"La división del mundo entre los que se rehúsan a ser comprendidos y los que buscan

darse a entender sin que esto les aporte privilegio alguno": Vindication of Land and

Reason in Saraguro, Ecuador

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the Center for International Studies of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Leah C. Vincent

March 2010

© 2010 Leah C. Vincent. All Rights Reserved.

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This thesis titled

"La división del mundo entre los que se rehúsan a ser comprendidos y los que buscan

darse a entender sin que esto les aporte privilegio alguno": Vindication of Land and

Reason in Saraguro, Ecuador

by

LEAH C. VINCENT

has been approved for

the Center for International Studies by

Amado J. Láscar

Associate Professor of Modern Languages

Jose' A. Delgado

Director, Latin American Studies

Daniel Weiner

Executive Director, Center for International Studies

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ABSTRACT

VINCENT, LEAH C., M.A., March 2010, Latin American Studies

"La división del mundo entre los que se rehúsan a ser comprendidos y los que buscan

darse a entender sin que esto les aporte privilegio alguno": Vindication of Land and

Reason in Saraguro, Ecuador (185 pp.)

Director of Thesis: Amado J. Láscar

As a starting point for exploring regimes of truth, I consider Michael Taussig’s

question: “Can we understand the effects of truth in ruling ideologies without taking their

poetics into account?” I wanted to understand the tensions in Saraguro, Ecuador revealed

in narratives about a water conflict and the underlying historical conditions. My question

was: Why have the mayor and the communities not been able to come to a “meeting

point” despite apparent dialogue? Analyzing the conflict required excavations into local,

national and continental histories that flickered in and out of the stories told to me as

“flowerings” of great cycles of buried history. The conflict is not about the water; instead,

it reflects the nature of conflicts between the State and indigenous people; the inability to

advance a dialogue exposes two historical difficulties: the first is a “regime of truth” that

says Indians are not fully capable of possessing “reason,” and thus are not seen as

“equals” in a dialogue; and second is that the points of contention actually revolve around

territorial sovereignty. I used a discursive-historical and textual analysis, informed by a

decolonial perspective, of my interviews and scholarly literature to explore these two

historical avenues.
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Approved: _____________________________________________________________

Amado J. Láscar

Associate Professor of Modern Languages

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank a great many beings who have contributed not just to the

final product of this thesis, but to the original document I wrote, as well as the entire

process of my university studies and even beyond.

Thank you to Anne Scott and Amanda Harris, two inspiring Spanish professors who

helped early in my college career to cultivate in me a love and interest in the Spanish

language.

Thank you to Betsy Partyka, who was an immense help in the beginning stages of this

thesis, which was a different thesis at that time, especially with my applications for

grants; also for the books she lent me, and the time she has given me answering questions

and providing academic guidance.

Thank you to Anne Porter, friend and confidant, with whom I share a love for Ecuador

and who has been an emotional support not just for my studies on Ecuador but also for

life in general.

Thank you to my colleagues at the Student Writing Center, Susan and Erica, who helped

me in a critical moment. Also to Nuch, who I know understands exactly. Also thank you

to Sara Armstrong at Thesis and Dissertation Services who so patiently answered my

questions.

Thank you especially to the following scholars and writers with whom I have been

dialoguing in the past two years on this thesis, and who have all opened my eyes to new

ways of seeing the world: David Abrams, Josef Estermann, Galo Ramón, Leslie Marmon

Silko, Michel Foucault, Fernando Mires, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Frantz Fanon, Aime
 6

Cesaire, Beatriz Gonzalez Stephan, Andrés Guerrero, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Javier

Ponce, Anibal Quijano, Patricia Seed, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Michael Taussig, Arundhati

Roy.

Thank you to Linda and Jim Belote, whose work increased my understanding of

Saraguro, and who treated me to lunch in Cuenca and have given me advice and support

as a young and overwhelmed researcher.

Thank you to the staff of Alden Library that keeps the second floor open for 24 hours. I

also want to acknowledge all the anonymous glazed-eyed souls that spend their nights in

the library, either for necessity, study, or pleasure, my heart is with you. Tatiana and

Hernan, you both deserve a long break after how hard you have worked these past three

years. Lastly, I would to thank my library companions Matt, and above all, Ray, who on

separate occasions have taught me much about life and have listened with patience to my

intellectual or emotional rants.

Thank you to Sarah West and Alicia Miklos for their enormous help in the Spanish

translations of my citations. The translations in my text are as follows: Sarah, pages 39-

70; me, pages 70-128; Alicia, pages 129-153; me, pages 154-162.

Thank you to the following entities for helping to keep me sane during two months of

intense writing or without whom, this work would simply not be possible: my computer,

music, Casa Cantina, the TV series The Office, the cemetery across the street from my

house, the stars, the film Finding Forrester, and Harry & David’s dark chocolate truffles.

Thank you to my esteemed and brilliant committee members Ghirmai Negash and

George Hartley, who always supported, trusted, and believed in my work; who helped
 7

introduce me to other scholars and ideas; and who held stimulating conversations with

me about these topics.

Thank you so much to all my friends throughout these seven years who have encouraged,

supported and understood me in this time of intense growth. Natalia, Rachel, and Debbie

– I felt strengthened by your presence at OU while I was writing, even though you had all

graduated and left. How much I’ve missed you during this time.

Thank you to my friends who were able to attend my defense – I cannot express enough

my gratitude at your support and physical presence during that very long and challenging

hour and a half, which was the culmination of seven years of study, thinking and

conversing. Thank you to those who I’m sure would have been there had I remembered to

tell you about it, or had you been at OU.

Thank you so much to all of the people I interviewed in Saraguro, most especially to the

people who willingly spent much time with me on more than one occasion to discuss

anything about the water conflict or Saraguro in general. Thank you to those leaders who

provided me with materials about the conflict. Thank you most especially to A.S., who

I’m sure had better things to do than spend the day tromping around the sites with an

unsteady gringa; I very much enjoyed our conversations. Thank you to every Saraguro

individual, all those who have eaten with, danced with, conversed with, and taught me

about life and about their lives.

Thank you above all, to a certain family in Saraguro, for all of the support they have

provided in countless ways, for the meals and conversations, for allowing me to

participate in and learn about their lives, for shelter, for emotional support, for the jokes,
 8

for logistical help, for letting me tag along to social events; my gratitude is expressed

through the tears that come when I think about all the wonderful memories.

Thank you to the two professors at OU that without a doubt have had the most influence

on me: Steve Hays and Amado Láscar. Thank you for all the time you have invested in

my personal and intellectual growth and process of maturation. I absolutely would not

understand the world as I do now without your help; whether I am in Athens or not, you

will always, always, always be present in my life as I continue to grow and mature and

confront new challenges.

Finally, thank you to my family. Thank you to my parents for decisions they made long

ago that have allowed me to pursue university studies and to travel; I cannot express how

grateful I am for the financial possibility to study and travel, I can only hope to use all

this in a way that gives back to the world and the people who have helped me. Thank you

to Aunt Ellie and to Grandpa for their support and inspiration in writing since I was a

child; to my brother and sister for their continuous support, to my Grandma for her

interest and also financial support to my travels, and to my mom for everything.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 5 
List of Figures ................................................................................................................... 11 
Part I: Orientations ............................................................................................................ 12 
Chapter 1: Introduction to Researcher and Research; Methodology ................................ 12 
How I Stumbled into Saraguro ..................................................................................... 12 
How I Stumbled into a Water Conflict ......................................................................... 14 
Frustration, Limitations and Unease ............................................................................. 16 
Briefest Summary of Conflict .................................................................................... 18 
Review of Literature on Water Conflicts ...................................................................... 18 
Water in Saraguro ......................................................................................................... 20 
Understanding the Conflict and Springboard for Analysis ...................................... 23 
Methodology and Fieldwork Methods .......................................................................... 25 
Chapter 2: Review of Literature on Theoretical Perspectives; Methods; Goal ................ 30 
Latin American Subaltern Studies and Decolonial Perspective ................................... 30 
Historical Perspective, Language, Legality .................................................................. 32 
Implicit Social Knowledge and Regimes of Truth ....................................................... 36 
Methods: Genealogy; Goal: Excavation ....................................................................... 40 
Part II: Specifications ........................................................................................................ 42 
Chapter 3: Saraguro .......................................................................................................... 42 
Origins and Cultural Roots ........................................................................................... 45 
Agriculture, Dress, Language ....................................................................................... 46 
A ‘Bitter’ History .......................................................................................................... 50 
Colonization and Catholicism ....................................................................................... 52 
Why Saraguro Is Unique............................................................................................... 62 
Community ................................................................................................................ 66 
Curse You for Learning Me Your Language, Religion and Politics ......................... 71 
Chapter 4: The ‘Water’ Conflict ....................................................................................... 77 
Profiles .......................................................................................................................... 77 
The Narratives............................................................................................................... 78 
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What Has Been Done to Solve It? ................................................................................ 88 

“Whatever he might say, we have all the humanity” .................................................... 90 
“I’m not a mercachifle of water!” ................................................................................. 96 
Part III: Inspections ........................................................................................................... 99 
Chapter 5: Historical Regimes of Truth ............................................................................ 99 
The Poetics and Politics of the Conquest: the Requirimiento ..................................... 100 
Truth Effects of Discourses: Gente de razón and Quasi-Reasonable People ............. 103 
Traveling Ideologies: the Civilizing Mission Goes Rogue ......................................... 106 
Nature’s Paradox: the hombre-niño ....................................................................... 110 
Language and Civilization: How to Know One Is a Man ....................................... 112 
Chapter 6: The State........................................................................................................ 116 
Four Founding Phenomenon ....................................................................................... 117 
In the Beginning Was the Word ................................................................................. 120 
Ud. es poeta y sabe también como Bonaparte que de lo heroico a lo ridículo no hay
más que un paso .......................................................................................................... 122 
The Magic of the State: Liberalism ............................................................................ 127 
Chapter 7: Ecuador’s National Indigenous Movement and the Failed State .................. 132 
The Magic of the State: Ventriloquism....................................................................... 132 
A Glorious Failed Revolution ................................................................................. 134 
Pluri-what? .................................................................................................................. 136 
Failure of State Magic................................................................................................. 142 
In What Saraguro Am I?: the Loss of Semiotic Power: Plurinationalism and
Interculturality ............................................................................................................ 147 
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly
to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:5) ................................. 156 
Chapter 8: Summary, Reflections, Limitations............................................................... 159 
Limitations .............................................................................................................. 167 
Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 171 
Appendix A: An open letter from the mayor to Saraguro. ......................................... 180 
Appendix B: The Requirement. Text found in Seed (Ceremonies 69). ...................... 183 
Appendix C: IRB Forms ............................................................................................. 184
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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Saraguro about 20 minutes outside the town center by bus ...............................16

Figure 2: Sites in the microcuenca Chuchuchir that affect the communities ....................22

Figure 3: Saraguro location in Ecuador .............................................................................43

Figure 4: Taita Puklla in the background .......................................................................... 43

Figure 5: The town center ..................................................................................................44

Figure 6: Community of Lagunas ......................................................................................48

Figure 7: Saraguro dress, during an Inti Raymi celebration ............................................. 49

Figure 8: The town of Saraguro .........................................................................................51

Figure 9: Site of the ditches for the water pipes ............................................................... 82

Figure 10: Battle over the hoses.........................................................................................84

Figure 11: "Now resentment won't allow for a solution." One of the water sites..............85

Figure 12: The civilizing mission in Saraguro: a painting outside a church ...................124
 12

PART I: ORIENTATIONS

“Mama kuchamanta kukukunami shamukrinkuna. Sira ñawi, millma shimi, hillay

churarishka, illapa shina ninanta suni tutuwan lansashpa, chilpishka runakuna shinami
rikurimunkakuna. Chay ninapi takarik runataka wañuchishpami shamunkkakuna.1
-excerpt from a Saraguro folk tale, “It Grew Dark in the Middle of the Day”

If they could agree on nothing else, they could all agree the land was theirs. Tribal
rivalries and even intervillage boundary disputes often focused on land lost to the
European invaders. When they had taken back all the lands of the indigenous people of
the Americas, there would be plenty of space, plenty of pasture and farmland and water
for everyone who promised to respect all beings and do no harm. ‘We are the army to
retake tribal land. Our army is only one of many all over the earth quietly preparing. The
ancestor’s spirits speak in dreams. We wait. We simply wait for the earth’s natural forces
already set loose, the exploding fierce energy of all the dead slaves and dead ancestors
haunting the Americas. We prepare, and we wait for the tidal wave of history to sweep us
along. People have been asking questions about ideology. Are we this or are we that? Do
we follow Marx? The answer is no! No white man politics! No white man Marx! No white
man religion, no nothing until we retake this land! We must protect Mother Earth from
destruction.
- from Almanac of the Dead (Silko 518)

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCHER AND RESEARCH;

METHODOLOGY

How I Stumbled into Saraguro

The first time I “met” Saraguro I was on a study abroad program in Ecuador and

we went there for the weekend; I left crying. The weekend was part of a community

tourism network in which we visited several communities, watched a ritual, and ate,

listened to music from Saraguro and danced. I don’t know what it was but something

called my attention so strongly that I said to myself I had to go back. The strength of

whatever it was that called me is shown in the fact that I actually did go back; there are

1
“From the sea will come some monsters in the form of men, bearded and pale and
dressed in iron, that dismount from their animals in parts and vomit fire through long
tubes, fire like the lightning that kills whomever so touches it” (Carrión, translation from
the Spanish mine).
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many things in life I have said I would “go back to,” and haven’t. I went back for three

weeks when I had a break from my studies in Cuenca, and using the connections from my

institution of study with the community tourism network, I got in touch with the

foundation that spear-headed the program. I explained to them that I had no project or

skills to offer them; all I wanted to do was learn about their lives. Over three weeks I

stayed with four different families in two communities, and I tagged along with various

people working at the foundation. My Spanish was good enough to understand almost

everything, although I rarely was able to express myself as I wished. In listening to them,

I realized that the whole reason why I learned Spanish, or why one would learn any

language, was to begin to understand other histories, cultures, and ways of explaining and

living in the world. One night the father of the family I was staying with regaled me with

four stories from Saraguro. At the end of each story, he asked me what the moral was,

and each time I just stared at him blankly. The meaning of the stories was particular to a

way of thinking that was foreign to mine, and that simply didn’t translate to my

familiarity with the world. These stories were not only my introduction to the cultural

history of Saraguro, but also to the difficulty of cross-cultural understanding. But despite

language and cultural barriers, I did discover what it was that had attracted me to

Saraguro in the first place. In one of my conversations with that same father, we were

talking about the state of the world, and he commented quite simply, “Why would I

pollute the air if I need it to breathe?” Life in Saraguro made sense to me, compared to

other forms of life I had seen or even lived myself. I had to return to Cuenca to continue
 14

my studies, but I would visit Saraguro on the weekends to continue learning and

conversing, until I had to leave Ecuador.

When I began my graduate studies, I wanted an excuse to return to Saraguro,

which is why I chose to write my thesis about them. I went there for a month and a half in

the summer of 2008 with the intention of studying the effects of immigration. However,

to do this well would have required much more time than my studies allowed, and I soon

found myself frustrated and in need of a more practical topic. During a spell of insomnia,

I watched a video of Arundhati Roy’s speech “Come September.” Two ideas caught my

attention, which I noted in my journal: “relationship between power and powerlessness”

and “relationship between citizens and the state –who is the state? Coca-cola.” I decided

to change my topic to the relationship between the State and its “indigenous citizens,” as

represented locally by the municipality of Saraguro and the surrounding indigenous

communities. While I would certainly not describe this relationship as one between

“power and powerlessness,” there is a long history of local abuse of political power

(characteristic of municipalities all over Ecuador). To investigate this subject would

greatly facilitate my research, as I could focus on the relationship between the

municipality and community leadership, which would be a much smaller number of

people and more easily accessible to me.

How I Stumbled into a Water Conflict

I decided to interview the mayor, seven council members, and the presidents and

vice presidents of the eight rural communities closest to the urban center.2 After I began

2
“Urban” refers to around 3,100 inhabitants.
 15

the interviews, a conflict regarding the water repeatedly appeared in response to my

open-ended question: What has been the relationship between the municipality and the

indigenous communities? Thinking that the water conflict (which was apparently

between the municipality and three communities) would serve as the most recent

manifestation of this relationship, I narrowed my focus to the principal actors in the

conflict, which consisted mainly of current or former indigenous community leaders,

members of the municipality, and the mayor.3 At this point, I had limited time in

Saraguro but I was able to hear twelve narratives of what happened, as well as gather

materials such as proposals, scientific studies, open letters, the municipality’s project

plan, etc. However, I knew that two weeks were not enough to understand a conflict that

appeared so complicated, and I made an effort to return to Saraguro. I later spent a week

in which I returned to converse with several of the principal leaders involved in the

conflict, as well as the mayor, and soon after, spent another month in which I was able to

3
At the time, 5 of 7 council members were blanco-mestizos, and the mayor is a blanco-
mestizo. I have chosen the term blanco-mestizo (white-mestizo) or mestizo for this paper.
‘Blanco-mestizo’ is a referent with a strong cultural component. A mestizo is of ‘mixed
race,’ traditionally (eighteenth century) used to refer to a Spaniard mating with an Indian
woman (Belote 20). Linda Belote explains that in the 1960s and 70s, the term mestizo
was not applied to adults in Saraguro, since the ‘white race’ and the ‘indigenous race’
denoted culture, and no one was a ‘mix’ of cultures, one was either ‘white’ (blanco) or
‘indigenous’ (indígena), with a range of local ethnic terms applied to either group. As I
explain later, “laichu” is the Saraguro term for the mestizos of the town center (and has
been for a while). The situation has changed slightly, probably as an influence of a more
‘national’ consciousness since the late 1980s and 1990s, and ‘mestizo’ is now used in
Saraguro, although when referring specifically to Saraguro town whites, I would hear
‘blanco,’ ‘blanco-mestizo,’ or ‘laichu.’ Galo Ramón has argued for the necessity of new
decolonizing categories such as ‘indomestizo’ and ‘afromestizo’ because ‘blanco-
mestizo’ values the colonial root (Plurinacionalidad 140).
 16

converse with a couple leaders I had not previously met, as well as take trips to a few of

the streams which were the sites of the conflict.

Frustration, Limitations and Unease

The research process has been incredibly frustrating because I feel I cannot

understand Saraguro without actually being there. David Abram, in his book The Spell of

the Sensuous, states that, “In contrast to the apparently unlimited, global character of the

technologically mediated world, the sensuous world – the world of our direct, unmediated

interactions – is always local” (266). Saraguro, in the southern Andean mountains of

Ecuador, is definitely a different world than the flat Cleveland suburbs where I grew up

(see Figure 1).

Figure 1. About 20 minutes outside the town center by bus.

Walking around the hilly campo of Saraguro, I was often asked if I knew how to

walk in the mountains, and jokes were told of unsteady gringos stumbling along the
 17

paths. I was told that parents would send children to pastor the sheep or tend to the

cornfields in the cerros (hills) so that they would learn how to walk. I knew that to

understand Saraguro, it was necessary to know its local landscape, to be familiar with the

mountain Puklla, the lakes and the rivers that form an integral part of the mythology of

the Saraguros. Furthermore, it was frustrating to be away from Saraguro once I realized

that politics are made day-to-day. Once, on a Sunday night, I was told that one of the

communities was going to going to take over the municipality Tuesday morning to

demand their participatory budget. Tuesday morning I showed up in the town center at 7

a.m. and waited for an hour; children were walking to school, stores were opening – it

was business as usual. Apparently the leaders had held a meeting with the mayor the

night before and had decided not to take over the municipality. As one leader said to me,

“what goes to bed as one thing, wakes up as another.” Also in the time that I was gone, an

unprecedented election took place in which the incumbent mayor ran against the

indigenous man who had been his vice-mayor. The indigenous ticket had succeeded in

uniting for the first time the two strongest indigenous organizations in Saraguro, which

are divided according to national divisions within the indigenous movement. The mayor,

who changed parties to align himself with President Rafael Correa’s party, won at the

cantonal level, but I was told many stories of fraud.

Thus, at both the ecological and political level, I often felt frustrated that I did not

know Saraguro as well as I wanted to. It is easy for me to talk about Saraguro to people

who have never been there as if I were an expert. But the more I read about Saraguro, and

the more time I spend there, the more I realize how much I do not know about this local
 18

world. This experience also made me reconsider any research I have ever read – it is

important to realize that the product of research about another place is necessarily limited

by the researcher’s own ignorance of that place (unless s/he is a local). Any text is

necessarily a limited vision of the whole. I can say though, that after a relationship of

almost four years, and a total of almost three months actually living there, Saraguro is no

less magical to me. I do not mean to be the misty-eyed Westerner who romanticizes an

indigenous culture as evidence of some primitive-ideal past. The Saraguros are very real

and present to me; yet I cannot deny that even after witnessing the inevitable

imperfections, contradictions, and conflicts that exist any society, the culture of the

Saraguros still holds me in a spell.

Briefest Summary of Conflict

The simplest version of the water conflict is this: The mayor wanted to improve

the system that brings water to the town center because currently many problems exist

that cause it to come out as “chocolate” water during the rainy season. He obtained some

funds in 2006, and he started the digging for the pipes in land that belongs to the

indigenous communities, without first consulting the communities. The communities

found out, forced the mayor to stop the project, and since then no number of meetings,

reunions, or proposals have been able to resolve the conflict to this day.

Review of Literature on Water Conflicts

Access to water is certainly a world-wide conflict. Scholars in the twentieth and

twenty-first centuries such as Dávila-Poblete, have recognized that water is a looming

crisis because of “overexploitation of groundwater resources and contamination of

 19

surface water. All world cities face inadequate water supplies, and in many rural areas,

water for production and consumption is insufficient. Chronic water shortages afflict

more than eighty nations, and at least 40 percent of the world’s population lives with

insufficient water” (qtd. in Bennett 2).

The literature also recognizes that water has become a site of contested power,

control, and citizenship (Bennett; Castro; Wickstrom; Olivera). A few of the problems in

Ecuador include: changing rainfall patterns which bring severe droughts and alters crop

cycles; oil and mining; and privatization of water services, in which contractual

violations have led to water cut-offs of senior citizens and low-income residents, public

health problems such as respiratory problems, skin rashes, asthma, and diarrhea due to

lack of wastewater treatment, and others (Grusky). Apart from large urban area problems

like these, rural areas are disproportionately affected by huge gaps in inequality.

According to the Ecuadorian constitution, municipalities are responsible for the provision

of water and sanitation services in areas under their jurisdiction, including the rural areas.

In practice, services in rural areas have largely been provided through community and

project initiatives, usually with no linkages to the corresponding municipal

administration. Management and operations in these utilities and municipalities has been

inefficient (“Ecuador”).

International lending institutions, world water committees, and mainstream

environmental actors maintain that the global water crisis is “a result of the failure of

state management and thus may only be deflected by introducing market mechanisms in

resource management” (Ahlers 53). The solution to the crisis is proposed through the
 20

neoliberal model, which is characterized by unregulated markets, the reduction of the

state apparatus, and legal reforms that favor private entrepreneurs and foreign investment

(Dávila-Poblete and Rico 31). However, the imposition of such a model has only further

complicated the crisis by producing not just technical but social conflicts as well. Those

involved in water conflicts have been divided into contending cultural groups or even

simply “protagonists” and “antagonists” (Castro; Wickstrom). These categories represent

different cultural perspectives, broadly bifurcated between water as an essential resource

or as a commodity (Ahlers; Bennett; Castro; Wickstrom). For example, Wickstrom’s

study of water conflicts in Chile, Bolivia, and Mexico introduces the subject like this:

“Indigenous communities, governments, and transnational business represent conflicting

cultural groups fighting ‘water wars’ over meanings related to water” (287). In the last

two decades, new entities have entered the water battlefield, “imposing market rules and

regulations on the communities, externalizing water control and shaping the internal

‘needs’ that counteract collective action and community survival” (Gelles and Boelens

138). Furthermore, “The effects of water trading have contributed to rural poverty and

community disintegration, as well as to environmental degradation” (Ahlers 70).

Water in Saraguro

As mentioned in the literature above, the municipality of Saraguro is responsible

for water projects to the whole canton. Without the resources, however, this is a large

burden, and the communities in Saraguro constructed their systems for tap water with the

financial help of national and international organizations in the second half of the

twentieth century. Once these systems were constructed, the communities themselves fix
 21

any problems with them and do routine maintenance in mingas (communal labor). The

communities are essentially completely detached from the urban sector system, since they

have also established their own tariffs, collected by the cabildos (the formal body of

leadership in the communities). The urban sector, however, has little to do with their own

water system. The municipality contracts technicians for installation and maintenance.

Currently, water is taken from four sites, which are found within the land of three

communities: Ilincho, Lagunas, and Gunudel,4 and brought by pipe to three small

treatment plants and then pumped into town (see Figure 2). During the summer (dry

season), there are no problems with the town’s water. However, the sites of withdrawal

are located in a rural area and receive a lot of cattle traffic, and furthermore are low-lying

areas and thus prone to flooding during the winter (November to April). The water

treatment plants are not sufficient to combat the heavy sedimentation caused by flooding,

and thus water in the town’s taps comes out like “chocolate” during the rainy season. In

order to improve the quality of the water, it was proposed to move the sites of withdrawal

higher up so as to avoid the heavy cattle traffic and the low-lying land prone to flooding.

The water would then pass clean through the pipes to the treatment plants and into town.

4
A fourth community is affected because individual comuneros (community members)
own pasture in these areas, but as a community they have not been involved in the
ongoing conflict.
 22

Figure 2. Sites in the microcuenca Chuchuchir that affect the communities.

Thus, the actual water system certainly presents a series of technical problems.

However, I am convinced that the conflict in Saraguro actually has little to do with the

nature of water conflicts in the literature listed above; or rather, while it may share some

general characteristics, the heart of the matter is otherwise. The narratives and my

conversations expose dozens of other conflicts: the involvement of an indigenous

foundation to mediate between the municipality and the communities; disputes over

management and/or participation in the local water provider company EMAPASA, and

the imposition of tariffs; the threat by the mayor to withhold the budgeted money for

indigenous festivals if they did not allow the project; the announcement by the

municipality on the radio that a proposal had been signed when in fact it had not;

accusations that “certain indigenous leaders” had “interests” in managing the water; pine
 23

trees, etc. The conflict has remained unresolved even after meetings, assemblies,

scientific studies, and proposals from all sides. The last proposal (2008) created by the

indigenous leaders was signed by all the leaders but never turned in to the municipality.

When I asked why, I was told that by that time they had lost all trust in the mayor. When

I spoke with the mayor, he said he didn’t care if it was resolved or not; if not during his

term, it would be solved when someone else was mayor.

Understanding the Conflict and Springboard for Analysis

After the first group of interviews I did, I found it almost impossible to

understand the conflict. A year later, I was able to glean some insights by further

conversations, but I did not feel I could finally begin to explain it to myself until a year

and a half later, at the end of 2009. By that time, I finally felt more or less comfortable

with my understanding of the history, culture, and politics of Saraguro, and I had listened

to my interviews repeatedly to put together the pieces. It was clear the water conflict is

not about the water itself. As one leader said to me, “The conclusion was that this

problem of the water was a space to take back some unsatisfied necessities and that the

municipality was in some form to blame for these dissatisfactions.”5 If I were to

understand what the indigenous wanted to reclaim, it would be necessary to understand

the historical precedents for their claims. Upon close examination of the narratives, one

can see that they are laced through with complaints that do indeed have a traceable

genealogy. The discourse surrounding the water conflict consists of different narratives

constructed by the mayor, the council members, the indigenous community leaders,

5
I have chosen to keep my interviewees anonymous for their protection.
 24

members of the mediating organization, and other individuals who became involved.

Thus, in my original proposal, I intended to use a decolonial perspective6 and narrative

theory as analytical entry points in order to analyze the discourses. I wanted to

understand the kinds of tensions in Saraguro revealed in narratives about the water

conflict and the historical conditions underlying these tensions. Throughout my

investigations, I realized that discursive references are connected to the dominant

narrative of history in Ecuador and “Latin America”: discovery, conquest, colonial rule,

criollo independence, and the construction of the modern Nation-State. Other discursive

elements correspond to other memories, other languages, and other histories that exist but

that have been marginalized and, it must be emphasized, devalued by the dominant

narrative. While the dominant narratives operate on or within the logic of coloniality,7

the marginalized operate on the level of the colonial wound.8 I proposed that the current

water conflict in Saraguro reflects three historical sites of tension: (i) the internal tension

within the rhetoric of modernity/logic of coloniality, which centers around the split

between the signifier and the signified or the discrepancy between word and deed; (ii) the

tension caused by modernity/coloniality’s collision with and subsuming of other

paradigms in what is today Ecuador, which centers around the historical effects of the

conquest and the European system that was imposed on a native one; (iii) the tension

6
A decolonial perspective steps outside the paradigm of coloniality/modernity and listens
to those who articulate criticisms from outside the established locus of enunciation. It
involves recognizing the impact (past and present) of the colonial difference and valuing
those perspectives, memories, and histories that were silenced by it.
7
Coloniality is a paradigm that unveils an embedded logic that enforces control,
domination, and exploitation disguised in the language of salvation, progress,
modernization, and being good for every one (Mignolo Idea).
8
See Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
 25

produced within other paradigms as a result of this collision and subsuming, which

reflects two different responses of the colonized – either assimilation or resistance (Herr

141; Collins and Blot 129). I also suggested that indigenous peoples cannot decolonize

while working within the political, economic, social, and linguistic structures maintained

by modernity/coloniality.9 One year later, with the research I did, it is not hard to show

evidence of all these tensions in the history of the conquest of Spanish America as well as

in the history of Saraguro, which in themselves would each comprise a book. However,

just because the conflict reflects these historical tensions does not explain why it has not

been solved. Thus, my question became: if so much effort has been made to look for

solutions over the years, why have none been found? Why have the mayor and the

communities not been able to come to a “meeting point” despite apparent dialogue?

