Extractivism, pandemics and collective rights: The case of the indigenous peoples of the YasunÍ (ecuadorian Amazon)

Abstract

Through the case study of the Kichwa and Waorani indigenous communities of the Yasuní Park, this article will point out some elements of the particular situation that the Amazonian peoples are going through, as a result of the advance of the pandemic linked to the expansion of COVID-19 in territories threatened by extractive activities. While at the national level, the COVID-19 has placed Ecuador on the list of Latin American countries with the highest number of infections and deaths, in the Ecuadorian Amazon the statistics are alarming, revealing on the ineffectiveness, not to say the absence, of State policies necessary to prevent its propagation. On the other hand, taking advantage of the vulnerability caused by the pandemic, the Ecuadorian government has intensified oil activities in the Yasuní, which has represented a double threat to the life and rights of indigenous peoples. The historically exclusionary nature of virus and disease prevention measures in indigenous territories is intertwined with the arbitrary nature of extractivist processes, however, influencing the reinforcement of political strategies of community organization to face the racist matrix that persists in the structures of the Ecuadorian State.