Despite the contentions of Texaco's lawyers, there is nothing subtle about the way the contamination occurred. Above the small town of San Carlos, a rudimentary barbed-wire fence rings an unlined pit set among the trees. From there, it is a clear downhill run to the Huamagacu river, where the women of the town do their washing. Children often come here to swim, too.
"Seventy-five per cent of the children here have skin problems - abscesses and pus spots and raw, itchy skin," said Rosa Moreno, one of four field nurses in the town. "Plenty of others have skin or respiratory problems. Some of them lose their hair. We've had 12 people here die of cancer."San Carlos, not far from a well and pumping station center called Sacha, has been the community most intently studied by medical professionals, thanks to a European couple, Miguel San Sebastian and Anna-Karin Hurtig, who have meticulously gathered data on the town.
It is almost impossible to make a definitive link between environmental blight and a cancer cluster - a point Texaco has rammed home in court at every opportunity - but the two doctors have demonstrated over and over that San Carlos's cancer rates are dramatically higher than in similar communities untouched by oil pollution. Conditions such as childhood leukemia were all but unknown in the area until the oilmen arrived. Now the leukemia has taken on the proportions of a small epidemic, with 91 confirmed cases and counting.
