Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador 9780822385752

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CRUDE CHRONICLES

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c

Crude hronicles Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador Suzana Sawyer

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duke universit y press Durham & London 2004

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© 2004 Duke University Press. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Rebecca M. Giménez. Typeset in Adobe Minion by Tseng Information Systems. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

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Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

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For

Dorothy Anne Sawyer

and

J. Allan Sawyer,

with love

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AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS/ GLOBAL INTERACTIONS A series edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg This series is intended to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the history of the imposing global presence of the United States. Its primary concerns include the deployment and contestation of power, the construction and deconstruction of cultural and political borders, the fluid meanings of intercultural encounters, and the complex interplay between the global and the local. American Encounters seeks to strengthen dialogue and collaboration between historians of U.S. international relations and area studies specialists. The series encourages scholarship based on multiarchival historical research. At the same time, it supports a recognition of the representational character of all stories about the past and promotes critical inquiry into issues of subjectivity and narrative. In the process, American Encounters strives to understand the context in which meanings related to nations, cultures, and political economy are continually produced,

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challenged, and reshaped.

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C O N T E N TS Acknowledgments, xi A Note on Names, xiii Opening, 1

i national narratives 1. Amazonian Imaginaries, 27 2. Crude Excesses, 57

ii petroleum politics 3. Neoliberal Ironies, 91 4. Corporate Antipolitics, 118

iii raced realities 5. Contested Terrain, 149 6. Liberal Legal-Scapes, 182 Closing: A Plurinational Space, 211

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Notes, 225 Acronyms, 251 Glossary, 253 Bibliography, 255 Index, 277

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A C K N O W L E D G M E N TS

Over the course of researching and writing this book I have become indebted to many friends and colleagues. In their own unique way, each has inspired, supported, and challenged me along my journey. To begin, I thank all those in Ecuador who made my research possible. In particular, I am deeply grateful to Leonardo Viteri, Héctor Villamil, Giovanna Tassi, Paulina Garzón, Yvonne Ramos, Carlos Viteri, Chris Jochnick, Margot Escobar, Olga Pineda, Susana Gualinga, and the Cuji, Taula, and Canelos families. A number of colleagues have generously engaged with this project through discussions and readings. My teachers and guides in graduate school at Stanford—Bill Durham, Jane Collier, Akhil Gupta, Dominique Irvine, Sylvia Yanagisako, and Donald Moore—gave me the tools for crafting a discerning mind. I am truly grateful for their wise and gentle guidance. Since I joined the faculty at Davis, a number of colleagues within and beyond the University of California system have offered invaluable insights that have shaped this project for the better. I thank in particular Maria Antonieta Guzman, John Hall, Priya Joshi, Kyu Hyun Kim, Marcia Klotz, Jean Lave, Ming Cheng Lo, Barbara Metcalf, Lynn Meisch, Diane Nelson, Nancy Peluso, Richard Perry, David Simpson, Candace Slater, Stefan Sperling, Mukund Subramanian, David Szanton, Georges Van Den Abbeele, Sophie Volpp, Louis Warren, Michael Watts, and Alexei Yurchak. Within my department, I owe special thanks to Carol Smith, Roger Rouse, Li Zhang, and con cariño Marisol de la Cadena, for their careful, insightful, and generous readings. My most tender appreciation goes to Bill Maurer for providing relentless inspiration and support. A core of fabulous students have generously shared their thoughtful observations: Alex Ferry, Kregg Hetherington, Catherine Koehler, Fabiana Li, Gynnie Robnett, and Ellen Woodall. Special thanks go to Brooke Barnhart for her keen eye. I am most grateful to Jean

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Jackson and an anonymous reviewer for Duke University Press. Without doubt their extremely perceptive and incisive comments greatly strengthened this book. My deepest appreciation goes to Valerie Millholland for her editorial guidance and Gilbert Joseph for inviting me to publish in this series. My intimate friends have held me with love and humor through thick and thin along this journey. Mil gracias Karina Morris, Michael Moore, Guillermo Prado, Jeff Ellsworth, Jackie Starr, Megan Sheer, Michele Ku, Eric Black, Frauke Sandig, Kyu Hyun Kim, Emily Merideth, Kyra Minninger, Teresa Velasquez, Marcus Grant, Ron Rioux, and Marianne Glaspey for all the scrumptious meals and laughter. Throughout all, my family has been a constant grounding resource. Thank you Kate, Mary Catherine, Michael, Madelyn, Guy, Benjamin, Joshua, Mathew, Margaret, Eric, Kirke, and most especially Nancy, Leslie, and John for the joy of being. I dedicate this book to Dorothy and Allan, without whose love this adventure would never have been possible.

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research for this book was generously funded by the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Program on Peace and Security in a Changing World, the National Science Foundation, and the University of California, Davis. Support from the Humanities Research Institute, the Davis Humanities Institute, and University of California Faculty Research Grants provided the freedom for me to write this book. To all I am truly grateful.

xii acknowledgments

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A NOTE ON NAMES

Ethnographers have long engaged in the practice of disguising the names of the people they work with. In this book, I chose to follow this convention only in part. Many of the indigenous leaders with whom I collaborated were, and continue to be, highly public persons. They regularly appeared in public forums, in newspapers, on the radio, and at times on television, voicing their opinions. As such, I use these individuals’ real and complete names. The one exception to this practice is the president of dicip; his name is fictive. I have followed the same practice and used the real names of all high-ranking government officials and representatives of the landed oligarchy. I chose not to use the real names of arco executives; their actions, decisions, and speech serve collectively to exemplify a particular logic of liberal corporate capitalism. All other individuals mentioned in this book—be they Indian representatives or comuneros, corporate employees or government workers—have been given fictive names to protect their anonymity. All places and dates are true to history. By the years 2000, the spelling of ‘‘Quichua’’ changed to ‘‘Kichwa.’’ In this book, I use the former, as this is what indígenas used at the time.

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scale

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map 1. Ecuadorian Map of Ecuador, 1994.

ecuador

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OPENING

as often happened in Pastaza, the rain forest’s reality momentarily overwhelmed me. But this time it was the flood of contradictions inherent in processes of globalization—not the daily torrential rains—that made me pause. Alone in a dank, mildew-ridden room on the top floor of a rickety wooden building that served as the headquarters of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (opip), I fumbled with high-tech video equipment. It was the summer of 1993. This was the Upper Amazon—one of those supposed ‘‘faraway places’’—and there I was, an Anglo female, on the edge of the world’s largest rain forest basin, with more sophisticated microchip technology than I had ever worked with back home. It wasn’t the fact that California, home to both the silicon industry and the oil giant conjured up through my viewing screen, seemed simultaneously near and far. Rather, what caught and momentarily overwhelmed me was how the scene I watched and transcribed reflected the nasty knot of contention around modernity, transnational relations, and the governing of people in third-world places at the end of the twentieth century. Teetering on a wobbly stool, I played and replayed the videotape of a meeting between an oil executive from arco (Atlantic Richfield Company), a representative of Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, and five indigenous opip leaders from Ecuador’s central Amazonian province of Pastaza. The meeting had been held in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, at the behest of the Indian federation’s directorship. arco had discovered petroleum in the province and had begun drilling its second oil well to assess the reservoir’s size and the quality of its crude. The oil concession was located within indigenous territory, and leaders from the Indian federation had traveled to the Andean capital to denounce arco’s oil operations within their

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rain forest lands. This was the belly of the beast, the moist interiors of the postcolonial empires of neoliberalism: that clammy, sticky space where transnational capitalism and elite state rule commingled in their quest for accumulation in the face of local opposition, and consent. opip had filmed the meeting with arco and the Ministry of Energy and Mines to show corporate and state officials the seriousness of the federation’s concerns. When the indigenous leaders returned to Pastaza Province the following day, Héctor Villamil (the president of opip) asked if I wanted to watch the tape with them. That evening we gathered around the television monitor as Marco (the head of opip’s communications division—although ‘‘division’’ is a somewhat grandiose term to describe his cramped office) passed around Pilsners. Between sips, the men carefully watched the interaction on the screen. They were disturbed by how the meeting had gone. What most surprised (and disturbed) me, however, was the fact that the arco executive insisted on speaking through a translator. When I noted that there were discrepancies between what the executive said and how his words were translated into Spanish, Leonardo (the director of opip’s research division) asked if I would transcribe and translate the oilman’s words. I more than willingly obliged. So alone one afternoon in opip’s musty headquarters on the margins of Puyo, Pastaza’s provincial capital, I strained my ears and eyes watching and rewatching the mid-August 1993 meeting between opip and arco representatives. arco’s executive was a poster boy for transnational capitalism. A trim, distinguished-looking Englishman in his mid-forties with a tan, sculpted face and short blonde hair, he filled the bill of a cool corporate type equally comfortable and confident in boardrooms across the globe. arco had transferred him from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Quito in 1988, the year the company obtained its oil concession in Ecuador. As the company’s ultimate authority in Ecuador, he was charged with directing arco through the first stage of its operations, the long phase in search of crude oil. Discussion during the onehour meeting tacked back and forth (via a translator) between the corporate oilman and two senior opip leaders. Héctor Villamil was slightly younger than his corporate counterpart. With lightly tanned skin, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a receding hairline, Héctor did not particularly fit the stereotypic image of an Amazonian Indian. He was, however, a long-time veteran of indigenous politics and had proved himself to be a skillful leader during his first term as president 2 crude chronicles

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indigenous territories Cofanes Siona – Secoya Shiwiar Quichua Huaorani Shuar Achuar

100 200 *This border was finally delineated in 2000 with the peace agreement between Ecuador and Peru.

map 2. Indigenous Lowland Territories in 1994. Major portions, but not all, have been legalized.

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in the mid-1980s, the period in opip’s history when conflict between indígenas (Indians) and colonos (homesteading colonists from the sierra and the coast) was at its height. Leonardo Viteri was the director of Amazanga, opip’s recently established research institute. With his waist-long black hair, sharply cropped bangs, high cheekbones, and dark eyes, Leonardo, by contrast, fit the romanticized image of an Amazonian Indian to a T. In his early thirties, Leonardo had been involved in indigenous politics for nearly half his lifetime. While still in high school, he was one of opip’s founding figures. During his university days in Quito, he had been a key player in establishing an indigenous regional Amazonia confederation, and later a pan-national confederation. The representative from the Ministry of Energy and Mines was a tall, dark-haired Ecuadorian in impeccable dress. The opening 3

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translator was one of arco’s field coordinators for community relations. In a mild but discernible British accent, the arco executive graciously welcomed opip officials, slipping unconsciously between ‘‘I’’ and (the royal?) ‘‘we.’’ ‘‘I think dialogue is very important,’’ he began in an expansive voice. ‘‘We welcome this opportunity to have an open dialogue with the people of Pastaza. We are concerned that there has been some misinformation regarding our activities. We hope to clarify these misunderstandings today by stating the facts. . . . The context of today’s meeting will be an update of our activities in Block 10—what the current situation is and where the project is going.’’ For this cosmopolitan representative of what was then the sixth largest U.S. oil company, this meeting was an info-session. He would inform indigenous inhabitants of what was happening within arco’s 200,000-hectare oil concession (Block 10) lodged within the over one million hectares of Pastaza Indian rain forest lands. Noticeably annoyed, Héctor interrupted: ‘‘opip—not arco— called this meeting. And opip—not arco—will define the meeting’s agenda. We already know what is going on within our territory and within Block 10. We don’t need any company to tell us. Rather, we need to tell you what is going on.’’ The arco executive appeared irritated, tapping his pen on the table as he held his eyes steady on his indigenous interlocutor. Héctor continued in a fiery tone: ‘‘La compañía is fomenting division and social chaos within Indian territory. And we demand that arco stop its divisive and dangerous practices. That it stop buying the consciences of community leaders near its wells with insulting trinkets. That it stop propping up dicip, this phantasmic Indian organization it created. You [U.S. and European oil companies] have perfected the techniques of divide and conquer only too well, and in Pastaza, we will not stand for it.’’ Leonardo intervened. His voice was slightly calmer but no less assertive: ‘‘As you know, for a quarter century la compañía Texaco has contaminated and scarred the Oriente [i.e., the Amazonian region] beyond recognition only 100 kilometers to the north of here [meaning Pastaza]. And the result is that people there live in misery. More and more, they are sick, poor, marginalized, and landless. Texaco has taught you well: fomenting division among communities only weakens indígenas’ rights, indígenas’ concerns, and any opposition. Without opposition you can go about your operations without a thought to the social and ecological destruction you cause.’’ 4

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petroleum concession in the amazon region 10. 14. 15. 16.

Arco Elf – Alquitaine Occidental Maxus

Texaco – Petroecuador City Pañacocha – Tiputin

100 200

map 3. Active Oil Concession in 1994.

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The camera zoomed in on the arco executive as he leaned over and exchanged a few words with the otherwise silent representative from the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Leonardo continued: ‘‘Las nacionalidades indígenas in Pastaza, we consider our territory to be a single whole [conjunto], an indivisible unit. We define it along [the lines of ] traditional alliances and our identity as nationalities. The exploration and exploitation of strategic resources within our land has to be dealt with integrally and discussed with the rest of the Quichua, Achuar, and Shiwiar nationalities in Pastaza. You cannot just deal with a handful of easily manipulated people close to your wells. Those communities that lived near arco’s [oil] wells and that now express pro-arco allegiances do not have sovereign or independent claims to their lands. Nor do they have the unilateral right to define activities within them, espeopening 5

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cially when these activities will affect the larger indigenous population. The effect of oil operations cannot be contained within a discrete area, and arco cannot consider a three-month-old phantasmic organization that sanctions its oil operations as having greater authority than opip.’’ In response, the oilman asserted in a calm voice: ‘‘We did not create dicip. dicip approached us and we have engaged in an exchange with them because they are the entity that holds title to the land around our wells. It is important to realize that we do not have any right or ability to decide who has land titles, who represents the people who have land titles, and how they wish to handle their affairs. That is entirely those people’s right. Open dialogue with all involved parties is very important and critical at this time. This is democracy at work. It means that there will be disagreements. There are going to be differing opinions, but that is the nature of democracy. I think it is important that we try to preserve democracy and allow people to have their due say. I don’t believe that the fact that there is a dicip organization is divisive. I don’t believe that the fact that there is an opip organization is divisive. I think it shows democracy at work.’’ In his translation, the translator added: ‘‘The only thing we have done is recognized the democratic rights of people to chose their representatives. dicip is the elected organization. They have the [land] title. The problem is that you [opip] refuse to recognize that.’’ Leonardo cogently responded as tensions became more palpable: ‘‘The land that dicip claims to hold title to was defined arbitrarily by the state with the specific council of arco personnel. We know that arco had a hand in defining the shape of that land grant around its oil wells and in deciding who would hold title. But this fragmenting [i.e., division of land] makes no sense. We, the nacionalidades indígenas, do not recognize it as legitimate. Our territory is an indivisible unity.’’ The interchange was not translated. Seemingly oblivious, the arco executive continued: ‘‘I respect the point made by Señor Viteri, regarding traditional, tribal associations, if you will. But we also have to respect that individual communities within those larger associations do have their right to state their own positions and promote their own interests. . . . That is part of the process of recognizing the individual rights of individual people to be free to choose to act as a body or as individuals. With regard to arco’s oil operations, we also have to respect that there are distinct individual folks who have their individual concerns and 6

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who wish to have those represented. I think that again is democracy at work.’’ Leonardo shot back: ‘‘Whether or not you wish to acknowledge it, the fact of the matter is that la compañía is provoking social unrest in Pastaza. And arco has no right—not one right—to meddle in the internal affairs or authority structures of indigenous communities whether in the name of democracy or otherwise. Unlike in the northern Oriente, a frenzy of neoliberalism, a neoliberal madness, will not mean that la compañía can crudely manipulate indígenas [in Pastaza] at will.’’ As the conversation came to an impasse, Leonardo turned to the representative of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and said, ‘‘Señor Ministerio, your president is confused. Has he forgotten that we, the nacionalidades indígenas, are Ecuadorians too? Tell Sixto [Ecuador’s then-president Sixto Durán Ballén] that he is ignoring the reality of the majority of the population. His policies do not benefit all the nation.’’

