HISTORY AND WORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL ECOTRACKERS NETWORK FOUNDATION IN ECUADOR

HISTORIA Y TRABAJO DE LA FUNDACION ECOTRACKERS EN ECUADOR marzo 25, 2022

HISTORY AND WORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL ECOTRACKERS NETWORK FOUNDATION IN ECUADOR On August 29, 2000, the International Ecotrackers Network Foundation was legalized in the Ministry of Tourism. In that year, Ecuador lives the worst year in its recent history because in December 1999, the Banking Holiday occurs. For several days the banks did not attend because the population wanted to get their money, because some banks went bankrupt. A few days later, the sucre, the national currency, disappeared and was replaced by the dollar, but the exchange value went from 15,000 sucres per dollar to 25,000 sucres per dollar, that is, there was a sudden devaluation, with a brutal impact on the population. At that time, Ecuador was the cheapest country in South America, so many tourists called backpackers or backpackers arrived, a lunch cost only one dollar, a hotel night two and an hour of Spanish classes three dollars. Ecuador, Guatemala, and Bolivia became the best places to study Spanish, giving rise to smart tourism, where travelers come to learn, research, or volunteer to practice Spanish. Ecotrackers brought together some of the backpackers who learned Spanish in their school, created with them the Ecotrackers Foundation, in which more than foreigners, indigenous people, leaders of communities from the Sierra, Coast and Amazon joined. who were related to Dr. Maximiliano Moreno. The Vice President of the Foundation. It was the former Minister of Defense, General José Gallardo, retired at the age of 64, who accompanied us to visit the communities where we developed these new forms of tourism. Our administrator was an English veteran, planner and combatant of the Second World War, who had worked in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and especially in the City of London, which at 74 years of age, came every year to correct and recommend actions. In the first general assembly it was established that the foundation would have the objective of developing community ecotourism, as a mechanism to protect biodiversity, cultural diversity and the health of peasants and indigenous people. The Spanish students were motivated to work in the communities teaching English, making an inventory of the attractions of the communities or helping with reforestation, the protection of nature, of ancestral cultures, of medicinal knowledge, such as medicinal plants, native foods, healing places, hot springs, beaches, or famous healers. For 8 years, the foundation worked in 14 protected areas and 10 native communities in the Sierra, Costa, Amazon and Galapagos. In Galapagos, the creation of the museum of peace began, in the Cuevas del Amor, on Santa Cruz Island, where an attempt was made to set up a photographic gallery, which recalls animal and plant species, extinct or in danger, and the brutality of wars . The project failed due to lack of funding. On the Coast Ecotrackers began its work in Cabo San Francisco and Bunche, which are part of the same parish, then extended to Quingue, Estero de Plátano and Galera, which are part of the first marine reserve in South America, the Galera Marine Reserve. San Francisco. In this place, Dr. Maximiliano Moreno, administrator of the foundation, and his wife, worked for the Ministry of Health in 1982, together with the Muisne Esmeraldas Peasant Organization, OCAME, which became the first and largest peasant organization on the Coast. Ecuadorian. Together with OCAME and its health promoters, it carried out a fight against the landowners and the shrimp farms, for the destruction of the mangroves in the Mangrove Reserve of Muisne, Chamanga, in the community of Sálima del Estuario de Cojimíes. In 1988, Dr. Moreno collaborated with Channel 4 London for a documentary called Shrimp Fever. In 1989 and later to participate in the actions to stop the destruction of the mangroves together with Fundecol, the defunct Muisne Ecological Defense Foundation, in the Greepeace campaign in Ecuador. In 2008, as a result of the so-called Real Estate Crisis, which hit the United States and Europe, there was a sharp decrease in backpackers or backpackers, who were the source of financing and community work, which added to a theft of Spanish teachers, communities, its international and national links, its website and especially the know-how, by a Scottish and Ecuadorian volunteer who