Thursday, October 1, 2009
Ecuador is currently seeing another indigenous uprising in response to the proposed Law of Water (amongst others). Yesterday, a group indigenous protesters (mainly from the Shuar nation) in the Amazon were shot at from a helicopter, leaving two dead and nine other wounded.
colonos is replicating here briefly a statement of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and providing some links to further sources.
The proposed Law of Water is said to be in violation of the Ecuadorian Constitution, which prohibits all forms of privatisation of water. The law would allow for privatisation of water through the back door and prioritise needs of big developments (hydropower and mining) over those of the people. Moreover, in its article 43 it allows for the use of the Armed Forces in situations of protest and conflict around water use (such as when people would protest the diversion of community water for use in mining).
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Amazonia, Capitalism, Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage, Ecuador, Rafael Correa, South America, asamblea constituyente, ecological justice, police brutality, police violence, state of exception | 
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Posted by colona
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
This is an unofficial translation of a Ecuadorian indigenous peoples’ statement on REDD:
CONFEDERATION OF INDIGENOUS NATIONALITIES OF THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON (CONFENIAE)
(Logo and letterhead, list of members including organizations of the Shuar, Kichwa, Achuar, Waorani, Siona, Secoya, Cofan, Zapara, Shiwiar and Andoa Peoples)
STATEMENT
Unión Base, Puyo August 3rd, 2009
CONFENIAE REJECTS ALL KINDS OF ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOCIATIONS ON FORESTS AND EXTRACTIVE POLICIES THAT DAMAGE THE TERRITORIES OF THE AMAZONIAN INDIGENOUS NATIONALITIES AND PEOPLES OF ECUADOR.
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1 Comment | 
Amazonia, Anti-capitalism, Ecuador, Environmentalism, South America, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, climate change, enclosure, environmental destruction, indigenous movements, indigenous rights | Tagged: climate change, CONFEDERATION OF INDIGENOUS NATIONALITIES OF THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON, CONFENIAE, Ecuadorian Indigenous Peoples', News, press release, redd | 
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Posted by colono
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
colonos reproducing another AmazonWatch News release. For pictures, please see http://catapa.be/es/node/335:
Peru Police Accused of Disposing of Dead to Cover Up Death Toll Indigenous Leaders and Allies Call for an End to Violence on All Sides
Taken from http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/06/08-3
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 8, 2009
12:08 PM
BAGUA, Peru – June 8 – In the aftermath of Friday’s bloody raid on a
peaceful indigenous road blockade near Bagua in the Peruvian Amazon,
numerous eyewitnesses are reporting that the Special Forces of the
Peruvian Police have been disposing of the bodies of indigenous
protesters who were killed.
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Posted by colona
Monday, June 8, 2009
colonos is reproducing here a text by Ben Powless on rabble.ca, including the “INTERNATIONAL DENUCIATION of President Alan García Pérez of Peru and his admistration” by the COORDINATING BODY OF ANDEAN INDIGENOUS ORGANZIACIONES – CAOI.
We have received various notices from people in the Amazon reporting about 10 – 40 indigenous protesters having been shot dead.
Photo by Marijke Deleu (upsidedownworld.org)
Here goes:
50 days of protest and one massacre in the Peruvian Amazon
I’m writing this right now from Peru after having taken part in a 5 day Indigenous Peoples Summit held in Puno, Peru in the high Andes. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Amazonia, Anti-capitalism, Anti-militarism, Ecuador, Peru, South America, anti-terror laws, ecological justice, environmental destruction, human rights violation, indigenous movements, indigenous rights, rain forest | Permalink
Posted by colona
Friday, May 8, 2009
This is yet another report about industrial activities in Ecuador, a country ruled by an authoritarian, economistic anti-environmentalist, who despises traditional ways of living when it stands in his way of mining and drilling for oil, building roads, riverways and airports, but who loves to present himself – in the media – as a friend of indigenous peoples, wearing traditional outfits and speaking (mountain) Kichwa. Welcome to Correa’s Ecuador:
Locals fight mining in Ecuador’s cloudforest
Christian Tym
Green Left Weekly, 2 May 2009
Many people still speak sincerely about the existence of “corporate responsibility”. While doing volunteer work in the Ecuadorian community of Junin, I got a different picture.
