The lawsuit sought compensation for "alleged environmental and personal injuries arising out of Texaco's oil exploration and extraction operations in the Oriente region between 1964 and 1992.
[2] In the early years of modern oil extraction, the Ecuadorian government and corporations viewed the petroleum-rich Amazon as tierras baldias, or unoccupied lands.
[3] Instead, the Ecuadorian Amazon was home to indigenous peoples including the Quichua, Shuar, Achuar, Cofan, Huaorani, Shiwiar, Secoya, and Siona.
[4] In Cofan cosmology, the crust of Amazonian earth hosts the coancoan, creatures who provide goodwill and healing to their communities and who are damaged by oil extraction.
[2][4] A new constitution was ratified in 2008.Though Texaco's petroleum contract in Ecuador ended on June 7, 1992, Petroecuador continued to exploit natural resources in the Amazon.
[6] In 1997, the government of Ecuador repeated efforts to intervene under the waiver of sovereign immunity, but Judge Rakoff once again denied that request, citing an "untimely and prejudicial" bias against Texaco.
In combination with other Ecuadorian political issues, this spurred a 2000 military junta to overthrow Mahuad and replace him with a military-citizen triumvirate which included CONAIE (pan-indigenous organization) leader Antonio Vargas.
[2][clarification needed] In the Tena case, the president of the court refused to process the complaint for arbitrary reasons: (1) because the complaint had not been translated into English and defendant ChevronTexaco resides in the United States; and (2) for jurisdictional reasons because the affected lands owned by the plaintiffs' communities include lands beyond the geographic boundaries of the provinces where the court is located".Ecuador's 2008 constitution granted inalienable rights to nature itself.
[13] The new President Rafael Correa publicly supported the indigenous plaintiffs in cases against American petroleum companies, while privately backing some mining efforts in the Amazon.