Why create a foundation to protect the province of Esmeraldas ?

¿Why create a foundation to protect the province of Esmeraldas? 

Why create a foundation to protect the province of Esmeraldas?

Esmeraldas, the city where my wife Verónica was born, where my daughter Carmen Verónica was born, where I have worked as a technician for the longest time, is the poorest province in Ecuador.

It is located in the north of the country, and borders to north with Colombia, it is a border province, but since the 70s it has not really bordered with the Colombian State, but with the FARC and now with the so-called irregular armed groups of Colombia, which are the resilience of the FARC, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia AUC and the ELN, which dispute the territory controlled by the FARC, before the Peace Agreement signed during the government of President Santos.

To the west, it borders the Pacific Ocean, which in this place has two ocean currents, El Niño and Humboldt, but here it has the particularity that the two currents coexist together all year round, in the summer the Humboldt current occupies the surface and that of El Niño occupies the depth, and that is when the cold winds from the south arrive, with the whales and fishing abounds.

In winter, that is, from December to May, is when the northern winds arrive, as fishermen call the winds that push their boats towards the south. They are warm winds, which arrive with El Niño, and with rains, which fill the fertility of the land, but it makes the fish disappear, and in the mangroves, shells, crabs, and shrimp abound.

To the west, the province borders the Northern Andes, which tend to be less snowy on the western side than the Eastern Andes, but are the origin of mighty rivers such as the Mira, on the border with Colombia, and the Santiago, which are now places where illegal miners look for gold, the Cayapas, where the black and indigenous ethnic groups less affected by colonization live, such as the Chachis, and the Afro-Esmeraldeños, who in this place were able to live as their ancestors did in Africa, even with the same diseases than on that continent.

It also borders the provinces of Carchi, Imbabura, and Pichincha, and the Esmeraldas River is born from the mountains of this province, the largest river on the northern coast of Ecuador and which, given its flow, is the only river in Ecuador that always beats the sea, because in the others, when the tide rises, the sea penetrates into the interior of the other rivers. but not in the Esmeraldas River.

But in the south, there is a mountain massif that gives rise to the Daule River, the longest tributary of the Guayas River and that nourishes the most fertile humid coastal valley in South America, and where rivers such as the Quinindé, the Atacames, and the Muisne originate. the Rapartidero, the Teaone, or the Cojimies, and today, it is the largest reserve on the coast of Ecuador, but at the same time the least protected and where even the Chachis indigenous people, the last ones on the external coast of Ecuador, preserve their intact culture, including its language.

Along the entire coast of Esmeraldas, there are the most beautiful beaches of Ecuador and the cliffs with the most marine life.

Esmeraldas is the province that has the largest number of mangroves in the country, and the largest in the world, but it is also the last wildlife refuge of the tropical humid forest on the Pacific coast of South America.

But since the beginning of the 20th century, it became the loot of the Manabi rustlers, who were farmers who migrated to Esmeraldas from the dry Province of Manabí, land of farmers who grow short-cycle products, such as peanuts, corn, cassava, and are considered the best sailors and fishermen in South America since before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. These migrants, who are the whitest mestizos in Ecuador, were bandits who escaped from their province, where natural disasters produced by the El Niño currents with floods and La Niña and Humboldt with their droughts have always been experienced. In El Niño phenomena, floods make property boundaries disappear and this means neighborly war and violence. In droughts, on the other hand, plants and animals die, and the lack of water forces farmers to migrate to Esmeraldas, which is an evergreen province because it does not have these contrasts, and they do it with their livestock and families, invading usually violently.

But this became more acute after the Liberal Revolution, where the peasants of Manabí became soldiers who left their lands and went to fight with their families in the war. The so-called Montoneros of Alfaro formed an army of peasants, like in Mexico, who were going to raid the farms and towns, accompanied by their families and even their animals.

When the Revolution of General Eloy Alfaro ended, and the general became president was assassinated, these peasants who had been offered the lands of the so-called Gran Cacao, who were the millionaires of that time, who had dozens of farms Each family on the coast did not get anything.