Methodology and Fieldwork Methods

I wanted to understand these questions, and whether they might reflect a larger

historically-current condition of indigenous peoples. With all these antecedents, my

research was therefore a result of both my personal experiences in Saraguro and my

“intellectual curiosity.” As Lofland et al. explain, “At times, fieldstudies may emerge

from personal experiences and opportunities that provide access to social settings; at

9
This statement is problematic for several reasons. First is that “decolonize” is a vague
term, and one I did not define in my proposal, and which I will not define here since it is
outside the scope of this work. Second, as other scholars have argued, it is very important
to consider the agency of indigenous peoples who appropriate the systems and discursive
means of the colonizer to achieve their own goals or to subvert these same systems
(Collins and Blot). Despite hybrid identities, the thesis of Ngugi wa Thiong’o that
discusses the colonized mind is obviously vigilant even in successful hybridities. But
despite these problems, as I will show, this statement does actually reflect the proposals
of the indigenous peoples in Ecuador.
 26

other times, they develop out of curiosity that is spurred by readings, classes, and

academic conversations. Ultimately, fieldwork germinates when the researcher brings

both together, engaging research settings and subjects with an intellectual and analytic

agenda” (9). My methodology became a mixture of case study, ethnographic study, and

narrative analysis under the umbrella of qualitative research, which “attempts to

understand and make sense of phenomena from the participant’s perspective” (Merriam

6). I was only interested in the current experience of people in Saraguro, which made it a

bounded system and thus a case study. I also believed that I could not understand

anything about Saraguro without understanding the Saraguro people, and considered it

absolute necessary to read books about their culture and to participate in social events.

This participation informs my understanding of the conflict itself, which makes this

research also ethnographic. Lastly, since my analysis required in-depth attention to the

stories from my interviews and other conversations, narrative analysis was an obvious

element.

When I undertook a “research” project in Saraguro, I felt my relationship with the

people change. As a researcher, I felt very uncomfortable approaching people with what I

felt was an ulterior motive. As Lofland et al. explain, “Whether you are using the method

of intensive interviewing or of participant observation, you are asking people to grant

access to their lives, their activities, their minds, their emotions” (43). Furthermore, I was

also sensitive to the broader sociological conditions which place me, a white person from

the United States, in an economically and epistemologically privileged position. Linda

Tuhiwai Smith’s book, Decolonizing Methodologies, while intended mainly for

 27

indigenous researchers, was essential to help me understand what research meant in

indigenous contexts and to indigenous peoples. Her work outlines a comprehensive

perspective on the history and effects of Western research on indigenous peoples, the

ways in which research has continued colonization, and problems for both indigenous

and non-indigenous researchers. In her introduction, she explains that, “the term

‘research’ is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism…It is a history

that still offends the deepest sense of our humanity” (1). While ‘indigenous peoples’

names a group that is incredibly diverse in their social, cultural, political and economic

elements, “They share experiences as peoples who have been subjected to the

colonization of their lands and cultures, and the denial of their sovereignty, by a

colonizing society that has come to dominate and determine the shape and quality of their

lives, even after it has formally been pulled out” (7). As a researcher, it was necessary to

understand this collective experience of indigenous peoples, and that “Research is one of

the ways in which the underlying code of imperialism and colonialism is both regulated

and realized” (Smith 7). Smith poses several fundamental questions for researchers:

“Whose research is it? Who owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who will benefit

from it? Who has designed its questions and framed its scope? Who will carry it out?

Who will write it up? How will its results be disseminated?” (10). With these questions in

mind, as well as what I already understood about reciprocity in Saraguro culture, I knew

it was necessary to carefully explain my purposes and assure them that my research

would not just stay in my university but would return to them. My approach to my

interview encounters encompasses the three presentational strategies given by Lofland et

 28

al.: a nonthreatening demeanor, acceptable incompetence, and selective competence. The

authors explain that the naturalistic researcher is “a nonthreatening learner” (70):

A naturalistic investigator, almost by definition, is one who does not

understand. She or he is ‘ignorant’ and needs to be ‘taught.’ This role of

watcher and asker of questions is the quintessential student role…the

investigator who assumes the role of socially acceptable incompetent is

likely to be accepted. In being viewed as relatively incompetent (although

otherwise cordial and easy to get along with), the investigator easily

assumes the role of one who is to be taught. (69 emphasis original)

Of course, this role was not so much a strategy as a matter of fact. I needed to be taught

about the water conflict since I knew absolutely nothing about it. I also needed to be

taught about a number of other histories related to relationships with the municipality. At

the same time, in order to demonstrate respect, I needed to employ cultural norms and

show that I was familiar with Saraguro culture. I furthermore needed to be willing to

share about myself, since cultural exchange is important to the Saraguros.

Admittedly, I often felt unsure if I was demonstrating this respect, since learning

the appropriate greetings, phrases, and body movements had to be a conscious effort. As

Michael Taussig says about fieldwork, “All that fine work society has performed over the

years since we were born, orienting and adapting us to physical and cultural realities,

shaping our sense of self and bodily being – all of that is shaken and, in the process, new

ways of being invite us to be” (What Color 98). Almost every one of my interviewees

was incredibly helpful and willing; several of them I returned to repeatedly and we
 29

developed a relationship of trust and conversational exchange. Before beginning my

fieldwork, I had the privilege of meeting Linda and Jim Belote in Cuenca, Ecuador, by

coincidence. They were Peace Corps members in Saraguro from 1962-1964 and

continued research in Saraguro, both completing their dissertations on Saraguro in the

1970s, and have continued to publish and be involved in the communities for decades.

Whenever I meet anyone new (over the age of 30) in Saraguro, I am inevitably asked if I

know Linda. The two anthropologists gave me the advice that the Saraguros for the most

part are very open, and that individuals are given the freedom to construct their own

social networks (a person can be friends with two people who are not friends with each

other). However, while the Saraguros would happily indicate an individual to me, I had to

introduce myself. This advice was incredibly helpful. I used my social connections

already established to obtain the names and phone numbers or offices of community

leaders; for the mayor and council members it was as simple as walking into the

municipal offices and requesting an appointment or phone number. For most of my

interviews, I called or showed up at an office, introduced myself and my purpose, and

requested an interview. Apart from my interviews, my daily interactions with the family I

lived with and my participation in social events and fiestas introduced me to the cultural

norms and values of the Saraguros, and also facilitated my understanding of their history

and politics.
 30

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON THEORETICAL

PERSPECTIVES; METHODS; GOAL

This chapter very briefly reviews the broad current trend in decolonial theories in

Latin American Postcolonial or Subaltern Studies. These theories are necessary not only

for a global context in general, but they apply specifically to the circumstances in which I

was working. Furthermore, the claims to legitimacy by the Spaniards have remained

embedded in legal cultures today; thus, a historical tracing of such "regimes of truth"

reveal the nature of struggles today.

Latin American Subaltern Studies and Decolonial Perspective

For the analysis of my research and interviews, I placed myself within a historical

and decolonial perspective. Numerous Latin American postcolonial or subaltern studies

scholars have expressed criticism of postcolonial studies that ignore the role of Latin

America in the foundation of the modern world system and only focus on the postcolonial

struggles of British and French colonialism beginning in the eighteenth century (Castro-

Gomez, Castro-Klaren, Coronil, Dussel, Hulme, Maldonado-Torres, Mazzotti, Mendieta,

Mignolo, Pratt, Quijano, Walsh). These authors argue that the beginning of the modern

capitalist system was the sixteenth century, when the Atlantic trade circuit opened and

colonial powers implemented a system that required the domination and exploitation of

native lands and labors for the enrichment of Europe. This same system, with minor

changes, has continued to this day. The economic and political interests of the colonial

powers were accompanied by a “rhetoric of modernity,” whose discourse relies on a

“logic of coloniality.” With the passage of time, neither the logic nor the rhetoric gave
 31

way to anything new, and despite structural adjustments, “the same logic was maintained;

only power changed hands” (Mignolo The Idea 7). One of these “changes” came in the

form of the creation of the nation-state, as described in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined

Communities, in which he “delineates the processes by which the nation came to be

imagined, and, once imagined, modeled, adapted and transformed” (141). The nation-

states of Latin America came to be imagined and created by Creole intellectuals who

looked primarily to France as a model for their independent republics. Consequently, this

placed Creole “Latin America” under Europe’s hegemony of epistemological enunciation

and continued to suppress indigenous and African ideologies (Mignolo The Idea). What

recognition there is for the existence of other ways of living is described either in terms

of ownership, or of barbarism that must be civilized. The native peoples of the land fit

nowhere into the imaginary of the Latin American nation-states; if they were to be

included, they needed to adapt to the idea of “civilization” of Creole elites. From the

perspective of indigenous peoples, then, “independence” meant a new form of

colonialism.

Many other scholars (Mignolo, Quijano, Dussel, Castro-Gomez, Maldonado-

Torres, Cusicanqui, Pacari) demonstrate how the Spanish conquest and subsequent

colonizations – both colonial and modern – have contributed significantly to the

classification of Other paradigms, histories, and cultures as inferior. Despite the West’s

perspective of linear time and progress, history certainly repeats itself and heavily

influences the present. With this in mind, analyzing the water conflict in Saraguro

requires excavations into local, national and continental histories that flickered in and out
 32

of the stories told to me. Michael Taussig points out this concept in Robert Randall’s

essay on Collur Riti, the Andean festival of the Star of the Snow. In a literal sense, “great

cycles of history are said to be buried underground from where, through ‘flowerings’ into

the present they may exert a powerful influence on contemporary life” (Shamanism 229).

These great cycles include both communal memories of ancestor ways as well as macro-

systemic institutions like colonialism. In a figurative way, buried within the narratives of

the Saraguro water conflict are stories of conquest and the resulting incoherencies that

create both internal and external conflicts at the individual, community, and institutional

level.

Historical Perspective, Language, Legality

Patricia Seed’s concept of an American Pentimento also illustrates these

flowerings into the present. The term pentimenti refers to the original lines or painting of

an artist’s work that grow visible over time as the covering pigment becomes transparent

(11). Seed argues that,

Over the centuries, and particularly in the aftermath of independence,

national law codes and administrative and judicial decisions have

attempted to obliterate traces of the original sixteenth- and seventeenth-

century approaches to native peoples by overwriting them. Yet as the

twentieth century progressed, the outlines of these original colonial

intentions reappeared, becoming visible through contemporary

codes…underneath the subsequently layered-on regulations governing

 33

natives’ access to natural resources can often be seen vestiges of the

original colonizer’s economic aims – a colonial pentimento. (11)

In her book, she traces the legal codes that were employed by colonial powers to justify

their appropriation of native lands and souls, codes which still exist today. This

continuation in former colonies of Spain and others manifested itself primarily in the

language of politics and law, since “The political language of all these independent states

was (and still is) that of the original colonizers” (Seed American 164). Thus, citizens of

European descent in the Americas

[O]ften instinctively share many of the historical and cultural attitudes the

colonizers brought with them. Such unself-consciously shared convictions

remain embedded not simply in language but in popular cultures as well as

in legal systems. And these usually mechanically repeated expressions in

law and popular culture today provide continuing stumbling blocks to

natives’ ownership and management of the same natural resources that the

original colonists targeted throughout the Americas. (Seed American 7)

Just as colonizing practices and assumptions about natives are embedded in the dominant

(especially legal) languages of today, marginalized languages reflect histories of being

colonized. Smith explains that, “'The talk' about the colonial past is embedded in our

political discourses, our humour, poetry, music, storytelling and other common sense

ways of passing on both a narrative of history and an attitude about history” (19). These

narratives about history are local and tell the history of how imperialism was experienced

locally. Strategies of decolonization take on different forms according to the various

 34

ways colonial endeavors are carried out. As Smith asserts, “The specificities of

imperialism help to explain the different ways in which indigenous peoples have

struggled to recover histories, lands, languages and basic human dignity. The way

arguments are framed, the way dissent is controlled, the way settlements are made, while

certainly drawing from international precedents, are also situated within a more localized

discursive field” (22). Regionally speaking, in Spanish America, imperialism was carried

out by text and literacy (Seed Ceremonies). Collins and Blot argue that,

It is the legacy of this conflict between the alphabetic literacy of the

Spaniards and the various literacies of the ancient civilizations of

Mesoamerica that provides the cultural backdrop to the present struggle to

sustain ethnic identity in the face of the powerful forces of nationhood

carried out overwhelmingly through educational institutions by means of

language and literacy. In other words, language and literacy are not only

the means by which the battle is fought, they are the site of the battle

itself. (131)

This is clearly seen in Ecuador at the national level, in the struggles for bilingual

education and for inclusion of the concept of “plurinationality” into the constitution. In

Saraguro as well, the flurry of proposals, letters, and press bulletins as much as spoken

narratives reveal through alphabetic literacy the historical tensions.

Reflecting Mignolo’s idea of the logic of coloniality and discourse of modernity,

Collins and Blot affirm that “The colonizing effort was all too often written not as a

history of capitalist expansion, but as a massive, entirely laudable, educational enterprise

 35

bringing enlightenment and religion to those left behind in the civilizational process”

(121). Michael Taussig explores how such enterprises were narrated by those European

travelers and explorers who rode on the backs of Indians through dangerous mountainous

and jungle terrain. These travelers sometimes deemed their form of transportation as a

sacrifice, not only because of the “arduous” travel itself, but also in the sacrifice they

make to bring “civilization” to barbarians and savages. Taussig argues that their

“laudable” enterprise was “[c]arried down through the millennia of Western tradition” as

a “great moral epic of descent and salvation” (Shamanism 334). Descent and salvation

became an imagery that,

[L]aminated by this confluence of historical streams,…has remained

engraved in the imagination and in the magic of mountains to the present

day. In both their actions and in the renderings of those actions by

chroniclers, the conquerors of the Andes…were in their turn conquered by

this force and lost in its magnificent appeal, their hands awash in the blood

of its victims. Down through the centuries, the historiography of the

conquest has been beholden to the same narrative, and the mythology of

the conquest still awaits its conquest. (335)

I believe this other conquest will not come all at once, all of a sudden, but rather it is

contested daily in the struggle of marginalized peoples to assert and have others validate

their own mythologies. Thus, Smith sums up the challenge: it is always “to demystify, to

decolonize” (16).
 36

Thus, Smith, Seed, Taussig, Collins and Blot all show how present day struggles

are grounded in the historical roots of imperialism, and the different forms it took locally

as colonial and modern institutions. Legally, culturally, politically, and economically, the

rhetoric of coloniality/modernity continues today embedded in the discourse of elites and

even in the quotidian language of people, including indigenous peoples, who use the

colonial language. In the context of Spanish America, many other scholars (see above)

indicate the significance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a starting point for

projects of decolonization. For these reasons, the discursive analysis of the water conflict

in Saraguro required a strong historical component, and one that could at least be traced

to the sixteenth century.

Implicit Social Knowledge and Regimes of Truth

Finally, to help me in my excavation of historical precedents for the conflict in

Saraguro, I used a concept mentioned by Michael Foucault and Michael Taussig, which

they termed “regime of truth” and “implicit social knowledge,” respectively. Like the

moral of the stories the indigenous man told me, or Seed’s legacy of colonial legal codes,

all language contains cultural nuances that are often intangible and buried within this

“implicit social knowledge.” In exploring the multiple sources of envy in the Putumayo,

Taussig reflects that sensitivity to such an emotion can

[B]e thought of as a sort of sixth-sense or antenna of what I call ‘implicit

social knowledge’ slipping in and out of consciousness as a constantly

charged scanner of the obtuse as well as the obvious features of social

relatedness. Acquired through practices rather than through conscious

 37

learning, like one’s native tongue, implicit social knowledge can be

thought of as one of the dominant faculties of what it takes to be a social

being. We can think of this knowledge as a set of techniques for

interpreting not so much the seemingly direct as the various shades of

meaning of social situations – the ‘situation’ as Henry James depicts the

intertwining multiplicity of possibility in group affairs, the splitting and

the further splitting of meanings and suggestions in such a profusion of

gatherings and precisions that not only society but life itself is turned

about for reflection. And the interpreting enters into the situation

interpreted. Implicit social knowledge is not simply a passive, reflecting,

absorbing faculty of social being; it should also be thought of as an

experimental activity, essaying this or that possibility, imagining this or

that situation, this or that motivation, postulating another dimension to a

personality – in short trying out in verbal and visual image the range of

possibilities and near-impossibilities of social intercourse, self and other.

(Shamanism 393, 394)

These “various shades of meaning of social situations” and “the splitting and the

further splitting of meaning” manifest themselves in the perceived causes and reasons for

the water conflict in Saraguro. In the “group affairs” which involved the meetings

between the indigenous community leaders and the blanco-mestizos, each group or

individual is using their knowledge, as Taussig says, as a technique for interpreting the

various shades of meaning implicit or explicit in these social situations. Each

 38

interpretation, then, is a “splitting and further splitting of meanings and suggestions,” an

interpretive effort that takes place between any two individuals communicating in any

society, but that is extremely complicated in this context by historical splitting and

dissimilar identities. It is the snapping to consciousness of this knowledge that, I believe,

reveals our notions of truth and legitimacy. However, I would also argue that for the most

part, this in and out of consciousness still takes place, if not unconsciously, at least at an

inarticulable level, which is why conflict persists. Despite dialogue, two parties may

never understand or trust each other if their “scanners” are alerted to offenses or if

meanings are employed differently by each party. Furthermore, there is an obvious

discursive inequality between one party who has culturally inherited a dominant or

hegemonic knowledge and another who has inherited a marginalized knowledge. In the

case of the Saraguro conflict, however, I suggest that it is not only an inability to

understand each other, but since the issue is the management of land, understanding is a

historical impossibility.

Foucault was concerned with how this implicit social knowledge is constructed,

or what he called “regimes of truth.” The type of truth that Foucault was seemingly

concerned with was not the monolithic abstract but rather, since he was also interested in

power, the effects of discourses perceived as true. Firstly, two propositions that he makes

about truth are as follows: “Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures

for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements.

‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power that produce and sustain it,

and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it – a ‘regime’ of truth…”
 39

(Truth 170). Truth then, is a system that is produced and sustained, and that has effects.

What comprises the system, the mechanisms by which it is sustained, and the effects

produced all differ according to culture. As Foucault states,

Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth – that is,

the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true, the

mechanisms and instances that enable one to distinguish true and false

statements; the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and

procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those

who are charged with saying what counts as true. (Truth 168)

This regime operates at an international, national, and local level, but not without

complication. Whatever Foucault meant by “society,” conquest, colonialism,

imperialism, proselytization, and less malevolent forms of contact have guaranteed the

imposition of layer upon layer of regimes of truth. Resistance has allowed for the

persistence of other layers of regimes. But even with resistance, upon first contact, our

perceptions of what is true have already been challenged. In today’s world, the folding

under and over of constantly evolving regimes of truth constitutes a veritable “epistemic

murk” (Taussig’s term). Such murkiness means that finding “the best” (or purest) regime

of truth would be a fruitless endeavor. However, the exercise of analysis is not in vain.

Regimes of truth produce real effects in people’s lives. Wars are waged, peace is

declared, people are imprisoned or set free, denied or granted access to vital resources or

education because of what is produced and circulated as “truth.” In other words, the

regime of truth determines legitimacy. Therefore, “…the problem…consists in seeing

 40

historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses that, in themselves, are

neither true nor false” (Foucault Truth 152). Informed by a historical perspective, if we

can see what truth-effects are produced by discourses, and how they are produced, we can

understand what an individual or collective considers true or legitimate. This is not only a

process of decolonization, but to do this across cultures can lead to conflict resolution

because it can help find a meeting point for a dialogue of equals.

Methods: Genealogy; Goal: Excavation

Applying this concept to speech in general, I considered my interviews as

extremely powerful evidence not only to narrate the water conflict, but also to expose the

speaker’s regime of truth. Thus, discursive and historical analyses merge to trace the

genealogies of these regimes. As a starting point for exploring regimes of truth, I consider

Michael Taussig’s question: “Can we understand the effects of truth in ruling ideologies

without taking their poetics into account?” (Shamanism 287). I take the question to refer

not just to the ideologies that dominate others, but simply the ideology that “rules” in any

given society. In a place like Saraguro, the poetics of ruling ideologies circulate at

conscious and unconscious levels, some are over 500 years old, some arrived with the

conquistadores, several have been imposed by force, and several are the result of

hybridization. I would like to trace the genealogy of several of these ideologies and

analyze their truth effects, the mechanisms by which they are produced, and the further

effects as these ideologies are imposed, incorporated, resisted and hybridized.

As I stated earlier, one of the more important questions is why, after so much

effort to solve the conflict, has it remained stagnant for three years and a “meeting point”
 41

cannot be found? It is this question that I believe discloses the nature of the relationship

of the Nation-State to indigenous peoples nearly all over the world. I suggest that the

water conflict in Saraguro reflects the nature of conflicts between the State and

indigenous people; the inability to advance a dialogue seems to expose two historical

difficulties: the first is a regime of truth that says Indians are not fully capable of

possessing “reason,” and thus are not seen as “equals” in a dialogue; and second is that

the points of contention revolve around the control of land, which the modern Nation-

State as currently constructed will never compromise on, as it proclaims itself the

absolute owner of the land. Most importantly, the first historical difficulty is a constant

justification for the appropriation of indigenous peoples’ land and resources (the second

historical difficulty) and for their exclusion from dialogue and the construction of society.

I will use a discursive-historical and textual analysis of my interviews and scholarly

literature to explore these two historical avenues revealed in the Saraguro water conflict.
 42

PART II: SPECIFICATIONS

CHAPTER 3: SARAGURO

This chapter gives a brief overview of Saraguro in a few of its cultural aspects; it

focuses on the attitude toward Catholicism, the new processes of cultural transformations,

and why Saraguro is a unique case in Ecuador.

The name Saraguro denotes the political units of a municipality, a parish, and a

canton in the southernmost province of Ecuador: Loja (see Figure 3). It is also the name

of the ethnic-indigenous group inhabiting this area, a torrid zone located between 2,500

and 3,000 meters above sea level in the valleys of the southern Ecuadorian Andes. The

mountain Taita Puklla is the most salient geographic feature of Saraguro, which

overlooks the town center (see Figures 4 and 5). Saraguro parish comprises the urban

center and ten rural communities. A 2001 census places the number of urban habitants at

3,124 and the number of rural habitants for the entire canton at 24,905 (Pacari 63).
 43

Figure 3. Source: saraguro.org.

Figure 4. Taita Puklla in the background, the town lies on the other side of the mountain
(picture taken facing north).
 44

Figure 5. The town center.

Chalan et al. give an estimate of 6,000 indígenas10 that live in the twelve communities

closest to the urban center, and a total number of between 20,000 and 22,000 Saraguro

indígenas that includes those living in Loja province, those who have migrated to the

Oriente11 in Zamora-Chinchipe province and to major cities like Cuenca, Quito, and

Guayaquil. The name Saraguro is of unknown origin: possibilities include a Quichua

origin of sara (corn) and curu (worm), or sarar (tree) and guru (place, site), or it could be

from another language now lost. Whatever its origins, Chalan et al. certify that the

Saraguros strictly maintain a close relationship to corn as a native plant and present in

their daily alimentation in the form of mote (hominy) as well as corn flour and chicha

(corn beer) (12).

10
I use this term to facilitate the difference in my writing between ‘indigenous people’
meaning indigenous individuals and ‘indigenous peoples’ as a collective group.
Indígenas means individuals.
11
The Amazonian lowlands to the east of the Andes chain.
 45

Origins and Cultural Roots

The origin of the Saraguros is also disputed. Archeological evidence, colonial

documents, and toponyms testify to the existence of people living in the area before the

Inca conquest. Whatever groups lived in the area before (Paltas and Zarzas), when the

Inca arrived to continue extending his empire to the north, major changes occurred.

According to González Suárez, the Paltas were subjected to Inca strategies of empire,

which included the movement of groups of people for the following purposes: to spread

the ideology and cultural practices of the Inca, to establish military garrisons that

remained in a pacified area, to establish specialists in handicrafts or agriculture or

technicians to build irrigation systems and roads; or to pacify rebellious groups by

dividing them and giving them tasks in service of the empire (qtd. in Chalan et al. 11).

These groups of people were called mitimaes or mitmakuna. While Linda Belote upholds

that there are no documents to prove it, other scholars like Sisa Pacari, based on the

evidence, assert that the Saraguros were mitimaes, brought from the altiplano of Bolivia

and southern Peru. Some scholars draw on the dress, language, and symbols used by the

Saraguros to explain their origin as mitimaes (Pacari, Ananganó). Oberem Udo supports

the idea that the Saraguros are part of a military garrison of 6,000 soldiers from Chucuito

near Lake Titicaca who participated in the “war of Tomebamba”,12 of which only 1,000

returned to their native land (qtd. in Pacari 50). Thus, Pacari maintains that there were

three cultural roots for the Saraguro people: Inca mitimaes, paltas-zarzas, and some part

of the confederation of the Cañaris. In the early colonial period, the Saraguros were noted

12
Tomebamba is the Cañar name for Cuenca, a place located three hours north of
Saraguro. The Cañaris resisted the Inca conquest.
 46

for pursuing and killing the Cañaris, who had allied with the Spanish in the hope of

liberating themselves from the Inca (Pacari 52, Anángono 68). From other sources, Pacari

relates the following oral myth of the Saraguros: They say that a long time ago Inkapirqa

was an immense mountain. One day a pair of qurikinqis13 appeared in a clearing of the

mountain, a female and a male. These qurikinqis lived scraping the earth to feed

themselves. They passed a lot of time like this, until one day a flock of walonzas14 arrived

from below and they got into a dispute with the qurikinqis because they wanted to make

themselves owner of the mountain. They fought but in the end, the old qurikinkis were

defeated. So, gathering their things they descended on the ridge of Torre, to Uritusinga

and Kuypampa and from there to the valley of Saraguro, where they turned into what

today are the Saraguros (56, 57). Despite the uncertainty of their origins, Chalan et al.

affirm that the Saraguros “se convirtieron en una entidad étnica indígena distinta. La

etnogénesis Saraguro, ha alcanzado un punto de consolidación (de síntesis) desde el cual

nuevos procesos de etnogénisis podrían surgir”15 (14).

Agriculture, Dress, Language

Corn and cattle, the title of Jim Belote’s dissertation, have “traditionally” been the

principal economic activities of the Saraguros (see Figure 6). Chalan et al. explain that

the possession of fertile land has allowed for a strong dedication to farming;

13
A black bird with yellow feet, white feathers on his legs, white chest, and a black beak.
According to Pacari, there are few of them today in Saraguro, and few people are familiar
with them (57).
14
A bird similar to the qurikinqi but with pink beak and black legs.
15
“Became a distinct indigenous ethnic entity. The Saraguro ethnogenesis has reached a
point of consolidation (and synthesis) from which new processes could arise.” I have
placed the original citations in-text and all translations are footnoted unless it is a phrase
or short sentence.
 47

[E]l producto de la agricultura (maíz, haba, papa, fréjol, arveja y otros) es

destinado al autoconsumo y la ganadería es la principal fuente de ingresos

económicos, complementándose con la cría de animales menores:

chanchos, cuyes, gallinas, y otros. Parte del excedente es destinado al

‘fondo ceremonial’ para atender a la gente en las fiestas y pagar por las

ceremonias. Otra actividad complementaria es la artesanía de tipo textil,

todo ello destinado al consumo familiar, (16)16

and now for tourist consumption as well. The Saraguros are fantastic cattle raisers; I

consider their cheese to be the best I have ever had, and I don’t hesitate to eat it every

day, for every meal.

16
“Agricultural produce (corn, broad beans, potatoes, beans, peas, and others) is destined
to be autoconsumed while livestock is the principal source of economic income. This is
complemented with the breeding of small animals: monkeys, guinea pigs, hens, and
others. Part of the earnings is sent to the “ceremony fund” which is used to pay for social
gatherings, parties, and other ceremonies. Another complementary activity is textile
handcrafts, and all earnings from this source go directly for family use.”
 48

Figure 6. Community of Lagunas.

As we will see later, dress has been one of the principal forms of indigenous

identity for the Saraguros. With several variations over the years, their current dress is the

following: Men wear short black pants, a shirt of some form underneath a black poncho,

and for ceremonies, a belt with symbolic figures attached. Women wear two skirts: a

pleated anaco over a pollera that is embroidered at the bottom, a blouse (long-sleeve

became fashionable in the 1930s), also embroidered at the sleeves and neck, a very large

necklace of woven beads, a black shawl connected with a silver tupu, and silver earrings

connected by a silver chain (see Figure 7). Both men and women wear black bowler hats,

and for special occasions, a white sombrero with painted black spots on the underside.

Almost everyone now wears shoes, although I was told that 40 years ago, not one

indígena owned a pair of shoes.

 49

Figure 7. Dress, during an Inti Raymi celebration (see the last section of this chapter:
Curse you for learning me your religion).

