Ethics and Politics of Oil in Ecuador

Aylin ismayilova, Msc Social Anthropology

Image: Azzedine Rouichi / Unsplash

“Most of our women no longer sing… but today I will sing for you.

We lived upon the river of rich clean waters.

With the arrival of the company and their contamination

My brothers are now dead.

I am the only survivor of my family.

The message of my song is to tell the world,

So that the world can know what has been done."

- "Crude" (2009)

Between 1972 and 1993, the US oil company Texaco released over 30 billion gallons of toxic waste and crude oil into the Amazon rainforest in north-eastern Ecuador, producing severe environmental, health, and social consequences for the native community. The legal struggle documented in "Crude" (2009) foregrounds not only environmental devastation but also the ethical and political narratives through which oil extraction is justified and managed. The film shows how harm is visible and undeniable, yet it is repeatedly transformed into a technical and managerial problem rather than a political one. This raises a central question: why is the violence of extraction reframed as a matter of expertise and ethics?

This essay argues that in the context of oil extraction, ethical discourses and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) function as contemporary “anti-politics machines,” enabling processes of accumulation by dispossession while masking their political, environmental, and social consequences. Using Ferguson’s (1994) analysis of depoliticisation in Lesotho, Harvey’s (2003) concept of accumulation by dispossession, and the legal case over oil pollution between Texaco and the native population of Ecuador, we explore how oil corporations use ethics and social responsibility to depoliticise their extractive operations and mask the environmental impacts on affected populations.

The Development Strategy

In the 2009 documentary "Crude", we observe a situation where an energy corporation and the local population are at odds with each other, creating a complex transnational legal battle. In 1993, after decades of Texaco polluting the environment of Ecuador during oil extraction operations, a legal case was initiated by approximately 30,000 affected Indigenous people and small-scale farmers. The state did not protect the indigenous communities affected; the Ecuadorian government viewed their lands as unoccupied, signing a contract with Texaco and allowing the oil extraction to go on unregulated (Davidov, 2010). The documentary demonstrates the role of the Indigenous population in bringing international awareness to the role of oil extraction in harming the environment and the people living in it. Members of the Indigenous community are shown testifying in a US court and challenging Texaco scientists on the level of environmental degradation. Residents in the area have experienced illness due to polluted soil and water, but their concerns have been largely dismissed until the lawsuit provided them a platform. Yet, even in the courtroom, the dispute is not framed as a political conflict over land, sovereignty, and state power. Instead, it becomes a technical conflict over measurement, scientific credibility, and legal responsibility. The question becomes: why does the political reality of dispossession become a technical debate?

The film suggests that the state’s absence in protecting Indigenous land is not merely negligence but part of a wider political system that puts extraction before development, sometimes even equating the two. This framing allows corporations to operate with the assumption that the land is empty, rendering Indigenous communities invisible or obstructive. "Crude" therefore exposes a fundamental contradiction: extraction is presented as a process of national development, while the communities living on the land are ignored, displaced, or treated as obstacles. Harm is visible and embodied, yet the political structures that enable it remain hidden. This political invisibility is not accidental but structurally produced: it reflects the depoliticising logic Ferguson (1994) diagnoses as the “anti-politics machine.” Ferguson’s Lesotho case shows how development projects are framed as technical solutions to economic problems, even when they reshape state power and social relations. A project that “failed” to increase agricultural production nonetheless expanded bureaucratic control and reinforced state authority - effects systematically omitted from IMF reports. Poverty, in this logic, is not understood as the outcome of historical and structural relations but as a technical deficiency that can be corrected through expert management.

The anti-politics machine, therefore, does not simply conceal politics; it actively produces a reality without politics. Development becomes equivalent to economic growth, and growth becomes a mathematical model that can be optimised. This is precisely the mechanism at work in "Crude": the environmental destruction caused by oil extraction is rendered a technical issue of “management” and “mitigation.” The legal case becomes a matter of scientific measurement rather than a debate about sovereignty or responsibility. In this way, the documentary reveals how the anti-politics machine operates within extractive industries, making violence appear as a problem of technical expertise rather than political accountability.

This depolitisation of resource extraction conceals a devastating political reality - the people themselves are dispossessed as they lose control over the land they live on. Harvey (2003) builds on Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation to explain contemporary mechanisms of neoliberal expansion. He coined the term accumulation by dispossession, defined as the transformation of land and resources through their forcible or legalised transfer from communities to capital. Unlike primitive accumulation, which Marx situates in the historical formation of capitalism, accumulation by dispossession describes a recurring mechanism that sustains capitalism, especially during periods of crisis. In this framework, dispossession is not an exceptional historical event but a continuous strategy of accumulation through privatisation, enclosure, and the commodification of nature. In extractive contexts, dispossession is justified through developmental narratives that frame resource exploitation as a national economic necessity. When combined with the anti-politics machine, dispossession becomes both technical and morally defensible. In "Crude", this dynamic becomes visible when the Ecuadorian state frames Amazonian land as “unoccupied,” granting extraction rights to Texaco. Dispossession is not presented as a political act; it is framed as a necessary step toward development. Thus, dispossession becomes not only legal but morally justified, and extraction can proceed with little political opposition.

