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

Chapter 5: Race, Space, and the City: Whitening the Streets of Quito and Guayaquil

92 Chapter five Race, Space, and the City Whitening the Streets of Quito and Guayaquil Quito Limpio: ¡Fuera mendigos, fuera vendedores! [Clean Quito: Out with the beggars, out with the vendors!] —Social worker, Quito, September 2, 2003 XOn top of the harassment indigenous women and children receive on the streets, their livelihoods are increasingly under threat from punitive urban policies designed to cleanse the streets of undesirables. Under the guise of revitalization or renewal, cities around the world are reshaping urban spaces to revive city centers and attract global capital. While the language of renewal may seem celebratory, it is triumphant only for some. In a world where image is everything, the dark side of renewal is that it effectively erases or, rather, annihilates urban spaces for itinerant street vendors, beggars, street youth, and the homeless (Mitchell 1997). Neil Smith (1996) refers to this restructured urban geography as the “revanchist city.” He describes the process as a vengeful, rightwing reaction against the poor by dominant classes that attempt to “tame the wild city” (16) and bring it under their control. To date, much of the discussion concerning the revanchist city has been empirically grounded in the North (Atkinson 2003; Belina and Helms 2003; Hubbard 2004; Macleod 2002; Macleod and Ward 2002; Slater 2004; Smith 1996, 1998, 2001, 2002). In this chapter, I shift the discussion south to focus on the regulation of indigenous street vendors and beggars in Ecuador. I focus particularly on the cities of Quito and Guayaquil, which have taken their cue from the North to implement harsh neoliberal urban policies in the name of tourism. Relying on the imagery of cleansing (Clean Quito!) and modernity (TwentyFirst -Century Guayaquil), these cities’ urban regeneration projects are sanitizing the streets of urban undesirables, many of whom are of indigenous descent. Race, Space, and the City • 93 I explore tensions between the aesthetics of the city versus the aesthetics of the body to argue that the urban renewal discourse of cleanliness and modern progress is projected against the image of the perceived “backward,” “rural,” and “dirty” Indian. Keen to project a purified and sanitized image of the city, Ecuador ’s particular twist on revanchism is through its more transparent engagement with the project of blanqueamiento. Certainly, race plays a crucial role in neoliberal urbanism elsewhere (see, e.g., Fassin 2001; Terrio 2004; Uitermark and Duyvendak 2008); however, within the Ecuadorian context this engagement is much more blatant. In Ecuador’s “modern” view of the nation, “dirty Indians” most certainly do not fit in. In this chapter, I also explore how these concerns are projected onto the bodies of indigenous children. Critics decry the presence of indigenous children on the streets, arguing that the streets are no place for a child. Images of wide-eyed, suffering children are accompanied by articles that implore the need to remove them from the streets. A child’s letter to the editor of El Universo, a newspaper in Guayaquil, reads, “When I travel comfortably in my air conditioned car it causes me great pain to see children the same age as me, twelve, who are suffering and humiliated, who risk their lives to beg from passing cars” (2003). While there are legitimate concerns about the well-being of children on the streets, it would seem that for some this discourse is more about the urban image and the incompatibility of filthy beggars and “suffering” children with tourism. This dialog further intersects with notions of citizenship and fears that these children will become the future leeches of society. Herein, I explore national-level efforts to remove begging children from urban streets, focusing particularly on a federal bill targeting indigent children and adolescents, a police roundup of Quito’s begging children, and a proposed antibegging campaign. While these antibegging actions are put forth on the premise that begging destroys children ’s lives, I argue the opposite: that begging enables children to have opportunities that they never had before. “Saving” Ecuador’s Children: National-Level Politics of Exclusion Ecuador’s Code of Childhood and Adolescence lists begging as a form of child abuse, and many child advocates argue that begging is a violation of children’s rights and exposes them to significant risks on the streets. Some of the commonly cited risks include deteriorating self-esteem and corresponding selfdestructive behavior, health problems, traffic accidents, moral corruption, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. While I advocate for children’s right [18.224.59.231] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 13...