Indigenous peoples in Ecuador are organising in defence of their rights and their land with political, legal, industrial and civil disobedience campaigns.
Since Christmas the Waorani indigenous people have blockaded an oil field near the Amazonian village of Dicario to force state-owned Petroecuador to honour the agreements that authorised crude production in Yasuni National Park.
Dicaro is one of eight communities of Waorani who lived in nearly complete isolation until the 1960s.
The village of about 300 people is located across areas that were opened up to drilling in 1994, after which a series of private companies operated until 2022, when the Ecuadorian government awarded the territory to Petroecuador.
Dicaro residents say that under Ecuador's 2008 constitution, they have the right to refuse drilling in the area by the state-run entity, and they have also called for action to remediate lasting damage from an oil spill 15 years ago.
The Waorani told local media organisation EFE earlier this month that they will continue to block the access road to the oil field until Energy and Mines Minister Fernando Santos Alvite and Petroecuador chief excutive Hugo Aguiar come to Dicaro for direct negotiations.
"We want them to come here personally to talk and to reach an accord. If they don't come, we will continue the shutdown," community leader Robinson Coba told EFE.
Crude petroleum is Ecuador's biggest export product. Between January and November 2021, the country extracted 494,000 barrels per day.
Last month more than 6,000 barrels of oil leaked into an environmental reserve in Ecuador's east after a pipeline was ruptured by a boulder shifted by heavy rains.
In September 2022, the Waorani and another Amazonian nation, the Cofan filed an appeal before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador to demand compliance with the respective rulings won against the entry of oil and mining activities into their territories.
A delegation of both nationalities arrived in Quito to present an action of non-compliance to the Constitutional Court, positing that the Ecuadorian State has not complied with the measures issued in both cases by the courts of the respective Amazonian provinces in which the Waorani and Cofan peoples live.
CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities), which played a leading role in the June 2022 national strike, in January voted to "prepare conditions of territorial defence" in areas where mining companies were present to protect their communities and the environment.
Ecuadorian indigenous peoples have also campaigned for change via the ballot box.
In the elections held 5 February, Pachakutik, the electoral front of CONAIE, won six prefectures out of 23 provinces and 27 mayoralties from 221 cities. In contrast, the party of current president Guillermo Lasso, CREO, did not win any prefectures and only 22 mayoral positions.
CONAIE won in the highlands provinces of Cotopaxi and Tungurahua, where during the national strike the protest movement assumed de facto control of the governorships.