The "Gift" of Development

Dispossession, then, is made acceptable through the moral language of development and corporate ethics, which transform extraction into ‘responsible’ progress. The transfer of rights over land and resources contributes to the cycle of capitalist growth in the Global North. Yet, because extractive relationships are framed as beneficial to the developing country, foreign energy corporations are often portrayed as positive agents of development. Stirrat and Henkel (1997) draw on Mauss’s concept of the “gift” to argue that development projects create a giver-receiver dynamic. In resource extraction, the developing region “gives” its natural resources in exchange for financial investment and promises of economic growth. This creates an imbalance because the receiver becomes indebted to the giver, and a reciprocating “gift” is expected. However, this nuance is often lost: developed states and corporations are portrayed as altruistic, acting under ethical obligation to provide aid. The introduction of ethical frameworks into development discourse shifts responsibility for environmental damage away from structural relations of power and onto corporations or weak states. Rajak (2011) argues that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) allows corporations to establish themselves as moral agents and community participants, thereby gaining power beyond their economic role. CSR becomes a tool to mask power imbalances and transform extraction into a morally defensible activity. Environmental issues are treated as matters of corporate image rather than structural challenges. In this way, CSR functions as a modern anti-politics machine: dispossession is reframed as a form of participation in development. Ethics, rather than challenging extraction, becomes one of its legitimating tools.

Corporate Faces

In "Crude", this mechanism becomes visible through the representation of corporate actors. The documentary shows how corporate personhood is constructed via the voices of lawyers, scientists, and employees who speak on behalf of the company, thereby producing a sense of legitimacy and neutrality. Bovensiepen’s (2020) analysis of willful ignorance describes this process: non-knowledge of environmental and social damage functions as a tool of power, allowing corporate employees to detach themselves from the harm they produce. This blindness is not necessarily strategic; instead, “willful” ignorance becomes “banal” as it is naturalised and institutionalised. CSR, therefore, operates as a strategy to make harm manageable and acceptable rather than to eliminate it. A contrast emerges between the technical, detached Texaco employee and the Indigenous community member who is intimately aware of the environmental consequences of extraction. In a similar case, Shever (2010) describes how Shell reconfigured its image in Argentina through CSR by using a female spokesperson to present the corporation as a caring neighbour. By constructing corporate personhood and a “visible face” (Shever, 2010, p. 33), oil corporations use ethical framing to create distance between themselves and affected communities. Environmental issues are thus treated as technical challenges, consistent with Ferguson’s anti-politics machine, stripping them of their social and political context.

Empowerment in Truth?

However, I'd like to highlight how by documenting and exposing the legal battle over ecological polllution, "Crude" functions as a revolutionary and empowering project. By documenting harm and producing a counter-narrative that refuses to let dispossession remain invisible, "Crude" challenges the depoliticisation and moralisation of extraction. The epigraph captures this powerful sentiment: an elderly woman reclaims her voice in the most literal sense, by singing about the grief of losing her family, even though "the women no longer sing." By centering Indigenous experiences and making oil contamination legible to global audiences, “Crude” interrupts the logic that frames environmental destruction as a technical problem and does not allow the corporation to manage the crisis through media narratives and ethical tools such as CSR. Importantly, the documentary does not treat the courtroom as the only site of legitimacy; it exposes how legal systems privilege corporate expertise and treat Indigenous knowledge as anecdotal. In doing so, “Crude” reveals that the struggle is not only about compensation but about who has the authority to define truth, harm, and responsibility. Bovensiepen's concept of "non-knowing" is no longer a viable excuse - as the environmental damages and the suffering of the community are documented and publicised, they become impossible to dismiss due to ignorance.

Conclusions

"Crude" reveals how oil extraction is not simply an economic process but a political one that is continually depoliticised through ethics and CSR. Ferguson’s anti-politics machine explains how technical knowledge turns social conflict into a manageable problem, while Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession reveals how extraction relies on the transformation of land and community into capital. Ethical frameworks like CSR function as a modern anti-politics machine: they frame environmental damage as a managerial issue and dispossession as participation in development. Indigenous communities, often ignored by the state, are silenced; yet "Crude" provides a space to assert their lived experiences and challenge the authority of the corporation. By exposing the extent of the damage, the documentary reveals that this battle is not merely legal - it is a battle for the right to define truth and take control over the narrative.