{"id":807,"date":"2012-02-21T21:06:04","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T21:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sarayaku.org\/?page_id=807"},"modified":"2026-05-28T11:50:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:50:58","slug":"nuestra-lucha","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sarayaku.org\/en\/tayjasaruta\/nuestra-lucha\/","title":{"rendered":"Our fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Background: CGC and Sarayacu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sarayacu has a long history of opposition to oil exploitation, due to its serious environmental and social impacts. In 1989 we prevented the ARCO company from completing its oil explorations within our territory. The conflict with CGC began in 1996 when the government of Ecuador and the General Fuel Company (CGC) of Argentina signed an oil exploration contract in "block 23", covering 200,000 hectares of which most is territory. of Sarayacu. The people of Sarayacu were not consulted and from the beginning we opposed oil exploration.<\/p>\n

Because Sarayacu is the community that has the most inhabitants and the most territory within block 23, CGC first approached Sarayacu, trying to deceive people through offers of money and development works. He managed to bribe Telmo Gualinga, president of Sarayacu from 1997 to 1999, giving him a personal contract to build a drinking water system in his neighborhood of the community. The company was so sure that it would convince us that it publicly stated that it would not start any exploration work before obtaining 100% support from the communities in the block. However, the people of Sarayacu did not accept the oil activity, and subsequent presidents did not allow themselves to be bribed. Therefore, from 2000 until now, the CGC has maintained a true war of slander against Sarayacu, with the aim of destroying trust between the people and their own leaders. Since it was unable to destroy Sarayacu, the CGC began to make contact with other smaller communities, hiring their leaders directly, and thus managed to enter several other communities.<\/p>\n

The CGC's strategy is based on bribery, disinformation, and social disintegration, and violates articles 84 and 88 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador<\/a>. The American oil company Burlington Resources also appears as a shareholder in block 23.<\/p>\n

Background: CGC and Sarayacu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sarayacu has a long history of opposition against the petroleum exploitation, because of its serious environmental and social impacts. In 1989 we prevented the ARCO company from completing their petroleum exploration in our territory. The conflict with CGC started in 1996 when CGC and the government of Ecuador signed a contract for petroleum exploration in the \u201cBlock 23\u201d, comprising 200,000 hectares, most of which is Sarayacu territory. Sarayacu was not consulted and opposed the petroleum exploration all from the beginning.<\/p>\n

Because Sarayacu is the community that has the largest number of inhabitants and most of the territory within block 23, CGC first approached Sarayacu, trying to deceive the people offering money and development works. They managed to bribe Telmo Gualinga, president of Sarayacu 1997 \u2013 1999, giving him a personal contract for construction of a system of running water in his own neighborhood. The company was so sure that it would convince us that it publicly assured that they would not start any exploration work until they had 100% support from the communities within the block. Nevertheless, the people of Sarayacu did not accept the petroleum activities, and the later presidents did not accept bribes. Therefore, from the year 2000 up until now, CGC has maintained a real war of calumnies against Sarayacu, in order to destroy the confidence between the community and its own elected leaders. As it could not destroy Sarayacu, CGC turned to approaching other smaller communities by directly contracting their leaders. And this way it managed to get entry to some other communities.<\/p>\n

The strategy of CGC is based on bribery, disinformation and social disruption, and violates the articles 84 and 88 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador<\/a>. Also the company Burlington Resources (USA) is a shareholder in block 23.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Antecedentes: CGC y Sarayacu Sarayacu tiene una larga historia de oposición a la explotación petrolera, por causa de sus graves impactos ambientales y sociales. En 1989 impedimos que la compañia ARCO termine sus exploraciones de petróleo dentro de nuestro territorio. El conflicto con CGC tuvo su inicio en 1996 cuando el gobierno del Ecuador y […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":700,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-807","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"yoast_head":"\nNuestra Lucha - Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sarayaku, Pueblo Originario Kichwa del Medio D\u00eda\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sarayaku.org\/en\/tayjasaruta\/nuestra-lucha\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nuestra Lucha - Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sarayaku, Pueblo Originario Kichwa del Medio D\u00eda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sarayaku.org\/en\/tayjasaruta\/nuestra-lucha\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-05-28T16:50:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sarayaku.org\\\/tayjasaruta\\\/nuestra-lucha\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sarayaku.org\\\/tayjasaruta\\\/nuestra-lucha\\\/\",\"name\":\"Nuestra Lucha - 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