Three campesino leaders from Tarqui village in Ecuador's southern highland province of Azuay began an eight-day jail term in the provincial capital Cuenca on March 21, convicted of having disrupted the local water supply during a May 2010 protest against the Quimsacocha mining project, run by Canadian multinational Iamgold. Residents say the Quimsacocha project (also rendered Kimsacocha) will degrade and deplete local water sources. Ironically, the jail term for the three leaders—Carlos Pérez Guartambel, Efraín Arpi and Federico Guzmán—began on the eve of World Water Day, March 22, when a march on Cuenca had already been planned to demand local water rights and oppose large-scale mining projects. The march, which brought out several hundred, began with a ceremony in support of the jailed leaders at Cuenca's judicial building. "This is called the criminalization of struggle," said Delfín Tenesaca, president of the highland indigenous alliance ECUARUNARI. (El Tiempo, Cuenca, Kaos en La Red, March 22; La Tarde, Cuenca, Ecuavisa, March 21)

Reprisals are feared in a sensitive part of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest following an attack by "uncontacted" tribesmen in which two members of the Waorani indigenous people were killed March 5. According to a preliminary investigation by the Orellana province public prosecutor's office, the victims were speared to death while walking near their village of Yarentaro, located along the Maxus Oil Road—within both Yasuní National Park, and the Bloc 16 oil exploration division, being developed by Repsol. The victims were identified as a Waorani elder and his wife. A statement by the Organization of the Waorani Nationality of Orellana (ONWO) said the attackers were from an isolated band of the Tageiri-Taromenane, which has long had territorial disputes with the closely related Waorani. The Taromenane are said to be a branch of the Waorani who spurned contact with evangelical missionaries in the 1950s by retreating deeper into the forest, and now roam the interior Yasuní as nomads.

Indigenous peoples in Peru's Amazonas region have held demonstrations over the past weeks at the site of the June 2009 massacre at Curva del Diablo, in the municipality of Bagua. The action was called to protest that 54 indigenous leaders are now facing life terms if convicted in the Bagua violence, while only one member of the National Police is behind bars in the affair, with another two already released. On Feb. 26, when the road at "Devil's Curve" was blocked by hundreds of members of the Awajún and Wampis peoples, one large group of participants refused to join in the singing of Peru's national anthem that opened the gathering. Carlos Altamirano Rafael, leader of the Interests Front of Condorcanqui, said he believed that no justice is possible within Peru, and that the two peoples should declare independence or unite with Ecuador.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa on Feb. 18 claimed an overwhelming re-election victory. Reuters perhaps inadvertently noted the contradiction in Correa's program, stating that his sweep at the polls "allows him to deepen his socialist revolution even as he seeks to woo foreign investment in the resource-wealthy Andean nation." Correa in his statements implied he is prepared to pick up the torch of Venezuela's ailing Hugo Chávez, Latin America's leading anti-imperialist head of state, who sent a statement of congratulations. "We will be present wherever we can be useful, wherever we can best serve our fellow citizens and our Latin American brothers," Correa told supporters who massed in front of the presidential palace in Quito, waving the green banners of his ruling Alianza Pais.

Seven men who were detained in March in Quito's southern district of Luluncoto on "terrorism" and "subversion" charges were freed Dec. 20, after a panel of three judges of the metropolitan province Pichincha found that they had been detained in violation of constitutional guarantees against arbitrary arrest. Three women who were arrested along with them remain detained and on hunger strike at Quito's El Inca women's prison. The seven men also went on hunger strike at Quito's Provisional Detention Center three days before their release. The so-called Luluncoto 10 were arrested in an operation code-named Red Sun, and accused of being part of an urban guerilla cell called the Popular Combat Group (GCP), which was supposedly planning attacks in the capital. (El Universo, Guayaquil, Dec. 20; El Comercio, Quito Dec. 17; El Comercio, March 6)

Residents and officials in Ecuador's port city of Guayaquil are protesting a planned gas pipeline that would run from Monteverde, in Santa Elena province on the coast to the west, to El Chorrillo, a town just north of the city—through densely populated areas. Hundreds have marched in protest of the line, and won the support of Guayaquil's municipal government. The city's development director José Nuñez asserts that the government's impact study for the project fails to provide adequate guarantees for the safety of some 300,000 residents in Guayaquil's outlying working-class districts. The city also charges that protests remain ongoing over non-payment of compensation to residents who were relocated by the Libertad-Pascuales pipeline, built some 10 years ago along a similar route, and fear it will be the same with the new line. But Petroecuador's pointman for the new pipeline, Rommel Tapia, insists the project is safe and necessary for Ecuador's energy security. (El Universo, Guayaquil, Dec. 18; El Universo via Ecuador Times, Dec. 17; La Linea de Fuego, Ecuador, Dec. 16; Andes, El Universo, Dec. 14; Andes, Dec. 13)

Hundreds of indigenous people gathered outside the Marriott Hotel in Quito on Nov. 28 at the VII Annual Meeting of Oil and Energy, where the Ecuadoran government announced the opening of the XI Round oil auction, offering 13 blocks covering nearly eight million acres of rainforest in the Amazonian provinces of Pastaza and Morona Santiago near the border with Peru. Led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Confederation of Amazonian Indigenous Nationalities (CONFENIAE) and representing seven indigenous nationalities, the group blocked the entrance to the hotel, to be met by military and private security forces as well as police who used pepper spray. Several indigenous leaders succeeded in entering the meeting and publicly confronted Minister of Non-Renewable Energy Wilson Pastor. "CONFENIAE was never consulted about this," said the organization's Franco Viteri. "Our position on oil extraction is clear: We are absolutely opposed."

An Argentine judge on Nov. 8 embargoed the assets of Chevron corporation in the country, in a win for plaintiffs trying to collect on a $19 billion judgment against the company in Ecuador for environmental damage in the Amazon rainforest. Judge Adrian Elcuj Miranda upheld a petition filed by an Ecuadoran court under terms of a regional pact, the Inter-American Treaty of Extraterritorial Enforcement of Sentencies.  The embargo covers 100% of local subsidiary Chevron Argentina's stock—valued at roughly $2 billion—as well as its 14% stake in the company Oleoductos del Valle, 40% of the company's oil sales to refineries, and 40% of the funds it has deposited in Argentine banks. Chevron is the fourth-largest oil producer in Argentina, with output of 35,000 barrels per day in 2011.