Some of the most memorable and idyllic times of my early youth are the days and weeks I spent in the late 1940s with my parents and sister in the “Oriente” in my native Ecuador.

The “Oriente” is Ecuador’s name for its beautiful jungle region on the East side of the mighty Andes—the beginning of the Amazon rainforest and one of the most biologically diverse regions on earth.

The Oriente provides most of the early tributaries to the mighty Amazon. Rivers such as the great Napo and Santiago and the smaller but still powerful Pastaza.

It is near the banks of one of the Pastaza tributaries that our parents lived in a compound provided by the Anglo-Dutch oil company that was exploring for oil in the Oriente.

My sister and I visited our parents during our various school vacations and holidays. My sister would spend her time admiring the beautiful, gigantic butterflies (sometimes trying to catch them) and I would spend my time playing Tarzan, avoiding the snakes and trying to explode the tunnels interconnecting the giant ant hills. During the day we would swim—under the watchful eye of our nanny—in a smaller river flowing into the rambunctious Pastaza; at night we would collect huge lightning bugs and place them in mason jars making beautiful yellow, green and blue “lanterns.” Generally, we would spend our days and nights just having the time of our lives in this then-pristine part of the Amazon jungle.

I also vividly remember the stories our father told us about the company’s sometimes-not-so-friendly encounters with members of the indigenous tribes who made that region their home. Some had never seen a “white man.” For sure, some had never seen the low-flying amphibious aircraft the company used to try to make contact with the natives. Some must have been members of the feared Auca and Jivaro tribes. Some would raise their bows and arrows or point their spears and blowpipes, with deadly curare-tipped arrows, at the airplanes that sometimes dropped beads, small mirrors, and other small objects as a sign of friendship. Some would actually shoot at the aircraft. I remember and still treasure the photos taken of the natives when some of them finally agreed to make contact with the “white men.” (One of those photos is shown above.)

The company our father worked for–Shell–apparently decided that the actual exploitation, transport and export of oil in those days would not be economically or technically feasible. After a few years, the company left the jungles of Ecuador.

However, others would follow. Companies such as Texaco—later to merge with Chevron—would successfully explore, tap and exploit one of the larger reservoirs of oil in the world, causing what has been described as “the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever.”

In a story in today’s New York Times, Bob Herbert quotes a lawyer who is part of a legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest inhabitants as saying: “As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse.”

After my family benefitted from our father’s employment with the oil industry, some may find it hypocritical of me to now, sixty years later, criticize the very same industry.

So be it.

In view of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill catastrophe, and in view of the ecological disasters that have occurred and continue to take place in the precious, fragile and irreplaceable habitat that is the Amazon region, I’ll take my chances and highly recommend that you read Bob Herbert’s “Disaster in the Amazon.”

Image: On the back of the photograph of the natives (above), my father wrote: