You campaigned for the prefecture focused on the defence of water, bringing the other important issues, including infrastructure and economic development, out of its priorities. But nothing else to win, the people who supported you have also put solutions on the table at all levels. How do you think of linking these two lines? It
must be understood that the “Defense of Water” is not a mere defense of a good or natural resource. Water is in the middle of the world that we have known for thousands of years and is still in force today. The destruction of the flows would give rise to that of a whole world. Not just a landscape, rivers, etc. We are not talking about economics or ecology; we are talking about a way of understanding life, work, community relations… In addition, it is clear that we need investment to develop infrastructure and improve our people’s daily lives. This would require, for example, the $50 million owed to us by the State [the department of Azuay], which belongs to us by hydroelectric companies, essential for the development of various public projects. Many things could be developed against the propaganda of the great powers – from agriculture to tourism, following the model of a sustainable economy – which the destruction of extremism would make impossible.

The possibilities of mining are at the heart of all this controversy, and Ecuador considers it the main driver of its economic development since oil exploitation began intensively in the last four decades, becoming the main source of income of the State. Is responsible mining possible?
In principle, we're not anti-miners. We are faced with mining in areas of flow such as Kimsakotxa or in sites such as the Amazon. In this continent, and also worldwide, the issue is well researched: the irreversible destruction of an entire environment in exchange for a few – the multinationals bear the main benefits – the creation of precarious and precarious jobs and the destruction of the social texture… In Ecuador there is no mining operation in good conditions, so we demand the moratorium on new mining projects. The latter, the concessions signed by the last President (Rafael Correa) with the Chinese under secret, endangering our entire water system.

The resistance of the indigenous peoples of America comes from the era of colonization, and the title of his last book talks about it [Resistance, Resistance], but I would like to place it in the context of the last decades and, furthermore, from the point of view of a European. Those born in the second half of the twentieth century have detected in the last decades two great waves. The first was that of the “armed uprisings”, the time of the Cold War and a comprehensive process of decolonization was taking place throughout the world. The Cuban revolution was defeated, and then, from Central America to the far south, the guerrillas everywhere. Secondly, many have called it “populist”: the idea of the armed revolts was abandoned and confronted the political authority of the states, overcoming the omnipresent oligarchies in Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, etc. Ecuador held “the longest presidency in modern history” with Rafael Correa (2008-2017), in the framework of this “progressive” slump, and the current president (Lenin Moreno) took office for his impetus. But it's also the story of great disappointment. Could you think that today we are at the heart of a third slump, which differs from the previous ones? Correa's, in a soft
way, has been a lost decade. He came to the first legislature with broad citizen support, but he has developed one of the most corrupt governments in the history of the republic, with betrayal and totalitarian. In the broad context he mentions, we can say that both the traditional right and the traditional left have not provided an adequate response to the needs of society. Perhaps because they are both colonial; because they have law of capture and domination; patriarchy, mercantilism, capitalism. The right has always been more closed, reactionary, heir of the settlers by these places, oligarchic; and the left has risen in the name of the oppressed rights of the people, but every time he has touched power he has similarly violated those rights. Among these denied and violated rights, the most basic are those of nature. We live in a world on its feet: “Human Rights” were agreed, but not those of Mother Nature. It experiences us with an anthropocentric view, forgetting the cosmocentric reality. Right, liberal, neoliberal, dictatorships of all kinds, left-wing regimes and governments; progressive and reactionary… they are deaf ears with the desperate cry of society… And yes, I too note that third slur that emerges from the vision of the world of peoples of origin. The sensible thing to ecology, because the first ecologists were the people of origin; instead of understanding the Earth as an object, they considered it as the First Creator, furnished by right. Unlike civilizations of Jewish and Christian origin, that is why we respect Mother Earth to which we lovingly honor. They, whether they are based on the Bible or the Qur'an, speak of the domination of the earth from the first word, of an inert object that must be plucked out and exploited. In the name of “progress”, both the old and the new Left have not deviated in that line, there are fundamental conceptions that collide here.

You come from the indgenist movement, from the defense and the thrust of the “native countries of Abya Yala” [“Abya Yala” is the name that native peoples claim for the continent we know as America]. It is common to think that indigenous peoples are engaged in defensive struggles, but, within that “third slump”, you
are formulating a general solution to the global crisis of the world... Ours is not just a struggle for minority rights. Those who speak of “indigenous” often fall into the racist and colonialist point of view. What we are working on is a response rooted in a general emergency.

A few days ago I had the opportunity to be present at the final act of some two hundred young people who met in the nearby town of Girón for four days and I was struck by two issues. The first is the maturity of your last communiqué. Secondly, they celebrated the ritual of closing the days. In his books and lectures the word “Spirit” is common, which is far from the usual areas of claim in Europe, even more so within radical or revolutionary movements. As for your speech, I am struck by this complement that revives a vision of the world, which will recreate the tradition of underdeveloped peoples and collective identity. And that, when you are claiming “indigenism” as a global alternative, with rites, ceremonies, myths of yesteryear… For me the newest thing is not so much all that, but the politicization of all that. Because in Europe we live them apart, unlike here… There
is always a vision of the world at the basis of any social or political model. Modern Europe deals with the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom, but it has forgotten the fourth fundamental kingdom, the kingdom of the spirit. For us, number four is a sacred one. Four forces of the Universe, the four doors of Txakana [South Star, main symbol of the Indians], the four directions… Here were the expressions of this fourth kingdom, but when the Europeans arrived, as they did not fit in their prejudices, they criminalized them, they adopted them as witchcraft, sorcery, retreat to destroy, and we remain the same. What the conqueror cannot understand, makes it invisible and pursues it relentlessly. But without spirituality, there would be no emotion, no anger, no happiness. It is clear to us that stone or water are living beings, full of spirit. It is from this sensitivity that our ecological awareness is born, and I believe that that is why we are becoming more widespread among young people.

It seems to me that we are talking about a clash between very deep models and that the forces against your conception are greater than ever. However, the kind of resistance I feel here has something that is outside my schemes. Where is the source of your strength, where is your hope?
Experience tells me that there is no impossible. Twenty years ago, in Kimsakotxa, there was a popular consultation that seemed like a crazy fantasy to deal with a large Chinese multinational, and it just happened. When we emerge what we express with the names of communism or biocentrism, the old ideological limits are surpassed… that is passing over the ideological areas of capitalism, socialism or communism. I do not, however, deny the previous liberating efforts, but I must admit that they were short of looking at the people of origin, on the issue of gender, on the understanding of the rights of nature.

That is why these new proposals arise, which are not reduced to closed schemes, but which feed on a broad, open, intercultural and multi-national conception. We are not sectarian, we are not “indigenists” in the restrictive sense that that word has had. And that is where hopes, dreams, utopias are awakened... by an impulse of the young. Without them, we're not going anywhere. Young people are aware that the climate emergency is an emergency of civilization. And with their innate irreverence, they bravely break the outdated schemes and models and are on the street defending Yasuní, Tipnis, the defense of the Amazon and, once again, imagining that another world is possible. This is a new concept that believes that small actions will have global effects; it affects the Himalayas when we defend water here or in India; what happens to the Danube river has consequences in Madagascar. Scientific knowledge and ancestral myths and rites, when they coincide with their powerful iconography, it is possible to associate with young people and with the hope that they are.

Other interesting interviews with Yaku Pérez in video:

Interview 2016

Mining & Consulting, 2019

Newly received the prefecture

This concentration has been launched at 247 LARRUN