Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement Research Articles

Indigenous Revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia, 1990–2005

Sociologist Jeffery M. Paige is the author of two important comparative works on revolution in the latter part of the twentieth century. The first examined cases of agrarian revolution in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, while the second focused on Central America. More than two decades later, he has produced a new comparative study that takes a surprising tack. Whereas in the past Paige deployed a structural economic and political framework for analyzing revolution, he now adopts a primarily cultural one. The cases that he takes up are “indigenous revolutions” at the turn of the twenty-first century in the Ecuadorian and Bolivian Andes, a region rarely considered in the global geography of revolution.Paige's concept of revolution in the new book emphasizes subjective consciousness, as seen in the political actors' utopian imagination. The aspiration to “turn the world upside down” is indeed a classic feature of revolutions, but less often a feature of classic social science definitions of them. Paige here moves away from Theda Skocpol and toward Pierre Bourdieu, who stressed the symbolic transformations that underlie political revolution. In the Andean case, Paige argues, Indigenous discourse provided a new way to think and talk about overturning the existing order, a pachakuti in native parlance. The communalist social organization and ethos in Andean and Amazonian society also provided a foundation for an ideology of “indigenous socialism” that inspired mass mobilizations. Paige goes on to highlight one other unusual factor in Ecuador and Bolivia. While symbolic transformation and mass uprising are common elements of revolutions, what stands out in the Andean cases is that social movements ultimately achieved a share of state power through electoral democracy rather than armed struggle.Here the two cases diverge, however. Whereas the Indigenous movement in Ecuador was unable to retain power in the center-left government of Rafael Correa (2007–17), it had more success in Bolivia under the Movement Toward Socialism government of Evo Morales (2006–19). Paige argues that the difference lay in the more heterogeneous and inclusive notion of Indigenous identity in Bolivia. He observes that the coca growers' movement, which combined peasant trade unionism, ancestral ethnic affiliation, and an anti-imperialist stance against the United States, played a key part in constituting a durable symbolic and political unity.To discern the symbolic and utopian dimension of the movements, Paige conducted 45 interviews, primarily with Indigenous intellectuals and political leaders in 2008, 2009, and 2011. They represent a gamut of influential organizations and constituencies in the two countries. In Ecuador, the interviewees come from the lowland and highland regional associations that are part of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador as well as from the Pachakutik political party. In Bolivia, we hear from intellectuals and activists from the radical indianista-katarista, coca-growing, and peasant trade union movements as well as from non-Indigenous Left intellectuals. The extensive testimonial accounts are an unusual feature of the book and are framed by coherent and accessible interpretations by the author.A panoply of key themes emerge from the interviews and form the basis for what Paige conceives of as the revolutionary vision in the Andes. A number of interviewees address the philosophy of “living well” (suma qamaña in Aymara, or sumak kawsay in Quechua), an approach to natural resources, territory, and development that would overcome historical patterns of extractivism and capitalist development. They consider the meaning of decolonization, whether in spheres of Indigenous autonomy, intercultural relations, or plurinational state formation. They also reflect on the relationships between social movements and state power, direct and representative democracy, mass mobilization and armed struggle, and Indigenous ideology and Marxism.One difficulty is that the book ostensibly focuses on the phase of powerful Indigenous and popular insurrections in the two countries between 1990 and 2005, while the interviews were conducted subsequently. Therefore we get the perspectives of the actors only in the aftermath of the events, when a series of new issues presented themselves. Chief among these were the tensions between some of the Indigenous intellectuals and activists and the Pink Tide governments of Correa and Morales. Nonetheless, these later conflicts are of significance in themselves, and the interviews do indeed provide ample evidence of the radical critiques of society and the utopian aspirations that animated the mass mobilizations at the turn of the century.Whether or not one accepts Paige's concept of revolution, his compelling cultural approach and the rich testimony that he supplies will be of great value to general students and specialists interested in revolution, Indigenous social movements, and the Andean region.

