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Mario Criollo

Ecuador

Mario Criollo grew up along the headwaters of the mighty Aguarico River, where the Andes mountains meet the Amazon basin. As the president of the Kofan community of Sinangoe, Mario has been a protagonist in the battle to protect his peoples’ ancestral territory from a gold mining boom that threatens the Kofan’s way of life, health and rainforest territory– a battle that has become emblematic of indigenous resistance to resource extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Related Films

  • Sinangoe: Defending A’i Kofan Ancestral Territory A Community Mobilizes to Defend its Rainforest

    The Kofan community of Sinangoe is situated in the pristine, and highly biodiverse headwaters of the Aguarico River in Ecuador, an important tributary of the Amazon River. The community has organized a land patrol, and are using mapping technology, camera traps, drones and legal strategies to defend their ancestral territory from a gold-mining boom that […]

    ActivismEcuadorFighting Big Corporations