Territorial partitions, the production of mining territory and the building of a post-neoliberal and plurinational state in Ecuador

Abstract

The Ecuadorian government currently advances large-scale mining as an economic activity to alleviate poverty and ultimately achieve a post-neoliberal agenda in the country. Three large-scale mining projects are planned in the Cordillera del Condor, a region of the Amazon basin, where local people have developed particular ways of living in close relation to their land. This paper claims that current mining projects create territorial partitions that transform socio-spatial relations in five inter-related ways: institutional hierarchies, governance frameworks, social imaginaries, politico-cultural identities and productive transformations. It is argued that territorial partitions aim to develop a particular state narrative in the Cordillera del Condor, the one of a mining territory. This narrative in turn, regroups territories into a unity that imposes state dominance over new meanings of territory. Ultimately, this paper challenges the state's rationality of using mining as a strategic activity for a post-neoliberal agenda while limiting Ecuador's ability to transition towards a plurinational state.