The ecosystem and indigenous people of Yasuní Park are in danger, environmentalists warn. Credit: Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Aug 24 2013 (IPS)

The Ecuadorean government’s decision to allow oil drilling in the Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, has caused alarm among environmentalists and indigenous people, who are calling for a referendum on the issue.

President Rafael Correa ordered the shelving of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, a plan to leave oil reserves underground in the Amazon rainforest park in return for international compensation.

He complained that only 13.3 million dollars were contributed by companies, individuals and countries to a trust fund administered by the United Nations since 2007, towards a final goal of 3.6 billion dollars.

The decision announced Aug. 15 gives the state-run oil company Petroamazonas the green light to commence exploration in up to one percent of the area of the park, according to the decree that ended the Yasuní-ITT Initiative.

Opponents warn of the effects on the fauna, flora, and native peoples in voluntary isolation – the Tagaeri and the Taromenane – if drilling goes ahead in Ecuador’s largest protected area, covering 982,000 hectares.

On Thursday Aug. 22, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), the Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality (ECUARUNARI), the Confederation of University Students, and environmental organisations like Acción Ecológica presented a proposal for a referendum to the Constitutional Court.

They will need to collect 584,000 signatures – five percent of all registered voters in this country of 15 million people – in support of the petition.

In the proposed referendum, voters would be asked: “Do you agree that the Ecuadorean government should keep the crude in the ITT, known as block 43, underground indefinitely?”

President Correa urged people to collect signatures, and said he was sure that his own proposal to extract crude from Yasuní, for the purpose of boosting public expenditure, would win in a referendum.

The government says an area of less than one-thousandth of Yasuní park, situated in the north of the country, will be affected.

It also claims the isolated native communities will not be impacted, since the fields to be exploited (Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini – the ITT) are far from the area declared the “untouchable zone”, where they live.

José Lema, the president of the association of geological engineers of Ecuador, told IPS that it is possible that oil could be extracted as the government proposes.

He cited the work Petroamazonas is doing in the Pañacocha field, located in another nature reserve in the north of the country, which has received international recognition for environmental best practices.

“Petroamazonas is carrying out similar work there, and it has had only temporary impacts while building the oil pipeline,” he said.

The expert believes the first thing to be done is to carry out a new assessment of the area in order to redesign the drilling plan.

“There may be changes, because the methodology that was first used (in 1993) was a two-dimensional seismic survey…that determined reserves of 920 million barrels of crude,” he said.

“But once more detailed information is available, there will be a more precise volume assessment, which will no doubt be greater than the original estimate,” he said.

In Lema´s view, the main task will be to adapt the oil rigs that are already in the park, and to bring in equipment for the installation. Then the wells will have to be drilled and the oil pipeline built.

“Every project creates disturbances; the aim is to reduce them as much as possible by using the best technology,” he said.

Wilson Pástor, a former minister of non-renewable resources in the left-leaning administration of Correa, who took office in 2007, says the concerns are unfounded because oil is already being extracted in the park.

“Block 31, which was explored by (Brazilian oil company) Petrobras and now belongs to Petroamazonas, is located within the park,” he said.

He also noted that the Pañacocha field produces 18,000 barrels per day, but the crude is not processed in any way within the protected area.

“The same approach will be used with ITT, since there are already seven oil rigs in the area,” and cluster wells will be drilled. “Previously, one well per platform would be drilled, but now 25 wells are drilled from each rig, occupying less space,” he said.

In Pástor’s view, the most polluting activity is the treatment and separation of water, gas and oil, which mean “in practice setting up a refinery, and the refinery will not be built in the ITT…so the entire intervention will only affect 190 hectares.”

He added that electricity will not be generated in the field and the oil pipeline will not affect the park, as it will be buried in a trench three metres wide filled with biodegradable material.

Evidently, the drilling plans already existed

The former minister also said that oil exploitation would have an additional benefit for the park. “Today, the Yasuní lacks strong institutions to control access to the park, but if Petroamazonas begins work here there will be resources to protect it,” he said.

According to government forecasts, the Tiputini field will produce its first barrels of crude in two years’ time, Tambococha 12 months later, and Ishpingo a year after that.

But civil society organisations are not convinced by the arguments put forward by Correa and his government.

