The Road to Taisha: Indigenous Protests for Road Infrastructure in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Ontological Turn

Abstract

This contribution examines protests by Shuar people in the Ecuadorian Amazon during the summer of 2015 in favour of the construction of a road through their territory. Can the ontological turn help us understand such events? Debates around the ontological turn have hinged around its potential contribution to the analysis of environmental challenges and political conflicts. In this article, I argue that central concepts from the ontological turn – such as animism (Descola 2005) or perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro 2004) – may add nuance but not substance to anthropological understandings of environmental conflicts. I focus on the stakes of these conflicts, the construction of alliances, and the tactics used by the different stakeholders. Taking to heart one of the core premises of the ontological turn, we may think that Western concepts of “nature” and “culture” may hinder our understanding of indigenous Amazonian people’s participation in these conflicts. I argue on the contrary that efforts to overcome these concepts may precisely risk concealing or distorting the actions and statements of indigenous people involved in the conflict.

Extreme normalcy: The place of violence in indigenous Amazonians’ well-being

“…Indeed, Shuar land is currently riven by the conflicts pitting, in constantly shifting alliances, the mining consortiums, the State, the upper echelons of the army, Peruvian and mainly Ecuadorian secret services backed by US resources and counselling, reportedly the Sinaloa drug cartel, some Shuar and some settler communities against other Shuar and colonist settlements, an army of environmental and indigenist national and international NGOs, an indeterminate number of lost soldiers (remnants of the Colombian guerilla movements as well as, reportedly, some Zapatista fighters), either actively solicited by Shuar leaders or attracted to the scene by the Shuar's willingness to engage in mayhem and their reputation for fearlessness and tactical savviness. This conflict is played out in actions ranging from intrusions by a handful of Shuar men into mining camps to intimidate the workers and engineers (always carefully documented by video and posted on social media) to protest marches in the local towns (usually ending in violent skirmishes with the police) and to full-out armed attacks on mining headquarters and the sequestering of bosses, army officers or State officials (Deshouillère 2016;Garra 2012;Lu, Valdivia and Silva 2017;Cova 2021;Buitron, forthcoming;Vacas Olea 2021).…”

Cultures of power and politics: Two cases of the limits of anti‐essentialism in the political anthropology of lowland South America

“…Thus, in an ostensible paradox, while Shuar people have a general disinterest in collective culture of “the song and dance variety” (Li, 2000, 154; see Taylor, 2007, 151), they have maintained a cohesive culture of politics over generations. Thus, one sees that Shuar people wish to conquer politics as Shuar in a stated effort to resist dependence and maintain autonomy (Cova, 2015, 225), but then deploy that political power to attain conventional developmentalist goals—capital accumulation, road construction, and access to professional training—that one would normally expect to produce greater integration with the national society (Cova, 2021; Karakras, 1998, 56−7; 2001).…”