Focusing on the June 2022 blockade, this article examines the Saraguro Indigenous women–led organisation defending the Fierro Urku wetlands in southern Ecuador from expanding mining extractivism. We argue that their leadership, grounded in collective care, Andean identity and deep territorial experience, operates beyond formal institutions and emerges from relational ethics shaped by community histories, thereby challenging extractivism and male-dominated organisational structures. These elements shape organisational forms rooted in historical territorial struggles and in the diverse leadership roles women assume through community work, the affirmation of local and ancestral knowledge, and direct engagement with the land. Despite repression, criminalisation, gendered power asymmetries and the unequal burden of domestic and care labour, these women sustain robust political participation and collective action. Thus, Fierro Urku experience offers a perspective on alternative models of political and social organisation, highlighting Indigenous women's central role in protecting water and sustaining the vital relationships between community and nature.
This study is based on ethnographic research and direct engagement in Saraguro between 2020 and 2022, complemented by follow-up interviews in 2025. The first author conducted participant observation, informal conversations and 28 in-depth interviews with women leaders in ancestral medicine, community governance, activism and environmental collectives, with six additional interviews focused on the Fierro Urku blockade and regional environmental conflicts. The research was supplemented by secondary sources and local scholarship (Astudillo and González, 2023, 2024; Alvarado, 2022; Celi, 2023; Montaño, 2022; Rodríguez and Loginova, 2018). The second author, as president of a Saraguro Community Governance Council, contributed her direct experience during the June 2022 mobilisation, providing reflective insights and informal dialogue. Together, these dual perspectives offer a nuanced understanding of local political practices, resistance strategies and socio-environmental dynamics in the Fierro Urku conflict.
The Fierro Urku experience demonstrates that defending water is inseparable from sustaining life. It reconfigures political participation by contesting extractivism, patriarchal hierarchies and colonial models of development, while generating alternative forms of organisation anchored in care and communal autonomy. Ultimately, the experience of Saraguro women shows that defending water and territory is not only a response to threat but also the construction of lifeways grounded in care, historical demands and situated political action. Their collective efforts underscore the need to strengthen intercultural dialogue and community-based strategies capable of confronting extractive pressures while sustaining collective life.
This study is based on the authors' ethnographic work and direct engagement in the field, with its originality grounded in the depth and rigour of the fieldwork.
