Extractivism as a field of tensions

Due to its wealth of renewable natural resources, the Ecuadorian Amazonian region is both a strategic place for the country’s economy and a territory in tension. Here are three of the five large-scale mining projects considered strategic for the country’s economy. Their location coincides with spaces of informal, smallscale extraction, which have been taking place since the pre-Hispanic era. The coexistence of these two extraction processes in the same territory is triggering socio-spatial processes that are economically and spatially intertwined.