge who has since been removed from the case. Since
then, a number of inaccuracies and discrepancies in Chevron`s account of the
tapes have been uncovered by journalists, and the company has refused to make
the witnesses or full tapes available. (See
http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/chevrons-corruption.html for more
information about Chevron`s discrepancies.)
Ecuador`s government has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate
Chevron`s legal team for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act on the theory the company created the tapes to undermine Ecuador`s judicial
system so it could evade a liability. Chevron is currently under investigation
by Ecuador`s Attorney General for its role in the bribery scandal.
Separately, Ecuador`s national prosecutor in 2007 indicted two Chevron lawyers
for lying about the results of a partial remediation used to secure a legal
release. Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced he
was investigating Chevron to determine if company management was misleading
shareholders regarding its financial risk in Ecuador.
Meanwhile, the release of Crude in Washington -- which runs from October
23rd-29th at the Landmark E Street Theatre -- has generated enthusiastic reviews
for the award-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger. Berlinger`s film focuses on the
complexities of the legal controversy as well as the devastating destruction of
both human and environmental life in the rainforest stemming from almost three
decades of oil exploration.
Since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Crude has received
high praise from The New York Times, the Associated Press, and the Los Angeles
Times. It also has won a series of environmental and human rights awards, and
theatres were packed for the film`s opening weekend in New York City in
mid-September.
A.O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times, described Crude as
"intelligently and artfully made" and wrote that corporations like Chevron "move
money and commodities from one place to another, often with slight regard for
the sovereignty or customs of any place in particular. And so the lawyers and
activists who oppose these conglomerates have tried to become equally mobile and
adaptable, moving continually in the zigzagging paths traced by transnational
capitalism." See additional reviews and the trailer
athttp://www.crudethemovie.com/.
The film, slated for theatres in 40 cities across the country and a 2010 release
in the United Kingdom, is rumored to be in contention for an Oscar nomination.
Scheduled to attend the D.C. premiere will be Luis Yanza, a representative of
the affected communities in Ecuador and a winner of the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize; Berlinger; and Steven Donziger, the American legal advisor
to the communities.