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this book is about indigenous opposition to economic globalization in its neoliberal guise.1 By ‘‘globalization,’’ I am referring to the ever increasing and uneven production and consumption of capital, commodities, technologies, and imaginaries around the globe. By ‘‘neoliberalism,’’ I am referring to a cluster of government policies that aim to privatize, liberalize, and deregulate the national economy so as to encourage foreign investment and intensify export production. The tensions apparent during the meeting between the arco and the indigenous representatives speak directly to many of the concerns running through this book: slick corporate maneuvers, knowing state complicity, and oppositional indigenous tactics. Read as a palimpsest, the meeting reflects the conflicts that have arisen from attempts to implement neoliberal policy in Ecuador: questions of governance that arise with corporate expansion and state retraction, and questions of representation that surface when a liberal logic glosses over the difference and inequality. How then to read this meeting? Most apparent for those familiar with the local situation was how the arco executive erased history through an abstract, rational, and formalistic language of democracy, rights, and the liberal subject. Purportedly neutral, universal forms acted as a rhetorical sleight of hand. To begin, the arco executive invoked the idiom of democracy and equal voice to authorize one group as a representative Indian body and dismiss the claims opening 7

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of another. At a generous estimate, dicip—the organization that arco supported and that its corporate executive defended—represented 100 individuals. By contrast, opip represented approximately 15,000 indigenous people at the time. Situating dicip (then only three months old) alongside opip (then fourteen years old) as if they were equal was a disingenuous ploy that erased the vast disparity between the two. How they each emerged, whom they each represented, and what their distinct interests might likely be were not merely academic questions. Furthermore, those folks close to the oil company’s operations with what the arco oilman called ‘‘their individual concerns’’ were not equal free agents, analogous counterparts to the executive himself. Rather, these 100 individuals were among the most materially poor and politically marginalized people in Pastaza. As such, they could be swayed by an array of goods—be they candies or blankets, school lunches or plane rides—in ways that the arco executive could not. Their ‘‘interests,’’ ‘‘concerns,’’ ‘‘opinions,’’ and ‘‘due say’’ were not the sui generis convictions of freely authentic, autonomous individuals, but rather were produced in relation to the illusions of betterment that arco’s omnipotent and benevolent hand promised. By expounding on the glories of liberal thought and using its framework to set the rules of engagement, the arco executive implicitly invoked a distinction between himself and indigenous interlocutors: modern/tribal (‘‘if you will’’), global/local, cosmopolitan/ insular. arco represented the force of modernity and reason that would bring progress and democracy to isolated lands. Amazonian Indians represented tradition and unreason, caught in their own parochial particulars. opip leaders, however, refused the multinational corporation’s terms of engagement and attempts to contain Indians both temporally and spatially. They demanded to be recognized for who they were—sophisticated, articulate, and brazen representatives of a long-standing Indian organization. They sought to undermine the corporation’s adherence to form (democracy, equal voice, rights) and purportedly neutral containers (modern/tribal, global/local) by reasserting history. Specific identities, understandings, and differences were the effect of historical process, realities created in great part through questionable corporate and state practices. What the arco executive called ‘‘democracy at work’’ was, for opip leaders, the effects of a ‘‘frenzy of neoliberalism’’—the relentless and everincreasing capacity of capitalist accumulation (with the blessing of 8 crude chronicles

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the state) to intervene in people’s lives: their senses of self, community, land, and nation. The irony rested in the fact that championing the rights and liberties of the 100 individuals and undermining opip’s legitimacy served to sabotage, rather than promote, democracy—assuming that ever more engaged participation and debate are what is meant by democracy. More broadly, the meeting illustrated a twofold process under neoliberal rule whereby the state increasingly assumed the role of a fiscal manager geared toward facilitating transnational capital, and private enterprise selectively assumed a pastoral role.2 As the state retreated from its role of caring for the well-being of its subjects, arco stepped in. From the moment it gained rights to its oil concession, arco bestowed gifts and small ‘‘development’’ projects on the isolated communities near its exploratory operations, purportedly as compensation for letting the company complete its work. Gifts and projects ranged from candies to tin roofing, from school supplies to a new schoolhouse, from airplane rides to high school scholarships. For a corporation that invested hundreds of millions of dollars in oil exploration, these gestures were incidental expenditures; for materially poor and politically marginalized indigenous communities, they were near-monumental. Supporting dicip not only demonstrated the corporation’s compassion for local people, but also created the docile and compliant bodies necessary for oil operations to proceed. Specifically, the meeting revealed how transnational capital functioned in a country where social relations were ever more inflected by neoliberal economic reforms. Like a compassionate and knowing father, arco, according to its corporate man, was practicing and instituting enlightenment ideals in the rain forest—civilizing the heart of darkness with democratic principles. In essence, then, transnational capital did more than simply employ indigenous bodies to be docile spectators and cheap labor. It simultaneously was engaged in a project to shape and to govern the capacities, choices, and wills of subjects to conform to a neoliberal reason. The liberal logic of capital accumulation that informed arco’s practices intruded ever more intensely into local people’s lives and shifted the terms of debate around identity, rights, and representation. This logic (regardless of how flawed) was profoundly positive—in the technical rather than the ethical sense. Through the creative alignment of interests, objects, institutions, and bodies, arco produced (with the blessing of state agencies) new identities, dispositions, senses of knowing, and possibilities of being among indigenous peoples in Pastaza. opening 9

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Importantly, multinational capitalism was not the only force that engaged in creative and constructive alignments. opip, in conjunction with national and transnational indigenous and environmental groups, similarly produced new identities, dispositions, senses of knowing, and possibilities of being among indigenous peoples in Pastaza. opip community members and federation leaders vociferously challenged petroleum exploitation in their lands—condemning what they considered to be arco’s insidious instrumentality and manipulative method. Promises of progress were disingenuous ploys. A quarter century of petroleum practices in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon had left the region plagued by poverty and environmental devastation. In response, many of opip’s past and present leaders had become articulate, savvy spokespersons who denounced, both nationally and internationally, the marginalization, inequality, and exploitation that oil operations produced. They sought to shift the unequal power relations that permeated petroleum politics in Ecuador. Connected as opip was to a larger matrix of Ecuadorian, Latin American, and global indigenous and green organizing, its struggle was situated within and built on an indigenous politics in Ecuador that sought to transform Indians’ place in the nation and their possibilities for inclusion. Indigenous people represent approximately 40 percent of Ecuador’s population, yet historically they have been excluded from influencing, let alone directing, political and economic process.3 As the Ecuadorian state increasingly disavowed its role as the protector of its people and as subaltern groups had fewer effective avenues for addressing the perceived wrongdoings of ever more pervasive capitalist ventures, indigenous political movements increasingly oriented their struggle around questioning reigning forms of political representation and creating an alternative national polity: a plurinational political space. As Leonardo intimated in his question to the representative of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, indígenas demanded a rethinking of elites’ notion of the nation.

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the events that this book chronicles—the highly contested form of neoliberalism in Ecuador—are best understood against the backdrop of shifts in the world’s economy over the last three decades of the second millennium.4 Beginning in the late 1960s, Western economies began to experience a recession as their postwar economic growth faltered through declining productivity and profits.5 10 crude chronicles

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In the early 1970s, the ‘‘oil shock’’ intensified this economic decline. Seemingly overnight, opec (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quadrupled the price of petroleum, causing production costs to skyrocket as energy outlays soared.6 For nascent oil-producing nations like Ecuador, opec’s action in the early 1970s spurred their economic boom. In 1967, Texaco discovered the country’s first commercial petroleum reserve and brought it and subsequent reserves into production in 1972.7 In 1973, Ecuador’s military regime joined opec, making the country the cartel’s second-smallest producer. New oil revenues launched Ecuador, a small agrarian nation, into the industrial world. Over the following years, Ecuador became heavily dependent on its oil reserves (all of which are located in the Ecuadorian Amazon, or the Oriente, as the region is called). Crude oil represented approximately 50 percent of the state’s budget. The military government used oil revenues to finance tax breaks, offer credit, subsidize energy and food, and embark on an ambitious project to build Ecuador’s infrastructure and social services (road, communication, health care, water, and education systems). When oil revenues did not cover the costs, the military junta used future oil production as leverage for obtaining international credit. This pattern of banking access to credit on future petroleum revenue sustained Ecuador through the 1970s and led to unprecedented growth rates.8 But in the early 1980s, the fall in the world price of crude oil and hikes in international lending rates spun Ecuador into an economic crisis just as the country returned to democratic rule. When Osvaldo Hurtado (the former vice president) took over the presidency after the death of President Jaime Roldos in 1982, Ecuador could barely make its debt service payments. Between 1974 and 1982, the foreign debt had risen from 18 percent of the gross domestic product to 60 percent of the gdp.9 In his first major speech as president Hurtado declared: ‘‘We neither can nor should have continued to resort to eternal indebtedness . . . the age of petroleum prosperity has come to an end. . . . It is necessary to begin an age of austerity.’’ 10 Over the course of the 1980s three separate democratically elected regimes began introducing a neoliberal program that sought to increase export production (especially oil), open the economy to foreign investment and trade, and reduce the state’s productive and distributive functions. Roldos/Hurtado (1980–1984) implemented Ecuador’s first modern austerity program. Hurtado created new opening 11

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taxes, devaluated the currency, eliminated many subsidies, and cut public spending. In comparison with what was to come, many of these reforms were mild; at each step of austerity the government back stepped and compensated the poor with numerous social programs.11 The conservative regime of León Febres Cordero (1984–1988) demonstrated a stronger commitment to austerity and free market principles by reducing trade restrictions and tariffs. By 1987, however, opposition from the congress, military, and popular groups, together with a devastating earthquake, forced Febres Cordero to reverse many of the neoliberal policies he had implemented in the first two years of his term.12 During the center-left presidency of Rodrigo Borja (1988–1992), international financial institutions placed stricter conditions on Ecuador before the country could receive loans. They demanded that Borja cut the fiscal deficit, reduce inflation, reform taxes, and further liberalize trade and ease restrictions of foreign investment. Borja refused to privatize Ecuador’s state-owned industries, and he compensated for having raised the price of fuel and electricity by increasing the minimum wage, freezing the costs of basic foods, and creating work programs.13 It was not until 1992 that neoliberalism transformed the country’s political-economic reality with a passion. As was the case with many indebted third-world states, multilateral lending institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund, imf, and the World Bank) granted Ecuador loans only on the condition that it implement specific neoliberal economic policies. Neoliberalism’s core principle leaned heavily on the tradition of Adam Smith and the ingenuity of his ‘‘invisible hand’’ thesis. For Smith, the invisible hand was the mechanism by which the economic activity of profit-seeking individuals results in the greatest economic good for society as a whole. He wrote in 1776, ‘‘By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention’’—and which benefits all.14 The regime of President Sixto Durán Ballén (1992–1996) adopted this tenet with a fervor. Following the lead of state officials from Chile to Mexico, privileged elites and dignitaries in the Durán Ballén administration began chanting the neoliberal mantra (privatization–liberalization–deregulation–and–decentralization) and started equating neoliberalism and its attendant globalization with inevitable ‘‘modernization.’’ Policies seeking to intensify export produc12 crude chronicles

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tion, privatize public property, and cut government spending were jointly understood to stimulate transnational investment, boost the gnp, reduce state expenditures, and increase governmental efficiency. The hope was that modernization programs would further facilitate national and transnational capital accumulation and that they would generate enough state revenue to pay the international debt. Indigenous people were skeptical, however, about the applicability in Ecuador of the Smithian wisdom that there exists a fundamental harmony of interests between the activities of profit-seeking, self-interested, rational individuals and the general good of society as a whole. The neoliberal policies introduced in the 1980s (and which intensified over the 1990s) offered Indians a taste of the free-market global economy and gave many cause for reflection. The example of oil, and Texaco in particular, caused opip leaders to be apprehensive about the neoliberal drive to intensify oil operations in the Oriente. Between 1964 and 1992, Texaco was the primary foreign company producing oil in Ecuador.15 Initially, the arrangement was mutually productive for the Ecuadorian state and Texaco, allowing both to garner impressive profits over the years. As the debt crisis ensued and oil prices declined the state sought to increase oil production to finance unpayable foreign debt. International lending institutions and corporate capital believed that by seeking its own gain, Texaco (and foreign industry in general) would have the overall effect of promoting the interests of the Ecuadorian society as a whole. Yet, many who lived in the Oriente were incredulous of such claims. Over the course of three decades, Texaco’s crude exploitation indelibly transformed the northern rain forest, strewing it with contamination from thousands of miles of seismic grids, hundreds of oil wells and open waste pits, numerous pumping stations, an oil refinery, and the bare-bones infrastructure essential for petroleum operations. A network of roads linked oil towns and facilitated the homesteading of the region by over 200,000 poor mestizo farmers or colonos (colonists). Both directly and indirectly, these oil operations tore indigenous communities apart in the northern Oriente through disease and displacement, contamination and corruption.16

Neoliberal States

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As was the case most everywhere at the close of the twentieth century, neoliberal economic reforms in Ecuador represented the preopening 13

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dominant constellation of practices that form what Michel Foucault called the ‘‘art of government’’—‘‘the conduct of conduct.’’ 17 Indeed, throughout the 1990s neoliberal policies were the primary measures through which a succession of Ecuadorian regimes sought to shape the behavior and condition the movements of populations, capital, and resources. In general, neoliberal rule across the globe has progressively sought to relieve the state of its responsibilities to govern its subjects. This is a process that many scholars have referred to as the ‘‘degovernmentalization’’ of the state and the ‘‘destatalization’’ of government.18 Policies and programs seeking to privatize the public sector, to liberalize trade, to deregulate the economy, and to decentralize administrative functions also seek gradually to release the state from its role of championing the social development and betterment of its people. Through trickle-down economics, it is thought, the market forces of a robust economy and the greater circulation of transnational capital will resolve social problems and inequities—making most social policy superfluous, if not obsolete— and will establish the conditions necessary for democracy to flourish. As I suggest in this book, while neoliberal rule aims to convert the state into an administrative and calculating organ—a fiscal manager geared toward facilitating transnational capital accumulation—neoliberal polities do not seek to eliminate government per se. Rather, what the meeting between the arco and the opip representatives foreshadows and the following chapters illustrate, is how the processes which govern subjects are transforming, displacing and replacing the sites of government. Furthermore, as I demonstrate with respect to changes in Ecuador’s hydrocarbon (oil) and agrarian laws, a fundamental paradox characterizes much neoliberal rule. Despite contentions by proponents of neoliberalism that state intervention leads to a paralyzed and parasitic social body, a host of legal, institutional, and cultural state interventions suffuse forms of neoliberal governing. Specific legislative reforms, institutional arrangements, and social conditions need to be positively constructed to enable the market rationality of competitive entrepreneurialism to have its best effect. It is through the enactment of new laws, the nurturing of national and transnational capital, and the contraction of social welfare that the exercise of government extends to encompass new techniques, devices, and forms of persuasion. Alongside preexisting disciplinary technologies, these new governing methods strive to shape and direct individuals to be autonomous liberal subjects who will espouse the rational economies of competition, account14

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ability, and self-actualization. They seek to make subjects responsible for their own civility or savagery, development or regression, social health or disease. In Ecuador, however, neoliberal policies have been neither smoothly implemented nor passively received. During the 1990s, indigenous groups in Ecuador staged five major uprisings and numerous demonstrations in opposition (either directly or indirectly) to neoliberal economic reform.19 As the chapters that follow illustrate, strikingly apparent with each successive protest (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997) was how state neoliberal reforms backfired in Ecuador. Far from creating an environment of political and economic stability—the conditions necessary for democracy to flourish—neoliberal policies in Ecuador gnawed away at the country’s social bodies and served to foment impressive resistance. Indeed, economic reforms undermined the very conditions that lent legitimacy and authority to the state’s political system—its purported concern for its national subjects—and gave rise to new political subjects who disrupted the confines and exposed the hypocrisy of the neoliberal dream. By ignoring the havoc that privatization and austerity policies wreaked on indigenous peoples—the vast majority of Ecuador’s poor—the state jeopardized what little credibility it held. Neoliberal economic reforms provoked a crisis of representation and accountability in Ecuador and spurred the conditions of possibility for a disruptive indigenous movement that denounced the government’s allegiances to transnational capital and its unresponsiveness to subaltern subjects. That is, a global model of economic reforms that sought to modernize and normalize citizens in Ecuador unintentionally produced transgressive political subjects—people who resist, challenge, and subvert the state’s agenda to privatize, liberalize, and deregulate the nation’s economy to a degree rarely seen before. In their protests and paralyzations, Indians throughout Ecuador engaged in tactics that frustrated the goals of transnational corporate capital, weakened the aims of the neoliberal state, and carved out a political space to rethink the configuration of the nation. opip was integral to this three-pronged labor. By appropriating transnational discourses of the nation, indigenous rights, and environmental conservation, the Indian federation in Ecuador curbed the practices of a multinational oil conglomerate, interrupted World Bank lending strategies, tripped up neoliberal modernization policies, and problematized the assumed oneness and homogeneity of the nation. As the following chapters make clear, the crisis of representation opening 15

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and accountability left in the wake of neoliberal reform compelled indígenas to transform the nation into the site and stake of popular struggle. Social conflict over physical things like land and petroleum was about more than the materiality of their use.20 Struggles over the control of land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about configuring the nation under neoliberalism—rupturing the silences around social injustice, provoking a space of accountability, reimagining narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain forest resources. This book challenges depictions of globalization that characterize this process as an equalizing, democratizing, and homogenizing one that promises to heal the world’s wounds and synchronize peoples, their desires, and their opportunities across the globe. It suggests that globalizing forces have exacerbated political, economic, and social inequalities while simultaneously provoking the proliferation of oppositional identities and counter-dreams. Similarly, this book challenges depictions of globalization that characterize transnational capitalism as an all-powerful, all-incarcerating world force. While the grasp of transnational capitalism in its neoliberal guise is, indeed, increasingly voracious, intruding, and programming, as I argue in this book, the processes of exploitation in third-world margins are more fragile and open-ended than many would care to think. This is not to proclaim an imminent breakdown of global capitalism, but rather to point to how subaltern oppositional movements proliferate precisely through the same transnational processes that enable hyperexploitation under globalization. The power differentials we see across the globe are hardly inevitable. Rather, they emerge from the sticky webs of social relationality where subaltern practices consistently interrupt and upset neoliberal calculations. The fraught expression of neoliberalism in Ecuador provides insight into the precarious and contingent nature of this near-dominant global form of power balancing on the edge of the twenty-first century. A basic premise of this book is that neoliberal maneuvers and oppositional tactics are mutually constitutive, though in uneven ways.21 Counter-hegemonic indigenous politics and the workings of transnational capital and a neoliberal state infused each other through complex relays and in the process produced new conditions. Consequently, the chapters that follow do not lament the implosion of globalizing forces into vulnerable localities. Without doubt, globalizing processes and norms increasingly permeate people’s existence even in supposedly faraway places. Yet these processes and 16

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norms generate struggles in particular locales that have translocal effects. This book explores what the articulations among subaltern groups, transnational capitalism, and a neoliberal state produce. It tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, redeployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. Similarly, it tracks the multiple maneuvers, ideologies, and discourses that corporate capital and the state deploy to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. It looks at the possibilities invented as much as the limits imposed by the postcolonial empires of neoliberalism.

