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The two largest oil-producing countries in Latin America, Mexico and Venezuela, sold petroleum to Nicaragua at concessional rates for several years beginning in 1980. The program was curtailed because Nicaragua could not make even reduced payments.

Brazil does not want to become an exporter of crude oil. No. We want to be a country that exports oil byproducts - more gasoline, high-quality oil - and to strengthen the petrochemical industry.

Energy companies, such as Chevron and Shell, and oil producing countries, such as Kuwait and Venezuela, pump crude oil from their vast land holdings and sell it on the world market.

Oil is ancient wealth in the ground.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

Bahia is the Amazon's geographical next-of-kin: the same climate, forest canopy, diverse floor. But there is no wild cacao; the tree was introduced, most likely by a Frenchman, Louis Frederick Warneaux, who, in 1746, sowed seeds near one of Bahia's large rivers.

There is no doubt that now, more than ever, we must work to end our dependence on foreign oil sources. But we cannot do so by ignoring the wishes of the coastal communities that oppose drilling.

Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source, they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world.