The Indigenous Women’s Association of Sarayaku

Context

In November 1993, inhabitants of the northern Oriente filed a $1.5 billion class-action lawsuit against Texaco in the U.S. federal courts protesting against the company’s intentional use of substandard technologies which they claimed resulted in contamination of the their land. [1] After ten years of petitioning to have the case relocated to Ecuador, the lawsuit was ultimately filed and began in Ecuador in May 2003. [2]

Many indigenous peoples were devastated by the consequences and impact of Texaco’s time in Ecuador. The oil company had devastating impacts on indigenous lands and severe injustices continued to plague rural communities as a result of Texaco’s continued appeals and government policies that ignored indigenous peoples’ rights. In response to this disaster, women especially began to mobilize and form organizations in order to better serve their communities and create a voice for themselves within the Ecuadorian government.

A Gendered Approach

The women’s mobilization may seem surprising for far “too often the traditional concept persists of women solely as ‘beneficiaries’ of social services in their circumscribed role of wives and mothers restricted to the home.” [3] The reduction of women as solely wives and mothers covers up the work women do in building and maintaining houses and improving community life as well as the roles they play as producers and community managers. This work ultimately further encourages men to become involved in community action as well, positioning women as the “principal actors in low-income communities.” [3] This integral role that women play in maintaining their communities became clear through the actions they took against Texaco.

Women were the first to deeply understand that by violently attacking the environment that rural communities depend on, the acts of Texaco also affected women’s own bodies, the bodies around them, and the livelihoods of their communities. Maria Garfalo, an indigenous woman from the Pastaza province living in San Carlos,  highlights the nature of this attack when reflecting on the uterine cancer she is suffering from as a result of the toxins contaminating her drinking, cooking, and bathing water: “if I could say something to the oil companies, I’d tell them not to contaminate the land because they are killing people, making people suffer with this continuation. I have six children, and it’s very sad for me to think that maybe my children will lose their mother.”  Since this very interview was conducted, doctors have further diagnosed her husband with stomach cancer and her daughter with liver cancer.[4] These very tragic and real health consequences highlight the fact that the attack on the earth conducted during the exploration for oil parallels attacks on indigenous bodies, especially female ones.

Agency and Activism

When understanding female indigenous agency we must first acknowledge the assumptions and truths of female agency in general and be wary of stereotyping. “Women are positioned on the dominated side of the dichotomy and seen as rather passive subjects in Western traditions, a passivity that is even amplified in the case of non- Western women, Third World, or minority women. However, postcolonial feminists such as Chandra Mohanty cogently critique this amplified passivity of women of color, poor women, or women in the Third World as a construction that served the political goal of elevating First World women to the category of liberated.”[5] By understanding this, we can now better consider how power dynamics such as these influence whose story is told and given legitimacy. Theorist María Moreno Parra notes that, “in such a context, the understanding of indigenous women as political actors has to be undertaken from an analytical standpoint that counters sustained stereotypes of indigenous women’s purported passivity.” [5]

But far from echoing this narrative of passivity, indigenous female groups in rural Ecuador were quickly able to recognize the need for action and the Indigenous Women’s Association of Sarayaku (AMIS) was formed. By doing this, these women – a minority within a minority –  simultaneously fought for their rights to a voice in government as well as their rights to their land, health, and livelihoods.

On July 7th, 2004, 30 leaders from various grassroots organization affected by the oil company occupied the Foreign Trade Ministry. The groups pressured Minister Ivonne Baki to respect the wishes of the rural Ecuadorian people that the environmental responsibility of Texaco’s action not be transferred to the state-owned company Petroecuador, an action which would dismiss the Texaco of responsibility, much to the favor of the US. [6]

Also at this meeting, AMIS expressed it’s collective solidarity with the women and children of the Yana Yaku community located in the Ancash Region of the Santa Province of Cáceres del Perú. This community has faced violent government militarization in response to their environmental activism in protesting the actions of the oil company. In a public message AMIS collectively declared itself “in solidarity with the women and children of the community of Yana Yaku.” [6] Along with this message, AMIS put forth proposals to the national government that included the immediate exit of armed military groups and an investigation into the violation of the indigenous rights of Pastaza. A document listing the entirety of the proposals can be found here.

