The 1992 Indian Mobilization in Lowland Ecuador

Abstract

On April 11, 1992, 2,000 indigenous people from throughout Pastaza province in the central Ecuadorian Amazon gathered in Puyo, the provincial capital, to embark on what would become one of the most effective mobilizations of lowland Indians in recent Latin American history. Adorned with facial paint and feathers, carrying spears and children, often ill-prepared for the vagaries of lowland-highland climate change, Quichua, Achuar, and Shiwiar peacefully marched to Quito, Ecuador's capital, some 240 kilometers away on the northern Andean plateau. Their goal was the realization of two demands-the communal titling of 2,000,000 hectares of contiguous rainforest territory (approximately 70 percent of the province) and constitutional reform declaring Ecuador a plurinational and pluricultural state. The 1992 march, one of three pivotal indigenous mobilizations since 1990 to challenge the Ecuadorian state,1 was a crucial juncture in the process of indigenous nation building. Indian leaders crafted a platform from which to voice their claims by weaving international concerns for tropical conservation and indigenous rights together with local understandings of identity and place. Although support was not unanimous and victory was less than complete, the march constituted a unique moment of indigenous agency. By exploring the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities in state-indigenous and mestizo-indigenous relations, I trace the ways in which it inspired an ongoing national debate on the authority of the Ecuadorian state and the