In traditional garb and painted faces, indigenous activists showed up on Tuesday in Puyo to protest the latest stage of the government’s XI Oil Round.

As Amazon Watch describes it, the XI Oil Round is "an auction of oil blocks in Ecuadors southern Amazon region initiated by the Ecuadorian government in November of 2012. Companies from around the world will bid for licenses to operate in areas where oil reserves are believed to exist." The blocks are estimated to contain somewhere between 369 million and 1,597 millon barrels of oil. 

On Tuesday, the government was going to reveal the offers they’d received for 13 of those oil blocks. Their event was cancelled, however. This is the second time this part of the process has been postponed.

The protest, in Puyo’s Plaza Roja, was organized by the CONFENAIE, the confederation of Amazonian indigenous nations.

Franco Viteri, CONFENAIE’s president, said the indigenous people are defending their land rights. He said the protest on Tuesday was just the start of what can be expected. The real resistance, he said, will happen in the different indigenous communities.

The land included in the 13 oil blocks up for auction coincides with the land of at least six different indigenous groups.

“We want to remind the world, the country, and the government that were on orange alert, and dont force us to declare a red alert, because there will be consequences. We have jurisdiction and we manage our own territories,” Viteri said.

Jaime Varga, the president of the Achwar Nation says his group is aligned with the umbrella CONFENAIE’s position, and they are ready, alongside the rest of the Amazon tribes, to put up a resistance in their territories and in the cities.

Fernando Santi, president of the Shiwiar, said at the protest that “our next protests will be in the capital city, so the government knows the whole process so far and the consultation has been unconstitutional.” Ecuador’s constitution guarantees peoples affected by legislation to be consulted before it is drafted, and it guarantees indigenous rights to their traditional lands.

The national indigenous congress, the CONAIE, announced they’d offer any support the Amazon confederacy needed, including legal advisors and organizers. The Amazon indigenous have pledged to defend their territories to the “last consequences,” faced with what they call an offensive invasion of their lands, perpetrated by oil companies.

Original story