María Paula Romo, of the left-wing party Ruptura 25, who is a former member of the constituent assembly that rewrote the constitution, argues that the government is violating article 57 of the constitution, which bans extraction activities in the territories of isolated peoples.

The article says: “The territories of the peoples living in voluntary isolation are an irreducible and untouchable ancestral possession and all forms of extractive activities shall be forbidden there. The state shall adopt measures to guarantee their lives, enforce respect for self-determination and their intention to remain in isolation, and ensure observance of their rights.”

It adds that “the violation of these rights shall constitute a crime of ethnocide, which shall be classified as such by law.”

Romo told IPS, “Before talking about specifications for wells, the first step is to ask how entry into forbidden territory can be justified in the light of the constitution.”

The justice minister, Lenín Lara, said there are no isolated communities in the oilfields where drilling is planned.

But environmental experts and academics refute this claim.

“The Taromenane are hemmed in on every side. And even if the work is done with the best technology, pressure is going to be put on these peoples,” said journalist and filmmaker Carlos Andrés Vera.

With reporting by Carey L. Biron in Washington, D.C.

A Huaorani man holding a hunting spear in a tourist lodge in Tigüino, a community in Yasuní National Park in Ecuador's Amazon region. Credit: Eduardo Valenzuela/IPS

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Jun 5 2013 (IPS)

Reports of another massacre in an isolated indigenous community in Ecuador’s Amazon region cast doubt on the state’s compliance with precautionary measures imposed in favour of uncontacted peoples in 2006 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

According to reports that are being investigated, some 30 Taromenane Indians were killed by members of the rival Huaorani indigenous community, seven years after the Inter-American Commission (IACHR) called for protection for native peoples in voluntary isolation.

The government claims it is doing everything possible, but civil society organisations dispute that.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the alleged Mar. 29 massacre, first heard of in early May, but the inquiry is still in its preliminary stages.

Cawetipe Yeti, the president of the Huaorani Federation of Ecuador, said 30 Taromenane Indians had been killed, including children, in revenge for an earlier incident in which an elderly couple of his ethnic group had been murdered near the Tiguacuno river in Yasuní National Park. Earlier, a member of the Huaorani who claimed to have led the attack reported a lower number of fatalities.

The Taromenane and Tagaeri indigenous communities are the last uncontacted groups in the northeastern Ecuadorean Amazon basin, having shunned contact with the outside world. They live in the “untouchable zone” of over 700,000 hectares created by the government in 1999 to protect the area from activities that could threaten biodiversity and their cultures.

Their latest clashes with members of native communities in partial contact with the outside world, like the Huaorani, have renewed doubts about the effectiveness of the protective measures and drawn criticism of government actions and the impact of the model of development in an area rich in oil, minerals and timber.

In 2006, the IACHR, part of the Organisation of American States human rights system, called on the Ecuadorean state to “adopt effective measures to protect the lives and personal integrity of the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples.”

The resolution added that the authorities should take “the measures necessary to protect the territory inhabited by the beneficiaries from third parties.”

To comply with these requirements, one year later Ecuador launched its “Plan to protect the lives of the Tagaeri-Taromenane uncontacted peoples,” as part of a national policy for indigenous communities living in voluntary isolation.

The stated strategy of the plan is “to assure the survival and physical, cultural and territorial integrity of peoples in voluntary isolation.”

The government banned outsiders from entering the protected zones of isolated peoples for purposes other than essential actions for social and environmental protection.

Excepted from this ban are other indigenous people living in the area, like the Huaorani, who number approximately 4,000 compared to 300 Taromenane and 30 Tagaeri.

While native people’s organisations in this country of 14.6 million people claim that 40 percent of the population is indigenous, only seven percent identified themselves as such in the 2010 census.

Under the government strategy, the armed forces may enter the protected zones for national security reasons, and priority attention is to be paid to the Amazon region ecosystems inhabited by communities in voluntary isolation.

After receiving the reports of the recent massacre, the government said that in 2012 a technical team from the Interior Ministry scouted the jungle in the untouchable zone on about 200 occasions, to monitor the possible presence of uncontacted communities.

The goal of the patrols is “to establish protection plans, as well as actions to avoid contact with settlers from outside or westernised native groups,” the government explained. The team has been carrying out the policy on behalf of voluntarily isolated peoples since 2010.