The native language of the Saraguros is Kichwa; however, its use seems to be

declining. My experiences are that Kichwa is more prevalent the further one goes from

the town center; this is confirmed by Belote (46). There still exist monolingual Kichwa

speakers, primarily in communities like Gera and Oñakapak; however, I was told often of

the disinterest on the part of the youth to learn Kichwa. The three communities involved

in the water conflict each have a bilingual school; thus, the teachers are fluent Spanish

and Kichwa speakers. However, once children go to high school in the town, their contact

with Kichwa is minimal. Many Saraguros from the surrounding communities leave to

pursue their studies in the universities in the larger cities. There are a number of people

who work to maintain Kichwa, either working locally with the National Directorate of

Intercultural Bilingual Education (Dirección Nacional de Educación Intercultural

Bilingue, DINEIB) or as professors in the bilingual schools. All the same, I think the
 50

worry expressed to me by these adults about the youth’s disinterest in Kichwa suggests

the general idea of the state of the language.

A ‘Bitter’ History

The town center is today inhabited mainly by blanco-mestizos. In the 1960s,

Belote observed that the town was occupied entirely by whites (7), but in the past two

decades, a few Saraguros from the communities have bought property in the town. For

the most part, however, there is a clear division between the town center and the rural

communities. Not all rural communities are inhabited by indígenas; some are comprised

of blanco-mestizo campesinos (farmers). Belote confirms that, “The earliest reference to

the presence of non-Indians in the basin is 1583, when a priest is noted as residing in

Saraguro” (13). While colonial documents are scarce, the records suggest that the

Saraguros “were successful in retaining control of their lands due to a combination of

three factors. First, the Saraguros were reported as hostile towards the Spanish and

responsible for ambushing and killing many (Jimenez de Espada, 1965, II: 279). Second,

the Saraguro area seems to have been covered extensively with forest and relatively

sparsely populated,” making it less favorable to the Spanish; “Third, Saraguros appeared,

already at that time, adept at appealing to high officials for favorable adjudication when

Spaniards attempted to usurp their land. They were able to retain control over all of it,

except for the land on which the town is now located, which bit by bit was confiscated for

‘official’ purposes” (14). Pacari affirms that the emergence of the town center is a

“bitter” history of forced displacement (see Figure 8). What today is the main church

used to be the principal cemetery, and lands of the urban center were the property of
 51

indigenous families (64, 65). Despite Belote’s assertion of the Saraguros’ adeptness at

maintaining their lands, they were not always successful; in 1775, those of the last name

Gualán were displaced to the east by order of the King of Spain, to what is today Gera

(Pacari 65). Pacari also relates how the Crown divided up the urban center for the

mestizos arriving from Loja and Cuenca. The abuses in accordance with the parish priest

provoked the sale of lands and the indígenas began to leave to avoid conflicts. By the

middle of the eighteenth century there were more than 100 mestizos in Saraguro (Pacari

55). I was told in conversations that another reason for the more recent exodus of the

Saraguros from the town center to their current communities (1940s) was for the abuses

of the town’s blanco-mestizos, in the form of robbery or creditor abuse. Some

communities have also prohibited the mestizos to buy land in their territories, again for

reasons of abuse (unjust appropriation of land) as recent as the past few years.

Figure 8. The town of Saraguro, Puklla is behind me.

 52

Colonization and Catholicism

Catholicism is the primary way the Saraguros were colonized. I have mentioned

that the earliest known reference to Saraguro is the mention of a resident priest (cura

clérigo) in 1583. Later, a Jesuit identified as B. Recio described a trip he took on mule

through Saraguro in 1752:

Acuérdome con gozo singular de una cruz grande que se colocó en un

monte [¿Puglla?] muy empinado y exento de Saraguro, pueblo que media

entre Cuenca y Loja. Después de colocada con gran fatiga, nos servió de

grande consuelo, no sólo la vista del salutífero leño exaltado en aquella

bárbara altura, sino mucho más el fruto que produjo, que fué el fin de una

superstición que antes había. De la cima de aquel monte descendía, o se

desgajaba, una fuente o arroyuelo que llamaban los indios Cusi yacu, que

es decir agua de la dicha. Allá acudían los indios, por la antigua

costumbre de la gentilidad, a hacer sus vaticinios y ejercer sus agüeros.

Pues viendo ya allí la cruz, la empezaron a llamarle agua santa, y

atribuyendo a su virtud los efectos, que esperaban, se abolió la

superstición, y se derivo a ellos la veneración a aquella señal de salud

signum salutis. Fué esto una cosa tan sonada, que el cura de allí me

aseguró después cómo el señor comisario de Loja había dado muchas

 53

gracias a Dios de haber cesado con este medio las muchas delaciones, que,

por la superstición de los indios, le daban mucho quehacer.17

Ironically, the Jesuit cannot conceal his own “superstition” – the comfort offered by this

exalted log that salutes from on high and magically terminates superstitions. One physical

form of magic was replaced with another, and it is impossible to judge what exactly was

“abolished.” The Indians, after all, were still climbing the same mountain and venerating

the same water.

Clearly, though, after 500 years, Catholicism is deeply entrenched in the

Saraguros. Despite the fact that Catholicism itself was imposed by the conqueror, the

forms in which it was celebrated by the indígenas became an extremely important form of

social cohesion. A book written by six Saraguros in 1995 called Fiesta y ritualidad de los

Saraguros explains the form and function of each of the major holidays as well as

weddings, deaths, and housing ceremonies. In the introduction the authors explain that,

17
The text can be found online at www.saraguro.org under “Etnohistoria de los
Saraguros antes de 1850: Documentos y Libros,” and also in Anangonó “El pueblo
Saraguro”: “I remember with particular delight a large cross that was put atop a very
steep and unspoiled hill of Saraguro, a town just between Cuenca and Loja. It served as a
great solace to us, not only for the sight of such inviting wood exalted upon high, but also
for the fruit that it produced: the end of a superstition that once was. At the top of that hill
a fountain, or a stream that the Indians called Cusi yacu, which means water of goodness,
descended, or trickled down its side. That was where the Indians gathered, by an ancient
custom of politeness, to predict the future and exorcise bad spirits. But when they saw the
cross, they began to call it holy water, and, attributing its effects to that virtue, the
superstition was eradicated, and the need to worship that signum salutis sign of health
was thus diverted. This thing was so talked about that the local priest later assured me
that the Lord Commissioner of Loja had given thanks to God for having ended the many
accusations that because of the superstition of the Indians, had made for him much
work.”
 54

La minga y la fiesta cumplen una función de cohesión socio-política…Las

fiestas y las mingas son elementos de cohesión que ayudan a que la

comunidad permanezca unida hasta la actualidad. En ellas se hace

presente la solidaridad y la reciprocidad, prueba de ello es la ayuda que se

ofrece con productos (maíz, panela, miel y otros) para las fiestas y con

mano de obra en las mingas.18 (20, 21)

In his description of the Christmas celebration, Aurelio Chalán writes that,

En la Navidad se hace presente la vida comunitaria y la coparticipación de

todos y por ende la solidaridad, reciprocidad y redistribución entre los

patrocinadores y los miembros de la comunidad. Solidaridad, porque la

mayoría ayuda con algo; reciprocidad, porque otros vienen a devolver lo

que recibieron en años anteriores y redistribución, porque los

patrocinadores reparten entre todos los asistentes lo que han

recibido…Casi todos los saraguros hacen un paréntesis en sus duras tareas

diarias para celebrar la fiesta religiosa que es también la mejor

oportunidad del año para establecer relaciones sociales entre los miembros

de las diversas comunidades…19 (28, 29)

18
“Group work (minga) and social gatherings complete a socio-political function…Social
and group work gatherings are cohesive elements that have helped maintain the
community united until the present day. In them, solidarity and reciprocity are constant,
and this can be proved in the support that is offered through produce (corn, cheese,
honey, and other products) for parties and as payment for work in group work
gatherings.”
19
“During Christmas, community life and the participation of all in the name of
solidarity, reciprocity, and redistribution among the hosts and members of the community
comes alive. Solidarity, because the majority helps with something; reciprocity, because
 55

I was fascinated by the descriptions of the Christmas celebration, which I read

before spending Christmas in Saraguro. Various activities last about three weeks long and

preparations are made months in advance (especially the musicians and dancers). When I

went one day to observe the dances in the house of the Marcantaita (patron), I was

impressed by two observations: First, I grew up Catholic and celebrated Christmas every

year on December 25. However, there was absolutely nothing about Christmas in

Saraguro that reminded me of my Christmases, supposedly the same Catholic celebration.

In fact, nowhere in the entire world is Christmas celebrated as it is in Saraguro, with

wikis, ajas, sarawis and other local characters, whose costumes and dances reveal a lost

but assuredly Andean meaning, most probably fused with local forms of anticolonial

resistance.20 When I commented to someone that for me, this wasn’t Christmas, she

replied, “yes, but for us, on the other hand, it wouldn’t be Christmas without this.” As an

outsider, supposedly having been brought up in the same religious faith, I felt that the

celebration’s complete obscurity to me was evidence of the fact that it contained hidden

local meanings. Secondly, I became aware of spaces: for almost a week every morning, I

would hear the parade of Christmas characters past my window – the whistles of the

sarawis, the shouts in a high-pitched voice of the wikis yelling “wiiikiiiii! wiiikiiiii!”, the

drum, the violin – they were walking to town for mass. But it is only the mass that takes

others come to give back what they have received in years past, and redistribution,
because the hosts divide what they have received to all the assistants…Almost all
Saraguros take a break from their difficult daily tasks to celebrate this religious festival
which is also the best opportunity of the year to create social relationships between
members of diverse communities…”
20
As part of the dances and characters, “rebels” who refused to turn Christian used to
decapitate a priest; a dance that was eventually banned but not until the twentieth century.
 56

place in town. Away in the community, in the house of the Marcantaita, the dances and

theater are presented, food is served, the community gathers for three days straight. It is

this space that is decidedly Saraguro indigenous. Sincretism, “fiesta,” and “rituality” are

important and complicated elements in contemporary Saraguro culture, and it is not in the

scope of this work to treat them. It should be noted that these same authors (I can attest to

at least a couple of them) are currently those decidedly not Catholic who are “taking

back” their culture. In this vein, historian Galo Ramón contends that it is necessary

“…una relectura del sincretismo para evaluar las imposiciones…” [a rereading of

syncretism to evaluate its implications] (Plurinacionalidad 154).

Historically speaking, the priest has undoubtedly been the single most powerful

person in Saraguro. Belote explains that, “It is commonly alleged by Ecuadorians outside

of Saraguro parish that the resident priest enriches himself greatly by charging Indians

large sums of money for special masses, and, in particular, religious fiesta masses…”

(179, 180). However, local perceptions must be taken into account. Belote continues that,

[T]hese religious fiesta cargos are eagerly sought by Saraguro Indians and

no one has ever complained to me about the cost of the mass. At a

highland Indian conference in Ecuador in 1968, when the Saraguros were

asked if they would like to add to the testimony of other Indians regarding

clergy abuse in their areas, the Saraguros only chuckled and said, ‘We

have no trouble with the priest, he only does what we ask him to do.’ The

truth is that the reform-minded priest of 1970 was the one who began to

complain. He tried to get the fiesta sponsors to reduce the frequency and
 57

opulence of masses and procession, in favor, he pleaded, of donations to

charity. Few sponsors paid him any heed. (180)

As this experience shows, local contexts paint unclear pictures of what is considered

abuse. Belote demonstrates in her dissertation that the Saraguro Indians in fact were

much better off economically than the whites who lived in town, because the Saraguros

had land and cattle, which were the elements that made up true “wealth.” In Saraguro, it

has been poor town whites, with no cattle or land for farming, who go to beg in the

indigenous communities, where they are given food (often, as one indigenous woman

suggested, to avoid being robbed of their crops anyway by the whites). Because the

indigenous traditionally refused to sell their corn, town whites were resentful because

they had to buy corn brought in from the city of Loja, when all around their town were

fields of corn. Regardless of the Saraguros’ wealth in land and cattle, Belote notes,

everyone agreed that the priest has always been the richest person in town (178).

Aside from economic power, the priest has apparently held incredible

psychological and social power, as evidenced in the following example:

The idea that there were different ‘kinds’ of Christians in a religious sense

was not considered by most of the people of Saraguro until the [protestant]

missionaries arrived [in1962]. Then due to the fierce diatribes and

condemnation from the pulpit of the Catholic Church two new words

became part of everyone’s vocabulary: Protestant and Communist, which

became ominous synonyms for the evil and dangerous. The result of these

verbal attacks was the only known uprising of Saraguro Indians [at that
 58

time] who came into town armed with machetes and rocks to eliminate the

Protestant/Communist horror from their midst. The next priest, who was

sent as a replacement, tried a different ploy. He had his parishioners sign a

petition declaring the foreign missionaries as persona non grata, disruptors

of the peace and tranquility of their Catholic town. This petition was to be

hand-carried to the Ecuadorian president by a delegation of Saraguro

whites and Indians, headed by the priest. It never reached its destination,

however, for upon reading the document the then secretary to the president

sternly lectured the Saraguro group on religious freedom and destroyed the

petition on the spot. After this attempt failed, the church ceased waging

overt warfare and began to counterattack by offering courses in religion,

and a greatly expanded social program to combat the educational, medical,

and charitable work performed by the Protestants who were slowly

gaining acceptance and respect from the local people. (173, 174)21

21
In a different text, I used this as an example of the phenomena of power at one of its
lowest levels that at the same time demonstrates the ambiguity of the origins of power, its
colonization and recolonization at infinitesimal and general levels. In analyzing power at
its “infinitesimal levels,” Foucault says his goal was not to abstract some “man” that “has
power” or what was “going on his head,” but rather, “to study power at the point where
his intentions … are completely invested in real and effective practices; to study power
by looking, as it were, at its external face, at the point where it relates directly and
immediately to what we might, very provisionally, call its object, its target, its field of
application, or, in other words, the places where it implants itself and produces its real
effects” (Society 28). In this case, the priest is, in fact, that “man who has power,” but his
intentions are “invested in real and effective practices.” The external face of the priest’s
power is his Catholic subjects, towards which he directs his condemnation of others who
threaten the terrain of his religious and economic monopoly. The “real effects” produced
by the priest’s power are manifested in the collection of machetes and rocks the
Saraguros bear as a response to his discourse. To think of power as ascending in this case,
 59

This example shows the obvious dedication to, and absolute trust in the parish priest.

Moreover, the arrival of the Protestant missionaries indirectly revealed another level of

colonization that was internalized and expressed linguistically. When the Protestants first

came to Saraguro in 1962, they “…had trouble converting people to “Christians,” “for

this word in Saraguro has a connotation other than that intended by the Protestant

missionaries. It is common in Saraguro to use the word ‘cristiano’ as a synonym for

‘human.’ Hence a statement ‘Is that edible for Cristianos,’ implies a contrast with what is

eaten by animals” (Belote 171). This twentieth century linguistic element in Saraguro, as

we will see in chapter five, clearly evidences a regime of truth inherited from the

sixteenth-century distinction made between those capable of fully becoming Catholics,

and those (youth, the deranged, indígenas) who could never fully understand doctrine.

Furthermore, Linda Belote confirms that the word ‘cristiano’

[C]an also have a more restricted meaning, and has the connotation of

being ‘civilized’ and having a knowledge of good manners. For example,

when Saraguro Indians were asked on a triad test ‘Which of the following

is an exercise in the unexpected. For me, at least, it is easier to understand power as

emanating from the hegemonic discourses in speeches from the State, in this case during
the Cold War from the White House in the U.S. However, the priest’s power lies not in
the fact that he uses macro-narratives about Communists and Protestants, but in the fact
that he uses them to defend his locally threatened position in Saraguro. At the same time,
we can see that power employed to serve a personal, local interest also serves to “coerce,
control and subjugate” according to the State’s desires. And not only that, a delegation is
sent from Saraguro to the capital; perhaps it is that very delegation that literally brings
the power of discourses from its infinitesimal to its general mechanism. As it turns out,
the President’s secretary who rejected the petition to remove the Protestants from
Saraguro, was a Lutheran: a brilliant example of how infinitesimal mechanisms compete
coincidentally, even at the literal level of the State, to consecrate their power into general
forms of domination.
 60

are most alike – Saraguro Indians, town whites and Jívaros?’ – the

response was immediate: town whites and Saraguros, on the basis that

they were all Cristianos, whereas the Jívaros,22 it was explained, were

‘Jívaros, wild and uncouth.’ This response would come from Saraguros

who knew some Jívaros well from contact in the Oriente, and who knew

that Jívaros were missionized, baptized, and educated by Fransiscan nuns.

When they were reminded of this fact they would invariably reply, ‘Oh,

yes, they are Catholics, but not Christians.’ Town whites make the same

classification on the same basis. (172)

However, even if Saraguro Indians considered themselves “Christian” and thus

“civilized” compared to the Jívaros,23 as a result of Spanish colonization, colonial

mentality manifests itself upon further distinctions. When the Indians became subjects to

the Crown and thus technically political equals, the Spaniards created a moral distinction

to maintain their economic exploitation, and referred to themselves as gente de razón

(people of reason). Indigenous peoples, in their view, were not capable of possessing

reason. When Indians were then forced to be Catholic and the moral distinction begins to

fade, the whites continue to create distinctions to maintain some form of dominance.

Belote claims that in the 1960s, “The immediate response of Indians when asked the

22
Jívaros refers principally to the Shuar people, in southeast Ecuador. In Ecuador it is
derogatory and means “savage.”
23
See Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man for examples of
highland Indians’ views of lowland Indians’ in southern Colombia. See Derek Williams
“The Making of Ecuador’s Pueblo Católico, 1861-1875 for examples of how the
government made highland Indians an example for their lowland counterparts to aspire
to.
 61

difference between Indians and whites is ‘The clothing’” (25). This in itself is a lengthy

discussion, but I only mention it here to contrast it with the whites’ view:

Town whites do not point to clothing as the primary difference between

Indians and themselves…Town white responses varied considerably.

Some cited differences in ancestry…Others indicated behavioral

characteristics…[But] most frequently volunteered was: ‘We are

civilized.’ ‘Civilized’ by the town whites’ definition is, of course,

ascribing to the cultural rules, life style, etiquette and values of whites. It

also entails a high level of competency in Spanish.24 (28)

Belote furthers observes that, “Although never immediately verbalized, it is clear that

clothing indeed marks the boundary into ‘civilization.’ One Sunday in mass the priest

exhorted the Indian males to start wearing white shirts under their cuzhmas ‘to look clean

24
Belote makes an important observation about these ‘spontaneous descriptive
statements: “…they all, or almost all, are derived from contact with the Indians on the
whites’ turf – in town. Many, probably most, town whites have never been in an Indian’s
home (beggars and thieves being notable exceptions). The Indians, on the other hand,
have considerable familiarity with the town whites’ living habits and can give quite
detailed descriptions of the ‘other’ way of life” (28, 29). Although my experience in
Saraguro is very limited, I would venture to say social interaction is still like this. Whites
and Indians clearly socialize with each other, I would see them walking through the
streets together and there is much contact through the high schools. However for social
events, they maintain themselves segregated. If there is an event in town, everyone can
go. If there is an event in the communities, only those whites who are somehow
connected to the programming of the event would show up, with the exception of the
occasional tourist for major events like the Raymis. Because I interacted exclusively with
the indigenous (unless my formal research called for otherwise), I was often the only
white person at such events. The two exceptions are a German who married an
indigenous woman, and another German who works for one of the organizations.
International volunteers come to help mainly with the indigenous organizations, although
their stays are usually very short and so their social interaction is minimal.
 62

and civilized.’ And no white would classify even those regarded as the most exceptional

Indians as ‘white’ as long as their dress is Indian” (29). As evidenced by Saraguro, “In

former English and Iberian colonies, the visual, often physical, identifiers of native

peoples as natives have remained in place. These forms of separation involve styles of

dress, modes of speech, sounds of names, and places of residence – forms of cultural

behavior that once reflected colonial differentiations” (Seed American 177). I was

conversing once with an older woman and I asked her what had changed in the

community since she was young. One of her responses was that “the people don’t want to

be indigenous anymore.” When I replied, “Really?”, she looked at me as if surprised that

I hadn’t noticed: “Haven’t you seen all the young people wearing jeans?”

Why Saraguro Is Unique

It would be dangerous to make assumptions about colonizer/colonized or

dominant/subordinate relations of the Saraguros to the town whites since there are several

aspects that make Saraguro a unique case compared to the rest of Ecuador. Belote’s study

from the 1960s explains the differences:

The Saraguro Indians are the only indigenous group in highland Ecuador

with land resources which are both extensive and favorably endowed in

terms of fertility and adequate rainfall for successful agricultural pursuits.

This land base is, in addition, not confined within a finite highland zone,

but, has, since the turn of the century been extended to include ‘frontier

lands’ in the Oriente, …The Indian campesinos (farmers) are, in fact, on

the average wealthier than the whites who live in the town of Saraguro
 63

itself. Saraguro is similar to other biethnic regions, however, in that the

whites control all administrative and authority positions in the area. In

contrast to the low status and almost sub-human characterization assigned

by members of national Ecuadorian society to most land-poor Indians of

central and northern highland Ecuador…and the concomitant subservient,

deferential behavior expected them, the Saraguro Indians enjoy more

egalitarian relationships with whites. ‘Proud,’ ‘dignified’ and ‘self-

confident’ are adjectives easily applicable to them. (1)

The fact that they possess abundant land refers to their historical fortune of never being

submitted to the hacienda system. Some existed in “the western, drier, unforested zones”

of the canton, but the valley of Saraguro and the communities I lived in have retained

these lands for their own agricultural production. Knowing the lack of haciendas, in the

1960s the Belotes investigated whether the local people knew the term huasipunguero,

which is a Kichwa term that refers to the Indians serving on haciendas and living on the

parcels of land doted out to them (huasi – house, punka – gate, door). While “[s]ome of

the town whites did, either through Icaza’s novel, Huasipungo, or through traveling to

other parts of Ecuador[, t]he Indians did not, though some tried to give a literal quichua

translation of a person who sat in doorways. When we explained the situation of the

huasipungueros, however, they were familiar with the concept, and said the local

designation is los arrimados,” who were poor whites or Indians living in the western part

(41). Despite the lack of haciendas, the Saraguros were still subjected to the Spaniards’

version of mita, and the town served as one of two important stopping places (tambo) for
 64

travelers between Loja and Cuenca, since it was “one day’s travel by horseback north of

Ecuador’s southernmost provincial capital” (14). Those appointed to serve in the tambo

did so for one year and were responsible for providing bedding and feeding travelers -

often soldiers - and sometimes for arranging fresh mounts. Their tambo duty exempted

the Saraguros “from serving mitas in the gold mines in Zaruma, located west of

Saraguro” (15). Pacari also writes on the significance of the lack of haciendas, and

suggests that the wetter climate of Saraguro may have repelled the Spaniards, who were

more accustomed to agriculture in dry climates. She also indicates that it was convenient

for Spain to have “free” indígenas that depended directly on the Crown “para la

explotación de la mita para no tener que hacerlo mediante los encomenderos y

hacendados” [in order to exploit the mita system so that it didn’t have to be done through

farming and land ownership] (65). One other significant aspect of Saraguro is its location

on the Pan-American highway. The opening of the highway in the 1940s had several

effects; among them, it allowed the Saraguros more access to markets for their cheese

and cattle, which consequently increased production, and because of the now-shorter

distance between Loja and Cuenca, it relieved the Saraguros from their tambo duties

(Belote 16).

Perhaps because of these historical conditions, Belote asserts that, “…a simplistic

majority/minority or dominant/subordinate dichotomy based on economic subordination

of the minority group is not applicable in an analysis of the Saraguro situation” (7). As

she shows from her research, the complicated relations between the whites and the

Indians (at the time) reflect subtle areas of dependence. For example, the Saraguros
 65

expressed a preference for borrowing money from whites with the possibility of abuse

rather than borrowing from fellow Saraguros with the possibility of straining social

relationships. At the same time, the Indians held abundant “real wealth” (land and cattle)

and the white merchants depended on them for petty purchases. Thus, in her conclusion,

Belote states that, “…the whites depend on the Indians economically, but dominate them

politically. The Indians depend on the whites politically, but are dominant economically”

(212, 213). She reflects that

At some point early in my Saraguro experience it occurred to me that the

Indians, with their numerical superiority, combined with their control of

the economic resources of Saraguro region, should, theoretically, be the

dominant group, not the whites. However, this was obviously not the case.

It was the Indian, not the white who was made to learn a second language;

it was the Indian, not the white who was addressed with derogatory or

paternalistic labels, who sat on the back of the bus, got waited on second,

was asked to run errands, was a victim of petty theft, was humiliated and

embarrassed for social blunders. (207)

These types of marginalization clearly reflect macro-level subjugation of and attitudes

toward the Indians in the contexts of Ecuador and all of Spanish America. However,

Belote also emphasizes the Saraguros’ pride and independence, such that while they may
 66

even publicly reinforce the whites’ belief that they are poor and ignorant, in private they

assert no such attitude.25

Community

What Belote terms the “individualism” of the Saraguros is a complicated

discussion. She claims that,

[I]t is expressed primarily in terms of the household unit – the nuclear

family – which is responsible for day-to-day subsistence

maintenance…Though close ties are continued on a social level with

parents throughout life, there does exist a broader reciprocity/obligation

network binding true and ritual kin…In addition to the kin linkages there

also exists for each conjugal pair their own network of relationships,

which are composed of friends, selected kin and whites, but which are

built on an individual basis. (108)

This type of individualism, in contrast with town whites, does not include

competitiveness. Concomitant with this lack of competitiveness and the conjugal

25
I don’t know how I feel about such assertions. Assuredly, my experience with the
Saraguros is extremely limited and the character of the Saraguros compared to other
indigenous peoples of the Sierra, due to their exemption from haciendas, may be stronger
and independent; but I sense that “globalization,” migration and the diffusion of enticing
“Western” movies affects the youth, who perhaps feel caught between the ethnic
assertiveness of their parents (whether Catholic or not), positive and negative experiences
of migration, and contact through the universities with a racist Ecuadorian society. I was
discussing this with a few young women, who commented that in Cuenca they had found
that people from the upper class were sympathetic and available as friends, while the
lower – middle classes were racist. One girl said that one only has to hear who someone
hates to know what class s/he is from. At any rate, my limited experience with the youth
suggests that there exists, in fact, shame at calling oneself an Indian, or at least there is
the desire to be mestizo.
 67

emphasis “is a recognition of the rights of the individual, equality of the sexes, and

recognition of individual responsibility” (109). Children at a young age are given

freedom in personal choices over their belongings or going to school or the doctor.

However, “[a] child is not granted decision-making power in areas that affect the family

unit…he cannot refuse to care for cattle, gather firewood, or enter into a marriage

disapproved by the parents, etc.” (110). Belote claims that the feature of individualism

“has as a corollary a depressing effect on community development projects…The lack of

community unity is decried by Andean Mission employees, and by community leaders on

some occasions. It has impeded the construction of potable water systems and irrigation

canals, and is probably closely related to the amount of abuse suffered from the revenue

officers and white thieves” (111).

Another factor that “impedes” community “development” is their approach to

“innovation,” in which they carefully weigh “the merits and demerits of the case” (Belote

106). The example cited above of the uprising against the “communists and protestants”

must be taken as demonstrative of the sheer power of the parish priest, and not as some

suggestion toward a manipulative character in the Indians. The following example, as

described by Belote in Prejudice and Pride,26 illustrates how the Saraguros will “not

embrace a new technique or procedure just because an ‘expert’ tells them to do so” (107):

The Andean Mission told the Saraguros they should build latrines. When nobody did so,

the Mission constructed several with willing participants in the hopes that they would

26
See her essay “El Desarrollo a pesar de si mismo: el caso de Saraguro” (Development
in Spite of Itself: The case of Saraguro), in Transformaciones Culturales y Etnicidad en la
Sierra Ecuatoriana, ed. Norman Whitten, Quito:USFQ, 1993 for the relationship of the
Saraguros to the Andean Mission.
 68

serve as an example. This tactic also failed, as the Saraguros considered that the latrines

“were a waste of time and materials; the privacy heralded by the Mission was regarded as

‘unnecessary’; they soon became dirty and smelly and attracted flies; and, one could add,

the dogs were deprived of a food source” (107). After three years, the only ones in use

were those next to schools. The doors on the others, provided by the Mission, were

removed and installed elsewhere. Later, however, the members of Lagunas began to see a

connection between intestinal illnesses and dirty drinking water, so they drew up a legal

document “which pledged their labor and $5.00 per household to the Andean Mission for

tubing if it would provide them with an engineer who would tell them where and how to

build a potable water system. The Andean Mission refused, vindictatively punishing them

for lack of cooperation on past projects such as that of the latrines” (107).

I once asked someone about the “individualism” of the Saraguros that I had read

about in Belote. He replied that yes, there was a type of individualism, but that it is also

“in community.” He mentioned the lack of haciendas and the existence of private

property, but went on to explain the older system of mayorales (elder community

leaders), who were trusted by the community and would pull people together if

something needed done. The sense of community among the Saraguros, from my

perspective, is still very strong, despite and also because of a series of changes in the

1970s, 80s, and 90s. The minga and the fiesta (religious holidays, weddings, funerals) are

to me, the most salient manifestations of community and reciprocity.

