Indigenous Guard across the Amazon unite forces to protect their territories

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SINANGOE, Ecuador, Dec 10 (Reuters) – About 200 members of Indigenous groups from Ecuador, Colombia and Peru gathered early this month in Ecuador’s Amazonian community of Sinangoe, wedged along the border with neighboring Colombia, to collectively strategize how to defend their ancestral lands. To mark the occasion, they drank sap from the ancestral yoco plant, and cleansed their energies with tobacco and nettle leaves. 

Indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest have long trained men and women to identify a variety of threats to their mineral-rich and verdant lands and to keep outsiders from invading their communities.

In recent years, emerging threats to their ancestral Indigenous territories have fueled a greater need for the self-defense forces known as the Indigenous Guard, its members say, as they confront illegal mining and logging, drug trafficking, armed groups, forced gang recruitment and extortion.

In Sinangoe, the Indigenous Guard in the A’i Cofan community has been fighting large-scale mining since 2017 in an effort to preserve the Aguarico River, the primary source of food for the families living on its riverbanks.

The pacifist group focuses on monitoring and patrolling, avoiding conflict and occasionally requesting support from armed forces when they encounter situations they cannot manage themselves, said Holger Quenama, coordinator of the A’i Cofan community’s Indigenous Guard.

Their work has paid off but needs daily effort, Quenama said.

“The Sinangoe guard always carries our staff, which is our strength,” Quenama said. “We are working with the entire community, but there are Indigenous groups that are more vigilant and active in patrolling the entire territory.”

In Peru, the Regional Organization of Indigenous Guards of Shipibo-Konibo has been successful in tackling illegal fishing and territory invasions, said Kelly Valera Silva, president of the group.

“Indigenous peoples are not against concession agreements, but they must recognize that they are within our territory,” she said.

Peru alone is home to about 300 Indigenous Guards spread across 24 Amazonian communities of the Shipibo Konibo people.

(Reporting by Karen Toro in Sinangoe; Writing by Alexandra Valencia; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)