The "Amazonian Trial of the Century": Indigenous Identities, Transnational Networks, and Petroleum in Ecuador

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2007 32: 41Alternatives: Global, Local, PoliticalGabriela Valdivia

Networks, and Petroleum in EcuadorThe ''Amazonian Trial of the Century'': Indigenous Identities, Transnational

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The “Amazonian Trial of the Century”:Indigenous Identities, Transnational

Networks, and Petroleum in Ecuador

Gabriela Valdivia*

This examination of the work of three organizations in thenortheastern Ecuadoran Amazon, FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE,explores how they engage and produce representations ofindigeneity in relation to an on-going lawsuit against ChevronTexaco. Each of these organizations has used distinct networkassociations and performances based on their particular histo-ries in relation to petroleum in order to mediate cultural,political, and economic possibilities for their constituencies. Asthese organizations mobilize support for local causes throughspecific network connections, they produce and articulate dis-tinct meanings of indigeneity, with distinct consequences forthe future of their constituencies. I argue that an analysis ofhow collective indigenous identity, localities, and social net-works shape and are shaped by representative organizationscan help productively explore the social relations throughwhich knowledge about Ecuadoran Amazon peoples andplaces is produced. KEYWORDS: indigeneity, transnational net-works, indigenous organizations, petroleum, Amazon-Ecuador.

On June 7, 1992, the contract of Texaco Petroleum Company inEcuador—a subsidiary of the former Texaco, now part of ChevronCorp.—reached its end, marking the beginning of momentouschange in the history of petroleum production in Ecuador. Whenpetroleum was discovered in the northern Amazon in 1967, it wason Texaco Petroleum’s concessions. The company undertook sig-nificant investments in the development of its concessions andpetroleum infrastructure, which under contract were handed overto the Ecuadoran company, Petroecuador, in 1992.

Alternatives 32 (2007), 41–72

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*Department of Geography, 112 Geography Building, Michigan State University, EastLansing, MI 48824. E-mail: [email protected].

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A little over a year after Texaco’s departure, on November 3,1993, a coalition of indigenous leaders and other residents fromthe Ecuadoran Amazon, sponsored by environmentalist and human-rights supporters, filed a billion-dollar, class-action lawsuit againstTexaco in US federal court. The plaintiffs accused the company ofknowingly conducting negligent environmental practices (such asdumping highly toxic water and crude petroleum into the sur-rounding ecosystem), wrecking traditional ways of life, and increas-ing health risks for local peoples.1 It was not until 2002, however,that the US court of appeals finally ruled that the trial be con-ducted in Lago Agrio (Sucumbíos province), Ecuador, and that theEcuadoran judicial system’s decision would be legally binding onthe Texaco parent corporation in the United States. Inspections ofoil wells and surrounding environments continue today, and re-ports on these findings are circulated via online sources for wideraccess.2 A final decision is expected in 2007.

This is one of the first legal cases to address human-rights vio-lations by international petroleum firms in a low-income country,and has the potential to set precedent for similar disputes aroundthe world. During the first stages of what has been dubbed “theAmazonian trial of the century,” representatives of the plaintiffsrallied outside the Lago Agrio courthouse, wearing “traditional redface paint and feathered headdresses” and stating their oppositionto “big oil” environmental practices.3 Through their role in the US-based lawsuit, networking with law offices in New York, and directlychallenging Texaco within and outside of Ecuador, plaintiffs of dis-tinct Amazonian nationalities collectively complicated notions oflocally bounded subjects in relation to the national governmentand transnational petroleum companies. As poignant images ofindigenous residents are circulated and translated around theworld, a specific understanding of Amazonian struggles and desiresis also produced through this high-profile lawsuit: local peoples,marginalized by capitalist enterprises and environmental irrespon-sibility, who are seeking to maintain an environmentalist ethic forcultural survival.

An analysis of the participation of indigenous organizations inthe Texaco lawsuit, however, suggests that indigeneity, articulatedfor transgressing political, social, and cultural boundaries, can havedistinct (and at times ambiguous) meanings, performances, andoutcomes.4 In this article, I examine the ways in which three in-digenous organizations in the northern Amazonian province ofSucumbíos, FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE, have articulated indigenousidentities through their participation in the trial against Texaco.5

42 The “Amazonian Trial of the Century”




FEINCE represents five Cofán communities (approximately 800people), OISE represents three Secoya communities (close to 400people), and FOISE represents fifty-six Quichua communities thatrange in sizes from ten to more than one hundred families.6 Al-though often seen as “local” agents, these organizations are notlimited to only locally based social relations. Their network associ-ations, the discursive and material aspects of their production andtheir role in producing knowledge about Amazonian peoples andtheir claims are central to the connection between local livelihoods,development interventions, and transnational processes.7

The Networks of Indigenous Articulation

I draw on the analytical contributions of Actor-Network Theory(ANT) to better understand the ways in which FEINCE, OISE, andFOISE shape knowledge about Amazonian peoples and their strug-gles in relation to petroleum. By focusing on the networks in whichactors are enmeshed, ANT explores the conditions and interactionsthrough which different forms of social order are produced. ANTalso looks at how these are configured so that actors gain responsi-bility for their collective actions.8 ANT is critical of conceptions ofreality that assume a hierarchy of differentially sized and boundedgovernable spaces and actors, where some actors operate at “global”scales and hence are more politically influential than actors thatremain at “local” ones.9 Instead, it argues, interpreting the world asnested global, national, and local scales is a powerful and domi-nant representational trope emerging within network associationsto frame our understanding of political agency.10 For example, spa-tial hierarchy metaphors are integral to the “rules of interaction”of FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE, shaping how they draw associationsto translate “local” issues into “transnational” ones.

Indigenous leaders often explain that their networking prac-tices are a way of securing help from those “with international in-fluence” both to enact change locally and to circumvent corruptpractices of the state. Interpreting social processes as situatedwithin a “spatial scaffold” of governance levels allows the possibilityto visualize the ways in which “local” actors can transcend the polit-ical boundaries of scale to mobilize a response from actors at“larger” scales of influence.11 This visualization of political oppor-tunity for social action draws on imaginaries of actor mobility, or“scale jumping,”12 where affiliating with actors in other places (andtheir financial and political resources) empowers those “below.”

Gabriela Valdivia 43




ANT also seeks to reconceptualize notions of agency and sub-ject production. In ANT, “agency” is a collective social and technicalprocess, the product of negotiations between all kinds of actors withseemingly autonomous (but actually mutually interdependent anddetermined) capacities.13 Hence, a subject is never an isolated indi-vidual; subjects and networks are constituted by the relationalityamong animate and nonanimate actors, not by the actors them-selves.14 The process of translation, which includes “all the negotia-tions, intrigues, calculations, acts of persuasion and violence, thanksto which an actor or force takes, or causes to be conferred on itself,authority to speak or act on behalf of another actor or force”15 iscentral to understanding the ways in which FEINCE, OISE, andFOISE participate in the production of indigenous subjects.

The goal of organizations such as FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE isto achieve control over local living spaces by establishing connec-tions between local desires for life improvement and the moral, fi-nancial, or political interests of actors beyond “the local.”16 The waysin which these organizations translate indigenous peoples’ strugglesare conditioned by the flow, contingency, and emergent propertiesof their relationships with indigenous advocates, constituencies, andnonhuman actors (such as petroleum). Relationships within net-works are not always “horizontal,” however.17 Power asymmetriesthat constrain associations can materialize through economicinequality, access to information, language proficiency, or politicalinexperience. These asymmetries shape the kinds of scale “trans-gressions” that occur, the capacity of actors to mobilize other actorson their behalf, and the circulation of specific representations of“the local” among network participants. Constituencies also affectthe practices of their representative organizations, pressuring themto establish (or break) associations, and providing political legiti-macy that allows leaders to enforce or seek agreements with non-local actors.

The articulations of indigeneity engaged by FEINCE, OISE,and FOISE, therefore, are imbued with meaning through the prac-tices of network-building, where organizations are persuaded,coerced, or directed to define indigenous needs and desires in par-ticular ways and by distinct actors, in order to reach resources thatwill help transform local material conditions.

Drawing on conversations, interviews, focus groups and archivalresearch conducted in Sucumbíos between 2002 and 2003, I tracethe different ways FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE have articulated indi-geneity through specific negotiations, persuasions, and contesta-tions surrounding the Texaco trial.18 I conceptualize indigeneitynot as “truths” about a people’s authentic practices and beliefs that





are then “taken up” by representative organizations, but as prac-tices and relationships of identification and recognition of differ-ence that are produced, inhabited, and contested through net-works of social interaction.19 Defining who is “indigenous” and whatconstitutes “authentic” indigenous needs and desires (or not) isshaped by network relationality, the connections among humans(with specific desires and goals) and nonhumans that intersect intime and space to generate a particular view of “the social.“ TheTexaco trial, therefore, does not necessarily disclose or emphasizea preexisting identity, but it certainly helped shape and circulaterepresentations that have become widely prevalent and accepted asstrategically powerful ways of achieving a political response amongindigenous and nonindigenous actors alike.

The analysis of how FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE articulate indi-geneity in relation to petroleum and Texaco is significant for under-standing not only the role they perform in shaping the future oftheir constituencies but also the ways in which livelihood—as arelationship linking everyday life, environment, and actors, locallyand beyond—is intricately connected to questions of identity,modernity, and transnational connections.

