History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992

The Ecuadorian Levantamiento Indígena of 1990 and the Epitomizing Symbol of 1992: Reflections on Nationalism, Ethnic-Bloc Formation, and Racialist Ideologies

Norman E. Whitten, Jr. The Ecuadorian Levantamiento Indfgena of 1990 and the Epitomizing Symbol of 1992 Reflections on Nationalism, Ethnic-Bloc Formation, and Racialist Ideologies Inthe mid-1970s I argued for a perspective that could encompass processes called ethnocide and ethnogenesis. These processes were taken to be complementary features in systems of radical change. My focus was on the Canelos Quichua people of Amazonian Ecuador who were among the first indigenous people in the moist tropics of South America to "accept" Christianity (Pierre 1983: 188) and who today sustain a rich indigenous cosmology and cosmogony (see, e.g., Whitten 1976, 1985; Whitten and Whitten 1988, 1993; Sullivan 1988). In the late twentieth century they are also at the forefront of movements of political self-assertion as part of an indigenous nation of native Quichua speakers in ideological alliance with all other indigenous nations. Between mid-April and May 12,1992, the Canelos Quichua people marched from Amazonian Puyo to Andean Quito to claim legal rights to ancient indigenous territory. I explore the Caminata, as the march was called by indigenous participants, in a larger work which is now in preparation.I This essay continues my interest in ethnogenesis: the public, historical emergence of culture (Hill, introduction; Whitten 1996). To express this in technical language, processes of ethnogenesis subsume both the expansion and condensation of contrast sets among and between human aggregates. These processes manifest all of the structural properties of symbols, as set forth by Victor Turner (1973, 1974), including multivocality, condensation, 194 Nationalism, Ethnic-Bloc Formation, Racialist Ideologies associational unification, and polarization. Consciousness of an ethnic-bloc formation, as manifest in public discourse focused on us/other (or uslthem), is fundamental to ethnogenetic processing of aggregate contrast sets into culturally meaningful systems of social movement. Ethnogenetic processes are profoundly symbolic and value laden; however we conceive of them, we must always bear in mind that these cultural processes move people to action. To come to grips with ethnogenesis in the late twentieth century, we must strive for a broad frame of reference that includes nation-state nationalist domination and hegemony, ethnic-bloc nationalism as a culturally constitutive process, strife between peoples over ethnic-bloc agency of development and survival, processes of counterhegemony, and enduring structures of racism and racialism. The resulting frame of reference that encompasses these processes should provide a basis for understanding oppositional processing and patterning of discourse formations and social movements. The general purpose of this contribution is to work toward such a framework. The specific purpose of this essay is to explore, in a preliminary way, dimensions of ideologies of interethnicity manifest in racialist discourse and in collective action. As a conceptual guide to what follows, please consider these two quotations: Whatever else ideologies may be-projections of unacknowledged fears, disguises for ulterior motives, phatic expressions of group solidarity-they are, most distinctively, maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation of collective conscience. (Geertz 1973: 220) Practice ... has its own dynamics-"a structure of the conjuncture"-which meaningfully defines the persons and the objects that are parties to it. And these contextual values, if unlike the definitions culturally presupposed, have the capacity then of working back on the conventional values. Entailing unprecedented relations between the acting subjects, mutually and by relation to objects, practice entails unprecedented objectifications of categories. (Sahlins 1981: 35) Nation-State Sociocultural Structure of Ecuador The Republic of Ecuador in western South America is a modern OPEC/ NOPEC nation that won its independence from colonial rule in 1822 and became in 1830 El Ecuador (the equator). Salient features of its tumultuous history are sustained ethnic clashes and equally sustained domination by a white minority. Mainland Ecuador is divided into three parts, Coast, Sierra (or Andes), and Upper Amazonia (Region Amazonica); the vast majority of its twelve to thirteen million people live in the Coast and Sierra. Ecuador is Nationalism, Ethnic-Bloc Formation, Racialist Ideologies 195 now, as it has been since at least the early nineteenth century and perhaps since the sixteenth century, in the ongoing process of social reproduction and cultural transformation of strongly represented ethnic categories that signify segments ofits ever-expanding population (e.g., Salomon 1986; Whitten 1976, 1981, 1985, 1986 [1974]). To even begin considering these processes, it is necessary to sketch the well-known, highly dynamized concepts of indio and negro as set against the national hypostasis of supremacy of the blanco...