The October 2019 Indigenous and Citizens’ Uprising in Ecuador

Once again the indigenous movement in Ecuador has shown its considerable capacity for mobilization and the creation of social alliances for change. Media coverage of the October 2019 uprising has been both weak and openly biased, giving credence to a mythical “enemy within.” A chronology of events from the social movements themselves shows that this insurgent event and the aftereffects now being felt have changed the political map of Ecuador and represent a significant blow to the neoliberal project of Lenín Moreno, who replaced President Correa in 2017. Una vez más, el movimiento indígena en Ecuador ha demostrado su considerable capacidad de movilización y de creación de alianzas sociales para el cambio. La cobertura en medios del levantamiento de octubre de 2019 ha sido poca y abiertamente sesgada, apelando a la idea de un mítico “enemigo interno”. Una cronología de los acontecimientos por parte de los movimientos sociales mismos muestra que este evento insurgente y las actuales secuelas han cambiado el mapa político de Ecuador y constituyen un golpe importante al proyecto neoliberal de Lenín Moreno, quien sustituyó al presidente Correa en 2017.

REPERTORIO DIGITAL: ¿UNA ACCIÓN COLECTIVA INNOVADORA PARA LOS MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES?

Usar recursos digitales en la acción colectiva ha abierto dos interrogantes analíticas para los movimientos sociales: ¿El activismo digital determina cambios o innovaciones en los repertorios de acción colectiva? y ¿El activismo digital impacta en el sistema político de un país? Para esta segunda interrogante se toma el caso del movimiento indígena ecuatoriano (MIE) y su actuación en los hechos acaecidos en octubre de 2019. El marco de análisis se soporta en la teoría clásica sobre contienda política de Tilly, así como la crítica que sobre ella han hecho los estudios de las redes sociales. De igual manera se toma cierta base empírica en los estudios sobre activismo digital en Chile, que se considera son los más relevantes en América Latina. La categoría principal es “repertorios de acción colectiva”, con énfasis en lo digital.

Ecologists by default? How the indigenous movement in Ecuador became protector of nature

Since several decades, indigenous peoples are seen as stewards of nature. This is not only an attribution by Western/Northern academics but rather the result of conscious political choices undertaken by organizations related to those peoples. From a certain moment on, some indigenous organizations integrated nature-related contents into their functioning and demands. In the Ecuadorian case, it is easily traceable when ecology entered the discourse of the indigenous movement and how it developed. Ecology and its connection to well-known concepts such as Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay is a main reasons for the success of the movement. This article will analyse the ecologization of the movement and its discourse as a particularly effective way of self-inclusion of the excluded and the subsequent institutionalization both on the level of organizations and the level of discourse. This will make possible to understand the moment of main impact of ecological contents – for instance in the 1990s – and demands and the moments of systematic depoliticization of those demands – especially, since 2008.

La universidad intercultural Amawtay Wasi del Ecuador, un proyecto atrapado en la colonialidad del poder

En la década de los noventa del siglo pasado, gran parte de los pueblos originarios de Abya Yala[1], demandan ante sus Estados la creación de un espacio de educación superior propio que puede llamarse Universidad. En el Ecuador, se logra la creación de la Universidad Intercultural de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos Indígenas “Amawtay Wasi”, mediante ley de la república en 2004. Este es uno de los proyectos más emblemáticos del movimiento indígena ecuatoriano, cuyos principales promotores fueron la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) y el Instituto Científico de Culturas Indígenas (ICCI). Tras ocho años de sobrevivir a las tensiones creadas por un Estado colonial, mediante el argumento técnico-político llamado “Evaluación”, se aplica el “Apartheid Epistémico” cerrando definitivamente la Universidad. A los cuatro años de resistencia ante el atropello y regresión de derechos, el presidente Lenin Moreno ofrece restituir el derecho a la Educación Superior. Efectivamente, en el contexto de un “diálogo” y la reforma de la LOES[2], se recupera la Universidad ahora como “Publica Comunitaria”, la misma que desde la conformación de la “Comisión Gestora” donde hay un solo indígena de sus siete miembros, como proyecto originalmente alternativo, se encuentra atrapado en los tentáculos de la “Colonialidad del Poder”.

Construção do conhecimento e eurocentrismo nas Universidades:

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a universidade ocidental dentro do padrão de poder moderno/colonial, a partir do Pensamento Decolonial Latino-Americano e de autores como Boaventura de Sousa Santos, apontando outras possibilidades epistemológicas que consideram diferentes tipos de conhecimento com equidade e diálogo. Outras possibilidades já estão sendo construídas, a exemplo da Pluriversidad Amawtay Wasi no Equador, que advém do movimento indígena equatoriano. O conhecimento que emerge e constitui essa pluriversidade difere consideravelmente dos ideais do conhecimento ocidental de objetividade, neutralidade, separação mente e corpo, razão e emoção, produzido por um corpo seleto de especialistas. A radicalidade desse empreendimento indígena se expressa também no reconhecimento da sua proposta como anti eurocêntrica e decolonizadora do conhecimento. Ao assumirem a interculturalidade crítica e o diálogo de saberes como pressupostos básicos na construção do conhecimento e para a transformação de toda a sociedade, atuam nessa direção.

