Habitar ante la cotidianidad de la contaminación del agua: contestaciones a las actividades extractivas en las periferias urbanas de Ecuador

Abstract

Lago Agrio was formed as a city around the first oil station in the Amazon, while Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas became urbanized around a thriving commercial activity, in the interstices of large-scale cattle ranching. These two nuclei are today two intermediate cities with a high degree of urban dynamism, in which oil and large-scale livestock activities, previously on their periphery, have been integrated into the urban continuum. The purpose of this article is to unravel how violence and disputes around water are re-configured in the face of urban growth and the formation of new peripheries in cities dominated by extractive activities. The theoretical-methodological framework is based on urban studies to draw up a dialogue with political ecology which, from a territorial viewpoint, explores daily life using anthropological methods, in order to observe what gives rise to environmental suffering and the disputes it triggers. The article concludes that the symbiosis between urban growth, in the absence of wastewater treatment systems, and the prevalence of extractive activities has caused water pollution to intensify in the midst of great environmental suffering. At the same time, however, belonging to the city has also promoted different forms of mediation with the authorities through the demand for urban services. The originality of the article lies in the analysis of a socio-environmental conflict over water, in which the new elements introduced by the dispersed expansion of cities are key, where urban rights give communities a tool to distance themselves from extractive activities to mitigate environmental suffering.

Keywords

• environmental suffering
• extractivism
• pollution
• right to the city
• urban peripheries