JUNTAS DEL PACIFICO, ECUADOR – Walking along a path his grandfather once used, Donald Cabrera, a villager from Bajada de Chanduy, on the coast of Ecuador, points out different trees and their uses. Talking about the imposing ceibo trees, he praises the fluffy white kapok fibre that falls from their branches, which his ancestors used for mattresses. From the guasango tree, he highlights the tough wood that people used to make floors and tables for their houses – and even coffins.
The tropical dry forest on Pacific coast, full of bare tree branches and yellowing leaves, is bursting with life and resources, though it may not seem like it. For locals such as Cabrera, it is not only a unique ecosystem but also the repository of ancestral knowledge.
“We have kept this trail clean for many generations,” he says about the community’s sustainable use of this conservation area.
However, just a few metres from the path is a large construction site, where the forest has already been cleared. There, workers are building a new maximum-security prison, one of many election promises made last year by the hardline president, Daniel Noboa, to tackle Ecuador’s growing security crisis, which has seen murder rates rise sixfold in four years.
“We are indignant because they are imposing on us a project that is not ours and doesn’t indicate that it will solve the country’s problems, much less the province’s,” Cabrera says.
Like him, most people in the comuna of Bajada de Chanduy and neighbouring Juntas del Pacífico are outraged about the new prison, saying the authorities never consulted them before construction began in June.
There are dozens of comunas, or ancestral community organisations, along the coast of Ecuador, with more than 60 just in Santa Elena province, the site of the new maximum-security prison. These comunas have been settled for hundreds of years, with roots in pre-colonial Indigenous populations.
According to the 2008 constitution, these collective lands cannot be seized, divided or sold. They have their own governing body and collective ownership of their ancestral lands, where people harvest their crops and protect the surrounding dry forest.
Despite constitutional protection, the comunas historically faced land invasions and evictions, often due to the expansion of large-scale agriculture. There have been cases of companies falsifying land titles and comuna leaders selling land to third parties with officials’ approval, leading to disputes over ownership.
Now, once again, the community has been taken by surprise. Cabrera first learned about the location of the prison in March, when official documents were leaked to comuna members, he says.
(Image compliments of Leonardo Salas Z/CoopDocs)
Kimberley Michelle Brown 