The date Oct. 1, 2014 will likely be long remembered by indigenous communities in Ecuador, and perhaps native peoples elsewhere, say indigenous-rights advocates here. That’s when Ecuador became what some experts describe as the first state in Latin America to issue a formal apology for human rights violations committed in connection with an oil project on indigenous lands. The backdrop was a public celebration in the flower-festooned central plaza of the Quechua community of Sarayaku, whose residents refer to themselves as the “people of the zenith” and their community as the “river of corn.” There, Ledy Zúñiga, Ecuador’s minister of justice, human rights and culture, complied with a judgment by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Costa Rican-based autonomous judicial... [Log in to read more]