Petroleum, Development, and the Nation-State in the Ecuadoran Amazon

Petroleum, agricultural development, and nation-building policieshave conditioned the cultural transformation of the EcuadoranAmazon as well as the production of Amazonian indigenous orga-nizations. A series of populist governments in the 1960s and 1970spushed for the modernization of Ecuador, and petroleum wasperceived as the commodity through which this goal could beachieved.20 While the quest for petroleum had profound effectsthroughout the entire Amazon region, the discovery of rich andviable deposits in Sucumbíos in 1967 brought the northern prov-inces squarely into national interest. By 1970, the Ecuadoran gov-ernment had granted numerous concessions throughout the region,attracting multiple companies that invested in exploration and pro-duction.21 Since 1972, oil has accounted for an average of 45 percentof the total national export revenue.22 Income from this Amazonexport has financed national infrastructure, increased the internalflow of capital, and increased Ecuador’s international profile.

Securing potential deposits of this rich natural resource fromthe threat of neighboring countries became a priority for theEcuadoran state, and agrarian reform proved to be a timely strategy





to achieve this goal.23 Agrarian reform laws in the 1960s and 1970ssought to economically and politically integrate the Amazon intothe logic of the nation-state. Under agrarian reform, the Ecua-doran Amazon was conceived as tierras baldías (unoccupied lands)in need of settlement and development, despite knowledge of theexistence of indigenous populations using those lands.24 Reformencouraged highland farmers to migrate to the Amazon. This wasdone in order both to alleviate the extensive land tenure crisisexisting in the highlands and to increase the presence of Ecuado-ran citizens in the Amazon region.25 As a result, nearly one-third ofthe Ecuadoran Amazon—more than 38,000 square kilometers—was titled for settlement by outsiders.26 In many cases, agrarianreform practices backed the expropriation of lands used by indige-nous peoples in the name of greater economic production andintegration into the modern Ecuadoran nation. In other cases,indigenous communities, in order to protect resource use andproperty rights, chose to participate in the logic of economic inte-gration through agrarian reform.27

Using the roads built by the Texaco-Gulf consortium to con-nect the Amazon to the rest of Ecuador, agricultural colonists set-tled into the “empty lands” of the petroleum-producing northernprovinces, shaping the patterns of agricultural development thathave changed indigenous ways of life in this region. State andtransnational organizations seeking to “civilize” and integrate in-digenous peoples within the nation-state also relied on these roadsto enter the Amazon.28

Missionaries from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)worked under contract with the Ecuadoran Ministry of Educationto develop disciplinary programs that would help shape the moraland material integration of Amazonian peoples into the nation-state.29 Such programs included the establishment and coordina-tion of bilingual schools and health clinics and the promotion ofsmall-scale agricultural and livestock projects for market devel-opment in remote indigenous communities.30 Missionaries alsoselected community members to be trained as health educators andcarpenters and taught them to read and write in Spanish as part ofthe production of indigenous citizen subjects. In the early 1980s,however, the SIL came under heavy criticism by nationalist sectorsand panindigenous organizations claiming that it perpetuated thepolitical marginalization of indigenous peoples.31 Under this pres-sure, the SIL contract with the Ecuadoran government was termi-nated in 1981.

Parallel to the SIL activities, Roman Catholic missionaries andCatholic-sponsored organizations also participated in the “civili-zation” of the Amazon. Under agreement with the Ecuadoran





government, they provided for rural development strategies, schools,health centers, and chapels to meet social and cultural needs ofthe rapidly increasing migrant population in the northeast. RomanCatholic missionaries saw as their goal the promotion of social andpolitical organization among marginalized peoples—indigenousand nonindigenous alike—in order to provide them with tools toconfront the rapid socioeconomic changes taking place as a resultof petroleum production.32 Unlike SIL missionaries, Catholic mis-sionaries were central to the promotion of indigenous activism andpolitical training and to the formation of the oldest Amazonianindigenous organizations in Ecuador.33

“Intimate Government” and Amazonian Organizations

Representative organizations such as FEINCE, OISE, and FOISEare partly an effect of the effort of nonlocal actors to integrate,politically and spatially, indigenous peoples into the networks ofthe nation-state.34 Agrarian reform in the Amazon stipulated thatlocal and regional organizations, constituted by indigenous lead-ers, were necessary to mediate a relationship of spatial and politi-cal containment between Amazonian peoples and the nation-state.These organizations were based on democratic Western models inwhich communities elected the leadership (presidents, vice presi-dents, secretaries, and treasurers), and not on existing indigenoussocial organizations.

Persuaded by missionary advisors, indigenous leaders partici-pated in these models of representative organization, redefiningexisting practices of collective representation and formalizing pre-viously unrelated communities as indigenous-peasant constituen-cies in order to protect territories from expropriation.35 Commu-nities thus became subjects of the nation-state, recognized by stateand nonovernmental agencies through the participation of their“official” local representatives in the legal, juridical, and organiza-tional structures produced by the state. This form of “intimate gov-ernment”36 through agrarian reform shaped the production ofAmazonian indigenous subjectivity by reducing physical and socialdistance between actors—as Amazonian spaces and peoples be-came the focus of national regulatory strategies—and shaping theregulation of local political conduct and representation.

Eventually, organizations that represent distinct ethnic groupswith defined territorial boundaries formed in all the Amazonianprovinces. In many cases, since petroleum and agricultural devel-opment practices threaten more traditional ways of life, indigenouscommunities and their representative organizations engaged “in-timate government” to resist these practices. Yet development





pressures also inspired novel ways to engage the logic of modernityin order to protect cultural difference and autonomy. During thepast two decades, several Amazonian organizations have partici-pated in ethnodevelopment projects sponsored by various nationaland transnational nongovernmental organizations to facilitate sus-tainable development and access to health care, political organiza-tion, and capacitación (professionalization) for indigenous peoplesin Ecuador. From the perspective of indigenous leaders, engagingthese structures of development provides the opportunity to im-prove local livelihoods. From the perspective of the nation-state,these engagements are seen as fomenting the “good governance”and inclusion of marginalized peoples, whose exclusion from de-velopment is believed to carry unwarranted economic costs.37

Livelihoods, Networks, and the Articulation of Indigeneity

FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE emerged as representative organiza-tions within the associations and ambivalences of the economic,political, and cultural intersections described. Their histories areconnected to missionaries, state institutions, petroleum companies,and nongovernmental organizations operating in the center of petro-leum development, the northeastern Ecuadoran Amazon. Knowl-edge about the needs, desires, and voices of indigenous peoples liv-ing in this region is translated and circulated through the legal,juridical, and organizational networks in which these organizationsare embedded.38

The remainder of this article uses parallel narratives to exam-ine the networks of OINCE/FEINCE,39 OISE, and FOISE in theTexaco case to convey a sense of the situated knowledges, oppor-tunities, and constraints through which they articulate Amazonianindigeneity with petroleum. As they represent indigenous strugglesin relation to petroleum, they significantly shape local futures byfavoring certain definitions of identity across space and time. I con-clude with a discussion of how differences in networking have co-evolved with differences in the politics pursued by each organiza-tion and the significance of this for Amazonian livelihoods.

OINCE/FEINCE: Networking Environment and Culture in a Changing World

Although petroleum operations have affected all Amazonian peo-ples, the case of the Cofán is distinctive among indigenous peoples





in Sucumbíos. In 1945, Shell Oil arrived in Cofán territory throughconcessions granted by the Ecuadoran government, at a point intime when notions of “indigenous and ancestral rights” had not re-ceived as much attention globally as they do now, indigenous peo-ples were not seen as capable of negotiating or denying the entranceof companies to their territories, and petroleum was regarded as thecountry’s most promising commodity. Petroleum exploration wasnot as profitable in the region in the 1940s and 1950s, however, andto cut losses Shell left. During the same period, the Bormans, a USmissionary family under contract with the Summer Institute of Lin-guistics (SIL), sought to settle among the Cofán, finally succeedingin 1954. The Bormans eventually became spiritual guides, as well asthe intermediaries and representatives of the Cofán to state agen-cies and other nonlocal actors.40

In 1964, a Texaco-Gulf consortium was granted explorationconcessions in Cofán territory. Large petroleum deposits were foundin 1967, leading to much more aggressive petroleum development.This in turn led to the forced spatial displacement of Cofán familiesand profound changes in material relations and social organizationwithin the communities affected.41 The prospect of oil and conse-quent road development further opened up land for agriculturalcolonization, which gradually cornered the Cofán into smaller por-tions of their ancestral territories. The Bormans remained with theCofán, petitioning the Ecuadoran government on their behalf toset aside protected areas for their survival. Unfortunately, they didnot achieve much success. Neither did the Cofán, who, althoughclear on their desire to protect their territory, did not have experi-ence in agrarian law and political organization or fluency in Span-ish, skills necessary to make a strong case in the political and socialclimate of the time.

