In the 1970s, large deposits of oil were discovered in Ecuador’s Amazon. The country’s leaders turned to Texaco to build an oil industry in the jungle and help pull the country out of poverty.

Now oil provides for more than half of the country’s national budget and foreign debt payments. But the ecological costs have been huge. And now many Ecuadoreans are beginning to question whether the benefits of the industry have been worth the price.

Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.