The government also said visits were made to several non-isolated indigenous communities to collect information about possible sightings of any signs of the protected peoples.

But civil society organisations regard these efforts as inadequate and say that if the protection measures had been more effective, the incidents of violence might have been avoided.

For example, former legislator María Paula Romo said “To regard this as a question of conflicts between ethnic groups or clans is an unacceptable way for (the government) to disassociate itself from its responsibility for what is happening.”

In her view, in addition to the need for concrete action on this conflict, “the fundamental issue should be an honest, thorough review of the model of development in the Amazon region.”

Humberto Cholango, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), agrees. “The conflict cannot be reduced to a confrontation between fraternal peoples,” as that would be to “wilfully adopt a political misreading of the issue,” he told IPS.

“Many have an interest in showing the world that this is ‘a problem between Indians’ rather than what it actually is: the result of an extractive industries policy that has increased the pressure on indigenous peoples. This is a national problem,” said Cholango, leader of the largest Ecuadorean indigenous organisation.

He said that imposition of the model has caused voluntarily isolated peoples to lose their way of life and their habitat, including their food and animals, which compels them to resort to violence, even among themselves, as a defence.

In contrast, Juan Sebastián Medina, the head of the Interior Ministry’s Precautionary Measures Plan, believes that the conflict “cannot be understood as a form of political pressure, nor as a form of pressure from the lumber or fossil fuel industries.

“It has to be understood from the perspective of a world view,” he said in public statements.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said on May 26 that the problem is “extremely complex.” He referred to the request by the United Nations 10 days earlier for the conflict between Amazonian indigenous peoples to be brought to an end.

“The U.N. has just told the Ecuadorean government it must protect the lives of the uncontacted peoples. Great! I’d like them to tell us how,” he said. “It’s very difficult to protect the lives of uncontacted people without contacting them.”

A group of anthropologists sent 16 recommendations to the authorities on May 29, calling for real solutions.

One of the first was for “the state to carry out an in-depth investigation to determine and achieve a comprehensive understanding of the internal factors affecting the Huaorani people, the relationship between the Huaorani and the Taromenane, and other isolated families or groups.”

The anthropologists also proposed that the state include in its analysis factors arising from the political economy of the Amazon region, such as “the extractive model of development linked to fossil fuel exploitation.”

Like CONAIE and organisations working for the rights of indigenous peoples, the anthropologists regard it as “inappropriate to reduce the conflict solely to the confrontation between the Huaorani and Taromenane peoples, while neglecting an analysis of the historical, economic and political circumstances that have exacerbated internal tensions.”

President Correa, meanwhile, said there would be an inquiry into possible omissions and violations on the part of the authorities in their responsibilities for protecting uncontacted peoples. The government is also looking into the possibility of creating a body to be directly in charge of the interests of communities remaining in voluntary isolation.

Rafael Correa celebrates his re-election at the Palacio de Carondelet, in Quito, cheered by a crowd of supporters. Credit: Martín Sánchez/IPS

By Leisa Sánchez and Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Feb 18 2013 (IPS)

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa secured yesterday his third term in office by a landslide, after vowing to radically deepen his project of citizens’ revolution by making the changes achieved thus far “irreversible”, fully achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, transforming the model of production and consolidating the “rule of the people”.

Initial data from the National Electoral Council give the centre-left candidate 56.7 percent of the votes in the national elections held this Sunday, Feb. 17, putting him well ahead of his greatest challenger, right-wing candidate Guillermo Lasso, with 23.3 percent.

This ample margin means Correa can begin his third consecutive term since 2007 without the need for the runoff required under the constitution unless the leading candidate obtains either 50 percent of the valid vote or 40 percent with a 10-point advantage over the nearest contender.

While Correa maintains that his government will continue to focus on social transformation, he noted that a change in the model of production and job creation would be the priorities this term.

This strategy is reflected in his choice of running mate, as the profile of vice president-elect Jorge Glas is more technical than political, and in Correa’s agenda, which involves promoting change through projects in the fields of oil production, energy resources, water, electricity and information and telecommunication technologies.

This transformation, which had already begun with restrictions on imports of consumer goods and higher tariffs for luxury items, will demand more value added on national products and strengthening popular and solidarity economy schemes, but without excluding private capital involvement.

