COMMUNITIES DEMAND A LAW THAT RESPECTS THE NATURAL WORLD

Hundreds of residents from communities threatened by mining projects marched to Quito’s colonial center on April 21 to thank Constitutional Assembly delegates for voting for the Mining Mandate. Of the 130 delegates, 95 voted in favor of the Mandate on April 18. According to Marta Roldós, delegate for Guayas province, the Mandate cancels 4,274 mining concessions granted by authorities over the years, including those whose concessionaires have not invested in their holdings since December 2007, and who have not consulted with affected communities, and concessions located within protected areas, national parks and protected forests, and affecting water sources.

 
Delegates concerned about water
The event began at the Teatro Prometeo, where community representatives met with Constitutional Assembly delegates. Abel Avila, delegate for Esmeraldas, emphasized that the Mandate is a positive step toward protecting water sources. He also said that Ecuador’s new constitution will be the first that guarantees the rights of nature. (See reflection by Alberto Acosta, this issue.)

 

One of the messages exhibited during the march. (Alexandra Goldstein)

Marta Roldós added that Ecuador is at a turning point, which she characterized not as an era of change but as a “change of era.” She also said that the struggle against mining is a health issue, an environmental protection issue, and, above all, a sovereignty issue. It is a matter of the kind of development Ecuadorians want.

Both delegates said that the Mining Mandate is a very important step in the struggle against mining, but that it did not provide a definitive solution to the problem and that communities would have to defend their rights in the streets.

In that same vein, Humberto Cholango, spokesperson for ECUARUNARU, a federation of Kichwa-speaking organizations in the Sierra, stated that communities could not wait for authorities to respect the law but that the people themselves would have to force compliance.

“We want chicha, we want corn…”
After the meeting, community representatives headed for the presidential palace where they hoped to have a meeting with Rafael Correa. The crowd marched from the Teatro Prometeo to the Plaza Grande, singing and chanting slogans, and carrying signs announcing their opposition to mining. Around 100 residents of Intag participated in the event. Their signs demanded respect for constitutional rights and accused mining companies of not consulting with communities.

The march ended at the government palace where the president was said to be too busy to meet with demonstrators. After demands from the crowd, one of Correa’s advisors met with a delegation of demonstrators who explained why they believe that Ecuador should be declared free of industrial mining.

Luis Robalino, Cotacachi County council member, expressed doubts about the chief of state’s position on mining. Correa has stated that there will be mining in Ecuador, but with tighter controls and better technology. Community representatives are convinced that the controls and clean technology proposed by the president do not exist.

While the Mandate has relieved tensions in communities threatened by mining projects, the new constitution will contain the final word on the subject. It is expected to be put to a vote in June. If voters approve the constitution, a new Congress will be elected and will write and approve a new mining law. Mr. Cholango stated that this will be the next step in the struggle: to make sure that the law requires that nature and communities be respected.

The Peoples’ Assembly is born
The march in Quito was planned during a meeting on April 4, called by representatives of communities threatened by mining, shrimp farms, palm plantations and timber activities, to evaluate the administration and the Constitutional Assembly. At that time, the Peoples’ Assembly in Defense of the Land, Water, Forests and Mangroves was founded. The organization includes a wide range of communities and organizations opposed to extractive activities. The meeting took place in the Jorge Icaza Auditorium of the Casa de la Cultura in Quito, sponsored by Acción Ecológica, a national environmental activist organization.

Marlon Santi, president of the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE), explained the need for the evaluation, especially as regards mining. He said that the administration up to that point had not made a clear statement of its stand on the issue. Other speakers described the problems their communities were experiencing as a result of the presence of mining transnationals.

Ecuador’s FARC
In a harsh criticism of the administration, Cotacachi mayor Auki Tituaña said that President Rafael Correa had expressed his support for extractive industries when he said that “it would be idiotic not to exploit the one hundred billion dollars” in oil in the Ispingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil field located in the territory of indigenous peoples who refuse all contact with the so-called civilized world and for whom oil activities would spell extinction.

President Correa promotes extractive activities because, according to Tituaña, his populist politics require monetary resources. That is why he belittles people opposed to mining, calling them infantile. The mayor criticized the chief of state for not proposing a real change, and he warned that citizens had two choices: to continue believing in the administration or to prepare for a radical, head-on battle against the Ecuadorian FARC [Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which the mayor said stood for Frente Amigos de Rafael Correa, or, the Friends of Rafael Correa Front]. He also stated that, according to Alberto Acosta, Constitutional Assembly president, transnational mining companies have designated $300,000,000 for bribing Assembly delegates to write a constitution that will promote their interests.

We want to be left in peace
In an interview with Periódico INTAG, Salvador Quishpe, from the Southern Resistance Coordinating Committee, said that communities just want “foreign mining company, whose representatives have manipulated Ecuador’s economy and the political situation, to leave them in peace.” He accused the administration of betraying the people by turning thousands of hectares over to foreign mining companies. He also said that resistance to mining is based on experience with oil, an activity that was also supposed to lead to jobs and development. In fact, it has produced pollution, destruction, and greater poverty for communities in the oil fields.

What most concerns Quishpe is that while calling itself the people’s government and bragging about citizen participation and open doors, this administration has not consulted with the people but is trying to force mining on communities.

The indigenous leader said that a peaceful solution to the conflict would require that Correa cancel all mining concessions. He maintained that otherwise an uprising will be necessary to solve the problem, adding that Occidental, the U.S. oil company, was not thrown out of Ecuador by the administration but by the people, who are prepared to get rid of mining companies in like fashion.

Assembly resolutions
The resolutions approved at the April 4 meeting charged the Correa administration with breaking its promises to the people who had voted for the president. The document also states that the chief of state has become the Chamber of Mining’s best public relations agent while doing nothing to prevent the privatization of water. These actions and omissions have led to serious social conflict. In addition, the assembly charged the administration with supporting reforestation with species that will damage soils and with an aggressive agrofuels program that will have negative impacts on food sovereignty for Ecuadorians. Finally, the document charges the administration with favoring shrimp farming, with criminalizing protest, and with repression against residents of Dayuma and Victoria del Portete. [Editor’s note: Residents of Dayuma were charged with terrorism as a result of a strike to protest lack of benefits from oil activities affecting the community, and residents of Victoria del Portete experienced serious repression and arrests during an anti-mining demonstration.]

In response to these and other positions and actions by the administration, assembly participants created the Permanent Assembly of Peoples to work for a “plurinational, sovereign, ecological” Ecuador where all peoples are respected and to demand that cases of persons harassed for defending life and nature be investigated and that the criminalization of activists cone to an end. The Assembly also condemned the administration’s slander campaign against those who defend nature; demanded the cancellation of mining concessions, large hydroelectric projects, industrial forestry projects, oil concessions and shrimp farms; demanded that communities have guaranteed access to and use of natural resources, that water and access to land be declared fundamental rights, and that communities be consulted and have the right to veto projects that diminish the quality of life and the sovereignty of peoples.