Profile
Sápara live on a 375,000-hectare territory in Pastaza province in the middle of Ecuador. Due to their relative isolation in a difficult-to-access region of the Amazon, Sápara have maintained a strong connection with their traditional culture, which places a strong emphasis on dreams and the spiritual world. Estimates of the Sápara population vary between 300 and 600 people, a figure that contrasts with the 200,000 Sápara people who existed at the beginning of the 20th century.
Historical Context
The first writings about Sápara are from the mid-19th century; however, descriptions of them are unreliable. The Sápara population was greatly reduced following the Ecuadorian rubber boom in the early twentieth century. In addition, the late 1890s saw increased colonization of the Amazon sponsored by the Ecuadorian government. It was at this point that Sápara ended their nomadic lifestyle. The border war with Peru, which ended in 1942, disrupted Sápara life and ceded much of their land to the Peruvian state.
This tumultuous history caused many Sápara to integrate into other indigenous communities as well as the wider population, leading many in the 1990s to believe that there were no Sápara left. Since then, they have been able to revitalize their culture, and in 2001, UNESCO proclaimed the Sápara people as part of the ‘intangible heritage of humanity,’ in recognition of their unique cultural traditions, including oral history, arts, and social and spiritual practices. According to UNESCO, only a few Sápara elders were able to speak the traditional Sápara language at the time of the community’s registration on its list.
Current Issues
Sápara have proposed that the Ecuadorian government fully recognize and implement the constitutional rights of nature by incorporating a plan they devised, called Naku (‘forest’). According to Sápara beliefs, Naku recognizes not only the rights of humans but also the rights of other beings in the forest – all of whom are in communication with each other.
In November 2012, the Ecuadorian government allowed exploration and exploitation that would affect all of Sápara land. This was done without adequate free, prior and informed consent of Sápara communities. There was also an increase in violence between Sápara and the authorities, the most serious of which occurred in February 2013 when a 13-year old Sápara boy was murdered three days after a protest by Sápara that resulted in threats. Since 2009, Sápara women have organized under the Association of Sápara Women of Ecuador (Asociación de Mujeres Sáparas de Ecuador, ASHIÑWAKA), in order to resist resource extraction activities on their land and document evidence of the killings of Sápara. ASHIÑWAKA’s President, Gloria Ushigua, has long faced threats and intimidation. In 2015, for instance, three police broke into her home, beat her and used tear gas in the house.
In January 2016, the Ecuadorian government sold oil exploration rights to Andes Petroleum Ecuador – a consortium of two Chinese firms, Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC) and SINOPEC (China Petrochemical Corporation) – in a deal said to be worth US$80 million. The rights cover a 500,000-acre expanse that overlaps Sápara territory and borders upon the Yasuní National Park. Later in 2016, Sápara community groups turned to the UN for urgent assistance, citing intimidation and harassment by police as well as security linked to the Chinese oil presence. On 2 May 2017 Sápara leaders delivered a letter to the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China at the UN asking them to abandon extraction efforts on their land.
In 2021, the Sápara nation was on the verge of losing their ancestral territory to a controversial association called Naruka, which is not recognized by the state and is declared illegitimate by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), because it claims to be Sápara but is composed of people who do not belong to that nation. After protective actions and protests, the Sápara Nationality of Ecuador (NASE) recovered that territory in 2021. Due to their efforts to defend their rights and safeguard their territory, Sápara women like the leader Nema Grefa Ushiqua, President of the NASE, have been victims of intimidation in recent years.
