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Join our fight for the right to water
The oil palm companies polluted our way of life. They polluted our water. They polluted our well-being. We have lost the quality of our food, and now we have to go to the city of San Lorenzo, we have to buy what nature used to provide us. What we really need is our water.
We long for our river and ache with nostalgia. Something has rumbled within, something we had practically forgotten has been reborn, something we had lost.
The images within the film are the result of an intense work of collective creation, of research and memory. We met to reflect together on the contamination of our water, to create a message that contributes to a more just society—one that’s more empathetic to diverse struggles and is based on storytelling, respect, and the right to a dignified life for all peoples.
The Chocó is a rainforest that traverses the Pacific Coast from Panama to Ecuador. In the province of Esmeraldas, Black and Indigenous communities coexist. In 2010, we, the communities of La Chiquita and Guadalito, joined together to file the first constitutional-level lawsuit in the world against two oil palm companies for violating the Rights of Nature and of Living Well. Although we legally won our lawsuit, to this day, reparations have not been made and our water continues to be contaminated.
This documentary film is a collective effort to tell our stories, those of the Awá Indigenous people and of the Black peoples of the Chocó Rainforest. It is our story, and also the story of those who are no longer here.
Camera in hand, this is a diary of plural landscapes, of ancestral ways of knowing and being that have been disrupted. Our ancestors came to these territories in Esmeraldas searching for freedom and settled in this place where we live. Now the companies have arrived to exploit our territories. We demand that the palm oil companies, Los Andes and Palesema, return our clean water and pay for the damages they inflicted on us. We demand justice from the Ecuadorian State, which has forgotten our communities.
We are young people. We are children, we are daughters and sons, we are sisters and brothers. We are Indigenous, and we are Black. We are activists, we are world changers, we are leaders, we are survivors, and we are liberating these rivers. We are liberating ourselves for the life of all beings in the province of Esmeraldas.
But we can’t do it alone. Twenty years so far and still ongoing. We need allies. We need your support. Please join and contribute to our fight for the right to water.