While not “indigenous,” I found the New Year’s Eve celebration to be a profound

expression of community. All over Ecuador for New Year’s Eve life-size mannequins
 69

(monigotes) are constructed with the purpose of burning them to represent something of

an “out with the old, in with the new” ceremony. Apparently, the monigotes at the

national level are accompanied by skits and dramatizations, but I can only attest to the

character of the Saraguro celebration in one of the communities. Four groups of young

people from this community had constructed monigotes, which are also given “houses”

set up like a sort of display case for the mannequins. For each monigote (who was a

known figure in the community), the groups had written a biography, a testament, and a

series of litanies. These were read out loud to an audience of maybe 150 people, and were

then judged by a committee. The skits were pure jokes. As a foreigner, I was lucky to

understand the literal meaning of the biographies and testaments (in Spanish). But I was

struck by a “smaller” way of living that allowed everyone to be familiar with everyone

else. The jokes were based on the life histories of the community figures, their character,

their family, their social relations, etc. Nearly every person of the at least 150 present was

laughing at the biographies and testaments, except me, who didn’t always understand

them because I didn’t know the people, their life histories, their girlfriends, their habit of

drinking, etc. I give this example to demonstrate a way of life that allows such familiarity

with its community members. I was told that of course, the monigote burnings are

different in the town or in the larger cities, since there is less intimacy. It is worth

mentioning that one of the groups had chosen to “burn” the current mayor and his ex-

vicemayor, the indigenous candidate who ran against him in April’s elections. The

biography and testament were made about the ex-vicemayor, of course, since he is a

prominent figure in the communities, and with such ill-feelings towards the mayor, who
 70

cared to make jokes about him anyway? One clever sign posted on the “house” for the

mayor and ex-vicemayor stated “El país ya se jodió [The country is now screwed],” a

play on President Rafael Correa’s ubiquitous slogan: “El país ya es de todos [The country

is now of everyone].” I thoroughly enjoyed the jokes made at one of the get-togethers to

construct the monigotes: One of the girls was stuffing the mannequin’s pants with various

trash items. It happened that an empty bottle of water found its way to the zipper area of

the mayor’s pants, and with appropriate positioning, became a befitting phallus. “If we

unscrew the cap,” the girl joked, “we could have all the water of Saraguro pouring out.”

Another example of community is the tradition of bringing pinzhi to fiestas or

other social events. Pinzhi is my absolute favorite manifestation of reciprocity. At formal

social gatherings, certain groups or families according to their relationship to the party’s

sponsors or hosts are charged with bringing pinzhi, which includes mote, bread, cheese,

rice, and various types of potatoes, normally with a peanut and pumpkin-seed sauce. This

food complements the caldo (beef broth), which is served by the host to every person

who arrives to the event. When the guests bringing pinzhi arrive, the formal distribution

of it begins. Basically, every person bringing these food items distributes them to others,

and receives them from others who have brought the same. The family leaves the party

with as much food or more than when they came, and the same type of food; the only

difference is, it is not what they brought but what they received from others. Of course,

this is a rather superficial example of reciprocity, but I cite it as what I consider is a real-

life, quotidian, and practical example of a more spiritual concept; of course, the real-life

and the spiritual in cultures like Saraguro are not necessarily divided.
 71

Curse You for Learning Me Your Language, Religion and Politics

“The masses of people in Asia and in Africa, and in the Americas too, no longer believed
in so-called ‘elected’ leaders; they were listening to strange voices inside themselves.
Although few would admit this, the voices they heard were voices our of the past, voices
of their earliest memories, voices of nightmares and voices of sweet dreams, voices of the
ancestors.” (Silko 513)

I have given this historical and present-day background to attempt to paint for my

reader the local character of Saraguro, although it is of course, an incomplete picture.

Linda Belote’s dissertation from the early 1970s is extremely helpful to understand

Saraguro’s history and the relationship between the whites and the Saraguros. Of course,

since then, great changes have occurred because of “globalization” and migration

phenomena, as well as the rise of the national indigenous movement at the end of the

1990s. To explain and explore all these changes is worthy of a book, and here I simply

want to give a few testimonies to the changes. Rodrigo Japón, a Saraguro who teaches in

Cuenca, writes in his essay “Quién es un runa Saraguro?” that,

[L]a familia como elemento intracultural juega un papel muy importante

en la conservación de la identidad del indígena saraguro, sin embargo en

la actualidad no está cumpliendo este rol porque no hay conciencia clara

de ello y una verdadera valorización del por qué y del para qué deben

utilizar la vestimenta autóctona las nuevas generaciones. A esto se suma el

desinterés masivo de la juventud…algunos pensadores indígenas creen

que el ‘indio’ ahora es aceptado y respetado no por su vestido, idioma o

 72

cultura sino porque se ha modernizado y se parece cada vez más al blanco

mestizo.27 (45)

There are certainly some cultural aspects being lost. I mentioned that the minga was one

of the strongest communal and reciprocal ties. However, the same man I asked about the

individualism also told me about changes in the minga system. When he was young, he

remembered without a doubt that every Saturday would be spent in minga, whether it was

building someone’s house or fixing something in the community. The minga has become

less common, however, since houses are constructed by contracting the materials and the

builders from town.

While there is much concern for how globalization and the little by little

integration into national culture and the market are affecting Saraguro identity, there is

also an incredibly strong group of leaders and professionals who are involved in

“recovering” or “taking up again” cultural values, which is a continual process of

invention and reinvention. Anangonó affirms that, “los Saraguros no tuvieron como

elemento aglutinador la lucha por la tierra, sino el proceso de organización de

organizaciones de base y la articulación de comunas en organizaciones de segundo grado

27
“The family as an intercultural element plays an important role in the conservation of
Saraguro indigenous identity; however, currently this role is not being filled since there is
no clear consciousness of it, nor is there a true valorization of why and how new
generations should use the autochthonic dress. The massive lack of interest of youth can
also be added to this…some indigenous intellectuals believe that the “Indian” is now
accepted and respected not for his dress, language or culture but because he has
modernized and perpetually looks more like the white mestizo.”
 73

para acceder a proyectos de distintas Organizaciones No Gubernamentales”28 (55).

Unifying factors for the Sarguros included “las experiencias de creación de centro de

alfabetización o de escuelas indígenas y la lucha contra la explotación y marginación de

los laichus29 (mercado, transporte, venta de chichas y aguardiente, abuso de las

autoridades civiles, entre otras) y la iglesia (diezmos, servicios a la iglesia, fiestas y

administración de sacramentos)”30 (55,56). The current situation is extremely

complicated and would take pages and pages to even try to give a more complete picture.

While the indígenas are integrating themselves and becoming integrated into the national

and international market culture, this has also meant a space to study, confront the

dominant structures, and fortify their identity as indígenas. The following testimonies, I

feel express the nature of the changes in the specific context of Saraguro.

La educación bilingüe debía cumplir con tres objetivos fundamentales:

fortalecer el proceso organizativo comunitario y el movimiento indígena;

mejorar la calidad educativa; y mantener la identidad cultural. Sin

28
“The Saraguros didn’t have land struggle as a unifying agent, but rather a process of
organization of base organizations and the articulation of communities in second grade
organizations in order to access projects of different non-governmental organizations.”
29
Laichu is the term the indígenas of Saraguro use for white people. It is only used in
Saraguro, and the origin is unknown but there are some possibilities; my favorite is the
following, offered to me by someone who works in the DINEIB at the local level: chu is
one of the interrogative morphemes in Kichwa to ask positive questions, like teacherchu
you are: Are you a teacher? And lai sounds an awful lot like the Spanish word for law:
ley. Thus laichu: is it the law? Applied to white people: is it the person who brings the
law?
30
“the experiences of the creation of literacy centers or indigenous schools, the fight
against exploitation and marginalization of the Laichus (market, transportation, and civil
authority abuse, among others) and the church (tithes, church services, parties and the
administration of the sacraments).”
 74

embargo, las organizaciones están más debilitadas, los profesores y

funcionarias/os que han sido avalizados por las organizaciones luego de

tener un puesto de trabajo se han desvinculado y no son un soporte para

las organizaciones…Nos queda el reto de realizar una evaluación critica

para mejorar la realidad educativa. Parece que antes de que estudiáramos

había mayor unidad y solidaridad en nuestra cultura. Un comunero decía

‘dicen que estudian pero se vuelven más brutos’. Entonces, es necesario

preguntarnos ¿Qué tipo de educación necesitamos? ¿Una educación

competitiva, egoísta, deshumanizada? O una educación que recoja los

procesos metodológicos de los y las mayores, una educación solidaria,

humana y de respeto hacia la naturaleza, una educación centrada en el ser

y no en el tener.31 (Pacari 72)

We are learning to unlearn and learn other things. This little step is

complicated…it’s like people in this little step become…they do

ridiculous things (hace tonteria y media), they say things. But in the end,

31
“Bilingual education should fulfill three fundamental objectives: strengthen the
communitarian organizational process and the indigenous movement; improve the
educational quality; and maintain cultural identity. However, the organizations are
weaker, the professors and functionaries that have been supported by the organizations,
after having a position have cut themselves off and are not a support for the
organization…The challenge remains to realize a critical evaluation to improve the
educational quality. It seems that before we studied there was greater unity and solidarity
in our culture. A comunero used to say “They say that they study but they end up more
stupid. Therefore, it is necessary to ask ourselves, What tip of education do we need? A
competitive education, selfish and dehumanized? Or an education that gathers the
methodological processes of the elders, a joint education, humane, filled with respect for
nature, an education centered in being and not having.”
 75

we are advancing, in relation to culture, the environment, we have come a

long way in comparison to ten years ago. The country was practically one

thing: a destroyer, to destroy and nobody was saying no, stop this please.

Likewise with the indigenous peoples. It was like language, out, dress, out,

cultural values, out. It was minimizing, as if Kichwa was the worst, to

wear a braid was the worst. Now, the air feels different. I can tell you

about our taitas (elders). There was a transition; for my mom, those who

are 80, 90 years old, for them the conception of the earth, the water, was

super sacred. From there it went downhill (par’abajo). People began to

ignore this process. People who are now 50, 60 years old began to say this

is just a plant, this is just water, this is just an indígena, just a poncho; until

about ten years ago. It was, at the end, we were going through a process of

mestizajización. From there, again, now our elders say, how good that you

have things like this; now there are few elders and they know a wonder of

things. I have some videos of my mom, how they tell the history of

Saraguro…it gives you courage, because no, carajo, we’re not going to

continue in this track and why have we let things be wrapped up so

quickly in the mestizijante current? In this, advantageously there are

institutions that support, people who work, discourses that are produced.

(Personal interview with one of the former presidents of a community)

The last testimony I have chosen reflects a profound vision and struggle of Indianity that

come from his actual lived experiences of being indígena. They form part of his response
 76

to when I asked him his opinion on the structure of community organization, which was

dictated originally by the State with the Ley de Comunas in 1937, and then enforced by

the Andean Mission in the 1960s.

Well, perhaps we’ve changed clothes, we’ve learned other customs, but

with all these changes, there is [something] inside us, I would say, almost

genetically, in the moments in which we are having the most problems, or

at the same time, the moments in which we are most at peace, our

conscience judges us, telling [us], because it makes us remember, it

presents to us mental figures of how our elders lived, of how they were

organized. When we make this comparison of those mental figures, which

in some form are preserved genetically, that, upon having these

physiological and psychological blunders (tropiezos), it happens that these

cultural mental figures of your past come to your mind, and you begin to

make comparisons and you realize that you are mistaken. The problem is

that not all of us are prepared to understand that the conscience is judging

us, that we are wrong; some, we understand it as a nightmare, a product as

any sort of excess one might have had or when the people, understanding

that Saraguro is Christian - let’s not say Catholic - Christian, these things

where you depart from Christianity and you head for somewhere else, that

changes the whole panorama… (personal interview with one of the

leaders)
 77

CHAPTER 4: THE ‘WATER’ CONFLICT

This chapter attempts to narrow the water conflict down to its most basic

elements, and from there, to amplify it to some of the “deeper” issues. What is presented

here is still an incomplete view, and I tried to be very selective, but also wanted to show

several points on which community leaders and/or members agreed. This section

privileges the testimonies I heard in Saraguro since I believe the voices of the leaders and

community members are important and deserve this space.

Profiles

With this confused and complicated background on Saraguro, we can now explore

the water conflict. It is necessary to mention that the leaders with whom I spoke and who

were the principal actors in the conflict are part of that middle-aged generation that is

seeking to reclaim their cultural identity and refusing to continue in the “mestizo” track.

The leaders held various occupations as bilingual educators, a car mechanic, in

indigenous organizations, etc. The three communities involved in the conflict are the

three that are spearheading the recuperation of the Raymis – the four festivals

corresponding to the agricultural and astronomical calendar that were either subsumed

into Catholic holidays or prohibited. This recuperation is not without controversy from

within the communities. One leader mentioned the contradictions within the community,

and told me, “They tell us we are against God, that this shouldn’t happen, that we are

witches (brujos) and a lot of things. We have heard it all when we want a change, and a

change has these difficulties.” His words clearly reflect the current atmosphere in the
 78

community, and, for the purposes of this thesis, the positions of the leaders who

confronted the mayor:

I have impelled a lot and on the one side I have a lot of people who

support me and on the other side people who can’t even look at me - why

am I with these absurdities [they say]. But in the end, I’ve always said, it

is 516 years since our taitas were little by little changed from their

mentality to another in which they took away our values until this very

moment we are ashamed to say we are runas,32 that we are Indians. So in

these Raymis, we recuperate our food, wisdom, technology…My parents

were Catholic, I was also Catholic. But now, coming to know that we have

our own spirituality, we go with our own (lo nuestro).

During my time in Saraguro, I “officially” spoke with 20 different individuals,

sometimes two or three times with same person. Of the 20, seven had been president or

vice president of one of the three communities involved; five were council members (two

indigenous, three mestizo) during the 2005-2009 period (of seven council members that

form the legislative body of Saraguro’s municipality); one was the mayor; and the others

were either community members of the three communities or presidents or vice-

presidents from three other communities in Saraguro parish.

The Narratives

I stated earlier that the simplest version of the water conflict was that the mayor

had begun a project without first consulting the communities, and they put a stop to it.

32
Runa is the Kichwa word for man, used in the general sense for ‘people.’ Used in
Spanish, it means ‘indigenous person.’
 79

The following are four narratives; three from people who were at one time in the position

of president, representing two of the three communities involved, and a fourth from

someone who at the time of the conflict, was vice-mayor in the municipality and at the

same time, secretary of one of the communities.

(i) We were participating in a forum about water, about the value it has for

indigenous peoples. In the forum an engineer from the municipality was

also participating. There we found out the municipality had a project of

water collection for the urban center. Once I knew about it, we had a

meeting with the Consejo de Ayllus (community council) and there were

some ideas that we’re not going to allow this, but we didn’t know exactly

what the project was. In April, the foundation again organized a forum to

consider the legal framework on the part of the State, to analyze the Ley

de Aguas (Water Law) in which we wanted to request participation, when

the Consejo Nacional de Recursos Hídricos (National Council for

Hydraulic Services) was going to give the concessions and permits to

bring the water. The civil servants of the municipality arrived there and

then we found out it was already set to go. So we held a meeting in the

community, with the three cabildos and we formed a commission to go see

the high part (la parte alta). We went to see and they had already dug a lot

higher up near the sites, where we have the springs. We planned, we went

around and we came back to the community to inform them. So we

approached the municipality and we spoke with the mayor about what our
 80

intention was, if they were going to take the water from the parte alta,

they needed to invest in maintenance. Then too we made him know that

for years and years the municipality would take water from a spring,

didn’t do maintenance or preservation or anything, the spring dried

up/disappeared, and they would go higher up. This would cause conflicts

for us because they would make the tank and the part below would be left

without water and the people who live off of cattle raising didn’t have

water to give to their animals. So we approached the municipality to

converse and the mayor, good naturedly, said yes, he was at fault, and we

requested that he maintain the cuenca (basin), nothing more, that the

springs be maintained so that they don’t dry up definitively. So the mayor

offered to give us a fund to start with, with which to invest, so we went to

basically sign the agreement with the authorities down below. We were

right on time, we had said at 3 o’clock sharp and by 4 o’clock nobody had

arrived. So we went to the [central park, outside the municipality], we had

a computer, we quickly wrote a letter and we left it for the mayor to say

that we had been there and that some other time we’ll present the proposal

and we left. After this, the mayor sent invitations, we would go and from

there the conflict began. The mayor changed his tone of voice, he would

start off annoyed; this caused us unease. We had gone around the parte

alta and there were complaints that they had harmed the cornfields where
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they had passed by digging, now there was more disapproval in the

communities.

(ii) The problem begins when the comuneros in meetings denounce that

they were already making the channel (for the pipes) in the territory that

corresponds to the geographic space that as a community we have said this

territory corresponds to us (see Figure 9). But we maintained relations

with the municipality until the last minute, in the end things came to some

setbacks. The same problem that Ilincho (community) was having also

happened in the territory of Lagunas and also in the territory of some

community members of Gunudel. The problem began with the situation

that the cabildos (presidents or governing bodies) we weren’t consulted in

order to do these excavations. In some cases they say they spoke with the

land owners, but only with the owners, not with all those who were going

to be affected, only with a few that they found, the others they hadn’t

found. So the problem came when the comuneros began denouncing on

the interior of each community.

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Figure 9. "They were already making the ditches."

(iii) After our water project, we had water left over that we wanted to

bring for irrigation, by means of different pipes; and despite the fact that

we had all the legality with this water, they tried to bring it to Saraguro.

We said no, it’s our water with every legal right, let alone the fact that it’s

our ancestral territory. We said no, from here, we would go to take out

some hoses they had left connected, they also would come, take out the

hoses and leave them connected; we spent some time like this (see Figure

10) … Then the mayor comes and says this is badly done, we have to

enlarge it up above, and some other things. In some part, a desire to spend

money and since it’s badly done, we have to begin reconstruction,

enlargement even. So he begins to give a contract to an engineer and what

he does is cunningly they go and converse with the proprietors, to some,

they trick them and said, I can give you work: I’ll buy you 5 donkeys so
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you can work there, and it’s deception. They begin to work but there are

many conscientious people who say, no, we don’t live in an individual

world, we live in a communitarian world and in these things we have to

make communitarian decisions. Parallel to this they had begun to dig, so

what the community did was to cover these ditches. That’s where the

anger began definitively; from there it didn’t go forward. In a community

minga we went and covered, not everything but in one part at least we said

here there isn’t passage. On the [radio] we came out and we circulated a

press notice to the citizens so that they wouldn’t think in terms of racism

because [the mayor] was inciting the citizens, saying look, the indigenous

we are such and such, and for that reason they don’t want to give the

water. We went [on the radio] to say it’s not this, we haven’t wanted to

because there isn’t a clear policy to maintain the environment and because

of the little and poor policy of negotiation with the communities. Because

[the mayor] needs to negotiate, he should converse, he should agree on

things, he should arrive at agreements. And this never happened, not even

until now.
 84

Figure 10. “We would go to take out some hoses they had left connected, they also would
come, take out the hoses and leave them connected…”

(iv) Lately we’ve had a problem, the straw that broke the camel’s back,

was a project to improve the potable water system in Saraguro. The

municipality had rapidly gotten a hold of some resources from the Fondo

de Solidaridad, they arrived at the communities with the contractors,

without any previous conversation in the community, without having

previously dialogued with the leaders and they began the work of the

whole process of excavation for the pipes. This caused an immediate

reaction in the communities. It’s a lack of respect because the community

is considered a communitarian government; there is a cabildo who is the

highest authority in the community, well actually the highest would be the

assembly, but the visible figure is the president, and over this base there is

a defined territory and generally this territorial jurisdiction is respected. I

consider it an erroneous act on the part of the municipality. Perhaps the

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problem could have been solved but things were then added on top of that.

What I think really worsened the situation were the harsh words that were

exchanged over the radio, in the press, and in assemblies between the

mayor and some of the indigenous leaders. Now the resentment won’t

allow for a solution (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. "Now resentment won't allow for a solution." I was taken to see some of the
sites; here, it had been a year since they installed the pipe, and it seems nature has taken
over.

The mayor’s version of what happened began by describing the problems where

they currently bring the water for the urban center, a system that was “already done”

when he took office, and that was a “disaster.” When he first arrived to office, he made

two treatment plants to make the water drinkable. After this, he decided instead of

treating the water, it would be better to go further up in order to collect cleaner water:

I did a study and I looked for money from the government and they gave

me $360,000 with the purpose of doing the following: instead of collecting

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the water here, to go higher up, where there is less deforestation, fewer

animals and less contamination, and try to collect it here, in such a way

that this water won’t come as mud anymore…When I presented this [to

the government], they approved me. Perfect. We weren’t going to increase

the quantity we were going to take. If we are collecting 7 liters per second,

we weren’t going to collect the 7 liters below, but above. But what

happened is that the compañeros immediately … they say “this doesn’t

comply with the water, this is bad policy.” So. They politicized the subject

of the water.

These five relations of the water conflict are not only a reduced sample from the

total number of narratives I have, but they themselves are also extremely simplified

versions of the events. Furthermore, according to the way I choose to organize my

interviews, they represent a selection only of what happened at the beginning, and

nothing yet of anterior or posterior events that further complicate the situation. One of the

most obvious possible causes of the problem, which the mayor never mentioned to me,

was the fact that they began the work without consulting the communities. Three of the

five council members also explained that this was what happened, as well as the three

who had been presidents of the communities at the time, and various other presidents and

community members. The problem is clearly seen in the following descriptions:

From the municipality the mayor says ‘I’m going to the legal facts – water

is a right that everyone has. Human rights, no? – the right to have access

to the water, and you can’t deny me [the mayor] [the water]. And the
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communities shelter themselves in collective rights, the possibility to

make decisions in our territory. That’s where the dilemma lies.

What was our legal argument that he couldn’t do this water project?

Because he would say, I’ll bring the police, the authorities…he also

threatened us with a constitutional appeal (amparo) and I also threatened

him with a constitutional appeal because as part of the collective rights we

have the right to be consulted about plans and programs of prospection

and exploitation of natural resources. We said, Mayor, you never

consulted us to enter into our territories. You never asked permission. And

another thing within the collective rights is that we are usufruct

beneficiaries of the administration of resources that are found in our lands.

There were serious verbal confrontations.

Thus, the various points of contention and causes for the conflict were the breach of

authority on the part of the mayor, the violation of collective rights and

misunderstandings across cultural and epistemic differences about the meaning of water

and territory. But even with the weight of these difficulties, the result of the conflict

could have turned out any number of ways. The leaders often mentioned that it could

have been resolved, if any number of possibilities had happened.

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What Has Been Done to Solve It?

Depending on how the problem is defined and how the beginning is defined, the

conflict has been going on anywhere from 2003 up to the present. The current

administration started work on the ditches between 2006 and 2007, and to this day no

resolution has been reached. “What has been done to solve the problem?” was one of the

questions I asked people the first time I was exploring this conflict in Saraguro. Here is

one response from an (indigenous) council member:

In April [of 2007], we had everyone’s presence in order to sit down and

resolve the conflict. So the first step successfully taken was the fact that

we all sat down in order to converse and search for solutions. But what

happens right there in the first intervention? The mayor steps out of

bounds and begins with “How is this possible that you won’t give us the

water? What happened to all that talk of the indigenous about solidarity,

about reciprocity…?” in a tone of voice not very cordial. The communities

resented this and immediately abandoned these talks. The situation got

really worse because of that. A commission was made, the mayor made

some requests that weren’t answered, there is silence. We haven’t been

able to establish this point of encounter/connection point of conversation.

In the beginning it was being worked on a lot. There were about 10

meetings. What the communities wanted was to establish a proposal and

negotiate it with the municipality.

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From one of the narratives given to me, it appeared that at first the municipality

seemed to want to resolve the problem. In fact, several of the community leaders and

council members mentioned that at different times, the municipality seemed willing to

give some financial support so that the communities could hire experts to help them with

technical studies on the water. However, the communities did not desire to elaborate a

proposal to simply hand it over to the municipality and never hear from them again. As

they repeatedly insisted, they felt it was necessary to work together in the long term. The

water might be coming for the townspeople, but the land where the water is coming from

is not only in the territorial jurisdiction of the communities, but the land is used for cattle

pasture and the communities also need water. So, it matters what happens in these areas

where the water is taken, even if the townspeople have no idea because they are not the

ones building or maintaining their system. But even if the municipality seemed ready to

negotiate at first, this attitude did not last long. As one leader explains,

The municipality, basically, gave us a blank check and we gave them a

price and the price was too high for the municipality: the price was that we

wanted to manage the [local] potable water company, that some member

of the community would be in charge. Then they began to question us, that

we didn’t have people prepared for this type of thing, and later that me and

another leader might have interests in something. I never thought about

this situation because I already have a job, I am an educator. I couldn’t go

work for the company.

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Despite the efforts to resolve it, the problem grew worse. From the community

leaders’ perspective, the reasons for stopping the project and demanding a different one is

summarized in the following testimony: “It’s not that we don’t want to give the water just

because. We have said first because of the behavior of the mayor, his attitude. Also,

because nothing has yet been done [for the community] despite the fact that it is many

years that this vital element has been provided. And also because there is no clear policy

about how to administer this life cycle of water…But the mayor is like, these are just

Indians…” One community member said that the communities felt abused and deceived

in a way. Respect was a common theme mentioned by the leaders. Another said, “We, in

a sense of solidarity and community, say ‘come, mayor, have a seat, have some pinzhi

and chicha,’ and later the next week he goes on the radio and sends us to where? We’ve

said no, until when, compañeros?”

“Whatever he might say, we have all the humanity”

As one can guess, in a setting historically plagued by racism, geographic division

of space and ethnicity, strained ethnic relations, etc., the water became more than water.

As one leader put it, stated earlier, “The conclusion was that this problem of the water

was a space to take back some unsatisfied necessities and that the municipality was in

some form to blame for these dissatisfactions.” If history is accounted for, this statement

makes perfect sense in Saraguro. I want to pull out the testimonies that show the two

threads that my thesis focuses on: the inability to dialogue, one because of a historically

racist view toward the indígenas, and two because of the mayor’s position within the

State. The following are some explanations of why the conflict remains unresolved:
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For me, it was always a serious matter, it wasn’t something superficial. On

the other hand from the municipality, the problem was always seen as

something superficial, something without root, without meaning … In

these public dialogues over the radio there was always the attack from one

side and the other, we were always responding in a way, we never

launched attacks, he would question us and we would go on [the radio] to

defend ourselves. We also took out a press bulletin explaining that water

in the Andean world means it’s your mother, that’s why we say mama

yaku (mother water), and you have to defend your mother…There was

never respect, never the recognition that we as indígenas respect the

authorities, we elect them, they are also in the obligation to respect us, to

respect our plans, even if it doesn’t fit into their way of being. But it was

never like this, so the fire kept getting bigger until there was a moment in

which the decision was made definitively that we could talk with any other

council member but not the mayor. All these things he was saying in the

parish assembly, with his declarations, all this motivated it to come to this:

that it couldn’t be negotiated.

We can’t approach the municipality because the first thing the mayor says

is ‘give the water,’ he gets annoyed, he becomes furious. Hopefully at

some point maybe with a different mayor who has a serious commitment
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to wanting to take care of and protect the environment; but in the

communities what’s clear is that it’s the same: they do not agree.

Of course, this latest [mayor] is more infuriated with us, he doesn’t give us

anything. As I say, it’s his attitude. We would have given [the water]

because the water isn’t ours, it’s for everybody but the way he wants to

impose things, we have said no.

Something else was that they always wanted to impose on us. It seems that

now we aren’t here to be given orders: we’ve prepared ourselves, we

know how to think, we don’t need them to tell us what to do. He was

always making us feel in this situation and every time it bothered us more,

saying that what we were saying wasn’t valid.

For the mayor we are inconsequential, we are inhuman (inhumanos), ugly

words like that. Whatever he might say, we have all the humanity… It’s

impossible, in this decade, in these years, that he wants to do whatever he

wants. He needs to consult; he needs to ask. Later when we rise up, then

he says, ‘come to converse but under these conditions.’ It doesn’t work

like that. Without any conditions, sure, but when he says under these

conditions, then no…It’s extremely complicated. This mayor has even

done some good things, but no, no. He has wounded us. There are really
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offensive words…they are…negotiators with interests in money, and later

he calls us to conversations – how is this? Impossible. He has to back

down, he has to change his attitude. Once he changes his attitude and

behavior to work with the people, with the communities, then, sure. A

dialogue would automatically flow, but when he’s all over the four winds,

sending the people to I-don’t-know-where, the leaders. Impossible.

These testimonies came out of the narratives of the water. Later, when I went back, I

decided to ask people, “Why, in the end, do you think it hasn’t been solved?” The

answers were not all the same, of course, but some said:

There isn’t willingness on the part of the mayor to accept long-lasting

proposals, above all for the environment. He wanted to comply with his

campaign. When there isn’t willingness on the other side, nothing can be

done.

Because the mayor is simply a capricious person. He wants to assert his

authority. He says that he is the maximum authority of Saraguro and he is

not recognizing the authority of the community, which, as it happens,

might be small, but it has as much authority as the mayor has. He looks for

conflicts, he doesn’t look to solve them.

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For me, because I have been on both sides, the heart of the issue is the

subject of power, and by means of the water is also the operation of

control of power.

Clearly, the leaders have complaints against the mayor. As another said,

Another thing for me is that the mayor is very authoritarian. He thinks the

municipality and the territory of the communities is his hacienda and in his

hacienda he can give orders. This is one of the great reasons that hasn’t

allowed us to come to an agreement…So why did the communities make

the decision to not give the water? Because he began to say this is how it

has to be and it’s for this reason we [the municipality] are giving the

participatory budget.

