Presentación del dossier "Economía Popular: entre la informalidad y la reproducción ampliada"

This article argues that the contradictory character of Ecuador's current development project is made evident through a focus on energy resource management from a feminist ecological perspective. The hydrocarbon exploitation fundamental to these projects transforms women's roles in social reproduction and production, their relationship with nature, and their dependence on state‐institutionalized energy regimes. We examine changes in women's territorially based work of care at sites in Ecuador's petroleum circuit. An ethnographic focus on the transformation of women's daily lives at sites of petroleum exploration, exploitation, and processing in Ecuador reveals an often overlooked dimension of the socioenvironmental conflicts produced by the intensification of national economic insertion into the global energy market. This article thus examines the intersection of state development policies and the gendered construction of subjects of development. The exploitation of natural resources transforms the meanings and values of nature and development, of women's work of care, and of the participation of these in different energy regimes.

During the past decade, Ecuador’s Alianza PAÍS socialist government, primarily under the leadership of Rafael Correa, was committed to moving toward a post-neoliberal economy and implementing a “New Amazon” free of poverty, with expanded infrastructure and services, as part of the redistribution of oil revenues. However, in sites of state development projects, gender hierarchies and territorial dispossession in fact became more acute. Analysis of two place-based indigenous political ecologies—one in the central Amazon, where the state licensed new oil blocks in Sapara territory to a Chinese company in 2016, and the other in the Kichwa community of Playas de Cuyabeno in the northern Amazon, where the state company PetroAmazonas has operated since the 1970s—shows how women have reconfigured their ethnic and gender identities in relation to oil companies and the state in the context of rising and falling oil prices and in doing so reinforced or challenged male leaders’ positions in the internal structures of their communities and organizations. Durante la última década, el gobierno socialista de Alianza PAÍS de Ecuador, principalmente bajo el liderazgo de Rafael Correa, se comprometió a avanzar hacia una economía posneoliberal e implementar una “Nueva Amazonía” libre de pobreza, con infraestructura y servicios ampliados, como parte de la redistribución de los ingresos petroleros. Sin embargo, en los sitios de proyectos estatales de desarrollo, las jerarquías de género y el despojo territorial de hecho se hicieron más agudos. Análisis de dos ecologías políticas indígenas basadas en el lugar—una en la Amazonía central, donde el estado otorgó licencias de nuevos bloques petroleros en el territorio de Sapara a una compañía china en 2016, y la otra en la comunidad Kichwa de Playas de Cuyabeno, en el norte de la Amazonía, donde la compañía estatal PetroAmazonas ha operado desde la década de 1970—muestra cómo las mujeres han reconfigurado sus identidades étnicas y de género en relación con las compañías petroleras y el estado en el contexto del alza y la caída de los precios del petróleo y, al hacerlo, refuerzan o desafían las posiciones de los líderes masculinos en la estructura interna de sus comunidades y organizaciones.

ResumenLas dinámicas sociales, económicas y políticas en la región andina dependen fundamentalmente de articulaciones entre la ciudad y el campo. El artículo identifica características fundamentales de la constitución mutua de lo urbano y lo rural boliviano, basándose en una colección de estudios sobre el tema y enfatizando las consecuencias de la paradójica falta de incorporación institucional y estatal de esos vínculos. Aunque las políticas estatales de regularización y de participación popular abrieron ciertas posibilidades económicas y socio-políticas para la población campesina e indígena, la combinación de la flexibilización institucional de estas políticas con su poca atención a las realidades concretas urbano-rurales también dejó más desprotegidos a los bolivianos más vulnerables.Palabras clave: Bolivia, articulaciones territoriales, urbano-rural, periurbano, multilocalidad AbstractThe social, economic and political dynamics in the Andean region depend fundamentally on the links between city and countryside. This article identifies fundamental characteristics of the mutual constitution of Bolivian rural and urban spheres, based on a collection of studies on the theme. It seeks to explore the consequences of the paradoxical lack of incorporation of these links into institutional and state mechanisms. Although state policies of regularization and popular participation opened economic and political possibilities for the Bolivian rural and indigenous populations, the combination of institutional flexibility of these policies with their lack of attention to urban-rural realities increases the vulnerability of the most marginalized Bolivians.

Social inequalities can only be understood through the interaction of their multiple dimensions. In this essay, we show that the economic and environmental impacts of natural resource extraction exacerbate gendered disparities through the intensification and devaluation of care work. A chikungunya epidemic in the refinery city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, serves to highlight the embodied and structural violence of unhealthy conditions. Despite its promises of development, the extraction-based economy in Esmeraldas has not increased its vulnerable populations’ opportunities. It has, instead, deepened class and gendered hierarchies. In this context, the most severe effects of chikungunya are experienced by women, who bear the burden of social reproduction and sustaining lives under constant threat.