Adopting new models of political organization. The following comes froman interview:

What happened is that the Cofán people organized themselves.Because of problems with the compañía, because here everythingis surrounded by the compañía, then we organized ourselves todefend our territory. We organized to defend from this environ-mental impact, to keep our health, because the Cofán people,well, that is what I say, all of Sucumbíos province belongs to theCofán.42

The Bormans persuaded the Cofán to adopt the organizationpractices stipulated by agrarian reform in order to protect their





territories from petroleum development and agricultural coloniza-tion. Randy Borman, who had been raised in the Cofán communityof Dureno, was central to the rearticulation of the Cofán as sub-jects who actively engage political, environmental, and citizenshippractices. Seeing how the Cofán were unable to protect local terri-torial claims and how important this was for Cofán ways of life, Bor-man decided to intervene.43 His upbringing and socialization as achild of SIL missionaries in Dureno provided him with skills to“straddle” Western and Cofán ways of knowing the world and theopportunity to develop bonds of friendship, solidarity, and famil-iarity with the Cofán. His SIL contacts, awareness of how Ecuado-ran law works, and ability to speak Spanish fluently also grantedhim the necessary recognition among Ecuadoran nationals to ne-gotiate on behalf of the Cofán.

With Borman’s help, the Cofán presented territorial claims tothe national land-distribution organization, IERAC (Instituto Ecua-toriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización), and by 1978 Durenowas recognized by the state as an indigenous collective with specificuse and access rights to a delimited territory and subject to nationallaw. Borman also helped establish the first Cofán organization,OINCE (renamed FEINCE in 1998), the official actor through whichthe Cofán could communicate “local” claims to “national” institu-tions. This system of scaled political and spatial representationsanctioned by the state was unfamiliar to the Cofán, however. Bor-man remained (and remains today) as a consultant to the organi-zation, giving advice on how to present claims and interact withothers outside of the community.44

The termination of the SIL contract in 1981 forced the Bormansto stop missionary activities among the Cofán. Since the Cofán hadgrown to trust the guidance the missionaries provided and theirrole as mediators with government agencies, this essentially left theCofán without active political representation.45 It is at this momentthat indigenous organizations promoting equity and democratiza-tion in the Ecuadoran political system (and which had lobbied forthe SIL’s cancellation) sought to work more closely with the bud-ding OINCE, seeing it as an opportunity to build a stronger re-gional support against agricultural colonization and to establish amore integrated and politically visible indigenous position in re-lation to petroleum. CONFENIAE, a panindigenous organizationestablished in 1980 to protect rights to land and culture funda-mental to Amazonian indigenous life, played a crucial role in thepolitical development of OINCE.46

According to OINCE’s early leaders, CONFENIAE supported,motivated, and organized OINCE politically vis-à-vis state organiza-tions with the goal of maintaining Cofán culture, language, and





territory. During the 1980s and 1990s, CONFENIAE leaders andassociated advocacy actors trained Cofán leaders in political orga-nization and concientización (raising awareness) of the marginalizedposition of indigenous subjects in Ecuadoran society, using discur-sive strategies of “power under unity” to incorporate OINCE withinits networks of national and transnational solidarity.

Acompañamiento and Global Environmental Citizenship. Negotiatingwith petroleum companies is seen as detrimental by most Cofán peo-ple since petroleum development has drastically affected their livesand living spaces (skin rashes, stomach aches, and pollution thataffects the quality of rivers and game were cited as some of the mostsignificant effects of petroleum extraction).47 Consequently, the Cofánare among the most active in the case against Texaco. By situatingthemselves against petroleum exploitation in order to protect theirways of life, they have maintained an image as “guardians of the rain-forest,” an image that helps secure the support of organizations thatshare a common global agenda against the destructive consequencesof petroleum exploitation.

Such advocacy relationships are produced through acompaña-miento (accompanying), the moral practice of working with a sub-altern group toward a common humanitarian goal.48 Acción Eco-lógica (AE), a prominent Ecuadoran environmental organizationworking against large-scale development, for example, has estab-lished acompañamiento with FEINCE through common agendas ofenvironmental protection against large-scale petroleum develop-ment. For the Amazonian coordinator of AE, the organization’swork among the Cofán is aligned with its moral responsibilitytoward the environment.

One of the ways to establish their acompañamiento within com-munities is to sponsor workshops of “information disclosure” ondetrimental environmental practices. These are strategies to conci-entizar (raise awareness among) the Cofán collective about thesocial place of indigenous peoples in the national and transnationalspatial imaginary. Capacitación (capacity building) workshops thatprovide knowledge on environmental management, project admin-istration, and legislation are also strategies to empower FEINCEleaders “internally” in “modern” ways of knowing the world.

Organizations such as AE also translate and circulate Cofánstruggles around the world in an effort to produce a larger andstronger support network. For example, AE and other advocacyorganizations have sponsored FEINCE leaders to travel and “telltheir story” abroad, which often results in further invitations thatsecure common goals of empowerment and environmental protec-tion for the Cofán.49 Through the alliances drawn between Cofán





leaders and environmental organizations, the Cofán participate inthe political spatiality of local-global dichotomies: They transgressthe bounded imaginary of “indigenous locals” to become “globalcitizens” bearing environmental ethics and responsibility.

The Cofán community of Dureno illustrates the centrality ofpetroleum in this powerful articulation of the Cofán as “global en-vironmental citizens.” In resisting the drilling of a Texaco explor-atory well in their community in 1987, the Cofán of Dureno definedtheir position of resistance through culturally specific practices andperformances that granted them transnational recognition as “eco-logical natives.” Dressed in traditional clothing, they took lances,blowpipes, and their shamans to occupy the well in order to fightthe occupation from a moral position, not physically, since theyunderstood that the company had governmental and military back-ing, physical power they couldn’t match.50

Toribio Aguinda, a representative of FEINCE, recalls the en-counter he had with a military member during this confrontation:

With Texaco, sometimes comes the military. They are from thegovernment. So the government comes. They ask me, “why don’tyou let the company in?” I tell them, “you want me to destroy myhouse. . . . If I come to your house, can I cut down trees, can Ithrow away. . . . This is our territory, our house. We don’t have any-where else to go. . . . If there were unoccupied lands, here, havethis, we’ll go. But there is nowhere for us to go, this is why I don’tallow the company in. . . .” Then he said, “but this is benefit forthe people . . . where is the benefit going to come from if you stopthe company?” I said, “is this the only place where there is petro-leum? You can work in other places. But this is my house, pleaserespect this, where else would I go?” And then they let me go.

Aguinda took a position of opposition to petroleum rooted inan engagement with the place without which his body and mindcannot subsist as Cofán: an articulation of his home, his house, histerritory. Petroleum (specifically, petroleum’s effects on health,home, and livelihood) is central to these strategic articulations ofidentity and environment within the networks of Cofán indigeneity.Linking “dwelling” in place,51 cultural difference, and petroleumas the threat to his way of life helped Aguinda circulate specificunderstandings of the Cofán vis-à-vis petroleum that not onlyallowed them to dialogue with state and military actors, but alsocomplicated notions of disempowered indigenous locals.

Other moments also illustrate petroleum’s role in Cofánindigenous production. For example, an officer of AE explainedhow petroleum and Cofán cosmology were linked during one of





their acompañamiento workshops. In the workshop, AE used a “sci-entific perspective” to describe what petroleum is, where it comesfrom, and how it is extracted. The Cofán present at the workshopmade links between what they were being told and what they knewfrom Cofán cosmology as existing beneath the soil surface. InCofán cosmology, there are people called the coancoan who inhabitthe subsurface of the earth and give shamans the power to cure ill-ness and lure game close for successful hunting. The Cofán inter-preted petroleum drilling as the destruction of large rocks wherethe coancoan rests, and petroleum extraction as draining theirblood. Therefore, as petroleum companies extract petroleum, theyhurt the coancoan and, consequently, the Cofán.52 AE’s officer thenposed the following argument:

When the petroleum company arrives and says we are going to dothings here, they [Cofán] say no. But not because it destroys thesoil, pollutes the river, or kills trees, or leads to deforestation. No,it is because the coancoan dies. If they say, it is because it leadsto deforestation, the petroleum engineer can say they will plantmore trees. If they say it is because it kills the animals, then theysay they will build a nursery of guantas, for example. If they say itcontaminates the river and kills the fish, then they say they willbuild fishponds. They will do anything. But if [the Cofán] say, itis because it kills the coancoan, how will the engineer respond?These arguments touch culture; spirituality, they are irrefutable.

While belief in the coancoan is part of Cofán cosmology, itscultural-environmental connection to petroleum extraction wasestablished through the interaction between Cofán leaders and AE.Together, they produced a particular understanding of the Cofánas “irrefutable” environmental actors, and of their resistance topetroleum extraction as environmentally meaningful, both to theCofán as well as to transnational advocates.53 These strategies ofarticulating culture and nature and the networks through whichthey are translated and circulated to garner support matter sincethey produce specific “truths” about “Cofán environmentality” andthe ways in which Cofán peoples become part of a larger networkof subjects with social and environmental rights. While not allCofán agree that staking an environmentalist stance is the onlycourse of action, opposition to petroleum development has beenwidely circulated as “the Cofán position” by Cofán leaders.54 In acontext where cultural difference, the marginalization of peoples,and environmental destruction are increasingly recognized con-cerns of a morally just “global society,” articulating cosmology and





environmental protection have become powerful and effectivestrategies to protect specific Cofán interests.

