Claudio Calapucha -- Arajuno, Pastaza, Ecuador

Claudio Calapucha is a Kichwa activist from Arajuno in Pastaza, Ecuador.

Q: Where is your pueblo?

A: I’m a Kichwa from Pastaza Province, Ecuador. I’m from Arajuno [a canton, or district], where we’ve been organized for more than 25 years.

Why did we organize? For territory. To us, territory is the guarantee of a continuity of the people. If the territory didn’t exist, the people wouldn’t exist. And this [continuity] is what makes a people, and even a country, like Ecuador, diverse.  Lots of groups in the country, especially recently in Pastaza, are seeing a lot of serious problems because of the presence of external agents that disturb the continuity.

Q: Agents of what?

A: The agents in this case are companies.

Q: Are they indigenous people that work for the companies?

A: They are indigenous people that secretly work for the companies. There are some indigenous people working secretly, but they are not leaders of the organizations. The leaders are ready, willing and able to defend their territory, which is our birth mother.

Q: What was your experience in the Amazon School?

A: I was in the first course, the pilot. I represented the Kichwa people of OPIP [The Organization of Indigenous People of Pastaza]. There were organizations from other countries.  There were people who had a lot of experience working in their organization and there were young people who were just starting to play a role in their communities. It was a very diverse group. Personally, as a member and representative of OPIP, I had a lot of documents and experiences to share. But I think that what happened after the course, going to the communities and the organization to be active, to develop, to put into practice what we learned at the school, that’s another important step.

Q: How have you done it?

A: After the session, I went to an Assembly – the assembly that selected representatives to go and learn . . . In my case I held small meetings with the leaders, to get them up to date on what’s happening at the provincial and national levels.  The discourse is on indigenous territory. We discussed politics as well, because it’s not just us who are living these processes, but also indigenous brothers in other places are in the same processes.

Q: Can you talk about your work?

A: Currently I’m in charge of cultural activities at the municipal level in the canton of Arajuno. This puts me in a position to be able to advocate in the municipality’s decisions. We’re very close to the mayor and his advisors who decide, for example, about regulations to protect biodiversity. Now we have the Arajuno road. How are we to protect the forest? That’s where the municipality and its regulations come in.  A local regulation is really a law that is in effect in the canton. So we do advocacy – in a subtle way – to get across the idea that such a regulation is necessary. It’s necessary, for example, that people in the city know how to treat waste. We have been able to influence these cases a little bit.

Q: You’ve traveled to Washington D.C. and to Houston as a graduate of the Amazon School. Can you speak about that experience?

A: The trip to Washington was to participate in the Amazon Alliance Forum. My experience there was that, for all that I was in the community, for all the talk of things in the organization, for all the attention on OPIP, CONFENAIE and CONAIE [Ecuadorian confederations of indigenous people].  There we spoke of international questions. For me it was a process of capacity building. When we got to Houston

I was participating directly in a campaign.  You had to open our eyes to see the reality of how a campaign is run, the forms of advocacy, how to work, how you have to make big efforts to defend what you feel in your heart for the territory, the mother who gave birth to you. So that was my experience and that is what I have shared with my compañeros in the community.