Sovereignty and the other in Ecuadorian nationalist discourse

Abstract

This article explores how exhortations for national unity are intrinsically linked to the symbolic displacement of a problematic other through an examination of elite Ecuadorian nationalist discourse and its construction of Indigenous activists as internal enemies. Specifically, this article looks at the role that the 2008 border row between Ecuador and Colombia played in publicly legitimating a concept of Ecuadorian citizenship rooted in racial homogeneity. Ecuador's northern border served as an ideal mechanism for performing the Ecuadorian state's authority to establish the internal borders that separated ‘citizens’ from ‘enemies’. These performances of state legitimacy highlighted Ecuador's victimisation by a more powerful neighbour/imperial proxy as a means for building regional empathy, while reinforcing the legitimacy of the Ecuadorian government to marginalise Indigenous social movements as a means to symbolically assert ‘national unity’.