Begging as a Path to Progress: Indigenous Women and Children and the Struggle for Ecuador's Urban Spaces

Chapter 1: Ecuador: Economic Crisis, Poverty, and Indigenous Identities

12 Chapter one Ecuador Economic Crisis, Poverty, and Indigenous Identities We’re lacking so much here. We’ve been left behind. So we’re migrating. —Baltazar, forty-one years old, Calhuasí, May 13, 2003 Political and Economic Crisis In recent decades Ecuador has experienced vast change, along with an accelerated integration into the global economy. During this time the nation has been characterized by political instability, high income inequality, poverty, and massive debt. Between 1997 and 2007, seven presidents held office—three of whom were overthrown. Meanwhile, gaps between the rich and poor were among the highest in the world (Lind 2005). At the turn of the millennium, close to 60 percent of Ecuadorians lived in poverty, while this figure rose to almost 90 percent among indigenous peoples (siise 2003c). An astonishing nine out of ten indigenous Ecuadorians were unable to meet basic needs for food, housing, health services, and education. Like elsewhere in Latin America, neoliberal restructuring has had a significant impact. Ecuador underwent its first round of structural adjustment programs (saps) in the early 1980s. Among other things, these led to currency devaluation, higher fuel prices, decreased subsidies for staple products, a switch to exportled growth, a rise in interest rates, and a reduction in government spending on health care, education, and social services (Weiss 1997). Ecuador’s political and economic situation became particularly dire between 1995 and 1999. During this four-year period, the nation went to war with Peru, endured various government scandals, suffered a severe El Niño, and observed large-scale crop destruction. Falling world oil prices also beleaguered the nation, particularly since Ecuador’s economy is largely supported by the export of Amazonian oil. Ecuador • 13 By 1999 Ecuador was in the midst of its worst economic crisis in recent history. In an attempt to curb rampant inflation and stabilize the economic situation, the government announced plans to abandon the national currency and adopt U.S. dollars in January 2000. Yet within three weeks of this controversial move, the president was overthrown by an indigenous- and military-led coup. Nevertheless, despite much popular opposition, dollarization proceeded in April 2000. This move drastically reduced real incomes for Ecuadorians. The local currency was fixed at 25,000 sucres to one U.S. dollar; four years prior it had been valued at 3,190 sucres to the dollar (Wibbelsman 2003). The immediate beneficial impacts of dollarization were limited: by 2001 Ecuador’s per capita debt remained the highest in Latin America (Lind 2005). The nation’s neoliberal restructuring programs hit the agricultural sector particularly hard. For small-scale rural agriculturalists, many of whom are indigenous, neoliberal policies effectively blocked access to the key resources needed for continued agricultural production, resources such as land, credit, high quality seeds, and new technologies (Martínez Valle 2003). While the nation ’s neoliberal development policies have focused on large-scale, export-based agriculture (e.g., floriculture), the majority of small-scale rural agriculturalists have been left behind. Consequently, across the nation many indigenous farmers have abandoned their plots to pursue nonagricultural activities—most often in the urban informal sector (see Korovkin 1997). As a result of high levels of rural poverty, Ecuador’s streets are overwhelmed by poor people trying to make a living by selling anything and everything, including umbrellas, newspapers, bootlegged cds, sunglasses, candies, and prepared foods. Young men ply their trades on buses and declare to passengers that they have decided to “earn an honest living selling candies rather than turn to a life of crime.” Mothers board buses with sick children to implore assistance with medical costs. Children are ever visible on the urban streets as shoe shiners, candy vendors, flower sellers, entertainers, and beggars. Ecuador’s Indigenous Youth At the turn of the millennium Ecuador claimed to have the highest rate of working children in all of Latin America (innfa 2001). Although verifying this claim would be difficult, given the problems with collecting accurate data on child labor, the claim itself points to the issue’s magnitude. Owing to higher levels of poverty among native people and considerable racial inequality, indigenous young people forge a significant portion of Ecuador’s working youth.1 Although the economic crisis has had a negative effect across Ecuador, the troubles have been particularly dire for indigenous children. For instance, in 1999, 60 percent 14 • chapter one of the nation’s children lived in poverty. Yet the rates...