Servio Curipoma Arrives in New York to Tell His Story

18 May 2011

From a sweltering Amazonian town surrounded by former Texaco oil fields, Servio Curipoma, a cacao farmer, arrived last evening in New York City to tell the story of how an American oil company devastated his lands and drinking water, causing a public health crisis that continues to this day. Servio lost both his parents (his mother's heartbreaking story is told here) and a sister to cancer that doctors have attributed to drinking water contaminated by toxic crude waste. Since that time, Curipoma has become an active voice for his community over the past 14 years, demanding that Chevron take responsibility for the contamination that has so profoundly affected his family.

Servio is part of a delegation of two other inspiring leaders from the Ecuadorian Amazon, traveling on behalf of 30,000 affected people in Ecuador, to demand that Chevron finally own up to its responsibility in Ecuador buy cleaning up its toxic legacy.