The Chapters in Brief

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In the sixteenth century, chronicles were the detailed narratives of conquest that scribes for the Spanish empire relayed back to the crown. At their most controversial, chronicles formed a part of the historical record that excoriated Iberian excesses in the Americas during a time of imperial exploration, expansion, and exploitation.22 The chronicles I narrate here record excesses of the postcolonial empires of neoliberalism in an age of globalization. That is, I am concerned with that which spills out of and cannot be contained by the ever-increasing and uneven production and consumption of capital, commodities, technologies, and imaginaries around the globe. The events chronicled here deal, in large part, with crude (oil) and the conflicts among indigenous peoples, a multinational corporation, and a neoliberalizing third-world state over the exploration and exploitation of petroleum in Ecuador. But crude, being slick and tenacious, also oozes widely into other realms. Coming from the Latin crudus, literally ‘‘trickling with blood, bleeding,’’ crude is a multivalent word.23 In addition to crude oil, this book deals with a core conflict long connected to imperial desires for subterranean riches and dripping with blood: struggles over land. The stories that follow chronicle moments in a neoliberal age marked by bitter struggles over crude oil and blood-stained land. Part I (‘‘National Narratives’’) sketches the contours of race and class that define Ecuador’s social and political landscape. Chapter 1 opens with opip’s spectacular 1992 protest march from the marginalized lowlands to the seat of political power (Quito). Against the backdrop of a historically exclusionary and racist state whose allegiances to the Amazon have long been contradictory, opip’s 1992 march to legalize indigenous lands and rewrite the Ecuadorian conopening 17

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stitution marked a startling moment of resistance for Amazonian Indians confronted with greater incursions by transnational capital and neglect by the state. Yet the legacy of the march also reflected the capacity of the state to contain indigenous opposition. opip’s protest and proposals, however, triggered an ongoing countrywide debate on the singularity and homogeneity of the nation under neoliberalism. Chapter 2 explores the capacity of transnational corporate capital to intrude ever more perniciously into people’s lives and transform their sense of identity, property, and belonging. As the state increasingly defined itself as a regulatory and policing instance, arco assumed a pastoral role, especially among those near its oil operations, seeking to shape individuals’ expectations, transform their allegiances, and define how to be an appropriate neoliberal subject. In response, opip organized a defiant march and assembly in 1993 at arco rain forest operations. This action, along with others, exposed the fragile nature of Indian organizing, as leaders sought to assert a politics of indigenous belonging to counter arco’s maneuvers that had debilitated, contained, and marginalized indigenous opposition to oil activity. Part II (‘‘Petroleum Politics’’) further untangles the connections between indigenous peoples, multinational corporations, and neoliberal policy. Chapter 3 opens with Indians and environmentalists occupying the Ministry of Energy and Mines in early 1994 in protest against changes to the Ecuadorian Hydrocarbon Law that sought to lease more Amazonian land for multinational oil operations and privatize Ecuador’s pipeline. This chapter further exposes two ironies inherent in neoliberal rule. First, despite claims to the contrary, neoliberalism rests on very specific and often intensified state interventions. Second, the very policies that nurtured transnational capital undermined people’s rights and produced disruptive subjects. Importantly, an indigenous-green coalition triggered serious reflection on who truly thrived within Ecuador’s neoliberal nation and who was increasingly disavowed as legitimate subjects. Chapter 4 probes a series of meetings throughout 1994 between arco, the state, and indigenous leaders. The chapter traces how, despite unrelenting indigenous challenges, arco skillfully foreclosed any space within which to address the profound inequality and forms of exploitation that accompany oil operations in Ecuador. It suggests that the corporations’ professed concern for the environment served 18 crude chronicles

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as a diversion—an antipolitics machine. Using a liberal language of democracy and participation, together with a restricted understanding of the environment, arco effectively erased history and the possibility to challenge the huge political and economic disparities upon which its operations relied. Part III (‘‘Raced Realities’’) examines the tense relations around land and nation in Ecuador. Chapter 5 looks at the 1994 mobilization that shut down the country for ten days as an act of protest to changes to the agrarian law. The new law categorically abolished land reform, jeopardized communal holdings, and propelled the country on a course of agrarian ‘‘modernization,’’ that is, monoculture export production. Even more so than neoliberal changes to the Hydrocarbon Law, changes to the agrarian law exposed the extent to which the state was relinquishing its responsibility for ensuring the development of its people, transforming into a fiscal manager, and turning over functions of government to private entities. Such state action and the crisis of representation that it left only served to intensify Indians’ resolve to build broader coalitions and transform the nation, as a symbol, into a site of struggle. Nation became an ever more powerful idiom for questioning why the rights of some were worthy of recognition and those of others were not. Chapter 6 analyzes the negotiations that emerged in the wake of indígenas’ protest to rewrite the controversial new agrarian law. The two-week-long meetings among indigenous representatives, wealthy landowners, and the president of Ecuador and his ministers represented an unprecedented moment when indígenas were invited to participate in formulating an Ecuadorian law. Similarly, it underscored the popular force of the broad coalition that indígenas had made with the nonindigenous poor. Yet the negotiations also illustrated the power of liberal ideology to couch its precepts in purportedly neutral terms and to erase the significance of history in creating inequality. Throughout the negotiations, a discourse of liberal law and ethnic essentialism curtailed and contained indigenous demands. Although indígenas managed to temper the more objectionable parts of the law, a racist and classist discourse of exclusionary belonging prevented radical change. The conclusion opens with a popular assembly, which sought to challenge the constitution and declare Ecuador a plurinational state, and uses it as a jumping-off point for examining the meaning of nation and nationality in Ecuador. It further underscores how and opening 19

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why nation has become such a contested site under neoliberalism in Ecuador, and it reminds how liberal thought is both enabling and containing.

Work in Postcolonial Fields My fumbling with high-tech equipment in August 1993 came to signal for me one of those proverbial rites of fieldwork benediction, a moment that reflects having achieved a degree of research rapport and that also structures one’s research. Far from being enthusiastically embraced by the ‘‘natives,’’ however, I was alone in that cramped, dank, mildew-ridden room on the top floor of opip’s headquarters. Outside it poured, as it did in Puyo nearly every afternoon, evening, and night. Inside, the lights dimmed with each flash of lightning. The video camera sputtered with each roll of thunder. And the television monitor sliced people into disjointed mosaic images with my slightest movement. The deafening wail of rain on the tin roof only made me more anxious about being responsible for opip’s sensitive electronics at such inclement times. Puyo’s electricity (like its phone service, water supply, and roads) was notoriously undependable and unpredictable because of constant heavy rains and landslides. I was convinced that at any moment the power would spike, causing both opip’s elaborate technology and my fieldwork to go up in smoke. I had been back in Pastaza for just over a month this time around and I was still a bit apprehensive about the direction of my research during what was to be the longest stint of my dissertation fieldwork. opip’s constituency (estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 lowland Indians in the early to mid-1990s) largely controlled Pastaza Province, and stories of opip thwarting the projects of volunteers and scholars wanting to work in Pastaza haunted the research lore. As elsewhere, in Ecuador working with Indian organizations was tricky—a politically sensitive endeavor, given the history of racist exploitation that suffused the region. Being a researcher, however, made one multiply suspect, and donning the cloak of anthropology compounded suspicions even more. The discipline was long defamed, having played handmaiden to too many civilizing missions in the Oriente. But my prospects of working with an Amazonian Indian organization trying to confront petroleum operations were placed further in doubt by the fact that I came from an oil family. Indeed, the legacy of petro20

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leum exploration in Latin America had largely defined my family’s history on my father’s side over the past century. I had done research in the Oriente during the summers of 1988, 1990, and 1992. By 1990, I knew that attitudes toward researchers and northern collaborators were changing within Ecuador’s Indian federation system—how and how much were somewhat ambiguous. Those leaders whom I had come to know in 1990 and 1992 no longer held their offices in 1993, their three-year terms having ended. opip’s new leadership was an unknown to me, and I to them, other than my previous ties with Leonardo Viteri and one of his colleagues. As I look back, my links with a growing network of U.S.-based indigenous rights and environmental organizations, and the openings that such networks facilitated, eased my ability to work with opip more than I initially realized. But on that rainy afternoon in opip’s headquarters, to be entrusted not only with opip’s most valuable equipment but also with rendering the ‘‘truth’’ of an oil executive’s words was a momentous though somewhat nerve-wracking event. The occasion also marked what was to be the form and content of my fieldwork: the intensive day in, day out collaboration with one of Ecuador’s most radical lowland Indian federations at the time as it grappled with a U.S. oil conglomerate, elite Ecuadorian agribusiness, and a highly dependent neoliberal state. The stories that this book tells primarily emerged from collaboration with opip in a political process, from my having politicized the rather shrouded anthropological method of ‘‘participant observation.’’ For eighteen months during 1993 and 1994, I collaborated with opip on a daily basis and, through them, with the Amazonian regional and national Ecuadorian Indian confederations, confeniae (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana, Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon) and conaie (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador, Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), in the quotidian practices of indigenous organizing. This collaboration shaped my research so that it spanned multiple spaces (local, regional, national, and transnational) and encountered multiple perspectives (indigenous, nonindigenous peasant, state, corporate, elite). In opip headquarters, in rain forest communities, in conaie and confeniae offices, I sat on hard wooden benches with federation leaders and community members debating the realities circumscribing indigenous lives. I accompanied Indians on their opening 21

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marches, ministry occupations, protests, and paralyzations. And I followed them into meetings with oil company executives and state officials. As such, my research dispensed with any pretensions of ‘‘objectivity’’; it was unabashedly invested and engaged. Yet, such highly enmeshed research afforded a methodological richness that could not be gotten any other way. Establishing where my political allegiances lay was critical to my being able to collaborate with opip; the federation would never have had me otherwise. The human connections that came from working daily with opip allowed me to build deep, trusting friendships with many federation and community leaders. I listened to indígenas disagree over fundamental issues, watched them develop the cohesion necessary to confront corporate capital and state institutions, witnessed them standing up to the military, and debated the changing shape of indigenous identity and politics with them at length. Similarly, working with the federation made it easier to build trusting friendships with indigenous community members, especially women. I carried infants on marches, recorded the visions of female elders, attended celebrations, and cried over family tragedies. This engaged research let me see the spaces in which indígenas challenged, subverted, and capitulated to power, and it helped me understand the circumstances that produced, politicized, and compromised indigenous people.24 My desire to collaborate with opip emerged from both my connection to oil and the education (both formal and informal) that such privilege had taught me.25 Spending the first thirteen years of my life in a number of poverty-stricken and debt-ridden third-world spaces, and having visited many more by the time I started graduate school, had imbued me over the years with a sense of indignation (however naive) over global inequalities. Undergraduate and graduate studies in U.S. universities nuanced my understandings of social injustices and disciplined me to write about, think through, and critique this social reality. These analytical tools complemented Indians’ larger political agenda to rethink the articulations of transnational, globalizing forces and reimagining potential alternatives. Thus, I consciously chose to build a research project based on political engagement rather than sociological detachment. Then, as now, my research position raised intriguing questions about what postcolonial fieldwork might actually consist of. How might history and power, identity and difference, articulate across space to reconfigure the play of power within anthropological re22 crude chronicles

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search in our postmodern moment? How might privilege insert itself into (and be used by others in) the force fields of struggle to shift the balances of power that affect human lives? How might a positionality of engagement (through privilege) interrupt conventional understandings of the production of knowledge? This book is a partial response: motivated, compromised, and incomplete; but a response that tells an important tale. Its pages, I hope, provide a text through which to interrogate my political accountability.

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1. AMAZONIAN IMAGINARIES

in april 1992, over 2,000 Quichua, Achuar, and Shiwiar Indians marched from Pastaza Province in the central Ecuadorian Amazon to Quito, Ecuador’s capital, some 250 kilometers away in the northern Andes.1 Adorned with facial paint and feathered plumes, carrying spears and children and often ill-prepared for freezing highland nights, Amazonian men and women walked for two weeks to affirm their collective voice. Two demands motivated their march—land adjudication and constitutional reform. The first demand called for the communal titling of two million hectares of contiguous rain forest territory in Pastaza, approximately 70 percent of the province. The second demand pressed for reforms in the constitution such that Ecuador be declared a ‘‘plurinational state.’’ Indian leaders insisted that Ecuador was a mosaicked nation composed of multiple discrete, though interconnected, peoples and that it be recognized as such. The 1992 march from the Upper Amazon lowlands, across the foothills, and along the spine of the Andes captured the Ecuadorian popular imagination. From the beginning, it was a national and international spectacle enveloped in an aura of euphoria and fascination. Drawing momentum from the pan-Americas Indian campaign to commemorate 1992 as marking ‘‘500 Years of Resistance’’ (in direct protest to celebrating it as the 500th anniversary of the ‘‘Discovery of the New World’’), the march revived dormant lowlandhighland alliances and momentarily exposed the possibilities for transforming race and ethnic relations within Ecuadorian society. Inspired by a handful of female elders who recalled their ancestors’ numerous treks to Quito, the march evoked indigenous solidarities on a broad scale and unearthed unsuspected sympathies from mestizos across the country. As marchers passed through the Andes, numerous indigenous

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figure 1. opip’s 1992 march. Giovanna Tassi, 1992.

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highland communities enthusiastically welcomed their lowland compañeros with moral and material support. Highlanders shared their food, clothing, and inspiration. In many instances, they accompanied lowlanders on their pilgrimage to the capital. Less expected was the support encountered from the press, the police, the Red Cross, and, most surprisingly, dominant blanco-mestizo enclaves. People lined streets to applaud and gawk at lowland marchers as they passed through towns and cities. In many municipalities, children were let out of school, and the more brazen ran alongside marchers and gathered autographs. Market vendors gave out sacks of fresh fruit. Stopped cars honked in approval. Even then-President Rodrigo Borja Cevallos, who only two years previously had denied lowland Indians their request for legal rights to their ancestral lands, vowed to receive and protect the marchers. Thirteen days after beginning their ascent up the Andes, an estimated 5,000 exhilarated Indians marched into Quito. With their numbers multiplied from highland participation, a river of marchers carrying banners and multicolored flags flowed through the capital. Their first stop was the Plaza San Blas, the site where the Amazonian hero Jumandi was condemned to death by the Spanish in 1579. The statue memorialized Jumandi for having led the first successful lowland indigenous rebellion against Spanish rule. There at the foot of his statue, Indian leaders addressed the crowd with inspirational speeches; indigenous marchers were continuing the 50028

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figure 2. Indigenous marcher walking through Quito. Giovanna Tassi, 1992.

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year struggle for Indian dignity and political autonomy that Jumandi began. Tensions rose, however, as marchers neared their ultimate destination in Quito’s colonial quarters: the Presidential Palace and seat of the executive branch. Hundreds of soldiers clad in riot gear and armed with dogs, horses, and tanks cordoned off marchers’ access to the Presidential Palace and the adjacent plaza. Indians relocated their point of assembly and gathered in the Plaza de San Francisco some five blocks away, waiting as helicopters circled overhead. Apprehensions were high. Despite the presence of an intimidating military force, marchers vowed not to budge until they had an audience with the president. Following negotiations between indigenous and state envoys, it was agreed that a select group of indigenous leaders could meet with the Borja regime. By midday, one hundred indígenas entered the Presidential Palace to present their demands. This chapter examines the 1992 march and its effects. The march was a crucial juncture in a long-standing political agenda to challenge a discriminatory and exploitative state rule in Ecuador, and to carve a space for indigenous difference within a new vision of national belonging. Here I sketch the racial hierarchy that defined state rule and normative narratives of the nation in Ecuador, and I explore how Indians challenged this hierarchical and exclusionary notion of the nation. It is especially crucial to understand the 1992 march because in amazonian imaginaries 29

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many ways it set the stage for all subsequent indigenous protest in Pastaza Province, and arguably beyond. Through collective action, Indians sought to reconfigure the material, political, and symbolic meanings of territory, nationhood, and sovereignty in Ecuador. And indeed, the march succeeded in shifting the terms of debate around these concerns. Despite these achievements, however, the effects of the march also inadvertently circumscribed the terrain (both literal and figurative) upon which future struggles among state, national elite, corporate, and indigenous actors would take place. The state de-historicized indigenous claims, instantiated new juridical entities that would transform intra-indigenous affairs, and invested new agents with the power of government. Together these strategies acted to contain indigenous opposition and frame the conduct of conduct in the Amazon region.

Mosaic Representation mo·sa·ic, noun (15th century) from Greek μουσαϊκός by form of μούσειος pertaining to the muses. —Oxford English Dictionary mo·sa·ic, n. 1:a surface decoration made by inlaying small pieces of variously colored material to form pictures or patterns. —Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

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The delegation of one hundred Indian leaders passed through the imposing wooden doors and elaborate wrought-iron gate at the entrance of the Presidential Palace and climbed the wide marble staircase that ascends from the central courtyard to the governing chambers on the second floor. Halfway up the stairs, some leaders paused, admiring a massive mosaic that stretches upward one and a half stories and dwarfs all. Spanning three walls, the mosaic, titled The Discovery of the Amazon River, depicts the drama of the first Spanish expedition to descend the eastern slopes of the Andes, navigate through rugged jungle terrain and labyrinthine river systems, and eventually, more than a year later, reach the mouth of the Amazon some three thousand miles away.2 The sixteenth-century journey, led by Francisco Orellana, marks the earliest known European expedition in search of El Dorado, the mythic realm of gold and spices thought to be located in lowland South America. 30

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figure 3. Marchers gathered in the Plaza de San Francisco. Suzana Sawyer, 1992.

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Before continuing with the 1992 march, I would like to make a small detour and analyze this mosaic. At face value, the masterpiece depicts a story of European conquest over nature and natives in faraway lands. On futher inspection, the mosaic serves as a powerful heuristic: it offers insight into conflicting notions of history and nation in contemporary Ecuador. It both represents and leaves room to challenge normative understandings of the nation and, in particular, the race relations that undergird this normative imagining. Created by Ecuador’s most loved and celebrated artist, Oswaldo Guayasamin, the mosaic inspires awe with its magnitude and vibrancy, made as it is of thousands of pieces of colored Venetian crystal. Each color-studded wall forms a panel in a triptych that sequentially portrays the conquistadores’ Andean descent, Amazonian passage, and Atlantic arrival. The adventure, faithfully chronicled by Friar Gaspar de Carvajal (the only man of the cloth to have survived the expedition), is familiar to all in Ecuador.3 Some version of Carvajal’s gripping eyewitness account is read by or told to every Ecuadorian schoolchild, adolescent, and adult. In the first scene, armor-clad Spaniards stand against a backdrop of jagged Andean peaks as they embark on their descent into unknown and mysterious lands. At the Spaniards’ feet stoop submissive Indians who will serve as the expedition’s slaves, porters, and guides. The second scene depicts the Spaniards’ arduous and treacherous journey through an Amazonian terrain. By this point in the expedition the highland Indian slaves amazonian imaginaries 31

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figure 4. Guayasamin’s mosaic in the Presidential Palace, The Discovery of the Amazon.

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and a number of Spaniards have died. In the upper left, the few surviving conquistadores pole downriver, seemingly alone, vulnerable, and in despair. In the lower center, two stark indígenas stand over the body of a slain conquistador. In the upper right, a lone Spaniard kneels at the feet of a female Amazon warrior, apparently beseeching her mercy. In the final scene, despite harrowing adversity, the conquistadores appear invincible, having reached the mouth of the Amazon at long last. They, alone, have prevailed victorious against the aggressions of savages and the perils of nature, and they, alone, set sail for Spain eager to present the crown with its newfound possessions. Like the one hundred indigenous delegates, I too have been struck by Guayasamin’s mosaic ever since I first saw it in 1984. Each time I returned to Quito over the following 16 years, I visited this great work and tried to decipher its meaning. Inscribed above the mosaic, along its glittering gold border, are the following words: 32

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quito, march 1541 atlantic ocean, august 1542 The Origin of Our Destiny The Epic of Francisco Orellana The sacrifice of three thousand aboriginals glorifies the presence of Ecuador in the Amazon River. The route is marked by their blood in our spirit.4 How is one to read this grand mosaic? The epigraph claims that this transcontinental Iberian ‘‘epic’’ marks the beginnings of Ecuador’s ‘‘destiny.’’ But how can a subject of the Spanish crown (Francisco Orellana) come to represent a postcolonial state (Ecuador)? 5 How can a Renaissance imperial mission portend, let alone be proxy for, a contemporary Latin American polity? And how were the 100 indigenous leaders who passed by the mosaic in 1992 supposed to interpret its message?: Is sacrificing thousands of Indians necessary to establish Ecuador’s presence and its illusions of prominence? The mosaic offers no simple interpretation. Rather, its composition, inscription, spatial arrangement, and location bespeak a myriad of contradictions: contradictions at the core of this book. Like its minute glass pieces, it is brilliantly opaque, while its cracks and fissures invite multiple readings and counter-readings. Representation, the power to assert truth claims and convey the certainty of the real, always has two sides—portrayal and proxy, depiction and political voice—and as Stuart Hall and Gayatri Spivak remind us, the two often intermingle in muddled ways.6 Guayasamin’s mosaic is a representation of the normative nation that simultaneously constitutes and critiques its self-conscious portrayal and capacity to act as proxy for all.