The  ability of AMIS to organize and provide support was important for the creation of a collective indigenous front against oil company. AMIS closed their proposal with the following statement: “We reaffirm that our fight for the dignity of the people of Sarayaku, our territory, projects and dreams for an alternative form of development, is not an isolated fight, it is a joint decision of all the Kichwa communities…and other areas that identify themselves with this cause…[that we] will never allow any form of abuse in this sector, be these oil companies, government or military forces.” [6]

An Ecofeminist Framework and Limitations

Without taking away from the merits of these women’s activism, it is important to retain a critical lens and not romanticize the situation. “In rehabilitating women as agents, there is a romance with women’s activism. And finally, there is a general romance with the indigenous. Being at the intersection of different forms of romanticized understandings, one could easily assess indigenous women’s activism in rather triumphalist manners, as an ‘amplified’ resistance in the face of intersections that amplify domination. The tensions that pull the analysis toward poles of over-victimization or over-romanticization need to be tackled with appropriate conceptualizations of human agency and of the structures in which it takes place.” [6]

With this recognition in mind, however, I still argue that it is not a romanticization to claim that through their activism these women were able to defend their lands while simultaneously creating a platform for indigenous voices to be heard. By virtue of being the literal embodiment of the intersection between environmental degradation and physical, bodily health the women of AMIS were able to advance an inherently ecofeminist type of activism that led them to successfully and strongly defend themselves, their communities, and their natural lands against the attacks of big business, military, and government. Because the goals of AMIS were strikingly ecofeminist in a way other activists could never be, they were able to organize and add an integral and underrepresented voice to the national and global conversation about oil exploration and conservation.

 

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[1] Sawyer, Suzana. “Indigenous Initiatives and Petroleum Politics in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 20.1 (1996): 365.

[2] Chevron Toxico. “Historic Trial.” Chevron Toxico. Accessed May 1, 2016.

[3] United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. Human Settlements Development through Community Participation, Ecuador: Women and Low Income Housing. By Ana Falu. Nairobi: United Nations, 1991.

[4] Dematteis, Lou, and Kayana Szymczak. Crude Reflections: Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2008.

[5] Parra, María S. Moreno, and Sarah Lyon. “Warmikuna Juyayay!: Ecuadorian and Latin American Indigenous Women Gaining Spaces in Ethnic Politics.” PhD diss., University of Kentucky. Abstract in Theses & Dissertations – Anthropology, 2014.

[6] Alter OilWatch Ecuador 2004 (2004) (testimony of Marcia Gualinga and Marlon Santi to the Foreign Trade Minister of Ecuador).

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Oil Spills in the Ecuadorian Amazon

The Pastaza province is in the Oriente region of eastern Ecuador. Pastaza reaches from the central Andes to the Peruvian border, almost 12,000 square miles, most of which is dense Amazonian  rainforest. As of 2010, 83,933 people live there.[1]  Before oil development, the small villages were only accessible via helicopter, small plane, or multi-day trek.[2]

In 1964 Texaco (now Chevron) first discovered oil in the Oriente region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, home to indigenous peoples such as the Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani, and shortly after began drilling and extracting operations in 1967.[3]

From 1967 to 1992, the 25 years in which Texaco was in the country, it contaminated over 30,000 people’s drinking, fishing, cooking, and bathing water by dumping large amounts of waste in their rivers and in unlined, open-air pits. At its peak, Texaco dumped an estimated 4 million gallons per day  into 600-1000  pits, a practice that had long been outlawed in oil-producing states in the United States.[3]

