CUIDANDERAS, a word that combines “caregivers” and “healers.” This is the name we gave to our web series that presents the stories of women defenders of their territory in Ecuador, Colombia, and Bolivia. They care for their bodies-territories and face the threats of an extractivist and racist model.

.Discover the three episodes, learn about the lifestyles and struggles of those who shared part of their history with us.

Guardians of the Amazon

Orellana Province, Ecuador. For centuries, Waorani women have been fighting for their Amazonian territory and the preservation of their indigenous culture. For more than 60 years, they have resisted threats from the oil industry that harms them. From the jungle, leaders belonging to the Association of Waorani Women of the Ecuadorian Amazon (AMWAE) recount the motivation behind their resistance and show their greatest power: their inexhaustible joy.

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Black sisterhood of the Pacific

Buenaventura, Colombia. In Colombia’s largest and most violent port, ravaged by decades of armed conflict, racism, and machismo, a group of women refuse to succumb to fear and resist despite adversity. The Red Mariposas de Alas Nuevas (New Wings Butterfly Network) brings together black women from the Colombian Pacific coast, who work together to protect their territory, recover their ancestral traditions, and heal the wounds of this systematic and structural violence.

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.Hermanas del Altiplano

The care and protection of the body-earth-territory is the call of indigenous peoples, peasants, and irrigators (those responsible for water irrigation) in Bolivia, in the face of an extractive model that threatens their lives, their health, their physical and sexual integrity, and the survival of their communities and territories.

The Network of Defenders of Mother Earth has brought together women from 12 indigenous communities to defend the right to water and denounce violations of human rights and the rights of nature by extractive companies, while recovering their ancestral knowledge and practices of collective care.