worked with Ecotrackers, the foundation experienced its worst moment. This was due to the fact that we participated in the protests against the Lucio Gutierrez government, which arrested the vice president of the Foundation, General José Gallardo, and that distracted us since 2005, since we intervened so that Dr. Leon Roldós would not be lynched in the Central University. The protests and this politician got us involved in his 2006 presidential campaign, in which he was a candidate for president and lost. Since 2008, he stopped working with foreign students and volunteers on a frequent basis, he did so occasionally, concentrating his work on rural medical care, in protected areas of the province of Esmeraldas, especially in the cantons of Muisne and Atacames up to the year 2017, together with the Peasant Social Security of the Province of Esmeraldas. In 2012, Ecotrackers and the Foundation, which had worked with volunteer tourism since the year 2000, returned to Esmeraldas, in the Muisne canton, to resurrect OCAME, gather its promoters at its headquarters in Puerto Nuevo, create with Father Julián, from the Theology of Liberation, in the organization's farm, an urbanization for peasants, after the 2016 earthquake. At that time, the foundation worked with the Peasant Social Security and had an active participation in the Mache Chindul Reserve, together with the Chachi peasants and indigenous people, to stop deforestation, with the fishermen and shellfish mines of the San Francisco Galera Reserve and of Tonchigue, reforest mangroves, protect the coastal rain forest, stop overfishing. That area was greatly affected by the Pedernales Earthquake, on March 16, 2016 and its 3,500 aftershocks, until March 2017, especially in the cantons of Muisne, Atacames and Esmeraldas, where the offices and the department of the Foundation in the Vargas Torres Building in front of the Esmeraldas Governorate, which it still maintains, were affected. Ecotrackers also worked in La Tolita, where there are archaeological remains of a La Tolita Culture (500 BC to 500 AD), which later migrated to Central America after environmental catastrophes caused by El Niño and La Niña. This island is in the center of the Cayapas Mataje Mangrove Reserve, and reaches the border with Colombia, the Mataje River separates the two countries. The reserve has the tallest mangroves in the world. Today it is a zone of conflict and confrontation due to the so-called War on Drug Trafficking, with the presence of cocaine laboratories, mini-submarines or speedboats. Here there is a bloody war between the Sinaloa cartels and their allies, the Choneros cartel, and the Mexican Jalisco New Generation cartel, and those from the North of the Valley of Colombia, which act through the so-called Tigerones. It is also an area of ​​dispute between the FARC dissidents, the dissidents of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC, known as Rastrojos or Black Eagles, with the armies of Ecuador and Colombia. It was a territory of Walter Arizala and his ally Gerald, the first, the narco-guerrilla who was assassinated by the Colombian army, after attacking Ecuadorian barracks, and kidnapping journalists from the newspaper El Comercio, in 2018 and El Gerald, who He became the Ecuadorian Pablo Escobar, owner of the most sophisticated network of speedboats, supply ships from Ecuador to California, arrested in Colombia and deported to the USA in 2020. Ecotrackers also worked in the Santiago Cayapas Reserve, which is now a conflict zone due to illegal gold mining. In the province of Santa Elena, he worked in Manglar Alto, near Montañita, and in Manabí in the Machalilla National Park, specifically in Salango, where he created a group of expert fishermen in collecting the spondylus shell from the seabed. Ecotrackers trained these fishermen to be diving and snorkel guide instructors in order to stop the overfishing of conch. Also in this same Machalilla National Park, he trained sobadores to use the medicinal muddy waters of Agua Blanca. In the Province of Carchi we work with the Afro-Andean and Awa communities in La Concepción, La Loma Estación Carchi and the communities of San Juan de Lachas in the Reserva de las Golondrinas, where Awa indigenous peoples and mestizos and mulattoes lived with the problem of glyphosate fumigation. in Colombia, to eliminate coca plantations, but the pesticide traveled to Ecuador and ruined short-cycle crops. such as corn, also produced cancer in the population, as did the indiscriminate use of pesticides in kidney bean or tomato