The Politics of Identity Reconstruction: Indians and Democracy in Ecuador

Abstract

The indigenous movement in Ecuador has emerged in recent years as one of the most important social movements in the country. By organizing to protest the withdrawal of social and material rights under the neo‐liberal economic model and their continuing political exclusion within a democracy, Ecuador's traditionally fragmented indigenous groups have created a powerful new political identity. This analysis focuses on two cases in which the indigenous confederation CONAIE successfully influenced the government's proposed reforms over land use and bilingual education in the mid 1990s. Identity politics proved to be an effective way for indigenous actors to challenge the neo‐liberal politics that threatened to undermine their social and political rights. In the process, indigenous mobilization focused national attention on the lack of political participation by popular sectors in the political system.

On Indigeneity, Change, and Representation in the Northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon

“…Several changes in the national and transnational contexts contributed to this. Attempts to privatize the agricultural sector (specifically, the for-export agriculture industry) were seen as a threat to the cultural integrity of Amazonian peoples, and led to heavy criticisms from national level indigenous organizations such as CONAIE, as well as the need for alternative democratic political projects (Lucero, 2003;MacDonald, 2002;Selverston, 1997). In 1994 an unprecedented mobilization of indigenous peoples protesting against such agrarian laws brought thousands of people to city streets, and led to the strategic closing of main highways and the halting of oil production for days (Selverston, 1997;Treakle, 1998).…”

“…Attempts to privatize the agricultural sector (specifically, the for-export agriculture industry) were seen as a threat to the cultural integrity of Amazonian peoples, and led to heavy criticisms from national level indigenous organizations such as CONAIE, as well as the need for alternative democratic political projects (Lucero, 2003;MacDonald, 2002;Selverston, 1997). In 1994 an unprecedented mobilization of indigenous peoples protesting against such agrarian laws brought thousands of people to city streets, and led to the strategic closing of main highways and the halting of oil production for days (Selverston, 1997;Treakle, 1998). Consequently, indigenous demands for equality and participation became vividly public, which helped amend the agrarian development law to incorporate aspects on water rights, land tenancy, and agricultural credits which were more favorable to indigenous peoples.…”

“…Rather, the articulation of indigenous culturally based needs as rights (such as territory and access to civil and environmental resources), and their recognition by state and international actors, inspired indigenous subjects to use socially recognized difference as a strategy to better their individual lives and communities within the framework of liberal democracy, self-improvement, and the circulation of capital. Through this cultural project, neoliberalism did not undermine indigenous cultural difference (as had been the case with state-led capitalism in the 1960s), but instead engaged Indian difference to symbolize a different kind of subjectöthe Indian citizen^a subject who acts as a global rational being with rights and needs (for example, see Lucero, 2003;MacDonald, 2002;Perreault, 2003a;Radcliffe, 2001;Selverston, 1997).…”