Joe Berlinger Gets Crude

Why we film: Bringing the story of Crude to the world

by Joe Berlinger & Michael Bonfiglio | Published February 23, 2010

We’ve certainly had cushier assignments. Bouncing along an unpaved Amazon road on the back of a bald-tired pick-up truck in blazing 120-degree heat can lead to reflection on how you wound up in your current situation. Making documentaries, we have filmed all over the world under a variety of conditions. Some places—Maui, Copenhagen, Vienna—have been beautiful and sometimes even luxurious. Others not so much, like this part of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. Once a pristine Eden, today this place bears numerous scars and open wounds, both literal and figurative, left by 40 years of oil extraction.

“Let’s make the next film be about the Paris Opera House or something,” we joke, as we pass a sun-warmed flask of rum around the back of the truck in an attempt to dispatch our splitting headaches. For the past eight or 10 hours we’ve been breathing noxious petroleum fumes while filming at some of the oil pollution sites that contaminate 1,700 square miles of the rainforest here. The physical effects of even very short-term exposure to the pollution are palpable and unpleasant.

Crude, the film we are shooting, tells the story of the largest environmental lawsuit on the planet. 30,000 indigenous people and poverty-stricken campesinos (peasant farmers) are suing Chevron for $27 billion, claiming that Texaco—which was purchased by Chevron in 2001—destroyed their rainforest home and created a “cancer death zone” the size of Rhode Island in one of the most bio-diverse ecosystems on Earth. Known as the “Amazon Chernobyl” case, the suit has been going on since a year after Texaco left the country in 1992, when the local people charged that the American oil company used outdated technology and irresponsible practices in order to save money on their operations in a place they knew no one was paying any attention. We spent three years documenting the case, during the most exciting and dramatic period of what has now stretched to 17 years of epic conflict.

All day and over the course of the past two years, we’ve heard stories from indigenous people about the health problems they and their families say they face on a daily basis. They’ve told us about losing their land, their culture, their loved ones and their dignity. Village elders have described this place as a former paradise, before the fish, animals and plants that allowed them to live in harmony with nature were destroyed by oil production. The voices and faces of these people echo in our minds as the breeze on the back of the moving pick-up cools the sweat that seeps through our layers of DEET-soaked jungle clothing, providing a respite from the extreme equatorial heat and the mosquitoes that the CDC label as carriers of malaria.

More than 40 years ago, Texaco began exploring for oil here. Back then, the company made a deal with Ecuador’s government, and the first place they struck black gold was underneath territory that belonged to the Cofán indigenous group. “A tremendous noise came from the sky,” says Cofán leader Emergildo Criollo, remembering the sound of Texaco’s helicopters descending on his village. “We wondered, ‘What kind of animal is this?’” He laughs, with more bemusement than bitterness, at his own naïveté. Emergildo was just a boy when Texaco arrived, but his recollections of that first contact are vivid. His stories have the same combination of confusion, indignation and sad resignation as those of the Iraqi civilians we saw while watching CNN International back in Quito just a few days before arriving in the jungle. Later, Criollo tells us that two of his sons died from the effects of oil contamination.

To the Cofán and a number of other indigenous groups in Ecuador, Texaco’s arrival was both an attack and an occupation. The native people tell us about their ancestral territories being invaded first by missionaries, then by heavy machinery, explosives, bulldozers, drills, riggers, strange white men and other people from various parts of Ecuador, who came here in search of work. The fertile land once named in the Cofán language of A’ingae was re-christened “Lago Agrio,” meaning “Sour Lake,” after Sour Lake, Texas—birthplace of the Texaco Petroleum Company.

The villagers recount stories of beatings, humiliation and even murders of indigenous people at the hands of the oil workers. Some of the female elders speak of being raped, and one woman tells us she became a prostitute after being violated, abandoning her community in shame for several years.

The heartbreaking story of indigenous people in this region of Ecuador is not a new one. The treatment of native people in both of the Americas by the “white man” is one of the most shameful chapters in human history. Back home we tend to think that similar atrocities in our own country occurred so long ago that they have lost any real significance. Although this legacy is a continuing thread in our ongoing American narrative and its effects still reverberate powerfully, we pretend it doesn’t matter because it happened so long ago.

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Comment by Michael O'Rourke on 9/13/09 at 1:58 pm: I want to thank you, Joe and Michael, for a cogent article about your film. Alarming as the situation is for Ecuadoran Indian community and their homeland, you have maintained equanimity in your “capture” of the last 40 years of what to my mind is horrific. But as you point out, this is not new in the Americas. Joaquin Miller, self appointed “Poet of the Sierras,” wrote about living among the Indians in the Mt. Shasta region of California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Upon his arrival he writes of “air so pure, we could eat it.” He uses the word paradise dozens of times. He also describes the ecologic and cultural devastation visited on the Wintu, Shasta, Modoc and dozens of other “river” tribes in the wake of an invasion by a hundred thousand miners. (Invasive species?) The elements and persons of the Cofan story are interchangeable with Joaquin Miller’s “Life Amongst the Modoc"--stories separated by 150+ years. Perhaps your documentary will not only lift the veil of deceit on the practices of a US resource extraction corporation in Ecuador, but turn the light bulb on in the hearts and minds of US citizens about those practices in this country. I mean, we’ve been down the genocide road as a society, we must put our collective will into stopping it worldwide. Best case scenario, your film will inspire us to redress, and prevent future, crimes against the Indians and environment here. You’ve written a great article here, and given the frame, you’re onto a blessing for us all in the making of this film.
Comment by aion kina on 10/13/09 at 1:51 am: This is really good sharing.this is really awesome article.
Really Inspiring Article. Thanks a lot for sharing.