This is the conclusion of Eduardo Pichilingue (former coordinator of the Center for Economic and Social Rights of Ecuador) who denounces the proximity of the delivery of the exploitation license for Block 55, also known as Campo Armadillo, and which is part of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve (although outside the National Park, within Waorani Territory).
Pichilingue, who also collaborated as an expert on the subject of isolated people with the current government of Rafael Correa, explains that this is a "marginal field", that is, with minimal oil reserves and at the same time it is the place where there is the greatest evidence of the presence of isolated indigenous people.
According to the former official of the Ministry of Environment of Ecuador, he had the opportunity to photograph them in 2009 in one of their houses, from a small plane, a few kilometers from the area where oil exploitation seems to be imminent.
As background, he explains, in 2008, the isolated individuals speared and killed an illegal logger near the block and later reached the Waorani community of Dikapare, causing panic and the subsequent total evacuation of the town.
Even, Pichilingue continues, "former minister Wilson Pastor dared to say that there was no problem in exploiting the ITT because the asylum seekers were not there, but in Campo Armadillo (something that he himself had denied some 3 years earlier)."
"My public complaints and the official report I made for the MAE in 2010 led to my dismissal from that ministry and the resignation (and dismissal) of my collaborators (and a media scandal that forced the authorities in power to say that they had never had any intention of allowing the exploitation of the area)," adds Pichilingue.
Finally, these isolated people were "wiped off the map" in the report of the Ministry of Justice, to make way for the declaration of national interest by the Assembly, in response to the presidential request of 2013, of Block 31 and the ITT (43).
Pichilingue concludes by stating that "Armadillo is the spearhead of the protection of isolated indigenous people, a place with very few oil reserves (9 million barrels vs., for example, the 900 million barrels of the ITT) and the greatest evidence of the presence of isolated indigenous people. If we do not achieve it there, we will not achieve it anywhere else where there is oil and these indigenous people live."
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