Bad luck
In March 2020 I happened to be in the Kichwa Amazonian community of Sarayaku in Ecuadorean Amazonia. I was there investigating the proposal of Kawsak Sacha (The Living Jungle/ Forest) that Sarayaku had launched, in order to protect the jungle’s visible and invisible beings (who are considered to have legal personhood and therefore to be bearers of legal rights). You can find the articles I wrote about that here, here, here, and here.
While I was there, two very important events took place one after the other and both were historical: the first for the community, and the second for the world.
On the night of the 17th of March 2020, Sarayaku experienced the biggest flood in the community’s living memory. I happened to be there together with photographer Evangelos Daskalakis, exactly on the side of Bobonaza river that was more severely affected by the flood, a part that the community calls sector pista, and Kushillu (the monkeys’ hill).
The day after, Ecuador closed its borders to the world, and the world to Ecuador due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
It was our Malinowskian moment.
I have described elsewhere what happened during the flood, and how the community dealt both with it and with the COVID-19 pandemic
Now, four years later, it all seems very distant, at the time however, it was the biggest crisis both Sarayaku and the world had experienced for a very very long time. Myself too.
This double disaster created a double problem for me and Evangelos Daskalakis: first, we had to save our own lives and help the members of the community save theirs, and their livelihoods as well; and, secondly, we had to find a way to get to Puyo first, from there to Quito, and from Quito to Europe, and Greece, with all borders and all means of transport blocked.
This research project was born exactly then: trying to get out of the Amazonia to reach Puyo. It is what social scientists call serendipity that brought it into being, and it all happened by chance. In a way, I didn’t find it- it rather found me.
To make it to Puyo from Sarayaku, one has two options: either travelling by canoe, of flying in a small avioneta. With the pista flooded, the latter was out of the question so we opted for the former. About a week after the flood, Sarayaku Governing council decided to send a delegation to Puyo to bring food and emergency kits for the community, and they agreed to take us onboard, leave us in Puyo, and from there we would try to find a way to make it to Quito and ,eventually, Greece.
Between Sarayaku and Canelos, where the road to Puyo begins, lies the community of Pacayaku. When we arrived there, we found out that the members of the community had blocked the river-pass with very long ropes that extended from one river bank to the other. After some negotiations they did let us go through, but when we asked them why they had blocked the river they gave us the following explanations:
For the balsa mafias not to enter.
I had no idea what balsa was, why would mafias be interested in it, and what it was used for.
Eventually, I made it to Puyo, and from there to Quito, but I had to remain stranded in Ecuador for three more months, so I had all the time in the world to investigate the issue.
What I found out was enough to win a Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowship, to further investigate the issue.
What I keep finding out in my research, will be (ir)regularly posted on this blog.
Last modified: September 2, 2024