It was not hard to see where the leaders drew their complaints from. In my interview with

the mayor, he said,

…[T]here are positions a little extremist on the side of the Indigenous

Movement that believe that they, for having been a group of people native

to America, native to here, they believe that they are the proprietors and

owners of everything, no? Of the resources, of the truth, of the streets, of

absolutely everything. Even though they can’t be from the legal point of

view because I say, this is my terrain, no? But there are positions

sometimes a little bit contradictory in the subject of, ah carambas, we are

who are promoting this, the proprietors and owners of culture, of history.

No, we all have culture, we all have our history; carambas, I’d like to
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know much more about the Anglo-Saxon culture, to know how the first

North Americans arrived from England, right?

There is much that these phrases reveal about the mayor’s attitude, but the most

important for the moment is: this is my terrain. This attitude helps reveal how the water

conflict is not about the water, but about control of the territories. Furthermore, it seems

that the mayor believes that his policies are inclusive and participatory and thus, he does

not need to come to agreements. But from the indigenous perspective, this is not how one

governs; not matter how revolutionary one is, political matters are never finished, and

they still need to be debated. The following comment may illuminate his thoughts on the

matter: “We believe that this government is one that is totally popular, inclusive, and that

works equally with them, together. If they don’t participate, nothing is given to them, as

if they didn’t want to belong to this model, this process. If they don’t want to belong,

neither are we going to include them, to oblige them to be with us.” This rhetoric actually

reflects one of the deeper problems in the mayor’s general discourse. He began by calling

his government popular and inclusive. The words used in his platform, and that are

spattered all over Saraguro on municipal documents and billboards, are “alternative,

participative, and revolutionary.” In one of our interviews, he furthermore prided himself

on being a “socialist” because poverty or riches must be shared. The mayor probably

thinks that he really is revolutionary. The problem lies exactly in what one indigenous

leader commented to me: “I’ve been with three mayors. Now, with this one, it’s like he

says he’s revolutionary, leftist and everything, as if to say, ‘I already know, and I want to

do things according to my thinking,’ and he wants to impose himself. And this has
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bothered us, we don’t want this. In any case [no matter your line of thinking], we have to

arrive at agreements and from there we work.”

“I’m not a mercachifle of water!”

A major problem in the water conflict centered on the supposedly participatory

water company – EMAPASA. The indigenous leaders, who were never given

representation in the company, proposed that the company disappear and that a different,

actually participatory company be formed, with them as managers:

The community wants to give the water but only if these cuencas (water

basins) are managed by an indígena. Water is for everyone. I think that no

one can be stingy with (mezquinar) the water. A compañero from the

communities should be there; they should have a voice. This is what they

don’t want to allow in the mayor’s office. The communities don’t play any

role at all, that’s where the clash is.

…a social problem came about here in Saraguro and there were verbal

confrontations, the mayor against us and he took out several public letters

insulting us, saying that they were political interests, that we want to be

candidates…

We brought a foundation from Quito, Acción Ecológica, and they gave us

the solutions. They were saying why collect from here? What they need to

do is improve the tank. They need to make sediment filters and right there
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the water is purified. We proposed this to the mayor but he told us you

aren’t engineers or anything, in the end, more insults.

Some of leaders told me that, sure, they needed help from outside technicians to fully

elaborate the proposal they wanted. But it seems in the end that the mayor will not listen

simply because it is coming from the mouths of “certain leaders.” In an open letter (see

Appendix A for original Spanish), the mayor wrote the following: “…With all these

antecedents, the above all scornful attitude of certain leaders of the Cabildos of the

communities of the micro-cuenca of Chuchuchir becomes inexplicable upon insisting

solely on seeking the management of EMAPASA to permit access to the water sites and

only thus the planned work could be realized. What is the interest of these leaders to

assume the management of EMAPASA?” The mayor insisted that not only constitutional

rights and guarantees were being violated, but also the human rights protected by national

and international agreements; the municipality would not permit these to be broken under

no threat or pressure from “a miniscule group of people who are only looking for

personal benefits.” One community member, who had previously been but was not

president at the time of the conflict, pointed out they certainly had experience managing

water systems, albeit smaller ones, since the communities manage, care for, and fix their

own water systems. But for the mayor, this would not be evidence that the indigenous

were capable of managing a water system. In fact he resents this point: when I asked him

who was responsible for bringing the water, he replied that the municipality brings it for

the urban sector and the communities have done their systems with outside organizations.

He continued, “…what happens is that they don’t incorporate into the only system of the
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municipal water and sewer company that we have now. They don’t get involved. They

want to have their own governing body for water to control it among themselves.”

At one point there was a proposal, and only one of the 12 items was never agreed

upon, because the mayor refused to turn over the administration to the communities.

Then a foundation became involved and that led to other problems; the proposal was

never agreed upon; the leaders say they completely lost any trust with the municipality,

and the problem stagnated. On the subject of the management of EMPASA, the mayor

exclaimed to me,

They want to be paid and I’m not going to pay anybody! I’m not some

corrupt politician. Once, they told me that they wanted the administration

of the water turned over to them - neither am I some businessman, I’m not

going to negotiate with anybody! Because I’m not a hawker (mercachifle)

of water. So if it’s that they think they’re going to force me, they will

never force me, and if it’s not resolved, we don’t resolve it, there isn’t any

problem.
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PART III: INSPECTIONS

CHAPTER 5: HISTORICAL REGIMES OF TRUTH

As a starting point for exploring regimes of truth, Michael Taussig’s question,

stated earlier, is helpful: “Can we understand the effects of truth in ruling ideologies

without taking their poetics into account?” (Shamanism 287). In the conquest of America,

religion, as an ideology, played a fundamental role as poetics and politics. Both

conquerors and conquered practiced religion and both did so by means of literacy (albeit

in different ways).33 However, it was the belief of the Spaniards that both the religion and

the books of the natives were ‘of the devil,’ a belief which justified their conquest. The

Indians’ religions, capacity to reason, literacies, and very humanity were questioned by

the conquerors. One form that resistance has taken is that of the constant struggle to

legitimate what was denied to the indígenas upon conquest. The sad irony, of course, is

that in Abya Yala, the struggle for indigenous peoples has been to legitimate themselves

in the face of an illegitimate ruler.

33
Fernando Mires claims that, “Si un europeo cambia de religión, cambia simplemente
de religión. Si a un indio le es quitada su religión, pierde el sentido de su historia. Porque
para los pueblos indios la religión es, entre otras cosas, la sistematización de múltiples
experiencias históricas. A través de sus religiones los pueblos indios se comunican con el
pasado. Para el europeo, en cambio, por lo menos para ese europeo que llegó a América,
la religión era una ideología” [If a European changes religion, he simply changes
religion. If an Indian’s religion is taken away, he loses his sense of history. Because for
indigenous peoples religion is, among other things, the systematization of multiple
historical experiences. Through their religions indigenous peoples communicate with the
past. For a European, on the other hand, or at least for that European that arrived to
America, religion was an ideology.] (53 emphasis mine).
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The Poetics and Politics of the Conquest: the Requirimiento

Patricia Seed criticizes colonial histories with an intellectual focus on “high

culture” literature that only present abstract ideas about colonial power because “ideas

cannot provide us with the contemporary consequences or legacies of colonialism

because they avoid considering the practices or mechanisms for enacting power”

(Ceremonies 15). Seed is concerned with the same type of power as Foucault. They do

not seek to define power itself, but rather to explore the mechanisms by which power is

diffused and functions, the truth-discourses that function to legitimate that power.

Foucault claims that, “…multiple relations of power traverse, characterize, and constitute

the social body; …and they can neither be established nor function unless a true discourse

is produced, accumulated, put into circulation, and set to work. Power cannot be

exercised unless a certain economy of discourses of truth functions in, on the basis of,

and thanks to, that power” (Society 24). Applied to colonization, the “normality” of the

procedures and protocols of the conquest made it seem legitimate, but only to those of the

conquering culture (certainly not to the natives, and often not to other conquering

powers).

The poetics and politics of the Spaniards’ ruling ideology, or discourse of truth,

was embodied in their protocol for conquest, which was to read a text called the

Requirement (Requirimiento) to the people they were conquering. This text was devised

in 1512 by the Spanish legal scholar Juan López Palacios Rubios “…as a result of a crisis

in the earlier forms of enacting Spanish authority in the New World…While not the

original form of Spanish authority in the New World, [it] was the most enduring” (Seed
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Ceremonies 72). The “legal opinion” of Palacios Rubios and advice from “a leading

expert on church law – Fray Matías de la Paz” granted the Crown the help they needed to

institute their authority in a more legitimate way (72). Part of their comments were

“transformed into an official statement – the Requirement – which all Spaniards were

required to read before subjecting New World peoples to the crown of Castile. Reading

the Requirement thus became the mechanism which enacted Spanish political authority

over the peoples of the New World” (72, 73) (see Appendix B for full text of the

Requirimiento). The Requirement demanded submission to Christianity, and thus

acceptance of the Crown’s and Pope’s authority; there was no other option. If the

ultimatum were rejected, the Spaniards would wage war. According to Seed,

The apparently preposterous character of the text includes the form of the

demands and its substance. It ‘requires’ that indigenous peoples of the

New World acknowledge the church as superior of the world and therefore

consent to have priests preach to them. It contains an equally mystifying

promise that such submission will result in Spanish soldiers leaving ‘your

women and children free,’ not compelling anyone to turn Christian. But

this was not an entirely free choice. If they failed to acknowledge the

superiority of Christianity, they could be warred upon ‘everywhere and

however’ possible. Finally, there is the incredible disclaimer that by

rejecting this demand all the deaths and devastation caused by the Spanish

attack were the fault of the natives for rejecting their demands. There is,

on the surface at least, nothing more absurd than a demand that a

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community of natives to whom the text was being read (assuming, of

course, they understood sixteenth-century Spanish) acknowledge the

‘church as lord and superior of the world’ or else be warred against and

‘subject[ed]…to the yoke and obedience of the Church and their

Highnesses. (Ceremonies 71)

The use of religion to justify expansion was not without precedent, and not unique

to Christian Spaniards. For the Spaniards, their justification can be traced to the Papal

Bull Inter Caetera of 1493, issued by Pope Alexander VI, a native of Valencia and a

friend of the Castilian king. This particular bull,

[B]ecame a major document in the development of subsequent legal

doctrines regarding claims of empire in the ‘new world.’ The bull assigned

to Castile the exclusive right to acquire territory, to trade in, or even to

approach the lands lying west of the meridian situated one hundred

leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. An exception was

made, however, for any lands actually possessed by any other Christian

prince beyond this meridian prior to Christmas, 1492. (“Bull Inter

Caetera”)

Thus, the Bull Inter Caetera grants the Castilian Crown the authority and legitimacy to

conquer and proselytize the lands they “discover” because the original inhabitants are not

Christians.

The Requirement, then, was the protocol by which Ferdinand and Isabela

exercised the rights granted to them in Inter Caetera, and which assured them that the
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massive-scale genocide and exploitation was lawful, legitimate, and legal. Text and

speech, then, of alphabetic European literacy, were the foundational method by which

Christian Spaniards built their illegitimate empire. This speech pertained to a “death

logic” that overwhelmed the Indians. Fernando Mires points out that the many accounts

of suicides are evidence the Indians were truly living the end of a history (47). Seed

explains that, “The threat of warfare contained in the Requirement was one of the most

distinctive features of Spanish colonialism. No other European state created a fully

ritualized protocol for declaring war against indigenous peoples” (Ceremonies 70). There

are various numerical estimates on the lives lost during the conquest. To have an idea,

one calculation is that the total number of Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas at the beginning of

the conquest was between 70 and 90 million persons. A century and a half later, just

3,500,000 remained, barely five percent of the lowest estimate (Mires 46). Tragically, “In

the Andean case, the excessive tribute charged by the encomenderos and corregidores,

together with the epidemics of 1525, 1546, 1558-59 and 1585, decimated the indigenous

population, which fell from an estimated 4 to 15 million under Incan rule to only 1.3

million by 1570, and again to only 700,000 by 1620 (Klarén 2000, 49-50)” (Mazzotti 85).

Truth Effects of Discourses: Gente de razón and Quasi-Reasonable People

To conquer so violently, there needed to be a distinct line between colonizing and

colonized; otherwise they could not justify their domination. Seed suggests that, “The

source of this unmistakably delineated boundary between Europeans and Indians was the

originally Christian belief in the moral demarcation isolating humans from animals”

(American 116). Importantly, this religious-sounding binary influenced all other areas of
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life, and most significantly the political, social, and economic spheres. After the natives

were conquered,

…Spaniards, like other European colonizers, did not preserve the

boundary in its original form…Spaniards presumed that natives were

subjects of the crown of Spain, an assumption that the crown ratified in

repeated decisions and made into law in 1542. While removing this major

formal political distinction between colonizers and the colonized,

Spaniards sought to retain and transform the politico-moral dividing line.

(118)

In other words, the political distinction was removed because both conqueror and

conquered were under the same Crown. But, if this was a land of equals, then the

conqueror could not justify his domination and legitimate his exploitation for gold. Thus,

instead of calling themselves “the Christians,”34 by “[b]orrowing a traditional Catholic

criterion created by the twelfth-century Dominican Thomas Aquinas, sixteenth-century

Spaniards began referring to themselves as the ‘people of reason’ (gente de razón). This

concept stemmed from a distinction that Aquinas made between human beings and

animals” (Seed American 118). For Aquinas, while all humans had reason, certain sectors

of society “…would never fully comprehend Catholicism, such as the mentally deficient,

the insane, and juveniles” (119). In the colonial situation, Iberians not only maintained

Aquinas’ moral category, they used it to establish a political identity that would favor

Spaniards. Seed advocates that, “Spanish jurist and longtime Peruvian resident Juan de

34
Because Moslems were also “Spaniards,” those who arrived to Abya Yala called
themselves, simply, “The Christians.”
 105

Matienzo put it best when he wrote that Indians were ‘participants in reason so as to

sense it, but not to possess or follow it.’ Thus the definition of Indians as ‘participants but

not possessors of reason’ became a standard that would prevent them from ever attaining

equality with Spaniards” (119).

While everyone was a subject of the Crown, there was a definite subordination of

the millions of original inhabitants, “ese mundo multicolor y heterogéneo” [this

multicolored and heterogeneous world] (Mires 44), whose plurality of names and cultures

would be reduced to one simple label, and a mistaken one at that: Indian. As Mazzotti

explains, “…the peculiar internal division of the Spanish viceroyalties into a república de

españoles (including the Creoles) and a separate república de indios with its own laws

and obligations (regarding issues of tribute and forced labor, for example) is one of the

defining features of the Spanish system…” (82,83). While (or perhaps because) the

purpose of the division was economic and labor exploitation, the basis of the division was

purely moral, as these two republics also existed in the same physical space – not side by

side, but literally together. Without geopolitical boundaries, Seed argues that,

[T]he most important distinction for Spaniards was that between the

‘reasonable’ and the ‘quasi-reasonable’ people, because that boundary

secured the legitimate title to gold and silver…Only the natives’

continuing status as incapable of becoming fully Christian guaranteed

Spaniards’ permanent ownership of buried gold and silver (through their

monarch), the major source of Iberian wealth. The economic source of the

distinction meant that the most scrupulously defended boundary for the
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first two centuries of colonial rule was that between Christians and those

not ever capable of attaining full Christian status. (American 125)

Traveling Ideologies: the Civilizing Mission Goes Rogue

After these first two centuries, Spanish America was finally opened to the rest of

the world. The travelers and explorers who came flooding in were Europeans and North

Americans for the most part with scientific or capitalist motivations. As Fitzell explains,

speculation and exploration involved not just the search for natural resources but also the

evaluation of “existing social conditions” in the emerging independent republics (27). To

accomplish this evaluation, in the context of Ecuador,

[S]e comparaba el progreso social, cultural y tecnológico relativo del

Ecuador con el patrón de la civilización europea. En esa evaluación, la

condición de la población indígena era un importante elemento a

considerar, porque a pesar del desacuerdo entre los viajeros respecto a las

razones para explicar esa condición ‘miserable,’ coincidían en que los

Indios de la Sierra eran ‘bárbaros.’35 (Fitzell 27)36

Pratt explains that the ideological task of this ‘capitalist vanguard’ “is to reinvent

América as backward and neglected, to encode its non-capitalist landscapes and societies

35
“…the relative social, cultural and technological progress of Ecuador was compared to
the pattern of European civilization. In this evaluation, the condition of the indigenous
population was an important element to consider because despite disagreement among
the travelers with respect to the reasons to explain this ‘miserable’ condition, they
coincided in that the Indians of the Sierra were ‘barbarian.’”
36
Significantly, in the 57 European and Northamerican authors studied by Fitzell of
writings about Ecuador, Sierran Indians are never referred to as “savages” (salvajes), they
are distinguished as “barbarians” (bárbaros) (67 note 2). Salvaje is reserved for
Amazonian Indians and is used to produce images both of repulsion and paradisiacal
nobility (the noble savage).
 107

as manifestly in need of the rationalized exploitation the Europeans bring” (Imperial Eyes

152). The capitalist vanguard arrives to compete with the Church in Spanish America as

bearers of the civilizing mission. While the Church seeks to eradicate the “paganism”

offensive to its doctrinal and political positions, the capitalist considers “indolence” as a

primary sin, and one that is pervasive in “backward” or “barbarian” societies. Pratt

describes how the language of the civilizing mission is one in “which North Europeans

produce other peoples (for themselves) as ‘natives,’ reductive, incomplete beings

suffering from the inability to have become what Europeans already are, or to have made

themselves into what Europeans intend them to be” (152). The civilizing mission, first

used by Spanish Christians to legitimate their conquest and subsequent rule of America,

and then three centuries later by North European capitalist vanguards, can traverse time

and space because it consists of an “immense flexibility of […a] normalizing,

homogenizing rhetoric of inequality. It asserts its power over anyone or any place whose

lifeways have been organized by principles other than the maximizing, rationalizing

mechanism of industrial production and the manipulations of commodity capitalism”

(152). Even further,

[I]t tolerates all manner of contradiction. In Spanish America, like

everywhere else, the judgments of indolence remained quite compatible

with the labor-intensive forms of servitude the travelers were concretely

witnessing. The human infrastructure required by their own travels

required armies of muleteers and peons, not to mention the famed Andean

silleteros who carried Europeans across the Cordillera on their backs.

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Most travelers in the Andes saw firsthand such spectacles as indigenous

miners living lives of unspeakable misery toward certain death in the

frigid, mercury-poisoned mines of the Cordillera. Such counterevidence

posed little problem to the essentializing imperial eye. One needed only to

see a person at rest to bear witness, if one chose, to the trait of idleness.

One needed only to see dirt to bear witness to the trait of uncleanliness.

This essentializing discursive power is impervious until those who are

seen are also listened to. (Pratt Imperial Eyes 152, 153)

The pervasive, homogenizing rhetoric of the civilizing mission has existed for

centuries as what Foucault calls a regime of truth and Taussig, an implicit social

consciousness. Fitzell cites Hall’s (1990:16) proposition

[Q]ue aunque los significados específicos de las imágenes puedan

cambiar, se siguen construyendo de acuerdo con la antigua gramática. Esta

gramática sirve para clasificar el mundo mediante las antiguas categorías

que enmarcan nuestra comprensión, aunque las imágenes mismas sean

contemporáneas. El mundo clasificado en Nosotros y el Otro constituye

una antigua premisa…37 (34).

The classifying typology used since the sixteenth century in Spanish America categorized

people based on a racial concept of the “limpieza de sangre y a la supuesta jerarquía de

37
“that although the specific meanings of the images might change, they continue to be
constructed according to the old grammar. This grammar serves to classify the world
through the old categories that frame our understanding, although the images themselves
may be contemporary. The world classified into Us and the Other constitutes an old
premise.”
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las tres razas que contribuyeron con la sangre original: Blanco europeos, Negro africanos

e Indios aborígenes”38 (Fitzell 29). Complicating classification was the phenomenon of

mestizaje, which created countless racial categories. However, these racial divisions were

not the only determinant of a social hierarchy; the reality of social relations in the Andes

was also divided according to “diversas características sociales y culturales atribuidas a

cada grupo…En la práctica, el uso de normas similares a las europeas en la forma de

hablar, en la indumentaria, en las maneras, ocupación y riqueza, resultaban ser muy

importantes para determinar el status racial”39 (Fitzell 29). The racial hierarchy that

attributed inferiority to those described as “savages,” “barbarians,” “uncivilized,” or

“primitive” imbued the assumed superiority of the white race with a scientific foundation,

a new element to this “ancient discourse” (Fitzell 35). The images of this ancient

discourse

[S]on representaciones mentales trasmitidas de generación en generación

entre la población blanco-mestiza, alimentadas y ratificadas con

experiencias cotidianas desde la tierna infancia… Conforman esquemas

mentales que guían clasificaciones de la población…son al fin y al cabo

habitus no conscientes del sentido práctico, en racionalizaciones

38
“purity of blood and the supposed hierarchy of the three races that contributed with
original blood: White Europeans, Black Africans and Aboriginal Indians.”
39
“diverse social and cultural characteristics attributed to each group…In practice, the
use of norms similar to the European ones in the form of speaking, in clothing, in
manners, occupation and riches, turned out very important to determine racial status.”
 110

plasmadas en escritura y refuncionalizadas en ideología.40 (Guerrero 230,

231)

Nature’s Paradox: the hombre-niño

In Ecuador, these “mental representations” manifest themselves in political

discourse.41 In an 1855 debate over whether Indians should be allowed to break their

concertaje (labor debt) contracts if they found better treatment, one politician proclaimed,

[N]o considero a los indígenas como hombres sino como niños que no

tienen bastante discernimiento para consentir ni menos para obligarse…Se

les ha dado el derecho de ciudadanos, se les ha nivelado a los blancos

siendo, como digo, más débiles y de menos valor que los niños. Todos los

días estamos viendo que a un infeliz indio, un muchacho lo conduce a

donde quiere y no presenta más resistencia que la de un cordero. Es libre

de naturaleza, es esclavo de condición, hombre y niño. Por otra parte veo

40
“are mental representations transmitted from generation to generation among the
blanco-mestizo population, fed and confirmed by quotidian experiences since the tender
infancy…They conform mental sketches that guide classifications of the population…in
the end, they are the subconscious habitus of common sense, in rationalizations captured
in writing and refunctionalized in ideology.”
41
The following citations are from Andres Guerrero’s article “Una imagen ventrílocua.”
He makes a very convincing and complicated argument that the political discourse
throughout the nineteenth century over the character of the Indian was actually a
metalanguage that served as a discursive base for Conservatives and Liberals in their
struggle for power. In other words, the discourse about the Indian in Ecuador (until 1990)
often had nothing to do with the real condition of the Indian but served instead to mask
differences in political interests of conservatives versus liberals. I cite these examples
simply to show prevalent attitudes or conceptions about Indians held by the elites,
regardless of what their underlying political goals were.
 111

que protegiéndole demasiado se fomenta la inmoralidad…42 (Guerrero

210)

Guerrero asserts that this politician turns to common stereotypes about the Indian. The

first is the image of the Indian as a child, and therefore incapable; the stereotype results in

a paradox: “[S]on adultos pero niños, por ende, seres inacabados…El indio es en sí un

‘hombre niño’, un ser que…jamás alcanzará una etapa de madurez” [they are adults but

children, as such, incomplete beings…The Indian is in himself a ‘man child’, a being that

will never reach a stage of maturity] (211). This first image seems to be inherited from

the centuries-long tradition of considering the Indian as ‘quasi-reasonable.’ The second

image is that of an animal, which Guerrero says seems to have been crystallized into a

commonplace stereotype. He argues that this “comparación con un animal remata la

naturalización de la silueta del indio: es un ser no del todo humano, un ente sin devenir

pero sin embargo ya hecho…Se le puede concebir como una paradoja de la naturaleza y

su destino es ser esclavo ‘de condición’”43 (211).

In the second half of the nineteenth century, progresismo and the triumph of the

Liberal Revolution solidified the State as the protector of the Indians, but did not consider

them ready for citizenship. The belief was that the Indians had been reduced to a

42
“…I do not consider the indígenas as men but as children that do not have enough
discernment to give consent let alone force themselves…The right to be citizens has been
given to them, they have been leveled to the whites, being, as I say, weaker and of less
value than children. Every day we see a wretched Indian, that a young person leads him
to wherever and he doesn’t put up any more resistance than a lamb. He is free by nature,
slave by condition, man and child. On the other hand, I believe that protecting him too
much leads to his immorality…”
43
“comparison to an animal ends in the naturalization of the silhouette of the Indian: he is
a being not of all humanity, a being without development but yet made…He can be
considered a paradox of nature and his destiny is to be a slave ‘by condition.’”
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miserable state by centuries of colonialism but under the care of the State, they could

potentially mature in order to achieve citizenship (Sattar 27). Their incompleteness was

reflected in that “All Indians (including caciques and cacique-governors) were considered

legal minors who could not enter into contracts with non-Indians or appear in court

without a protector or an intermediary who had to be a citizen – that is, white-mestizo,

male, literate, and property-owning” (Sattar 27).

Language and Civilization: How to Know One Is a Man

In a book called Resumen de la historia del Ecuador (Summary of the History of

Ecuador, 1887), under the section Costumbres (Customs), the historian Pedro Fermín

Cevallos writes that the Indian,

Casi no tiene noción ninguna del bien y del mal, ni del pundonor, ni de lo

bello y, tal vez, ni del amor; quizá también no conocen lo que se llama

curiosidad […] No piensan jamás en lo que son ni tienen

conocimiento[…] de que sea tan triste y humillante su destino. Menos aún

pueden dar cuenta de su ser, ni siquiera admirar las maravillas de la

naturaleza; se ven sin saber quiénes son, y ven las cosas sin contemplarlas

ni examinarlas; son máquinas que se dirigen y mueven por los sentidos. Y

sin embargo, ¡tienen como cualquier otro de nosotros, un alma inmortal,

una cabeza para pensar, un corazón para sentir! Si no conociéramos el

estado de civilización en que se hallaron al tiempo de la conquista de

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Benalcázar, (…) diríamos ser bastante inconcebible que también ellos

pertenecen a la familia humana…44 (Guerrero 222, 223)

Cevallos offers two solutions to the “problem of the Indian.” The first is to exhort

children to treat Indians like equals, soldiers not to obligate them to forced work, and

priests to view them like brothers. The second suggestion is one that is repeated by

intellectuals today: “’Debe empeñarse principalmente en que los indios aprendan el

idioma español pues se ha observado quiénes lo hablan han llegado a conocer que

también son hombres, y principiado a conocer sus derechos y las cosas, y porque éste

sería el modo de desindianizarlos, como tan atinadamente dice Humboldt’45 (Cevallos

1887: 165)” (Guerrero 223). Cevallos makes an assertion about the Spanish language that

has held in Ecuadorian society to this very day.46 He believes that Spanish is a superior

44 “almost has no notion of good and evil, nor of self-respect, nor of the beautiful nor,
maybe, of love; perhaps as well they are not familiar with what is called curiosity …
They never think about what they are nor do they have awareness that their destiny might
be so sad and humiliating. Even less can they realize their being, they cannot even admire
the wonders of nature; they meet without knowing who they are, and they see things
without contemplating them or examining them; they are machines that guide themselves
and move by the senses. And yet, like any of us they have an immortal soul, a head to
think, a heart to feel! If we didn’t know the state of civilization in which they were found
at the time of the conquest of Benalcázar, … we would say that it is really inconceivable
that they also belong to the human family.”
45
It should be insisted upon that the Indians learn the Spanish language, of course, it has
been observed that those who speak it have come to learn that they are also men, and
begin to understand their rights and the things, and because this would be the way to de-
indianize them, as Humbolt so right says.”
46
In the preface to her book From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance, Amalia
Pallares relates the following story: Before beginning her fieldwork, she spent four
months in Quito learning Kichwa. One day, as she was heading out the door, she ran into
her host’s nephew, who was visiting from Guayaquil. Upon hearing that she was going to
a Kichwa class, “his eyes opened in bewilderment and he burst out in laughter,
immediately replying in a display of quick coastal humor: ‘How do you say computer in
Quichua?’ I did not respond, in part because I was not able to answer… and in part
 114

language; he does not say that those Indians who have learned Spanish have advanced in

society, or gained better jobs, or become more civilized; rather, those who speak Spanish

have learned that they are men! This is as much an exaltation of Castilian as a

debasement of Quichua. The Spanish language is the language of men, of reason and

civilization and apparently, of the ability to see things as they are. The Indian who speaks

Kichwa is a child-man; if one speaks Kichwa, he can never know that he is a man. In

sum, Cevallos’ political position is that of “conservative progressive” (Guerrero 223), in

which he articulates a critique of powerful landholders yet does so using the mantle of the

condition of the Indian. However, instead of proposing profound social changes, the

solution is to de-Indianize the Indian – this is the rhetoric of the homogenizing state.