Livelihood interests, organizational discipline, and grassroots participation in Ecuadorian indigenous movement protests

ABSTRACTThe Ecuadorian indigenous movement has received much scholarly attention for its ability to mobilize large numbers of people in its protest campaigns. These mobilizations rely on the participation of rural indigenous community members who make up the organizational base of the movement. Yet, most scholarship on the movement focuses on national-level leadership. As such, little is known about the perspectives of indigenous community members and why they do or do not participate in these protests. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews with respondents in three rural indigenous communities in the highlands of Ecuador to see how participation varies within and between communities. I found that differing degrees of participation can be explained in part by livelihood interests and in part by organizational discipline. Certain themes cut across communities, such as being skeptical of careerism; feeling taken advantage of by movement leadership; and perceiving protest campaigns as going against the livelihood interests of those who make a living in the agro-export sector. These findings contribute to existing scholarship on the contradictions inherent within indigenous movement political discourse and alternative development ideologies more broadly.

La comunicación online como herramienta para el fortalecimiento de la ECUARUNARI

En la historia ecuatoriana los movimientos sociales desde siempre han jugado un papel determinante en la vida política y social del país, sin embargo, su lucha y contribución han quedado invisibilizadas en las agendas de los medios de comunicación comerciales, violentando así el derecho constitucional de los pueblos originarios a una comunicación legítimamente incluyente. De allí, que este estudio tenga como propósito evidenciar el estado actual de la comunicación que se articula desde la Confederación de Pueblos de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador – ECUARUNARI, como pilar fundamental del movimiento indígena ecuatoriano, en aras de fortalecer desde iniciativas propias, procesos de comunicación interculturales. Los resultados del estudio tienen como fuente importante un diagnóstico que profundizó en la manera que se configura la comunicación institucional e intervienen los públicos internos y externos, como parte constitutiva de una estrategia que sostiene el derecho que tienen los movimientos sociales del Ecuador a ejercer la comunicación en condiciones de igualdad y horizontalidad.

The indigenous movement in Ecuador: resource access and Rafael Correa’s citizens’ revolution

ABSTRACTThe indigenous movement in Ecuador notoriously lost its political influence during Rafael Correa’s government, which is counterintuitive, as both actors – in theory – shared a similar political agenda. To explain this phenomenon, the extant academic literature has posed several hypotheses, all primarily based on the study of Ecuador’s political juncture. In an alternative, but complementary, manner, and based on the Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT), the main aim of this article is to analyze how the exchange relationship between resource types and resource access mechanisms of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement were affected under Rafael Correa’s administration. The results indicate that the exchange relationship between cooptation and appropriation employed by Correa’s regime altered the indigenous movement’s resource access during 2007–2017, resulting in the movement’s loss of influence and legitimacy within the Ecuadorian political arena. In addition, this article discusses the potential impact of resource access mechanisms on the empowerment and development of social movements; a relevant factor to understand their failure or success.

Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement: The Role of Pachakutik

Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement: The Role of Pachakutik

Land Reform, Historical Consciousness and Indigenous Activism in Late Twentieth-Century Ecuador

AbstractStudies of the emergence of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, which burst onto the national political scene in 1990, have not paid enough attention to indigenous historical consciousness. Using historical and ethnographic evidence, this study examines the emergence of historical consciousness among indigenous peasants involved in the land struggle for the Quinchuquí hacienda, in Otavalo, Ecuador. The research demonstrates that it was only during the struggle for the land that the peasants became aware of the colonial dispossession of indigenous lands. Legitimating their politics in terms of history, they articulated a political identity that increasingly emphasised ethnicity over class.

Localizing rebellion: International development agencies and the rise of the indigenous movement in Ecuador

Localizing rebellion: International development agencies and the rise of the indigenous movement in Ecuador

Good Life As a Social Movement Proposal for Natural Resource Use: The Indigenous Movement in Ecuador

The Ecuadorian indigenous movement has developed the concept of Good Life (Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir) as a conceptual weapon in order to defend the territories of indigenous nationalities as the movement itself defines them. Starting in 2002, petroleum exploitation in indigenous areas in the Amazon has been denounced as an attack against the principles of the traditional concept of Good Life. The introduction of the concept of Good Life allowed the local as well as the national indigenous organizations to define their vision of the country and society, while allowing easier coalitions with a growing Ecological Left. Good Life is not only a new content in the indigenous discourse, but also an instrument for social movement mobilization and coalition building. This text aims to offer a clearer idea of what the indigenous movement in Ecuador understands as Good Life, the development of the concept, the different contents and relations it has, and its strategic use in Ecuadorian politics.

