Although they were caught off guard in 1964, the inhabitants of the Oriente have organized and are fighting back. Under the banner of the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (Amazon Defense Coalition), the Ecuadorian victims of Texaco's toxic mess have filed a landmark class-action lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit, first filed in 1993 in New York, was refiled in 2003 in a Lago Agrio courtroom, after a U.S. judge granted Texaco's request that the case be heard in Ecuador. By then, Chevron had purchased Texaco and inherited the lawsuit and Texaco's toxic legacy. In 2011, after nearly two decades of litigation, the Ecuadorian plaintiffs won a landmark judgment against Chevron: Judge Nicolas Zambrano ruled that Chevron should pay $8.6 billion to clean up contamination in the Oriente and provide health care and potable water to area residents. The case is not over with Zambrano's verdict: now it must go to an appeals process, and if Chevron loses its appeals, the verdict will have to be enforced in a country other than Ecuador, where Chevron no longer has assets.

The case is unprecedented. It marks the first time indigenous people have won a judgment agains a U.S. company in a foreign court for environmental crimes, and experts have called the damage the worst oil related contamination on the planet. The ruling against Chevron will have repercussions far beyond Ecuador. The oil industry and communities around the world are watching and waiting on the outcome. If Chevron ultimately pays for a clean-up, it will put multinational corporations on notice that they can and will be held accountable for environmental and human rights abuses anywhere in the world. No longer do they have the green light to continue operating with business-as-usual impunity.

Amazon Watch works with the affected communities in the case to monitor the trial, keep news of the trial in the spotlight and pressure Chevron to do the right thing in Ecuador. The company has engaged in repeated attempts to subvert the judicial process, ranging from the use of deceptive sampling techniques in scientific studies of the contamination, to lobbying efforts in Washington to tie the renewal of Ecuador's trade privileges to its dismissal of the case, to accusing the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and their lawyers and consultants of fraud and extortion. We have successfully applied a combination of shareholder activism, media pressure, and direct action to expose these efforts and keep the heat on Chevron's increasingly desperate management. However, we need continuing support to ensure that 30,000 Ecuadorian indigenous and campesino peoples see one of the world's largest corporations held accountable for poisoning their home. Visit the Take Action section to learn how you can get involved in the fight for justice for the citizens of the Oriente!