Oil drilling sparks Indigenous outcry as spills tarnish Ecuador Amazon [Video]

A thick slick of oil covers part of an estuary in the Ecuadoran Amazon, where the Indigenous Waorani people are imploring authorities to stop drilling for the black gold that keeps spilling into their environment.

Black sludge also coats the vegetation alongside a road leading to the village of Guiyero in Yasuni National Park, one of the most diverse biospheres in the world.

“It’s time to say enough! They’ve abused us,” Ene Nenquimo, vice president of the Waorani Nationality (Nawe) organization, told AFP, wearing a headdress of multicoloured feathers.

The oil spill occurred in June, according to environmentalists, the latest of many in the reserve.

State-owned oil company Petroecuador admitted that an undetermined amount of oil leaked into the environment from one of its blocks, contaminating water sources in several towns and reaching the Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon.

“Big lizards died,” lamented Pablo Ahua, 44, one of …