To conclude, after the conquest was carried out, the Spaniards continued to

establish and legitimate their authority over original peoples on the basis of the written

word, which began to flood the continent first through the ciudad letrada,47 who founded

the great administrative centers and secured the religious, political and social bureaucratic

systems, and then eventually through European traveler-writers in the form of scientific

expeditions and capitalist scouting for North European exploitation. What all these

because I was surprised by his familiar response. My silence completed the joke and
prompted more laughter from him.” The joke is an example of a shared belief in
Ecuadorian society that “Indians and modernity are incompatible. The young man
regarded his comment as a joke precisely because of the contradiction involved in placing
the computer – a symbol of modernity – and Quichua – a symbol of primitiveness and
antimodernity – in the same sentence. The omitted punch line of the joke was, ‘Of course,
there is no word in Quichua for computer, nor can there be” (ix). I could relate to the
story, as I have received similar expressions of bewilderment and barely controlled
smirks when I tell people I am learning Kichwa.
47
See Angel Rama, La ciudad letrada, and the next chapter for a discussion of how the
elites wrote Latin American society.
 115

literatures have in common is that they overwhelmingly produced discourses of the

Indian as ‘quasi-reasonable’, questioning his humanity, or at least relegating it to a sphere

inferior to that of Europeans. These written discourses were legitimated by the authority

of God and Science. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Indians had been deemed

semi-human for 300 years. North European capitalism compounded the civilizing

mission of Catholicism and presented a further threat to indigenous communities and a

new form of exploitation:

Subsistence lifeways, non-monetary exchange systems, and self-sustaining

regional economies are anathema to expansive capitalism. It seeks to

destroy them wherever it finds them. The bottom line in the discourse of

the capitalist vanguard was clear: América must be transformed into a

scene of industry and efficiency; its colonial population must be

transformed from an indolent, undifferentiated, uncleanly mass lacking

appetite, hierarchy, taste, and cash, into wage labor and a market for

metropolitan consumer goods. (Pratt Imperial Eyes 155)

This “bottom line” becomes the very foundation of the nation-state in Latin America: it

seeks to create a secure and pacified body of citizens through homogenization of

language, culture, history in order to successfully participate in world capital markets.

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CHAPTER 6: THE STATE

The previous chapter enumerated the various constructions of the character of the

Indian in the social imaginations of political and economic elites. To be sure, these

constructions were built on daily interactions with the indígenas as the two republics

existed in the same territorial space. However, by no means were the majority of Creoles

or capitalist vanguards friends with Indians. Relationships were based on political and

economic exploitation – hacendados, encomenderos, European explorers, all depended

on the subjugation of the indígena for his services. The way they saw the indígena was

necessarily already informed by a European ‘innate grammar’ built upon the logic of the

civilizing mission, to which was added a scientific and racial component on the basis of a

long tradition of constructing the Other. In other words, since their overarching purpose

was economic exploitation (and/or evangelization), most “saw” whatever would justify

their operations. The implicit social knowledge inherited by Creoles from their Spanish

forefathers and capitalist and scientific heroes would play a fundamental role in the

creation of the republics in the first half of the nineteenth century. As Seed explains,

[W]hen the nation came to be ‘imagined’ as a self-conscious political

community in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there already

existed a basis for it in language, political experience, and cultural

practice. Overseas enactments of colonial authority thus formed part of

these emerging national traditions. The citizens, subjects, and leaders of

each European power enacted domestically familiar means of political

authority overseas. (Ceremonies 191)

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In Spanish America, the culturally familiar was the foundation of a Catholic Law on the

basis of war justified by the presence of “paganism” and legitimated with alphabetic

literacy. Creoles would appropriate the same adherence to the authority of the written

word, which would underwrite their own civilizing mission for the new republics.

This magically authorative (written) word, which “inició su esplendorosa carrera

imperial en el continente”, “…viviría en América Latina como la única valedera, en

oposición a la palabra hablada que pertenecía al reino de lo inseguro y lo precario…La

escritura poseía rigidez y permanencia, un modo autónomo que remedaba la

eternidad…”48 (Rama 42, 43). Similarly, Gonzalez Stephan asserts that such

“foundational and expansive moments” were “entwined with the culture of the book,

which validated a certain type of logocentric power as well as vertical functioning

patterns” (188).

Four Founding Phenomenon

This “culture of the book” exercised its logocentric power on the basis of four

phenomena. The first, already mentioned, was the norms of a legal culture inherited from

Spanish predecessors and colonial administrative practices and then influenced by the

Enlightenment and liberalism (Seed Ceremonies and American; Anderson). The second

was a print culture embodied in the newspaper, which established a provincial sense of

the “imagined community” based on the colonial administrative units. It was this

provinciality, largely connected to trade and markets, which created the political

48
“initiated its splendorous imperial career in the continent…would live in Latin America
as the only [word] valid, in opposition to the spoken word that belonged to the kingdom
of the insecure and the precarious…Writing possessed rigidity and permanence, an
autonomous mode that mimicked eternity.”
 118

boundaries of the Spanish-American republics (not single-handedly, of course)

(Anderson, esp. ch. 4). The third element was the proliferation of romance literature in

Latin America, which sought to establish legitimacy, build a common national past, and

project a future for the nation. Significantly, the vast majority of the authors of these

novels were also part of the political elite; they used romance to overcome political and

historical fragmentation, reconciling previously antagonistic social groups by suggesting

their natural attraction to each other (Sommer). Finally, the fourth element was the

collective group of elites that engendered the first three factors: Angel Rama’s ciudad

letrada, which changed hands mainly from the clergy “al servicio de los nuevos

poderosos surgidos de la élite militar, sustituyendo a los antiguos delegados del monarca.

Leyes, edictos, reglamentos y, sobre todo, constituciones, antes de acometer los vastos

códigos ordenadores, fueron la tarea central de la ciudad letrada…”49 (87). These four

phenomena converged in Latin America to construct the modern Nation-State, a project

of homogenization and control for the purpose of capitalist-market participation and

carried out by the Castilian word, which normatized every aspect of society.

Blanca Muratorio defines nationalism as,

[U]na práctica de identidad que procede a establecerla por el mecanismo

de inclusión de lo supuestamente homogéneo y exclusión de la diferencia.

Es un principio de organización social y una ideología de identidad y

diferencia que se construye con el fin de legitimar interna y externamente

49
“to the service of the powerful new men arising from the military elite, substituting the
old delegates of the monarch. Law, edicts, regulations, and above all, constitutions,
before undertaking the vast ordering codes, were the central task of the lettered city…”
 119

a las naciones-estado…El control, manipulación y representación del

pasado, la producción y celebración de símbolos y santuarios nacionales,

así como la figuración del Otro mayoritario, se convierten en un proceso

central en el establecimiento de la nación-estado.50 (Introducción 17)

This aspect of control, manipulation and representation of the past is the critical element

of the state’s antagonistic relationship to indigenous peoples. For peoples whose very

identity is solidified in the ancestors, the erasure of the names, deeds, and lifeways of the

ancestors is ethnocide. The modern nation-state seeks to empty the vessel of historical

memory of every one of its “citizens” in order to fill it with invented “national” histories

and heroes. Ernest Renan51 proclaimed that, “Of all the cults, that of the ancestors is the

most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men,

glory…this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea” (19). However, the

50
“[A] practice of identity that proceeds to establish it by the mechanism of inclusion of
the supposedly homogenous and exclusion of difference. It is a principle of social
organization and an ideology of identity and difference that is constructed with the goal
of legitimating internally and externally the Nation-States. The control, manipulation and
representation of the past, the production and celebration of symbols and national
sanctuaries, like the figuration of the majority Other, become a central process to the
establishment of the Nation-State.”
51
In applying the ideas of a French intellectual in a speech given long after the republics
were solidified, I am only acknowledging the well-known influence of French ideals,
revolutionary processes, and nation-building on Creoles in Latin America. Furthermore,
the maintenance of the ‘imagined community’ requires continuous re-imagining; thus
these ideas still hold dominion. For example, in 1863, the Ecuadorian government
contracted the French Christian Brothers, whose teaching was founded on Jean Baptiste
de la Salle (1651-1719), to establish schools in Cuenca, Guayaquil, and Quito, and other
provincial capitals rushed to procure funds for their own facilities. Their “instruction was
to be rigorously Catholic, but also ‘practical, rational and progressive.’ The La Salle
curriculum linked Christian morality and virtue to habits of hard work and productive
skills obtained through technical training” (Williams 210).
 120

problem is that the republics, in order to have a nation, needed to create a past for the

diverse social groups and ethnicities. Such a process of unification requires forgetting,

and, as Renan affirms, “is always effected by means of brutality” (11). The modern

nation-state is antagonistic to indigenous communities because it erases and devalues

their ethnic identity and seeks to implant it with the vision of a small group of political

elites, who necessarily construct the nation according to their economic, social, and

political privilege.

In the Beginning Was the Word

The values of this project included the modern State’s economic system, which is

one of the reasons the homogenization project is so pervasive. Gonzalez Stephan

confirms that,

At this level, the modern era made a strong commitment with a written

legal order, whose policies for binding and language were at the service of

a new economy that was more socially profitable. The police writings –

writings that guided the social movement of the polis – included ethnically

different areas: on the one hand, city, state, industry, progress; on the

other, rural areas, caudillos, and estates. But the new order, the ‘police’

order, not only put these areas in opposition, it also discredited the latter.

(192)

With the establishment of the metropolitan written word’s authority and legitimacy in

Spanish America came as corollary the legitimization and normatization of urbanity.

Even though they do not disappear, orality and rural cultures do not have a visible place
 121

in the modern nation-state because its economic vision is not one of subsistence but of

accumulation, and this same economic system requires an ensemble of fixed laws (and

thus, written) among nations to regulate and stimulate production and trade. For their

part, the contemporary rural cultures living under the nation-state, since they do not

contribute to the economic vision, are devalued.52

The constitutions, grammars, and manuals, which in Latin America “comprised a

system of surveillance and orthopedia which seized and immobilized the citizen through

laws and norms…shaped [and] also created and held the object that it prescribed… [T]he

prerequisite for an individual to be recognized as a citizen was that he could exist only

within the framework of the disciplinary writings of the constitution” (Gonzalez Stephan

191). In other words, the written word literally draws the identity of the citizen; it

demarcates who and what the citizen can and cannot be. Foucault’s analysis of such

disciplinary mechanisms of power suggests that they appeared as “a system of right that

concealed its mechanisms and erased the element of domination and the techniques of

domination involved in discipline” (Society 37). If the Creoles were challenging the

theory of sovereignty embodied in the ‘monarch’, in this case the Crown, they established

a system of domination through the nation-state no less pervasive, but it was concealed in

juridical codes that normatized society. As Foucault states, “juridical systems…allowed

the democratization of sovereignty, and the establishment of a public right articulated

52
Notes I took in Saraguro exemplify this: “That night! It was very hard because A. was
telling me that throughout history they’ve been told that they aren’t worth anything and
that they aren’t useful for the capitalist system, and I sat looking him in the eyes but there
was nothing I could say, what could I say to him when I am white and have been
privileged by this system?” To look a friend in the eyes and hear him say that his people
have been told that they are useless…
 122

with collective sovereignty, at the very time when…the democratization of sovereignty

was heavily ballasted by the mechanisms of disciplinary coercion” (Society 37).

Ud. es poeta y sabe también como Bonaparte que de lo heroico a lo ridículo no hay

más que un paso53

At the turn of the eighteenth century, the Creole elites established these juridical

systems by appropriating the rhetoric of North European travelers, explorers, politicians,

and philosophers (all writers), and by creating their own discourses to use as a weapon

against Spanish colonial rule.54 Creole leaders needed inspiration for the new project, and

Pratt argues that in large part it was the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt’s

“reinvention of América for Europe [that] was transculturated by Euroamerican [creole]

writers into a creole process of self-invention[: ]Over and over in the founding texts of

Spanish American literature, Humboldt’s estheticized primal América provided a point of

departure for moral and civic prescriptions for the new republics” (Imperial Eyes 175).

Thus, “Politically and ideologically, the liberal creole project involved founding an

independent, decolonized American society and culture, while retaining European values

and white supremacy. In an important sense, América was to remain the ‘land of

53
You are a poet and know as well as Bonaparte that from the heroic to the ridiculous
there is no more than a step – Simón Bolívar in his letter to Olmedo 1825 (qtd. in
Muratorio Nación 173).
54
“In some sectors of Creole culture…a glorified American nature and a glorified
American antiquity already existed as ideological constructs, sources of Americanist
identification and pride fueling the growing sense of separateness from Europe. In a
perfect example of the mirror dance of colonial meaning-making, Humboldt
transculturated to Europe knowledges produced by Americans in a process of defining
themselves as separate from Europe. Following independence, Euroamerican elites would
reimport that knowledge as European knowledge whose authority would legitimate
Euroamerican rule” (Pratt 136, 137).
 123

Columbus,’ as Bello said” (175).55 To create their own founding myth, Creoles used

European scientific, Catholic, and naturalist discourse about progress, liberty, and

civilization yet they added elements that would be uniquely “American.” This would

involve native peoples only in the sense that, since the “contemporary” natives were

backward and barbarian by European standards, Creoles inevitably invented their myths

based on past Indian nobility. Muratorio explains that in attitudes towards the Indios,

[P]ersonificadas por Bolívar, los criollos y mestizos se declaran

liberadores de la raza indígena oprimida para justificar su lucha contra

España (Ayala 1986:133; Platt 1993:169). Desde el comienzo, se apropian

de la imagen gloriosa y aristocrática del Inca, inventando selectivamente

una tradición histórica común (König 1984:396-97) para construir su

propia identidad ‘americana’ frente al mundo europeo y por último, en

control del estado republicano, usan la ‘ciudadanía universal’ para ocultar

las contradicciones internas de una sociedad profundamente dividida

étnica y socialmente.56 (Introducción 14)

55
Despite the homogenous nature of the republic, Creoles were far from unified among
themselves: On the one hand, creoles needed to assert their dominance and thus had to
“grapple with the blatant neocolonialist greed of the Europeans they so admire;” on the
other hand, asserting their dominance was also problematic in the face of “claims for
equality of the subordinated indigenous, mestizo, and African majorities, many of whom
had fought in the wars of independence” (Pratt 175.). On a third hand, the Church,
already with three centuries of dominance, would not give up its power so easily.
56
“personified by Bolívar, the creoles and mestizos declared themselves the liberators of
the oppressed indigenous race to justify their fight against Spain…From the beginning,
they appropriate the glorious and aristocratic image of the Inca, selectively inventing a
common historic tradition…to construct their own ‘american’ identity in front of the
European world and finally, in the control of the republican state, they use ‘universal
 124

State formation and the countless mechanisms, both local and general, that mandate,

regulate, and control the process are obviously an extremely complicated endeavor (see

Figure 12). As we have seen, these mechanisms involve the creation of homogenous

subjects, which can only be done by eradicating heterogeneous pasts to replace them with

one Official, national history, and it hardly needs reiterating that the entire process is by

means of the written word.

Figure 12. Painted outside a church: A picture is worth a 1,000 words. The civilizing
mission is at its peak here: the image on the Saraguro Indian’s alforja (bag) is the
Ecuadorian Coat of Arms.

citizenship’ to mask the internal contradictions of a society profoundly divided ethnically

and socially.”
 125

For example, Simón Bolívar, the “Great Liberator,” describes the project of creating

Latin American nation-states in a poetics and politics which also revealed “ese

permanente ambigüedad de los blancos-mestizos hacia el Otro indio que oscila entre una

suerte de ‘nostalgia imperialista’ (Rosaldo 1989) que idealiza al Indio histórico ya

desaparecido y la denigración o el olvido del Indio real como sujeto histórico”57

(Muratorio Introducción 13). On the one hand, he invokes the image of the Inca Manco

Capac as the “Adam of the Indians”, but in the end, “ante los Indios como sujetos

históricos, Bolívar firma decretos aboliendo los cacicazgos, manda eliminar a los

‘bárbaros’ indios Pastusos que se sublevan obstaculizando sus triunfos, suprime las

instituciones comunitarias y finalmente los esconde bajo la republicana categoría de

‘ciudadano’58 (Favre 1986)” (13). In Creole poetics of legitimization, the archeological

and aristocratic Indian is invoked to establish Creole right to rule. In their politics,

however, the “real-life” Indian is either completely obliterated under the homogenizing

cloak of nationality (or as non-citizens), or his “miserable” state is used by both right and

left to legitimate various political interventions.

Creole attempts to construct citizens is seen is Article 13 of Ecuador’s 1830

constitution, which states, “Los derechos de ciudadanía se pierden por entrar al servicio

de una nación enemiga…Y se suspenden, por deber a los fondos públicos en plazo

57
“that permanent ambiguity of the blanco-mestizo towards the Indian Other that
oscillates between a type of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ that idealizes the now-disappeared
historic Indian, and the denigration or oblivion of the real Indian as a historical subject.”
58
“before the Indians as historical subjects, Bolívar signs decrees abolishing the
cacicazgos, he commands the elimination of the ‘barbarous’ Pastuso Indians that rise up
to hinder his triumphs, he suppresses the communitarian institutions and finally, he hide
them under the republican category of ‘citizen.’”
 126

cumplido; por causa criminal pendiente; por interdicción judicial: por ser vago declarado,

ebrio de costumbre, o deudor fallido; y por enajenación mental.”59 There is no need to

cite Foucault here – the Constitution speaks for itself: vagrants, drunks, the financially

irresponsible, and the deranged are non-citizens; they are out-lawed. These types of

criminals have the honor of being named in the constitution, and thus, by naming them it

is easier to control them. However, there is another type of criminal not named by the

written word and more slippery to the State than drunks and the deranged; it is what

Gonzalez Stephan calls “the flip side of writing.” From the flip side,

emerges a threatening dimension which strains the logic that

acknowledges only an imitation of the prewritten order (on this side), and

negotiated ‘otherness’ in legal, ethical, and cultural terms (on the other

side), built upon a series of operations in which ‘the other’ assumes legal

penalty, inquiry, judgment, and exclusion, ethical and cultural degradation

(‘filthy,’ ‘repugnant,’ ‘uncivil,’ ‘unpleasant,’ ‘vicious’), and social and

economic failure. (198 original emphasis)

This “negotiated otherness” can manifest itself in myriad ways including claims to

different culture, religion, language, etc. Thus, the law wrote or unwrote its citizens, an

act which has the effect of immediately excluding those that do not fit exactly within

such limits and because they are thus “illegal”, they are deemed inferior or less-worthy to

those who meet the requirements or succeed in attaining them.

59
“The rights of citizenship are lost upon entering the service of an enemy nation…and
they are suspended for owing public funds; for a pending criminal cause, for judicial
interdiction: for being a declared vagrant, drunk by custom, or a bankrupt debtor; and for
mental derangement.”
 127

The Magic of the State60: Liberalism

At first, the Indians were included in the Ecuadorian nation for the legal, political,

and economic purpose of extracting Indian tribute, reinstated by Bolívar shortly after

independence and now called the ‘personal contribution of the Indians.’ However, as

export revenues from the booming cacao industry began flooding in, the tribute from the

Indians became a minimal contribution to state income, and “progressives” became more

anxious to end the practice of a bifurcated state (Larson, Sattar, Guerrero). In 1857,

tribute was abolished and the ethnic classification of “Indian” was eliminated in favor of

“citizen,” which erased ethnic identity (as Indian) for the sake of a single nationality

(Ecuadorian). The abolition of tribute also left Indian communal lands much more

vulnerable to expropriation by outsiders as Indians lost their justification for state

protection of these lands” (Sattar 36). There was a further effect: “En los registros del

estado el decreto de 1857 tuvo un efecto de magia política pues esfumó a la población

indígena de los documentos. Desaparecieron de todos los registros centrales del estado:

de las leyes, censos de población, presupuestos del estado, informes de ministros y

gobernadores, de la correspondencia entre las autoridades superiores”61 (Guerrero 215).

If the State’s distinction of Indian ethnicity was for economic purposes, so was its

erasure. The assimilation of Indians into citizenship required a different sort of control of

their labor. Liberals wanted control of labor in order to manage the market, and to do this,

60
The Magic of the State is the title of a book by Michael Taussig. I haven’t read it,
though.
61
“In the records of the state, the 1857 decree had a magical political effect, since it
vaporized the indigenous population from the documents. They disappeared from all the
central records of the state; from the laws, population censuses, budget proposals, reports
from ministers and governors, from the correspondence between superior authorities.”
 128

they needed free movement of laborers. In debates on the system of concertaje,62 one

politician stated that the system, “a más de inmoral, demuestra su absurdidad puesto que

entorpece las leyes del mercado y del trabajo, inhibiendo el progreso” [besides being

immoral, it demonstrates its absurdity since it hinders the laws of the market and labor,

inhibiting progress] (Guerrero 233). If concertaje were abolished, then the Indian would

thus learn “lo que vale su trabajo, lo que es la moneda y para lo que sirve; queda por

consiguiente en libertad para proveer a sus necesidades donde y como mejor le parezca”

[what his work is worth, what currency is and what it’s used for; he remains thus in the

liberty to supply his necessities wherever and however it seems best to him] (233). The

State wanted to free the Indian from the abuses of concertaje because its political

platform sought to concentrate its power and weaken that of the Church. The Church,

having suffered a blow from the Liberal Revolution, in order to maintain any project of

control of the Indians, had to situate its discourse within the liberal, civilizing project of

the nation-state (Guerrero 235, 236). For that reason, the archbishop Federico Gonzales

S. sent a letter to all the parish priests in which he announced that “la fundación de

escuelas primarias (católicas se sobreentiende) es el único medio para lograr que los

indios hablen la lengua castellana, como lengua materna suya; mientras conserven la

lengua quichua, como lengua nativa será…imposible el evangelizarlos y el

civilizarlos…”63 (qtd. in Guerrero 235).

62
System of contracted debt which bound Indian laborers to the hacienda.
63
“the founding of primary schools (Catholic it is understood) is the only way to obtain
that the Indians speak Castilian as their mother tongue; so long as they conserve the
Quichua language as a native language, it will be impossible to evangelize and civilize
them.”
 129

Lastly, as the above example shows, in Latin America, language and education

were/are fundamental tools for the construction of the nation-state. As Williams states,

“Widely disseminated and standardized state schooling is a powerful tool for inventing,

reshaping, or perpetuating national identities” (210). Such projects are “no neutral

undertaking” when applied to indigenous peoples: The language of the colonizer carrie[s]

with it the ideological framework and ideological judgments which were part and parcel

of the language itself and of its uses” (Collins and Blot 122). Even if education in one’s

native language was permitted, the goal was not to value that language (or its lifeway) but

simply to ease the transition into the nation’s homogeneity. Furthermore, learning to

speak Castilian necessarily involved also learning to read Castilian in order to instill the

“fixity” of the written word and avoid spontaneity, which would disrupt homogenization.

“Fixing” the law in writing “…required linguistic stability for proper enforcement of

law” (Gonzalez Stephan 193). While subjects need to learn the language of the law in

order to be citizens, this language itself creates, controls, and normalizes its subjects.

Andrés Bello believed that

[G]rammar had a civilizing mission[…]because […]it is one of the ethical,

legal, and political authorities with the greatest power of intervention to

create citizenship and the founding discourse of the modern state.

Standardizing language through compulsory education would not only

eradicate ‘nasty habits,’ ‘defects,’ and ‘rude barbarism’ from ‘people with

little education,’ but also prevent the proliferation of a ‘host of irregular,

licentious and barbaric dialects’ in the Hispanic-American continent

 130

‘which block the diffusion of enlightenment, execution of the law,

administration of the state, and national unity’ (Gonzalez Stephan 193).

The mandate of Ecuador’s constitution that only literate individuals could be citizens

created a “relationship between language and citizenship [that] assumed the disciplinary

intervention of authority…” and allowed grammar to serve a “legal-political function” in

“proclaiming the new legal subject” (194). Thus, as in colonial Spanish America,

Castilian language and literacy in Ecuador continued to determine the boundaries of the

“legitimate,” which also as before, consequently deemed the vast majority of indigenous

peoples (and women and other poor) as “illegitimate” citizens.

Simón Bolívar made himself a hero for the Andean nation-state, and his divine

authority64 has been accepted without question ever since by those who advance the

paternal and homogenizing mission of the state. On 24 May 2009, the current President

of the Republic, Rafael Correa, pronounced a speech in honor of the 187th anniversary of

the Battle of Pichincha, which liberated the Royal Audiencia of Quito from Spanish rule.

Correa legitimates his own project of “citizen revolution” (la revolución ciudadana) by

invoking the name of the Liberator. True to Bolívar’s own vision, Correa suggests that

Bolívar’s heroic figure not only represents liberty, he is liberty himself: “Nada hay más

revolucionario en Nuestra América, que nuestra propia historia insurgente;… la

presencia de Simón Bolívar en cada uno de los pasos de nuestra independencia, es

esencial; nuestra libertad lleva el nombre indeleble del Libertador de América, no

64
See “Mi Delirio sobre el Chimborazo” in Bolivar, Escritos fundamentales.
 131

podemos pronunciar la palabra libertad, sin mencionar a Bolívar”65 (Correa, emphasis

mine). Correa’s invocation of Bolívar demonstrates very clearly the State’s necessity (and

success?) to continuously “imagine” and homogenize the nation through invented heroes.

For indigenous peoples in Ecuador, however, these ‘heroes’ represent the destruction of

their very identity.

65
“There is nothing more revolutionary in Our America than our own insurgent
history;…the presence of Simón Bolívar in every one of the steps of our independence, is
essential; our freedom carries the indelible name of the Liberator of América, we cannot
pronounce the word freedom, without mentioning Bolívar.” (emphasis mine)
 132

CHAPTER 7: ECUADOR’S NATIONAL INDIGENOUS MOVEMENT AND THE

FAILED STATE

The 1990 levantamiento general (General Uprising) was the first time that

Ecuador’s indigenous peoples organized at a national level, and the levantamiento

paralyzed the entire country. The Saraguros also participated by blocking the Pan-

American highway and cutting the urban center off from the flow of market goods. After

160 years of history as a nation, the levantamiento shattered the previous relationship

between the State and indigenous peoples. For the first time, the indígenas were speaking

for themselves to the national government, and making demands the State is hardly able

to handle. The events leading up to the uprising are worthy of a brief examination,

because the particular way the movement developed is a result of the Ecuadorian state’s

contested relationship to the indígenas.

The Magic of the State: Ventriloquism

Article 12 of the 1830 Constitution had stated that to enjoy citizenship, “se

requiere: 1. Ser casado, o mayor de veintidós años; 2. Tener una propiedad raíz, valor

libre de 300 pesos, o ejercer alguna profesión, o industria útil, sin sujeción a otro, como

sirviente doméstico, o jornalero; 3. Saber leer y escribir.”66 The last requirement was still

basically in effect almost the entire twentieth century.67 When Indian tribute was

abolished in 1857, many indígena communities were opposed to this, since it also

66
“It is required: 1. To be married, or older than 22 years; 2. To have a property, of the
value of 300 pesos, or to practice a profession, or useful industry, without subjection to
another as a domestic servant or day laborer; 3. To read and to write.”
67
The right to vote was granted to nonliterates in 1979.
 133

dissolved the juridical and communal protection they had enjoyed in the “bifurcated”

state,68 and the legal distinction of their cultural identity. Thus, when tribute was

abolished, the indígenas were supposedly to join the ranks of the criollos and mestizos as

citizens. However, the State did not consider them “ready,” and with the triumph of the

Liberal Revolution in 1895, the State officially became their protector (Guerrero). By the

end of the nineteenth century, “la construcción de la imagen [de los indios] y su

incorporación al estado bajo la función de protección inauguró una modalidad inédita de

representación: estableció una ventriloquia política”69 (Guerrero 240). This new way of

representation would require a “conjunto de agentes sociales blanco-mestizos [que] habla

y escribe en nombre del indio en términos de su opresión, degradación y civilización. Del

sujeto indio parece provenir una voz”70 (240). Using an example from Cotacachi of

Indians who took advantage of the state’s offer of protection in order to denounce abuses,

Guerrero shows how these “social agents” serve “de interfaz y pone en marcha el

dispositivo político de representación que transforma el reclamo verbal (¿en quichua?) de

los indígenas en una estrategia de señales-palabras inteligibles para el estado liberal, una

ideología-código” 71 (240). At the bottom of the document created in representation of the

17 comuneros from Cotacachi appears the signature of their witness: an alphabetized

68
Aleezé Sattar uses this term to describe the Ecuadorian state.
69
“the construction of the image (of the Indians) and its incorporation into the state under
the function of protection inaugurated a new type of representation: it established a
ventriloquist policy.”
70
“an ensemble of blanco-mestizo social agents (that) speak and write in name of the
Indian in terms of his oppression, degradation and civilization. From the Indian subject
there appeared to come a voice.”
71
“as an interface, and puts into action the political device of representation that
transforms the verbal demands (in Quichua?) of the indigenous into a strategy of signs
and words intelligible to the liberal state, an ideological code.”
 134

citizen and Spanish speaker. As such, “las palabras del documento son obra de un

ventríloco, un intermediario social que conoce la semántica que hay que poner en boca de

los indígenas, que sabe el contenido, la gama y el tono de lo que el estado liberal quiere y

puede captar” 72 (242). In 1896, General Eloy Alfaro decreed that, “las demandas de

aquellos indígenas analfabetos (la casi totalidad de la población), deberán ‘ser firmadas

por su respectivo apoderado o defensor, sin lo cual no podrán ser admitidos dichos

escritos’ (énfasis agregado)” 73 (242). For almost a century, then, the indígenas were still

considered ‘not men enough’ to have their own dialogue with the state. The state required

an intermediary that would negotiate the space between citizen and non-citizen.

