Tag Archive for 'Ecuador'Page 3 of 4

10
Sep

Coca, Petroleum and Conflict in Cofan Territory

The Transnational Institute (TNI) has just released a report which examines the impact of coca cultivation, petroleum activity and armed conflict on Cofan, a people traditionally living in the tropical forest between Ecuador and Colombia.

Today their territory, culture and very survival are being threatened by the dynamics associated with the drugs trade, the armed conflict and large mega-projects being developed in their territory.

Here’s the Introduction to the report (links added by me) followed by TNI’s recommendations to the Government of Colombia:

Coca, Petroleum and Conflict in Cofán Territory

Spraying, displacement and economic interests

By examining the recent history of the Cofán people, this paper shows how, under the guise of the war on drugs and terror, the way is being cleared for major economic interests in the Lower Putumayo. Paramilitary groups have been the principal ally of large investors, …

Published on
September 10, 2007
  0 Comments 725 views

28
Jul

Opposition to mining in Ecuador receiving death threats

This week, Amnesty International released an alert on behalf of activsts in Ecuador who are opposed to a local mining operation headed by Canada’s own Accendant Copper. According to the Press Release:

“community leader Jaime Polivio Pérez Lucero has been threatened and activist Mercy Catalina Torres Terán has been attacked, as a result of their opposition to a mining project close to their homes in the Intag area of Imbabura province, northern Ecuador. Their lives, and those of others who voice opposition to the mine, are in danger. Jaime Polivio Pérez Lucero, from Garcia Moreno parish in Imbabura, a group of villages close to a site where the authorities and a mining company are planning to excavate for copper, has received a series of death threats in recent months.”"

This comes at the same time that Ascendant Copper is …

Published on
July 28, 2007
  0 Comments 978 views

30
Jun

Ecuador’s Black Plague

From 1964 to 1992 Texaco (now Chevron) built and operated oil exploration and production facilities in the northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the “Oriente”.

When the oil company arrived in the region, an area of more than 400,000 hectares was pristine rainforest inhabited by indigenous communities living in the ancestral style, in harmony with their natural habitat. Nearly three decades later, when Texaco pulled out, a vast area had been environmentally devastated.

Today, dozens of communities continue to suffer severe health effects, including surging rates of cancer. Meanwhile, indigenous communities have been dispossessed of their traditional homelands and more than a million hectares of ancient and irreplaceable rainforests adjacent to the company’s pipelines and production facilities have been leveled.

The company left a region three times the size of Manhattan polluted with more than 600 open toxic waste pits. To …

Published on
June 30, 2007
  1 Comment 1,284 views

21
Feb

Ecuadorian Native movements turn up the heat

Ecuadorian Native movements turn up the heat
by: Lisa Garrigues - February 19, 2007
www.indiancountry.com/

LA PAZ, Bolivia - On Jan. 15, Native leaders handed the ceremonial ‘’staff of power” to Ecuador’s new president, Rafael Correa. Now indigenous movements in Ecuador are putting the pressure on the Ecuadorian government to meet their demands, which include the convocation of a Constitutional Assembly and increased territorial rights in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

During the ceremony of Tantarimuy, held in Cotopaxi province, Correa said his government would be ”a government of the indigenous.”

His leftist views align him with Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who attended the ceremony wearing Andean ponchos given to them by Native authorities.

”Latin America will keep changing, because what we are living is not an era of change, it is the change of an era,” Correa said.

He has promised to build an Ecuador with ”Ecuadorians in charge,” opposing the free market …

Published on
February 21, 2007
  0 Comments 963 views

15
Jan

Ecuador Bars Oil Extraction, Logging from Indigenous Zone

QUITO, Ecuador, January 12, 2007 (ENS) - To protect indigenous groups who voluntarily isolate themselves from the modern world, the Ecuadorian government has declared a two million acre zone in an oil-rich region of the Amazon off limits to oil development and logging.

The Presidential Decree signed last week by outgoing President Alfredo Palacio is intended to protect the core territory of the last two groups of indigenous peoples in Ecuador known to live in isolation.

Both the Tagaeri and Taromenane are renowned for their giant spears and regarded as among the fiercest tribes on Earth. There is a bloody history of encounters between these two groups and invading oil company workers, loggers, and colonists.

The Presidential Decree defines the boundaries of the so-called Intangible Zone, an area larger than the state of Delaware.

Located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Intangible Zone overlaps the southern part of Yasuni National Park, which …

Published on
January 15, 2007
  0 Comments 911 views

09
Jan

South America: Toward an alternative future

By Noam Chomsky - Last month a coincidence of birth and death signaled a transition for South America and indeed for the world.

The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died even as leaders of South American nations concluded a two-day summit meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, hosted by President Evo Morales, at which the participants and the agenda represented the antithesis of Pinochet and his era.

In the Cochabamba Declaration, the presidents and envoys of 12 countries agreed to study the idea of forming a continent-wide community similar to the European Union.

The declaration marks another stage toward regional integration in South America, 500 years after the European conquests. The subcontinent, from Venezuela to Argentina, may yet present an example to the world on how to create an alternative future from a legacy of empire and terror.

The United States has long dominated the region by two major methods: violence and economic strangulation. Quite generally, …

Published on
January 9, 2007
  0 Comments 967 views

10
Oct

World Indigenous Empowerment Summit

World Indigenous Empowerment Summit
La Paz, Oct 9 (Prensa Latina) The multinational state, the Constituent Assembly, resistance and democracy are on Monday s agenda for delegates at the Continental Summit of the Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala.

Over a thousand representatives from Bolivia, the US, Canada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Uruguay are presenting their experiences with unity in native peoples.

They will discuss international rights, identity and coexistence as well as culture, education, language and historical social debts in work commissions.

The event ending October 12 will spurn Washington´s new colonization strategy through the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Free Trade Agreements. I aims at creating a mechanism that consolidates brotherhood and complementary capacity among peoples.

Delegates will especially honor President Evo Morales, the first indigenous statesman.

Likewise, attendees will say no to interventionism, militarization and all policies and actions that damage sovereignty and …

Published on
October 10, 2006
  0 Comments 1,044 views

Video activism and the Chiapas Media Project

In the following presentation, Claudia Magallanes-Blanco from the University of Western Sydney talks about the role of video activism as a world-wide tool for empowerment and the Chiapas Media Project, a collaborative effort based in Mexico that provides indigenous Zapatistas in Chiapas and peasants in Guerrero with training and equipment to produce their own videos.

Since forming in 1998, CMP has distributed over 6000 videos, including: Zapata’s Garden, a film that looks at the society the Zapatista’s are building; …


I Am A Defender of the Rainforest

Known as ‘Soy defensor de la selva’ in Spanish, I am a Defender of the Rainforest is an award-winning documentary that was filmed, edited, and directed by members of the Sarayaku community in southern Ecuador.

The film shows how the …


Underreported Struggles #19, October 2008

In this month’s Underreported Struggles: 400,000 Guatemalans Reject Development Model, Philippines Indigenous People Unite for the Land, Riot Police Target Algonquin Blockade, Chagos Islanders Denied the Right of Return, and 17 other stories …


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