The community members of Oloncito lit a bonfire and cooked fish and green bananas to endure the night vigil on the shores of a mangrove area, called Oloncito mat. They are against logging to build buildings. 23 years ago, they fought for the authorities to declare the place as protected forest and vegetation, a condition that grants constitutional rights.
Oloncito is a small Ecuadorian commune in the province of Santa Elena where around 300 families live. The mangrove that they monitor to prevent its felling has 2.5 hectares of endemic trees, birds and five species of mangrove that flow into the Pacific and that are currently in a dispute with the presidential familywho spend part of their free time in their Beach housejust 500 meters from the commune.
In mid-2023, the residents saw an unusual movement: technicians arrived to measure the land. Then they found out that there was a luxury real estate project called Echo. In 6300 square meters, its promoters plan to build four buildings with 24 homes, green areas, parking and a boardwalk. They did not have more information until May 6, when it arrived the machinery to cut down the forest and fill in the estuary.
The community members opposed it and the next day The area was surrounded by police and military tanks.. Since then, the forest has been permanently monitored by the residents.
How the hectares for the project were obtained and who approved it
The questioned project is carried out by the company Vinazin SA, founded by the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, in 2016. Five years later, Noboa sold it to Daniel Correia, administrative manager of the shipping company of the president’s family corporation, one of the richest in the country. In 2022, the president’s wife, Lavinia Valbonesi, bought the company’s shares, as recorded in the records of the Superintendence of Companies. Today she is the only shareholder of the company that intends to cut down the forest in Oloncito.
The real estate project of the president’s wife obtained the environmental registration by the Ministry of the Environment, led by Sade Fritschi, a 26-year-old minister questioned for her inexperience in managing one of the most important and complex state portfolios in Ecuador. Upon arriving at the institution, her resume included experience as a cashier at her family’s restaurant, waitress, organizer of tourist tours and sales representative until she became director of the Noboa de Galapagos electoral campaign. She did not have a college degree until last April, when two appeared in the registry of the Ministry of Higher Education.
Despite the impact to a protected forest, which is legally untouchablepermission to Valbonesi’s company was granted two weeks after Noboa assumed power. “A simple permit was authorized that can be processed by anyone online, without considering the impact that a work of that magnitude can have on the population of Oloncito, which does not have sewage networks, and preserves a protected forest,” he explains. Andrea Fiallosdirector of the Iguana Foundation, which works on environmental conservation.
The land where the complex of buildings facing the sea will be built has remained in the Noboa family for many years. assures Fiallos. With the passage of time and the impact of the El Niño phenomenon of 1983, the erosion of the mangrove has occurred, therefore the limits of the land that the presidential family had at the beginning have changed. Now they intend to recover them by filling in the estuary. Feasibility studies account for this. They were made by the company Geoseismicfounded by the super minister of Noboa, Roberto Luque, who at the beginning of his Government was assigned the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works. After the energy crisis, Noboa also entrusted him with the Ministry of Energy.
EL PAÍS tried to contact the president’s wife, Lavinia Valbonesi, and the Ministry of Environment, but they did not respond. The same management was carried out with the general manager of Vinazin SA, Maria Beatriz Moreno, who also holds the position of national president of Noboa’s political party, ADN. After two days of silence, the president spoke out – as he usually does: in X, where he implies that what happened is due to the fact that his opponents want to discredit him. “This Government does not wear itself out in the attempts of obvious politicians to start a campaign ahead of time”, wrote the president. Noboa broke the silence after the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate an investigation into the real estate project.
“There is no political flag here,” responded Jhon Reyes, president of the commune, to what they oppose, he assures, “It is the cutting down of the protected forest.” The population of Oloncito relies on the income generated by tourism in the coastal area and is concerned that the work includes filling in part of the estuary, which is one of the tourist attractions that they have managed to recover since the declaration of a protected forest 23 years ago. The inhabitants of the area are also concerned that filling the estuary will reduce the flow through which the rainwater drains, which in the winter creates a strong current that occurs throughout the Chongón-Colonche mountain range that ends in Oloncito. Without the estuary, the commune could flood and even disappear, as has happened in many other areas of the country.
After criticism of the felling of 21 carob trees and the presence of police and military tanks, they withdrew from the site on Wednesday. Even so, the community members remain vigil with the uncertainty of not knowing what the next step that the first lady’s company will take will be. Lavinia Valbonesis is one of the most visible faces of the Government due to her high popularity on social networks, where she shares her family life and her social work from the Carondelet offices, although It has no position or budget to execute projects within the Government.
Source: Ambito
