Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

The Runa in Ecuador 25
Lower elevations are recognized centers of the
Loreto Runa, descended from mission towns
around Loreto, Avila, and San José de Payamino.
These three zones have distinct mythological traditions,
and their elaborate ceramic heritages are
readily distinguishable in form and design. The
detailed and colorful decorations on chicha pots
and bowls made by Runa women in Pastaza contrast
with the simple but elegant, unpainted
ceramics and modestly painted gourds crafted for
the same beverage by women in Napo near
Loreto. Runa from each area speak dialects that
vary significantly in grammar and vocabulary,
linguistic differences widely recognized by the
Runa themselves as markers of identity.
Despite these cultural differences, Runa subsistence
economies share many similarities across
ecological zones, and probably have long done
so. Principal crops of manioc and plantain are
interplanted with minor crops and fruit trees in
small clearings, which are then allowed to revert
to forest after one or two harvests. Largely
unknown to outsiders, the upper Amazon has
been identified as a major domestication center
for harvestable crops from a variety of rain forest
trees, including the peach palm (Bactris
gasipaes), which must be planted to reproduce.
Hunting, fishing, and the collection of native
plant products provide a varied diet, and all other
necessities of life—medicines, construction
materials, fibers, firewood.
The Napo Runa are much more densely populated
than other Runa groups in the province.
Roads entered their territory in the 1960s, and
development pressure hit them earlier and harder
than populations to the east. At first they formed
new villages in old hunting territories; then they
began to migrate to unsettled areas within Loreto
Runa territory and farther downriver all the way
to the Peruvian frontier. As hacienda owners,
peasant colonists, and the church swallowed bits
and chunks of their home territory, displaced
Napo Runa families and the young seeking land
that was not overcrowded spilled north and east,
forming an indigenous colonization front. At
times colonization was a result of conscious
policy by indigenous organizations. Other times,
families spontaneously resettled. With populations
on the move, intermarriages of Runa from
different cultural zones increased.
Boundaries, once distinct, have blurred. The area
around Sumaco marks a recent border shift
between the Napo and Loreto Runa. Before the
Hollín–Loreto leg of the new trans-Andean road
was built, the Napo Runa hunted west of the
Pingullo River, and the Loreto Runa stayed to the
east. Now Runa villages along the road are often
a mix of the two groups, and the three villages
involved in the PUMAREN project reflect this
diverse background.
2.2 Organizing to Deal with Outsiders
Other changes to Runa life have accompanied
contested land claims and shifts in settlement.
People have reworked how they organize themselves
as communities and their relation to the
outside world. One of the foremost developments
has been the growth of regional indigenous
organizations since 1964, when the first
major threat to traditional land tenure materialized.
Following the Agrarian Reform and
Colonization Law enacted that year, peasant
families began to spill into the western fringe of
the Amazon headwaters from Napo in the north to
Morona–Santiago in the south, where the Shuar
reacted by organizing the first federation with
support from Salesian missionaries (Rudel 1993).
Petroleum development intensified the incursions
and extended the pressure to organize among
Runa deep in the interior. Exploration in the late
1960s hit pay dirt in Napo Province. By the time
Ecuador joined OPEC in 1973, the landscape
around Texaco’s concession—between Lago
Agrio and Coca—had been transformed. Roads
to bring drilling equipment in and to service the
new pipeline that snaked like a giant anaconda
from the Amazon to the coast also opened the
way for peasants hungry for land and jobs. Statesponsored
and spontaneous colonization poured
into the area at the fastest rate in the world.
Settlers cleared farms in long swaths as many as
five rows back from the dusty roads. As roads
proliferated, deforestation relentlessly kept pace.
North and south, dispersed communities were
bewildered to learn that the newly altered and
unfamiliar framework of Ecuadorian law affected
their rights, and they slowly developed responses.
Lands held under customary tenure for centuries
were suddenly subject to a maze of rules and regulations
that voided traditional rights and imposed
demands that had to be met to prove ownership.