Quito, Sep 16 (EFE) .- The different indigenous guards of Ecuador promised in their first national meeting to strengthen their organization and collaboration to consolidate themselves as a “millennial resistance strategy in its different expressions and in all ancestral territories”.
This is the main precept of the mandate signed by the participants in the first National Meeting of the Indigenous Guard of Ecuador, held in the community of Sinangoe with the participation of delegations from different indigenous nationalities of the country.
The document, published this Friday by the environmental organization Amazon Frontlines, also implies its signatories to strengthen the autonomy of each indigenous nationality to legitimize the territorial control of their respective guards.
The signatories of the mandate also committed to defending collective rights such as territorial, community and nature rights, as well as monitoring compliance with the obligations of the national government in conjunction with indigenous organizations.
At the same time, they aimed to “develop various defense and protection strategies and mechanisms based on ideological formation and organizational politics” and agreed to “respond to the guidelines and decisions” that are adopted through the assemblies held in their communities and in indigenous organizations.
So that the movement is not lost, they agreed to “transmit the characteristic elements and symbols” and “honor and revitalize the spiritual force, knowledge and ancestral knowledge that relate human life with nature.”
Among those commitments adopted by the indigenous guards is also “to promote knowledge about the principles of historical memory” and “about community mandates, expressions of their own rights, collective and constitutional rights.
Likewise, “position in all spaces the legitimate exercise of the indigenous guard, its strength, wisdom and spirituality in the territories, as the caretakers and defenders of the rights of the nationalities and indigenous peoples of Ecuador.”
In the same document, the indigenous guards ratified that their movement “is legally protected by constitutional rights, jurisprudence, international norms and the right to self-determination of peoples and nationalities.”
For this reason, they denounced being “target of stigmatization, accusation, political persecution and criminalization.”
“Attempts have been made to discredit our role to confuse it with an alignment with terrorism or drug trafficking, which generates a serious scenario of physical and cultural risk, reflecting the structural racism of the State and the fear of the colonial institutionality that has always wanted to impose and standardize our ways of life,” they added.
Among the signatories of the mandate is Leonidas Iza, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), the largest indigenous organization in the country, who faces trial accused of instigating the paralysis of public services during the last series of protests that took place last June.
The first National Meeting of Indigenous Guards of Ecuador was held on September 10 and 11 with the Sinangoe community as host, from the A’i Cofán ethnic group, whose first woman who is part of their indigenous den, Alexandra Narváez, received this year the prestigious Goldman environmental award, along with his partner Álex Lucitante.
The indigenous guards of Ecuador are committed to strengthening their structure