plantations. At that time, the so-called Plan Colombia had generated a large migration of Colombians to Ecuador, including the Awa indigenous people, who are binational, since they live on both sides of the San Miguel River, which is the border between the two countries. In the province of Pichincha, he has worked in the Cayambe Coca Reserve, where the waters that feed the Coda Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Dam, the largest in the country, come from, specifically in the communities of La Chimba, where Transito Amaguaña, the famous historical indigenous leader, lived. of the women of Ecuador, at the foot of the Cayambe Volcano, in the course of the Equinoctial Line, with the nationality of the Cayambis, indigenous mitimaes, that is, brought by the Incas from Bolivia, before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Ecotrackers also worked in the Santiago Cayapas Reserve, which is now a conflict zone due to illegal gold mining. In the province of Santa Elena, he worked in Manglar Alto, near Montañita, and in Manabí In the Machalilla National Park, specifically in Salango, where he created a group of fishermen, experts in collecting the spondylus shell from the seabed. Ecotrackers trained these fishermen to be diving and snorkel guide instructors in order to stop the overfishing of conch. Also in this same Machalilla National Park, he trained sobadores to use the medicinal muddy waters of Agua Blanca. In the Province of Carchii we work with the Afro-Andean and Awa communities in La Concepción, La Loma Estación Carchi and the communities of San Juan de Lachas in the Reserva de las Golondrinas, where Awa indigenous peoples and mestizos and mulattoes lived with the problem of fumigation with glyphosate. in Colombia, to eliminate coca plantations, but the pesticide traveled to Ecuador and ruined short-cycle crops, such as corn, also caused cancer in the population, as did the indiscriminate use of pesticides in bean plantations or kidney tomato. At that time, the so-called Plan Colombia had generated a large migration of Colombians to Ecuador, including the Awa indigenous people, who are binational, since they live on both sides of the San Miguel River, which is the border between the two countries. In the province of Pichincha we have worked in the Cayambe Coca Reserve, where the waters that feed the Coda Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Dam, the largest in the country, come from, specifically in the communities of La Chimba, where Transito Amaguaña lived, the famous historical indigenous leader of the women of Ecuador. At the foot of the Cayambe Volcano, the course of the Equatorial Line, we work with the nationality of the Cayambis, indigenous mitimaes, that is, brought by the Incas from Bolivia, before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. We have worked since the year 2000, on the Vía Quito Guayaquil, via Santo Domingo, in the Toachi Pilatón Reserve, part of the Iliizas Reserve, which provides water to the hydroelectric plant of the same name, in the Community of The Atenas, where the Foundation has 70 Ha for reforestation and cultivation of medicinal plants. Here there is a large waterfall called the Cascada de Atahualpa, which is close to the Atahualpa gold mines, which would later be owned by the Marquesa de Solanda, the wife of Marshal Antonio José de Sucre, the army officer of Liberator Simon Bolivar , which in 1822, won the Battle of Pichincha that gave the independence of the Royal Court of Quito from the Spanish Crown. In this place we have worked with the Tzàchila nationality of Chiguilpe, to develop health tourism. In this area is the cloud forest of the Western Cordillera of the Andes, one of the areas with the most birds, orchids, and insects in the world. Following the Quito Santo Domingo highway, in the Community of the Tzáchilas de Chiguilpe indigenous people, we have developed a project to conserve and promote aboriginal medicine in that community, which protects a wild area with mountains and a large river, but the most extraordinary thing is that preserve their language, clothing, customs and above all, their ancestral medicine, which is famous on the Pacific Coast of South America, despite being surrounded by one of the largest cities in the country, Santo Domingo, or being in the busiest road, the highway Santo Domingo, Quevedo Guayaquil. In the province of Cotopaxi we work with the community of Ponce Quilotoa, of the Panzaleos nationality, at the summit of the volcano, where we collaborate in the construction of a