Ecuador tribes vow to fight oil threat

Yet again massive corporations are plowing through natural resourses and ancestral heritage, in a bid to secure ever greater profits. If they are successful, it will mean the devastation of hectares of rain forest, upsetting thousands of species, several of which are on endangered lists, as well as the raping of land rights of the aboriginal people. If this conflict, like so many others before it, results in violence, it will be another instance of blood-for-oil, where profit, not humanity or life, are the bottom line.

One of South America’s poorest countries, Ecuador, is believed to be sitting on huge untapped reserves of oil and gas.

Much of it, though, lies beneath remote areas of the Amazon rainforest.

Now the indigenous people of the region are starting to organise themselves politically in a bid to keep the oilmen out of their ancestral homes.

In global oil terms, Ecuador is a relatively small player. But revenues from its existing Amazon oil reserves are critical in keeping the country’s economy afloat.

Now, with the country sitting on huge potential new reserves, there is enormous pressure to expand production.

Ancestral land

The difficulty is that much of it lies beneath pristine virgin rainforests which are legally designated indigenous tribal territories.

In 1999 the government sold exploration rights in two areas, known as Blocks 23 and 24, which are at the heart of Indian reserves – without consulting the tribes involved.

Six years later and exploration has yet to get under way.

There are three indigenous peoples living within these Blocks: the Achuar, Shuar and Kichwa peoples. Each has set up political organisations to help keep the oilmen out of their territories.

Click here for a map of the region

Milton Carrera is president of the Achuar, a tribe of about…

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