Battling Mining in Ecuador's National Parks
Ecuador's Carlos Zorrilla
by Steve Ginsberg

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When I met Carlos Zorrilla in 1994 he was not driven to become an Andean version of Chico Mendes. He was sustainably farming in Ecuador's remote Intag cloudforest and just starting to fight back.

To diversify his income he opened a small eco-lodge on his 500 hectare farm and biodiversity junkies from the U.S. and Europe started showing up despite his off-the-map location. A few lines in a Lonely Planet guide was all the free advertising he needed. Carlos wasn't keen on having his family life invaded by birdwatchers and orchid lovers, but realized tourism could help spread environmental news of the region and reverse the decline of these rich forests.

Born in Cuba, Zorrilla lived in California before traveling the world looking for his slice of Shangri-La. He thought he found it in the Intag, a region that harbors as much or more biodiversity than Ecuador's Amazon, but is far less studied or protected. After settling in the Intag, Carlos was considered a gringo by the locals because he wasn't born in Ecuador. He learned to farm sustainably and brought a different consciousness to forests that were traditionally slashed and burned and over grazed by cattle.

Ecotourists had less impact on the land, Carlos reasoned, and on my hikes with him I saw my first Andean cock of the rocks, a stunning red bird with a plumed brushy crest that helicopters through the forest in search of mates and fruit. A dozen species of hummingbirds and over 200 orchid varieties are on his property that has both a looming mountain and the constant rush of the Intag River.

But Carlos' slice of paradise was troubled. When a powerful neighbor hired pistoleros to shoot and poach the rare Andean Spectacled Bear on the upper reaches of his property, Zorrilla had no choice but to fight back. The bears were being sold to a middleman in Quito who shipped its parts to Asia's medicinal markets. Zorrilla was able to dramatize his plight on a leading Quito television show by organizing the hamlet of La Florida's teen soccer club to patrol his forests. His "green corps" won that fight and he refused to be intimidated despite several gunshots in his direction.

I helped raise a little money for Carlos through the Los Angeles Audubon chapter and over the last few years I have watched Carlos go from trying to protect his own plot to fighting the World Bank's plan for mining in the entire country. He has become increasingly strident, hardened and committed to saving what little is left of the Western Cordillera's forests.

Carlos is up against corrupt government officials, mining conglomerates and the World Bank, but also his own increasing cynicism.

As Ecuador's economy has slid into depression the last two years, the pressure to sacrifice its forests to repay its foreign debt escalates. The World Bank wants Ecuador to meet its fiscal obligations and is looking for ways to spark its economy. The World Bank is pushing a new industry, industrial mining. To jumpstart the industry, it quietly financed a five-year project to restructure mining laws and attract multinational mining companies through an extensive mineral survey.

Carlos and other environmentalists say the Bank's project invaded protected ecological reserves when PRODEMINCA (Proyecto de Desarrollo Minero y Control Ambiental), the Bank's mining project, sent its survey teams to scour much of the Western Cordillera including the Intag Valley and the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve.

PRODEMINCA was established with $22 million in loans and it finished its work in June. It is now selling the survey information to mining companies on a $7000 (each) CD-ROM earmarking the 36 minerals found. Copper was the biggest potential find, according to the bank's senior mining specialist, Gotthard Walser, who has spent considerable time in Ecuador. Walser told me the Bank would never try to impose its will on a community that didn't want mining, but admitted mistakes have been made in not getting community input before sending in its survey teams.

The bank is hoping to bring mining companies into Ecuador and has lobbied Ecuador's new government to change mining laws to eliminate royalties paid by mining companies. There had been small royalty payments in the past when major mining companies conducted their own surveys.

To save the Intag from mining, Carlos organized the Organization for the Defense and Conservation of the Intag (DECOIN) a grassroots group comprising farmers, peasants and priests. They are trying to block the release of the mining information and DECOIN's formal complaints against PRODEMINCA were heard by the World Bank. The Bank formed an inspection panel to investigate alleged irregularities and violations of World Bank project rules. It is rare for the World Bank to investigate one of its projects using the inspection panel format.

Zorrilla and DECOIN's leaders are eager to work within the system to stop mining, but they will also go outside it if need be. They kicked Mitsubishi's Bishimetals and Britain's largest mining company, RioTinto PLC out of the Intag with an Andean version of the Boston Tea Party. These multinational mining conglomerates were prospecting for about five years near Cotacachi in Junin, and had ruined a waterway in their testing. In late 1997 DECOIN staged a classic monkeywrench campaign to kick the mining companies out. A ragtag green army of 500 men, women and children trekked in the mountains ten hours on burros and torched a seasonally vacated prospecting camp. Before burning the camp's shacks, all contents were painstakingly carried out and inventoried. Everything was returned, but the government accused DECOINS leaders of sabotage and state terrorism. After years of never being consulted by the government or mining companies, the locals who are colonos, settlers without indigenous Indian ties, rose up and got everyone's attention. Mitsubishi and RioTinto both pulled out by not renewing their two-year prospecting contracts. None of DECOIN's leaders went to jail as the charges were dropped.

Global mining giants like RioTinto simply move to easier pickings, but the World Bank is in Ecuador for the long haul and has targeted it along with Peru, Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico, for its mining programs. In 1990, just 13 percent of the bank's loans went for mineral exploration in Latin America, today that is around 30 percent, the fastest mining growth sector in its global portfolio by far. If it can orchestrate mining law changes in Ecuador it would likely bring back Mitsubishi, RioTinto and others pronto.

Carlos has watched the threat of mining in national parks grow. Small-scale goldpanners have operated in Podocarpus National Park for years. Oil has long been sucked out of the nation's Amazon forests and parks at great environmental and social cost and the line between business and conservation are blurry here. The second highest official in the former government's Ministry of Environment formerly worked in the mining ministry. In the new government headed by president Gustavo Noboa, The Ministry of Environment has been fused with tourism and is headed by a tourism official who has no environmental credentials.

Anyone who visits Carlos' lodge is made aware of mining and other threats to the area. Carlos' guests have gone back and helped raise funds and awareness of the issues.

To offer economic alternatives to mining, shade grown coffee is now a cottage industry in the Intag with the cooperative's beans being shipped to Japan. Profits have gone back into buying land threatened by mining. The Bank would prefer a different scale of job creation and will likely wage a war of economic attrition by offering to create mining jobs in the impoverished region.

The Bank recently hired a foundation to study the Intag and its residents' views of mining. Carlos' fears that the Bank is trying to discredit the opponents of mining. Therefore, it's not surprising that paranoia is seeping into these forests along with the fog.

"The 30 young adults hired by PRODEMINCA were hired from Cuellaje, the village where our president is from. They have threatened her, and now I worry they are trying to destroy DECOIN," Zorrilla said, vowing to keep the pressure on and the World Bank out.

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