Abstract
During the past three decades, mines have increased in number at the same time that indigenous populations have grown in size and acquired more land. The intersection of these two trends suggests that, increasingly, mining companies have tried to exploit mineral deposits on lands populated and controlled by indigenous peoples. These ventures touched off conflicts between organized indigenous peoples and state supported miners. The copper mining controversy in the Ecuadorian Amazon exemplifies this pattern. Legacies from earlier mestizo land invasions in the form of active NGOs and an extensive land base made Shuar resistance to the mines much more likely. Increasingly assertive national political leaders, pursuing an extractive imperative, reinforced the miners’ efforts to extract copper from deposits near Shuar settlements. To reduce the probability of violent conflict between these parties, indigenous people should have a seat at the table when negotiations between the mining companies and the state occur.
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Notes
The estimate of three Shuar centros in the Cordillera in the mid-1970s may omit one or two settlements that were in the midst of formation at the time. Even with these settlements included in the count, the numbers of Shuar villages in the Cordillera underwent a dramatic increase during the three decades after 1975.
The estimate of Shuar for 2010 includes 3771 Achuar, a linguistically and culturally similar group who reside in the easternmost parts of the province of Morona Santiago.
Urban places are the parishes within municipalities that contain the seat of the municipal government. All other parishes within a municipality are defined as rural places. The parishes with municipal government offices almost always have the largest populations in a municipality.
Place names changed with changes in control over the site of the San Carlos mine. The mining exploration company occupied San Carlos, a largely abandoned colonist community, near the site for the proposed mine. When the Shuar occupied the site and settlement in 2006, ‘San Carlos’ became ‘Nankints.’ Now that miners and Ecuadorian troops have reoccupied the site, it is ‘San Carlos’ again.
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Acknowledgements
Funds from grants P1009499 and SBR 9618371 from the U.S. National Science Foundation facilitated this research. Rafael Machinguiash, Tuntiak Katan, Diane Bates, Amy Lerner, Bruce Horowitz, Delores Quesada Tenesaca, Sandra Garces, and David Neill made important comments or contributions to this paper.
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Rudel, T.K. The Extractive Imperative in Populous Indigenous Territories: The Shuar, Copper Mining, and Environmental Injustices in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Hum Ecol 46, 727–734 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-0011-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-0011-1