Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

The Runa in Ecuador 33
Pacto Sumaco. Colonists quickly cleared land for
cash crops and began small-scale logging with
chain saws and mules. Two lumber companies,
ENDESA and Arboriente, then negotiated with
cash-starved Runa villages the right to extract
whole trees. Villagers thought this would be a
painless way to settle outstanding bank loans for
cattle raising. The communities were dismayed,
however, when loggers who had contracted for
prized specimens of copal (Dacryodes olivifera) at
$4 a tree leveled nearby trees as well, and hauled
the booty out on roads cut through crop fields.
These practices left some villagers ruined when the
company refused to pay for damages. FOIN
feared that all their efforts had come to naught.
This early setback, however, stiffened the resolve
of local communities to organize their own
resource management to generate income. 11 And
the earthquake also brought in influential outside
actors who tipped the balance of power in the
region. USAID funded the bridges to make the
Hollín–Loreto road passable, but restrictions
imposed by the U.S. Congress conditioned all
such assistance in tropical rain forests on mitigation
of deforestation along the demarcated route.
Among the steps USAID requested of the
Ecuadorian government was to make the Sumaco
area a protected conservation zone. USAID also
provided FOIN with seed money for a land-titling
and resource-management proposal to strengthen
the ability of indigenous inhabitants to control
deforestation in their territory. This was the seed
of what would eventually become the PUMAREN
project. The following subsections review three
phases in the development of natural resource
management in Runa territory, moving from land
titling and community evaluations in Project
LETIMAREN, to the income-generation activities
of PUMAREN and its later fragmentation.
3.1 Phase One: Land Titling and
Assessment (~1988–1990)
The Federation of Indigenous Organizations of
Napo (FOIN) is one of four principal organizations
representing Runa in the Ecuadorian
Amazon. 12 As of 1997, FOIN represented 101
member communities. 13 Every three years communities
select federation officials to carry out
programs in land titling, agriculture, and health,
and to provide a regional political voice.
FOIN’S Sumaco effort got under way in March
1988 as Project LETIMAREN (Legalization of
Indigenous Lands and Management of Natural
Resources). Local priorities and those of
donors overlapped without coinciding.
USAID’s principal concern was to prevent
deforestation and biodiversity loss. This would
occur primarily through establishment of a protected-area
model for the region, with supplementary
seed funding for FOIN. FOIN’s
objective was to secure indigenous control over
this traditional territory, and then to help member
communities maintain control by managing
forest resources to earn income without depleting
their children’s legacy. FOIN’s leadership
denounced rapid deforestation by logging companies
that had signed contracts with indigenous
communities and homesteaders along the road.
But this deforestation was viewed in terms of
loss of indigenous control over resource use that
stemmed from unfavorable and deceptive contract
terms logging companies negotiated with
unsuspecting and unprepared villagers.
The federation also saw the local crisis as an
opportunity to develop a response to a regional
problem. International attention had spotlighted
Sumaco, but incorporation of Napo into the
national economy had transformed indigenous
land use and tenure throughout the province.
Many other Runa communities were struggling
quietly out of sight, and FOIN hoped to learn
how to help them by developing models from the
influx of funding and technical assistance donors
had earmarked for communities along the
Hollín–Loreto road.
FOIN’s leaders decided to form and train a
resource management team from a group of
recent high school graduates who had participated
in the federation’s youth leadership program.
They would work with member communities to
secure land rights and to help develop more sustainable
economic strategies as their resource base
was threatened.
After training by Cultural Survival and FUNDA-
GRO (Fundación para el Desarrollo
Agropecuario) in social-science data collection
and analysis, the team fanned out to survey the
29 communities affected by the Hollín–Loreto
road about the legal status of their lands and the
impact of logging in the zone. Surveyors would