Ethnic Movements and Citizenship in Ecuador

Cooperación Al Desarrollo Y Demandas Étnicas En Los Andes Ecuatorianos: Ensayos Sobre Indigenismo, Desarrollo Rural Y Neoindigenismo. By Víctor Bretón Solo de Zaldívar. (Quito and Lleida, Ecuador: FLACSO and the Universitat de Lleida, 2001. Pp. 278.)

Estado, Etnicidad Y Movimientos Sociales En América Latina: Ecuador En Crisis. Edited by Víctor Bretón and Francisco García. (Barcelona, Spain: Icaria, 2003.)

Andean Entrepreneurs: Otavalo Merchants and Musicians in the Global Arena. By Lynn A. Meisch. (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2002. Pp. 328. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.)

Liberalismo y Temor: Imaginando a Los Sujetos Indígenas en el Ecuador Postcolonial, 1895–1950. By Mercedes Prieto. (Quito, Ecuador: FLACSO and Abya Yala, 2004. Pp. 283.)

Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador. By Suzana Sawyer. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Pp. 312. $21.95 paper.)

Millennial Ecuador. Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and Social Dynamics. Edited by Norman Whitten (Iowa City: Iowa University Press, 2003. Pp. 438. $59.95 cloth, $27.95 paper.)

Perhaps the most significant event in Ecuador in the 1990s was the emergence of ethnic movements. In 1986, after a prolonged period of organization, indigenous nationalities of the three main regions (coast, sierra, and Amazonía) created the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). This organization led several mobilizations and "uprisings" in July 1990, April 1992, June 1994, January and February 1997, January 2000, and January 2001. CONAIE, however, is not the only indigenous organization. Indigenous evangelicals have their own organization, the Federación de Indígenas Evangélicos del Ecuador (FEINE) and their own political party Amauta Jatari (renamed as Amauta Yuyay) that has participated in elections since 1998. Even though FEINE and CONAIE tend to compete for state resources, they have joined forces a few times as they did in the 2001 indigenous uprising.

Indigenous uprisings are forms of collective action in which indigenous communities have blocked major roads and have marched to cities to present their demands. Indigenous organizations have been at the forefront of the opposition to structural adjustment policies. They have also incorporated ethnic claims such as bilingual education and changing national identity from mestizo to multicultural and multiethnic. Indigenous protests were prominent in the removal of two elected presidents from office, Abdalá Bucaram in February 1997 and Jamil Mahuad in January 2000.

Indigenous protests have met with little repression. State officials, including presidents of different ideological orientations, have entered into national dialogues and have accepted some of the groups' claims. The Constitution of 1998, for instance, incorporated collective rights and has changed the character of the nation to multicultural and multiethnic. CONAIE has directed bilingual education programs that target indigenous people and has participated with the government and the World Bank in PRODEPINE (Proyecto de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas y Afroecuatorianos), the first major ethno-development project in the Americas. In addition, indigenous nationalities of the Oriente were granted more than a million hectares of land.

Even though Afro-Ecuadorians have not had the same visibility as indigenous people, the number of black and Afro organizations multiplied in the 1990s. The state and the World Bank have included them in ethno-development projects, and Afro-Ecuadorians are demanding the creation of palenques (named after runaway slave settlements) in their "ancestral" territories in the northern province of Esmeraldas. What explains the emergence of ethnic movements in Ecuador? How can we account for state responses? What are some of the transformations of ethnic relations? Is Ecuador experiencing a renewal of the meanings of citizenship? The books discussed in this review give important clues to answer these questions.

Liberalism and Fear

Mercedes Prieto focuses on the political and academic debates of the elites about "Indians" between 1895 and 1950 to analyze the ambiguities of the liberal universalistic project in a postcolonial nation. This period has been characterized by Andrés Guerrero (2000) as a time in which...