Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

The Runa in Ecuador 29
game animals that proliferated as they fed on the
fruiting trees that people planted or protected
(Irvine 1987).
Evidence also suggests that, depending on usage
customs, indigenous management affected some
forest areas more than others. Lowland forests
were probably preferred to higher ones since
Runa gardens were generally cleared below elevations
of 600 meters. The higher parts of
Sumaco Volcano were seasonal hunting grounds
for a variety of Runa communities. Small gardens
were cleared there only occasionally, to
supply food for people visiting their purina
huasi, or small hunting houses.
2.4 Shifts in Tenure, from Custom to Law
Traditional Runa tenure relations provided the
security and flexibility needed for sustainable
management of rain forest resources by future
generations. Large community territories
afforded ample space for gardening and hunting.
Community boundaries were not demarcated but
were well known and recognized. Individuals
within a community negotiated directly with their
neighbors to obtain land for gardening and for
access to hunting and fishing areas. Such usage
rights were widely respected by other indigenous
communities, and provided the inhabitants of
each community with a degree of control over
resource extraction by outsiders. Disputes were
resolved internally.
This customary system has been superseded by
an evolving patchwork of Ecuadorian law.
Ecuador’s native Amazonians must negotiate a
maze of laws that fall into three categories: those
specific to indigenous communities, those regulating
tenure for agricultural lands, and those
governing forest areas. Usufructuary rights and
responsibilities vary by category. Resource
rights are divided by the state and apportioned as
it sees fit. For example, Ecuadorian law assigns
subsoil sovereignty to the state. Concessions
may be (and are) granted to companies to explore
for and extract petroleum or mineral resources
despite the wishes of the individual or group
holding surface rights. Not only do applicable
laws differ, depending on category, but so do the
institutions that oversee land titling.
Indigenous Land. Ecuador’s Law of Comunas,
established in 1937, provided a legal framework
for indigenous communities to keep control over
resource use. Few communities in the Amazon
lowlands knew about or took advantage of this
provision, however, given the lack of state
administrative presence, the complicated and
expensive procedure for gaining title, and a functioning
traditional system to regulate resource
use. When oil exploitation opened the rain forest
wide to other groups 35 years later, the window
of opportunity had severely narrowed if not
closed. Neither the state nor new settlers knew
existing community boundaries, and neither
understood nor respected indigenous systems of
coordinating forest use. As the Runa scrambled
to understand Ecuadorian rules, they found that
the legal landscape had changed. Many, often
contradictory, laws appropriated their territory
and ceded areas to colonists for agriculture, to oil
companies for petroleum extraction, to lumber
companies for forestry, and to the state for protected
areas. Indigenous populations faced the
daunting task of mastering the rules of engagement
on several battlegrounds at once.
Agrarian Reform and Colonization. The first
risk many indigenous communities faced came
from the deluge of settlers during the 1970s.
Roads and infrastructure cleared the way into the
Amazon, but public policy opened the floodgates.
Agrarian reform laws in 1964 abolished the feudal
huasipungo system that had kept Andean people
in a state of serfdom, and promised to transform
the highland hacienda by redistributing land to the
poor. The Agrarian Reform and Colonization Act
established the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma
Agraria y Colonización (IERAC) as an agency to
implement the law. IERAC’s land-titling policies
favored colonization over expropriation, and the
Amazon offered a tempting solution. Since so little
of it was titled, it must be empty, free, and
available. IERAC soon set up offices in each
Amazonian province, and much of the land distributed
by the agency in its first years belonged to
Amazonian Indians rather than hacienda owners.
The 1978 Law of Amazon Colonization put a
legal stamp on the policy, superseding previous
legislation and setting a national priority on the
settlement and occupation of the region in order
to relieve pressure in the densely populated highlands.
About 85 percent of the 75,000 square
kilometers adjudicated from 1964 to 1994 was for