During a visit to the Amazon two years ago, with my class on Environmental Literature, we met Alejandro Suarez. He lives in the “selva,” manages Jatun Sacha biological station, and has fought against oil companies in Ecuador for twenty years. He invited us to take a careful look around at the living conditions of people in Amazon of Ecuador. Big oil has been extracting oil in the area for thirty years, beginning with Texaco in the 1970s. Though billions of gallons of oil have been extracted from the vast tracts of wild jungle, people in the area are actually poorer than before the big oil companies arrived.

Despite promises of economic development through transnational oil companies, poverty has actually increased by four times in Ecuador. Some 80% of the people live in literal poverty.

“Look around you. Look how we live,” he said to us. The poverty was visible to all of us. “We live the way we live,” he continued, “because you all live the way you live.”

These words—the voice of Alejo Suarez—has stayed with me, echoed in my mind, stirred things inside me. How is it the people live in the Amazon of Ecuador, with oil companies make fortunes. What do the people have to say about their living conditions? What do the people have to say about oil and its effects on their lives and their health? What would it mean for me to listen to their voices? How would it change my voice?

One tentative answer to these questions can be found in the recent elections of Ecuador, when Rafael Correa was the anti-U.S. candidate who won with 57% of the vote. What is going on in Ecuador?

So I have come back to Ecuador, returning to the “Oriente,” or eastern Ecuador, to explore in more detail the effects of oil and the attitudes of the people—indigenous and “colonos” or colonists. I’ve returned with only two students—two very good students, Kate Fontana and Rachel Esbjornsen. Follow us as we travel down the Rio Aguarico, from Lago Agrio, through communities of Cofanes, Sionas, Secoyas, and Quichuas. How is it that these people live, in the midst of oil pipelines, open oil pits, and burning towers of natural gas? What do they say? And perhaps as important, how will their voices inform our own vision of Ecuador? Our own voices about life, not only in Ecuador, but in the United States as well?