OISE: Networking an Autonomous Indigenous Nation

The SIL was also central to the formation of a Secoya political andsocial organization, but in significantly different ways. In 1955, theJohnson family, US missionaries from the SIL, relocated to liveamong the Secoya in order to integrate them better into the logicof the modern nation-state. Through missionary teachings, theypersuaded younger generations to distance themselves from tradi-tional spiritual and religious practices and provided medical assis-tance within communities that established their position as spiri-tual guides among the Secoya.55 By the 1970s, the new generationof community leaders was missionary-trained, and the SIL inter-acted on their behalf with the state.56

The cancellation of the SIL program in 1981, however, left theSecoya with no well-established actor to represent them politicallyin relation to state officers and transnational companies. As withthe Cofán, CONFENIAE sought to work more closely with the Sec-oya at this opportune juncture and sponsored the formation of anofficial representative organization. Secoya leaders agreed to en-gage the administrative and political models suggested to them asa way to protect the livelihoods of their communities. Together withindigenous advocacy organizations, CONFENIAE selected commu-nity leaders to train as professional leaders who could lead thelocal organization. This training was quite different from the onereceived through SIL. Leaders were trained in the discursive strate-gies of indigenous political mobilization used at the time, particu-larly views on structural inequalities, the spatial-political subordi-nation of indigenous subjects by powerful “others,” and therecognition of unique indigenous nationalities in relation to theEcuadoran state. By 1984, the first leaders took over the manage-ment of social and political life of the Secoya through OISE, theorganization that represents the Secoya within the structures dic-tated by the state and through whom negotiations with nonlocalactors are undertaken.57

Changing relationships: Environment, petroleum, and the trial. Agricul-tural reform laws conditioned how Amazonian indigenous subjectsrelate to the state and how representative organizations should bestructured, elected, and governed within the spatial hierarchies ofnational government. According to a recent president of OISE, how-ever, the organization is seeking to rearticulate its constituency as an





“indigenous nation,” a collective of indigenous citizens with autono-mous decision power over cultural, political and environmental gov-ernance.58 The “new plan” proposes a system of shared responsibilityfor development where leadership is collectively held among a gov-ernance board and not centered on hierarchical models of gover-nance that hinder their creative economic and political rearticulationas indigenous citizens.

Central to the formulation of the “new plan” is environmentalself-governance, and OISE’s officers have actively sought to estab-lish connections with members of national and transnational orga-nizations to help achieve this goal. One such organization is theDanish NGO IBIS-Dinamarca, which since 1987 has worked withOISE to define the political future of the Secoya.59 The goal ofIBIS is to improve democratic systems by forming relationships ofaccompañamiento with indigenous organizations around the world.Its connection with OISE is based on friendships established be-tween an Ecuadoran biologist who had lived with the Secoya forseveral years and who later provided consulting services for IBIS.His personal knowledge about Secoya views and needs was centralto initiating and strengthening the Secoya-IBIS relationship.

Together, OISE and IBIS drew on notions of global citizenship,environmental protection, and indigenous rights to coproduceSecoya subjects who can tap into collective rights for their self-gov-ernance within Ecuador.60 Engaging these discourses, OISE identi-fied the Secoya to national and transnational actors as indigenouspeoples seeking to be reunited with families that had been sepa-rated by border disputes between Ecuador and Peru. IBIS’s negoti-ations, perseverance, and connections to secure financial resourcesand media coverage, along with Secoya leaders and shamans pub-licly articulating an environmentalist position, made possible a suc-cessful translation of the Secoya as transnational actors with cul-tural-environmental desires. This networking of Secoya indigeneitythrough the tropes of environmental stewardship served to bindtogether a triad of culture-place-ecology,61 where Secoya traditionsare wedded to the ecological preservation of a particular place(their homeland or ancestral territory), and positioned in contrastto a modern world of territorial disputes and global capitalism.

Transnational representations of the Secoya as environmental-ists, however, are complicated by their approach to petroleum gov-ernance. While the Secoya were also among the initial group ofpeople that led the lawsuit against Texaco, they have engagedpetroleum and petroleum-related activities differently than theCofán. For example, prior to the US court decision in 2002, someOISE members were frustrated with the uncertain and long trial





process against Texaco. For a former OISE president, ElíasPiaguaje, the lengthy lawsuit and the increasing number of peopleinvolved diminished Secoya participation and power to stake theirclaims. In 2001, he described his reasoning:

After seven years of figuring out how this game works . . . we havesued Texaco simply to obtain a right to the Secoya way of life. It isa problem of water contamination, we want to be compensated,and to have clean water to bathe and drink, to have educationand all the other things that they have damaged, and for them toreturn all these things to the Secoya. But at some point every-thing got politicized . . . right now we are in the hands of peopleoutside of our control. It is in the hands of colonos, attorneys, allthose people. First it was in my hands, now I don’t control it . . .colonos, politicians, they want a piece of the cake.

Piaguaje’s concern with Secoya “loss of political control” overthe lawsuit underscores the ways in which the emergent character-istics of networks shape the possibilities to produce a self-governingSecoya nation in relation to petroleum. With the lengthy trial andthe increasing number of people associated with it (agricultural set-tlers, lawyers, environmental activists . . .), the Secoya became “onemore of the many” actors desiring to translate their claims throughthe trial against the Texaco-petroleum actor. As Piaguaje says, manymore political desires and economic interests are now articulatedtogether with Texaco and its environmental consequences. Whileincreasing the number of actors (and their agendas, needs, anddesires) in the network has been critical to bringing attention to thecase worldwide, it has also affected the possibilities to meet imme-diate reparation claims for the Secoya in ways not anticipated byOISE officers.

Piaguaje further suggested that, while president of OISE, hehad considered negotiating directly with Texaco in order to obtaindirect benefits from the company and bring political control backto the Secoya. In relation to the billion-dollar suit against Texaco,he commented:

We don’t need large amounts of money. We are being duped.The company [Texaco] says, we don’t want to go into a lawsuit,we want to settle. We’ll pay twenty million dollars and we are out.We will pay twenty million to the indigenous peoples and we leavethe problem behind.

Considering an out-of-court settlement with Texaco illustratesthe unstable nature of the relationship between Secoya indigeneity





and petroleum. Piaguaje considered rearticulating the Secoya-petroleum relationship in order to achieve the immediate goals ofsocial and environmental reparation. Environmentalist supporters,however, strongly advised OISE leaders that this was not the bestcourse of action, neither for obtaining the long-term benefits de-sired for the Secoya nor for establishing a precedent for negotia-tions with future petroleum companies.

Other OISE officers and the Secoya constituency also disagreedwith Piaguaje’s view on the trial. According to OISE’s health officerin 2003, the Secoya learned from their experience with Texaco howcollectively to present a cultural-rights position that has global pur-chase and should not be undermined by trickery, lack of informa-tion, or impatience. He argued that, whereas some actors within thecommunity may have a more influential opinion that can persuadeindividuals within the collective to negotiate—referring to Piaguaje’srole as both president of OISE and pastor of the largest Secoya com-munity—the entire collective unanimously determines whether ne-gotiation takes place or not.62 Thus, OISE and the Secoya haveremained as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and their presence in LagoAgrio and the trial has been widely publicized. In photos of pro-tests against Texaco outside of the Lago Agrio courthouse in 2003,Piaguaje appears in traditional dress, circulating images and per-formances of environmentalist indigeneity alongside Cofán andother Amazonian peoples.

My intention is not to question Piaguaje’s positioning, but tohighlight the difficult choices and situations through which Secoyaindigeneity is circulated. Regardless of his personal interests be-hind considering negotiating a settlement, Piaguaje’s public rep-resentations of the Secoya are shaped not only by his perception ofwhat is best for the Secoya people but also by how tensions withinthe organization can affect the trust of his constituency and, con-sequently, his leadership.63

Negotiating with petroleum for “Global Citizenship.” The case of Occi-dental Exploration and Production Company (OXY) further highlightsthe centrality of petroleum to the articulation of Secoya indigenousidentity. In 1995, OXY obtained access to Block 15, an explorationconcession contracted with the Ecuadoran government that overlapswith Secoya territories. While some Secoya considered it inappropri-ate to negotiate with petroleum companies due to the environmental,social, and cultural changes this brings to the community (as hadalready been the case with Texaco), others considered negotiation aninvaluable opportunity. For the latter, negotiation was construed asthe only way to survive during current times.





First, it allowed them to participate in environmental decisionmaking not possible through a positioning as ecological stewards.Managing aspects of petroleum-related activities was seen as a steptoward greater self-determination, allowing the Secoya to partici-pate in specific aspects of petroleum governance in their territo-ries, such as supervising petroleum-related activities (e.g., seismictesting and the installation of platforms) and monitoring their en-vironmental effects.64

Second, establishing connections with the company directlyopened the possibility to secure a profit from activities that couldpotentially benefit the standard of living within entire communi-ties, without the mediation of state actors. The impasse finallyreached an end in the late 1990s, when a majority ruled that theSecoya would negotiate with OXY. In 1999, with the acompaña-miento of Secoya allies, OISE and OXY officers signed a code ofconduct outlining the procedures and responsibilities to whicheach party would comply during discussions of the company’s activ-ities within Secoya territory.65 “Secoya allies” (such as the Center forSocial and Economic Rights [CSER] and the Institute for Scienceand Interdisciplinary Studies [ISIS]) saw their participation as in-dependent advisers to OISE as essential to the production of thiscode of conduct, as OXY officials had previously tried questionablestrategies to secure an agreement with the Secoya, including“divide and conquer” persuasion techniques, bribes to individuals,and coercion.66

The Secoya negotiation with OXY cost them the support ofenvironmental allies in Ecuador, who saw OISE as weakening apanindigenous resistance against petroleum development, as wellas harming the environment.67 AE, for example, decided to cut tiesto the Secoya as a response to their attempts for negotiation, whichmeant the Secoya also lost powerful political connections withintransnational environmental networks, where they were no longersupported as “authentic” indigenous environmentalists.

