“Sumak Kawsay Is Harmful for All of Us”: Oil Roads and Well-being among the Waorani in Ecuadorian Amazonia

• Author: Andrea Bravo Díaz
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211004909
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211004909

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 238, Vol. 48 No. 3, May 2021, 51–68

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211004909

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

51

“Sumak Kawsay Is Harmful for All of Us”

Oil Roads and Well-being among the Waorani

in Ecuadorian Amazonia

by

Andrea Bravo Díaz

Exploration of the notion of waponi kewemonipa (living well) among Waorani

people living near oil camps suggests that the extractivist developmental model delivered

by the Ecuadorian government in the name of buen vivir (living well) is harmful to their

experience of well-being. For Waorani living well is related to peace, collective happiness,

and certain ecological experiences. The forest, a socio-biological ecological milieu, is the

ideal locus of the Waorani conception of living well, but environmental changes related to

oil camps and roads challenge their health and vitality.

La exploración de la noción de waponi kewemonipa (o buen vivir) entre los waorani

que viven cerca de los campamentos petroleros sugiere que el modelo de desarrollo extrac-

tivista fomentado por el gobierno ecuatoriano en nombre del “buen vivir” es perjudicial

para la experiencia indígena del bienestar. Para los Waorani, vivir bien se relaciona con la

paz, la felicidad colectiva y ciertas experiencias de índole ecológico. El bosque, un ambiente

socio-biológico, es el locus ideal de la concepción waorani del buen vivir, pero los cambios

ecológicos relacionados con los campos petroleros y las carreteras dificulta la experiencia

de su salud y vitalidad.

Keywords: Waorani, Living well, Oil roads, Ecuadorian Amazonia

In April 2017, when several indigenous leaders met in Quito to discuss what

they called the “Amazonian law,” among them was a group of Waorani leaders

that planned to submit suggestions to the Ecuadorian National Assembly on

the same day. During a break after several hours of discussion, one of the

Waorani leaders said, “I believe that sumak kawsay [living well] is harmful for

all of us.” These leaders perceived the Amazonian law, inspired by the national

developmental model of buen vivir (living well), as a new governmental attempt

to control their land and resources in the name of national well-being. This law,

whose Article 1 established an ideal of sustainable development “based on the

principles of sumak kawsay,” was approved in 2018 by the National Assembly

Andrea Bravo Díaz obtained her doctoral degree from University College London in 2020 and

currently works for the Instituto de Salud Pública at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del

Ecuador. She is grateful for the hospitality of the Waorani people and for their insightful and

generous participation in the activities related to this research. She also thanks her doctoral super-

visors, Marc Brightman and Sara Randall, who provided advice on the research that inspired this

article. The Secretariat for Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation of Ecuador

provided funding for this research.

1004909LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211004909Latin American PerspectivesBravo Díaz / OIL ROADS AND WELL-BEING IN ECUADORIAN AMAZONIA

research-article2021

52 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

as the Organic Law for Integrated Planning of the Amazon Special Territory.

Acknowledging that the Ecuadorian development model differs from the

indigenous Kichwa notion of sumak kawsay (Whitten and Whitten, 2015), this

paper describes the pernicious ways in which the national model of living well

is being implemented in Waorani villages affected by oil extraction, becoming

a challenge to the Waorani practice of waponi kewemonipa (living well)—a notion

recorded in the ethnographic literature (Rival, 1992: 113, 161) long before

the re cent popularity of the living-well debate.

Noting that there are different definitions of “living well” in the Ecuadorian

case (Bretón, 2017), the critique of Ecuadorian living well in this paper refers to

the governmental approach, which has ignored its local and indigenous defini-

tions (Altmann, 2017; Whitten and Whitten, 2015) while promoting an extrac-

tive model that is far from the initial proposals of social movements, indigenous

leaders, and leftist intellectuals that inspired the living-well debate. As Acosta

(2017: 2606) suggests in reference to the Ecuadorian governmental approach to

living well, this approach has “emptied the concept of all its content.” Other

critics (e.g., Bretón, 2017; Viola, 2014) argue that most attempts to define “living

well” have failed to include systematic ethnohistoric and ethnographic-based

research. While contributing to the literature that criticizes the extractivist

developmental model delivered in Ecuadorian Amazonia in the name of “liv-

ing well” (Lu, Valdivia, and Silva, 2017; Uzendoski, 2018), this article provides

in-depth ethnographic insight into the Waorani waponi kewemonipa. This eth-

nographic approach, based on long-term fieldwork, introduces aspects of the

Waorani conception and practice of living well that are important for under-

standing the negative impacts of the extractive model experienced by Waorani

people in their daily lives, among them the perception of environmental

changes near the oil camps.

The Waorani conception of living well is related to peace, collective happi-

ness, and certain ecological experiences. While the forest, a socio-biological

ecological milieu, contributes to Waorani living well, the oil camps and roads

opened in their territory challenge their health and vitality. Waorani people do

not have a term that can be directly translated as “health.” In referring to health

they use expressions such as “I am well” (waa imopa), “living well” (waa kewin-

gui), and “being strong” (teemo piyengue). While acknowledging this ontologi-

cal understanding of bodily strength as related to health and well-being, this

article is centered on the ecological dimension of Waorani well-being.

The next section presents the methodological approach of this paper, and it

is followed by an introduction to the Waorani people. A brief historical account

of the tensions between indigenous people and the Ecuadorian government

presents the framing of the research. After an overview of recent studies of

well-being across Amazonia, the Waorani notion of living well is explored in

two sections. Starting with a discussion of the earlier literature on the Waorani,

an analysis of the ecological experiences that contribute to the maintenance of

living well shows that their proximity to oil camps and roads is harmful to

Waorani well-being. The description of a developmental extractive model that

is far from the Waorani ideal of living well allows me to conclude that the

“Ecuadorian sumak kawsay” as delivered by the government is indeed harm-

ful to Waorani people.