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CHAPTER FOUR. Ecuador: Ethnicity and Elections
- University of Arizona Press
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Ecuador’s indigenous movement was once widely regarded as one of Latin America’s strongest social movements. Under the direction of CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), the movement managed to terminally delay neoliberal economic reforms in the country throughout the 1990s. In contrast to other countries with a significant indigenous population, such as Bolivia, Ecuador’s indigenous movement managed, at least until quite recently, to avoid extensive intraethnic conflict and unite diverse interests from the coastal, highland, and Amazonian regions (Lucero 2008; Van Cott 2005; Yashar 2005). Since 2003, however, CONAIE and the indigenous movement have lost much of their power to mobilize the masses both in the streets and in the electoral arena. A complex set of factors contributed to the decline of the movement’s power to mobilize, including its participation in a military-supported coup, its illfated electoral alliances, and its perceived shift to a more radical, ethnicist stance. Nonetheless, indigenous activism in Ecuador has paved the way for an alternative economic and political model in the country, though under the leadership of the populist president Rafael Correa (2007–present). Why did Ecuador’s indigenous movement become the lead protagonist of antineoliberal contention in the country? Much of the literature on indigenous movements and democratic political representation in Latin America suggests that the political and economic exclusion engendered by market reforms triggered the politicization of indigenous identity in the region (Bengoa 2000; Lucero 2008; Yashar 2005). Certainly these factors are central to the sudden and unexpected emergence of indigenous peoples CHAPTER FOUR Ecuador Ethnicity and Elections 51 as important new social and political actors. However, such explanations do not fully account for why indigenous-rights claims have translated into broad-based antineoliberal coalitions only in some national contexts and during certain periods of time. This chapter advances the notion that Ecuador ’s historic pattern of popular political incorporation by way of multiclass populist parties generated collective identities and organizational forms that proved relatively easy to cast off in favor of ethnic forms of struggle. The imposition of neoliberalism resulted in popular-sector hardship and grievances that were amplified by the country’s weak and unresponsive political institutions. Indigenous actors in Ecuador were initially successful in interweaving ethnic demands with opposition to neoliberal reforms to lead the powerful new protest movements. The chapter opens with an overview of the changing basis of collective action in Ecuador’s neoliberal era. This first section examines the somewhat muted response of the country’s historically weak labor movement in the face of neoliberal reforms in the 1980s. It then explores the rise of indigenous collective action in the mid-1980s. The mass mobilizations of the 1990s that resulted from the linkage between indigenous and popular movements are examined in detail. The shift to partisan competition on the part of indigenous and popular-sector groups in the mid-1990s and the eventual demobilization that ensued are also addressed. The second section underscores Ecuador’s historic pattern of popular political incorporation and the way in which it permitted the emergence of strong ethnic identities in the country. The final section of the chapter details the new indigenous activism in Ecuador and the challenge of combining protests and proposals. Market Reform and Protest Activity Neoliberalism in Ecuador has been applied in a piecemeal fashion. Ecuador managed to avoid the hyperinflation and high levels of social violence that made draconian measures imperative elsewhere in the region. As a result, a strong consensus on the need for market reform never materialized in Ecuador. Ecuador’s initial experience with neoliberalism came under the administration of President Osvaldo Hurtado (1981–1984), which undertook a series of failed stabilization efforts in response to the 1982 drop in international oil prices and the halt in foreign lending (Conaghan and Malloy 1994). In contrast to the other cases in this volume, initial resistance by Ecuador’s weak urban-labor movement was unimpressive. Figure 4.1 charts the progression of general strikes called by organized labor between the years of 1978 and 2004. The small size and low level of militancy of the nation’s main labor confederation, the United Workers’ 52 chapter four [34.230.84.106] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 14:30 GMT) Front (Frente Unitario de Trabajadores), prevented it from having a central role in politics (Silva 2009, 149). For these same reasons, organized labor was not directly targeted by neoliberal reforms to the extent that it was in other countries...