Ecuador: Amazon families split over lure of oil money | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/ecuador-amazon-split-oil-money
While they were growing up in their remote community deep in the Ecuadorean Amazon, Blanca Tapuy and her sister Innes were inseparable.
As children, they would play together while their parents hunted monkeys and tapir with blowpipes and spears. After they married, they regularly met to drink chicha and keep up with the latest gossip as western modernity crept ever closer to their indigenous Kichwa community.
Today, however, the sisters are at loggerheads, divided by an offer from the country’s biggest oil company, Petroamazonas, to start seismic surveys in their homeland of Sani Isla. Blanca declares she is willing to die to stop its advances. Innes passionately counters at community meetings that petrodollars are vital for the future prosperity of the community.