Weaving Resistance: The Amazonian Women’s Struggle against Extractivism in Ecuador

Abstract

Over the last three decades, Latin America has witnessed the rise of women’s collectives resisting the expansion of natural resource extraction. This book project examines the organizing of a network of Indigenous women from the Ecuadorian Amazon called the Mujeres Amazónicas (Amazonian Women), who have become one of the most visible anti-extractive movements in Latin America ever since their “March for Life” in 2013. While contextualizing their struggle against the state within a broader frame of Latin American economic dependence on extractivism, my book project explores how the Amazonian Women have shaped the politics of oil and mining in Ecuador. Based on my twelve-month ethnographic research, the book traces the historical legacies of their territorial resistance, the complex dynamics of Indigenous and environmental allyship, the human and non-human relations that constitute the rainforest, and how each of these guide the Amazonian Women’s political organizing today.