‘They are prosecuting us for nothing more than defending the environment, as defenders of life and water’, says Nelly Coca when I call her in October. She is on her way to meet with her lawyer in a nearby town, to discuss the lawsuit that the gas company YPFB has filed against her and 28 other community members for allegedly having obstructed their work.
Nelly, a campesina woman who lives in the Tariquía National Reserve of Flora and Fauna, is standing up against the impending gas extraction which will have detrimental impacts on the environment and the local campesino communities’ ways of living. Since 2016, these communities have been defending their home, where Petrobras and the state-owned YPFB (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos) are planning to drill for gas.
The women who protest the petroleros have suffered violent attacks, intimidation, harassment, and stigmatization in their families, communities, and organizations for their involvement in the defence of the nature reserve which is not in line with traditional gender expectations that pressure women to stay home and be submissive. You can support them here.
The last protected area of Tucumano cloud forest
Tariquía is located in the far south of Bolivia, close to the border with Argentina, in the department of Tarija. The reserve has around 3,000 inhabitants who live in 22 communities that make a living from cattle farming, agriculture (maize, peanuts, and other crops), beekeeping, selling handicrafts, and (seasonal) wage labour.
The reserve was created in 1989 to protect an area of Tucumano cloud forest: a sub-Andean ecosystem which consists of forested valleys and mountain ranges that feed two major rivers: Río Bermejo and Río Grande de Tarija. These are crucial water sources for the southern part of Bolivia and northern Argentina which will be affected by gas extraction in the Tariquía reserve.
Tariquía is the only significant area of Tucumano cloud forest that is left. It is known for its biodiversity and is home to at least 13 endangered species. Among these is the spectacled bear, which has become a symbol for the communities’ resistance against gas extraction.
Changes in Bolivian law have facilitated the expansion of extraction in protected areas and Indigenous territories. In 2015 and 2022, two supreme decrees (DS 23669 and DS 4667) were issued that open up protected areas for oil and gas extraction, including large areas of the Bolivian Amazon. 35 territories in Bolivia have declared themselves ‘in resistance’ following the threat of extractivist projects.
Tariquía illustrates the contradictions of a ‘socialist’ government heavily relying on an extractivist development model while promising to protect Indigenous rights and the rights of nature.
Representatives of these territories under threat coordinate through the national platform CONTIOCAP – the National Coordinator for the Defence of Indigenous, Original Inhabitants, and Campesino Territories and Protected Areas in Bolivia (Coordinadora Nacional de Defensa de los Territorios Indígenas Originarios Campesinos y Áreas Protegidas). CONTIOCAP campaigns for the decrees to be revoked and for contracts with oil companies to be cancelled.
The Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS – Movement Towards Socialism) government, which has been in power almost uninterrupted since 2006, defends the extraction of gas in Tariquía, arguing that it is in the national interest and that they count on the ‘total acceptance’ of the Bolivian population.
Tariquía illustrates the contradictions of a ‘socialist’ government heavily relying on an extractivist development model while promising to protect Indigenous rights and the rights of nature.
Hands off Tariquía
In 2018, without adequately consulting the communities, YPFB and Petrobras announced the start of their exploration activities in Chiquiacá, one of the proposed drilling locations in the reserve. In response to this threat, the communities who live in this area declared themselves ‘in resistance’ and demanded for the contracts between the government and the gas companies to be cancelled. Their resistance grew quickly, as environmentalists from the city of Tarija and different organizations mobilized support for their struggle under the slogan Tariquía no se toca! – Hands off Tariquía! The communities organized protest marches, blockades, and engaged in legal and direct action to expel gas workers from the reserve.
Despite threats, intimidation, and police repression against them, the resistance managed to temporarily halt gas extraction in the nature reserve. However, In 2022, the companies started their operations in a remote corner of the reserve. Then in 2023, the gas companies returned to Chiquiacá, after supposedly large quantities of gas were found there. The anticipated gas extraction in this location forms part of the national ‘Upstream Reactivation Plan’ that includes 36 gas wells in different parts of the country and is meant to ‘reactivate’ Bolivia’s economy. Bolivia is facing a public debt and dollar crisis linked to the declining production of traditional gas fields, which has led to the government prioritising extraction from new reserves in protected areas, despite community resistance.
The defensoras have denounced the consultation process as ‘illegal’, as their communities’ democratically elected authorities were bypassed, and they were presented with manipulated information about which area would be affected. In 2014, a new management plan for the nature reserve was secretly approved without consulting the affected communities. In this new plan the borders and zones within the reserve have been strategically altered, cutting the ‘core zone’ of the reserve where extractive activities are not allowed, so that the proposed locations of the gas would fall outside of the area of strict protection. These changes also mean that communities could be dispossessed of land they use for small-scale farming and livestock grazing, to make way for gas extraction.
Living with the land
The communities argue that not only would the gas drilling endanger the nature reserve, but also their subsistence as small-scale farmers. In 2020, I visited Paola’s farm: she and her neighbour Nieves were squatting in the field, pinching out the flowers of runner bean plants. Slowly they moved from plant to plant, careful not to damage their roots and stems while Paula gave Nieves an update of what had been going on with the resistance against gas extraction in the reserve.
Turning to me, Paola explained: ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to work here, when the sun is hot. It all takes a lot of effort. This is why we are defending, because any kind of new diseases could come with the contamination of the river. We won’t be able to drink the water or farm organically anymore.’
Through everyday agricultural activities, such as organic farming, ranching, and beekeeping, the women care for the land and their families. These ways of living with and caring for the land are now under pressure. With the threat of gas extraction, Tariquía’s annual peanut festival also has gained a new political significance as a celebration of the communities’ relationships with the land and their rural identities as small-scale farmers.
‘My grandfather was born in this beautiful place Chiquiacá… a productive place, where we raise animals, where we grow maize and peanuts,’ says an environmental defender giving a speech to her fellow community members at a road blockade organized by the communities: ‘We learn how to ride horses when we are five years old. We women are fighters, and we will always defend [our land and way of life]!’
Women’s embodied resistance
Women are at the forefront of the struggle against gas extraction in Tariquía and have taken the lead in blocking the access road leading to the reserve to prevent the companies from bringing in workers or machinery, putting their bodies in the way.
One of the defensoras, Barbarita Meza, describes how one day she was called by her friend who lives close to the entrance of the reserve, informing her that the petroleros were coming to drill on their land. ‘Go stand in front of them, don’t let them pass…,’ Barbarita advised her friend, ‘…because you are a woman and a leader so it is not in their interest to do you harm… they wouldn’t dare touch you.’ She and other women from a nearby community then rushed to the friend’s house, to reinforce the blockade.
On various occasions the women defenders challenged the companies’ presence in the nature reserve with their bodies: ‘If they have to pass [the machinery], it will have to be on top of us,’ Nelly stated. In these instances of direct action, the defensoras organized as a collective body to defend their communities and ways of living with the land.
The conflict is marked by stark power asymmetries between the communities in resistance on the one hand, and the state and gas companies on the other. As a ‘punishment’ for their dissent, the defensoras have suffered numerous attacks on their bodies.
In March 2019 the police evicted a road blockade to make way for the gas workers to enter the reserve. Video footage of the eviction shows how community members held onto the blockade, the women in front, pushing back the police, forming a line with their bodies to protect the reserve. The confrontation escalated when the police violently pushed the women away.
The women recall police repression on that day as an emotionally difficult and traumatic event, where they felt very vulnerable in the face of the power of the companies and the State: ‘they trample everything, just because of their greed for money […] they passed over us’ said Barbarita.
Criminalized for defending nature
In October 2024, the police again accompanied gas workers into the reserve, making way for the drilling activities to start. In an emergency meeting, the communities of Chiquiacá once more rejected the plans for gas extraction, declaring that ‘from now on, the entry of oil companies is completely prohibited’.
In the weeks that followed it became clear that Petrobras and YPFB will not respect the grassroots decisions of the communities. Nelly says: ‘The gas company continues to invade our lands. They are entering as if they had permission. We continue to watch what they are doing closely. They are using the police to intimidate people, to scare them.’
This lawsuit is an expression of a shameful contradiction by the MAS government: a state-owned company —YPFB— that should be protecting environmental defenders, is instead serving the interests of a transnational oil company to persecute campesinx communities that defend our rights.
Despite these threats, the defensoras continue to hinder the companies from carrying out tests and preparation work. Following a series of confrontations the same month, YPFB announced that they are suing 29 community members for alleged obstruction of their work. If these charges stand in court the community members could face up to four years’ imprisonment.
In a public statement, the environmental defenders denounced the lawsuit: ‘This lawsuit is an expression of a shameful contradiction by the MAS government: a state-owned company —YPFB— that should be protecting environmental defenders, is instead serving the interests of a transnational oil company to persecute campesinx communities that defend our rights.’ The controversial lawsuit has also been denounced by the national ombudsman who urged the government to ensure the communities’ constitutional right to peaceful protest is protected.
My father is selling my mother
‘We have governments as fathers. The sacred land as mother. But such is the greed for money. That my father is selling my mother,’ Nelly sang. ‘Resiste Tariquía’ is a song that she wrote to protest the gas extraction. In it she calls out the government, their ‘father’, for selling the land, their ‘mother’. The women defenders assert that women are at the forefront of the struggle because of their reproductive work as mothers, farmers, and carers.
These women stand in solidarity with future generations and highlight that their lives and wellbeing are entangled with the wellbeing of the land. Paula Gareca told me, ‘we are different from the men, because they always aspire to having money in their pockets. But if they exploit the gas… over time there won’t be water, no food will be able to be produced here. We are mothers, and we know the mother you have to take care of: mother earth. A mother you can’t sell, not at any price.’
Despite the difficulties and the recent criminalization efforts against them, the defensoras persist: ‘We are not afraid to continue the fight. As women we have committed to defence, and we say that if we are to die, it is better to die in rage than to walk on our knees.’
You can help amplify these women’s stories of resistance by donating to the Crowdfunder for ¡Escucha la tierra! – a collaborative radio project with defensoras from the TIPNIS and Tariquía territories.
Researcher Penelope Anthias has documented Tariquía’s resistance in her documentary ‘Don’t Touch Tariquía’.
Main image: In Tariquía women are at the frontline of the fight against gas extraction which threatens their ways of living. Credit: Verdad con Tinta.
