Like “Trinkets and Beads” before it, “Crude” shows us the impact to the indigenous cultures (and perhaps more importantly, people) by the oil companies. “Trinkets and Beads” focused more the Maxum and the other “tribe”, but “Crude” focuses more on the Cofan people’s direct struggle with Chevron (formerly Texico), of which we got a glimpse in “Trinkets and Beads”.
Mostly we see this from the legal team for the Cofan people’s perpective, but we see very clearly the type of fight they have as Chevron outright lied to try to avoid what would eventually become (after the scope of the film) a 19 billion verdict. Of course, they still aren’t paying up and are even challenging the validity of the verdict now.
This whole thing has been a public relations disaster for them and one would think they would just go in and do the remediation (of course they would still likely deny wrongdoing) for “the sake of the indigenous people”. It would give them a way to put this to bed, do what’s ultimately right (finally), and still not “acknowledge guilt” which seems to be very important to them.
Sadly Chevron, like most governments and other corporate entities, don’t think ahead. They tend to be more reactionary than visionary. They fail to realize that by saving a little money now, it’s probably going to cost you more in the long run. For Chevron (Texico really), while it would have cost them more to properly drill and produce, it probably wouldn’t have cost them 19 billion more. That’s not even counting the human cost (because frankly, Chevron doesn’t care about that). But even just looking at the almighty dollar, it would have been in their best interest to do it right the first time.
As if Chevron’s evasion and outright deceit isn’t enough, they add insult to injury by forcing the filmmaker to turn over raw footage (including footage not used) of the lead attorney for the Cofan people, and that of government officials on what is effectively a technicality. That “technicality” was that not only was he approached by the lead attorney to make this film, but he had also removed some scenes at his request, which the judges decided amounted to being “commissioned” and thus not an independent journalist.
The bottom line is that Chevron, like most corporations, simply cares about the almighty dollar, and especially doesn’t care about human life. At this point the fact that the people they are screwing over are indigenous simply makes it easier to run them over. I don’t believe Chevron is specifically against the indigenous, but rather simply puts money over human life (any human life) and sees the Indigenous as less empowered, thus less able to defend themselves, thus easier to save money by not doing things properly with (because they can’t defend themselves).
starbase22 