Notes on a graphic journey

Abstract

This visual essay offers a journey through a series of posters made for campaigns in defense of the environment and the land, led by indigenous and farming communities, as well as environmental organizations, in Ecuador’s Amazonia region and other parts of Abya Yala, since 2009. Specifically, they represent acts of resistance to fossil fuel drilling and mining campaigns carried out by multinational corporations such as Chevron–Texaco, or by economic sectors of the national elites, which have torn apart the region’s eco-social fabric by forcibly displacing its inhabitants and stripping the land of its resources. This overview of the posters likewise reveals the author’s own dynamic understanding of the conflicts, as her perspective shifts from that of doomwatcher to that of situated participant whose practice takes place alongside those who live in this region, with their own culture and worldview. At the same time, the potential of these images is reflected through their reuse by other movements in different geopolitical spheres of Africa and Latin America, forming networks of empathy that have joined together far-flung but like-minded struggles for cultural, economic and environmental difference.