Imaging the Normative Nation Mosaic, adjective, modern Latin Mosaicus, from Moses. Biblical: of, pertaining, or relating to Moses the lawgiver of the Hebrews [the ur-patriarch], or the writings and institutions attributed to him. —Oxford English Dictionary

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The state commissioned Oswaldo Guayasamin to create the Presidential mural in the late 1950s soon after he completed his nearamazonian imaginaries 33

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decade-long study of Huaycayñan (Quichua for ‘‘Trail of Tears’’), a series of paintings depicting the anguish and dignity of Ecuador’s indigenous people—themes that would become the artist’s enduring hallmark. In line with Guayasamin’s abrupt and daring style, one could interpret the Presidential mosaic as asserting both the anguish and dignity of el indígena within the ‘‘epic’’ of ‘‘discovery.’’ In the jungled panel, Indians are formidable figures. Could it be that the mosaic seeks to reveal a forgotten history of Spanish imperialism: to render the horror of colonial exploits, and the rage they unleashed and the pain they inflicted? But the epigraph’s bold letters suggest a more official reading. They proclaim that a sixteenth-century voyage augurs and affirms a twentieth-century state’s proprietary claim. As the epigraph states, the discovery of the Amazon is more than a fabled European expedition into the heart of exotic lands. In the eyes of those who commissioned the mosaic, it is a story of conquest, a grand epic, which confirms the rightful destiny of the Ecuadorian nation. More than simply concerned with territory, this is a claim about national membership in Ecuador—who is and who is not a part of the nation. It is instructive to explore the racial components of this claim. The mosaic’s inscription is able to equate Orellana with ‘‘Our’’ (i.e. Ecuadorians’) present and future because the ‘‘Ecuador’’ here imagined includes only those of common European descent. The belief that those of Spanish pedigree (regardless of epoch) coexist in a single, constant temporal-spatial plane elides any dissonance that might otherwise result from equating realities more than 400 years apart: they are the rational, the modern, and the civilized. This acts not only to legitimate Ecuador’s nationalist territorial claim to the Río Amazonas, but also to consolidate a sense of kinship—shared blood—among those who legitimately make up the nation. Thus, synecdochic substitution—the process whereby a part stands in for the whole, or the name of the material for the thing made (Francisco Orellana functioning as proxy for Ecuador)—enables the transfiguration of Orellana qua Ecuador to make sense. A synecdoche reconciles the irreconcilable; the temporal leap in the epigraph’s claim is bridged by the notion that all those of Spanish blood are one. Indians, meanwhile, are banished to the fringes of this Ecuador via both decree and omission. Although the mosaic presents its viewer with some bold Indian physiques, and the epigraph ‘‘glorifies’’ them, indígenas are not the subject of concern. If anything, the 34

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epigraph is for them an epitaph—an inscription marking their tomb. ‘‘Aboriginals,’’ the mosaic’s inscription reminds us, were elements crucial to the unfolding of an imperial and a national drama; they sacrificed their lives in the service of a colonial exploit and a postcolonial destiny. Yet their blood does not really matter. It cannot act as a synecdoche, as the name of the material (blood) for the thing made (nation). They are excluded from national membership. In particular, the mosaic exemplifies a dominant cultural logic whereby one cannot simultaneously be both Indian and Ecuadorian. Hierarchical binaries between civilized/savage, modern/traditional, cosmopolitan/tribal, national/indigenous infuse this origin myth of Ecuador.7 As a racist saying (Muestre su patria, mate un indio; ‘‘Show your patriotism, kill an indio’’) often heard throughout the 1990s suggests, Indians have little place in elite notions of the Ecuadorian nation. If they are to join the process of modernization they must renounce their identity as Indians. Other than serving as dead markers in history, their existence vanishes from our nation. In a gesture that Johannes Fabian calls ‘‘allochronism’’ and Anne McClintock calls the instantiation of ‘‘anachronistic space,’’ a postcolonial power synchronized the coexistence of distinct time across contiguous space.8 As in the story portrayed in Guayasamin’s mosaic and as reenacted by its viewer, progression through space marks passage through time. Importantly, this space is raced. The conquered and claimed, uncivilized, jungled terrain of Orellana’s time still occupied, in the 1990s, an unchanging Oriente landscape at the apex of elite white reason and progress. Juxtaposed on a contiguous spatial plane, Indians and vegetation represented living relics of the past, antiquated artifacts arrested in their evolution. Yet as the object of discovery, the river, the region, and its inhabitants (as ‘‘Amazon’’ refers to all) are Ecuador’s, and it is Ecuador’s task to protect, civilize, and develop this national patrimony—that which belongs to the father.

Fractal Optics mosaic vision, noun (1880). Physiology: the manner of vision of the compound eye of an arthropod which produces multiple overlapping, though not exactly identical, images at once.

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—Encyclopedia Britannica and Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

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One question continues to gnaw, however, with respect to Guayasamin’s mosaic: What does it mean when a historical event that Ecuadorian elites have mythologized into a seamless national narrative is represented through the medium of mosaic—that is, depicted as an image spliced together from fragments, bits and pieces? Mosaics, after all, are disjointed representations. In the late 1950s, mosaic was not an art form already within Guayasamin’s artistic repertoire. Primarily known as a painter, Guayasamin consciously chose to build this narrative of colonial and national conquest in a medium rarely seen in his work: the Discovery of the Amazon River was the first of only three mosaic murals that he produced in his lifetime. How might one read the cracks and contradictions, silences and exclusions within Guayasamin’s mosaic? Is it possible to interpret the mosaic (its story, inscription, spatial composition, and location) as both representing the official white myth of the nation and exposing the brutality, inequality, and racism within elite vision? The term mosaic is derived from the Greek μούσειος pertaining to the Muses, the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology who inspire storytelling and enable fantastic vision. Oswaldo Guayasamin received inspiration for both, as his mosaic narrates a story and portrays a vision. To muse also means to ponder, to contemplate, to ruminate over questions meditatively: this is precisely what the mosaic encourages. The Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory), and it is the politics of memory, questions over how to represent the history of the present, that is at issue here. When viewed from afar, a mosaic appears to form a cohesive picture, an unbroken whole. But when analyzed more closely, the illusion of wholeness and cohesion cannot be sustained. Mosaics are made up of fragments, and the relationships among these fragments are differently perceived, depending on one’s proximity and position. The fluidity of a mosaic resides in the connective demands it makes upon the human eye. Just as Guayasamin’s mosaic demands a physical realignment on the part of the viewer, so it demands an optical effort, a filling in of the breaks. In contrast to other fragmented images, such as a puzzle, where the fun is figuring out where each piece goes, a mosaic is not made such that each piece has its own single, unique place. Neither shape, size, weight, nor color determines any fragment’s precise location. The particular arrangement of mosaic chips and the configurations they make are an artifact, an effect of culturally situated labor. Given its fragmented and indeter36

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minate, yet concrete, structure, mosaic, perhaps more than other art forms, underscores the constructed nature of representation. Guayasamin’s mosaic, in particular, brilliantly forefronts both the artifactual nature of the art of imaging and the artifactual nature of what is being portrayed. Guayasamin was a master at evoking contradictions and provoking discomfort among his viewers. He once wrote, ‘‘My painting aims to wound, to bruise, to strike at the hearts of people: to show what humans do to each other,’’ and in so showing to incite unease.9 By portraying in his larger work the dignity and despair of marginalized peoples amid the horrors in which they lived, this poignant artist (who himself was of Indian descent) captured a space in which to honor indígenas and to allow viewers to recognize their own complicity in creating the Indians’ plight. For some observers, he held out a space for subaltern resistance. How then are the one hundred indigenous leaders who climbed the Presidential Palace stairs in 1992 supposed to interpret a mosaic that ‘‘glorifies’’ the ‘‘three thousand aboriginales’’—one Indian for every mile—who sacrificed their souls for Ecuador’s destiny, and whose epigraph obscures from view the cruelty, torture, and slavery inflicted on thousands of indigenous bodies over the centuries? From a distance, the mosaic portrays a perfect narrative that seals a purportedly rightful order of national exclusion to a colonial hierarchy of conquest. But this myth of the nation not only necessitates and depends on racial exclusion—the sacrifice of indigenous people— but also sees such erasure as inconsequential. The brilliance of Guayasamin’s mosaic is its capacity to elicit this tension in the elite’s narrative of national belonging. Coming himself from a humble background and having lived with racial discrimination, Guayasamin’s mosaic both reasserts the forgotten role of Indians in a colonial and postcolonial drama and critiques past and present imperial missions of greed. As such the mosaic (its story, inscription, composition, and location) makes for a potent and vivid allegory for grasping the fraught content of identity, exploitation, and nation in the region since the Spanish conquest. The masterpiece suggests that racist continuities connect colonial and (post)colonial empires: colonial inequalities suffuse the (post)colonial present—a political-economic order that must be colonial to assert itself as a modern, rational, civilized state in our nation-state global order of things. amazonian imaginaries 37

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Amazon Obsessions Guayasamin’s mosaic is yet further instructive. Why is it, we might ask, that the most prominent work of art in the Presidential Palace of an Andean country focuses on the Amazon? The Amazon region has long held a curious place in the Ecuadorian state’s construction of a national self-image. Even the state motto reads: ‘‘Ecuador was, is, and shall be an Amazonian country.’’ One glance at an Ecuadorian map further reveals the state’s obsession with the Amazon. Over the 150 years since independence, four wars and five separate redrawings of Amazonian borders defined Ecuador as increasingly smaller and Peru as increasingly larger. Ecuadorian history, both official and popular, has strategically ignored these earlier border treaties and has insisted that the nation’s true ‘‘historical heritage’’ was its sovereign right to the Amazon. Until 2000, official state maps had retained this illusion of grandeur. The internationally recognized border of 1942—known as the Rio de Janeiro Protocol—came to represent the moment of betrayal when Ecuador was coerced, purportedly by the United States, to relinquish over half of its Amazonian territory (some 200,000 square kilometers) to Peru. The rightful border according to the Ecuadorian state was that defined at independence in 1830. Whether in schoolbooks, on government buildings, or on parade floats, Ecuador depicted itself up until 2000 as twice its internationally recognized size by extending its Amazonian territory to where the Marañon becomes the Amazon River (see Map 1 and Figure 5). Even people’s interpretations of the state shield emblazoned on the national flag bespeak the country’s captivation and obsession with the Amazon (see Figure 6). The national coat of arms depicts a ship on a lowland river that flows from a snowcapped mountain. According to the Instituto Geográfico Militar, the mountain represents Chimborazo (Ecuador’s highest Andean volcano peak), the river represents the Guayaquil, the green space represents the Pacific littoral, and the ship represents Ecuadorian trade. Yet, for the majority of the close to one hundred people I surveyed about the state shield, the mountain was the Andes, the river was the Amazon, the green space was the Amazon basin, and the ship represented Orellana’s voyage: ‘‘That river? It’s the Amazon, what else?’’ Now, Ecuador is an ‘‘Andean’’ country that sits on South America’s northern Pacific coast. But, according to the priest who guided me through a museum documenting historical shifts in the shield’s design, the 38

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figure 5. Children’s map of Ecuador with story of the discovery of the Amazon used in the 1990s. Instituto Geográfico Militar, 1974.

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librarians working in the national archives, the progressive environmentalists campaigning to preserve Pacific coast mangroves, the highland campesino leader concerned with changes to their social security, and the lowland indigenous community members worried about oil operations, the nation was depicted from the backside, as it were. The snowcapped Andean mountain representing the space of the nation is the backdrop for the ship floating down the Amazon River into the Atlantic Ocean three thousand miles away. Undoubtedly, the Amazon region’s symbolic value as Ecuador’s destiny within state-national pride becomes conflated with the region’s historically crucial economic value. A number of extractive activities have shaped the Upper Amazon over the past five centuries: gold from Spanish colonialism to the present, cinchona and sarsaparilla in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rubber during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and petroleum since the 1920s.10 In the mid-1960s, the Upper Amazon became incorporated into larger state designs to transform the region into the country’s fountain of black gold and new breadbasket. Although amazonian imaginaries 39

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figure 6. The Ecuadorian state shield.

the state has marginalized the Oriente politically and socially, it still sees hydrocarbon and agro-industrial ‘‘development’’ of the region as crucial for gaining modern status in the global arena.

Imagining the Variegated Nation mo·sa·i·cism, noun (1926). Genetics: the condition of an organism possessing cells of two or more different genetic constitutions. —Oxford English Dictionary

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Past Guayasamin’s mosaic, in the grand hall on the second floor of the Presidential Palace, community and federation leaders fervently presented their demands to President Borja. At times in broken Spanish, at times through lyrical metaphors and passionate speech, one by one, Indians stressed the need to maintain the integrity of their ancestral lands. After silently listening for more than three 40 crude chronicles

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hours, the president announced that the government would grant title deeds to Indians’ rain forest lands. The front pages of Quito’s evening newspapers pictured a smiling Borja, appearing vaguely ill at ease, en route to address the awaiting marchers in the nearby Plaza de San Francisco. Propelled by the column of indigenous leaders behind him and escorted by an indigenous female elder latched to his arm, Borja appeared captured in a moment not totally of his choosing. The support that diverse social sectors had extended toward the marchers over the previous two weeks had created a momentum that went well beyond the limits of the president’s control. The marchers were ecstatic; opip’s march had become one of the most effective mobilizations of lowland Indians. Male and female Amazonian Indians had succeeded in interrupting the sixteenth-century epic of conquest and the twentiethcentury myth of national exclusion, and were carving out a place in which they could be recognized as political subjects. Many questions remained, however. Although Borja’s regime had agreed to grant Indians title to their lands, the government had not defined exactly how it would do so or how much land it would title. Determined to make sure the government fulfilled its promise, the two thousand Pastaza indígenas who had marched to Quito set up camp in the central park, El Ejido, and vowed not to move until they had titles in hand. Clara put it this way one warm afternoon when I joined her as she bathed her two-year-old child with the water from an open city fire hydrant: ‘‘We have walked far and suffered much along the paths of our ancestors for the sake of all the lives of the forest.’’ In her late twenties, Clara was from Sarayacu, an indigenous community about an hour’s flight or three-day trek and canoe ride from Puyo. The last time she had been in Quito was nearly a decade before when she had worked for a few months as a maid. Close by, Clara’s mother sat on the grass peeling yuca (manioc) with a machete, while her other little daughter ran in circles chasing pigeons. ‘‘We won’t leave until the government recognizes our right [to legal title],’’ Clara continued as we walked back toward her mother. Her voice had the singsong lilt of a native Quichua speaker: ‘‘The jantun sacha [big forest] is the place where we have always lived and we want our rights to our territory to be made legal.’’ Wielding her machete with a surgeon’s precision, Clara’s mother added in an even thicker Quichua accent, ‘‘This is not the first time that runaguna [Quichua Indians] have walked from Pastaza to Quito. The Cacique amazonian imaginaries 41

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Palati [a noted warrior and shaman] marched to Quito before we were born. And he won title for all indigenous lands [in Pastaza].’’ According to local lore, the title deeds that Palati obtained at the turn of the century were buried with him upon his death. ‘‘Since we can’t show proof, the state now denies the fact that it once recognized indígenas’ rights.11 But no matter,’’ Clara’s mother continued. ‘‘We walked again. I was ten [years old] at the time and I followed my father’s shadow the entire way,’’ she said, recalling how she had walked with her father and many others to the Presidential Palace in 1947. In that march, indígenas gained legal title to only two areas near Puyo, Comuna San Jacinto and Comuna Canelos. Clara’s mother was from San Jacinto and had moved to Sarayacu upon marriage. ‘‘With this [1992] march,’’ Clara picked up again, ‘‘we want to repeat Palati’s success and gain legal ownership of our ancestral lands, all the land to the Peruvian border.’’ Over the next three weeks, a long and at times contentious process ensued as state and indigenous representatives debated the specific terms of land adjudication. In late May, the Ecuadorian Institute for Land Reform and Colonization (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización, ierac), the state land titling agency, granted communal title to 1,115,175 hectares of indigenous territory. To understand how remarkable this land titling was—despite it being only half the area indígenas claimed—let me delve into the march’s social, political, and historical contexts.