A Glorious Failed Revolution

In the mid-twentieth century, then, the indígenas were still considered the

equivalent of minors (niños con barbas) (Becker 111), and the State was still a bifurcated

one. In May of 1944, the indígenas joined with other subalterns and overthrew President

Arroyo del Río in the “Glorious May Revolution” (Becker). Along with women,

peasants,74 workers, and students, the indígenas hoped that the Glorious May Revolution

would change the structure of the State. Despite their original complaints about

protection being taken away from them, by the twentieth century, the indígenas

increasingly desired political representation and to be given a voice in the national

72
“the words of the document are the work of a ventriloquist, a social middleman that
knows the semantics that need to be put into the mouths of indigenous people, that knows
the content, range, and tone of what the liberal state wants to and can capture.”
73
“the demands of those illiterate indigenous people (almost all of the population) should
be ‘signed by their respective representative or defender, without which the said writings
will not be admitted’ (emphasis added).”
74
See Amalia Pallares, From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance, for a history of
changing strategies in reference to ethnicity and identity.
 135

politics; “by necessity, they had to rely on others to represent their interests to the

government” (Becker 106). The indígenas were adept at using national laws since they

often “appealed to central state structures to defend themselves from those who exploited

them at the local level” (106). However, in the twentieth century, since they were not

officially citizens, the indígenas could not use “formal political channels to press for legal

and structural changes,” so they relied on the strategy of mobilization as civil society

(119), if not through a ventriloquist.

While the indígenas had a rather sympathetic representative to the 1944

Constituent Assembly in the person of Communist leader Ricardo Paredes, the assembly

was a failure from their perspective. In August of 1944, they successfully formed the first

national organization for and by indigenous peoples, the Federación Ecuatoriana de

Indios (FEI, Ecuadorian Federation of Indians) (Becker 105). However, in an assembly of

all white males, there was hardly hope for structural changes. While some gains were

made, largely symbolic, President José María Velasco Ibarra dissolved the Constituent

Assembly in March of 1946, declared himself dictator, and reinstated the 1906

constitution (117). Thus, in the mid-twentieth century, numerous factors limited the

reformation of state structures through constitutional means, even though the Indians had

placed their hope in the halls of Congress. Becker argues that, “the disappointment

Indians felt was not due to a failure to take power in Ecuador” (118). Over half a century

later, Miguel Lluco, the national coordinator of the indigenous Pachakutik movement,

observed that after Bolivia (1993) and Peru (2001) had elected Indians to the

vicepresidency and the presidency, respectively, these countries’ problems were far from
 136

solved; “Merely placing Indians in positions of power would not automatically mean an

end to long-standing problems. Rather, the structure of the country had to be changed to

build a new society” (Becker 118.). The effects of the Glorious Revolution reflected a

debate that continues to this day: are “electoral mechanisms and constitutional assemblies

appropriate avenues for advancing Indigenous struggles?” (119).

Pluri-what?

By the end of the twentieth century, indigenous activists, while still debating the

means, were in fact using electoral mechanisms and constitutional assemblies to demand

change. Two main conceptions of citizenship – liberal and communitarian – are often

seen as irreconcilable. However, some scholars disagree about this irreconcilability,

while others propose alternative visions of citizenship, like Iris Marion Young’s idea of

differentiated citizenship (Pallares 141). If in the mid-twentieth century Indians simply

wanted to have a voice in national politics, by the 1980s and 1990s, they had developed a

firm proposal of representation that “challenged existing notions of state and citizenship”

and required a re-imagining of the nation (141). In the early 1980s, President Jaime

Roldós had openly spoken of Ecuador as a ‘pluricultural’ nation. The vote to nonliterates,

granted in 1979, opened national decisions to a large majority of the indigenous

population. However, the State’s concept of pluriculturalism was increasingly critiqued

by indigenous activists, which “led to another perspective that envisioned Ecuador as a

compendium of multiple nations” (141). As Pallares explains,

The dispute between Indians and the state revolved around two central

elements: how Ecuadorian plurality was defined, and what was included in
 137

and excluded from public debate. … While the state principally sought to

address literacy, bilingual education, and cultural affirmation policies,

indigenous activists lobbied for a broader agenda that included resolving

land claims, demands for credit and rural development, and political

empowerment. (141, 142)

At the end of the 1970s, the government had shown itself increasingly open to dialoguing

with indigenous actors. In the end, however, the state was only willing to recognize

cultural differences according to a narrow definition of culture as language and

education. Indigenous peoples’ definition of culture turned out to be much different than

the State’s. In a conference to discuss literacy programs in 1979,

[I]ndigenous activists demanded that land and rural development issues

had to be incorporated into discussions of literacy. Literacy policy had to

be accompanied by policies that ensured socioeconomic improvement.

Additionally, activists argued that INCAYAC (the Institute of Aboriginal

Cultures and Community Action) should be completely autonomous and

managed by Indians…The government rejected all of these

recommendations, whereupon indigenous activists withdrew their support,

and the project was suspended (Pallares 144, 145). Throughout continued negotiations

with the national government, “… state officials sought to divest cultural policy of any

political content, dematerializing neoindigenismo, claiming that education and language

policy alone were part of a specific ‘cultural’ public sphere in which broader political and

economic demands did not have a place” (146). While 1988 saw the creation of the
 138

Dirección Nacional de Educación Intercultural Bilingue (DINEIB), a monumental gain

for indigenous peoples, it also signified the “peak of indigenous empowerment within the

state’s pluricultural agenda” (Pallares 146). Frustrated with the denial of their material

and economic demands and lack of control over policy, the indigenous movement sought

a new strategy of “plurinationalism,” which was more than a mere semantic difference

from “pluriculturalism.” Their vision of ‘indigenous citizenship’ was linked to “claims to

territorial and political autonomy [that] provide[d] the institutional framework for the

realization of indigenous aspirations and the legal and material basis for the exercise of

all other rights” (Van Cott 46).

Indigenous activists, “…ultimately unwilling to accept what they perceived as a

dematerialized notion of culture and cultural policy offered by the state,” proposed a

vision of “plurality” that encompassed three aspects: cultural rights, economic rights

(including land), and political empowerment (Pallares 148). This was a new perspective

(to the state) of culture that understood it as “not only subsuming artistic production and

language, but also encompassing a way of life, an economic rationale, a system of law,

and the right to territory” (148). The indígenas claimed that their rights to citizenship

“stemmed not only from their individual rights as citizens born in Ecuador, but from their

collective rights as ancestral groups who had first occupied and governed the land”

(Pallares 149). In 1990, the CONAIE75 presented a declaration entitled “Agreement

75
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (La Confederación de
Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador-CONAIE), formed in 1986, is the largest national
umbrella indigenous organization. At the national level, there are two other umbrella
organizations: FENOCIN and FEINE. The differences and histories of these
organizations are far outside the scope of this work, and not least because I myself have a
 139

Concerning the Territorial Rights of the Indian Peoples of Pastaza.” The document

“called for the concession of land rights, self-rule, political autonomy, respect for

customary law, and Indian participation in decisions concerning oil exploration in Indian-

inhabited lands…While government officials had been willing to discuss economic

demands, they refused to address political ones, particularly self-determination” (Pallares

very limited understanding. There are definitely divisions, and through the years there
have been charges of corruption, ill-feelings, clientelism, etc. In Saraguro, the two main
organizations are the CORPUKIS – aligned with the CONAIE, and the FIIS – aligned
with FENOCIN. I persistently asked people in Saraguro about the differences between
the two. At the national level, “from the outside” it is understood that the main difference
lies in the two proposals: plurinationality (CONAIE) and interculturality (FENOCIN).
“From the inside,” however, I was told the differences were based on “interests,” and the
conflicts between them centered on fighting for “spaces of power.” I was told the
divisions have been taken advantage of; obviously, if they were united they would be a
very strong force, but this way they are weaker. For example, at the time of the 1998
constitution, “[t]he struggle over representation among CONAIE, FENOCIN and FEINE
[was] exacerbated by a battle over management of $50 million in development funds for
indigenous and afro-Ecuadorian communities promised by the IDB and World Bank”
(Van Cott 65). The history in Saraguro seems almost arbitrary. For instance, apparently,
the FIIS (in Saraguro) tried three times to ally itself with CONAIE, but CONAIE had
already given space within their organization to CORPUKIS, the other organization in
Saraguro, because of a relative in CORPUKIS. So the FIIS was forced to align with
FENOCIN, even though they wanted to be with CONAIE. A community member
opinioned that the organizations have contributed to the disunity of the indígenas within
the communities because candidates for (community) president would be from one
organization or another and there would be a lot of fighting. So the community began to
say, the organizations need to stay there (allá) in their place, and here, “we don’t want to
see shirts.” Some communities were resentful because the NGOs and indigenous
organizations might do a lot of projects in one community and nothing for another.
Autonomy, for him, means that they in the community should be left to govern as it
should be; if others want to support, fine, but here, the community governs.
If one is looking for any studies on the differences and internal histories of the
organizations, good luck. CONAIE by far dominates the literature, and almost every
article I read did not even mention the FENOCIN, which was a great surprise and
frustration to me since most of my contacts in Saraguro were aligned with the FIIS.
Someone in Saraguro told me that the 1990 uprising was so powerful because everyone
was united. But since then, the unity has dissolved, and now if CONAIE makes a call, the
FENOCIN and the others call off.
 140

150, 151). From both the left and the right, the demands were interpreted as a threat to

national sovereignty. To a certain extent, the state had understood the material component

of plurinationalism; but the political dimension was absolutely refused (151). As

President Borja said, “we will give you land, not sovereignty.” The following president,

Durán Ballén,

[C]uando, invocando la autoridad de su autorepresentación, hace

reaparecer la ideología del ‘mestizaje homogeneizante’ como fundamento

de la identidad nacional cuando en su discurso inaugural ante el Congreso

el 10 de Agosto de 1992, previene claramente a la nación contra ‘el

peligroso fomento de aisladas nacionalidades que buscan romper la unidad

nacional, única y común identidad que necesita solidificarse’…76

(Muratorio Nación 112)

The state, even if it nominally recognizes diverse cultures, cannot tolerate a definition of

“culture” that deviates from its homogenizing project. However, as Trujillo argues, the

‘[S]olución cultural’ no solo que, de hecho, no satisface a los indios, sino

que tiene limitaciones objetivas que la vuelven inviable en la práctica. En

efecto, la cultura depende, a la vez que genera instituciones, normas

morales y jurídicas, escritas unas y otras consuetudinarias, centros de

poder y formas del ejercicio de este; por lo mismo, cuando se intenta

76
“…when, invoking the authority of self-representation, he makes the ideology of
‘homogenizing mestizaje’ reappear as the foundation of national identity, when in his
inaugural address before Congress on 10 August 1992, he clearly warns the nation
against ‘the dangerous growth of isolated nationalities that seek to destroy national unity,
an identity unique and common that needs to solidify itself.’”
 141

sustraerla de este contexto jurídico-político se la mutila, impidiéndole una

de sus manifestaciones vitales, o se la priva de uno de sus nutrientes

insustituibles. 77 (169)

Thus, exchanging the word “national” for “cultural” was an attempt to demonstrate to

others that the indigenous concept of culture was different than the State’s. If there was a

misunderstanding with “pluricultural,” it became worse with “plurinational.” While

others saw it as a separatist movement, “para los indios, había una tergiversación de su

planteamiento; no se consideraban separatistas, sino portadores de un proyecto

beneficioso no solo para sí mismos, sino para el conjunto de las sociedades

ecuatorianas”78 (Ramón Estado 10).

In a way, the Ecuadorian state should be familiar with the recognition of Indian

identity as “separate” because “it is connected to long traditions of indigenous communal

rights and separate indigenous republics” (Pallares 153). However, the recognition of

difference was for the purpose of economic, political, and religious control and

exploitation. When State policy changed in 1857 to begin the subjugation of the

indígenas to the homogenization project of the state, denying their difference, the

eventual result was an indigenous movement that combated the exploitation under both

77
‘the cultural solution’ not only, in fact, doesn’t satisfy the Indians, but also has
objective limitations that make it unfeasible in practice. In fact, culture depends, at the
same time that it generates institutions, on moral and judicial norms, some written, others
customary, centers of power and forms of exercising it; at the same time, when trying to
extract it from this judicial-political context it becomes mutilated, impeding one of its
vital demonstrations, it is deprived of one of its irreplaceable nutrients.”
78
“For the Indians, there had been a distortion of their approach; they didn’t consider
themselves to be separatists, but bearers of a beneficial project not only for themselves
but for all the Ecuadorian societies.”
 142

colonial and state systems: they demanded recognition of difference and recognition of

citizenship. However, “despite the important gains of the contemporary indigenous

movement, national politicians have rejected attempts to create separate indigenous

circumscriptions within the Ecuadorian polity…” (Pallares 154). This rejection clearly

reflects the very nature of the modern nation-state construction.

Throughout the 1990s, the indigenous movement was protagonist in a number of

national uprisings and strategies that continued to seek official political channels for

reform. At the end of the 1990s, several Andean countries experienced severe crises of

legitimacy and governability that allowed for popular movements to mobilize for political

change on the complaint that significant sectors of the population were denied formal

representation and protection under the law (Van Cott 45). Indigenous organizations, now

at a level of influence and participation in the reform process, “framed their claims as the

reconstitution of relations between pre-constituted, autonomous indigenous peoples and

their authorities and forms of organization within the territorial and institutional confines

of the Western state” (45). As Van Cott argues, “…the elite project to construct

democracy around a homogeneous ethnic identity based on transplanted European

cultures had failed” (46).

Failure of State Magic

Ramón elaborates on the failure of this elite project, which, he argues, consisted

of five elements: la ciudadanización, la cristianización, la escolarización, la enseñanza de

español, and the unificación del vestido [The citizen-making process, Christianization,

schooling, learning Spanish, and the unification of dress ] (Estado 12). Of the reasons for
 143

failure, Ramón delineates the two most salient: first, that it failed because while

ideologically the nation-state was proposed as a country of equals (liberalism), the very

Constitution denied the participation of over half of its so-called citizens. For a time, on

the one hand, the state was exclusionary, and on the other, the Indians in a way accepted

this exclusion. As Ramón explains it,

La reproducción de la identidad india entre 1830 y 1950 había adoptado la

forma de la creación de la comunidad o parcialidad al interior o fuera de la

hacienda…Al interior de esta formas organizativas, los indios mantenían

sus sistemas de parentesco, idioma, vestido, costumbres, sus mecanismos

de reciprocidad, autoridad política y demás formas culturales…se negaban

a integrarse al sistema político diseñado por los blancos, que de otra parte,

también los excluía, resultando inintegrables al proyecto criollo.79 (Estado

15)

The other reason the elite national project failed manifested itself after 1950, when

indigenous peoples, in fact, showed themselves eager to take advantage of the offers of

citizenship. It was a failure, because far from de-indianize themselves, indigenous

peoples began to vindicate themselves and assert more strongly than ever their own

79
“The reproduction of Indian identity between 1830 and 1950 had adopted the form of
creation of community or bias to the inside or outside of the estate [hacienda]…Inside
these organizational forms, the Indians maintained their systems of kinship, language,
dress, customs, their mechanisms of reciprocity, political authority, and all other cultural
forms…they refused to integrate themselves to the political system designed by the
Whites, that on the other hand, also excluded them, ending up incompatible to be
integrated into the Criollo project.”
 144

identity outside that of the state. To the dismay of the homogenization project, it seemed

that

[M]ientras más escolarizados…más étnicos se muestran. Que mientras

mejor hablan y escriben el español, más conscientes se tornan.80 Que

mientras más tierra hayan logrado y que más económicamente viables se

muestran, mejor han rehecho sus redes familiares, su sistema de autoridad

y sus elementos culturales comentarios…que mientras más usan el sistema

político electoral, más encuentran las limitaciones del proyecto nacional

blanco-mestizo. El proyecto criollo…ha llegado a sus límites históricos sin

producir la mestización de los indios, sino exactamente lo contrario: el

fortalecimiento de los indios como nacionalidades.81 (Ramon Estado 19)

As Pallares shows in her essay, the indigenous movement in Ecuador had begun

to challenge this elite project with the proposal of “plurinationalism.” While the

government painted the movement as “antinational” and continuously denied their

demands, the opportunity for change through formal changes came in 1997. At this time,

“Ecuadorian political institutions had entirely lost their authority” and fragmentation,

80
This has its downside as well. The reader may recall Pacari’s assertion that it seems
they are more divided upon seeking education. Another community member in Saraguro
commented that, “Study is good, but it also destroys because it is the growth of the
personal “I,” it marks the ego, for this reason there has been destruction.
81
“the more educated they are, the more ethnically aware they prove to be…that the more
Spanish they speak and write, the more conscientious they become. That while the more
land they win and the more economically viable they show themselves to be, the better
they reestablish family networks, their system of authority, and their commented cultural
elements. That the more they use the political electoral system, the more they find the
limitations of the White-Mestizo national project. The Criollo project has reached its
historic limits without producing the ‘mestización’ of the Indians, but exactly the
opposite: the strengthening of the Indians as nationalities.”
 145

corruptions and lack of political representativeness were decried by civil sectors of

society” (Van Cott 58). Challenges to the government led to a Constituent Assembly,

which opened in December of 1997, and indigenous organizations found themselves in

an advantageous position. The eventual Constitution of 1998 does not explicitly define

Ecuador as “plurinational;” however, there were significant gains in terms of the exercise

of autonomous functions in the administration of justice and the formulation and

execution of economic development plans. Nielsen and Zetterber (1999) argue that,

[T]he Ecuadorian indigenous movement was able to insert its vision of the

pluri-national state into the 1998 Constitution because it mobilized on

three complementary fronts. It did so, first, through its delegates to the

Constituent Assembly, second through its representatives in the National

Congress (who secured the ratification of the International Labour

Organisation Convention 169), and, third, through direct lobbying by

CONAIE’s leadership…MUPP exploited opportunities for strategic

alliances and centre-left delegates and isolated its opposition. (qtd. in Van

Cott 60)82

However, despite the gains in the 1998 constitution, serious complications impeded the

implementation of the reforms. First, since there was no consensus on economic reform,

the “Constitution provides no coherent model of the state, particularly with respect to the

question of decentralization,” a question further problematized by the “rift between the

82
MUPP-NP was created in 1995 as a “loose electoral alliance of diverse social
movement organizations based on a common desire to block the imposition of a
neoliberal economic model and offer a political alternative to the corrupt and clientelistic
traditional parties” (Van Cott 59).
 146

Quito-based political elite and the Guayaquil-based economic elite” (62). Secondly, “the

new charter came into effect under a newly elected president who had opposed the

constitution during his campaign,” and economic and political chaos continued in the

following years (62). Finally, CONAIE’s legitimacy was seriously questioned after

indigenous leaders joined forces with lower-ranking military members to overthrow the

presidency in a quasi-coup d’etat on 21 January 2000 (Van Cott 62, Macdonald83). Thus,

since the Constituent Assembly, “virtually nothing has been achieved with respect to

statutory legislation,” (Van Cott 63),84 and in any case, a new Constitution was drafted

and instituted in 2008.85

83
Macdonald, contrary to other literature, argues that the January 2000 uprising was not a
disaster because “it served as a fulcrum to open more political space, as a stimulus for
internal reflection and self-criticism, and, subsequently, as a motive for a more structured
and rational political plan” (170).
84
There are many other obstacles to implementation of indigenous autonomy in Ecuador,
for which there is not space here. Both Van Cott and Ramón (Plurinacionalidad) go into
detail. Some of the reasons include: CONAIE’s alienation of other social movements,
decidedly ambiguous language on ethnic territorial circumscriptions and lack of
consensus on territorial organization, lack of consensus within a plural indigenous
movement on definitions of “nationality,” “people,” “ethnicity,” etc. (Van Cott); the
inexistence of a solid judicial system and of democracy, clientelism, inequitable relations
among the indigenous ‘nationalities’ themselves, alliances that weren’t formed on the
construction of interculturality, the inability to learn from local experiences, the lack of
profound debate over the very process, etc. (Ramón).
85
The 1998 Constitution states that Ecuador is “un estado social de derecho, soberano,
unitario, independiente, democrático, pluricultural y multiétnico. Su gobierno es
republicano, presidencial, electivo, representativo, responsable, alternativo, participativo
y de administración descentralizada” [a social state of law, sovereign, united,
independent, democratic, pluricultural and multiethnic. Its government is republican,
presidential, elective, representative, responsible, alternative, participatory, and of a
decentralized administration] (Art. 1) (emphasis mine). The 2008 Constitution states that
Ecuador is “un Estado constitucional de derechos y justicia, social, democrático,
soberano, independiente, unitario, intercultural, plurinacional y laico…” [a
constitutional State of rights and justice, social, democratic, sovereign, independent,
united, intercultural, plurinational, and secular](Art. 1) (emphasis mine).
 147

In What Saraguro Am I?: the Loss of Semiotic Power: Plurinationalism and

Interculturality

This chapter has focused on the recent indigenous movement in Ecuador to

demonstrate the particular way in which indigenous peoples are vindicating themselves.

Indigenous movements in America have taken very diverse forms; peoples in Canada,

Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc. have sought different channels for decolonization and

vindication due to extremely diverse histories of colonizations and creative ways of

resistance. The character of the national movement in Ecuador is important to understand

some of the conflicts in Ecuador. As some of the testimonies show, the leaders used the

1998 Constitution to support their arguments: indigenous peoples have the right to be

consulted about projects in their territories, and they have the right to benefit from and

participate in projects realized in their area. In our conversations, the leaders cited

Articles 83, 84, 191 and the ILO Convention 169 on indigenous peoples to strengthen

their arguments and claimed that the mayor had violated all of these. Once the history of

Ecuador’s relationship to the indigenous peoples who live in the territory is understood, it

becomes clear that these claims are not to be taken lightly. The indigenous have fought

extremely hard to be able to use formal political channels and documents like the

constitution for protection and justice.

The mayor, when he was narrating the water conflict to me, after explaining how

he obtained funds for his project then said,

But what happened is that the compañeros immediately, since here a

thousand years ago there has always been water, [say] that there’s no
 148

water, that this thing that the other, and this has served an entire life so

that some idiots, some people interested in ruining your life, your

existence, they say ‘this doesn’t comply with the water, this is bad policy.’

So. They politicized the subject of the water. Below, they collect 80 liters

per second for irrigation. And I want seven liters. So, it’s a political

question, immanently political. And I’ll tell you one thing – I’m not

causing myself any harm. This is an attitude of an ill heart. It’s an attitude

of political revanchism. And they don’t want me to solve this problem in

order to continue bothering me. (emphasis mine)

For a year and a half after my first interviews, I used the same words of the mayor to

describe the conflict: “It became political question,” I told people. However, I soon

realized that while I jostled this phrase around, in reality, I had no idea what it meant.

What did it mean for something to be political? How did the water become a political

subject? What does political mean? When I read Van Cott’s essay on constitutional

reform in the Andes, it began to be clear to me why the Constitution was so important to

the indigenous peoples: this was the space where they asserted their rights and where they

argued for autonomy. If part of the problem was an exclusionary state, part of the

solution was a non-exclusionary state. With “plurinationality” CONAIE considered that

constitutional status as a nation provided the basis for self-government. Indigenous

peoples in Ecuador had a long tradition of enjoying communal rights, but in a “liberal”

state, indigenous issues are rendered invisible. Thus, their fight has been to get the liberal

state to recognize their difference, but also to not be racist. Despite all the truths of the
 149

“tyranny of the alphabet,” the illegitimacy of the conquest, the colonia, and the republic,

and the terrible discursive dislocation of the indigenous peoples, the reality is that due to

Ecuador’s history, formal political channels were one way a relative majority of the

indigenous peoples chose for some vindication. Of course, a national panorama does not

reveal the everyday forms of creative resistance practiced by indigenous peoples.86 I have

had several conversations with people in Saraguro about whether change can come “from

above” and from official channels. In the end, it is these unanswered questions about

autonomy that are at the heart of debates both internal and external to the indigenous

movement.

86
The English explorer and writer, Edward Whymper climbed Chimborazo (a volcano in
Ecuador) twice in 1880, and claimed to have been the first to make it to the top. With
Whymper we can extract the very real practices of (neo)colonial oppression and the
subtle yet effective resistance of those reigned in to facilitate European scientific
missions. I use Fitzell’s summary of Whymper’s experience: “Los cargadores de
Whymper le habían sido facilitados por el Municipio de Guaranda para cargar su
equipaje en la subida al Chimborazo. Whymper se quejó de que, si bien los indígenas
solían andar descalzos, el cargador apalabrado encontraba que no podía caminar sin
zapatos y había que dárselos. Los cargadores formaban un contingente indeseable porque
se iban atrasando con varios pretextos, con la evidente intención de fugarse. Uno de ellos,
que era particularmente displicente y necio, se las ingeniaba para golpear las angarillas
contra los objetos que se encontraban a su paso y retardaba su avance con similares
travesuras. Luego de una noche helada, fue un golpe para Whymper el que los Indios y
cinco mulas hubieran desaparecido (1987:40)” [Whymper’s porters had been provided to
him by the municipality of Guaranda to carry his equipment in the ascent to Chimborazo.
Whymper complained that, if usually the Indians walked barefoot, the aforementioned
porter found that he couldn’t walk without shoes and he [Whymper] had to give him
shoes. The porters formed an undesirable contingent because they went along delaying
the ascent with different pretexts, with the obvious intention to run away. One of them,
that was particularly disdainful and stupid, arranged to knock the carts against objects in
the path and thus delay the advance with similar schemes. After a freezing night, it was a
blow for Whymper that the Indians and five mules had disappeared] (Fitzell 50, 51).
Stories such as this one reveal several things at once: the diverse forms of racial and class
oppression that changed names but not essence over the centuries; the very real desire to
not be subject to this oppression; and the creative, if not humorous, strategies invented by
the Indians to trip up their oppressors and try to fulfill those desires.
 150

Furthermore, upon reading Pallares’ essay on citizenship and pluriculturalism, it

dawned on me exactly what it meant that the water in Saraguro was political.

“Revanchism,” the bitter word offered by the mayor, can be defined as “a policy of

seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory.” Of course, this is the suggestion

of this thesis: that the water in Saraguro is not about the water, but rather about the

autonomous management of the land where the water happens to be. Of course, this

seems like an obvious conclusion, but it was easy for me to proclaim that the water had

become politicized without actually understanding what this meant. As soon as I realized

that the subject was the land and the right to make decisions about the land and

participate in projects, and not the water, and furthermore that the arguments had been

made according to national and international official political documents, I finally

understood what it meant to be political. As one leader clearly stated to me, it is about

“the possibility to make decisions in our territory.”

While at the national level, the largest indigenous organization has pushed for the

concept of plurinationality, arguing that as nations indigenous peoples should be granted

juridical, economic, cultural, educational, etc. autonomy, other organizations have

proposed different concepts, for example, interculturality. It would be easy for outsiders

(as probably many mestizos do)87 not to attempt to understand the proposals of the

87
One council member in Saraguro said to me “Interculturality…until now, I still don’t
understand what this is. I don’t get it…[The water project] wasn’t going to affect
anything, because of this the indígenas turned their back on us, claiming that they are
communal lands, that it’s their land; but water is for public use, it’s a national good and it
still hasn’t been resolved; where the instinct to conserve the water is, only they might
know, or what might they be looking for with this? The argument that the land didn’t
seem well to them, if this is interculturality, in what Saraguro am I? This has never been.
 151

indigenous movement in their depths of meanings. However, so much literature has been

generated that one can even get a degree in Interculturality.88 There is not space here to

sufficiently explain the concepts, the debate, or the practical implications, but it is worthy

to have a glance at some of the deeper issues. Ramón argues that the proposal of

plurinationality embodied the following characteristics: plurality, a continuous present,

pluri-ethnic, inter-regional, and pluriclasist, critical, and alternative. It is plural because it

stems from many different initiatives, creations, projects, etc. It is a “continuous present”

because despite its enormous historical density, it does not seek a “return” to the past;

rather, it is a “contemporary proposal” that assumes, among other factors, the existence of

the nation-state and “la realidad de un mundo moderno aunque vivamos en su periferia,”

[the reality of a modern world, although we live in its periphery] and of the conflicts

between class, gender, etc. The proposal also seeks to include in its vision not just

indigenous peoples but also every social sector of society, and a necessity for the need for

a profound change in the very structure of the state. In this sense, it is “profoundly

critical” because it radically questions Ecuadorian society in every aspect and the very

constitutive bases of that society:

Critica al Estado Nacional por considerarlo discriminador, genocida e

inadecuado a la realidad…por ser un proyecto fracasado que ha llegado a

If they have resentment, it’s with the past...They have very nice customs that I like a lot,
however, we must take care (hay que tener cuidado) that racism isn’t generated on their
part towards us.”
88
Luis Macas, an intellectual and politician from Saraguro, created a university, which
currently has no funding from the government, and so the 80 or so students once a month
meet in a different town or city. They prepare their own food and housing, or they are
hosted by local families. The man who was telling me this is getting his degree in
Interculturality.
 152

sus límites históricos sin resolver los problemas de que los partió…critica

al modelo de desarrollo dependiente, especialmente al agrario…por

producir violencia, inseguridad, altos procesos migratorios, cuestión que

en las ciudades se traduce en hiperurbanizaciones, pobreza extrema,

marginalidad social y muerte. Cuestiona al modo de vida dispendioso,

consumista, de una sociedad tercermundista que produce alienación,

incertidumbre, infelicidad, miedo…89 (21)

Ramón’s title “Estado plurinacional: una propuesta innovadora atrapada en viejos

conceptos” [Plurinational State: an innovative proposal trapped in old concepts] reveals

his argument: the very notion of the state puts limits on the construction of a pluricultural,

just, and caring society. The difficulty of the activity of imagining a plurinational state is

that it has not been imagined before. In language that smacks of Zapatismo, Ramón

concludes that the “Indian proposal” should create a “pensamiento pluricultural, es decir,

un conjunto de puentes que unan las diversas modalidades” [Pluricultural thinking, that is

to say, a group of linkings that unites diverse modes] of resistance, initiatives, hopes, and

critiques of Indians, ecologists, dissidents, etc. (Estado 24).