On the other hand, the Secoya also gained the support ofhuman-rights and development organizations that recognized theirstruggles as part of the reality of living in this petroleum-rich pro-duction region and disagreed with the drastic measure of droppingacompañamiento relationships at such a crucial point in time. Asa former director of CSER in Ecuador described, the rationale forcontinuing to support the Secoya rested on the belief that impos-ing an environmental agenda on the Secoya eroded their effortsfor self-determination and nation building.68

Several interconnected events conditioned the repositioning ofSecoya from environmentalists to self-determining nation. Taking a





position against Texaco allowed OISE to represent the Secoya as anenvironmentalist collective seeking retribution for damages causedto their homes through capitalist exploitation. The political effec-tiveness of this representation was most powerful in the early andlate 1990s, when the political and cultural climate at the time pro-vided discursive and structural opportunities for indigenous peo-ples such as the Secoya (and Cofán) to build transnational net-works with actors concerned with environmental destructionaround the world.69 The symbolic power of these ecological repre-sentations, however, somewhat diminished at the turn of the cen-tury, through a combination of ideological changes, financial limi-tations, and a shift in media attention to issues of democracybuilding and global security.70

The combined effect of these shifts in the cultural, economic,and political climate, and the ways in which environmentalist net-works had secured the Secoya as “global citizens” with a politicalvoice, allowed the possibility to consider a negotiation between theSecoya and OXY. This, together with Block 15 having significant butuntapped reserves that deeply interested OXY and the openness ofOISE leaders to consider alternative ways of articulating a relation-ship with petroleum, materialized the conditions through whichnegotiation took place. Under these discursive and material con-ditions, OISE translated the Secoya as “global citizens” staking cul-tural claims that not only protect their livelihoods but also helpstabilize the production of key energy resources. Through negotia-tion, the Secoya become economic partners in the networks oftransnational corporate actors, within a framework of spatial-politicalimaginaries where participating in the “global” economy is the onlyalternative for promoting “local” livelihoods.

FOISE: Building an Organized Way of Life

FOISE’s establishment, unlike that of FEINCE and OISE, is moreclosely linked to the presence of the Roman Catholic Church inSucumbíos. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Carmelita missionrepresentatives organized comunidades de base (base communities)among the Quichua through evangelization. The missionariesschooled community leaders as catechists, teachers, and health ad-vocates and selected young men to attend mission-run boardingschools, where they were further trained in political discourse andactivism. They also encouraged the Quichua to engage the discoursesand practices of organization stipulated by agrarian reform to retainaccess to territory and environmental resources for their materialand cultural reproduction. By 1972, the first communities had





already formed a board of directors to obtain communal titles fromthe Ecuadoran land-reform and distribution agency in order todefend their territorial claims against agricultural colonist expansion.

Among the Quichua, producing an organization has becomemore than a spatial-political strategy used to translate claims acrosshierarchical structures of governance. Vida organizada (organizedliving), or consciously performing and policing the practices of“intimate government ” suggested by the state, has also become animportant element in the articulation of Quichua indigeneity.Community members participating in vida organizada see them-selves as political actors working through FOISE to articulate col-lective demands on livelihood improvement.71 One of the maingoals of “organized living” is to secure access to proyectos, programsfor social betterment and development managed by national andtransnational actors. In focus groups, Quichua participants identi-fied proyectos as commonly desired services for livelihood im-provement and FOISE as the “official” agent designated to securethese benefits. Materially, projects include tangible aspects of de-velopment and politico-economic empowerment, such as workshopson sustainable agriculture, financial credits, and infrastructure meantto promote progress and development of rural peoples.

FOISE performs its role as project procurer by translating andcirculating particular representations of the Quichua. For exam-ple, in some instances, FOISE has strategically articulated aQuichua identity as “rural peasants” in need of technical agricul-tural guidance—this, in order to secure state and transnationaldevelopment projects that target these populations. In other casesFOISE has circulated representations of the Quichua as disempow-ered indigenous peoples facing environmental damage by capital-ist enterprises—this, in order to secure relationships of acompaña-miento with environmentalist organizations. Yet in other cases,FOISE has engaged tropes of Quichua as “development managers,”modern economically rational, self-governing subjects searchinglivelihood improvement.

As FOISE seeks to secure material benefits for its constituency,its success is also conditioned by how well the latter participates inthe political spaces of “organized life.” “Trust in the organization,”in particular, is one of the most important elements of “organizedliving” that allow the functioning of FOISE.72 Trusting a leader iseasier if that person has been raised among the people repre-sented and has a vested interest in the families, land, and resourceswithin the territory. FOISE representatives, however, often are not“local”—unlike FEINCE and OISE leaders—and this is a central ele-ment conditioning how FOISE operates in networks of livelihood





improvement. While the Cofán and Secoya have small populationsliving in a small number of communities, the Quichua are thelargest indigenous population in Sucumbíos. FOISE’s success as arepresentative organization, consequently, rests heavily on howeffectively it accomplishes its tasks—that is, on professional suc-cess—rather than personal ties to communities.

Their approach has until now been successful: FOISE is seenby community members as an entity that ultimately seeks the well-being of Quichua communities. Community members often re-ferred to FOISE as “their voice” outside the community, recallingthe ways in which it helped legalize territories and “brought pro-jects” to their communities.73

Petroleum secures the organization. Since its establishment in 1978,FOISE was under the direct guidance of the Roman Catholic Church,which helped secure projects and facilitated transnational connec-tions for the budding organization. This close relationship, however,changed in the late 1980s, as FOISE leaders sought to become moreeconomically and politically independent.

The period between 1991 and 1994 was critical in FOISE’s his-tory. Its strained relationship with the Roman Catholic Churchseverely diminished access to projects, which in turn also limitedthe income available to pay for infrastructure and salaries thatallow leaders to attend to the needs of their large constituency.Given this reliance on external resources, FOISE leaders activelysought projects to finance and perpetuate their existence duringthose trying times. As Pascual Tapuy (one of FOISE’s original lead-ers) explained: “We had to make them [organizations] see ourrealities, our needs, our poverty.”74 In 1993, FOISE found one suchfunding opportunity: joining the lawsuit against Texaco (or “Tex-aco project”) to remediate the consequences of negligent environ-mental practices in Amazonian indigenous territories.

FOISE leaders initially saw their participation in the lawsuit asa relationship that would secure funds to support the organizationand its activities among communities. FOISE’s role in the lawsuit,however, changed over time and strengthened perceived differ-ences among Quichua, Cofán, and Secoya as indigenous peoples.In 1995, foreseeing that the lawsuit would take many years and per-suaded by the more established Quichua organization FCUNAE—originally involved in the lawsuit as a representative of the Quichuain the neighboring lower Napo River—FOISE entered an out-of-court settlement with Texaco.75 The settlement established thatTexaco would pay FOISE and FCUNAE monetary compensation($1 million) for the environmental damage caused, and would





invest in a cleanup effort in areas where it was deemed necessaryby the company. FOISE and FCUNAE, for their part, agreed toback out of the lawsuit.

The financial compensation for the cleanup agreement waspaid directly to the Ecuadoran government, which FOISE then lob-bied for their share. Tapuy describes the logic of their decision andthe ways in which they participated in this set of the trial’srelationships:

It was through FCUNAE that we were able to get in [the settle-ment] . . . [FCUNAE] had already drafted a plan of development.Johnson Cerda came to manage everything for us . . . we inte-grated into their plan . . . they said we could only get five percent. . . it was too little. We started to make contacts with the Ministryof Energy and Mines, with the environmental division. I don’tknow what happened . . . there were vehicles, computers, dis-comóviles, topographic equipment [in the plan]. So we took ad-vantage and started taking some of these things . . . FCUNAE gotvery angry. . . . We are Indians, I said, we shouldn’t get angry ateach other. We want to work together to make all of us stronger,and to ask for that money so that we can manage it. . . . At theend we got thirty-three percent, because they [FCUNAE] havemore communities.

Tapuy’s relationships with FCUNAE and the “Texaco project”illustrate the complexities of FOISE’s participation in the trial’snetworks. FOISE engaged the trial as an opportunity to meet thedemands of its constituent communities and support the longevityof their organization. By first joining the lawsuit, Tapuy articulatedcommon class and environmental identities among Quichua,Cofán, and Secoya: indigenous peoples marginalized and sufferingfrom global capitalist enterprises and environmental injustice. Yet,FOISE eventually chose to enter the out-of-court settlement be-cause it was perceived as the best course of action for the Quichuaconstituency: It promised immediate resources linked to transna-tional actors that would finance livelihood improvement. Tapuy’sactions and discursive engagements served to strengthen FOISE’sposition as a political actor that transgresses local, national, andtransnational scales in order to stake “local” claims of reparation to“global” actors (i.e., petroleum companies).