Situating History

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Far from being a spontaneous event emerging from Indians’ ‘‘primordial’’ attachment to their land, the 1992 march was highly orchestrated. The principal organizers were members of opip, in coordination with a larger indigenous organizational structure. Over the previous 30 years, indigenous peoples in Ecuador had become higly organized politically. In the mid-1960s, with the assistance of Salesian priests influenced by liberation theology, Shuar Indians in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon formed Ecuador’s first Indian federation.12 Over the course of the 1970s, the Shuar Federation became an organizational model for an increasing number of highland and lowland Indians. Though Indian federations differ from each other depending on historical constraints and political-economic exigencies, they are today the primary political bodies that serve as vehicles for voicing indigenous interests and concerns in Ecuador. During 42 crude chronicles

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the late 1970s and early 1980s, federations increasingly coordinated their agendas and actions and formed an even more elaborate confederation system.13 In 1992 as now, indigenous organizations in Ecuador were structured into three tiers: national, regional, and local. The top tier is occupied by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador, conaie).14 Founded in 1986, conaie is the national umbrella organization and has acted as the primary indigenous body that negotiates Indian demands with the Ecuadorian state, as well as beyond. The second tier comprises three regional confederations: confeniae (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana) in the Ecuadorian Amazon, ecuarunari (Ecuador Runacunapac Riccharimui) in the Andean highlands, and coice (Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana) on the coast. Founded in 1980, confeniae represented eight indigenous nationalities in the Amazon region in 1992—Quichua, Shuar, Achuar, Shiwiar, Siona, Secoya, Cofan, and Huaorani—distributed, at the time of the march, among nine local federations.15 In 1978, a burgeoning cadre of young leaders in Pastaza Province (with the help of leaders from established Amazonian federations) founded opip, the local-level federation that plays a central role in this book.16 In 1992, opip represented the majority of indigenous peoples in Pastaza and was arguably the most active indigenous organization in lowland Ecuador. At the time of the march, the organization claimed a constituency of 148 communities, accounting for approximately twenty thousand people (or 90 percent of the indigenous population in Pastaza) belonging to the Quichua, Achuar, and Shiwiar nationalities. The 1992 march on Quito was the culmination of highly coordinated activity between opip indigenous leaders, advisors, and community members, together with support from conaie, confeniae, and several progressive indigenous rights and environmental organizations in the United States and Europe. As Guayasamin’s mosaic and the memorial to Jumandi suggest, there is a deep history of Amazonian Indians protesting oppressive rule.17 In recent history, tensions between the Ecuadorian state and lowland indígenas intensified in the 1960s. In 1964, Ecuador enacted its first agrarian reform law, spurred by President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress and larger apprehensions in the United States amazonian imaginaries 43

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that social inequalities in Latin America might incite more Cubas. Simultaneously, the Agrarian Reform Law established ierac, Ecuador’s land titling agency. Since the agency’s inception, tensions have run high between ierac and indigenous peoples throughout Ecuador. Importantly, the 1964 law abolished Ecuador’s feudal system of serfdom (known as huasipungo) and led to the expropriation of some haciendas and former Church lands in the highlands. But the primary focus of land reform was colonization, not redistribution.18 Indeed, the agrarian reform law provided an escape valve for growing population pressure and economic tensions in the sierra. Between 1964 and 1994, roughly 6,500,000 of the approximately 7,500,000 hectares adjudicated as private property resulted from colonization, not expropriation.19 The majority of colonization efforts took place in the Oriente (4,500,000 hectares), and more homesteading occurred in Pastaza (1,800,000 hectares) than in any other single province.20 As a consequence, state-sponsored and spontaneous colonization dramatically transformed agrarian reality on both sides of the Andes. Homesteaders by the thousands moved to the lowlands and cleared previously untitled rain forest land that, according to the 1964 law, was seen as the patrimony of the state: tierra baldía, no man’s land. With the discovery of oil in the northern Amazonian region in the late 1960s and Ecuador’s joining of opec in 1973, the area was transformed dramatically. The colonization of the Oriente became a heightened state preoccupation and petroleum a national security concern. In the northern Oriente provinces of Napo and what are today Orellana and Sucumbios, Texaco (the longest producing oil company in Ecuador) exploited sizable oil reserves for over twentyfive years, inscribing the rain forest landscape with thousands of miles of seismic grids, hundreds of oil wells, and a bare-bones infrastructure essential for oil exploration and production. Tragically, Texaco used deteriorating and outmoded equipment (technologies long illegal in the United States). Employing substandard technologies greatly increased Texaco’s profits, but they also contaminated sizable segments of the surface and subterranean water and soil systems in the northern Oriente.21 As I discuss further in chapters 2 and 3, the health risks associated with hydrocarbon activity have, for years, haunted the lives of those living near industrial contamination in the Oriente. Pastaza Indians, with their burgeoning cadre of organic intellectuals, established opip to better confront increasing colonization 44

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and impending petroleum development in their territory. Beginning in the 1950s and intensifying with the 1964 Agrarian Reform Law, homesteaders colonized a vast corridor along a forested plateau at the base of the sierra in Pastaza. opip leaders and community members, some with relatives in the northern Amazonian provinces and others who had worked as contract laborers for Texaco, believed that, along with further colonization, the devastating effects of oil in the north would soon threaten their territory. Self-organization represented the most secure vehicle through which indigenous peoples might have a voice in influencing, if not directly shaping, the direction of their future. opip’s first priority was to secure legal ownership of Indian lands, which opip leaders defined as approximately two million hectares extending eastward from the colonization plateau to the Peruvian border. The 1992 mobilization was the culmination of opip’s fourteen-year struggle to defend and gain legal title to Indians’ ancestral lands. More specifically, the 1992 march resulted from the previous three years of frustrated negotiations with the state. This period began with the signing and subsequent disavowal of the Sarayacu Accord of May 1989. The Sarayacu Accord, which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 2, was the product of negotiations among state and indigenous representatives after opip communities sabotaged arco’s seismic exploration. Officials from arco, cepe (Corporación Estatal Petrolera Ecuatoriana, the state oil company at the time), and ierac flew to the rain forest community of Sarayacu to hear Indians express their concerns about the multinational petroleum corporation’s exploratory activities. Under indigenous insistence (or what state and corporate men came to call ‘‘blackmail’’ and ‘‘kidnapping’’), the official commission remained in Sarayacu for twelve days and, together with indigenous officials, they drafted and signed an agreement wherein the Borja administration agreed to grant communal title to all Indian territory in Pastaza.22 Over the following months, the state created elaborate teams (composed of local Indians and officials of opip, ierac, and cepe) to demarcate land and draft title deeds. All efforts were in vain, however, when the state reversed its position within eight months. The following year, the Borja regime publicly maintained that the agreements reached in Sarayacu arose under ‘‘force’’ and thus were not valid.23 Tensions over land rights were only to heighten. On May 28, 1990, highland Indians occupied the Santo Domingo Cathedral in Quito and embarked on a hunger strike. Launched to protest the long unamazonian imaginaries 45

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resolved agrarian issue, the occupation and hunger strike inspired the first conaie-led indigenous mobilizations to obstruct the workings of the Ecuadorian state and the national economy.24 A weeklong, nation-wide levantamiento (uprising) paralyzed the Andean highlands with roadblocks, market boycotts, local government office occupations, and land repossessions. Through the leadership of conaie, Indian communities forced the government, momentarily crippled by the magnitude of collective resistance, to enter into negotiations over land disputes. As part of these conaie-state negotiations, opip presented the government with a bold proposal called the Acuerdo Territorial. Reaffirming once more lowland Indians’ right to legally recognized lands, the Acuerdo Territorial contained two themes that challenged conventional understandings of Indians’ place in the nation: plurinationality and self-determination. The proposal called for the communal titling of ancestral lands and political, cultural, and economic control over them. The document argued that constitutional reform was necessary to abolish Ecuadorian laws that eclipse Indians’ rights and to establish new guidelines for resource exploitation and military intervention in Indian territory.25 The government perceived the Acuerdo, written in an unconventional style mixing social memory, mythology, and metaphor with the United Nations’ International Convention on the Rights of Indigenous People, as brazen and its language inflammatory.26 The Borja regime publicly denounced the Acuerdo Territorial. The president himself maintained that opip had adopted a near-seditious attitude, claiming that opip was seeking ‘‘to dismember national territory.’’ 27 ‘‘You are not a state within another state,’’ Borja admonished. How could opip possibly imagine signing an accord with a government? 28 With reason, Borja noted, opip’s proclamations served to fuel public commentary that labeled indigenous activities as ‘‘subversive’’ and ‘‘unconstitutional.’’ 29

Effecting a National Mosaic

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Two months after marchers had arrived in Quito, I sat with a group of indigenous leaders in conaie’s offices and watched hours of video footage from the march. The video team was reviewing the tapes they had shot to make a short documentary. At one point, a stream of marchers flowing through central Quito’s narrow colonial streets carried a wide cloth banner that read, ‘‘Ecuador Mama Llacta.’’ Turn46

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huaorani territory shell

puyo canelos

villano

Cura ray

r Rive ano Vill

Riv er

quichua territory

sarayacu za sta Pa r ve Ri

Bo bo na za Ri ver

ar hu ac

zap aro ter shiw rito iar ry ter rito ry

ry ito rr te

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napo province

morona santiago province

map 4. Indigenous Territories in Pastaza Province. Adapted from opip’s map, 1991.

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ing to Leonardo Viteri (who at the time headed conaie’s commission investigating oil operations), I asked what that meant. ‘‘The Ecuadorian Nation’’ was the translation that Leonardo offered me, where llacta in Quichua might interchangeably refer to a lived territory, a pueblo (people), or, less frequently, a nation. The choice of his translation was telling, for it underscored a realm of confusion and tension that has long pervaded public debate surrounding indigenous politics. Flying high alongside the banner was an immense multicolored flag. This was the brilliant Tahuantinsuyu mosaic. Tahuantinsuyu is the name given to the vast indigenous realm that streched north to south across western South America before the Spanish invasion. Indians fabricated and conaie adopted this flag to invoke a prior time of indigenous strength and to signal contemporary indigenous pride.30 A multiplicity of colors, the Tahuantinsuyu flag symbolized conaie’s ideal of creating a plurinational polity in Ecuador, a mosaicked nation. In his address to President Borja, Valerio Grefa, then president of confeniae, echoed this mosaic ideal: ‘‘The purported national unity is a fictive utopia. Ecuador is a mosaic, a country made up by diverse nationalities.’’ This notion of a national mosaic was evident in the map opip crafted in 1992 as its geopolitical template outlining indigenous terms of reference for identity and territory in Pastaza (see Map 4). As evidenced in their map and rhetoric, leaders explicitly presented amazonian imaginaries 47

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their proposal to the Borja regime through the idiom of nationality. They demanded the legalization and autonomous control of ancestral territory (not land) and that this territory be granted to indigenous nationalities (not ethnicities). opip’s demands outraged the state, especially as articulated within these terms. Throughout the negotiations, the government adamantly insisted that it only adjudicated ‘‘land’’ and, with respect to Indians, it would only do so with respect to ‘‘ethnic’’ groups. What was at stake in this debate was a struggle over the meaning, legitimacy, history, and identity of the nation. For opip and its indigenous intellectuals, tierra (land) constituted the fifty hectares allotted to homesteaders, or colonos; it was the commodification, normalization, and homogenization of life support and land-based resources that transformed the landscape and effectively mandated that colonos convert rain forest to pasture should they like to maintain legal title. Territorio (territory), by contrast, referred to an ancestral space of indigenous sociality. In Quichua, people articulate this claim as ñucanchi rucuguna huiñay causana pachamama (‘‘the land where our ancestors have always lived’’)—the domain in which cultural integrity was sustained and nurtured. Inherent to this understanding was a heightened sense of historically belonging within a landscape. ‘‘Ethnicity,’’ they argued, defines minority groups in opposition to the dominant Ecuadorian society, ensuring that minority rights are hierarchically ranked in relation to those of a self-declared majority. By circumscribing the margins (marking who is ethnic), the dominant sector erased its own ethnic and racial content, giving the illusion of itself as neutral, nonpartisan, ahistoric. By contrast leaders suggested that nacionalidad (‘‘nationality’’) was the product of cultural processes of selfascription that bestowed a collective sense of belonging to a pueblo, a people. It was the primary political idiom of social identity that both promised political self-determination over a ‘‘homeland’’ and situated the terrain of struggle in national (i.e., Ecuadorian) and international political context, especially with regard to the un International Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.31 More than the manifestation of a shared ancestry, identities as nationalities were political expressions of resistance to exclusionary and destructive state modernization policies and constituted the source for alternative indigenous social orders in the Oriente.32 In questioning the framing of nationhood in Ecuador, opip and 48 crude chronicles

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the larger federation structure inspired a fiery debate on who constituted the nation and whether the nation need be singular. Reactionary forces, including Borja’s administration, conservative congressmen, and the military, labeled such inquiry as flirting with treason. Such sentiments echoed the anxieties voiced only two years earlier by a conservative public and instantiated by two military reports (one from the Joint Commander, the second from the Ministry of Defense) after opip presented its 1990 Acuerdo Territorial. The Ministry’s report (which resurfaced during the 1992 march) claimed that indigenous organizations, and opip in particular, were associated with ‘‘countries linked to international guerrilla groups’’ and were determined to establish ‘‘an indigenous state with its own territory, language, and race.’’ 33 Denouncing indígenas as subversive was the most frequent strategy that conservative sectors used to dismiss indigenous demands in 1992 and the deeper questions that such demands raised. In both official and unofficial commentary, many among the political and economic elite categorized indigenous activities as a threat to la patria and to state sovereignty and deemed them an affront to the nationstate. Oppositional groups as well as conservative members of Congress insisted, as they often still do, that opip was fundamentally radical and sought at best to create ‘‘a state parallel to Ecuador in the Oriente’’ and, at worst, to overthrow the government. Though this was not the first time such charges appeared in print, these accusations reunited age-old bedfellows, racism and statenationalism. Enraged congressmen and representatives of the landed oligarchy (terratenientes) advocated that external and internal cultural and political borders needed to be policed. Such policing supported a conservative agenda to discriminate those who belonged to the nation from those who did not. Wary of opip’s purported ulterior political motives, the chamber of agriculture, one of the last strongholds of Ecuador’s landed oligarchy, questioned the logic of giving Indians so much land and reiterated its concern for the security and expansion of private landholdings.34 As echoed in Pastaza, Spanish-speaking landowners told me that ‘‘Indians are lazy and undeserving of so much land. They never make productive use of it.’’ As I will discuss in chapters 5 and 6, tensions over neoliberal reform to expand private holdings and antagonisms between indígenas and terratenientes led to the most powerful indigenous mobilization of the decade, the 1994 Movilización. amazonian imaginaries 49

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11

shell

12

puyo

canelos

10

14

13 villano

8

sarayacu

1

extension Cur ara yasuni park y Ri ver 17

iver no R 16 Villa 15

9 Bo bo na za

Pa sta za

Ri ve r

18

7 3

Riv er

2

6

19

5

e

4

it ur

on yz

c

se

key 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

comuna achuar shaime comunidad numbain charapa comuna pucayacu comuna bufeo comuna shiwiar comuna zaparo comunidades del rio conambo comunidades del rio pindoyacu comunidades del rio bobonaza comunidades del copataza

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

comunidades de arajuno comunidad liquino comunidad quillualpa comunidad yatapi comuna ochacungo comuna curaray comuna morete playa comuna pavacachi comunidad montalvo

map 5. ierac Adjudication Map of Indigenous Land in Pastaza Province. Adapted from ierac’s map, 1992.

Reading Lines of Power

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Despite the march’s many achievements, the state’s response to the 1992 march also compromised indígenas in unanticipated ways. ierac’s cadastral map (see Map 5) most clearly illustrates this; the map shows how authority couched in a purportedly neutral technology can further entrench inequalities. In effect, the state’s land titling map shows how governmentality—the managing and disciplining of movements of people, capital, and resources—was changing within a neoliberalizing state and what contradictions might lie therein. As with the conventional reading of Guayasamin’s mosaic, a purportedly neutral representation (i.e. a map) codified a new, official reality into existence and in the process erased identity, history, and inequality. Similarly, it heightened one form of state surveillance and relinquished other functions of government, allowing others to shape the conduct of conduct in Pastaza. To begin, the Borja administration only partially conceded to indigenous demands, granting Indians only 55 percent of the ancestral 50

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territory they claimed. Furthermore, the state divided Indian lands into nineteen seemingly arbitrary blocks (what I call ‘‘land blocks,’’ so as to distinguish them from petroleum concessions, which are also called ‘‘blocks’’) and assigned each land block a communal land title. The state gave each land block an indigenous name and dotted it with indigenous communities, granting the illusion that each of the nineteen land blocks corresponded to locally recognized social divisions. These new juridical segments bore no resemblance to how indígenas themselves delineated their territory or perceived divisions within it. The titled land blocks did not correspond to divisions within indigenous authority structures, or to their land-use patterns, or to their understandings of their identity as nationalities. The state’s land blocks scientifically dehumanized Amazonian worlds, where rivers, ridges, groves, and forests had been imbued with specific histories, mythologies, identities, and rights. In their stead, the adjudication map fixed a mosaic of geometric shapes devoid of any lived sense of place. According to many indigenous leaders, these nineteen land blocks were chaotic demarcations that were intended ultimately to divide the integrity of indigenous nationalities, undermine their solidarity, and erode the deeply embedded cultural practices of living in a landscape. As will become evident in chapters 2 and 4, the state’s 1992 cadastral map engraved new juridical entities into history that took on a life of their own. Indeed, over a short time select indigenous and nonindigenous people imputed a legitimacy and naturalness to these land blocks that radically realigned indigenous allegiances and undermined prior indigenous coherence. Second, in the interest of what it called national security, Borja’s regime established a forty-kilometer-wide ‘‘security zone’’ paralleling the Peruvian border. Pastaza is the only province in the Oriente to have a ‘‘security zone,’’ a zone under the exclusive control of the military. In contrast to the land blocks, where communities were specifically marked on the state’s map, the security zone was depicted as a white, blank space. The blank spaces presumably devoid of humans negated the existence of the thousands of indigenous peoples who inhabited this region. Of concern was not simply the need to police foreign borders, but also the desire to police internal borders. For conservative statesmen long obsessed with Ecuador’s ever-dwindling Amazonian territory, the security zone granted the military carte blanche to control the zone and strictly monitor all activities within it—potential Peruvian incursions, but indigenous amazonian imaginaries 51

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movements as well. As noted earlier, many conservative sectors of society readily believed that Amazonian Indians were untrustworthy and potential subversives. This belief was intimately connected to elite visions of the nation—a nation much like that portrayed in Guayasamin’s mosaic whose destiny was linked with the country’s purported rightful possession of the Amazon region and in which Indians were not welcome. The security swath represented the further entrenchment of the state disciplinary apparatus and powers of surveillance in Indian lands.35 Third, the government extended the borders of Yasuni National Park—a United Nations Biosphere Reserve—south to the Curaray River. On the surface, this appeared to be a generous (perhaps even progressive) gesture. However, many leaders were skeptical. As with the security zone, the park extension is depicted on the state’s map as a blank white space devoid of humans, when in fact thousands of Indians live there. Only two years previously, Borja’s government modified the borders of Yasuni to preempt a lawsuit contesting the legality of petroleum exploration in protected areas.36 By moving the borders of the park so that it no longer overlapped with the boundaries of an oil concession, the state facilitated transnational corporate desires and turned a blind eye to environmental concerns. Considering the particular history of Yasuni National Park, together with the ineffectiveness of Ecuadorian environmental law, and the impunity with which petroleum companies (via ministries) have manipulated forest protection legislation, many Indians saw the extensions of the park boundaries as a pretext through which the state and multinational corporations would gain exclusive control of indigenous lands.37 Without doubt, concern for the environment (in various guises) played an increasingly prominent role in shaping activity in Pastaza. By 1992, the land that Indians inhabited was not merely that area within the Republic of Ecuador east of the central Andes. Nor was it the rugged, jungled terrain of conquest and possession. Rather, at the end of the second millennium, the space in which Pastaza Indians lived had become the ‘‘rain forest.’’ And, more importantly, according to many international conservation groups, it was one of only ten ‘‘hotspots’’ of biodiversity around the world. For marchers themselves, environmental concerns were an important subtext to the 1992 march and were key to gaining crucial international economic and political support. Whether addressing the media, state officials, fellow citizens, or international greens, in52

