One State, Many Nations: Indigenous Rights Struggles in Ecuador (original) (raw)
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2007
En éste artículo, exploro las practicas de auto-representación usadas por los líderes o dirigentes de la Nacionalidad Zápara del Ecuador (NAZAE), uno de los grupos indígenas más pequeños de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. Éstos dirigentes han utilizado sus idiomas indígenas, específicamente zápara y kichwa, para simbolizar su autenticidad cultural cuando interactúan con individuos que no pertenecen a la nacionalidad zápara. El énfasis de éstos lideres en los idiomas zápara y kichwa, como indicadores de la legit- imidad de sus comunidades, ha sido importante para crear un espacio político para los indígenas záparas en el Ecuador. Sin embargo, en el proceso de comparar idiomas indí- genas con autenticidad cultural, los lideres záparas también han parcialmente ocultado e invalidado practicas de la historia zápara. Por ejemplo, ellos han ocultado el uso del idioma español en sus comunidades cuando representan sus comunidades a personas no záparas, y han utilizado la falta de conocimiento del idioma zápara de líderes indígenas rivales para desacreditarles. Al examinar la complejidad de las practicas de representación de lideres indígenas en América Latina, he contribuido a un proceso de aprendizaje más complejo y comprensivo al estudiar y ver cómo éstos lideres han articulado nuevas expresiones de autoridad indígena en el proceso de auto-representación.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2010
To what extent might an indigenous mayor govern beyond ethnically defined grievances, without being labelled traitor by the indigenous organisation? This article deals with the challenges faced by the Ecuadorian indigenous movement when it attains power in local government. The issue will be explored through the case of Mario Conejo, who in 2000 became the first indigenous mayor of Otavalo representing the indigenous political movement Pachakutik. Although ethnically based tensions in the local indigenous movement were evident throughout the period, 2006 saw Conejo leave Pachakutik and create a new political movement. This rupture can be traced, I argue, to an intercultural dilemma and the difficulties of ethnically defined political movements.
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2015
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.
In this current globalized world, indigenous populations, marginalized throughout history, face an increasing loss of their land and culture. In response to this homogenization of their culture, loss of their land, and the continuing lack of their political and economic rights, indigenous movements in Ecuador and Mexico rose up in the 1990s demanding an end to this marginalization. Through work with key allies and members of these communities, this investigation intends to understand and elucidate the indigenous perspective of the effects of western culture and globalization on these indigenous peoples, and their ways of resisting and living in this globalized world.
Nations within Nations: Transnationalism and Indigenous Citizenship in Latin America
2014
Over the last three decades in Latin America, indigenous movements have played key roles in re-visioning democratic processes from local to global horizons. Indigenous peoples have sought to redefine their identity, their constitutional rights and duties, and their relation to the state. From Chile to M exico, sprouting transnational citizenship projects have emerged, con testing not only the foundational nation-state tropes but also conventional isomorphisms established between place, space, and culture. These ethnic rights initiatives have exceeded nation-state boundaries, making evident the existence of ethnically different nations within estab lished political, jurisdictional, and administrative limits. Living in nations within nations, indigenous men and women have claimed special citizen ship rights, deploying diverse strategies to produce new forms of gender and cultural difference, sameness, or self-presentation. Such strategies have required the flexible and transnational mobility of these peoples between historically and hierarchically interconnected local, regional, and global spaces. Local communities, national states, NGOs, and regional and inter national movements have been crucial sites where indigenous peoples have negotiated issues of identity, established different alliances, and posed new political, cultural, and gendered geographies. This chapter explores strategies followed by indigenous peoplesboth men and women-to produce new forms of gender and cultural dif ference within local and global shared and connected spaces. I focus on how these processes force us to rethink the politics of space, community, identity, and citizenship in Latin America. For that purpose, national constitutions and international agreements (e.g., the United Nations Dec laration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2 0 0 7) are analyzed as key loci that illustrate how transnational imaginary significations, related to identity and citizenship, have traveled from local to global spheres, making possible the recognition of indigenous rights. I discuss contribu tions made by articulation theory to understand processes of creation of ethnic sameness and difference that are at the core of these emergent transnational citizenship projects pursued by indigenous movements. Furtherm ore, having worked with indigenous movements in different local and national instances in Colombia, international instances (e.g., United Nations forums), and human rights NGOs, my participant obser vation adds useful content to this analysis.1 Here, the term tra n sn a tio n a l mostly refers to relations among post colonial nation-states but also acknowledges indigenous peoples as con stituting nations within these nation-states. In English, the term n ation is commonly used to refer to ethnic minorities or indigenous peoples within postcolonial countries, to the point that Canada collectively calls its indigenous peoples First Nations-6 3 0 recognized governments or bands across the country. Conversely, n ation has not been a term commonly used in Spanish to connote indigenous peoples. This is so in part because, in general, indigenous peoples refer to themselves by their own proper names (e.g., Mapuche people) or as indigenous peoples (particularly in their struggles to claim national civil rights or build transnational coalitions, as I explain below). Additionally, Latin Ameri can nation-state governments, recently discussing their national projects and adopting new constitutions, have largely resisted the recognition of indigenous peoples as nations because of the perceived juridical com plications and risks of secession that such denominations may entail, although they have sustain heated debates about the matter of indig enous self-determination rights. The adoption of the term n ation may have started to spread, however, as Bolivia, in 2 0 0 9 , adopted a new constitution that changed the name of the country from the Republic of Bolivia to the Plurinational State of Bolivia in recognition of the multi ethnic nature of the country and the enhanced position of its indigenous peoples under the new law.