“The Right to Self-determination”: Right and Laws Between Means of Oppression and Means of Liberation in the Discourse of the Indigenous Movement of Ecuador

The 1970s and 1980s meant an ethnic politicization of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, until this moment defined largely as a class-based movement of indigenous peasants. The indigenous organizations started to conceptualize indigenous peoples as nationalities with their own economic, social, cultural and legal structures and therefore with the right to autonomy and self-determination. Based on this conceptualization, the movement developed demands for a pluralist reform of state and society in order to install a plurinational state with wide degrees of autonomy and participation for indigenous nationalities. A part of those demands was the double strategy to fight for legal pluralism while already installing it at the local level. Even if some degrees of legal pluralism have been recognized in Ecuador since the mid-1990s, in practice, the local de facto practice prevails until today. Another central part of the demand for plurinationality is the representation of indigenous peoples in the legislative organs of the state, developing since their first appearance in the 1940s in a complex way. This article will analyze the development of right-based demands within the discourse of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the visions of the implied state-reform and the organizational and political background and implication they have. Based on an analysis of the central texts of the indigenous organizations, conceptualizations of rights and laws and their appropriation within an autonomist discourse and a local practice will be highlighted.

Studying discourse innovations: the case of the indigenous movement in Ecuador

Studying discourse innovations: the case of the indigenous movement in Ecuador

Digging into the power system: The growth of indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia

Digging into the power system: The growth of indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia

Long Live Atahualpa: Indigenous Politics, Justice, and Democracy in the Northern Andes

Emma Cervone’s Long Live Atahualpa contributes to the scholarly trend of examining Ecuadorian indigenous political activism from the perspective of grassroots organizations rather than only via national indigenous leaders. Also important is Cervone’s focus on activism in the central highland civil parish of Tixán, Chimborazo, rather than on the better-known cases in the northern highlands of Ecuador. Cervone asserts that examining national events from a local perspective “works at the frontier of culture, identity, and power to explore the meanings generated in the everyday by the people who resist domination” (p. 19).The focus on Tixán and Cervone’s many years in residence there provide a richly detailed discussion of indigenous versus nonindigenous perceptions of the rise of the Inca Atahualpa organization in the region. She shows, for example, how the context of national indigenous uprisings emboldened local indigenous peoples to act on their grievances (particularly over land) and how the rise of the indianada made nonindigenous tixaneños both resentful of indigenous actions and afraid to counter them. Moreover, her discussion of local indigenous politics considers not only the big moments of overt confrontation but also the resistances offered through daily interactions, particularly the ways in which indigenous peoples often ignored abusive demands rather than submitting to them. It was out of this particular convergence of local and national politics that the Inca Atahualpa organization came to serve as an alternative justice system in Tixán (p. 171), holding meetings on Sundays to hear disputes between indigenous peoples and to mete out justice, including punishments for those found guilty.Perhaps the best discussion of the overlapping issues of identity, politics, and inter-ethnic interactions in Tixán can be found in chapter 6, “Celebrating Diversity,” in which Cervone scrutinizes the “festival of the Quichuas” held in Tixán around the summer solstice in June. The celebrations date back to the days in which hacienda owners presided over harvest festivals, but in the aftermath of the 1960s agrarian reform, indigenous peoples gradually took over the planning and oversight of the festival, which became an indigenous event located in the white-mestizo town center of Tixán. It was symbolically, culturally, and politically crucial as an event that developed alongside rising political activism. Eventually, the festival became more inclusive of nonindigenous as well as indigenous peoples. Cervone offers a particularly fine discussion in this chapter of the variety of ways that indigenous peoples used clothing to highlight distinct parts of their identities at different times. In this chapter, theory and detail, collective and individual experiences, and indigenous and nonindigenous views all blend seamlessly for a powerful and fascinating look at a well-known yearly event.Other chapters do not blend theory and detail or description and analysis nearly as well. Cervone offers interesting quotes and descriptions throughout the monograph, but these are typically separated from theoretical discussions, and the connections between the two are often not well developed. Moreover, despite Cervone’s emphasis on doing “politically engaged” anthropology by collaborating with the indigenous group she studied (p. 31), she makes only brief references to things like organizing workshops in Tixán. This was a missed opportunity to explore the significance of anthropological engagement along the lines set out by Maximilian Viatori in One State, Many Nations: Indigenous Rights Struggles in Ecuador (2009), in which he discusses his political involvements with the Amazonian community that he studied.Cervone is at her best when discussing the rising political power of both the Inca Atahualpa organization and the broader Ecuadorian indigenous movement in the 1990s. Her discussion of events from 2000 forward offers a useful summary of scholarly studies on national developments, but her references to local activities are brief in contrast to her richly textured and specific discussions of the Inca Atahualpa movement in the 1990s. More problematic is her discussion of the earlier twentieth century: she often takes indigenous peoples’ memories of the hacienda system as fact rather than analyzing them in light of the context in which they were made. Furthermore, she does not take full advantage of some of the available scholarship on the preagrarian reform decades, such as Marc Becker’s groundbreaking study of Indian-state relations in the early to mid-twentieth century, Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements (2008), which, while included in her bibliography, is underutilized. Similarly, although she often mentions haciendas in Chimborazo and the problem of respect for indigenous peoples, she never references the important work of fellow anthropologist Barry Lyons on these subjects, Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador (2006).Even with these limitations, Long Live Atahualpa is a solid book that will be of interest to scholars who focus on the complex issues of indigenous identity and politics, particularly with regard to local versus national experiences of political change both in Ecuador and in Latin America more generally.

