To my Shuar brothers and sisters, to the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and the Andes, to the men and women of Ecuador and the World.
As many of you know, Shuar people have been through very dangerous days. Those days have not ended; we may well be only at the beginning of a great territorial dispute that the National Government has generated against the Shuar Arutam People
Our jungle has been stained with tears, anguish and blood. The roads and pathways we used to travel in peace have become unsafe and dangerous. Almost 30 years have passed since the Ecuadorians spoke of us as the warriors of Cenepa, defenders of Ecuador, where we belong.
But now it is necessary for us to speak with our own voice to proclaim who we are, because others have spoken on our behalf, without our consent: the Government, as well as social and political leaders, whether with negative intent or positive intent.
We were born here, in the immense jungle of the Cordillera del Cóndor and along the banks of the Zamora and Santiago Rivers. We did not know of such things as barbed wire or private property. The State declared that our lands were uncultivated, and they began to colonize of our lands, with the same blind decisiveness and self-legitimacy of any colonizer. When the settlers first came to this land, we received them well, because we knew they were poor, struggling people who were looking for opportunity in their lives. From one day to the next, large tracts of land suddenly no longer belonged to us because they had been “deeded over” in the name of people we had never even met.
In the 1960s, we had to create the Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Centers (FICSH), which we call “Our Mother”, so that the State would recognize what has always been ours: our territory, our culture, the place where we live our lives. Only in the 1980s did our lands begin to be legalized under a collective title, and we started to be recognized not only for the Cenepa war, but also because we care for these immense millennial forests in peace, protecting the frontiers.
In 2000, a group of Shuar leaders toured these lands and founded the “Shuar Arutam Territorial Circumscription”, as noted in the Constitution. This was a complex and deliberate process: there were hundreds of meetings and discussions that resulted in the union of six associations, including their 48 centers (communities) and covering a continuous territory of 230,000 hectares in the Province of Morona Santiago on the border with Peru.
The FICSH stressed that we were to pilot a plan to build a new form of indigenous government within the Ecuadorian State– a government under a special regime in the Shuar territory. In 2003 we wrote our Life Plan, which became the axis of our organization. [Our Life Plan] is the guide that tells us where we can walk, which rivers we can navigate and where we should not be turning up without notice. Our Life Plan addresses fundamental issues such as health, education, good management and control of the forest and its resources, economy and conservation. Beyond what any other group in the country does, we have organized our territory into categories for sustainable use, and we have left more than 120,000 hectares under strict conservation, for the benefit of all Ecuadorians.
In 2006, we were officially recognized in CODENPE as the “Shuar Arutam People”. Two years later, we signed an agreement with the Government to maintain the forest in pristine condition for 20 years, and to allow us to receive contributions in order to develop and implement our Life Plan. This agreement was called Socio Bosque.
In 2014, we updated our Life Plan, and once again our Ordinary General Assembly declared itself against both medium- and mega-mining projects within our territory. Because, as we have told President Correa: do not tell us that mining will get us out of poverty, because we, with our way of life, do not feel poor; tell us, instead: how will you protect us as People and as a distinct culture?
This was the situation when the conflict of Nankints arose. Since 2008, we have been asking the National Government to begin an institutional dialogue, but despite our efforts, we have not been able to establish a serious, sincere, honest and equal dialogue within the framework of the Plurinational State. This lack of communication made it impossible for the Plurinational State to interpret and understand the requirements of the Shuar people.
In the name of “national interest”, and with the justification that what has happened in Nankints is an isolated case, the Plurinational State now passes over other rights and considerations that are of national interest. The Constitution, which they wrote with their own words, clearly expresses underlying convictions about protecting multi-culturality and conservation. But in Nankints, the revolutionary government is acting like any colonizing government, ignoring even the international agreements that it has signed.
The problem is not the parcel of land in Nankints that we share with colonos; the people living there do not even realize that the land is the traditional home of the Shuar. We never imagined that a mining company could be allowed to buy from the state and a few settlers what belongs to us by ancestry. The government chooses to forget this fundamental fact and, as it has many means to make itself heard, it imposes its version of the “truth”. At present, not only Nankints, but more than 38 percent of our territory is under concession to large-scale mining: all the riverbanks of the Zamora and Santiago basins have been granted as concessions for small-scale mining, and a gigantic hydroelectric dam is scheduled to be built. Our question now is: where do they want us to live?
That is why, in 2007, we told the company to leave, and we reclaimed Nankints. Now, nine years later, someone has manipulated the President and convinced him that, before he leaves office, we should be forcibly evicted. When we disagreed with the order, there was a tragic violent incident. We have been blamed for the tragedy of the murder of a policeman, but we did not give orders to kill anyone. Instead of talking with us, the Government ordered thousands of police and soldiers into our homes and onto our land, where they terrorize and threaten our children. To our knowledge, no one from our land is a sniper, nor do they possess weapons that could pierce helmets. Why not thoroughly investigate this tragic incident, before pursuing us and ordering the capture of all the heads of families? Instead of talking to us in good faith and investigating, with the goal of preventing violence, why does the Government plunge us into a state of emergency like the ones of the terrible dictatorships of the Condor Plan, which the President says is being planned again?
Why have they come into our homes? Why won’t they let us live in peace? They say they are acting in the name of the national interest, that we have become “a handful of folkloric indians and terrorists” who do not understand what good living is, nor the Sumak Kawsay and, even worse, the project of the Citizens’ Revolution.
Without dwelling on the details, which sound like something from the evening news, let us focus on the overall crisis in which we find now ourselves, and not fall prey to provocations or rough discussions that lead nowhere.
In this first urgent letter from the forests of the Cordillera del Condor, we are a thousand families who proclaim that we will not allow the Government, under any justification or argument, to use force or violence to destroy our homeland, your homeland, the homeland of the world.
President Rafael Correa must create a climate of peace, withdraw his troops, suspend the state of emergency in our province and discard the arrest warrants he has issued for our leaders and families. The only true way to end this path of destruction – which may provoke unauthorized acts of individual resistance by Shuar inhabitants whose territory is threatened – is through conversation, respect and mutual understanding.
We call upon all the inhabitants of Ecuador and Morona to join us in our demand for peace, to cease the violence and to demand that the Government enter a serious dialogue, acting in good faith and with respect for our life as indigenous people.
GOVERNING COUNCIL OF SHUAR ARUTAM PEOPLE