Abstract
This paper explores the imagery of indigenous citizenship constructed by elite groups in mid-20th-century Ecuador, paying particular attention to the perplexing role assigned to indigenous women in key legitimating events. It traces the thinking of local intellectuals and the metropolitan press about two political technologies: voting rights and productive restructuring. Both mechanisms appeared, in a growing transnational arena, as paths to integrate the Andean indigenous population into an incipient nation-state. Integration, in these early and innovative proposals, did not entail the censure of indigenous peoples in political discourse, but rather their recreation as culturally different beings that required transformative action by the central state. Contemporary theories about acculturation, including bilingualism, opened the way for these overtures to expand the political community. Bilingual alphabetization was suggested to extend voting rights to conflict-ridden peons from Cayambe. Modernization of household industries and marketplace integration was proposed for free peoples of Otavalo. Prominent indigenous women mediated both processes. Their images were instrumental in helping the state expand at its margins and control the reproduction of the highland indigenous population.
Published Version
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