Sani Warmi is a women’s collective that runs ecotourism activities and practices agroecology to generate income and conserve the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Its members guide tourists around the traditional chacra — a diversified agroecological system — and introduce them to their traditional foods and practices.
The group produces organic chocolate with cacao grown on a community plot and on their smallholdings and has a fish-farming project.
These initiatives reduce the need to extract resources from the forest, protecting this area which is home to approximately 600 bird species.
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For members of the Sani Warmi collective in Amazonian Ecuador, the day begins before sunrise. They tend to the chacra — their agroforestry garden — and harvest plantain, yuca, palm heart and bijao leaves. They feed the cachama fish in the tanks and catch some of them. Throughout the day, they will receive at least one group of tourists who want to learn how Amazonian Indigenous peoples manage to live somewhere that, seen from above, appears impenetrable.
The collective’s cofounder, Senaida Cerda, and president, Jesenia Santi, say that Sani Warmi was formed so that the women of the community could earn some money and not depend on their husbands. “It’s a wonderful project that empowers women; they have been to able gain knowledge and generate an income for their day-to-day,” says Cerda.
Sunset in Sani Isla. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Between Yasuni National Park and Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Ecuador is the Kichwa Sani Isla community. Getting there from the city of Coca involves a two-hour boat ride on the Napo River. The waterway is fringed by thick forests, and occasional gas flares that rise above the canopy. Gas flaring signals the presence of the oil industry: All along the route, there are barges carrying hydrocarbons in tanks labelled “inflammable” or “dangerous.”
Well-trained eyes and ears will be able to spot macaws, parrots and other birds flying over in the early hours of the morning. They will also see several species of monkeys resting or swinging through the branches.
Parrots feed on minerals on the bank of the Napo River. Image by Erik Hoffner/Mongabay.
The communities are hidden among guaba (Inga feuilleei), kapok (Ceiba pentandra) and balsa (Ochroma pyramidale) trees. Small piers, huts made from local materials and open spaces used as soccer fields or meeting points show that this dense jungle is inhabited. The communal areas of Sani Isla have the same features, as well as two malocas — or long houses — in which the Sani Warmi receive tourists.
In Kichwa, sani means “purple” and warmi, “woman.” The community gets its name from the abundance of trees in the area that produce a violet-colored ink.
A skewer of chontacuros, larvae obtained from the trunk of certain palms. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
At noon, in the heart of the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, temperatures can surpass 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and humidity can jump above 90%. The women of the collective receive the visitors with chicha, a traditional fermented drink, made from yuca root (Manihot esculenta). They also offer them skewers of chontacuros (Rhynchophorus palmarum), a larva obtained from the trunk of certain palms, and maito, a traditional dish consisting of grilled fish wrapped in bijao leaves (Calathea lutea), accompanied with chopped palm heart, yuca and plantain.
Passing on ancestral knowledge
The men of the community work in the oilfields around Sani Isla and in Sani Lodge, a community tourism establishment opened in 2002.
Digna Coquinche, presidenta de la asociación de mujeres Sani Warmi, muestra un cacao blanco (Theobroma bicolor) de la chacra comunal. Foto: Rhett A. Butler.
Digna Coquinche, president of the Sani Warmi women’s association, holds a white cacao pod (Theobroma bicolor) from the community chacra. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
One of the services offered by Sani Lodge is visits to the community, where tourists can see native houses, traditional food, handicrafts and chacras, their traditional vegetable gardens. “We came up with the idea of creating a women’s group that could pass on ancestral knowledge,” says Cerda. With the help of Rainforest Partnership, the collective was formed in 2008 and trained women in making handicraft, business management and customer service, among other things.
They organized mingas (communal volunteer days) to build two malocas, one with a wood-fired oven that functions as a restaurant and another larger one which receives tourists and exhibits handcrafts, Sani Warmi chocolate bars and charapa turtle (Podocnemis unifilis) hatchlings as part of a repopulation program.
At the center of the Sani Isla community are the school, meeting spaces and sports facilities, and the Sani Warmi malocas. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Santi says that, as a teenager, she accompanied her mother, Lola Santi, to the group meetings. “I liked to go and talk to people from other places,’ she says. Now 32 years old and mother to a 3- and a 6-year-old, she is the one leading the agrotourism project.
The chacra as an agroforestry system
The collective has a communal chacra where they grow traditional Amazonian foods. The women guide the visitors among pineapple plants (Ananas comosus), white cacao (Theobroma bicolor), chontaduro palm (Bactris gasipaes) and other crops.
A member of Sani Warmi walks through the women’s cacao plantation. Image by Ana Cristina Alvarado/Mongabay.
The guides explain that these traditional vegetable gardens are normally established near the home. Unlike Western cropping systems chacras don’t appear to have a clear order: They look more like extensions of the forest and are not based on monocultures but on the production of multiple plants that are used every day in the home. Apart from food, they grow medicinal plants, like the Croton lechleri spurge (locally called “dragon’s blood”) and nettle.
They use the land cyclically so that it can regenerate as it is naturally repopulated by the ecosystem. Thus, the chacra is considered to be an agroforestry system that contributes to the capture of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
A white cacao (Theobroma bicolor) bean is rounder than a typical cacao bean (Theobroma cacao). Image by Erik Hoffner/Mongabay.
