In late October, Ecuador’s right-wing president Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency, suspending civil liberties just as protests were ramping up against his plans to implement economic policies that prop up the oil and mining industry.

Lasso's stated goal is to encourage investment in order to double oil production. Much of this extraction would come from the Ishpingo, Tambococha, Tiputini (ITT) fields, which is located underneath Yasuní National Park.

Yasuní, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve widely considered one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, is traditional Waorani territory and also home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the last two Indigenous peoples living in isolation in Ecuador.

Oil drilling, roads, and illegal logging have pushed these nomadic groups to the brink. And now, oil wells are planned inside the buffer zone surrounding the designated “no go” zone created to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane.

In an unprecedented event, Indigenous organizations, supported by environmental and rights organizations, filed a constitutional challenge to the decrees and are mobilizing to block them.