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The Chocó Andino is just an hour away from the concrete jungle better known as Quito. For most city dwellers, this distance is like an entire world away. Between traffic lights and Zoom calls, here in the city, we forget about the interdependence between our mouths and the hands that harvest. In an apparently far-gone time, these instincts existed within a single body, but now they seem infinitely separated. For those of us who choose it, remembering those instincts ends up being continuous work.
And so, from our lofty urban environments, the Quito Sin Minería collective constantly asks it and ourselves: how do we bring the essence of the forest to the city? How do we represent its life, its clean water, and its magic? With awareness and careful responsibility, we make the decision to take the heartbeat of the Chocó Andino to Quito, every chance we get.
August 20th marked our joyful anniversary: one year since 70% of Quito chose nature, life, and the countryside; one year since mining was banned in our city. This victory united both the urban and the rural territories of the capital. So on the 20th, together with the victorious comrades from the Yasuní referendum (who banned oil extraction in that territory, on the same date), we fill our pockets with intangible seeds of feeling. While we marched with a collectively beating heart, while we took each step, up at 2,850 meters above sea level, we planted those seeds; which brimmed with the importance of connection and unity that moves towards a new future, one that is collective and full of care for nature.
The march ends at La Carolina Park where we settle on a bridge that overlooks the park’s small artificial lagoon. We set up an altar symbolizing the importance of food while simultaneously an activist canoe floated on the lagoon’s water. Park-goers started.
The heartbeat pulsed stronger and stronger, until for a moment, it took us over, and I believe everyone in that park, even for the most fleeting of seconds, felt how essential the Chocó Andino is. In a flash, we honored the life it holds, its clean water, and its place as sacred. I hope we never forget or underestimate the importance of these moments, when as a deliberate pack, we give thanks, honor, reaffirm our purposes, and celebrate. Here, with dancing and cries of justice, it is clear: celebration and struggle are necessary accomplices.
Weeks earlier, we were chopping vegetables and craft making for this momentous celebration. Gathered together under the excuse of a skilled chef’s cooking class, our stomachs smiled, and we talked about our projects, about every person’s different but complementary initiatives of hope and activism. Artists, volunteers, and inhabitants of the Chocó Andino joined together. We reminded ourselves that planting seeds of collectivity, from artivism to artivism, from encounter to encounter, will inevitably bear the fruits of a strengthened social fabric and further organization. Each time we meet or march, we come closer to realizing the future we collectively pine for.
Quito Sin Minería does not hold obvious power like a presidential band, but we are relentless underground roots, intertwining evermore. Our re-existence points us towards healing the imbalance we see everyday: the accumulation of power that robs the great womb of Pachamama, and an intense call to protect her. Truly, the call is to protect ourselves and give a worthy world to those who follow.
The celebration of August 20th lasted only a few hours, but in the cement, the memory of the marching volunteers is still alive, in the water, the memory of the floating canoe remains and in our hearts, seeds are sprouting. The heartbeat of the Chocó expands.
Thank you to Esteban Barriga for his important contribution in the elaboration of this text.