During the tour, the Sani Warmi demonstrate how yuca is harvested: The shrub, which is about one meter (3.3 feet) tall, is uprooted, revealing the tubers — one of the main sources of carbohydrates of the Amazonian diet. In another part of the chacra, they take a chontaduro palm stem, peel it with a machete and extract fresh palm heart.
Afterwards, they harvest a cacao fruit (Theobroma cacao) and split it in half with a machete to offer visitors the beans covered in a soft white, aromatic pulp. The tourists — many of them foreigners — are surprised to discover this raw material that goes into chocolate bars.
Organic chocolate and cachamas
Cacao fruit on the tree. Image by Erik Hoffner/Mongabay.
To complement their earnings from guiding and selling traditional dishes, the collective learnt to make jewelry with seeds from the forest. A couple of years after Sani Warmi was formed, the women began their own chocolate project.
Santi says that, every 15 days, they harvest some 23 kilograms (50 pounds) of cacao from the communal plot and members’ farms. The fresh cacao goes through a process of fermentation and drying. Afterwards, they send it to Salinas de Guaranda, a small town in the center of the Ecuadorian Andes which is famous for its chocolate production. The 69%-chocolate bars are returned to the community in 50-gram (1.76-ounce) packages.
The women of Sani Warmi show the cacao fruit to tourists. Image by Erik Hoffner/Mongabay.
“With the pandemic, everything stopped, but we want to start producing more again,” says Santi. The leader hopes that, in the future, they will be able to train and acquire the necessary equipment to carry out the whole production process in the community. Cerda says the group also hopes to certify their chocolate as organic, since they produce it without chemicals.
For a year and a half, the group has been farming red-bellied Pacu fish (Piaractus brachypomus), known locally as cachamas, in three communal tanks. The women trained in pisciculture with the non-governmental organization Centro Lianas Foundation. Antonio Almeida, the organization’s president, says that the fish-feeding method they teach combines a feed mix with food from the chacra, such as corn, yuca and chonta, or peach palm. When they can, they chop up termite nests and scatter them over the tanks, providing protein to the omnivorous fish.
Maito, a traditional dish made by grilling animal protein wrapped in a bijao leaf. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
During the tour, visitors also learn that fruit trees, like guaba, are sown near the tanks so that their fruits fall naturally into the water. This is another way of feeding the fish in a sustainable way.
“This reduces production costs. What’s more, in gastronomic terms, it’s not the same when you only use feed mix,” says Almeida, adding that the flavor of the fish is better when they have a varied diet.
In 2024, the flow of the Amazon’s rivers reduced due to drought. This made it difficult for Amazonians to travel around. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Pisciculture facilitates the logistics of Sani Warmi and provides them with extra income, according to Santi. When the fish have not reached the desired size, they must invest in transport to the city so that they can buy tilapias.
River turtle conservation
“When you go to Coca, you hardly ever see turtles anymore,” says Santi. The yellow-spotted river turtle (Podocnemis unifilis), known in the region as charapa, is classified as vulnerable under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Intense hunting of the turtles and their eggs is one of their main threats.
A member of Sani Warmi holds a baby charapa turtle raised for the repopulation program. Image by Ana Cristina Alvarado/Mongabay.
Santi says that the NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) trained Sani Warmi in the recovery of this species. Now, in the nesting season, the women collect the eggs that the turtles lay on the beaches and store them in hatcheries. The last time they did this, they collected about 100 eggs and hatched 80 baby turtles.
Once the turtles have hatched, they are kept in trays with clean water. The tourists are involved at this stage, as they are encouraged to donate $5 to release a turtle. With the income, the Sani Warmi are able to sustain the project.
Baby charapas that were incubated in hatcheries. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Sani Isla is one of the several communities on the Napo and Tiputini Rivers that participates in this project, which has already seen results. In 2009, WCS recorded an average of 1.5 turtles per linear kilometer (0.62 miles). Seven years later, there was an increase of 340% in charapa sightings.
Women empowerment
“In Sani Warmi and Sani Lodge, I began to grow as a person, I began to see possibilities for women,” says Cerda. She says that when she joined the group, she was very shy, but this gradually changed as she interacted with tourists and was invited to talk about the project. The training also helped.
Striated heron (Butorides striata), one of the smallest herons. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
At the end of the month, the income from tourism and the sales of their products is shared between the 19 members. Santi says the women put it towards household expenses: Food, school supplies, clothes and medicine for their children.
While at the start of the project many members gave up because their husbands “didn’t allow them to attend,” Cerda says, now the men “have begun to understand that this is good for their wives and generates income.”
The hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) is one of the easiest birds to spot around Sani Lodge. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Sani Warmi’s activities contribute to reducing pressures on the forest, like hunting or deforestation. Moreover, together with Sani Lodge, it is one of the alternatives the community has to keep their territory oil free, protecting around 31,000 hectares (76,600 acres) of Amazon rainforest.
As a result, Sani Isla has been called “the best kept secret of the Ecuadorian Amazon,” where you can see approximately 600 bird species, like the attractive black-necked red cotinga (Phoenicircus nigricollis), the capped heron (Pilherodius pileatus) and the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus).
Banner image: Members of Sani Warmi share chicha and traditional food around the grill. Image by Ana Cristina Alvarado/Mongabay.
Sani Isla: A Kichwa community that found alternatives to oil in conservation and tourism
This article was first published here in Spanish on Feb. 8, 2025.
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