Anti-Oil Activists in Ecuador Stand Up To Protect Yasuni National Park

23rd Sep­tem­ber, The world’s most bio­di­verse area risks being exploit­ed for its oil by the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” gov­ern­ment of Rafael Cor­rea. But he faces strong resis­tance.

The script of this sto­ry is almost too obvi­ous. The most bio­di­verse spot on the plan­et, the Yasuní Nation­al Park in Ecuador — and in par­tic­u­lar an area called ITT — lays on top of pre­cious oil. A poor country’s greedy gov­ern­ment threat­ens to exploit it. Vol­un­tar­i­ly iso­lat­ed indige­nous peo­ple who have nev­er been con­tact­ed also live in this region. Those indige­nous peo­ple are war­riors and would fight for their ter­ri­to­ry to death. As I am writ­ing this I am think­ing that all the ele­ments in this sto­ry might remind us of the film Avatar. But in that sto­ry it was much eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy the bad guys rid­ing super­son­ic space­ships and fight­ing against those blue gigan­tic indige­nous who would use drag­ons to fly. This sto­ry is a bit more com­pli­cat­ed.

Rafael Cor­rea has been Ecuador’s Pres­i­dent since 2007, with at least 4 more years ahead of him. Pri­or to Cor­rea, Ecuador expe­ri­enced over 10 years of intense polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, which includ­ed more than 6 pres­i­dents oust­ed over that peri­od. But what start­ed as a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” left­ist gov­ern­ment which has per­ma­nent­ly claimed rights and respect in the name of sov­er­eign­ty, has recent­ly start­ed to sig­nal author­i­tar­i­an­ism, cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism as well as oth­er typ­i­cal signs of a pow­er-hun­gry gov­ern­ment. Late­ly, the Ecuado­ri­an gov­ern­ment, with Rafael Cor­rea as its main fig­ure, keep say­ing that “every­body who is not with me, is against me and the rev­o­lu­tion.”

Com­ing back to the stage where this sto­ry takes place, it is impor­tant to men­tion that ecol­o­gy and respect for the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties do not go togeth­er with oil drilling. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly clear in Ecuador. Ecuador’s rela­tion with oil drilling start­ed over 40 years ago. Just one exam­ple of the what has hap­pened in the Ama­zon­ian region in the East of the coun­try since then is Chevron’s sys­tem­at­ic dump­ing of more than 18 bil­lion gal­lons of oil into the rain­for­est, in what has been called the worst eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter in his­to­ry, with thou­sands of peo­ple left dead and thou­sands more sick due to pol­lut­ed water. The destruc­tion of the for­est has left very lit­tle rev­enue to Ecuador and even less to its peo­ple. Petroa­ma­zonas, the Ecuado­ri­an pub­lic enter­prise in charge of oil explo­ration and drilling, admit­ted that one spill occurs every week. After 40 years of oil exploita­tion, Ecuador is still a poor coun­try.

What makes the char­ac­ters in this sto­ry par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to define as the “bad guys”, is that not all of them were always will­ing to inter­vene in this high­ly sen­si­tive area in exchange for mon­ey. Pres­i­dent Cor­rea him­self devot­ed his first inter­ven­tion to the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly in 2007 to this top­ic. Using the same charm as years ago in New York or Rio de Janeiro dur­ing the Rio+20 glob­al con­fer­ence, Pres­i­dent Cor­rea announced on August 15 this year that he has been forced to start drilling oil in the most sen­si­tive zone of the Yasuní Nation­al Park, claim­ing that “the world has failed us.” As a mat­ter of fact the ini­tia­tive was pret­ty much boy­cotted by the gov­ern­ment itself.

Through­out the years, con­tra­dic­to­ry sig­nals were sent, a low-skilled team was appoint­ed, min­ing projects all over the coun­try were giv­en to Chi­nese and Cana­di­an com­pa­nies, Ecuador par­tic­i­pat­ed in oil-pro­mot­ing inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tion rounds. This, among oth­er things, weak­ened the verac­i­ty of the ini­tia­tive. Fol­low­ing the announce­ment, Cor­rea and some of his gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have stat­ed that those indige­nous vol­un­tar­i­ly iso­lat­ed have actu­al­ly dis­ap­peared, tak­ing off the table the fact that an eth­no­cide is immi­nent once the oil drilling starts. All of the argu­ments pre­sent­ed to pro­mote the ini­tia­tive ini­tial­ly were tak­en back, includ­ing mod­i­fy­ing offi­cial maps.

As expect­ed, a mas­sive pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign fol­lowed Correa’s announce­ment. Claim­ing that oil drilling will only affect 0.1% of the Yasuní area, TV spots and radio com­mer­cials are broad­cast every day on prime-time, fol­lowed by a strong social media cam­paign. One of the sev­er­al spots shows a baby hand­ed by its moth­er to be vac­ci­nat­ed. The Ecuado­ri­an gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly com­pares a tod­dler being vac­ci­nat­ed to oil drilling. In the Ama­zon­ian provinces, where entire com­mu­ni­ties have paid the price of oil drilling with their health and life — includ­ing those impact­ed by Chevron’s oil dam­ages — have been put up with the slo­gan “oil builds a bet­ter future.” The gov­ern­ment is actu­al­ly try­ing to con­vince us that those (sup­pos­ed­ly) 18 bil­lion dol­lars will con­tribute enor­mous­ly to erad­i­cate pover­ty. How is it that since Cor­rea came to pow­er the nation­al bud­get has been over US$150 bil­lion and peo­ple in Ecuador are still poor?

In Quito and many oth­er cities across the coun­try, young­sters, artists, civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions and indige­nous groups have orga­nized demon­stra­tions against the inter­ven­tion in Yasuní. This social move­ment has been fight­ing for the rights of nature and against trans­genic food, neolib­er­al­ism, impe­ri­al­ism and oth­ers, and is now stand­ing up to defend the park. The gov­ern­ment has react­ed furi­ous­ly against the pro­test­ers, even resort­ing to vio­lent police repres­sion. All sorts of threats have been announced includ­ing con­trol­ling social media and leav­ing stu­dents out of school if they dare to par­tic­i­pate in demon­stra­tions. Pres­i­dent Cor­rea even react­ed through his Twit­ter account against inter­na­tion­al com­men­ta­tors who showed their dis­ap­proval. Every­body who is not with the gov­ern­ment is auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered its ene­my.

And so, with­out blue indige­nous peo­ple rid­ing drag­ons to stop the destruc­tion of the most bio-diverse spot of plan­et Earth, we stand up. We stand up to say that we won’t allow an eth­no­cide to hap­pen in front of our eyes. We stand up to tell Pres­i­dent Cor­rea that even if the world failed Yasuní, he is respon­si­ble for the impact that oil drilling will have on this area and the plan­et. We stand up to those who have his­tor­i­cal­ly betrayed our con­sti­tu­tion. We stand up for a ref­er­en­dum where the peo­ple of Ecuador will say “no!” to the destruc­tion of nature and the habi­tat and liveli­hoods of indige­nous peo­ples. Because we believe that a dif­fer­ent Ecuador and a dif­fer­ent world are pos­si­ble; a plan­et where nature doesn’t need to be destroyed and peo­ple don’t have to die so oth­ers can dri­ve. We believe in a post-oil plan­et.