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Introduction: Stalled Justice
On November 3
rd
, 1993, a class-action lawsuit, Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc., was filed by
30,000 indigenous and settler residents of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest against Texaco for
environmental and cultural damages resulting from the company’s two decades of oil exploration
and drilling operations in the region.
1
The case was historic for several important reasons. First,
this case represented a historic move for indigenous communities: holding a multinational
corporation accountable for their exploitative and destructive activities on their lands. Second,
the case was filed in a U.S. federal court against a US-owned company for negligent acts in
another country. Third, the plaintiff sought relief under the Alien Tort Claims Act (“ATCA”), a
statute enacted by Congress in 1789 which gave the district courts “original jurisdiction of any
civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of
the United States.”
2
The case was closely watched by all for its potential ramifications on human
rights, environmental and international law doctrine, and international corporate accountability.
Ten years and mountains of litigation later, the case was remanded back to Ecuador
where it was refiled in 2003 as Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco, following Chevron and Texaco’s
merger in 2001. Today, the challenges of indigenous groups against this petroleum behemoth
have been all but squashed under the weight of Chevron-Texaco’s bottomless legal and public
relations resources, as well as the political instability of the Ecuadorian Republic and its judiciary.
During the heat of public and scholarly attention to this case, examining the democratic
challenge of indigenous groups against Chevron-Texaco was predominantly the work of lawyers
and legal scholars. Their approaches centered on the novelty of this case and its implications for
international, human rights and environmental law. From the lens of the promise of the social
justice through the law, critical engagement with the obstacles encountered by participants was
1
See Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc., No. 93 Civ. 7527, 1994 WL 142006 (S.D.NY. April 11, 1994).
2
See 28 U.S.C. § 1350.
Convention