The story of the efforts of Copper Mesa Mining, one of Rio Tinto’s collaborators in gold and copper exploration in Ecuador, to overcome community resistance is an example of what modern “corporate responsibility” looks like.
The mining concession Copper Mesa bought from the Ecuadorian government is centered on the community of Junin and the Intag River.
The proposal was to evict four entire communities, 100 families in all. These people live off their land and depend on the outside world for only electricity and medical supplies.
Mining would destroy their entire way of life.
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1 Comment | 
Ecuador, capitalism is murder, ecological justice, latin american integration | Tagged: Ascendant Copper, cloudforest, Copper Mesa Mining, corporate irresponsibility, corporate responsibility, correa, industrialist correa, intag, Junin, mining in ecuador, Rio Tinto, struggle | 
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Posted by colono
Friday, May 1, 2009
Today the colonos blog received hit number 100.000.
Thanks to those who dropped by – and many thanks to those who keep coming back. It is muchly appreciated.
With the Best of Wishes,
colono y colona
2 Comments | Ecuador | Tagged: blog statistics, colonos blog, hits, News | Permalink
Posted by colono
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
This is a rather flattering, brief, misleading look at Rafael Correa’s public life and his rise to political power in Ecuador, which, once again, positions him as “radical, single-minded” (sometimes called a “socialist”) and which, once again, ignores his dubious environmental politics. Readers of colonos will know better. It has been pasted from openDemocracy.
Rafael Correa: an Ecuadorian journey
The impressive political rise of Ecuador’s economist-turned-president is about to face its greatest test so far, says Guy Hedgecoe.
28 – 04 – 2009
Rafael Correa’s landslide election victory on 27 April 2009 makes him the first candidate since Ecuador’s return to democracy in 1979 to win a presidential vote outright in the first round. With the opposition divided and the resounding vote confirming his already formidable control of the Andean country, this left-leaning nationalist is the most dominant figure Ecuadorian politics has seen for decades.
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Posted by colono
Thursday, April 23, 2009
colonos is here reproducing a news release from the ETC Group. President Rafael Correa has proposed several changes to the Law on Food Sovereignty which dangerously weaken the legislation and open the door to Terminator seeds.
ETC Group
News Release
April 17, 2009
www.etcgroup.org
Terminating Food Sovereignty in Ecuador?
President opens door to Terminator seeds
On February 18, 2009, the Ecuadorian Congress approved a new Law on Food Sovereignty, which, among other important points, declared the country “free of transgenic crops and seeds.” However, in spite of vocal popular opposition, the legislation left the door open to approvals of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in “exceptional”
cases. Now, President Rafael Correa has proposed several changes to the legislation – in what is known in Ecuador as a partial-veto – and sent it back to the Congress. The president’s changes dangerously weaken the law and open the door to Terminator seeds.
Terminator technology is designed to make “suicide seeds,” genetically engineered to be sterile in the second generation. The technology has been widely rejected around the world by farmers’ movements, governments, research institutions and UN agencies as dangerous, immoral and undesirable.
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Leave a Comment » | Capitalism, Ecuador, Environmentalism, Rafael Correa, South America, asamblea constituyente, constitutent assembly, genetically modified food, nature | Tagged: food sovereignty, Terminator Seeds | Permalink
Posted by colona
Friday, March 20, 2009
The WWF – the ones with the Panda logo – have published a report on the details about “saving” the Amazon rain forest by putting a price tag on every thing, – sorry, assets is probably a better term-, that the rain forest possesses.
The report – Pita Verweij, Marieke Schouten, Pieter van Beukering, Jorge Triana, Kim van der Leeuw and Sebastiaan Hess. Keeping the Amazon forests standing: a matter of values, WWF-Netherlands 2009 – is presented here by Mongobay.
This bizarre fashion of price tagging everything starts with the realisation that the market mechanisms have failed the environment, which is a pretty good observation, but then proceeds to suggest that the very same paradigm of thinking – the economistic, capitalistic reductionist line of thinking – should simply also be applied to “the environment”, since it provides humans with valuable “ecosystems services“. If it is not tagged with a price, why care for it?
