Karina Monteros Paguay

Karina Monteros Paguay is a human rights defender, a Kichwa Kayambi indigenous woman from the Ecuadorian highlands, originally from the community of Pijal in the province of Imbabura. She is 41 years old and a single mother. Throughout her life, she has forged her path as a human rights defender through the recovery of indigenous identity and culture, combining education, dance and political organisation. From the age of 14, she became involved in the work of the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador -CONAIE- (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), participating in political and organisational training courses and in forums for reflection on legal pluralism and the current challenges faced by indigenous peoples and nationalities.

Her advocacy work has been carried out primarily through art and popular education. She has promoted the traditional dance of indigenous peoples and nationalities as a tool for memory, identity and resistance, and has supported alternative educational processes with children using community-based and cultural relevant pedagogical approaches. For several years, she worked with the Kichwa Saraguro people as a project officer on initiatives relating to children, culture and political advocacy, as well as in the training of young leaders and regional leadership.

Karina Monteros Paguay has a direct history of state criminalisation. In 2015, she was arrested during national protests and remained in detention for a month, facing criminal proceedings that lasted over three years, until her subsequent acquittal. This history demonstrates the real risk of criminal prosecution against her and exacerbates her vulnerability in the current context of Ecuador.

Since 2023, she has been supporting and promoting processes of popular education and political training among the Amazonian peoples and nationalities of Ecuador, in coordination with indigenous community guard initiatives and experiences from Colombia and Peru. Through this work, she supports the defence of territories, life and the community fabric, strengthening the cultural, spiritual and territorial existence of indigenous peoples, and reaffirming that their defence of human rights is grounded in self-determination, collective organisation and the living practice of indigenous culture.

Currently, Karina Monteros Paguay faces a context of growing stigmatisation. At the national level, there has been an intensification in the diffusion of narratives linking the indigenous movement, and in particular the Indigenous Guards, with terrorism, subversion and illicit economies. This pattern, previously observed in 2019, 2022 and 2025, creates an adverse environment that significantly increases the risks to her safety, her work as a human rights defender and her personal security.