Research done by Judith Kimerling, an environmental and indigenous rights activist and attorney, concludes that since production began in 1972, a cumulative amount of more than 19.3 billion gallons of waste water was dumped.[4] Additionally, an estimated 3.2 million gallons of toxic waste was spilled daily at Texaco’s peak.[4]

As a result of this heavy a pollution, today, “almost 10,000 people in Ecuador face a significant risk of contracting cancer in the coming decades due to Chevron’s refusal to clean up billions of gallons of oil waste dumped there.”[4] Further, according to Dr. Daniel Rourke, an American statistician, this number could grow much larger in years to come as these preliminary estimates have been made assuming that cleanup will begin immediately and will be complete within ten years–a proposition Chevron has steadily rejected.[3]

Clearly, the actions of Texaco have had dramatically devastating health effects on rural communities. But what are effects of the company’s practices? Because the responsibility to keep families healthy lies with women and mothers in rural communities, many indigenous women have begun to speak out against Texaco’s destructive practices which they claim have exploited and abused indigenous lands causing many rural families to suffer. Ena Santi, a representative of the Kichwa of Sarayaku Indigenous People Association, said: “Women are defenders of our own Mother Earth. We produce our own food for our sons and daughters and our husbands. We are the watchers of the Living Forest that lives in the Amazon. We are the mothers that fight every day and night carrying our babies to defend our culture, our language and our traditions.”[5] As Santi states, women produce and defend culture, language, and traditions by ensuring the livelihoods and thus health and sustenance of their communities and, by extension, natural environments.

Echoing the sentiment of Santi, women representatives of the Sapara and Shiwiar Nationalities and the Kichwa Kawsak Sacha and Sarayaku Peoples put out this collective statement: “Women are the main victims [of oil extraction]—their ability to feed their families becomes impaired. There is deterioration of family health and they suffer the division of their communities and other forms of violence.”[6] Through their attacks on the environment via oil drilling and mass contamination, Texaco parallely attacks not only women’s bodies directly, but simultaneously threatens their ability to sustain the health and nourishment of their families and communities.

By using ecofeminism as a frame of analysis, we consider and thus better understand the intersection between environmental crises and gender equality, ultimately identifying the ways in which hegemonic power systematically oppresses both women and the earth in a quest for consumption-based progress. In this case, the quest for oil by big businesses like Texaco is supported by a global, capitalistic model that fails to ascribe value to the natural environment, as witnessed by the indiscriminate tons of toxic waste carelessly dumped in rural communities. Further, this same model that encourages this kind of violence against the environment is responsible for the violence enacted upon women in these same rural communities. Women, as primary caretakers, organizers, and nurturers are responsible not only for themselves and their own health, but that of their families and communities as well. The actions taken by Texaco threaten their ability to sustain family and community not only by physically attacking their bodies but by destroying the lands they depend on for their livelihoods. The recognition that this environmental disaster is intimately linked to women’s ability to sustain their families and communities is incredibly important for informing how activists should organize and what they should target.

 

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[1] Statoids. “Cantons of Ecuador.” Statoids. Accessed May 1, 2016.

[2] Lawrence, William. “Ecuadorian Indigenous Peoples Resist Oil Drilling in the Amazon, Jan. 1989 – Sept. 1994.” Global Nonviolent Action Database. January 10, 2010.

[3] Chevron Toxico. “Historic Trial.” Chevron Toxico. Accessed May 1, 2016.

[4] Kimerling, Judith. “Oil, Contact, and Conservation in the Amazon: Indigenous Huaorani, Chevron, and Yasuni.” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 24, no. 1 (2013): 44-115.

[5] Gimenez, Jaime. “Indigenous Women Resist Against Oil in Ecuador: ‘We Are Ready to Die for Our Rainforest.” The Dawn, March 25, 2016.

[6] Arasim, Emily, and Osprey Orielle Lake. “Women of the Amazon Defend Their Homeland Against New Oil Contract on International Women’s Day.” Ecowatch. 2016.

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