While this whole business, as it were, sounds rather disturbing (Can two wrongs make a right? Can a problem be solved from within the paradigm it was created? Einstein famously answered the latter question, of course), the report has some very good bits – it is a very comprehensive report that deserves wider attention, but the price tagging horror really does not appeal very much – at all – to colonos or any of the people we have worked with in the forest. Essentially, it sounds like a lose-lose scenario: either lose the forest or sell it to the highest bidder? And bidding is low these days of financial collapse, so one could hardly imagine worse timing for the publication of this report.
Interestingly, it has a pretty good section on IIRSA, which has been covered again and again here, but the section does not include reference to the Manta-Manaus/Manaos corridor. This goes to show just how big the “biggest infrastructure project in history” is: an otherwise detailed and comprehensive report does not need to list the Manta-Manaus corridor in order to show just how much of a horror show that IIRSA is threatening to be:
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8 Comments | Amazonia, Anti-capitalism, Ecuador, Politics, South America | Tagged: amazon, ecosystems services, horror show, IIRSA, sian sullivan, wwf | Permalink
Posted by colono
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Acción Ecológica is an environmental NGO in Ecuador, which includes a wide variety of actors in diverse groups. They do a lot of good work and offer an institutional setting, training and education as well as a platform for action and publication of research to protect the environment against the Ecuadorian state, which is more industrial and progressive than ever.
Recently rumours started circulating that there was a plot against Acción Ecológica – that the government, currently in serious stand-offs with the people in connection particularly with the aggressive expansion of the mining industry, wants to shut down Acción Ecológica.
It is unclear what exactly is happening, but the the story is – more or less – that they got a letter from the Health Department (through which the NGO was legalised as a juridical person) saying that their juridical status has expired. The official explanation is that that is the case for all organisations that became legal institutions over 20 years ago (before the Department of the Environment existed) and that it’s just a bureaucratic formality to now get registered as juridical entity via the Dept. of Environment.
On their website Acción Ecológica says that the Health Department said they’d withdraw the juridical status of Acción Ecológica because they have not fulfilled the objectives for which they were set up. Something might smell fishy and Acción Ecológica therefore calls for support.
2 Comments | Ecuador | Tagged: Acción Ecológica, buraeucracy, Ecuador, environment, environmental destruction, repression | Permalink
Posted by colono
Thursday, February 26, 2009
It’s a disaster.
colonos is here reproducing an article from the Ecuadorian national daily El Comercio (in Spanish).
The extent of the spill is yet to be determined, but basically it occurred due to a rupture of the 305km long pipeline running from the Amazon to the coast. On Tuesday, the pipeline broke in the cantón El Chaco in the rainforest at the foothills of the Andes where it runs 20m under the ground. The river Santa Rosa turned black. The pipeline carried 130,000 barrels of crude at the moment of rupture. The company reports that the oil exports are guaranteed until the end of the month. Clean up, according to the company, might last over a year. But how clean is clean?
Fecha: Miércoles 25 de Febrero de 2009
Fuente: El Comercio
La rotura de una de las sueldas de la tubería del Oleoducto de Crudos
Pesados (OCP) ocasionó un derrame de petróleo de proporciones en el
cantón El Chaco.
A las 10:30, María Macas se sorprendió al ver que el río Santa Rosa era
una gran mancha negra que corría lentamente. Uno de sus mayores temores se hizo realidad ayer: hubo un derrame de petróleo que cubrió el cauce del río, las piedras y la maleza de las orillas.
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Leave a Comment » | Amazonia, Ecuador, environmental destruction, keep the oil in the soil, nature | Tagged: disaster, oil, oil spill | Permalink
Posted by colona
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
ECUADOR SIGNED DEAL TO DESTROY THE COUNTRY’S HIGHEST WATERFALL, THE SAN RAFAEL FALLS IN THE SUMACO BIOSPHERE RESERVE, SACRED TO THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE.
See also these IIRSA related posts.
There has been a lot of cheering and celebration of Ecuador’s new constitution, which provides a bit of rhetoric about how nature has certain rights – like human rights – that, then, would save Pachamama from the Almighty Dollar. The Ecuadorian constitution is a milestone for the environmental movement – so they say, from The Misleading Guardian (commented here earlier) to more grass roots oriented, independent journalism.