hotel located on the beach of the lagoon, which surprisingly is inside the crater, in addition , in the promotion of tourism and the sale of its handicrafts, Tigua paintings, pictures that are made on leather or sheep skin. They were given training in making woolen items and dresses, with an Italian volunteer from the fashion industry since the 1950s. They now sell plain fabrics. In the Province of Chimborazo, we work with the indigenous Puruahes of the Municipality of Guamote, to promote tourism to the market, on Thursdays, and then, for the trip to the Devil's Nose, by the Quito Guayaquil train. In addition, tourism via the Guamote Macas route, in the Lagunas de Atillo, within the Sangay National Park, at 4000 meters above sea level, the most mega-diverse park in the country, between the Andes and the Amazon, with a cloud forest, the paramo in the Central Cordillera and jungle at the base of the Sangay Volcano with snow as it is more than 5000 meters high, visible from the jungle, active, regularly emitting fumaroles and which erupted during the covid pandemic. In the Province of Cañar we work with the Cañaris, from the community of El Tambo, near Ingapirca, the Inca ruins and the Cañari nationality, which is now a historical cultural heritage of Ecuador. In addition, we develop tourism along the Inca Trail, from the Tambo, to the Culebrillas Lagoons, to Alausí, the last train station before the Devil's Nose and the descent to the Coast. In the Amazon we work in Sucumbíos, in the Cuyabeno National Park, which conserves intact wildlife, with the Siona and Secoya nationalities. In the Napo Province in the Sumaco Biosphere and the Mushullacta community with the Quichuas. At Pastaza we work in Arajuno with four nationalities that are even within the Yasuní National Park, the largest national park in the Amazon and continental territory. In this place we collaborate, as in Galapagos, with the Central University, which has extensions and observation scepters. We also work in the Cueva de los Tayos, caves that have nocturnal birds called tayos, with the Sarayacu community, which faces oil companies, where one of its leaders, José Gualinga, was one of the founding members of Ecotrackers. In the province of Morona Santiago, we work in Macas, Pablo VI and San José de Morona. In Macas we are now promoting, as in Santa Cruz in the Galapagos, in Same in Atacames, in Quito, and Cuenca, the tourism of digital nomads, because in these places there are good internet connections, airports, bus stations, hospitals, and low social conflict. In Pablo Sexto in the Sangay National Park in the Amazon, we developed student tourism, receiving students from England, who explored the jungle. The work was with the school, as in Cabo de San Francisco and in San José de Morona, where with the help of Australian and New Zealand volunteers, vacation camps were created with the schools, which could have toilets, classrooms, fields and camping areas. The tourist route from Puerto Morona, to the Alto Amazonas or Marañon, where tourists arrive in San Lorenzo or Puerto Borja, is through places that conserve much of the jungle, since they do not have the so-called Via-trans Amazonica from Peru to Brazil, which at Like the great rivers, it creates areas of deforestation, mining, and sexual trafficking of minors and women. The movie Pantaleón y las Visitadoras was filmed in this place. From these ports, it is possible to continue the trip through the Amazon, until its mouth in Belen in the Atlantic. The trips are in three-story boats, which carry live birds and animals, to serve as food during the long journey. This route to the Upper Amazon was opened by Ecotrackers volunteers, in collaboration with the Eco-Morona Foundation. Since 2002, the Ecotrackers Foundation proposed the School of Tourism of the Central University to create the GALAPAGOS - AMAZONAS RIVER BIODIVERSITY CORRIDOR, as the MOST IMPORTANT corridor IN THE WORLD, to admire the biodiversity and cultural diversity of South America, in the most megadiverse country. per km2 and now has more protected area (290,000 km2), than continental territory (284,000 km2), The Galapagos Amazon River tourist corridor along the Morona River is important, because the Morona River was the site of the last armed conflict between South American countries. In the Cenepa War that confronted Ecuador and Peru, for a few months, in 1995. The defense minister of Ecuador, at that time was General José Gallardo, 5 years later vice presidents of our foundation. For years, the two countries, with