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digenous rhetoric was laced with images of Indians as the crusaders of the rain forest, the last patch of tropical Eden left on this earth. Predictable eco-speak phrases rolled off indigenous leaders’ tongues as easily as they were produced by the press. On numerous occasions I heard Leonardo (perhaps the most articulate and passionate leader voicing these claims) say: ‘‘For centuries, we have been the defenders of the rain forest’’; ‘‘We defend the last frontier of uncontaminated selva remaining in Ecuador’’; ‘‘We live in and defend part of the large Amazon Basin, the lungs of the world and the patrimony of all living species on the planet.’’ 38 At times, Indians self-consciously mixed eco-speak with the right for indigenous self-determination. As Luís Macas, the president of conaie, noted while addressing President Borja in the Presidential Palace, ‘‘As the guardians of the Amazon, in the name of life, we, los indígenas, have walked to Quito. We want to be the owners of our territory, and those responsible for our destiny.’’ 39 Though opip leaders had few qualms about aligning themselves with Western concerns for tropical conservation and usurped this rhetoric for their own purposes, they also vehemently denounced ecological imperialism. Leonardo, in particular, reacted strongly against zealots of tropical preservation who portrayed indígenas as ecological curios. opip explicitly maintained that an integral component of indigenous identity was sustainable use of the tropical forest; theirs was not the untouched, virgin forest. ‘‘Ancestral forest management practices,’’ Leonardo claimed, ‘‘shaped the ecology of the forest as equally as the cultural identity of those who live in it.’’ The rain forest was ‘‘an integrally managed, diversified space, not some luxuriant treasure waiting to be preserved in a conservation museum.’’ Similarly, Indians recognized that their historical connection to Amazonian landscapes was strongly shaped by a history of conquest and exploitation. As one impassioned Indian leader noted in his address to President Borja, ‘‘The illusion of the riches of the jungle has seduced many, even the state. In olden times, it seduced with gold, cinnamon, vanilla, clove, and rubber . . . today with lumber, petroleum, land, and mines. . . . For Western civilization, the exploitation of these riches has constituted the base of their fortune. For our peoples, it has represented genocide.’’ This historical inequality strongly informed Indians’ sense of self and their resolve to achieve some degree of self-determination. As in other regions of the Amazon basin, Pastaza Indians mustered crucial international support to pressure the Ecuadorian president into recognizing indíamazonian imaginaries 53

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genas’ historical entitlement to Amazonian lands by juxtaposing indigenous mythology, ancestral heritage, and 500 years of oppression with broader international concerns for tropical conservation and indigenous rights.40 Once Indians joined their concerns with those of Western tropical conservation, they participated in the discursive construction of a space called ‘‘Amazonia,’’ a rain forest realm of untold treasures.41 Increasingly, indigenous intellectuals and comuneros now saw themselves as inhabiting a realm of purported global environmental significance. But as an ecological Eden chock full of biological treasures of global import, the Amazon was quickly becoming a space that others (outsiders) felt they needed to control. Without a doubt, a space called ‘‘Amazonia’’ allowed indigenous nationalities to build powerful imagined communities among indigenous rain forest inhabitants (as manifest, for example, by coica [Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica], the Coordinating Body of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, founded in 1984) as well as with transnational environmental organizations. But this imagined space of Amazonia similarly enabled official and corporate entities to deploy their scientific expertise in such a way that it circumscribed how Pastaza might be talked about. A place of Amazonia allowed state and corporate experts to appear all-knowing in defining which activities should take place within this realm, and how. As I demonstrate in chapter 4, over time both the state and arco used their access to scientific ingenuity to tout the ecological glories of their activities in the Amazon. Ironically, the language of tropical conservation both helped (financially and politically) sustain Pastaza Indians’ struggle and laid the groundwork for the state and corporate capital to manipulate ecological concerns, advancing other interests and championing their activities in the name of the environmental cause. Fourth, although possessing legal titles would impede more homesteaders from colonizing Indian territory, title would not guarantee control over many activities within it. The state retained sovereign rights to all subterranean resources, of which petroleum is the most treasured. Similarly, title deeds defined any activity by indigenous people that might obstruct oil operations as illegal. Only days before marchers reached Quito, arco had announced the discovery of a sizable oil reserve within Indian territory. At the time, arco was the only multinational working in Pastaza. By the end of the decade this would change. As I explore in chapter 3, the state sought to in54

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tensify exploration in the province fourfold by enacting neoliberal policy reform and promoting new corporate alliances. If oil operations in the northern Amazon were in any way indicative of what was to come, the exploration and eventual production of petroleum could have devastating effects in Pastaza. The way in which the state adjudicated indigenous land in 1992 intimately influenced the shape of oil struggles to come between indígenas, the state, and arco. mapmaking, like all representation, is an inherently political social practice. Cartographic technologies are ‘‘intellectual weapons’’ through which power ‘‘gains, administers, gives legitimacy, and codifies’’ spatial and ideological control.42 Though often portrayed as scientific truths, maps are made within specific social contexts of power, not simply intuited from a land’s topography or regional geography. When crafted by a government, this planned product reflects the dominant social order by insinuating the state’s desired form and silencing competing realities. As the 1992 state adjudication makes clear, if maps are viewed as ‘‘cartographic lore,’’ their surface objectivity quickly wears thin.43 The lines, degrees, emblems, and seals that purportedly mirror reality and grant maps their authority reveal not the topography but instead the power and the social interests that compromise the production of and the breaking up of space. They are powerful texts that condense the past, present, and future longings of those who craft them and often deny the historically constructed senses of place and identity felt by local inhabitants. Even at the close of the millennium, cartography was an expansionist technology; as the 1992 state map indicates, drawing lines and delineating space were still tools for the consolidation of the nation-state and postcolonial empires, for mapmaking is a material and symbolic act of appropriation.44 The land titling that followed the 1992 march was incomplete and compromised. While appearing to be conciliatory to the march, the government actually circumscribed indigenous control of ancestral lands by carving up Pastaza in ways that fragmented indigenous authority and land use. opip did gain legal titles to indigenous rain forest lands, but the manner in which the state titled that land would create new tensions and divisions among indigenous peoples. The military secured a zone designated as having strategic importance along its border with Peru, but this zone clearly circumscribed indigenous movements. Ecological groups acquired the extension of the Yasuni Park, but as noted above, national parks often stood amazonian imaginaries 55

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merely as pretexts for future state and corporate incursions into indigenous territory. And global capital as well as the state retained access to subterranean resources, allowing oil exploration to proceed unhampered. Read critically, the state’s adjudication map, like Guayasamin’s mosaic, more precisely exposed the power relations, forms of exploitation, and economic interests that undergirded its making than revealed any truth about the lived landscape. At the same time, it set new parameters for how the conduct of conduct would proceed in Pastaza. Despite claiming to be progressively neutral, the 1992 adjudication map divided and contained; it established the terrain upon which the state would seek to manage and discipline people, capital, and resources in Pastaza, and in the process shape the will and choices of neoliberal subjects.

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2. CRUDE EXCESSES

veronica hurled insults at opip’s president as if hurling poison darts. Gesticulating furiously with a force I didn’t anticipate from such a slight, elderly woman, she yelled, ‘‘Get out or we’ll kill you! You devil invaders. Get out before we kill you!’’ Roughly thirty other lowland Quichua crowded behind her in an effort to give her protection and support. I had joined them where they stood on the veranda of a wooden army barracks in an attempt to shelter my camera from the rain. In front of us at ground level stood opip’s president, Héctor Villamil. Behind him were approximately two hundred opip-affiliated Indians. Respectfully yet forcefully, Héctor responded in his characteristic Spanish–Quichua hybrid speech: ‘‘Shamunchi cuitanacugahua’’ (We have come to talk), Héctor assured: ‘‘We’ve come to discuss the future of our Amazonía, our territories.’’ Gentle drizzle coated his hair and seeped through his navy-blue T-shirt. ‘‘What do they add up to?’’ he continued. ‘‘A flimsy communal hall, an empty health center, a volleyball field, sheets of tin [roofing], and a company cap? Crumbs, just crumbs.’’ A helicopter transporting drilling muds to arco’s exploratory oil well flew overhead—the multinational’s operations were a half-hour’s walk up a northeastern ridge. ‘‘opip wants to push for real development,’’ Héctor continued over the receding roar of the helicopter’s engine. ‘‘Get out! Now!’’ Veronica yelled back above her companions’ angry replies, ‘‘You’re thieves, devil invaders!’’ By the end of the month, arco would finish drilling the last exploratory well needed to determine the size and quality of the petroleum reserve it had discovered two miles beneath the surface of the earth. Negotiations with the state to ‘‘develop’’ the oil field were already underway. It was December 15, 1993, and opip had orchestrated its second

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figure 7. Héctor Villamil speaking during the standoff at Villano. Suzana Sawyer, 1993.

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‘‘march.’’ This time, however, instead of reversing the route of imperial conquest, opip-affiliated Pastaza Indians mimicked the Spaniards’ course and walked further into the forest. Rather than an expedition in search of the sixteenth-century El Dorado, that mythical city bathed in glittering gold, the indígenas’ march sought to denounce the twentieth-century el dorado—the glimmering black gold of late capitalism. They traveled through the politically marginalized, yet economically crucial, Amazonian region to interrupt the workings of petro-capital and demand control over processes within their lands. Pastaza Indians gained only surface rights to their ancestral lands in 1992. Subterranean resources—of which petroleum was the most coveted—belonged solely to the state, and the state retained the right to develop this resource as it deemed necessary. Hailing from all corners of Pastaza, 250 opip-affiliated indígenas trekked for three days (some for four) through the rain forest to Villano—the site of arco’s exploratory oil wells some 80 kilometers east of Puyo. There lowland Quichua claiming to represent 133 indigenous communities gathered to debate petroleum exploration and imminent petroleum production in their lands. Tensions rose by the morning of the first day of the Villano Assembly when a smaller group of about thirty indigenous Villano residents detained opip’s president and prohibited him from crossing the river to join assembly participants. This smaller cluster of in58 crude chronicles

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digenous people belonged to dicip (Directiva Intercomunitaria de las Comunidades Independientes de Pastaza, Intercommunity Directive of Independent Communities of Pastaza), and they accused opip members of invading their land.1 In a pattern repeated wherever multinational oil capital operates in Ecuador, the local inhabitants of Villano were divided. A handful of families loyal to opip had asked federation leaders to convene a meeting in Villano among opip-affiliated communities to debate petroleum practices in the region. Members of dicip—then a fledgling five-month-old indigenous association—vehemently denounced the gathering. Hostilities escalated even further over the following hours as factionalized Indians of the same ethnic group challenged one another. opip representatives obstinately asserted their rights to convene in the area (with zealous young men boasting of occupying arco’s oil well) and dicip community members ever more stridently threatened violent retaliation. By early afternoon the area was militarized with seventy counter-insurgency troops. Villano encapsulated the political-economic reality animating petroleum development throughout the Oriente: state dependency, unmitigated military protection, a multinational capital near–carte blanche, and a volatile mix of local backing and local opposition. This chapter explores the tensions that arose from new forms of ensuring the conduct of conduct in Pastaza. It explores how arco (with the blessing of the state) intruded ever more perniciously into people’s lives and transformed their sense of identity, property, and historical belonging. Furthermore, it examines the dilemma opip faced in building a politics of indigenous belonging to counter seemingly benign corporate behavior and its capacity to debilitate, contain, and further marginalize indigenous opposition to oil operations. As the state increasingly assumed a regulatory and policing role, arco assumed a pastoral role, shaping individuals’ expectations, transforming their allegiances, and defining what was an appropriate neoliberal subject. Rather than being inevitable, however, these new dispositions were produced in relation to new state-imposed juridical entities and corporate-encouraged rational sensibilities. As was the case in analyzing the state’s 1992 adjudication map, my central concern is: What happens when authority attempts to codify reality through a purportedly neutral realm? How might a particular rhetoric or practice that claims to be neutral in actuality condition reality and shape social interaction in unequal ways? Together the crude excesses 59

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state and the multinational corporation exercised something similar to what Timothy Mitchell calls ‘‘enframing’’—‘‘a method of dividing up and containing . . . which operates by conjuring up a neutral surface or volume called ‘space’ ’’ or ‘‘democracy,’’ or ‘‘the free market.’’ 2 The aim of techniques of enframing is to discipline, coordinate, and control the movements of individuals. In Pastaza, arco’s and the state’s supposedly impartial framing reset the terms of engagement (though not without a fight) and fragmented existing indigenous social geographies of place, belonging, and responsibility.

Indigenous Mosaicism ‘‘We’ve come to discuss the future of our Amazonía, our territories,’’ opip’s president, Héctor Villamil, repeated to those indígenas gathered on the veranda of Villano’s army barracks. Rain splattered Héctor’s mud-covered rubber boots as he enumerated the forces that would menace Indian reality in Pastaza once petroleum was unleashed: ‘‘contamination, colonization, mining, timber, deforestation’’ and ‘‘prostitution’’—a shorthand for social degeneration. ‘‘Petroleum,’’ he noted, is ‘‘not simply Villano’s concern. It affects us all. . . . We will not be played with like pawns, in what are routinely christened negotiations between indigenous communities and multinational oil companies.’’ 3 If petroleum production were to occur in Pastaza, opip was intent on changing the rules of engagement. ‘‘We demand large projects,’’ he continued. ‘‘opip wants to press for real development, for integral health, education, transportation, communication programs defined by indígenas. . . . Tucui runagunaga Pastazamanda tandarishca’’ (But all Pastaza Indians have to join forces and organize). An opip supporter yelled, ‘‘Si es indio, es unido así! Ñucanchi Amazoníamanda, ñucanchi territoriosmanda!’’ (If one is Indian, one is so united! For the sake of Amazonia, for the sake of our territory!) This was precisely what opip-affiliated indígenas believed: identity and territory were every Indian’s common stakes and commitment. dicip leaders clearly refused opip’s appeal to identity, to oneness, to common commitment. The president of dicip, whom I call Cristian Cruz, was visibly angry, his voice aggressive.4 ‘‘Ñucanchiga mana cuitanacushun munanichichu. We don’t want to talk,’’ he began, first in Quichua, then in Spanish. ‘‘There is nothing to talk about. We have nothing in common. We are opposites, like day and night. . . . You are assaulting our houses,’’ he claimed, referring to four of the skele60 crude chronicles

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ton structures across the river that arco funds built and assembly participants now occupied. ‘‘You are invading our land, our community—just like Peruvians. . . . We demand that you leave. Get out! You are not authorized to be here. We don’t respect the government of opip. We live as an independent pueblo. Villamil says that opip is not going to leave until it has resolution. Well, we don’t want to talk. The people of dicip, the people of this land, we want to work. We work with la compañía. The national government has laws and we respect them. There is no negotiating here. If you want to engage in debate, if you want to present your proposals, then go somewhere else. Go to Quito to the powers that make decisions.’’ Samuel, a community leader from Sarayacu (one of the rain forest communities that inspire much of opip’s politics), replied to Cruz and his pro-arco contingent, ‘‘Don’t you see, you don’t see clearly. They are blinding you and manipulating you with trinkets. You’re being bribed with crumbs. arco, not opip, is the invader.’’ One by one, the heads of each opip community that had marched to Villano stressed the need ‘‘to unite as indigenous nationalities, as a single pueblo,’’ and not be naively beguiled by la compañía. In Héctor’s words arco was ‘‘using economic incentives to deceive communities and corrupt local leaders. La compañía is comprando conciencias’’ (buying consciences). But Cristian Cruz forcefully denied these accusations: ‘‘dicip leaders have carefully watched over and assured the progress and well-being of Villano independent communities. It is opip leaders who are deceiving local people. You are dangerous, subversivos.’’ Insults ricocheted furiously back and forth, as armed soldiers demanded that there be order. The overpowering noise of a low-flying helicopter brought momentary reprieve from the shouting; two top representatives from arco and Petroecuador (the Ecuadorian state oil company) had just arrived with additional troops at the request of the regional military colonel. Villano was a multiply layered, mosaic landscape. The name referred to an area (not a community) that included parts of three different state-adjudicated land blocks, two indigenous hamlets, four colono (colonist) landholdings, a military installation, and the northwestern corner of arco’s oil concession (see Map 6). The larger indigenous hamlet, Santa Cecilia, was composed of approximately seventy people, and it was there that the Villano Assembly took place.5 Across the Villano River from Santa Cecilia was a small milicrude excesses 61

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figure 8. opip members crossing the Villano River to the military barracks. Suzana Sawyer, 1993.

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tary installation that housed a dozen or so ‘‘jungle-trained’’ soldiers. The military had been a presence in Villano since the late 1930s, when Royal Dutch Shell began exploring for oil in the region.6 According to local inhabitants, the present facilities were built in 1945, the previous ones having been destroyed by the Peruvian army in the 1941 Ecuador–Peru war. Beyond the military installation stretched a grass airstrip that Shell built and the military then maintained. Alongside the landing strip were four colonist landholdings—all that remained of a government plan to populate the area after the 1981 war with Peru.7 Less than a half-hour downriver was Pandanuque, Villano’s second hamlet, composed of approximately forty individuals.8 Geographically, as well as ideologically speaking, Pandanuque was closer (than Santa Cecilia) to arco’s oil operations. arco had sited its exploratory wells within Pandanuque’s land block, and it was there that the most ardent dicip members lived. Particularly telling in the fiery two-hour exchange in front of the Villano army barracks were the ways in which dicip members asserted a difference, and opip members assumed a common identity, among indigenous peoples in Pastaza. dicip’s president, Cristian Cruz, echoed the nationalistic rhetoric of Ecuadorian elites and denounced opip’s action as ‘‘subversive,’’ as threatening to both the state and national progress. In fact, the ‘‘government of opip’’ was so antagonistically opposed to the ‘‘national government’’ that Cruz 62 crude chronicles

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unproblematically identified opip members with Peruvians. Peru, of course, had been the Ecuadorian state’s most bitter enemy since independence in 1830. Just in the twentieth century, Ecuador had already fought two fierce ‘‘jungle wars’’ with Peru over its Amazonian border (1941 and 1981), and soon it would fight a third (1995). Local stories of the 1941 war intensified inhabitants’ hatred for Peruvians. As told by older Villano residents, Peruvian soldiers occupied the Villano military installation and Indians fled into the forest for protection as troops destroyed their houses and raided their gardens. Like Peruvians, opip-affiliated Indians were (in Veronica’s words) ‘‘devil invaders,’’ an enemy threatening their livelihoods and against whom dicip would defend itself to the death. Cruz allied dicip with the Ecuadorian state. dicip members were upstanding national citizens who knew how to respect the laws of the national government and who sought to better themselves through work. Yet, this was not just any work, it was work that furthered the state’s plans to increase petroleum production, thereby linking dicip leaders to the state’s project of modernization, enabling the development of what some Ecuadorian elites called the ‘‘vital fluid’’ that kept la patria alive. But, by associating dicip with the Ecuadorian state and opip with its aggressive neighbor, dicip’s president did more than depict opip as a threat to local and national security; he also underscored dicip’s belief that its land was a sovereign domain. Just like Peru, opip had no rights in it.

