Meet 32 year old Alexandra Narváez and 29 year old Alex Lucitante, two young members of the Cofán community in Ecuador who led their forest dwelling tribe to a historic legal victory to protect their ancestral way of life from the impact of mining.
Alexandra and Alex grew up with the Amazon as their backyard. Their families, both part of the wider Cofán tribe, have lived in Ecuador’s northern Amazon forest for centuries, maintaining the delicate balance of the land that has served as home, supermarket, and pharmacy. However, since the discovery of oil and gold a century ago, their territory has been threatened by mining without any protection from the government.
In 2017 the community formed a land patrol, La Guardia, to monitor mining activity within their territory. Alexandra was the first woman to join the patrol and the young mother of two quickly emerged as a leader, driven by the realisation that her future grandchildren might never experience a healthy forest. When the patrol discovered heavy machinery along the banks of the Aguarico River, Alexandra raised the alarm and uncovered 20 large scale mining concessions, with more pending, that the Ecuadoran government had issued without consultation.
This is where Alex came in. Descended from a long line of spiritual leaders, he was practicing to be a shaman but also had one foot in the modern world as a law student. When there was no response from government offices, Alex and Alexandra united their communities and took the government to court. The young leaders combined their ancestral knowledge with modern tools; using mapping technology, camera traps and drones to document the impact of mining and rally international support through social media. Their strategy played a crucial role in the community's success.
In 2018 the Cofán won the landmark case - 52 mining concessions were cancelled, ensuring the protection of 79,000 acres of rainforest. But Alexandra and Alex didn’t stop there. In February 2022, they secured a larger win when Ecuador’s Constitutional Court guaranteed, for the first time in the country, Indigenous peoples the right the right to decide what happens on their lands.
Since the victories, Alexandra has inspired five more women to join the patrol and both she and Alex have expanded their mission to help Indigenous communities around the world preserve their ancestral lands and cultures.
We want to invite other Indigenous communities in Ecuador and the world to join these collective fights happening in Amazonia. We're dreaming of a world where our communities — with their knowledge and culture — can keep living.