international help, had to clean the numerous antipersonnel mines, this work was very complicated, due to the vegetation, or the rains, which dragged the mines, it was very costly and delayed. In the Peace Agreement, signed in 1999 in Brazil, called the Itamaratí Agreement, Ecuador agreed to recognize the limits set in 1941 in the Treaties of Rio de Janeiro, but the free navigation of the two countries was agreed on the Morona River and other rivers that go to the Amazon. In addition, the ports of San Lorenzo and Puerto Borja, at the mouth of the Morona and Santiago Rivers in the Amazon, would be binational ports. This motivated us to explore the Morona River, to create a tourist route, which has the advantage over the others, such as the Napo River, in which Puerto Morona, which is reached by a paved road, or by plane, has an aerodrome, frequency regular ground transportation, electricity, internet, it is two hours from Macas, the provincial capital of Morona Santiago, which is a city with an airport, hospitals, 4 universities, 19,000 inhabitants. With one of the best urban developments in Ecuador, 5 paved access roads from the Sierra and other provinces of the Amazon, it is the closest Amazonian city to Cuenca and Guayaquil, where there are also airports and an air connection with the Galapagos. From Puerto Morona it takes 8 hours to reach the Amazon, while through the Napo River it takes up to 15 days, in addition the vegetation and wildlife, unlike what happens in the great rivers to the Amazon, is preserved, since it was created in its borders the largest natural park in the Amazon, the Pacaya Samiria Park where indigenous Amazonian nationalities still live with much of their past, as well as many species in danger of extinction. Creating this route through the Morona River almost had fatal consequences, since the administrator of the foundation suffered an accident when crossing the river in the barge, this fractured a rib, which perforated his spleen. His life was miraculously saved thanks to the air ambulance of the Salesian Mission, which took him out of the jungle, to the regular flights from Macas to Quito, to the expertise of the surgeons at the Eugenio Espejo Hospital and to the blood donated by his daughters, since he had lost most of his blood which spilled into his abdomen. Today Ecotrackers has created the information and content center for the Internet on health, environment, coexistence and tourism. especially on the protected and heritage areas of Ecuador, healing places, native cultures and health and sports tourism. It also has an information center for La Mariscal de Quito, the neighborhood with the largest tourist, educational and administrative infrastructure in Ecuador, the Amazon, Galapagos, Australia and Denmark, which is being built at its headquarters on Av. Amazonas N21 217 And Roca, where he tries to implement a student tourism agency with real offices in Quito and virtual offices in Melbourne and Aahorus, Denmark. ECOTRACKERS gives online Spanish classes and provides medical and psychological support to tourists and students. She does real and virtual theater-therapy, music-therapy, painting-therapy, yoga, dance-therapy or sports workshops. that can be practiced in Quito, or in the protected areas, such as mountain climbing, hiking, soccer, swimming, surfing, diving. Develop intelligent tourism between Ecuador and Australia based on Work and Holiday visas that allow Ecuadorian students to travel to Australia, to speak English well, understand the Anglo-Saxon culture, how to work in tourism or agriculture and livestock in that country. , as nature, health, native cultures are protected and coexist with people from other continents, It ensures that Ecuadorians work without taking jobs from Australians, selling tourist packages, handicrafts, spices, medicinal plants, food produced with conscience ecological cultural sustainable and responsible for life in the Amazon, Galapagos, patrimonial protected areas of Ecuador. For Australian students from 18 to 30 years old who want to take advantage of the works and holiday visa to Ecuador, the Learn Spanish Foundation, and how to protect health, biodiversity, cultural diversity, peaceful coexistence, and intelligent tourism in the Pacific, the Andes, and the Amazon, for a year, living as a volunteer, digital nomad, Spanish student, or youtuber. for which it teaches you how to communicate in Spanish and use this language to protect health, the environment, peaceful coexistence, intelligent or eco-community tourism in Latin America.