21st Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest Travel
through the window

A Kichwa woman looks through the window of a light aircraft into its interior that has landed in the community of Morete, in Sapara territory. Morete, like other communities in this territory, can only be reached by air and the arrival of a light aircraft is a special event. The Sapara are the ancestral owners of the largest indigenous territory in the Ecuadorian jungle. It is estimated that only 573 Sápara Indians live in a territory of more than 3,100 hectares of primary rainforest. The Alto Cenepa war of 1995 and the 1941 conflict between Ecuador and Peru over the border divided the Sápara between Ecuadorians and Peruvians. Today, Kichwa communities and some settlers also live in this territory and consider oil extraction as a solution to their economic instability, without taking into account the great environmental impact, destruction and contamination that it would cause in their surroundings. The remoteness of the cities, the lack of a road and a river impossible for navigation allowed until today, to control and preserve this oil-rich territory, avoiding the extractive threats. But recently, not far from here, in Block 10, a new oil concession threatens the lives of several Sapara and Kichwa indigenous communities, with the consequent contamination of the rivers, dictating the end of cultures that live in close relationship with nature and threatening the future and integrity of the jungle.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 06.2017
Date Uploaded: 11.2023
Photo Location: morete community, Ecuador
Camera: X-E2
Copyright: © Nicola "Ókin" Frioli