Pedro Bermeo

The YASunidxs fight began on August 15, 2013, when Rafael Correa Delgado, the president of Ecuador at the time, canceled the Yasuní ITT initiative. This was the first initiative in history that sought to leave oil underground, it was born from social organizations as an innovative strategy to avoid the emission of greenhouse gasses. However, beyond this milestone, the Yasuní is very important for the planet for other reasons, such as the fact that it is the place where various peoples and nationalities live, including indigenous peoples in isolation — their mere contact with the Western world can lead to their extermination. As if this were not enough, this Amazon region of Ecuador is the territory with the greatest biodiversity on the planet. It is home to at least 165 species of mammals, 130 species of amphibians, 72 species of reptiles, 630 species of birds, 540 species of fish in a five kilometer segment of any river. There are also 1,130 species of trees—more than Canada and the United States combined! — 94 species of ants on a single tree and a hundred thousand species of insects per hectare! It is the highest diversity discovered so far on earth.

Faced with the unfair decision to cancel the initiative, the mobilizations did not wait. Massive youth protests in the streets were harshly repressed by the police. Between threats, criminalization and attacks, the idea of ​​carrying out the first national initiative of direct democracy from the citizenry arose so that we Ecuadorians decide if we are in favor or against the exploitation of the Yasuní through a popular consultation. 

To carry out the consultation, almost 600,000 signatures had to be collected in six months. The initiative was gaining momentum. Various sectors of the organized popular camp began to join this great front called YASunidxs. We bring together ecologists, feminists, dissidents, animalists, left-wing movements, human rights defenders, indigenous peoples and nationalities. We said —we still say— that YASunidxs is as biodiverse as the Yasuní.

After a titanic effort, with all the powers of the State against it, YASunidxs presented 757,000 signatures in support of the initiative, many more than required (600,000). However, the National Electoral Council (CNE), the electoral body controlled by the Executive, denied 60% of the signatures, mainly for formal reasons: the weight or size of the paper, the order of the names and a series of formal requirements that were neither found in the Constitution nor in the law.

This is how YASunidxs undertakes a legal fight that has lasted almost ten years, since 2013. However, as of September 5, 2022, the scenario changed. The Electoral Contentious Tribunal (TCE) recognized that the signatures collected were valid and, therefore, the different entities that denied the consultation such as the Constitutional Court of 2013, the CNE of 2014, the TCE of 2014, the CNE of 2020 and the TCE of 2021, in its various instances, violated the rights of participation of the collective and of all Ecuadorians who had the right to decide.

Today, the case is in the Constitutional Court to carry out the automatic control of constitutionality and, finally, the call for popular consultation is carried out. In other words, the Court will review that the proposed question is not confusing, composed or suggestive. This is a formal process that must take place prior to collecting the signatures, although this was one of the traps used by the State in 2013. The Constitutional Court at that time ordered us to collect the signatures before issuing this opinion. The same Constitutional Court, at present, has already recognized that this limits the exercise of the rights of political participation of the citizenry.

This August 15, 2023 will be the tenth anniversary of the YASunidxs struggle. For those who saw the collective from the outside during all these years, they might think that it is just a group of young people trying to stop the oil extraction in Yasuní, others probably —as we were accused at the time— may think that we are a group of politicians, sold to the CIA, to the drug traffickers, to Chevron, to Correa, to Lasso. That we are violent people, and a host of other fallacies that they could never prove.

However, for those of us who have experienced this from the inside, what began as a fight for that remote place in the Ecuadorian Amazon gradually transformed us. The defense of Yasuní, with the passing of the years, circumstances and governments, has become something much deeper: a popular and class environmentalism, in defense of life. But, not just any life, a dignified life, a true deepening of participatory and community democracy. A post-extractive world, a world without dispossession and discrimination, a world without rich and poor, a world of justice, an emancipated world, a world without capitalism.

Today, those young people who fought for the defense of Yasuní in 2013 are no longer so young. During these 10 years, YASunidxs has made mistakes, has had political setbacks. But, in one way or another, it has remained in force through a profound constant transformation, welcoming struggles, maturing the idea of ​​an anti-capitalist environmentalism, articulating with the organized popular camp, joining the uprisings of the indigenous movement, joining efforts for a world of social and ecological justice.

Pedro Bermeo

Lawyer, activist for the rights of nature and animals, including human beings. He is a community expert in rights of nature and spokesperson for the YASunidos collective.

Text published in alliance with FES, on May 17, 2023.

Translated by Damian Vasquez