Abstract
After failing to renegotiate debt conditions with China, Lenin Moreno’s government reverted to traditional international financial measures in a further attempt to cover the fiscal deficit left by the dramatic drop in oil prices of 2014. In order to meet targets agreed with lenders, Moreno scrapped subsidies on transportation fuels by the beginning of October 2019. However, amid nationwide protests, Moreno repealed the measure after nearly two weeks. Interpretations of the protests have been manifold; this paper presents a further reading based on rentier theory, and argues that a significant source of opposition to the elimination of subsidies is to be found in peoples’ claim on their portion of oil rent, the expression of a quasi-naturalized right derived from living in a natural resources-rich country.
Highlights
In the Mid of the 21st Century Crisis The year 2020 is already a watershed
We argue that the ongoing crisis is the repeated story of failed attempts of resourceled modernization, while political turmoil was the consequence of questioning the foundations of the rentier bargain and trying to alter state-society relations
On the other hand, mirroring current developmental policies wisdom and past political initiative to reduce dependency of highly volatile international commodities prices, most Latin American counties aimed to use natural resource income in order to diversify the economy during the last bonanza (PETERS, 2019, p. 185; ALARCÓN, 2020)
Summary
Recebido em 30/04/2020 Aceito em 07/08/2020 doi>: https://doi.org/10.25247/2447-861X.2020.n250.p251-278 Esta obra está licenciada com uma Licença Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional. ALARCÓN, Pedro; PETERS, Stefan. Ecuador after the commodities boom: a rentier society’s labyrinth. Cadernos do CEAS: Revista Crítica de Humanidades. Salvador, v. 45, n. 250, p. 251-278, set./dez. 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25247/2447-
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