By Alberto Acosta on October 3. 2023
For practical purposes, in terms of the search for development, the countries bordering the Amazon have treated that region as their periphery, Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves, a great teacher and tireless companion in the struggle, often reminded us. The Amazon is a sort of enormous territory of sacrifice. It is where resources are obtained to finance economies. It also functions as an escape valve for the serious social problems experienced in other regions back home, for example, the door was opened to its colonization instead of promoting true agrarian reform processes in other regions. The Amazon, in short, as a result of an endless history, which began in the early colonial period and continues in the current republics, lacks its own options for its autonomous development.
Some history would not be a bad thing. The “economic discovery” of the Amazon region crystallized just a century after Francisco de Orellana’s voyage down the Amazon River. The Jesuit Cristóbal de Acuña, special envoy of the King of Spain and who is buried in Lima, informed the crown about the riches existing in the “discovered” territories. In his report of 1641, known today as the New Discovery of the Great Amazon River, in addition to describing the various peoples and cultures he encountered along the way, he mentioned with great enthusiasm the existence of timber, cocoa, sugar, tobacco, minerals… resources that still encourage the exploitation of the various interests of national and transnational accumulation of the Amazon.
After the colonial era, in the republican stage, the race after “El Dorado” continued and continues unstoppable. It is enough to see how our predominant style of “development” is based on extracting more and more natural resources from this region, privileged by its biodiversity and the multiplicity of its original cultures. Although in many cases the technologies change, a pattern is repeated that dates back to colonial times: most of the resources are brutally appropriated for export. And this is accelerating at the pace of an ever-increasing demand coming especially from the centers of metropolitan capitalism and also pressured by the growing weight of foreign debt. What is distressing and outrageous is that, from the centers of national and international power, the Amazon is assumed to be an “empty” wasteland, there to be conquered and developed, and the presence of the native peoples are in a de facto way made invisible.
The Amazon region is treated, in practice, as a periphery in all Amazonian countries, which are in turn the periphery of the world political and economic system.
On the other hand, the discourse on the global importance of the Amazon, so often repeated in many international forums, collapses in the face of the reality of a system that, by revaluing its resources in terms of capital accumulation, puts life itself at risk in that region and on the entire planet. Let us bear in mind that the internal rates of return of capital -whether they are extractivist activities or not- are much higher than the capacity of Nature to recover.
In this context, in addition to the ruthless extractivism of oil, mining, forestry and agro-exports, there are “modern” forms of increasing commodification of nature, such as, for example, the various carbon markets of the much-publicized “green economy”. By taking forest conservation into the realm of business, air, trees, biodiversity, soil, water and even elements of native cultures are commodified and privatized, for example, through biopiracy, which is another brutal form of colonial exploitation. All this permanently expands the frontier of colonization.
The massive and predatory extraction of natural resources devastates the territories, causing not only the impoverishment of its inhabitants, but also the disappearance of many cultures.
However, this same Amazon, which is not characterized by its homogeneity, contains much hope. In the face of so many abuses, multiple struggles of resistance emerge that are at the same time actions of re-existence. The list of encouraging actions and options is long. Let us mention a couple.
The peoples of the region, in practice, constitute the true vanguard of the struggle against ecological collapse. By protecting the forests, they guarantee the ecological balance and biodiversity much more than any national or international action. And not only that, these peoples are bearers of other forms of life oriented by harmonious relationships in their communities and with Nature, typical of what we know as good living: sumakkawsay, kawsak sacha, pénkerpujústin….
Let’s understand it, the relations of the native peoples with their territories are cultural and not simply “natural” as a sort of naive urban imaginary pretends to see; their forests are the result of a complex weave of permanent and changing reciprocities between human and non-human beings, including the world of spiritual beings. Mother Earth or Pacha Mama, in short, is not a simple metaphor, for the native peoples it is a reality from which we have much to learn. And in this broad context we must understand the depth of their struggles to defend their territories.
The case of the Kechwa people of Sarayaku in Ecuador is an example of remarkable resistance and re-existence: for several decades the communities of that territory have managed to stop and expel the oil companies that have made incursions time and again under the auspices of different governments. At the same time, they have consolidated life options that transcend their borders, such as the kawsak sacha or living jungle. Their actions have been complemented by notable advances in the legal field, including at the international level, as Sarayaku achieved in 2012 a historic and exemplary sentence in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which condemned the State and established several reparations.
For another recent example of these struggles, even within the labyrinth of the legal institutions of the Amazonian countries themselves, suffice it to mention the great victory of the indigenous peoples in Brazil, where the majority of the Supreme Court judges rejected the claim of the powerful agricultural sector to establish a time limit on indigenous land claims. They wanted to prevent the native peoples from being able to claim lands they did not inhabit in 1988, when the Constitution was approved.
The historic triumph in the popular consultation for the Yasuni to stop oil exploitation and dismantle the installations built there is another case worth highlighting; an idea that emerged with force more than two decades ago. We refer to that long struggle developed by the youth and by diverse groups of the Ecuadorian society, including indigenous communities from the Amazon and other regions of Ecuador. A true exercise of direct democracy, within the framework of the provisions of the 2008 Constitution, especially after the failure of the so-called Yasuni-ITT Initiative in 2013, which was too big for the government that officially proposed it. A triumph that now demands to redouble the fight because the powers that be are resisting to comply with the popular mandate.
Mention could also be made of the creation of several sacred territories to protect native peoples, especially those in voluntary isolation. This is the case of the recent creation of the Sierra del Divisor Occidental – Kapanawa Indigenous Reserve in Peru, which will protect the territory, life and ecosystems of isolated peoples living in the Loreto and Ucayali areas.
At this point we must ask ourselves how long will the long colonial night in the Amazon last. Without denying the importance of the intangible zones to protect indigenous communities, we cannot but recognize that they are actions framed in the spirit of the conquest and colonization that is still in force in Our America. Reduced protectorates are established to guarantee the life of the true owners of these territories… when in reality we need another vision of the Amazon, overcoming that imposed function of sacrificial territories.
A first step to understand and protect the Amazon, then, demands another approach. The autonomy of the native peoples must be fully understood so that it can be effectively guaranteed by the States, which sooner rather than later should move towards their reconfiguration into plurinational States. The wealth of the Amazon, which should not in any case be subordinated to the – in any case useless – search for development, definitely does not lie in its negotiable natural resources, but in its cultural and ecological diversity. And this also compels us to make a reading of the global significance of the Amazon.
This region, without being the much-talked-about lung of the world, functions as a great carbon dioxide filter whose planetary importance is indisputable. In addition, its jungle mass acts as one of the most important regulators of the world’s climate, which is why, due to its magnitude and the volume of its biodiversity, the growing destruction of the Amazon has repercussions that affect the global ecological balance. And its rivers, true sacred basins of life, which cannot be pigeonholed in the artificial borders of the Amazon countries, make up a complex network that ensures the existence of human and non-human beings, even outside its geographical area.
Therefore, the commitment to the Amazon is also a commitment to the world. A reality that demands responsible national and regional actions with this region, without accepting in any case impositions that could configure new imperialisms, in this case even of an ecological nature. However, the leadership and control of actions to protect it must be assumed by its inhabitants -especially the native peoples-, as managers of any transformation process, without external interference, no matter how well-intentioned it may seem. The task, in short, demands reversing the long, painful and disastrous path of conquest and colonization. The emancipation of the peripheries is ever more urgent.
Alberto Acosta is an Ecuadorian economist. President of the Constituent Assembly (2007-2008) and judge of the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature.
Source: Rebellion translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English