Through the settlement, FOISE emphasized cultural, political,and class affinities (“We are Indians. . . . We want to work togetherto make all of us stronger”) with other Quichua organizations. Itsrepositioning, however, also altered its relationship with other par-ticipants in the lawsuit. As a FOISE leader described, they made





“enemies” out of former allies through their settlement decision.FOISE leaders couched their new position on the belief that envi-ronmentalists were “too radical” in their views and practices andcriticized rigid framings of the Quichua as “ecological natives” thatlimited their management of potential financial resources. FOISE’sactions, in turn, were interpreted by environmental organizationssuch as AE as threatening a panindigenous defense of environ-mental and cultural rights. Cofán leaders also saw FOISE’s posi-tioning as an unwise move for protecting traditional ways of life,influenced by economic greediness. Secoya leaders have not alwayscriticized FOISE’s repositioning, seeing it as an attempt to gainself-determination.

FOISE used its out-of-court settlement funds to buy land in LagoAgrio, build a new office building equipped with telephone linesand new computers to be used as their “central station,” in additionto purchasing a car and part ownership of a small airplane. With thefunds, FOISE also financed bonificación (bonus payment) for leaderswho had not been paid during years of service. As FOISE leadersexplained in 2003, these were headquarters and personnel “basicneeds” essential for cultivating potential and existing relationshipswith national and global actors. Without these resources, theyargued, they would be unable to serve their large constituency.While FOISE’s reasoning for access to the funds was to clean upcontaminated areas, build schools, communal buildings, and im-prove living standards in communities, a large portion of the fundswere spent financing its own institutional building and personneland in activities and goods enjoyed by a limited portion of theirconstituency.

FOISE has continued on the path of drawing relationships withtransnational petroleum companies, often seeing negotiations withthese actors as an opportunity to foster local economic develop-ment (e.g., approving road building within Quichua territories fortransporting petroleum infrastructure can also facilitate the trans-port of local agricultural goods to markets). However, these rela-tionships may also be rearticulated over time as FOISE’s composi-tion and agendas change. For example, as more women take upleadership roles in the organization, they bring their experiencesand views into FOISE’s agenda, and in some cases redefine theways in which the organization articulates Quichua identity.76 Mostrecently, women leaders contested the view that the Quichua nego-tiate with petroleum and timber companies, arguing that previous(male) FOISE leaders did not understand the bonds built betweenQuichua women and land and how the practices of transnationalcompanies undermine this relationship.77





Articulating Indigeneity for a “Better Life”

As representative organizations, FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE seek tonegotiate a “better life” for their constituencies by participating intransnational networks of solidarity that translate and circulatelivelihood struggles to potential allies. While it may seem unprob-lematic in some cases to draw networks of support for “Amazonianindigenous peoples struggling for survival,” it is certainly more dif-ficult to grasp the meanings and practices that such an identifierrefers to, or the meanings intended by its users at particular mo-ments in space and time. As the Texaco case indicates, whether thegoal is to represent a particular way of life or worldview or a mar-ginalized social group in relation to the exploitation of petroleum,the relationships and practices through which people self-identifyor are identified as indigenous to stake claims are ambiguouslydetermined and subject to redefinition and contestation.

The historical trajectories of FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE in thelawsuit against Texaco underscore the complex relationship betweenindigeneity and petroleum within transnational networks. Drawingand strengthening advocacy connections with actors participatingin larger networks of political influence is central for articulatingindigenous struggles “from below.” The networks engaged byFEINCE, OISE, and FOISE are distinct, however, despite geograph-ical proximity and similar historical associations with national andtransnational actors. In each case, the representations of indigene-ity circulated reflect the embeddedness of these organizations inlocal cultural and political specificities. As FEINCE builds allianceswith environmentalist organizations to articulate Cofán struggles asbeing of global importance, it participates in networks that linkcultural survival, politics, and biodiversity conservation to identifythe Cofán as victimized “ecological natives.”78 Drawing on theseenvironmentalist images is a powerful cultural-political strategythat grants them symbolic ecological capital, capital that trans-gresses the subjection of “local natives” to “global capital.” This cer-tainly is not a view shared by all Cofán peoples, but one that hasbeen powerfully circulated by leaders and their advisers to servethe interests of territorial and cultural protection.

OISE, while participating in the same environmentalist net-works as FEINCE in relation to Texaco, also articulates other repre-sentations of indigeneity that facilitate exchanges with “global”actors that are not necessarily environmentalists. Through thesealternative representations, OISE translates the Secoya as a modernindigenous-nation that draws social, economic, and technologicalrelations with transnational petroleum companies, but also losessupport from allies that were central to its historical production.





The distinct networking paths used by Cofán and Secoya in relationto petroleum are partly an effect of the politics of the actors per-forming representations (leaders and supporters have particularpolitical visions, produced through personal experiences, interests,and investments that shape their desire for establishing specificalliances), partly an effect of the power inequalities under which con-nections are established, and partly an effect of the purchase of spe-cific representations within particular political and social timeframes.

FOISE’s changing position in the Texaco trial suggests a moreradical shift in the ways in which transnational networks can beengaged for local betterment. Its engagement of the “Texaco pro-ject” situates the Quichua as rational economic citizens seeking toescape the “discursive incarceration”79 of indigenous peoples as“ecological natives” in order to engage other forms of politicalopportunity that will potentially enhance Quichua livelihoods. Thepolitical and cultural affiliations of leaders are also crucial to FOISE’snetwork relations, shaping the possibilities for establishing specificconnections to achieve local goals, while terminating others becausethey are not perceived as powerful. For example, FOISE chose tojoin the settlement along with other Quichua organizations ratherthan remain part of the lawsuit with geographical neighbors, Cofánand Secoya, in order to secure immediate financial gains.

As the “trial of the century” continues, the geographies oftranslation and circulation of indigeneity become crucially impor-tant. The roles each organization inhabits and their performancesas “mediating” actors not only shape the ways in which this trial isunderstood among a wider audience around the globe but also thepossibilities for further associations that bridge local livelihoods,development, and human-rights networks. Regardless of how thetrial ends or whether fault is found among the corporations underinvestigation, the livelihoods of Cofán, Secoya, and Quichua havealready been altered by “global capital.” The work their organiza-tions perform as indigenous representatives, therefore, is vital, as itconditions the possibilities for more humane living conditions andsocial justice in the region, where local identities, environment,and petroleum have become complexly intertwined.

Notes

I gratefully acknowledge the institutional support provided by the Consor-tium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences, theDepartment of Geography and the Graduate School at the University ofMinnesota, and the MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Global Change,





Sustainability, and Justice. My thanks also go to Eric Sheppard for his espe-cially helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article and to anonymousreviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. My deepest thanksto the organizations and individuals in Quito and Sucumbíos who grantedme the time and space to ask questions and taught me about the ways inwhich social connections and identity matter in political action.

1. Amazonian residents had made several attempts to make Texaco(and the Ecuadoran government) pay attention to the environmental con-sequences of Texaco’s practices prior to initiating a lawsuit. Cristóbal Boni-faz (one of the lawsuit’s current lawyers) was first alerted by family mem-bers in Ecuador about the environmental situation in the Amazon. Onefamily member, in particular, had firsthand experience of the impact ofTexaco’s oil production while living with the Secoya. This prompted Boni-faz, who has a long history of advocating for environmental causes, toinvestigate the situation further and eventually advise the plaintiffs to filethe lawsuit as the only option left to tackle this “Western” problem.

2. While Texaco claims it complied with Ecuador’s environmental reg-ulations, it also contends that Petroecuador is partly responsible for thedamage since it became a major partner in the operations by the late1980s. Texaco also claims to have invested $40 million in an environmentalremediation program from 1995 to 1998, approved by the Ecuadoran gov-ernment, that released the company from future obligations and liabilities.The program was limited in geographic scope and plaintiff agreement,however. For more information on the lawsuit, Aguinda vs. Texaco, seewww.texacorainforest.org/ and www.chevrontexaco.org.

3. Scott Wilson, “Rare Class-Action Pollution Trial Pits Indians AgainstU.S. Oil Company,” Washington Post, October 23, 2003, A18.

4. I draw from Stuart Hall, “On Postmodernism and Articulation: AnInterview with Stuart Hall,” in D. Morley and K.-H. Chen, eds., Stuart Hall:Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, pp. 131–150. (London: Routledge,1996) for the notion of articulation to define the simultaneous processthrough which a subject-position or identity (e.g., Amazonian indigenouspeoples) is conjoined with a political project (e.g., securing cultural,social, and economic rights in specific geographical spaces).

5. FEINCE (Federación Indígena de la Nacionalidad Cofán, Ecuador,formerly known as OINCE [Organización Indígena de la NacionalidadCofán, Ecuador]) represents Cofán people; OISE (Organización IndígenaSecoya de Sucumbiós, Ecuador) represents Secoya people; and FOISE(Federación de Organizaciones Indígenas de Sucumbíos) representsQuichua people. While ONISE (Organization of the Siona Nationality ofEcuador) and ONAHE (Organization of the Huaorani Nation of Ecuador)and twenty-two farming communities in the Amazon are plaintiffs in thelawsuit, this article focuses only on FEINCE, OISE, and FOISE as case stud-ies of organizations in the center of oil development in Sucumbíos.

6. An official breakdown of population figures for the Quichua ofSucumbíos is not available, but sources indicate that approximately fivethousand Quichua live along the Napo, Aguarico, and Putumayo Rivers inthe provinces of Sucumbíos and Napo (Summer Institute of LinguisticsEthnologue Report, www.ethnologue.org/show_country.asp?name=Ecuador)and approximately eighty thousand Quichua live in the provinces of Sucum-bíos, Napo, Pastaza, and Orellana (www.codenpe.gov.ec/kichwaama).