Oil Operations in Block 10

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On the morning following the confrontation, Clara sat on a high bank overlooking the Villano River. She laughed as her little daughter ran down the hill and flew into my arms. We had not seen each other since opip’s 1992 march. As with the march to Quito, Clara and her three sisters made up part of the contingent that had walked for three days through the forest from Sarayacu. ‘‘We don’t want la cumpañía [sic] to dirty our rivers,’’ Clara said with the distinctive lilt of a Quichua speaker. She paused and painted a thin, black, zigzagging line across her sister’s cheekbones: ‘‘We don’t want la cumpañía to destroy our selva and divide our people. It’s just like Moretecocha. These people think they own the forest when they don’t.’’ Her made-in-China, sky-blue dress shimmered beneath the morning sun. ‘‘We’re against the pitrulirus [oil men],’’ Clara continued as she poised the child’s-hair paintbrush with unequivocal precision: crude excesses 63

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‘‘They make our lands tremble. They scare away the animals. They poison communities. Does la cumpañía want another Sarayacu?’’ she asked. ‘‘He [sic, arco] has to consult . . . with us, the real owners of the forest.’’ After a second, Clara gave me a quizzical look: ‘‘Do you know about the Sarayacu Assembly?’’ Having worked with opip during the summers of 1990 and 1992, and having reestablished my trust with the organization over the previous six months, I knew only too well the history of Sarayacu, Moretecocha, and Villano, as well as arco’s role in inciting problems in each community. A bit of history is in order. Let me retrace events since 1988. sarayacu: 1988–1989 In June 1988, arco acquired rights to explore and exploit petroleum in Block 10, a 200,000-hectare oil concession centrally located within Quichua territory in Pastaza Province (see Map 6).9 Within months of starting seismic work, indígenas derailed arco’s oil operations. In early 1989, community members from Sarayacu and its environs threatened seismic crews working for the General Company of Geophysics (Compagnie Générale du Géophysique, cgg—a French subcontracting firm) in the southwest portion of Block 10 and confiscated their equipment. When seismic activity had still not resumed in the area a few months later, the chief of arco field operations flew to Sarayacu and, according to opip leaders, attempted ‘‘to buy the community’s consent’’ with two million sucres (then U.S. $5,000); the money was rejected.10 Within days a presidential advisor accompanied by representatives of cepe, ierac, and arco/cgg flew to Sarayacu to discuss indigenous grievances. The official commission planned on setting things straight that afternoon. When the official delegation arrived, however, Indians confiscated the keys to the delegation’s helicopter and placed felled tree trunks across Sarayacu’s landing strip, blocking all air traffic in and out of the rain forest community. The officials remained in Sarayacu for twelve days. Then Ecuadorian president Rodrigo Borja swiftly condemned the episode, denouncing it as a ‘‘kidnapping,’’ an ‘‘act of sequestration.’’ Local peoples insist, however, that the visitors were free to leave, only not by air. With a twinkle in her eye, Clara reminisced (much like opip leaders had done with me earlier) that official delegates were in fact quite free to walk to the nearest road, though it might take them four days—if they knew the way, that is.11 Since the delegation was compelled to remain, Indians from various opipaffiliated communities convened an assembly in Sarayacu with heads 64 crude chronicles

huaorani territory

comuna guillualpa

comunidad liquino

comuna pandanuque Pandanuque

villano military installation comuna pacayacu

r

Santa Cecilia

Villan o Ri

ve

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10 km

comuna moretecocha

comunidades del rio bobonaza

map 6. Map of arco’s Block 10 in Pastaza Province. Adapted from arco’s map, 1993.

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of the local, regional, and national Indian confederations to discuss the titling of indigenous lands and problems associated with petroleum exploration. Those twelve days constitute the gathering that led to the Sarayacu Accord I discuss in chapter 1. At the time of the 1989 Sarayacu Assembly, arco had just begun the first phase of its field operations in search of crude oil: seismic exploration. This process entails cutting a grid of thousands of kilometers of cleared swaths (each approximately three meters wide) through the forest, drilling two- to five-meter-deep holes every hundred meters along the swaths, and detonating ten to twenty kilos of dynamite in every hole. Charges of dynamite in each hole are connected to cables that transmit the sound waves created by the explosions to highly sophisticated geophone equipment. The geophone reads the sound waves and creates a map that slices vertically through the earth to determine the subterranean stratigraphy. Impressive infrastructure supports this work and the hundreds of (largely indigenous) laborers who do it. Heliports and worker camps sprinkle the rain forest landscape as helicopters haul, and tents house, the necessary bodies and equipment. crude excesses 65

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Seismic work is highly disruptive, to say the least. Clara put it this way: ‘‘You’ve seen how those working for the company offend, how they cut trees, exploit petroleum, contaminate the rivers. . . . They make our territory thunder with hundreds of charges of dynamite. The high hills that our ancestors have known, sacred hills, are thrown down and disappear. The fish die and the animals hide. Who gave them the right?’’ Clara was referring to how the forests cleared for swaths, the hilltops leveled for heliports and worker camps, and the dynamite detonated during seismic exploration disrupted forest management, killed fish, scared away animals, and denigrated sacred sites. As opip noted in its 1989 Sarayacu Pronouncement, ‘‘Las petroleras have pillaged the resources without thought to the fact that Amazonian territories are the historical possession of our peoples.’’ 12 By the end of the Sarayacu Assembly, official representatives drafted and signed a series of documents—agreements that became know as the Sarayacu Accords. Most significantly, state representatives agreed to legalize all indigenous territory in Pastaza, to halt seismic activity within Indian lands until adjudication occurred, to pay for ecological destruction, and to document and propose solutions to problems associated with petroleum activity. Two distinct commissions arose from the resolutions: one to demarcate Indian lands, the other to investigate oil concerns. In 1990, however, the Borja regime publicly maintained that since the agreements reached in Sarayacu arose under ‘‘force,’’ none were valid.13

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moretecocha: 1990 opip’s 1989 Sarayacu protest paralyzed arco’s operations for one year.14 When the company resumed field operations in spring 1990, it began clearing the site of its first exploratory well. This site was near Moretecocha, an indigenous community about a day’s walk from Sarayacu.15 Past experience had demonstrated that opip did not welcome the company’s presence. The one-year hiatus gave arco time to identify pro-oil indigenous communities. Moretecocha was one. arco’s operations did not proceed easily, however. Once again opip-affiliated Indians attempted to obstruct the multinational’s activities. A number of Sarayacu residents built makeshift houses and planted crops on the company’s proposed well site. This was a symbolic, as much as material, act of protest to assert indigenous rights. In a game of cat and mouse, arco hired guards (men from Moretecocha) to destroy the shacks and gardens, and Sarayacu community members would return to build and plant more. Letters, along with 66

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figure 9. Indigenous household at their purina. Eliza Cutcher, 1990.

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multiple verbal threats, went back and forth between communities. Moretecocha’s leaders warned of the ‘‘grave danger’’ and ‘‘violence’’ that would ensue if those from Sarayacu did not stop trying to interrupt arco’s activities. Within months, ierac granted Moretecocha communal title to a large piece of land. arco’s well sites fell within this newly adjudicated land block. Soon thereafter, the state militarized the well site and arco began implementing so-called development projects in Moretecocha.16 ierac archives note that arco, through its field managers, orchestrated the titling of land around its oil wells in Moretecocha; this occurred in a moment when legalizing indigenous land in Pastaza was virtually impossible, given the tensions that existed between Indians and the state.17 opip-affiliated indígenas vehemently protested. For them, Moretecocha and the site of arco’s oil well were part of the Nacionalidad Quichua; Moretecocha belonged to a larger contiguous rain forest territory that many lowland Quichua used and managed. Miquia Rosa, Clara’s aunt through marriage and a respected female elder from Sarayacu, put it this way: ‘‘You know, the well site is ours, and theirs too—not solely theirs. We also make that land live.’’ Miquia Rosa was referring to the processes whereby lowland indigenous peoples worked in shifting, often dispersed, landscapes. For generations, a handful of Sarayacu ayllu, or extended family networks, had maintained their purina (secondary subsistence and hunting grounds) and purun (managed secondary forests and hunting grounds) near crude excesses 67

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Moretecocha. As such, the land that ierac titled for Moretecocha was not Moretecocha’s sovereign domain. For Miquia Rosa, proprietorship or legitimate claims emerged from historical relations of land use, and Sarayacu community members also claimed this territory. villano: 1990–1992 arco’s relations with Villano residents mirrored patterns of patronage in Moretecocha. This time, however, even before beginning any work in Villano, arco convinced the state to title the parcel of Indian land that the company deemed most strategic. ierac bureaucrats recalled the morning in late 1990 when arco field operators walked into the agency’s Puyo office and finalized the titling of 10,569 hectares of land, even though it was still virtually impossible to legalize indigenous land in Pastaza.18 The land title was granted to the community of Pandanuque.19 This newly titled land encompassed some of the more promising subsoil stratigraphy for encountering crude oil in Block 10. The Royal Dutch Shell company drilled its only successful well (Villano-1) in the area forty years earlier, in 1949 and 1950. With the sophisticated drilling technologies of the 1990s, success was almost guaranteed. Over the following years, arco drilled its next two exploratory wells (Villano-2 and Villano-3) within this newly titled land block. To ensure that its exploratory operations would proceed smoothly, arco needed to appease local indigenous peoples. Facilitating the titling of Pandanuque’s land was an important first step. But Villano was composed of two communities (Pandanuque and Santa Cecilia) and, while the company’s oil wells were sited on Pandanuque’s land, Santa Cecilia could disrupt operations. Consequently, in September 1991, arco signed an agreement with the Intercommunity Committee, a negotiating body that Pandanuque and Santa Cecilia leaders formed with the guidance of arco field representatives. Under the 1991 contract, the company agreed to complete specific public works in each community (the building of a schoolhouse, a medical dispensary, and a meetinghouse), pay each community a stipend of 150,000 to 200,000 sucres monthly (approximately $75 to $100 at the time), and arrange for six free flights a month from Villano to the military airbase in Shell just outside Puyo. In return, local inhabitants promised never to impede arco’s operations. As stated in the signed agreement, the Intercommunity Commit68 crude chronicles

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tee was the ‘‘only local representative’’ body that could enter into a legal contract with arco.20 Similarly, arco could only hire local men as laborers for constructing the ‘‘public works’’ projects. Thus, multiple perks came with arco’s presence: some new buildings, wage labor, and a handful of small gifts—candies for children, blankets at Christmas, and school supplies. Only days before Pastaza Indians reached Quito in their 1992 march, arco announced that it had discovered a large, highly commerciable petroleum reserve at Villano-2.21 The timing of the company’s disclosure seemed more than merely coincidental. Many people (indigenous and nonindigenous alike) interpreted it as an attempt to foil opip’s plans to gain title to indigenous lands. Wittingly or not, Pastaza Indians were becoming world renowned for their defiance of crude development. Even one of the industry’s mainstream journals, Oil & Gas Journal, reported that despite being encouraging, the development of arco’s find was ‘‘likely to be controversial. arco’s discoveries have stirred up local residents.’’ opip was more than capable of obstructing arco’s oil operations. With land title, opip-affiliated indigenous communities might become even more militant.

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dismemberment and disaffiliation: spring–summer 1993 The federation, however, was up against some difficult odds. In spring of 1993, the organization received a letter declaring that six indigenous communities were disaffiliating from opip. Cristian Cruz, then the president of the newly formed Intercommunitarian Directive, an expanded version of the Intercommunity Committee, signed the letter. The letter read, ‘‘In representation of the independent communities of [Land] Block 12 and [other] outlying communities, we declare ourselves independent such that no organization has the power ( facultad) to represent us.’’ 22 Since arco was working within the land that ierac had adjudicated ‘‘to Pandanuque, an independent community in all dimensions of the term, no other organization had the authority ( facultad) to intervene in the relations that this community has with la compañía.’’ The Directive was the only legitimate body that could ‘‘guide their destinies.’’ Accompanying the Intercommunitarian Directive’s declaration were six separate, virtually identical letters from Chuyayacu, Pitacocha, Nuevo Kurintza, Elena, Santa Cecilia, and Pandanuque. These six communities ranged in size as follows: Chuyayacu (apcrude excesses 69

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proximately seven people), Pitacocha (approximately forty people), Nuevo Kurintza (approximately ten people), Elena (approximately ten people), Santa Cecilia (approximately seventy people), and Pandanuque (approximately forty people, roughly six families).23 Four of these communities (Chuyayacu, Nuevo Kurintza, Elena, and Pandanuque) had emerged within the previous six to ten years, and with the exception of Pandanuque (which had its own separate land block), these communities were all located in Land Block 12—that is, the land block designated as number twelve out of the nineteen that ierac adjudicated after opip’s 1992 march.24 This was significant. Land Block 12 was the land through which arco envisioned building a pipeline connecting its Villano oil wells and the TransAndean pipeline. Given that pipelines are vulnerable arteries within the oil industry, and that opip had already demonstrated its capacity to sabotage operations, it made eminent sense for arco (and the Ecuadorian state) to want to create pockets of pro-oil communities along the proposed pipeline’s expanse. Within months of sending its letter declaring independence from opip, the Intercommunitarian Directive encountered problems. Disagreements between households in Santa Cecilia and Pandanuque led to division and to the formation of dicip in July 1993. Dispute over the use of funds in Santa Cecilia—layered over preexisting misunderstandings and distrust between nonevangelical and evangelical households—led to the political bifurcation of Santa Cecilia into a pro-opip contingency and a pro-dicip contingency. opip leaders had little doubt that divisions and disaffiliation were the result of arco’s meddling. During an opip meeting soon after the formation of dicip, Marco (the head of opip’s communications division) cautioned with indignant anger, ‘‘This is just the beginning. There’s no end to these dirty tricks. arco has reassumed its divide-and-rule strategy. . . . But dicip is being misled.’’ The resonance between ‘‘dicip’’ and the English word ‘‘deceive’’ was perhaps unfortunate, yet a joke well appreciated by opip members when I noted the irony. Indeed, Marco turned the acronym into a new Spanish verb: ‘‘Son dicipados!’’ (They’re deceived!). In a letter to arco’s chief executive officer in Los Angeles, opip claimed that the company’s top official in Quito and field managers were ‘‘creating instability, internal conflict, [and] corruption in Villano.’’ arco was not different from any other multinational oil corporation. ‘‘There is not one compañía petrolera,’’ the letter affirmed, ‘‘that has integrally respected the Indigenous Peoples and their tra70 crude chronicles

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ditional territory. The strategies of penetration are all exactly alike: breaking community unity, corrupting local leaders, fomenting dependency and paternalism through gifts of crumbs, negotiating unilaterally with the community, providing momentary [community] works, instigating denigrating campaigns against provincial and regional Indian organizations, and militarizing the [oil] Block.’’ 25 For opip leaders, the unequal relations between a multinational petroleum corporation and local Indian communities made socalled contracts and negotiations inherently problematic and insidious. Echoing words I had heard from Héctor and Leonardo, the letter continued, ‘‘We are not willing to succumb to the same fate as those to the north who have suffered profound ills . . . in the name of ‘Progress,’ ‘Development,’ and ‘Modernization.’ ’’ 26 Most infuriating for opip leaders was how arco, seemingly without effort, managed to circumvent opip’s authority and operate through a system of its own creation. Indígenas, both within and outside opip’s organizational structure, spoke repeatedly of ‘‘suffering for their territory.’’ opip had ‘‘forged’’ ( forjado), in the sense of produced, an indigenous politics over a period of fourteen years; this history accorded the federation legitimacy at both the national and international level. Even the Ecuadorian state recognized opip’s authority, its capacity to mobilize indigenous peoples in Pastaza, and the representativity of its voice. dicip’s legitimacy, according to opip leaders, was by contrast ‘‘forged’’ ( fraguado), in the sense of being false, a forgery. dicip ‘‘had no history’’ and hence no legitimacy. It was thus outrageous, to federation leaders, that a multinational corporation could treat dicip—‘‘an entity it created and was not even legally recognized’’ (i.e., it did not have juridical personality)—as a body of status and import equal to those of opip. dicip’s very existence simultaneously allowed the company to showcase to the world its commitment to work with indigenous peoples—as being sensitive to Indians’ needs and concerns—and to dismiss opip. In response to opip’s letter to the ceo in Los Angeles, arco Oriente sent two letters to the federation in early August 1993 clarifying the multinational’s activities. This was the first contact that the federation had had with arco since before opip’s 1992 march.27 Both corporate letters were curious; generously worded, they reflected arco’s efforts to sidestep responsibility for its questionable social interventions in past years. The first letter contained mostly perfunctory information: arco was about to embark on ‘‘the next phase of its exploratory activity with the perforation of Villano-3.’’ crude excesses 71

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The purpose of this well was to evaluate ‘‘the discovery encountered with the Villano-2.’’ 28 Villano-3 would be ‘‘a directional well.’’ Hence, it ‘‘was unnecessary to construct another drilling platform in the jungle,’’ making environmental damage minimal. As with earlier drilling, all necessary equipment would be transported by helicopter, obviating the need to build new roads.29 As a final gesture, arco noted that ‘‘they would be very happy to respond to whatever questions might exist’’ and asked ‘‘if indigenous organizations were interested in meeting with arco Oriente to exchange information and ideas.’’ 30 The plural form—‘‘indigenous organizations’’—disturbed opip leaders. For them, it reflected arco’s attempt to make dicip’s existence seem unquestionable. Adjoining the text was an alphabetized list of the thirty individuals receiving copies of the letter. The thirty included provincial authorities, state officials, arco representatives (in both Los Angeles and Plano, Texas), U.S.-based environmental activists, and, most significantly, indigenous leaders of conaie-affiliated and anti-conaie organizations. For arco this was another example of ‘‘democracy at work,’’ of being impartial and inclusive. But opip leaders objected to simply being added to a roster of interested parties. This seemingly innocuous list had the effect of naturalizing and leveling each group; each was equivalent to the others—equally important and equally powerful. More precisely, the systematicity rendered through alphabetical ordering enabled a unique sleight-of-hand whereby arco Oriente literally detached itself as subject and reinscribed itself as object. Rather than an indispensable agent in the formation of dicip, arco Oriente tallied itself among dicip, opip, and others in the recipient list. The strategy reflected arco’s wider pretensions of establishing comparability among entities, asserting equality in stature, and erasing the play of power and history. opip received the second letter after the meeting with arco that I described in the opening of this book. In the second letter, arco noted that it ‘‘recognize[d] dicip as an organization representative of the communities in the Villano area presently affected by exploratory perforation’’ and that it ‘‘equally recognize[d] opip as an organization representative of various communities in Pastaza Province.’’ 31 Since each organization represented ‘‘some communities within Block 10,’’ arco deemed it ‘‘preferable that representatives of both organizations . . . be present in any future meetings.’’ Such a meeting could only occur if the gulf between the two were bridged; consequently, arco ‘‘suggest[ed] that Sr. Villamil attempt 72 crude chronicles

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to reach a rapprochement with dicip.’’ 32 Until it was understood that both must be present, the letter continued, ‘‘arco Oriente Inc. believe[d] that it should not hold meetings between arco-opip or between arco-dicip, as this could cause distance between the organizations.’’ 33 The multinational thus relieved itself of any engagement until Pastaza Indians got their house in order. The implication was that arco itself played no role in creating, let alone maintaining, the divisions that cut through indigenous territory in Pastaza. indeterminate identities: november 1993 Disaffiliation had serious consequences for opip communities. A couple of weeks before opip’s December 1993 march to Villano, I sat on a wooden bench in a crowded meeting hall in the Comuna Canelos. Seventy lowland Indians had gathered for a two-day meeting to talk about arco’s petroleum activities and divisions within the Canelos territory. The Comuna Canelos was key to maintaining the strength of opip politics; located just below the colonized plateau at the base of the Andes and along the frontline of claimed indigenous territory, Canelos boasted one of the larger indigenous populations in the region (Map 5). At issue that day were disputes between Comuna Canelos and one of the six communities—Chuyayacu—that had disaffiliated from opip in May 1993. According to ierac’s 1992 adjudication map, the Villano River charted the division between the Comuna Canelos and Land Block 12. Land to the south of Villano River ‘‘belonged’’ to Canelos and that to the north ‘‘belonged’’ to Land Block 12.34 But members of the Comuna Canelos viewed things differently. They considered the western third of Land Block 12 to be within Canelos’ traditional territory. As Chuyayacu was situated within that portion of Land Block 12, Chuyayacu’s ‘‘disaffiliation’’ from opip (and consequently disaffiliation from Canelos) concerned Comuna members. They had invited opip leaders to help them work out these territorial disputes. Benito, Chuyayacu’s founding father, began in his raspy voice, ‘‘In the summer [of 1993], Pandanuque leaders came to visit us. They told us to join their independent organization. ‘What has opip done for you?’ they asked us. ‘This is your land and the pipeline will run by your house. By working independently you will prosper.’ ’’ Despite his age, Benito’s frame was strong and compact. That morning, he had set out from Chuyayacu before dawn to walk the nine hours to Canelos. ‘‘A few months later,’’ Benito continued, flashing his broad smile, ‘‘sheets of tin roofing dropped from the sky. [Land] Block 12 crude excesses 73

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figure 10. Indigenous elder in Comuna Canelos. Eliza Cutcher, 1990.

