Realities situated in COVID-19 times: Indigenous amazon peoples facing pandemics and extractivism in Ecuador

Abstract

This paper shows how the nation-state applied a homogenizing model of care in the health emergency that initially ignored the particularities of the population, the geographical situation, the provision and access to basic services (food and safe water) and health, the needs according to the cultures, as well as the specific protection against different forms of violence in the territories and towards women in family and /or community spaces. Throughout the article, we observe a discussion on institutional centralism and the exercise of self-determination by indigenous peoples in times of emergency; as well as the configuration of universalizing responses that ignore diversity and its difficulties in materializing the Plurinational State. With their nuances and differences, the Amazonian peoples demand in times of pandemic guarantee to their specific rights, respect for their traditional ways of life, culturally appropriate health care, defense of the territory against extractivism and dispossession.