Ecuador’s ‘El Oriente’: Will It Be Another Paradise Lost?

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

The Oriente is Ecuador’s magnificent jungle region on the East side of the majestic Andes Mountains. It is the beginning of the Amazon rain forest basin — some parts still pristine — and one of the most biologically diverse regions on earth, an ecological miracle.

My sister and I visited our parents in the Oriente during our school vacations. My sister would chase the colorful, gigantic butterflies and admire the delicate, iridescent colibris, not realizing at the time that Ecuador has thousands of species of butterflies and is home to one of the largest profusions of hummingbirds in the world.

I would spend my days playing Tarzan, climbing some of the trees that reached for the sky, not knowing that the rainforest has 2,200 varieties of trees or that they are a critical part of our planet’s “lungs.” Of course, we knew that we had to be careful of poisonous snakes, frogs and certain plants. But we did not know then that such toxins and some chemicals from a treasure trove of “medicinal plants” would be used to make potent new medicines, powerful painkillers and — who knows — one day the wonder drugs that will cure cancer and other cruel diseases.

Our parents lived in a “company compound,” Shell Mera, on the banks of a river at the headwaters of the powerful Pastaza, which eventually disgorges into the mighty Amazon.

At the end of our delightful, adventure-packed days, my sister and I would listen to our father tell us about his latest encounter with some heretofore unknown animal or insect, or how one of the company planes had flown low over the huts of some indigenous tribe, visible through openings in the emerald canopy, and dropped beads and small mirrors trying to establish contact with the natives, only to see them raise their bows and arrows or point their spears and blowpipes at the airplane.

For my sister and me, our short visits to the Oriente were like trips to Paradise.

But soon there would be trouble in Paradise, and it would be spelled O-I-L.

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Photo by our late Father who wrote on the back of it: “Chief Taisha, of the Jivaro head hunters and his son, Segundo, with their 16-foot blowpipes, September 1948.”