Had to change hotels today to one filled with petroleros (petroleum industry workers). Photo of lunchtime at Hotel El Auca with petroleum workers, not bad people but destroying the forest nonetheless, in a restaurant with 20+ year-old photos of Huaorani people on the wall living in a hunter-gatherer way no longer possible except for a few of the uncontacted people, because of the petroleum exploitation petroleros do. But the photos give the restaurant an Amazonian feel. Auca, as in Hotel El Auca, means savage in the Kichwa language and is considered pejorative to the Huaorani. So in essense, I am sitting in a 21st century version of a saloon at the Hotel Redskin with a bunch of 49-er goldminers or cattle ranchers in the middle of the 19th century.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 19:54:23 +0000