7. C.f. Allison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights andInternational Relations in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press,2000); Beth Conklin and Laura Graham, “The Shifting Middle Ground: Ama-





zonian Indians and Eco-Politics,” American Anthropologist 97, no. 4 (1995):695–710; Laura Graham, “How Should an Indian Speak? Amazonian Indiansand the Symbolic Politics of Language in the Global Public Sphere,” in KarenWarren and Jean Jackson, ed. Indigenous Movements, Self-Representations, and theState in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), pp. 181–228; NinaLaurie, Robert Andolina, and Sarah Radcliffe, “Indigenous Professionalization:Transnational Social Reproduction in the Andes,” Antipode 35, no. 3 (2003):463–491; Ron Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics ofIdentity (San Diego: University of California Press, 2003); Thomas Perreault,“Developing Identities: Indigenous Mobilization, Rural Livelihoods, and Re-source Access in Ecuadoran Amazonia,” Ecumene 8, no. 4 (2001): 381–413;Suzana Sawyer, Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neo-liberalism in Ecuador (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).

8. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Net-work-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); John Murdoch,“Towards a Geography of Heterogeneous Associations,” Progress in HumanGeography 21, no. 3 (1997): 321–337.

9. Sallie A. Marston, John Paul Jones III, and Keith Woodward, “HumanGeography Without Scale,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers30, no. 4 (2005): 416–432.

10. Bram Dov Abramson, “Translating Nations: Actor-Network Theoryin/and Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 35, no. 1(1998): 1–19; Bruno Latour, “On Recalling ANT,” in John Law and J. Has-sard, ed., Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford: Blackwell/SociologicalReview, 1999), pp. 15–25. It is also worth pointing out that both networkand scale approaches are spatial representations that use specific meta-phors of how humans inhabit the world and draw relationships in it andthat neither offers the absolute “truth” about social relations.

11. See Arturo Escobar, “Culture Sits in Places: Reflection on Globalismand Subaltern Strategies of Localization,” Political Geography 20 (1999):139–174; Thomas Perreault, “Making Space: Community Organization,Agrarian Change, and the Politics of Scale in the Ecuadoran Amazon,” LatinAmerican Perspectives 30, no. 1 (2003): 96–121; Thomas Perreault, “ChangingPlaces: Transnational Networks, Ethnic Politics and Community Develop-ment in the Ecuadoran Amazon,” Political Geography 22, no. 1 (2003): 61–88.

12. Neil Smith, “Spaces of Vulnerability: The Spaces of Flows and thePolitics of Scale,” Critique of Anthropology 16 (1996): 63–77.

13. Lawrence Knopp, “Ontologies of Place, Placelessness, and Move-ment: Queer Quests for Identity and Their Impacts on ContemporaryGeographic Thought,” Gender, Place, and Culture 11, no. 1 (2004): 121–134;John Law, “After Ant: Complexity, Naming, and Topology,” in Law andHassard, note 10.

14. Helga Leitner, Claire Pavlik, and Eric Sheppard, “Networks, Gov-ernance, and the Politics of Scale: Inter-Urban Networks and the Euro-pean Union,” in Andrew Herod and Melissa Wright, ed. Geographies ofPower: Placing Scale (Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 2002).

15. Michael Callon and Bruno Latour, “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan:How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them toDo So,” in A. V. Cicourel and K. Knorr-Cetina, eds., Advances in Social The-ory and Methodology: Towards an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).

16. Kevin R. Cox, “Spaces of Dependence, Spaces of Engagement, andthe Politics of Scale, or Looking for Local Politics,” Political Geography 17,no. 1 (1998): l–23.





17. Noel Castree, “False Antitheses? Marxism, Nature, and Actor-Net-works,” Antipode 34 (2002): 111–146; Scott Kirsch and Don Mitchell, “TheNature of Things: Dead Labor, Nonhuman Actors, and the Persistence ofMarxism,” Antipode 36, no. 4 (2004): 687–705; Sarah Whatmore, “HybridGeographies: Rethinking the ‘Human’ in Human Geographies,” in DoreenMassey, J. Allen, and P. Sarre, eds., Human Geography Today (Cambridge,Eng.: Polity, 1999), pp. 22–40.

18. Methodologically, ANT is criticized for assuming a position fromwhich a researcher can explore all the important networks along their fullextent and for not acknowledging the researcher’s role in the politics ofdescription and knowledge production: Donna Haraway, Modest Witness@Second Millennium. Femaleman Meets Oncomouse: Feminism and Technoscience(London: Routledge, 1997); Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures,Cultures, Spaces (London: Sage, 2002). ANT is also criticized for its insistenceon connection, which can overshadow questions on how or why certain asso-ciations are (or are not) made between different actors, the accountabilityof actors in shaping those associations, and the role of power differences,tensions, and contradictions in making associations “precarious“: KarenBakker and Gavin Bridge, “Material Worlds? Resource Geographies andthe ‘Matter of Nature,’” Progress in Human Geography 30, no. 1 (2006): 5–27. The knowledge I produce about indigeneity is necessarily mediated bymy interactions with organization leaders and community members—byhow my particular interests in organization-building influence the ques-tions asked and the people interviewed as well as the information theychose to share. Mapping all the multiple connections established throughthe three representative organizations examined could never be com-pleted since those connections are dynamic. They are constantly initiated,redefined, reshuffled, and terminated according to the actors participat-ing (organization names, leaders, and visions change over time) and theirlocal, national, and transnational associations. Although the trajectoriestraced in the Texaco case are necessarily partial and incomplete, they arestill significant since they allow us to examine moments in which actorsreassociate and reassemble their connections to produce powerful under-standings of identity that fuel political action.

19. Indigeneity has been defined as that which is “outside of” moder-nity, and it has been embraced for its antimodernism. As Akhil Guptaargues, it can also be understood as a “desired Other” or as “phantom fig-ures who occupy a space of pure oppositionality” in hegemonic construc-tions of difference through which the West is articulated (PostcolonialDevelopments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Durham, N.C.: DukeUniversity Press, 1998). Yet in other cases, indigeneity can be understoodas a space for authenticity and the preservation of traditions, which high-lights notions of origins and the possibilities for compensation, protection,and validation based on this recognition. I use indigeneity as a processualand historically situated category of identification that involves identifyinga person (or self-identifying) as belonging to a social group original to aplace (or descendants of the group), practicing place-specific ways of life,facing colonization and oppression from outside within national territo-ries (and in some cases by states), and coexisting in place with an exoge-nous (dominant) and ethnically different category of people.

20. Jean Carriére, “Neoliberalism, Economic Crisis, and Popular Mobili-zation in Ecuador,” in J. Demmers, J. A. E. Fernández and B. Hogenboom, eds.,





Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin American Populism(London: Zed Books, 2001); Allen Gerlach, Indians, Oil, and Politics: A RecentHistory of Ecuador (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003); NACLA,“Ecuador: Oil Up for Grabs,” NACLA’s Latin America and Empire Report 9, no.8 (1975): 2–38; Lucy Ruiz, “El Pueblo Cofán,” in Etnografías Mínimas delEcuador (Quito: Abya Yala, 1997).

21. Guillaume Fontaine, El Precio Del Petróleo: Conflictos Socio AmbientalesY Gobernabilidad En La Región Amazónica (Quito: FLACSO-IFEA, 2003).

22. Gerlach, note 20.23. Paul Little, Ecología Política Del Cuyabeno: El Desarrollo No Sostenible

De La Amazonía (Quito: Abya Yala, 1992); Santiago Moreno Yánez and JoséFigueroa, El Levantamiento Indígena Del Inti Raymi De 1990 (Quito: Abya Yala,1992); Norman E. Whitten, “Amazonia Today at the Base of the Andes: AnEthnic Interface in Ecological, Social, and Ideological Perspectives,” inCultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, ed. N. E. Whitten(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981).

24. Little, note 23.25. Francisco Pichón, “Settler Households and Land-Use Patterns in

the Amazon Frontier: Farm-Level Evidence from Ecuador,” World Develop-ment 25, no. 1 (1997): 67–91.

26. Dominique Irvine, “Indigenous Federations and the Market: TheRuna of Napo, Ecuador,” in Ron Weber, John Butler, and Patty Larson,eds., Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations: Experiences in Collab-oration (Washington, D.C.: World Wildlife Fund, 2000), pp. 21–46.

27. Michael Rogers, “Beyond Authenticity: Conservation, Tourism,and the Politics of Representation in the Ecuadoran Amazon,” Identities 3,no. 1–2 (1996): 73–125.

28. Little, note 23.29. SIL is a North American–based evangelical group that seeks to

learn indigenous languages around the world in order to develop alphabetsand education programs and translate the New Testament of the Bible intonative languages.

30. William Vickers, “The Modern Political Transformation of the Sec-oya,” in Millenial Ecuador: Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and SocialDynamics, ed. N. E. Whitten (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003).

31. Randy Borman, “Survival in a Hostile World: Culture Change andMissionary Influence Among the Cofán People of Ecuador, 1954–1994.”Missiology: An International Review 24, no. 2 (1996): 185–200; David Stoll,Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? (London: Zed Books, 1982).

32. Luis Luis, La Misión Carmelita En Sucumbíos (ISAMIS Misión Car-melita, 1994); Pedro Luis Rodriguez Aliste, “El Sufrimiento Por Amor:Lectura De Teresa De Lisieux Desde La Realidad De La Iglesia De SanMiguel De Sucumbíos” (Madrid: Tesina de Licenciatura, Universidad Pon-tificia de Salamanca, 2002).

