Illegal Loggers Decimating the Amazon and Inciting Tribal Genocide

[sintax]

Illegal loggers decimating the Amazon and inciting tribal genocide
Illegal loggers are not only decimating the Amazon rainforest, they are also inciting tribal genocide to gain access to protected areas. Suzy Madigan reports from Ecuador

06 June 2005

In Tiguino, a Huaorani Indian settlement on the Cononaco river deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, two ladino workers lean on the fence of an oil well, cigarettes dangling, faces set hard like belligerent squatters.

Babae Ima, the leader of Tiguino's Huaorani clan, lumbers up. Ima has forsaken the gumi (a belt worn around the waist and penis), for army fatigues, fluorescent shorts and wellington boots, all provided by the oil company. It is only by his say-so that these oil workers are allowed here, but the oil firms have worked hard to nurture this relationship.

Tiguino squats at the end of a 115km oil road that carries a giant pipeline into the jungle, marking the only access from the outside world to the Cononaco, which flows deep into the Amazon and is populated by a number of tribes. No one passes down the river without Babae Ima's permission - and remuneration.

In Tiguino, thatched huts have given way to concrete boxes with corrugated roofs; more gifts from the petroleros. The town is littered with rubbish and rum bottles.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=644588

[ozymandius]

1. 90% of the mahogany sold in the U.S. was harvested illegally.

This implies that complicity in rain forest devestation as well as its indigenous peoples travels all the way up the economic ladder.