Oil, Ecuador’s largest source of foreign revenue, with a record 98 dollars per 159-litre barrel in 2012, will continue to underpin the government’s investment in social programmes, which last year absorbed 15.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and are projected to require 16.6 percent in 2013.

According to the National Planning and Development Secretariat, public investment grew six-fold in the last six years, standing at 6.29 billion dollars in 2012.

Speaking to the press following his second re-election, the leader of the governing Alianza País (AP) party said that the chief goal for the next four years would be to make “irreversible the shift in power relations in favour of the people and the great majorities” through the implementation of “solid economic policies, prioritising the ‘social debt’ (over debt to foreign creditors), but without neglecting efficiency”.

Correa stressed that “the challenge is to move more quickly but in the same direction”, adding that the people have confirmed at the polls their desire to “bury once and for all the ‘partocracy’ that has inflicted so much damage” on the country, in reference to the monopoly of power held by political parties.

Correa is confident that the massive support he received from voters will give him a large majority in parliament, which will thus be able to pass key bills on issues such as communications, water, land and criminal code reform, which had been stalled until now.

On Feb. 17, Ecuadorians also elected 137 members of the National Legislative Assembly and five Andean Parliament representatives.

Legislator Virgilio Hernández, re-elected under the AP ticket, told IPS that one of the great tasks ahead is to “build a post-oil Ecuador, going beyond a commodity-based economy”, while “making major changes to achieve energy sovereignty, continue developing the country’s road system and implementing large infrastructure works”.

He also spoke of the need to advance towards “a true and radical agrarian revolution” and implement credit and technology policies that will guarantee food sovereignty and security.

Hernández noted that significant progress has already been made, but social welfare, health and education are permanent issues on the government’s agenda. Work is needed to “ensure the full enjoyment of rights and social welfare” by all Ecuadorians, and achieve greater wealth distribution, with “more equality and social justice”.

Nonetheless, economic performance will be decisive in determining whether the Correa administration will retain its level of popularity, Hernán Ramos, a political and economic analyst, told IPS.

Ramos believes that one of the key factors of the president’s stability is the steady growth of GDP, fuelled by favourable oil prices, increasing government revenue and a high level of domestic consumption.

The government’s “project would suffer if the economy’s stability were to waver” for any reason, even an international crisis, Ramos cautioned.

In terms of politics, the analyst observed that Correa’s three victories at the polls had succeeded in dealing a mortal blow to a political leadership that was “historically responsible for the crises that dragged the country down”, as with this new win “the opposition has been broken”.

Unlike in 2007, when he took office for the first time, Correa now has several advantages. Firstly, the political experience gained after six years at the country’s helm; secondly, the strength gathered by his movement; and thirdly, ironclad media protection (in the form of a media regulatory body created in a 2011 referendum to stop media excesses), Ramos explained.

The president had promised that this would be the last time he ran, as he considered it in the country’s “best interest”. However, his movement lacks a figure strong enough to replace him after this term, a political weakness that could be overcome by AP if “it succeeds in grooming new leaders that can at least consolidate its political leadership in the country”, Ramos said.

Counting elections and referendums, Correa achieved his ninth victory at the polls on Sunday and holds an indisputable leadership after six years in which, in his own words, he “re-founded the nation” with a new constitution in 2008 that launched an era of good living and turned the state into the leading economic and political agent.

When his third term is up in 2017, Correa will have completed a decade in power.

In 2007 Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, sponsored the Yasuni Initiative to end oil prospecting in the vast Yasuni National Park, thereby preventing some 400 million tonnes of carbon emissions, if the international community or the United Nations would compensate Ecuador for half of the unrealised oil revenues (an estimated 13 billion dollars over 13 years).

Hazel Henderson

Spain donated 1.4 million dollars, Italy cancelled 51 million dollars of Ecuador’s debt, following Norway’s 20 million-dollar cancellation. Germany and France contributed token amounts along with Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey. U.S. and European NGOs added their support.

Sadly, however, this innovative effort is faltering because of the ongoing world financial crisis. The deeper reason lies in the murky secrets of money-creation and how this financial sleight-of-hand enabled financial players to take control of politicians even in democracies.