Reinventing the Lefts in Latin America

The Venezuelan popular educator and activist Joel Linares tells us, in Pablo Navarrete’s 2009 film Inside the Revolution, that “one morning in Guarenas, behind the mountains [on the outskirts of Caracas], at 5 a.m. on February 27, 1989, a woman tried to get on the bus. When she refused to pay the new bus fare, the driver pushed her. When the driver pushed her, that was the beginning of everything. . . . The other passengers . . . got up from their seats and attacked the bus with sticks and then turned it upside down and burned it.” The popular uprising known as the Caracazo that emerged from this event turned isolated acts of resistance into mass rebellion and challenged “normal” politics. Those who had been silenced by the elite pact of developmentalism and its descent into neoliberalism began to speak as political subjects. The Caracazo marked the beginning of a new era of popular struggle in Venezuela and, arguably, across Latin America. As Mendieta (2008: xii) argues, the ideological prophets and political architects of neoliberalism sought to create an age of “the abolition of politics.” This “antipolitics” was primarily an effort to disarticulate, delegitimize, and criminalize popular-class political horizons and imaginaries, projects, subjectivities, moral economies,1 and ways of life. The embodied and visceral rupture of the Caracazo signaled the emergence of cracks in neoliberal elites’ ability to speak for Latin America’s popular classes. The fault lines in this project of antipolitics deepened in the following decade and eventually resulted in the election to power of various governments falling under the broad rubric of the “pink tide,” including those of Luiz Ignacio (Lula) da Silva of the Workers’ Party in Brazil, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the development of social-movement and community struggles—the recovered-factories movement in Argentina, the Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers’ Movement—MST) in Brazil, the water movements in Uruguay, the indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia, the urban land committees in Venezuela, 489665LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X13489665LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESMotta 2013

Redeficiendo la nación: Luchas indígenas y Estado plurinacional en Ecuador (1880-2008)

Este trabajo estudia el impacto del movimiento indígena ecuatoriano sobre el significado de la nación entre 1990 y 2008. El planteamiento central es que en este período el movimiento indígena consiguió re-significar la nación ecuatoriana y ello fue posible porque no sólo logró una articulación estable de los sectores indígenas sino también proyectarse articulando las demandas de otros sectores opositores a las reformas neoliberales. Ello le permitió transitar de una lucha sectorial centrada en las demandas indígenas a una lucha nacional definiendo un proyecto de nación sintetizado en el Estado plurinacional hasta alcanzar su reconocimiento en la nueva Constitución Política. Para desarrollar este planteamiento, se analizan las dinámicas de acción colectiva en el movimiento identificando las articulaciones y antagonismos que establece, tanto entre las organizaciones indígenas como con otros sectores, para la realización de su proyecto de nación como proyecto hegemónico.

Book Review: The Americas: Pachakutik and the Rise and Decline of the Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement

Book Review: The Americas: Pachakutik and the Rise and Decline of the Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement