Desterritorialización, Violencia y Etnocidio en la Amazonía Ecuatoriana

Deterritorialization is understood not only as the physical destruction of territories and spaces, but rather as the re-production of new hegemonic dynamics that destructure the socio-spatial organization and the social, symbolic and material fabric of the native peoples, where they settled, their ecosystems. and its impact on the region. Ethnocide is analyzed as a manifestation of this deterritori-alization and the implementation of new organizational forms that were favorable to the vision of modernizing and nationalist States, which sought an effective incorporation of these territories into the central administration. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the indigenous peoples had become “obstacles” for these colonial projects of the State, capitalist desires of exploitation/commodification of nature and the labor force. In this context, the Salesian Congrega-tion participates, which at the invitation of President José María Plácido Caamaño, arrived in the country in 1888 and a few years later (1893) began its missionary work in this region.