Exclusive: Selling the Amazon for a Handful of Beads

By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet. Posted January 17, 2006.

In the midst of an Amazonian oil boom, classified documents reveal deep links between oil companies and Ecuador's military.

Scanning bookshelves in his tiny law office in Quito, Ecuador, Bolivar Beltran's disdain for Big Oil is as legible as the contracts that map their nefarious ways.

"These were all negotiated in secret," says the soft-spoken attorney and Ecuadorian congressional aide, explaining how he used a lawsuit last year to obtain pages of once-classified contracts between the Ecuadorian military and 16 multinational oil companies.