While Ramón’s essay is on “plurinationality,” his use of the more general term

“Indian proposal” is revealing: 17 years later, after the adoption of the 2008 Constitution,

89
“The proposal criticizes the Nation State because it considers it discriminative,
genocidal, and inadequate to reality…because it is a failed project that has surpassed its
historic limits without resolving the problems that created the limits…it criticizes the
model of dependent development, especially agrarian, because it produces violence,
insecurity, hightened migrational processes, an issue in which cities become super-
urbanizations, extreme poverty, social marginality, and death. It questions the wasteful,
consumerist way of life of a third-world society that produces alienation, uncertainty,
unhappiness, fear.” (21)
 153

he wrote another essay called “Plurinacionalidad o interculturalidad en la Constitución?”

In it, he argues that,

La plurinacionalidad es un concepto ambiguo y de menor alcance que la

Interculturalidad, por tres razones principales: (i) la Plurinacionalidad sólo

reconoce la diversidad, pero no enfatiza la unidad en la diversidad;

(ii)…no transforma a manera activa a toda la estructura racista,

excluyente, inequitativa y monocultural dominante; y (iii) es

inaplicable…en donde conviven diversos pueblos y ciudadanos/as. 90

(Plurinacionalidad 125)

On the other hand, the concept of interculturality responds positively to these problems in

the following way: instead of just demanding unity in homogeneity (the modern State) or

diversity in heterogeneity (plurinationality), interculturality recognizes the right to

difference but also seeks to establish unity in creative and equitable encounters between

the diverse groups. Secondly, and most important to this thesis, interculturality does not

allow indigenous peoples to be treated as minorities which are given a small part of the

construction of society; rather, it crosses every norm, institution, and practice of the

country, and demands that indigenous peoples and all of civil society be considered equal

participants, and worthy of equal participation. Furthermore, interculturality better fits

Ecuador’s reality, in which indigenous peoples coexist with other peoples in the same

90
“Plurinationality is an ambiguous concept and of lesser reach than Interculturality, for
three main reasons: (i) Plurinationality only recognizes diversity, but it doesn’t emphasize
unity in diversity; (ii) …it doesn’t actively transform the whole racist, exclusive, unequal,
and one-culture dominated system and (iii) it is inapplicable…where diverse peoples and
citizens coexist.”
 154

territory, and more to the point, the concept includes the large number of migrants in the

cities. Lastly, interculturality also offers an opportunity for groups that may not fall under

a strict definition of nation, like African descendents and mestizos.

The concept of interculturality suggests two important and related ideas for this

thesis: as I mentioned, it presupposes equality among rationalities91 by suggesting that

indigenous peoples are equal actors in the construction of society, and secondly, it

91
“Rationality” could be considered a starting point for intercultural dialogue. Josef
Estermann explains that every philosophy takes as its base assumptions that arise from a
collective experience of reality. These assumptions are somewhat similar, I would say, to
Taussig’s implicit social consciousness or Foucault’s regime of truth. Estermann calls
them “foundational myths” (mitos fundantes). In intercultural dialogue, he explains that,
“Hablando de la ‘racionalidad andina,’ ya estamos usando un concepto
fundamentalmente occidental que no puede ser transculturado sin más. La ‘razón’…no es
una invariable cultural, ni menos una esencia supra-cultural, sino una ‘invención’
eminentemente occidental….Cuando hablamos de ‘racionalidad andina’, afirmamos que
la ‘racionalidad’ sólo se da en el plural: ‘racionalidades’” [In speaking about an ‘Andean
rationality’ we are already using a fundamentally Western concept that can’t be simply
transculturated. ‘Reason’…isn’t a cultural constant, even less so a supracultural essence,
but an imminently Western ‘invention’…When we speak of ‘Andean reason’, we affirm
that ‘rationality’ is only found in plural form: ‘rationalities’] (87,88). Of the many
elaborations he gives of the concept, one is that “’Racionalidad’ es un cierto ‘modo de
concebir la realidad’, una ‘manera característica de interpretar la experiencia vivencial’,
un ‘modo englobante de entender los fenómenos’, un ‘esquema de pensar’, una ‘forma de
conceptualizar nuestra vivencia’, un ‘modelo’ (paradeigma) de (re)presentar el mundo’”
[’Rationality’ is a certain ‘way of conceiving reality’, a ‘characteristic way of interpreting
lived experience’, ‘an inclusive way of understanding phenomena’, an ‘outline of
thought’, a ‘form of conceptualizing our lives’, a ‘model’ (paradigm) of (re)presenting
the world’] (88). If in Western philosophy, the “founding myth” has been that rationality
departs from a ‘distancing’ from the visible as a transcendental subject in order to ‘see’
the object better, and thus is a ‘visual’ philosophy and culture, “La filosofía andina
enfatiza las facultades no-visuales en su acercamiento a la realidad…El runa ‘escucha’ la
tierra, el paisaje y el cielo; él ‘siente’ la realidad mediante su corazón. El verbo rikuy
(‘ver’) contiene el sufijo reflexivo (-ku) para indicar que no se trata de una acción
unidireccional (sujeto-objeto)” [Andean philosophy emphasizes non-visual faculties in its
approach to reality…The runa ‘listens’ to the earth, the landscape and the sky; He ‘feels’
reality through his heart. The verb rikuy (‘to see’) contains the reflexive suffix (-ku) to
indicate that it is not a unidirectional action (subject-object).] (100,101), and Estermann
gives many other examples of how the Quechua language reflects Andean rationalities.
 155

embodies constant change or dialogue – the work of society is never done; rather, it

consists of constant construction. Ramón explains that the old concepts of

multiculturalism and plurinationalism

[S]ólo describían una situación de hecho, la existencia de múltiples

culturas en determinado lugar, y planteaban su reconocimiento, respeto y

tolerancia en un marco de igualdad, sin embargo…no permitían analizar la

capacidad que cada una de [las culturas] tienen para contribuir y aportar a

la construcción de relaciones de convivencia, equidad, creatividad y

construcción de lo nuevo…una sociedad intercultural no sólo demanda del

reconocimiento de la diversidad, su respeto e igualdad, sino plantea la

necesidad de desterrar el racismo de manera activa, promover

negociaciones permanentes entre los diversos para construir nuevas

síntesis…92 (Plurinacionalidad 135)

Of course, this all might sound ambiguous, and it is still necessary to continuing debating

these terms and seeking what it means to live an intercultural society. But the quest for

interculturality comes as a vindication to the idea that the Indian and other subalterns are

somehow sub-human, child-men, not-quite-reasonable, etc., discourses which sprouted

on this continent at the very encounter between the Inka Atahualpa and Friar Vicente de

92
“…they only described a situation in fact, the existence of multiple cultures in a
determined place, and they presented their recognition, respect, and tolerance in a
framework of equality, however, they didn’t allow for the analysis of the capacity that
each culture has to contribute to the construction of relations of coexistence, equity,
creativity, and the construction of new things…an intercultural society not only demands
the recognition of diversity, respect for it, and equality, but it also presents the need to
actively exile racism, promote ongoing negotiations between the diverse cultures in order
to build new syntheses.”
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Valverde as the representation of a regime founded on the incommensurability of cultures

and the debasement of the Other culture.93 Furthermore, despite interculturality’s

“incompleteness” (which of course, is a necessary quality to the concept itself), the

claims of the indigenous leaders in Saraguro are practical manifestations of the concept’s

propositions.

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to

remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:5)

Several times during this process it occurred to me that my own Western

rationality was possibly preventing me from considering such concepts as the Nation-

State, for example, in any terms other than what it already is. I realized, however, that

this is a fundamentally linear way of thinking, and furthermore, pessimistic. Estermann

makes the analogy that “founding myths” (see note 13) are like the “plank in one’s eye”

(85) – I cannot see the plank in my eye, but my neighbor can not only see a plank but also

a speck (according to the story). Thus, “En el diálogo intercultural entre las filosofías

occidental y andina, cada una a su manera puede ‘revelar’ (quitar la venda de la ceguera

parcial) los ‘mitos fundantes’ de la otra. Este proceso tiene la forma de una ‘hermenéutica

diatópica’ (Panikkar), una interpretación de lo propio por lo otro (alteridad), y de lo otro

por lo propio” 94 (86). In my readings and conversations on the “Indian proposals”, I

93
The phrase “Indio que corre es ladrón, Blanco que corre es atleta” [An Indian that runs
is a thief. A white man that runs is an athlete] (qtd. in Quimbo, Derecho Indígena), is a
perfect example of an incommensurability that not only refuses to understand the Other’s
ways to “measure” the world, but assumes that they are inferior.
94
“In the intellectual dialogue between Western and Andean philosophy, each one in its
own way can ‘reveal’ (take off the blindfold of biased blindness) the ‘foundational
 157

sometimes realized that linear ‘founding myths’ were obstructing my ability to

understand their proposals. I was, at first, very skeptical of the concepts of

plurinationality and interculturality because I considered the Nation-State as something

finished and static. But even Foucault’s “ascending” analysis of power at the

“infinitesimal levels” suggests that relationships are made at the local level, and then

colonized, inflected, transformed, etc. “by increasingly general mechanisms and forms of

overall domination” (Society 30). If there were any possibility for change, it does no good

to think that the modern Nation-State will never allow indigenous peoples true autonomy.

To be sure, the way it has been constructed, the State will not ever allow this.95 I realized,

though, that to say never is certainly not an Andean way of thinking for it does not allow

myths’ of the other. This process takes the form of a ‘diatopic hermeneutics’(Panikkar),
an interpretation of the self by the other (otherness), and of the other by the self.”
95
Despite popular support for the 2008 constitution (the referendum passed with about
65% of the vote), the Saraguros, when I was there one month before the referendum,
were worried, as is seen in the following testimonies: “In September we are going to see
about the new constitution and in this they leave open the doors for the mining
companies. They do give the right to be consulted, but at the end it says in the case that
consent is not given, the State and the law will determine, so yeah right they will consult
us”; “If this law passes, yes, we are screwed. The State will be the absolute owner of the
natural resources.” The new constitution also gives rights to nature: “La naturaleza o
Pacha Mama, donde se reproduce y realiza la vida, tiene derecho a que se respecte
integralmente su existencia y el mantenimiento y regeneración de sus ciclos vitales…”
(Art. 71). This led one leader to proclaim that if this is how it had to be, then if the mayor
went forward with his project, they would rise up on behalf of nature, of the water, and
say “why aren’t you protecting the water? Why don’t you have a project of
sustainability?” While I have shown the importance of the constitution in the construction
of the arguments of the indigenous leaders, in the end, the lies of the Nation State are
well known, as summarized in the following words by one community member: “The
mayor only says the water is a right of everyone and nobody can block its use. And the
constitution says that the indigenous communities we can’t control the water, and I think
that in fact we can control it because in the end, it’s in our jurisdiction; not to cause harm
to the town but that the municipality by way of invoicing the water, can charge something
to maintain the springs. They have to be reforested.”
 158

for the possibility of pachakutik96 or a paradigm shift; it is a linear way of thinking that

sees the Nation-State as a finality.97 A non-linear way of thinking would truly see that the

State (or Colonialism in general) has arrived at its historical limits and that the world

awaits her paradigm shift. The concepts of plurinationality and interculturality have

developed as legitimate challenges to the paradigm of colonialism and both seek

vindication for what was lost upon conquest: land and “reason.”

96
Pachakutik - Kichwa for change, rebirth, transformation, a new era
97
“Globalization” and the rule of corporations is not a paradigm shift from the Nation-
State. It is colonialism in new garb.
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CHAPTER 8: SUMMARY, REFLECTIONS, LIMITATIONS

The first chapter introduced the reader to the author and her connection to both

the site of fieldwork and the topic chosen. I wanted the reader to understand why I was

writing and how I came to choose my subject. As the subject was apparently water, I also

gave a brief review of water conflicts in the world and some mainstream explanations for

the causes of conflicts and the groups contending over water. None of these explanations

envelops the core conflict in Saraguro, however; thus, I proposed a different analysis,

namely historical and narrative, to suggest that the water conflict actually concerns a

dispute over sovereignty. Thus, because of the topic, location, and what I believe is one

of the hearts of the matter (for there are several), in chapter two I outlined theoretical

perspectives on Latin America, which help to establish the conquest as a starting point for

understanding conflicts in the region. Furthermore, this “decolonial” perspective is

important if we are to honestly contribute to decolonization efforts in the region.

In the second part, chapter three gave a very brief overview of Saraguro culture

and history. While indigenous peoples share an overarching history of colonization, each

people also have a specific, local history. Saraguro’s exemption from the hacienda system

has traditionally meant that their struggles have little in common with the rest of

Ecuador’s Sierran indigenous peoples. However, while Saraguro’s history shows that

they have maintained their lands under colonial systems, the nation-state has introduced a

new threat to sovereignty. I also wanted to present the attitude and sentiments of a few of

the indígenas about their current situation and the effects of colonization, which is

extremely complex. Chapter four presented some of the narratives about the water
 160

conflict. I privileged those of the original three leaders who were presidents when the

conflict began, the indigenous council members, and a couple comuneros, as well as the

mayor. While they paint an incomplete picture, the narratives more or less explain what

happened, what was done to try to solve the conflict, and in a rather obvious way, some

of the “deeper” issues.

Part three presents my analysis. In chapter five I explored “regimes of truth.” The

way the Spanish legitimized their conquest laid the foundation for conflicts today. They

waged war with the purpose of religious, political, and territorial domination, and they

legitimized this warfare with an alphabetic text in Spanish. Once the “Indians” were

subjected, a regime of truth was established that suggested the “Indians” were people not

fully capable of reason. This became a sort of “implicit social knowledge” passed on

from generation to generation, as evidenced in political and historical discourses

throughout the centuries, and which persists to this day. I hope the connection is clear

between this regime of truth and issues of land and sovereignty: believing that the

indígenas are “not fully capable” allows for all manners of exploitation, and namely, the

appropriation of their land and resources. Thus, chapter six traced the history of the

nation-state and its founding elements in Latin America: the Spanish (Western) legal and

juridical culture, the newspaper which established the regional imagined community,

romance literature as an allegory for the nation, and the nineteenth century ciudad letrada

(namely, those who wrote the Constitutions). The Creole elites who founded the nation-

state, although not a homogenous group, used the “Indian” to justify their fight for

independence, and soon after, replaced his image with a European one, and eventually
 161

attempted to destroy his language and culture through “citizenship.” Chapter seven

investigated the “national” indigenous response to the Creole project of a nation-state.

The project has failed, and the indigenous peoples who have been subsumed into

Ecuador’s borders have reacted by demanding not only that their differences be

recognized, but that their historical position as “original” peoples also be recognized in

entitlement to land. The national indigenous movement in Ecuador has challenged the

construction of the modern nation-state.

By way of conclusion, I simply want to highlight the focus I have given the water

conflict in Saraguro. The question was: why have the mayor and the communities not

been able to come to a “meeting point” despite apparent dialogue? With this in mind,

analyzing the water conflict in Saraguro required excavations into local, national and

continental histories that flickered in and out of the stories told to me as “flowerings” of

great cycles of buried history. When the mayor complains that, “they politicized the

subject of water,” and also states, “…I say, this is my terrain, no?”, his position as a state

authority suggests that the indigenous leaders made the management of water a claim to

sovereignty, a claim which, as one leader said, was a price too high for the municipality.

The following testimony is the heart of the matter: “We haven’t been able to establish

this point of encounter of conversation. In the beginning it was being worked on a lot.

There were about 10 meetings. What the communities wanted was to establish a proposal

and negotiate it with the municipality.” In one proposal, eleven out of twelve points were

agreed upon; the only point not agreed upon was that the indígenas manage the basins.
 162

The second major complaint on the part of the leaders demonstrates what I

believe is the legacy of the regime of truth that perceives the Indians as “less-than-

reasonable,” a legacy which has built a racist foundation for the nation-state and

attempted the destruction of indigenous cultures. It has also prohibited the construction of

an equitable society, which the indigenous are fighting for, trying to make themselves

seen as equal participants in building a just society. The right to be consulted, for the

indigenous, is also a symbolic right that signifies politically autonomy. This consultation,

on the other hand, cannot only be “symbolic.” If the state remains the absolute owner of

everything, then “consultation” is no more the continuation of the lie that founded

Spanish America. In terms of decisions, the indígenas should also be guaranteed the right

to have the last word. If they say no, then the answer is no.

The following complaints: “[the mayor] needs to negotiate, he should converse,

he should agree on things, he should arrive at agreements. And this never happened, not

even until now;” “He needs to consult; he needs to ask;” represent the demand for

sovereignty: “the possibility to make decisions in our own territory.” The way of making

decisions is by consensus, a fundamental principle to the indígenas in Ecuador. Luis

Macas explains that,

‘[L]a búsqueda de consensos es una de las prácticas más antiguas de la

sociedad indígena’; que ‘el consenso es la parte fundamental de la

comunidad y que sin consensos esta no podría existir, porque todas las

decisiones importantes que se toman al interior de la comunidad, cuentan

con la participación de todos los miembros, y a través del diálogo busca

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alcanzar acuerdos estables y concertados en base al consenso’.98 (qtd. in

Ponce 37)

Thus, the perception of the indigenous that the mayor does not want to seek accords, and

that he only wants to “impose,” suggests that until the communities are considered equal

authorities as the municipality (by the municipality), they will continue demanding an

equal place at the table of dialogue as a recognition of both their “reason” and their

territory, since the territory is the basis for community. As the Shuar Ampam Karakas

confirms,

‘Los diálogos fracasan por las desconfianzas históricas mutuas. El

movimiento indígena ha avanzado, tiene una posición fuerte, pero no se le

quiere entregar recursos que fortalezcan ese poder. Los gobiernos quieren

ganar tiempo y firmar rápidamente acuerdos que después no

cumplen…Mientras los gobiernos quieren utilizar los disensos al interior

de nuestro movimiento, nuestras comunidades actúan por consensos. Esto

es más visible entre el sector andino. Diferimos en cuanto a los tiempos.

¿Cómo encontrar un término medio? ¿A qué aspira un ministro o un

presidente? ¿A colgar su retrato en Carondelet o a hacer rápidamente el

negocio de su vida? Falta continuidad en los diálogos. Diálogos serenos y

pragmáticos….Sí es posible dialogar. Sí es posible soñar con una sociedad

98
‘the search for consensus is one of the most ancient practices of indigenous society;’
that ‘consensus is the fundamental part of the community and that without consensus, the
community could not exist, because all of the important decisions that are made on the
inside of the community count on the participation of all of its members, and through
dialogue, the community seeks to reach stable and concerted agreements based on
consensus.’
 164

mejor, más democrática y con un estado plurinacional que sea, finalmente,

una página abierta que invita a todos a escribir en ella…’99 (qtd. in Ponce

47)

For the indigenous leaders, the elected officials of the municipality are “fleeting;” they

are “passengers” (pasajeros). And while the indigenous leaders are also “elected,” the

difference comes in that the highest authority of the community is the “assembly.” The

leader “has no authority except what the assembly gives him.” In fact, the mayor used the

same words to describe himself – a “passenger.” I was told that the mayor was not from

Saraguro – he had spent his childhood in Paquishapa, a nearby parish, and then had spent

the rest of his life in the capital, twelve hours away by bus. In 2004, he returned to

Saraguro to run for mayor. When I asked why, then, he was elected in the first place, my

interlocutor explained that after the corruption of the previous mayor, people wanted

someone “from outside.”

When I was doing extensive research for this, I kept thinking about what the

“solution” would be. But this turned out to be another “plank” in my eye: if consensus,

dialogue, coming to agreements, the perpetual agricultural cycle, the moon, the sun, etc.,

99
Dialogues fail because of mutual historical distrust. The indigenous movement has
advanced; it has a strong position, but resources that would strengthen this power do not
want to be turned over to it. Governments want to gain time and to quickly sign
agreements that later they don’t comply with…While governments want to use the
“disensus” on the inside of our movement, our communities act by consensus. This is
more visible among the Andean sector. We differ in terms of time. How can we find an
average term? To what does a minister or president aspire? To hang his portrait in
Carondelet (the government palace in Quito) or to do a quick business deal with his life?
Continuity in dialogue is lacking. Dialogue settled and pragmatic…Yes, it is possible to
dialogue. Yes, it is possible to dream of a better society, more democratic and with a
plurinational state that would be, finally, an open page that invites everyone to write on
it…’
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are what define a particular Andean way of life, maybe there is no salvation story. If

dialogue and consensus are the basis of life, then, as I suggested before, maybe there is

no conclusion or finality. With that, I would like to end, for now, with a story from

Saraguro, the first half of it I have heard myself, the whole story is found in both Linda

and Jim Belote’s dissertations: They say in Saraguro that

[I]n the time of the gentiles [ancestors], the valley was densely populated

and that the people did not have enough space to cultivate their food.

However, this did not impede them from having good relations with the

plants and they could simply place a few seeds and a little bit of earth over

a rock in order to produce in abundance. They had similar relationships

with the animals, the trees, and the rocks. If a man wanted firewood, he

should go the forest and they would call him in a delicate voice: “here is

firewood!” and one only needed to go and collect the dry branches. If a

living part of the tree was accidentally cut, the tree would cry from the

pain. When a wall of rocks was needed, one only needed approach a

friendly rock and tell it what was needed…Those were good times, since

one could relate to everything. Then Christ was born, and right before

being crucified, he told all of the living things that he would die and they

needed to die as well, but that he would return to life and they would as

well and things would be as good as they were before. And Christ returned

to life but the things, no, and that’s how he tricked them. Now, as
 166

Christians, people need to work very hard and do their own labors

cultivating large areas to feed their families. (Belote 175)

What is notable about Christ’s trick is that it is a narrative, a story. For a mode of

awareness that is more oral, says Abram, “to explain is not to present a set of finished

reasons, but to tell a story” (264). This story is decidedly local – it makes no mention of

Christianity’s own explanation, which is the story of God expelling Adam and Eve from

the garden. If things were then supposed to be put right through a relationship with

Christ, in Saraguro, things got confused. It was Christ himself, the savoir, who also

deceived, and left the natural world permanently silent and humans forever burdened.

Using the colonizer’s figure of salvation to tell a story of loss seems to me a local attempt

“to demythologize history and to reenchant its reified representation” (Taussig

Shamanism 10). The colonial figure of Christ is reinterpreted from savoir to deceiver, and

there is no salvation. Rather, the “ambiguities” are left “intact” (Taussig 10), and while it

seems there is only the memory of “a world made up of multiple intelligences” (Abrams

9), this, then, is the meaning of vindication: “La tierra para el indígena es el espacio

privilegiado donde se realiza la interacción simbólica que le permite a su vez la

reproducción ideológica, que le lleva a mantener su identidad”100 (Botero, qtd. in

Guerrero Arias 43).

100
“The land for the indígena is the privileged space where symbolic interaction is
carried out that allows at the same time the ideological reproduction that sustains him to
preserve his identity.”
 167

Limitations

The limitations of this work are many: (1) While I have included an entire chapter

filled with testimonies, I feel that not only is the conflict understated, but also much is

lost of the diversity of opinions and personalities and the depth of the history that informs

each person’s perspective. I know that to the reader it may seem like I present many

testimonies; but to me, who knows what was left out, it feels very incomplete. I imagine

that everyone who does research or write books has similar experiences. It was very

difficult to choose the testimonies, and what I have left out reflects the other limitations.

(2) The internal histories and aspects of the indigenous communities are almost

completely absent in my work; however, this was an aspect that I often discussed with the

leaders or informally in conversations. The history of community organization, and the

relationship of the communities to the state are important to understanding community

unity, both internal and among communities. Community organization has also been

colonized and homogenized, and is also going through new processes of organization as

the indígenas reconsider the effects of colonization and reclaim cultural values. New

processes are also occasioned by study; as one leader pointed out to me, because of the

universitization and professionalization, class differences are emerging within the

indigenous communities. There was not space here to elaborate on community unity and

organization, although I view it as an essential element. (3) While I suggest that the water

conflict is not about the water, a discussion on the history of ecological colonization and

change would also be fitting. Of course, the indigenous leaders demanded that the mayor

create a proposal for long-lasting management of the basins, and one of the reasons for
 168

lack of water and ecological destruction has been the introduction of pine trees in the

1980s; the pines consume a lot of water and also kill all the vegetation underneath them.

One comunero told me that the river had reduced about 45% since he was a child. (4) The

aspect of the colonial wound is not absent, but it is not explicitly discussed. One of the

indigenous council members mentioned the “historical debt” that was owed the

communities, and several stories from Saraguro express the grief of conquest and of a

lost world. I believe the memory of loss and grief still influences relations between

indigenous peoples and whites/mestizos. Aside from the grief expressed in histories of

the colonial wound, I feel “poetics” in general are only given brief mention in my work.

Other types of poetics, such as Simón Bolívar’s “Mi Delirio sobre el Chimborazo,” also

reveal the nature of Creole’s claims to legitimacy, which helped establish the modern

nation-state. (5) The history of Saraguro was itself only briefly mentioned, and in

particular the history of the organization of the Saraguros into “second-grade

organizations” was only mentioned in a footnote. I believe this history informs the nature

of community organization, internal divisions, and the relationship to external (state and

international) NGOs and the municipality. (6) The discussion on the indigenous

movement is rather superficial. As I mentioned, the debate on plurinationality and

interculturality has generated abundant literature on the subject for the last twenty years.

Thus, what I present here are the simplest, most basic elements. (7) My discussion on

power and government is also rather superficial. I mention a few arguments of Foucault,

but his other theories on governmentality, and his interpretations of Machiavelli, I believe

would add another dimension of analysis to both the local situation in Saraguro and the
 169

nature of the nation-state. To this limitation, I would add that the discussion of the

relationship of land to the Saraguros, to indigenous peoples in general, and to the State

could be greatly expanded. (8) I am perhaps most pained by the exclusion of a discussion

on the word. Fernando Mires claims that the system of the encomienda was the

foundation of the lie in Spanish America, and that, thus, Spanish America itself was

founded on a lie. One of the indigenous leaders in Saraguro commented that the

indígenas try to fulfill their word, but the blanco-mestizos could lie; or in another

paradox, that a blanco-mestizo’s word would be trusted even if he was lying, but an

indígena’s word would not be trusted even when he was telling the truth. As is hinted at

in the testimonies, a repeated complaint about the mayor was that he would say one thing

and do another, or say one thing in one community, and another in a different

community. One former leader cited Jesus Christ’s adage, “You will know me by my

deeds,” and said that the mayor “talked pretty” but nothing was done. Another

commented that, since the 2009 elections, the mayor may “legally” be governing, but that

“morally,” the comunero did not recognize him as an authority. The history of the word is

intimately connected to that of text, alphabetic literacy, the separation of the signifier

from the signified, the authority of the written word, and the discrepancy between word

and deed. The encounter and subsequent interpretations of Atahualpa and Friar Valverde

in Cajamarca is one starting point for the history of the word’s “tyranny” in Spanish

America; it is an encounter that I believe reveals the nature of some prominent conflicts

today in Spanish America. Furthermore, the issue of language has only been glossed in

this work, although I feel language is absolutely fundamental to both colonization and
 170

decolonization processes. (9) Lastly, the original idea I had was to give not only the

history of colonization but also an in-depth discussion of other, marginalized histories,

knowledges, philosophies, etc. (namely, Andean). As with the subject of the indigenous

movement, an Andean perspective was only mentioned briefly, although there is now a

rich literature on these marginalized knowledges. Not only is there the historical debt to

value these knowledges as much as “Western” knowledge, but they also reveal clues to

implicit social knowledge and “founding myths” that can be used in intercultural dialogue

and the construction of a plural society.

 171

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APPENDIX A: AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE MAYOR TO SARAGURO.

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182
 183

APPENDIX B: THE REQUIREMENT. TEXT FOUND IN SEED

(CEREMONIES 69).101

On behalf of His Majesty,…I…his servant, messenger…notify and make known as best I

can that God our Lord one and eternal created heaven and earth…God our Lord gave
charge [of all peoples] to one man named Saint Peter, so that he was lord and superior of
all the men of the world…and gave him all the world for his lordship and jurisdiction
(señorío y jurisdicción)…One of these Pontiffs…made a donation of these islands and
mainland of the Ocean Sea to the Catholic kings of Spain…Almost all who have been
notified [of this] have received His Majesty and obeyed and served him, and serve him as
subjects…and turned Christian without reward or stipulation…and His Majesty received
them…as…subjects and vassals….Therefore I beg and require you as best I can…[that]
you recognize the church as lord and superior of the universal world, and the most
elevated Pope…in its name, and His Majesty in his place as superior and lord and
king…and consent that these religious fathers declare and preach…and His Majesty and I
in his name will receive you…and will leave your women and children free, without
servitude so that with them and with yourselves you can freely do what you wish…and
we will not compel you to turn Christians. But if you do not do it…with the help of God,
I will enter forcefully against you, and I will make war everywhere and however I can,
and I will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and His Majesty, and I
will take your wives and children, and I will make them slaves…and I will take your
goods, and I will do to you all the evil and damages that a lord may do to vassals who do
not obey or receive him. And I solemnly declare that the deaths and damages received
from such will be your fault and not that of His Majesty, nor mine, nor of the gentlemen
who came with me.

101
See her chapter “The Requirement: A Protocol for Conquest” on the influence of
Islamic jihad on the Spanish protocol for conquest.
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APPENDIX C: IRB FORMS

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