Ecuadorian Chocó Water Guardians: From the Páramo to the Sea
Chocó-Andean water guardians and youth filmmakers who contributed to producing Together for Water 💦. Yaku Water Museum, Quito, Ecuador, 14 September 2024. Photo by Juli Hazlewood.
Seasonal shifts are now underway! As we unite #Together4water, here in Ecuador, we give thanks for the summer harvests🌽, and we welcome the arrival of rains💦! At this time, we look to Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other ancestral peoples of the differing altitudes of the Ecuadorian Chocó watersheds, who all honor the September equinox in distinct ways, but are also connected by the same life waters.
The headwaters of the Ecuadorian and Colombian rivers of the Chocó Biogeographic Region are nascent from the Parámo—sponge-like, shrubby Andean highlands sprinkled with glacier-covered volcanoes. Here in the Imbabura Province, in June, Indigenous Kichwa Karanki communities celebrated Inti Raymi (June solstice), enjoying the summer harvests of corn, beans, squash, and potatoes.
The Páramo shrubs and views from the highland Ecuadorian Andes, where the rains gather in the plants, forming creeks that eventually become rivers and lead out to the Pacific Ocean. Photo by Juli Hazlewood.
Then, after more than 90 days without rain—exacerbated by the prolonged drought, land-use changes, and climate change—the need for water and the impending necessity of sowing seeds became the main topic of day-to-day conversation, especially in the (non)light of planned blackouts throughout the entire country for 10 hours/day. These were due, in part, to Ecuador depending on a hydroelectric energy matrix. Meanwhile, wildfires ravaged the Andean mountainsides and smoke filled the air.
September fires in the Ecuadorian Andes. Photo by Sebastian Villagomez.
Then the heat broke, as Killa Raymi (September equinox) rounded the corner for a re-initiation of life and fertility. The skies split open and first rains fell, responding to the hopes of the people and quenching the thirst of Pachamama and all living beings. A new season is now underway!
Raindrops that gather in the Andean highland Páramo merge into creeks. Creeks mingle with streams and streams, with rivers. The waters tumble down through the western flanks of the Andes, twisting and turning throughout the Andean-Chocó cloud forests, swelling in size as the tributaries flow into the lowland river basins of the only Pacific tropical rainforest in South America. Eventually pouring out into the Pacific Ocean, the waters spread throughout the river deltas’ mangrove labyrinths, fusing with the salt waters that connect us all.
Roots & Routes Co-founder and Advisor, and tireless leader in fighting for human and Nature’s rights, steers his canoe and family through the Mangrove passages of the Cayapas-Mataje Ecological Reserve, his ancestral lands. They are returning from a family trip to their farm that has been in his family for generations. 17 August 2022. Photo by Juli Hazlewood.
Here at the river mouths, in the lowland Chocó rainforest, in the Esmeraldas Province, the rainy season also begins. Year-round, Afro-descendant and Indigenous Awá, Chachi, and Épera communities savor their year-round harvest of plantains, manioc, cacao, coconuts, fish, and crustaceans in their ancestral territories.
From the headwaters to the sea, we find ourselves in a time of transition. It’s time to plow the fields again! As the communities throughout the Ecuadorian Chocó turn old plants that once bore the fruits of our labor back into the soils. We give thanks for the rains that so nourish the seeds that so quickly burst open with what’s to come. Celebrating new life, we gather our harvests and share food.
Our Associate Director, Inti Sandoval Pupiales, and his mom, Maria Magdelena Pupiales (an important mentor to Roots & Routes IC) clearing the fields of the last harvests as the tractor moves into plow the fields. Kichwa Karanki community of San Clemente in the Imbabura Province, 30 September 2024. Photo by Juli Hazlewood.
As we do, we want to thank everyone who has joined us over the last NINE YEARS to help bring our documentary film, Together for Water 💦 , to fruition! With no other way to accurately convey the momentous tides of gathering and rejoicing in which we’ve found ourselves lately, we too conceive that Together for Water 💦 is in a watershed moment. Why? We are thrilled to share that in on September 15th, Together for Water has had its WORLD PREMIERE at EDOC’s 23rd International Documentary Film Festival in Ecuador! The response has been overwhelmingly positive! The national-level events have provided platforms for meaningful discussions and actions towards more sustainable futures throughout the Ecuadorian Chocó.
