Human Rights and People in Voluntary Isolation

Abstract

In Chap. 2, we discussed the concept of indigenous citizenship in Ecuador, and its importance in protecting groups like the Tagaeri and Taromenane, Waorani clans in voluntary isolation. In this chapter, we discuss two high-profile killings (in 2003 and 2013) by contacted Waorani of small groups who continue to resist pacification and assimilation, and their connection to indigenous citizenship in Ecuador. While portrayed by the Correa administration as intra-ethnic attacks by groups with a history of belligerence, we highlight the role of extractivist interests in precipitating such bloodshed and failing to protect PVIs, whose fate is important to the state’s identity as a guarantor of human rights and more generally a champion of social justice. The Correa administration responded to the 2013 massacre of the Taromenane with denial, reticence, and occlusion. Calls by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to protect two young Taromenane girls abducted during the killing have yet to be heeded. Instead, the government has taken the unprecedented step of incarcerating some of the Waorani implicated in the attack. These, in turn, have asked not to be seen as Ecuadorian citizens, but as outsiders who were acting according to Waorani law, and are therefore not subject to punishment by the state. For a nation so heavily reliant upon oil extraction and expansion—yet ideologically dedicated to plurinationalism and environmental conservation—these entanglements between the Waorani, Taromenane, and state continue to challenge any type of fixed or all-encompassing categorizations of citizenship for indigenous peoples.