Challuabamba houses are falling apart; High court extends ‘rights of nature’ to the ocean; Mandatory jail for terrorists rejected; Five die in Cuenca rivers

At least 22 homes in the up-scale Challubamba suburb northeast of Cuenca have suffered serious structural damage due to sinking and buckling foundations. Four homes have been abandoned entirely by their owners.

A representative of one Challuabamba neighborhood says that at least 30 other homes and outbuildings show extensive cracking in the walls and floors. “Everybody hears sounds in the night and in the morning we discover new cracks,” says Wilma Alvarez, who has lived in the area for 15 years.

A Challuabamba homeowner points out cracks in her walls. (El Mercurio)

In addition to the structural damage, water pipes have suffered ruptures, requiring multiple replacements in the affected areas. “The ground is constantly shifting in the higher elevations of Challuabamba and this breaks the pipes,” a representative of city utility company ETAPA said Monday. “This has been a problem for years.”

Although homeowners are asking for assistance from the city, a geologist at the University of Azuay blames developers and contractors for building on unstable ground.

“It has been known for years that the ground here is unstable on the steeper hills,” says Raul Miller. “This is an area of slow landslides that have been moving for hundreds and thousands of years and nothing should be built on them. The movement will tear houses apart, a little at a time.”

Ultimately, says Miller, the city should prohibit building entirely in the area. He says affected homeowners who were unaware of the geology have “strong legal cases” against developers.

High court extends ‘rights of nature’ to the ocean
Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has ruled that marine ecosystems have rights. The decision expands a 2008 constitutional provision, then the first of its kind in the world, that granted nature legal rights but, thus far, had been applied only to terrestrial ecosystems and mangroves.

In 2020, a group of industrial fishers filed a lawsuit alleging that the government’s restriction on an 8-nautical-mile-long zone was unconstitutional. The court rejected the claim, ruling that the law was necessary to protect the environment and had been responsible for increasing fish populations.

Marine ecosystems have “intrinsic value,” and the government has a constitutional mandate to “build a new form of citizen coexistence, in diversity and harmony with nature,” the judges wrote.

Hugo Echeverria, a lawyer who filed a brief supporting the government, said that others will likely use the decision as precedent to challenge the constitutionality of activities such as oil and gas drilling.

Cuenca records five river deaths
Cuenca’s rivers have claimed five lives since the beginning of February, according to the Citizen Guard. Three men and a 14-year-old boy have died in the Rio Tomebamba, while a woman died in the Rio Tarqui.

The most recent death occurred last week when the body of Hugo Fernando Picón, 62 years old, was recovered from the Rio Tomebamba in Parque Paraíso. Abad had been reported missing by his family on March 5.

The search continues for 14-year-old Sebastián Coronel although he is presumed dead. According to witnesses, he was chasing a soccer ball and was swept into the Rio Tomebamba current when he attempted to retrieve it.

The Citizen Guard recommends resident stay away from the river during high-flow periods. They say riverbanks are often unstable and are prone to collapse during high-flow periods, they say.

Court rejects mandatory jail for terrorists
The Constitutional Court on Monday denied President Daniel Noboa’s proposal to reform the constitution to require mandatory preventive detention for members of organized crime groups designated as terrorists by the government.

The court said the request did not meet the legal criteria to warrant a change in the constitution. “Mandatory pretrial detention should remain at the discretion of the judge since it constitutes potentially an unjustified restriction on the guarantee of the presumption of innocence and the right to freedom of mobility,” the court said. “In addition, the ruling continued, “it distorts the exceptional nature of pretrial detention by making it automatic in some cases and not others.”

The court added that the designation of “terrorist” is arbitrary when it is applied by elected officials and not the legal system.