By AFP and Entorno | 2023-07-26

RÍO JATUNYACU, Ecuador -- Sitting by a bonfire, Kichwa women recall the day they confronted gold miners who had stranded their boats along the Jatunyacu River three years ago. Since then, the women had been patrolling the river for illegal mining activity and have gone to the high courts to challenge mining licenses.

"We armed ourselves with spears made from sticks and posters, and we ran here to see what was happening," said Yuturi Warmi, a member of the indigenous guard in the province of Napo.

Accompanied by a handful of women, she recounted the day 18 months ago when illegal miners arrived offering money to the then-president of the community in exchange for permits to exploit their lands.

"We will not let the mining companies or the illegal miners in, even if it means we have to die," said the woman, who asked to withhold her identity to protect her safety.

While the community of Serena has resisted the entry of mining, the story is different downriver. The Napo Ombudsman's Office has identified more than 30 exploitation fronts on the banks of the Jatunyacu River, where adventure tourism is also practiced because of its rapid currents and landscapes.

A 21km-long journey along the river reveals a landscape of destruction. Numerous clearings interrupt the thick vegetation, the result of bulldozers that have been devouring the jungle.

Indigenous people are waiting for a ruling from the Constitutional Court on an extraordinary protection action they filed in an attempt to stop gold mining in the province, reverse the concessions and reduce deforestation.

The mining has already scared away tourists, and the indigenous people fear that it will further damage the rainforest and their way of life.

The noise of the machinery and the destruction of the landscape are a living nightmare for the inhabitants of Shandia, a small community that lives off tourism.

"The illegal mining cemetery is no longer a tourist attraction," said Andrés Rojas, provincial delegate of the Ombudsman's Office. "People don't want to pay two or three dollars to see a landscape of destruction."

"The noise is awful, the earth shakes, it's worse at night ... We're afraid when tourists come, because we hear they don't want to come anymore," said Graciela Grefa, a 64-year-old artisan, to AFP.

Legal battle

The devastation of mining in Napo worsened in 2020. Rojas, the provincial delegate of the Ombudsman's Office, said that while mining has been going on in the province "for 25 or 30 years, the public was alarmed to learn that a single company had been granted 7,125 hectares of land" for mining.

The lands around the Jatunyacu River are mostly granted to the Chinese mining company Terraearth, which is facing a legal battle that has escalated to the Constitutional Court.

The Ombudsman's Office and NGOs have accused Terraearth of contaminating three rivers and of failing to consult with indigenous communities prior to beginning mining operations.

But the inhabitants of Napo also face the threat of illegal mining mafias, which they accuse of being allies of Terraearth and of bribing populations to exploit their lands.

Terraearth presents itself on social network accounts as an "environmentally responsible" company that "contributes to the reforestation of areas mined by illegal miners".

Yutzupino was the epicenter of irregular gold mining in Napo until December 2022. According to the Ecociencia Foundation, which conducts satellite monitoring of the Amazon, 125 hectares of land had been occupied for gold extraction, an area equivalent to 88 soccer fields.

The area of irregular gold mining continued to grow until this February, when a police operation seized 148 excavators in an area of 180 hectares.

Sebastián Araujo, an earth scientist at Ikiam public university, has found that the levels of copper, lead, and chromium in the region are alarmingly high and qualify as "highly polluting."

These levels surpass the permissible thresholds set by environmental regulations, an unsettling consequence of illegal mining in the area.

Mining "graveyard"

In a region where state presence is scarce and poverty is rife, locals have been carrying out a traditional form of gold mining for decades. They pay $1 to enter mining areas and scrape up a bit of gold that they wash in their pans. This activity has little environmental impact, as it does not use heavy machinery or chemicals.

"They would go into the craters that the excavators left behind, hoping to find the gold dust that had been left behind," said Rojas.

Alba Aguinaga, a sociologist from Ikiam, points out that after the incursion of illegal mining operations, artisanal miners were stigmatized for allegedly supporting these mafias.

"If you don't have a job, if you have difficult economic conditions, there aren't many other options besides accepting small remuneration in exchange for illegal labor," she said.

"In addition, there is no public policy that supports the survival" of the communities and artisanal miners, added Aguinaga.

"The operational reaction capacity of the state is inadequate in the face of the organization that the illegal miners have," said Rojas.