The Tropical Silk Road by Paul Amar;Lisa Rofel;Fernando Brancoli;Maria Amelia Viteri;Consuelo Fernandez;

Author:Paul Amar;Lisa Rofel;Fernando Brancoli;Maria Amelia Viteri;Consuelo Fernandez;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

The alliance between the Río Blanco community and the city of Cuenca created conditions for a historic judicial ruling that, to date, has succeeded in suspending the mining project’s operations. While the community assumed the role of initiating and maintaining active resistance at the project site, supporters in Cuenca were able to publicize their activities, as well as the government’s disproportionate response. The determination of these groups has been driven by a common discontent with the imposition of a mining project that threatens a territory common to both populations: the Río Blanco highlands, not only home to the homonymous village community, but also part of El Cajas National Park, one of the city of Cuenca’s natural treasures.

NOTES

1. Ecuador’s constitution guarantees procedural recourse to protective injunctions, which are issued to prevent or curtail violations of human or environmental rights.

2. The village of Río Blanco, located within parish of Molleturo, lies about thirty-eight miles west of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third most populous city.

3. ECLAC (CEPAL in Spanish) refers to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a Chile-based U.N. organization that promotes economic and social development in the region.

4. CEDHU 2010; Sacher 2017; Solíz 2018; Granizo 2019.

5. A Cuenca-based environmentalist collective, we have achieved notoriety in the press and social media for our activities and proposals as water defenders. See our Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/yasunidoscuenca2014/.

6. In response to this discouraging event, and despite the apparent hopelessness of seeing any reversal of this decision, as a collective we had published an open letter explaining the environmental and social disaster the mine’s exploitation would produce.

7. In Spanish, “don” is used as a term of respect, but unlike “señor” (Mr.) it is mainly used as a prefix to a person’s first name (for example “don José”) or nickname (“don Pepe”).

8. She was referring to the Anglo-Australian mining giant then known as Rio Tinto–Zinc Corporation, which the people of Río Blanco remember by its initials.

9. Cuy is the Kichwa word for guinea pig, a family of rodents domesticated in the pre-Columbian era from various species native to the South American Andes. Beyond having ritual significance in Indigenous cultures, they have historically been an important source of food—and are still commonly eaten in the Andean regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, and Bolivia.

10. At the time San Luis Minerales S.A., an Ecuadorian company, was operating in Río Blanco as a subsidiary of Canadian-owned International Minerals Corporation.

11. While governors act as local authorities, they are nevertheless part of the national government’s executive branch and essentially represent the president in the different provinces.

12. Article 98 of Ecuador’s constitution defines and protects the right to resistance.

13. The Defensoría del Pueblo del Ecuador (Office of the Ombudsman) is an autonomous agency of the national government, whose purpose is to protect human and environmental rights.

14. The Fiscalía General del Estado (Office of the Prosecutor General) is another autonomous national agency, whose purpose is to investigate and prosecute violations of Ecuador’s criminal laws.

15. Ecuadorian courts may issue orders imposing Medidas Cautelares (literally “precautionary

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