However, some have been more careful, such as Upside Down World publishing Cyril Mychalejko’s Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature and Dan Denvir’s Whither Ecuador? An Interview with Indigenous Activist and Politician Monica Chuji, both of which contextualise the political process that by no means reflect or give just cause for any cheering and hope for the environment, let alone democratic principles (not that colonos really believe in those anyway, but still..). Ecuador’s revolutionary constitution is revolutionary for quite the opposite reasons: it entrenches IIRSA and private property in “all its forms”, essentially spelling the end of the Amazon as a rain forest and severely threatening the Andes mountain range.
All along, this blog has featured articles on Correa’s more than absent environmental sensitivity – indeed, the most read articles have concerned just that: Correa hates environmentalists (“infantile”, “romantic”, “indigenist” etc. etc. ) and wants to see the country turned into a Chinese-Brasilian investment project without trees and bees and primitive tribal attitudes.
In the beginning we were most often met with disbelief, anger even: How dare you criticise the Great Ecuadorian Revolution and cast doubt on the Latin American hope for 21st Century Socialism? Lately, however, we have had emails from people saying that they’re changing their minds in the face of the ever growing evidence that Ecuador’s constitution and Correa’s political programme serves global capitalism first and foremost (but then, of course, redistributes the loot from deforestation and displacement of peasants and indigenous peoples a little bit more fairly. In order to save the country they have to destroy it?).
¿So what’s the news? Well, business as usual, Correa has revived yet another 1980s World Bank, Economic Hitman style project, this time to destroy the highest waterfall in Ecuador and nothing is much more sacred, powerful and constitutive of the spririt of nature (Pachamama, that is) than a waterfall for the Kichwa people inhabiting the Sumaco Biospere Reserve – here is an excerpt from a piece called Ecuador’s Water Crisis: Damming the Water Capital of the World by Matt Terry, founder of the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute, which has an office in Tena, Napo:
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14 Comments | Amazonia, Ecuador, Environmentalism, Green Politics, dark forces, deception, environmental destruction, indigenous movements | Tagged: Coca-Codo Sinclair, Ecuador, ecuador constitution nature rights, environmental destruction, right for nature, waterfall | Permalink
Posted by colono
Monday, February 9, 2009
Colonos is involved in preparing a concept paper, which will be presented at the “Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change” at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage, Alaska (USA), 20-24 April 2009. It concerns the categorisation and organisation of contents well as a licensing framework for a web portal providing access to climate change adaptation strategies and tactics based on indigenous knowledge practices and captured in the spirit of the practitioners, whether in moving pictures, still, song or poetry. Not an easy conceptual task on a rather politically volatile and culturally sensitive terrain. However, we thought (something like) “better us than someone with less of a strong political analysis and feeling of solidarity and spirit of rebellion” (just to blow our own horn, perhaps?!).
One of the central challenges is spelled out in this quote from the Introduction to a Special Issue of Futures: Futures of Indigenous Knowledges. Volume 41, Issue 1, Pages 1-66 (February 2009):
“[T]he future for [Indigenous Knowledges] IKs lies in the creation of a knowledge space for assembling diverse knowledges. The critical strategic capacity to allow the comparative evaluation and growth of diverse knowledge traditions with differing epistemologies and ontologies, with differing ways of understanding and framing the world, may be humanity’s last hope for a future. .. But … is it possible for IKs to be moved from their site of cultural production, enter the knowledge economy and become part of the global knowledge commons without losing their cultural specificity, without being homogenised and submerged in one globalised system?” (Turnbull 2009)
We can reveal that the concept paper recommends the Transmission Metadata Standard, links to IFIWatch.TV, and draws upon the experiences of the Free Culture movement, more specifically the Free Software movement’s strategies and tactics for the reform of copyright. More on that later…
Meanwhile, here is the invitation to the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change:
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Leave a Comment » | Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage, Ecuador, Life, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, capitalism is murder, climate change, ecological justice, enclosure, environmental destruction, indigenous movements, people power | Tagged: adaptation, climate change, indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge, www.indigenoussummit.com | Permalink
Posted by colono
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