ECUADORAN PLAINTIFFS ACCUSE TEXACO OF RACISM
(Sept 23,1999)

NEW YORK, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Ecuadoran rainforest Indians suing Texaco
Inc. (NYSE:TX - news) for allegedly polluting their water and land with oil and waste, Thursday began a newspaper, TV and radio ad campaign in the U.S. charging the
company with racism.

A spokeswoman for the White Plains, N.Y.-based company, which made a record $176.1 million settlement in 1996 with black U.S. employees who sued for racial discrimination, accused attorneys for the Ecuadorans of "continued use of the media and even the World Wide Web to level unsubstantiated allegations against the company.''

An ad published in The New York Times Thursday is headlined, "Racial discrimination and Texaco Chapter 2.'' It outlines the charges filed in Manhattan federal court by the Committee for the Defense of the Amazon against the company in 1993 and says, "bluntly put, Texaco does not create this level of devastation near white people.''

The ads were made for the committee, which was formed by residents of the Oriente region of Ecuador in the Amazon rainforest who have reported increased rates of cancer, spontaneous abortions and respiratory infections.

COMPANY SAYS IT ACTED RESPONSIBLY

"Texaco acts and operates responsibly wherever we are in the world. And we acted responsibly in Ecuador,'' Texaco spokeswoman Faye Cox said in response to the ad's charge of racism. Cox said Texaco had been a minority partner in a consortium including the state-owned company Petroecuador and had not operated there for 10 years.

The rainforest Indians alleged in their lawsuit that a Texaco subsidiary dumped an estimated 16 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of toxic waste water there between 1964 and 1992, destroying their way of life.

"Before Texaco came to the Ecaudoran Amazon, indigenous communities fished out of the rivers because there were so many fish and they would live from the tropical rainforest, hunting animals and eating fruits and vegetables,'' committee leader Luis Yanza said in an interview in New York. But after the petroleum exploration, the fish started to die and people could not adequately nourish themselves and couldn't get natural medicines from the jungle.''

The lawsuit said that instead of pumping the substances back into emptied wells under the industry standard, Texaco dumped them in local rivers, directly into landfills or spread them on dirt roads.

ALL AWAIT U.S. JUDGE'S DECISION

After six years of legal wrangling, parties to the lawsuit are awaiting a judge's decision on whether the case should be heard in the United States or sent to Ecuador, where the company would have to consent to being sued in court.

A TV ad also released Thursday shows a white family outside their suburban U.S. home being sprayed with black oil by a Texaco worker.

"Texaco. Skin color matters to them,'' says the voice-over for the ad. "Texaco would never do what you're about to see to people who look like this. But this is what Texaco did in the rainforest in Ecuador.''

Steven Danziger, one of the U.S. attorneys representing the Ecuadorans, said: "It is a heavy charge, but we can't come up with any other explanation because how do you explain why a company would do this in an area where people were living. They didn't consider these people to be equal to them.''

Representatives of the group said the 30-second ad was scheduled to appear on CNN and that it had the support of four U.S.-based environmental groups -- Amazon Watch, Environmental Defense Fund, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth.