By Segundo Chuquipiondo
The journey to the Achuar community of Siwin is not measured only in hours. Traveling along the Marañón River and then venturing into the Pastaza River means moving through one of the vital arteries of the northern Peruvian Amazon, where rivers do more than connect territories: they nourish, heal, and sustain the lives of the Achuar, Kichwa, and Kandozi peoples who share this ancestral watershed.
“Los niños tienen diarrea, ronchas en la piel, vómitos y la barriga hinchada. Los peritos toxicológicos nunca llegaron y no hubo remediación ni compensación por parte de la empresa”, denuncia Jacob Espinar, presidente de la Federación Indígena Achuar del Alto Pastaza (FIAAP).
The journey is demanding. Fallen logs, whirlpools, and sandbanks that appear without warning force the boat to stop again and again. But the greatest obstacle is not natural. On the Pastaza River, the landscape changes abruptly: the green gives way to a dark stain that does not dissolve. Pollution caused by an oil spill from the Northern Peruvian Pipeline, resulting from an operational failure by Petroperú’s concessionaire in October 2024, remains present, and its impacts continue to strike riverside communities.
This is not an isolated incident. Despite the Achuar people’s repeated rejection of oil activity, the presence of extractive companies continues to cast its shadow over the territory. Espinar recalls that the first spill occurred in 2018. The second, six years later. Between them, unfulfilled promises by the Peruvian state.
“Children are suffering from diarrhea, skin rashes, vomiting, and swollen bellies. The toxicology experts never arrived, and there was no remediation or compensation from the company,” says Jacob Espinar, president of the Achuar Indigenous Federation of the Upper Pastaza (FIAAP).
Siwin: contamination that runs through life
The community of Siwin, officially recognized 36 years ago and home to around 120 families, is facing a multidimensional crisis. The river that flows through the lagoon that gives the community its name is contaminated, and the water people drink, the fish they eat, and the health of those who live there are directly affected. At the same time, the lack of basic infrastructure, health care, and an adequate education system worsens the situation.
The consequences are severe: recurrent gastrointestinal illnesses, skin conditions, respiratory problems, and reports of malformations in children. Since March of this year, community authorities have also warned of an epidemic outbreak in the area. To this day, the State’s response remains limited.
Lidia Dahua Suñiga, an Achuar Indigenous mother, speaks through tears: “I have had to bury other children. I have relatives who died on the way to San Lorenzo because we don’t have river ambulances or medicines here. They let us die slowly.”
In territories where the river is the only road, the absence of water ambulances can mean the difference between life and death. Yet this urgency does not appear to be part of the public agenda.
“The State is absent,” community leaders repeat. Pedro Dawa, an environmental monitor, sums it up bluntly: “Beneath the Siwin lagoon, oil is still flowing. The response is always the same: nothing.”
One watershed, many communities, the same abandonment
The route continues to Huagramona and then to Buenavista. The pattern repeats itself. Closed schools, health posts without staff or medicines, and communities forced to live with the impacts of more than half a century of oil activity in the Amazon—and with complete state neglect.
The illnesses are the same: constant diarrhea, inflammation, skin and respiratory problems. In response, the State offers, when it offers anything at all, paracetamol. Nothing more.
Night falls in Solplin, a Kichwa community. There, David Chino, President of the Inka Nation, explains that oil contamination is the main problem facing his people and that advancing territorial delimitation is essential to protecting their land.
“We have a health facility with no medicines. Many of our brothers and sisters have died because there is no way to treat them or transfer them in time. For everything, they want to give us paracetamol,” he says.
Resistance that cares for territories of lifea
The journey continues toward Huasaga, Loboyacu, and Suncache, following the river until reaching Musakarusha. There, resistance takes on another form. Valvina Sundi, a Kandozi woman leader, dedicates her days to raising taricayas. More than two thousand charitos—baby turtles—will soon be released into the lake as part of a community effort to recover what contamination threatens to erase. In a wounded territory, Valvina plants hope. Her work does not appear in official reports, yet it helps sustain the balance of Amazonian life.
A cry that can no longer be ignored
The warnings about contamination and the health conditions of families in Datem del Marañón are not new, yet they continue to go unanswered. In polluted rivers, in sick bodies, and in overlapping territories, a truth is revealed—one that seems not to trouble those in power, upheld by the silence and inaction of the State. The oil industry continues to advance over ancestral territories, causing harm and deepening inequality and environmental injustice.
Since 2017, the Sacred Headwaters Alliance, driven by Indigenous organizations and civil society groups from Peru and Ecuador, has sought to amplify these voices. “We need what is happening here to be heard, to generate real alerts and alliances that benefit the territory,” explains Wrays Pérez, vice president of the initiative.
The Achuar, Kichwa, and Kandozi nations are not asking for charity. They demand rights, health care, remediation, and respect for their historic decision to defend life. Ignoring them is not merely an omission—it is a form of violence that continues to flow, like oil, beneath the waters. It is essential to declare the Amazon a Zone of Life in order to protect the biome and its peoples.