Saving Yasuni and averting further social, financial, and environmental crises now urgently requires unmasking the mysteries of money.

Worldwide, we see thousands of sensible proposals ­ for re-vitalising communities, investing in new infrastructure, re-training, and green jobs, preventive health, public education, restoring ecosystems, protecting public parks ­ all blocked by politicians, economists, and financiers with the same cry: Where’s the money going to come from?

Even worse, we see central banks printing money to bailout past mistakes of financiers instead of directing it to the real economy while politicians crush taxpayers with budget and job cuts demanded by bond vigilantes and their rating agency allies.

Saving Yasuni can help us finally connect all the dots by revealing the truth: money is not wealth and only has value if we believe and trust it. Currencies are simply information systems that track and keep score of human priorities and interactions with each other and with nature’s riches.

Yet this money symbol system has morphed from a useful accounting tool into a fetish that dominates our minds, our communities, and national decision-making while hampering sustainable forms of development and more realistic global policies ­including protecting Yasuni and other ecological treasures for our common future.

The United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit of July, 2012, helped its 193 country members and many city and provincial governments to connect many of the dots needed to overcome faulty economics and its money-based paradigm. Its outcome document, “The Future We Want”, articulated their vision for people-centred, just, green economies based on ecological sustainability and renewable energy and resources and on the protection of the biodiversity on which all humanity relies.

However, the conference did not illuminate the money paradigm standing in the way of these goals.

Once we clearly affirm that while money is a useful tool it is not real wealth, we can see how it can be re-directed away from all the mal-investments in fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, and subsidising such destructive technologies of the past. As the Green Transition Scoreboard shows, some 3.3 trillion dollars has already been re-directed by private investors worldwide since 2007 into renewable solar, wind, geothermal, water energies and far greater efficiencies, as well as green buildings, public transport, and smarter cities and land-use, proving how humans can change their minds and redirect their money towards a cleaner, greener, more equitable future.

To similarly change the minds of our politicians requires directly confronting financial centres, economists, and business schools and re-training asset managers that still control our pensions, public and private.

The Occupy movement and the Arab Spring demanded that we create true democracies and end the dictatorship of money and finance. We are changing our scorecards of progress from money-based gross domestic product (GDP) and stock markets to broader indicators of health, education, infrastructure, poverty gaps, and the environment such as the Integrated Wealth Index (IWI) released at Rio+20, the Better Life Index of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada’s Index of Wellbeing, Bhutan’s gross national happiness index (suitable mainly for small Buddhist countries), and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

We are auditing the U.S. Federal Reserve and calling central bankers and their allies in finance to account, confronting the errors in their core business models and metrics.

Many challengers see beyond the money-game rigged by insiders and the powerful, based on scarcity, fear, and competition and instead point to the unpaid Love economies, gifting, and the new open source movements, all based on sharing, cooperation, creating community wealth and abundance powered by the sun. These unpaid sectors of the global economy are now larger than the paid economies officially measured by GDP. We can think beyond the paradigms of the Washington Consensus, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (all based on money measures like GDP). We can shift to Life’s Principles and Ethical Biomimicry Finance and invest in all such companies waiting for our re-directed focus on holistic, healthy investing.

We can envision a Gaian League of small countries that have rejected the Washington Consensus and are transitioning to healthier forms of local development, opting out of the global casino, such as Iceland, Bhutan and Ecuador, where they already value their Yasuni National treasure.

We and many NGOs support this kind of alternative, also promoted by the World Social Forum: Another World Is Possible. The breakdown of the corrupt, malfunctioning global casino is driving these new breakthroughs! Come join us!
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Hazel Henderson is president of Ethical Markets Media (U.S. and Brazil), publisher of the Green Transition Scoreboard and author of “Building a Win-Win World” and other books.

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org

The leaders of South America’s Mercosur trade bloc decided to set up a committee to facilitate the incorporation of new members, adopt a mechanism to defend democracy in case of a coup, and ban vessels from the Malvinas/Falkland Islands from docking in member countries’ ports.

Mercosur leaders express solidarity with Argentina's historic claim to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. Credit: Office of the Uruguayan president

At Tuesday’s summit, the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay also signed a free trade agreement with Palestine, seen as mainly symbolic, and expanded the list of products from outside the bloc that will pay import tariffs.

