"One of the problems with modern society is that it places more importance on things that have a price than on things that have a value. Breathing clean air, for instance, or having clean water in the rivers, or having legal rights - these are things that don't have a price but have a huge value. Oil does have a price, but its value is much less. And sometimes we make the mistake” - Pablo Fajardo
Historically infamous for cocaine production and guerilla warfare, the Northern-Oriente of Ecuador has been suffering a much more insidious and debilitating form of crime now for decades. Its perpetrators sit in sterile offices thousands of miles away and we assist their atrocities every time we visit the petrol pump and fatten their pockets with perpetually escalating profits. It is a complicity that we cannot escape from, no matter how hard we attempt, but we can at least be conscious of the crimes and demand a different future.
This dense jungle region that skirts the Colombian border is an area previously solely virgin rainforest in one of the most biodiverse parts of the Amazon, inhabited solely by indigenous tribes who lived sustainably governed by one God: the Jungle. Unfortunately however, this God harboured a dark secret deep within his folds - oil. And a lot of it.....Read more here.
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