Future PAthways: Ecuadorian CHocó Water GUARDIANS
Created by an intercultural minga (work-trade party), our documentary Together for Water💦—co-produced by Roots & Routes IC, the Afro-descendant community of La Chiquita and the Indigenous Awá community of Guadualito in collaboration with Selvas Producciones— demonstrates both how our intercultural minga works and why we do it: mutual and respectful collaboration between us all to achieve dignity and justice for Indigenous, Black, and rural communities who care for our most diverse places on Earth.
We are super excited to share what we do with the world! October and November are packed with wonderful opportunities for the documentary! In the month of October, we—Inti Sandoval (R&R’s Associate Director), Karen Erazo (Water Guardian/youth filmmaker), Christian Nazareno (Water Guardian/youth filmmaker), and I—are showing our film and giving a talk in the Ecuadorian SEPI IV (Permanent Interdisciplinary Seminar about Territories, Ruralities, Environment, and Food in Ecuador) from October 16th to 18th!
Then we are off to Europe! First, to the DOK Leipzig international film market in Germany 🇩🇪. Informing us that they believe in Together for Water 💦 and its potential for international circulation, DOK Leipzig film fest invited us to present our film as part of their fifty DOK Film Market Exclusives this year! to the and the films INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE in Spain 🇪🇸! and the German DOKFest International Market from October 28th to November 1st.
From November 1st to 8th, we are attending the SUNCINE International Film Festival in Madrid, where #Together4Water is in the running for The Golden Sun, the oldest environmental cinematography award in the world! You can learn about past and future highlights in this issue of Seasonal Offerings!
A screenshot from SUNCINE's webpage of the eight official selections. Learn more at https://www.suncinefest.com/en
As all of this unfolds, in the past 6 months since the birth of Together for Water, we find that the documentary has taken on a life of its own. And, like a mom after a toddler, we are both uncertain of exactly where it is headed and just running behind it. One thing that we have gathered is that the documentary has transformed from an end in itself to a tool, a megaphone, for a Chocó watersheds movement!
Ecuadorian Chocó Water Guardians, Karen Erazo, Alexon Rodriguez, Christian Nazareno, and Gaby Cuajiboy at the Kunta Kinte Afrocine Festival in Medellin, Colombia, 3 September 2024. Photo by Juli Hazlewood.
The new goal—Ecuadorian Chocó Water Guardians:
To get all hands on deck–from the headwaters to the sea–to take care of the last remnants of one of the most unknown YET biologically and culturally diverse places on Earth, the Ecuadorian Chocó!
This program is nascent from Roots & Routes IC's director's collaboration with the Afro-descendant community of La Chiquita and Indigenous Awá community of Guadualito over the past 16 years, but is now expanding to include many more communities affected by rampant extractivism throughout the western flank of the Andes. Our goal is to work with many organizations to create a network, a coalition to protect the Ecuadorian Chocó.
All this time, the film was the end, but is now taking its own life. Although access to clean water for the two communities is still priority #1, and we plan on seeing that through, we want to expand our efforts using all our time invested in this film. We want to do our best to unite the disparate efforts along the way of the distinct Andean-Choco watersheds.
So our future pathways are based in creating an educational and leadership program called “Water Guardians: From the Páramo to the Sea.” We want to train youth in specific themes and arm them with specific skills and methodologies related to Roots & Routes’ four R’s—Restorying, Re-Storying, Revindicating, and Reciprocity—to take care of the rivers from distinct territorial cultural ways of knowing, doing, and being.
The call for action for the rainforest goes hand in hand with the fight for water justice (clean water is a human right!) and dignity for the ancestral Black and Indigenous peoples who take care of these living forests. We hope that YOU will partner with us as we embark on this next phase of our journey with the documentary tool in hand.