In their speeches, the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) leaders acknowledged the contradictions and hurdles faced by the region’s largest trade bloc, while stressing the need to continue to forge ahead with the process of integration.

At the bloc’s headquarters in Montevideo, host President José Mujica met Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, as well as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, whose countries are in the process of joining as full members.

“Our path is full of contradictions and difficulties,” Mujica said. “Woe to us if the contradictions disillusion us and we abandon this project. We would soon become a leaf in the wind, in this world of colossal forces.”

The Uruguayan president emphasised that the bloc represents not only economic, but political, integration. “Without politics, there will be no Mercosur in the long run, and there will be no convergence, because this is not only an economic equation.

“Alas for us if we fail to understand that the underlying issue is a question of power, and that this question makes it necessary to move towards convergence,” he said.

Mujica also confirmed the creation of a high-level committee to analyse the admission of Venezuela and Ecuador as full members.

Venezuela, whose admission process began in 2006, is only awaiting approval by the Paraguayan Congress, where legislators opposed to the left-leaning Lugo hold a majority. For its part, Ecuador formally requested full membership on Tuesday.

Chávez said the incorporation of his country as a fifth full member has been blocked “by just five lawmakers” in Paraguay.

“These people who have been opposing (Venezuela’s admission) for five years, I don’t know if they are aware of the harm they are causing, not to Venezuela, but to everyone, to the Paraguayan people themselves,” he said. “There are only five people who don’t want it. I think that behind them there must be a very powerful hand, moving who knows what mechanisms of pressure,” he maintained.

Chávez underlined that Venezuela’s incorporation would mean “opening Mercosur to the Pacific.

“We are members of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies), we have gas and energy reserves, we have things to contribute,” he added. “We have to expedite this, spurred on by the global crisis that is threatening us.”

Lugo also referred to the case of Venezuela and the resistance put up by a handful of legislators in his country.

“This government of Paraguay is respectful of its institutions, but it is making an effort to strengthen integration. The incorporation of Ecuador and Venezuela would work in favour of our bloc,” he said.

Rousseff, meanwhile, highlighted the agreement reached at the summit “to expand the list of products included in the common foreign tariff” applied to imports from outside Mercosur, and to adopt various mechanisms to foment intra-bloc trade.

Correa, for his part, stressed the signing of the “Montevideo Protocol”, a mechanism providing for a mutual response in defence of democratic institutions in case of a coup d’etat in any of the member countries.

The summit agenda, which was to include public ceremonies, such as the signing of the agreement with Palestine – signed in private in the end – was interrupted by the tragic news of the death of Argentina’s deputy trade secretary, 33-year-old Iván Heyn. The newly appointed official was found hanged in his room in the Montevideo hotel where most of the Argentine delegation was staying. The police said his death appeared to be a suicide, but that the investigation continued.

When Fernández was notified, she was so upset that her private doctor was called to attend to her.

Malvinas/Falklands

The summit also approved a resolution to close the bloc’s ports to vessels flying the Falkland Islands flag. The islands, known as the Malvinas in Argentina, have been held by Britain since the 1830s, and were the subject of a brief war between the two countries in 1982, when Argentina sought to assert its sovereignty over them.

In a column posted on the Uruguayan president’s web site Tuesday, Mujica explained his decision to ban the boats from docking in Uruguay, arguing that his country’s foreign policy has always been based on national interests, but also on the principle of solidarity with the region.

Mujica said solidarity with Buenos Aires also benefited Montevideo. “Uruguay’s political history shows that every time relations with Argentina have soured, the economy and labour have been enormously impaired,” he wrote.

Fernández expressed her appreciation for the member countries’ decision to block boats from the Malvinas.

The Malvinas “are not just an Argentine cause, but a global cause, because (the British) are taking oil and fishing resources, and when they need more resources, whoever is the strongest will go to find them whenever and however,” she said, as Rousseff nodded.

“When they sign something involving the Malvinas, they are doing so as if the Malvinas belonged to them. There are many countries here with great natural wealth, and this wealth must be defended. Let’s be smart enough to understand that, by taking care of each other, we are taking care of ourselves,” she added.

At the end of the summit, Mujica handed over the rotating six-month presidency of the bloc to Fernández.