Defending White-Mestizo Invisibility through the Production of Indigenous Alterity: (Un)Marking Race in Ecuador’s Mainstream Press

This article demonstrates the central role that discursively marked Others play in the defense and maintenance of white-mestizo unmarkedness in Ecuadorian public discourse. It does so through an analysis of the circulation of public discourses of race in interviews with indigenous activists published in the newspaper El Comercio from 1992 to 2004. These interview texts provide critical insight into the discursive strategies employed by white-mestizo editors and reporters to mark indigenous voices, thus naturalizing racial inequalities in Ecuadorian politics and society. An analysis of this dynamic underscores the challenges that indigenous interventions face in upsetting this process of naturalization.