Defend Indigenous, Ancestral Black, and Rural Peoples in Ecuador from Oil Palm Expansion Before It's Too Late! A Total Veto to Oil Palm Law! 

This documentary features ancestral Black and Indigenous Awá communities who live in the Ecuadorian Chocó Rainforest Region, on the border with Colombia. They have suffered from the effects of aerial fumigation of U.S.-funded Plan Colombia, which also motivated oil palm expansion.

Today many communities in the Esmeraldas Province—as well as all throughout the Ecuadorian Coast and Amazon—live surrounded by enormous extensions of oil palm. Their communal health and cultural ways of life are devastated by deforestation and water contamination caused by oil palm plantations and extractors. They also suffer abuses, expropriations, and other violations of their human rights by large oil palm companies.

The Afro-Ecuadorian community of La Chiquita and the Indigenous Awá community of Guadualito in the documentary initiated lawsuits in 2002, which are still ongoing today. They sued two oil palm companies for violating their Human Rights and Rights of Nature. The state has not responded and Ecuadorian laws continue to benefit the large oil palm companies. They continue to contaminate the La Chiquita River in the people's faces despite of all ongoing judicial processes.

WHAT ECUADORIAN COMMUNITIES WANT: A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT, CLEAN WATER, AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY!

Although there is scientific evidence for all of the above, the governments in power have ignored and continue to promote oil palm expansion. Oil palm will be further accelerated after the "Law for Strengthening and Development of Production, Marketing, Extraction, Export, and Industrialization of Oil Palm and its Derivatives"—a law that has just been approved by the National Assembly on June 2, 2020. The foundations of the Oil Palm Law are misleading and seek to convince the public that oil palm contributes to sustainability and food sovereignty.

Faced with the above, hundreds of people—Indigenous leaders, academics, researchers, and activists, came together to write a public letter to Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno to request that he veto the Oil Palm Law. It's necessary to unite more voices to ensure that the law is vetoed so to give guarantee the Rights of Nature and of Indigenous, Ancestral Black, and Rural communities to a life with dignity.

WHETHER THIS LAW IS IMPLEMENTED IS A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH FOR PEOPLE LIKE THESE IN THIS DOCUMENTARY.

BEFORE THE LAW GOES INTO EFFECT, JOIN THE MOVEMENT TO REQUEST THAT PRESIDENT MORENO VETOES THE LAW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! 

With Determination and Hope,

Roots & Routes IC — Great Awá Family Ecuador-Colombia — GAIDEPAC — PCN- Intercultural Laboratory (FLACSO-Ecuador) — Union of Peoples Affected By Texaco (UDAPT) — Justice Forum of the Ceará State, Brazil — Justice Forum of the — South Rio Grande State, Brazil —Critical Geography of Ecuador — Agroecological Collective of Ecuador — Observatory of Political Ecology