33. Steven Rubenstein, “Colonialism, the Shuar Federation, and theEcuadoran State,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19 (2001):263–293.

34. Antonio Lucero, “Locating the ‘Indian Problem’: Community,Nationality, and Contradiction in Ecuadoran Indigenous Politics,” LatinAmerican Perspectives 30, no. 1 (2003): 23–48; Michael Rogers, “BeyondAuthenticity: Conservation, Tourism, and the Politics of Representation inthe Ecuadoran Amazon,” Identities 3, nos. 1–2 (1996): 73–125.





35. Perreault, note 7; Rogers, note 3; Rubenstein, note 34.36. Arun Agrawal, “Environmentality: Community, Intimate Govern-

ment, and the Making of Environmental Subjects in Kumaon, India,” Cur-rent Anthropology 46, no. 2 (2005).

37. Nina Laurie, Robert Andolina, and Sarah A. Radcliffe, “Ethno-Development: Social Movements, Creating Experts, and ProfessionalisingIndigenous Knowledge in Ecuador,” Antipode: Journal of Radical Geography39, no. 3 (2005): 470–496.

38. Other forms of collective organization predate and presently coex-ist alongside these official organizations, but the latter is how Cofán, Sec-oya, and Quichua peoples and their struggles are “visible” to national andtransnational actors.

39. The change of name from OINCE to FEINCE is a result of redefi-nition within the organization. FEINCE is constituted of the political unityof independent but affiliated Cofán communities, and the name change rec-ognizes this federal relationship. Each community retains the managementof its internal affairs through their individual community organizations.

40. CONAIE, Las Nacionalidades Indígenas En El Ecuador: Nuestro ProcesoOrganizativo (Quito: Abya Yala, 1989); Scott Robinson, Hacia Una NuevaComprensión Del Shamanismo Cofán (Quito: Abya Yala, 1996).

41. The death of the main leader of Dureno in 1966 left the commu-nity still more susceptible to the social changes resulting from petroleumexploration: Borman, note 31; Lucy Ruiz, Situaciones Específicas PueblosIndígenas De La Amazonía Ecuatoriana: Estudio De Caso: El Pueblo Cofán(Quito: UNICEF, 1992).

42. Former OINCE president Toribio Aguinda, interview, February 8,2002.

43. Borman, note 31.44. Although Borman today continues to be closely associated with

the Cofán, his position as adviser/leader is ambiguous. While some peoplelook up to Borman for his support securing territorial claims, others havedoubts about his “gringo” (American white male) views on Cofán environ-mentalism and reticence toward negotiating with petroleum companies.His positioning among the Cofán significantly influences which familiestrust his views and which choose not to “work with him.” Borman’sapproach has focused on shaping transnational representations of the Cofánas ecological actors; for example, see www.cofan.org.

45. Robinson, note 40.46. CONFENIAE: Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas de

la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities ofthe Ecuadoran Amazon).

47. Cofán communities, focus groups, April 6 and 7, 2002. Differentopinions certainly exist among the Cofán. For example, some youngerCofán men in focus groups argued that choosing not to negotiate withpetroleum companies can eventually be more detrimental to the Cofánsince they lose potential income that could help improve education andelevate standards of living.

48. Acompañamiento was mentioned by advocacy organizations as a wayto explain their relationship with indigenous peoples in Ecuador; a rela-tionship of companionship and guidance to support a particular directionof social, political, cultural, or economic change in order to reach goalscollaboratively determined by both indigenous and nonindigenous repre-sentatives. Acompañamiento is most likely a response to the criticisms





advocacy organizations received regarding top-down practices commonlyused in the 1980s and early 1990s. For an examination of the role ofmorality in justifying the existence of advocacy organizations, see AlanHudson, “NGO’s Transnational Advocacy Networks: From ‘Legitimacy’ to‘Political Responsibility,’” Global Networks 1, no. 4 (2001): 331–352.

49. In many respects, these stories are not fully owned by the Cofán:they are an effect of networking among leaders and advocacy organiza-tions and tailored for specific audiences with a specific goal. For example,in 2003 I ran into a former president of Dureno in the offices of ALDHU(Asociación Latinoamericana de Derechos Humanos, Latin AmericanAssociation of Human Rights), where he was finalizing the details of anoverseas trip. He was soon to travel to Scotland to speak about the Cofánenvironmental-justice fight against Texaco at a Friends of the Earth confer-ence. This conference was reported “a success,” and the activists (includingDureno’s former president) were seen as inspirational to environmentalgrassroots movements; see NIDOS (Network of International DevelopmentOrganizations in Scotland), December Newsletter (2003), available at www.nidos.org.uk/nidosNews/dec2003.doc.

50. FEINCE representative Fidel Aguinda, interview, February 18. 2002.51. Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood,

Dwelling, and Skill (London: Routledge, 2000).52. OINCE, El Mejor Lugar De La Selva: Propuesta Para La Recuperación

Del Pueblo Cofán (Quito: Abya Yala, 1998).53. In 1998, OINCE/FEINCE published a manuscript entitled ”El Mejor

Lugar de la Selva” (“The Best Place in la Selva”) detailing this connection.54. See, for example, www.cofan.org, a nonprofit organization funded

by Randy Borman dedicated to the survival of Cofán indigenous cultureand environment through “biodiversity conservation and research, procur-ing legal rights and protection for traditional Cofán territories, the devel-opment of environmentally sound micro economy alternatives, and edu-cation of the next generation of Cofán.”

55. Despite missionary teachings, the Secoya have not fully aban-doned their beliefs in shamanism and currently seek both traditional andWestern treatment for illness and other problems; see Vickers, note 30.

56. Ibid.57. Despite its position against the SIL, CONFENIAE’s strategies of

empowerment could not have been as successful without the work per-formed by the missionaries. The “new” OISE leaders, or dirigentes, wereprecisely the same actors that the missionaries had already groomed asleaders of their communities.

58. Interview, OISE officer, February 9, 2002.59. IBIS is sponsored by the European Initiative for Democracy and

Human Rights, a European aid organization whose goals are to promote theprinciples of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of lawthrough programs targeting the root causes of poverty. For more on IBIS, seeeuropa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/projects/eidhr/projects_2002_themes_en.

60. IBIS director Arturo Cevallos, interview, August 20, 2003.61. Bruce Braun, The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power

on Canada’s West Coast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).62. In 1995, for example, even though individual OISE officers had

signed an agreement to allow a petroleum company into Secoya territory,the Secoya collective forced their leaders to annul the agreement sincethey had not been consulted in the process.





63. Piaguaje, although a recognized leader of OISE, is controversial.At times his politics have been characterized as developmentalist, ob-scured, and biased to benefit his immediate family at the expense of othercommunity members (personal communication, Ana Oña, 2002).

64. Jim Oldham and Antonio Almeida, ISIS representatives, interview,August 2003.

65. CDES (Centro de Derechos Económicos y Sociales), “La Nego-ciación del Código de Conducta entre Occidental Exploration and Pro-duction Company (OEPC) y la Organización Indígena Secoya del Ecuador(OISE)” (Quito, 2000).

66. Chris Jochnick, CDES former director, personal communica-tion (June 23, 2001); Jim Oldham, ISIS director, interview, August 16,2003.

67. Kay Treakle, “Ecuador: Structural Adjustment and Indigenous andEnvironmentalist Resistance,” in J. A. Fox and D. Brown, eds., The Strugglefor Accountability: The World Bank, Ngos, and Grassroots Movements (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).

68. Chris Jocknich, CDES former director, personal communication,June 23, 2001.

69. Conklin and Graham, note 7.70. Sonja Pieck, “Opportunities for Transnational Indigenous Eco-

Politics: The Changing Landscape in the New Millennium,” Global Networks6, no. 3 (2006): 309–329.

71. Not everybody participates in this social imaginary, however (thereare economic costs not everyone is willing to pay, such as membership dues).In some instances community members have sought to connect with outsideactors to improve their own personal situations, not those of the community.These ties are often not as strong as those made through FOISE, partlybecause FOISE is better connected to established networks and its officershave experience and skills that help cultivate these associations.

72. Quichua community, focus group, March 20, 2002.73. Ibid.74. Pascual Tapuy, former FOISE representative, interview, August 11,

2003.75. FCUNAE, the Federación de Comunas de Nativos de la Amazonía

Ecuatoriana (Federation of Communities of Natives of the EcuadoranAmazon), represents communities located along the Napo, Payamino,Coca, Tiputini, and Aguarico Rivers. Its purpose is to defend the territor-ial rights of indigenous communities and to promote economic develop-ment within their constituent communities.

76. This is particularly the case among Quichua organizations through-out Ecuador. Cofán and Secoya women do not play such a significant rolein leadership yet, primarily because, in most cases, they have not com-pleted elementary education.

77. Luis Ángel Saavedra, Warmi Wangurina (2005), cited June 8, 2006;available at www.latinoamerica-online.it/paesi4/ecuador1-05.html#warmi.

78. Conklin and Graham, note 7.79. Bruce Braun, The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power

on Canada’s West Coast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002),p. 94.





Documents

The "Amazonian Trial of the Century": Indigenous Identities, Transnational Networks, and Petroleum in Ecuador