For the Siona community, tourism's economic reach has stayed limited — only around 15 percent of families are involved directly, mostly renting out privately owned huts to visitors or working as day-labourers for tour operators. Those families do reasonably well. Everyone else still works the fields, mainly growing corn, the region's staple crop.
The involvement is spreading, though, often sideways rather than head-on — through souvenir-making, work that falls disproportionately to women and children. Compared to corn, souvenirs are simply faster money: corn takes half a year to reach harvest, while in high season a souvenir can be made and sold the same day.
Women have started to get a bit more respect from the men because of the selling of souvenirs. It doesn't solve social problems, though — men still earn a lot more than we do.
The shift has strained an older obligation: mingas, the communal work every member is expected to contribute to. In high season, families absorbed in tourism started skipping them, so the community introduced a penalty system — anyone who doesn't show up pays a fee, which funds hiring a replacement for the missed shift.
Socially, direct contact with tourists stays minimal by design. Guides act as a buffer between visitors and the community, and anyone who breaks the rules can be reported to the park keeper of Cuyabeno and suspended. It's a controlled distance, not an accident.
She looks at tourism's future with cautious confidence. A new marketing initiative through the community's own rural organisation, ONISE, is meant to shift more of the profit — currently concentrated with the tour operators many Siona work for — back into local hands.
Her advice to tourists is practical: buy your drinks in the local shops after a long walk, and don't skip the souvenirs — that little bit extra genuinely matters to the families selling them.