The Ecuadoran government is harassing Latin American climate justice activists for driving a bus! We need to act quickly to demand Ecuador stops harassing the Climate Caravan and Rising Tide activist Cristian Guerrero.

La Caravana Climatica is a group of Latin American climate justice activists that has traveled all the way from Northern Mexico in a converted school bus to bring the demands people around the world to the COP 20 United Nations climate negotiations in Lima Peru. Along the way they met, documented and supported dozens of communities of indigenous people fighting fossil fuels and other carbon intensive extraction. But on Tuesday December 2, on the last leg of their journey, the Ecuadorian police repeatedly harassed the group and then confiscated their bus and is threatening Cristian, the driver, with legal charges for driving with the wrong permits. Cristian could face three years in prison!

We need to demand the Ecuadoran Government immediately end this political repression so the Caravan can continue its amazing work uniting voices for climate justice across the Americas.

Cristian had all the bus’s paperwork in order but the authorities are claiming he was driving the bus for commercial purposes, an infraction that could lead to jail time. What’s more likely is that the government wanted to stop the Caravan from reaching Lima.

In Ecuador, the Caravan had joined up with YASunidos, a collective working to stop petroleum extraction in Yasuni National Park in the Amazonian rainforest. YASunidos is just one of many movements working for a real alternative to the climate crisis: demanding petroleum remain in the ground, forests be controlled by indigenous inhabitants and water be protected as a common good.

Authorities in Ecuador don’t want their extraction plans to be exposed in the international spotlight of the COP20. They already failed, members of YASunidos and the Caravan have continued on to Lima, are joining with other movements and are raising a ruckus during the negotiations. There is already a major public backlash against the Ecuadorian authorities and with international pressure, they might drop to charges to avoid further embarrassment. We need to help free the bus and demand charges be dropped against Cristian right now, so that the Caravana can become an even more powerful force connecting movements that change the system, not the climate.

Help make Lima a powerful moment for climate justice. Demand Ecuadorian authorities end all legal proceedings against la Caravana.