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is ours. Pandanuque leaders showed us on a map. It belongs to us, and we want to work independently.’’ ‘‘You live in my mother’s purina [distant agricultural and hunting zone],’’ Miquia Elena, a woman from Canelos, retorted. ‘‘We were nice to you. We let you stay there. It’s not just yours. It’s ours too.’’ According to Canelos community members, Chuyayacu existed only as a consequence of their good graces. In the late 1980s, Benito and his family, having been hounded from their home in another community, approached Canelos leaders about the possibility of establishing a new hamlet in Canelos lands. At the time, the Comuna Canelos was keen on populating a zone in its northern territory where confrontations with colonists had escalated to episodes of armed conflict in the mid-1980s. Canelos leaders agreed to allow Benito’s family to resettle in the northern reaches of their territory in the hope of mitigating further incursions by homesteaders. 74

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And so Chuyayacu was born. To label Chuyayacu a community would be an exaggeration, composed as it was of Benito and his son, each having two wives and a handful of children.35 More precisely, it was an incipient community consisting of four structures (one for each wife) built along the Villano River, a long day’s hike from Villano proper. In the eyes of Canelos members, Chuyayacu belonged to the Comuna and was subject to the Comuna’s council and behest. Benito and his family could not simply disaffiliate and think that they controlled the land on which they lived. For members of the Comuna Canelos, the ierac-adjudicated Land Block 12 was an arbitrary division. As I mentioned earlier, Canelos gained legal title to their lands in 1947 with the midcentury indigenous trek to Quito that Clara’s mother had recalled.36 On the state map, the northern border of Comuna Canelos was the Villano River. This was not, however, where people saw the limits of their territory. Approximately forty households whose primary residence was within the Comuna also managed, worked, and lived in the forest situated in Land Block 12. These households used land along the headwaters of the Villano River as their purina. Though often translated into Spanish as ‘‘reserve,’’ purina referred to a secondary residence of vast shifting agriculture and managed forests where households spent a number of months each year.37 Often families passed purina lands down through the years and, like Miquia Elena, many Canelos people who used the Villano headwaters as their purina claimed to have done so for generations. Benito reasserted his right to disaffiliate. ‘‘opip leaders have not visited Chuyayacu in two years,’’ he admonished. ‘‘What have we gained from opip? With the help from dicip we have progress.’’ By ‘‘progress’’ Benito was referring to the ‘‘sheets of tin roofing [that] dropped from the sky’’ and incidental school materials. Chuyayacu was an isolated community; the closest airstrip was that of the Villano military instillation. The day that arco helicoptered in sheets of corrugated tin was a day to remember.38 With a new roof on every structure, including a yet to be built schoolhouse, progress appeared just around the corner. Chuyayacu’s position (both ideologic and cartographic) exemplified the shifting terrain of struggle over territorial claims in indigenous Pastaza lands. Land Block 12 was a juridically independent, legal entity around which people were reshaping their identities and allegiances, realigning local understandings of territorial use, and crude excesses 75

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provoking debate over who precisely controlled what. As Benito noted: ‘‘I have little doubt that by working independently with the compañía that my family and I will gain more.’’ A young pro-opip man visiting from Villano accused Benito of being bought off. ‘‘dicip leaders,’’ he maintained, ‘‘receive funds directly from la compañía. Their riches make them selfish and opportunistic. They don’t really care about what happens in your community. They only want the money. They never consulted the communities in Villano. They do what they choose. The leaders [of dicip] say they are the owners of the [oil] well. But in reality, they are corrupt and you are corrupt just like them.’’ Benito shouted back in anger, accusing the young man’s brother of stealing community funds from Villano. Insults began to fly back and forth. Leonardo, the most prominent opip leader at the Canelos meeting, reminded those present that this was precisely the kind of infighting that arco hoped might distract indígenas. Holding a strip of paper under his chin as if it were a tie, Leonardo parodied arco’s chief executive, ‘‘We can’t work with those indios. They can’t even agree on what they want. They are always fighting. They’re tribal.’’ He continued, ‘‘arco’s strategy has been to distract Indians, pitting communities against one another and shifting attention away from analyzing what is at hand.’’ One by one he named the indigenous peoples in the northern Oriente: ‘‘the Cofan, the Siona, the Secoya, the Huaorani, the Quichua, and the Tetes who are no longer.’’ And one by one he enumerated ‘‘the big problems’’ that accompanied oil operations in these northern Indian lands, writing each in Spanish on butcher block paper suspended from the wall: environmental contamination, territorial reduction, deforestation and drought, colonization, cultural destruction, demographic reduction, prostitution, and disease. According to Leonardo, these problems took hold of and transformed the northern Oriente because the people were not organized: ‘‘Tandanacushun! [We must organize ourselves!]. arco is not just doing exploration. No! La compañía is intent on dividing communities. And dicip is its tool. . . . The tin roofing, the pencils and notebooks, they’re important. But, they’re not enough. We [opip] want to go beyond small tokens.’’ opip’s goal was to transform the ideological and material terrain on which oil operations occur. Leonardo assured the people that opip was striving ‘‘for territorial, cultural, and environmental control and protection’’ to prevent the history in the north from being repeated in Pastaza. 76

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Tactics of Territoriality At the time of the Villano Assembly in mid-December 1993, Clara and especially her spouse, Samuel, had become important community leaders in Sarayacu. Samuel was the president of the Association of Sarayacu, and I had worked with him a couple of times to coordinate business with opip. ‘‘You remember when the government recognized our territories the other year,’’ Clara said, referring to the 1992 legalization of Indian lands. ‘‘It’s defined ancestrally—from this come our customs. From this comes our identity.’’ She eased the skin of her sister’s crimped nose. ‘‘Chapai [Hold still],’’ Clara gently admonished, now painting triangles between the zigzag lines that climbed up her sister’s cheekbones. ‘‘All this land that you saw when you flew here. . . .’’ Her daughter interrupted, ‘‘She walked to Villano; she didn’t fly.’’ Clara looked at me and smiled. Many Indians were critical of the fact that opip dirigentes had flown rather than marched to Villano; that I chose to walk, despite working with opip, meant something to some. ‘‘I’ve flown here before, however,’’ I responded. Clara laughed. ‘‘Well, all that land,’’ Clara began again, sitting on the high bank overlooking the Villano River, ‘‘it appears as though there are no people. But this is ours. We work and live in different places at different times. Today we might leave here, go work our forest there for a month or longer, and later return to start over again here. Our life is not only in one place. This custom, our culture, our life, we cannot simply leave it and live some other way. Why did we suffer in the [1992] march?’’ Behind Clara, a large blue plastic tarp shaded a group of women who cooked the morning meal, a few men hauled water and firewood, clusters of assembly participants gathered to talk about the confrontation with dicip the previous day, and two Ecuadorian reporters busily snapped photos. The reporters had arrived in Villano with opip’s president the day before, after having attended his press conference in Quito. The 1992 march had impressed upon opip leaders the importance of the national and international press; media coverage lent credibility to their actions, tempered accusations of their being subversive, and served as a witness to potential foul play. Tensions were still high, and a handful of men stood watch as part of the twenty-four-hour guard set up to protect against any hostile surprises. Threats of violence by dicip members were not taken lightly. Two days before the Assembly was to begin, dicip members crude excesses 77

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obstructed Villano’s landing strip, nearly causing the fatal crash of an opip plane bringing in food and medical supplies.39 ‘‘dicip,’’ Clara continued, ‘‘they are only a few. But we are many. And a few people can’t decide for many. They say they want to work, but really they only want the pay, the money and presents. La cumpañía gives them everything. Did you see their feast?’’ The day before, arco employees had flown in freshly roasted chicken for dicip members when, after the confrontation in front of the army barracks, dicip indígenas refused to return to their homes. Villano had indeed changed in the year and a half since I was last there. In 1992, I had flown into Villano after the march to Quito, spending one night in Santa Cecilia before traveling downriver for four days with a few opip leaders. But in December 1993, between wanting to build solidarity and not wanting to be detained by the military were I to fly, I chose, despite being sick as a dog, to walk the roughly twenty-five miles to Villano. It was dark by the time I had arrived in Santa Cecilia with the tail-end contingent of those of us who had walked from Canelos. After placing my small pack in the ‘‘church’’—an empty building propped on short stilts that seconded as our sleeping quarters—I went to wash in the neighboring stream. ‘‘Suzana,’’ yelled a resident Villano acquaintance, ‘‘the showers are over there.’’ ‘‘Shower?’’ I yelled back, ‘‘You’re kidding!’’ Though that evening I chose to bathe under the stars, the next morning I saw that in addition to the square, tin-roofed, wooden schoolhouse, medical dispensary, and meeting hall, arco had constructed two showers and two flush toilets smack in the headwaters of the Amazon. The bathroom facilities worked like a charm. That was more than could be said for the other structures. The Villano Assembly took place in the middle of the week; yet, school was never once in session. Local residents complained that the dispensary was badly supplied and virtually unstaffed; the doctor, who had spent extended periods in the area the year before, never returned. ‘‘La cumpañía does everything,’’ Clara repeated. ‘‘That’s why they let them [arco] in. They say we are hurting them, saying we are taking their things away. But arco is the one hurting them. The [seismic] explosions, the helicopters, the motors, they scare away the birds and animals. Our waters smell like poisons—the smell will kill our rivers, like in Moretecocha. What good is the work after that?’’ During the confrontation in front of the Villano army barracks the day before, dicip’s president repeatedly invoked the idiom of ‘‘work’’ to define dicip members’ distinctiveness and worth. He 78 crude chronicles

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elaborated further during our first real conversation, a month later. ‘‘opip are another raza [race],’’ Cruz explained across the large wooden conference table in dicip’s recently established office in Shell. ‘‘They don’t want us to be educated and work,’’ he continued. ‘‘They don’t want us to wear shoes. They want to keep us poor and oppressed.’’ In his view, the federation deceived indígenas so that they would remain ‘‘salvaje [savage, wild]—manipulable, submissive.’’ ‘‘But with arco,’’ he added, ‘‘the doors of development opened for those of us who have always been marginalized. Through work [that is, the Smithian logic of profit-seeking enterprise],’’ Cruz continued, enunciating slowly, ‘‘el indígena will prosper, progress, and produce.’’ 40 Only minutes earlier I had been leafing through a stack of Economist magazines in the reception room making small talk with the secretary, while I waited for Cruz to arrive. The doors to development had indeed opened and the three ‘‘p’s’’ were flowing through. Not only had arco provided the British journals (the mail label on the back cover was addressed to the arco executive in Quito), but the company had also provided nice furniture, a pleasant secretary, and ample office space. As I chatted with Cruz a number of weeks later on the streets of Puyo, he explained even further: ‘‘We in Pandanuque, we want to work. We have contracts with la compañía. We want to work for a living. . . . If opip had its way, we would be naked and barefoot.’’ Cruz was taller than most Quichua, and he looked handsome in his slick new haircut and shiny new shoes. ‘‘You know,’’ he continued as he leaned against arco’s Chevy Trooper, ‘‘la compañía says that Villano will soon be Ecuador’s new petroleum capital, and that land in Villano is ours—we own it.’’ As part of the contract between arco and dicip, the company hired local people as workers to complete its projects and it paid community leaders to oversee this work. Rumors abounded as to how much money arco paid the leaders of dicip. In fall of 1993, the highest estimate was 1,100,000 sucres/month (approximately $550 at the time). With the national minimum wage hovering below 100,000 sucres/month (approximately $50), even half the rumored sum was a substantial amount. Without a doubt this was a pittance for a multinational oil corporation whose chief executive officer earned $1.5 million in 1994 and whose total revenues in 1993, $19.2 billion, were close to twice Ecuador’s 1992 gnp of $11.8 billion.41 arco invested $365 million to bring its oil discovery to production; incidental community expenses were only a minor inconvenience. Yet, for a matericrude excesses 79

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ally poor and politically marginalized indigenous community, the effect of this material assistance and cash flow was staggering. opip leaders insisted that these so-called donations that arco had bestowed on dicip communities did not represent ‘‘prosperity’’ or ‘‘progress.’’ Héctor was always quick to note that matchbox houses, volleyball courts, and high school scholarships were small tokens, trinkets with no lasting value, other than serving as nefarious bribes: ‘‘bribes aimed at breaking the unity of opip, corrupting local inhabitants, and [spurring] territorial dismemberment.’’ 42 These tokens were not different from what communities in the northern provinces (what was then Napo and Sucumbios) had received. Petroleum ‘‘development’’ had indelibly transformed the northern Ecuadorian Amazon where scant industrial regulations over the past twenty-five years had led to rampant contamination and undermined the life ways of many indigenous and nonindigenous peoples. As Héctor maintained during the Villano Assembly, ‘‘neither these gifts nor oil activity had brought development to the north. Rather, they had brought only misery, social and ecological decay and indígenas’ further marginalization from the national society.’’ Under the heat of the afternoon sun, Héctor bellowed: ‘‘We have conciencia [both ‘‘consciousness’’ and ‘‘conscience’’ in Spanish] on our side; arco has el dólar. This is a struggle of la conciencia contra el dólar, el dólar that is dividing el indio.’’ More than merely compensatory, these ‘‘gifts’’—be they candies or contracts—served to pry into and transform local senses of self and property. Much like the stack of Economist magazines in dicip’s office, they became talismans of progress and fetishes of modernity. arco’s employees fabricated illusions of imminent betterment for dicip members and for Pandanuque residents in particular: Villano would soon be ‘‘Ecuador’s new petroleum capital.’’ arco had discovered a treasure of black gold and Cruz, along with others from Pandanuque, were sitting on the jackpot. As the new petroleum capital, oil operations would catapult Villano hamlets out of their poverty. dicip was the vehicle through which many Villano residents believed they would secure independent control over their good fortune. arco sought to circumscribe its interaction with Pastaza Indians: first with those individuals who held the legal title to the land block that housed the company’s oil wells, and then with those Indians who lived along the route of its future pipeline. Together, arco and dicip treated Pandanuque and other state-delineated land blocks as mir80 crude chronicles

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rors of the real. They reified as fact the territorial divisions that the state had inscribed and naturalized them as reflecting authentic and long-standing land-use patterns, authority structures, and rights domains. As Cruz claimed, the land in Villano, the imminent oil capital, ‘‘is ours—we own it’’: it was their exclusive domain and they threatened violent retaliation against anyone who sought to intervene in what they deemed their affairs. The animosity dicip members expressed toward opip members paradoxically sharpened resolve among federation-affiliated indígenas.43 The December 1993 Villano Assembly launched opip’s Campaña Tungui—tungui being the drum rhythm that called allied indigenous groups to war in times of old. This was the first coordinated action among opip-affiliated communities to pressure arco since the 1989 Sarayacu Assembly. The Tungui Campaign outlined the conditions under which arco might proceed with its activities in Indian lands and declared a fifteen-year moratorium on further petroleum exploration in the province. Neither opip nor affiliated communities were against oil development per se. Many families maintained an ambivalent relationship with oil operations. At least one male in nearly every household had worked (or would work) in oil exploration at some point during his lifetime, if only for a few months; the pay was attractive, despite the labor. In the ideal world, opip would like to benefit from oil if it did not compromise indígenas’ independence and livelihoods. No one wanted their rivers contaminated or their territorial rights undermined. opip was opposed to the manner in which oil activity had been carried out in Ecuador to date. The federation pressed for indigenous participation in the environmental and social planning and monitoring of arco’s operations, as well as in oil’s economic benefits—demanding $2 for each barrel of crude oil produced.

Transnational Alliances

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On the afternoon of the second day of the Villano Assembly, three unexpected guests arrived. Accompanied by a former opip dirigente were the head of coica, a director of Oxfam USA, and an environmental activist from Acción Ecológica. The three were attending conaie’s National Congress, held that year in confeniae’s headquarters at Union Base just outside Puyo, as national and international observers overseeing conaie’s elections. The Villano Assemcrude excesses 81

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figure 11. ‘‘conaie, For a Plurinational State.’’ Poster for the confederation’s Fourth Congress. conaie, 1993.

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bly and the issues it raised had been a focus of discussion during the conaie congress, and conaie’s president, Luís Macas, sent the delegation to Villano.44 The presence of the three guests reflected opip’s strong and growing national and transnational links. coica represented a budding alliance among lowland indigenous groups across Amazonia. Founded in 1984, coica (what some indígenas jokingly called the indigenous United Nations) was the coordinating body that ignored nation-state boundaries and advocated for the rights of indigenous peoples across the Amazon region.45 Though controversial in some indigenous circles, coica presented new forms of organizing, defining identity, and analyzing problems for Indians. Oxfam USA, a Boston-based ngo, was a human rights and famine relief organization seeking to address cultural, social, and economic inequalities across the globe. Along with a handful of U.S. and European ngos, Oxfam was a long-time advocate and supporter of indigenous rights and the indigenous movement in Ecuador. Acción Ecológica was arguably the most radical environmental organization in 82 crude chronicles

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Ecuador at the time fighting for social and environmental justice. Since its founding in 1987, Acción Ecológica had developed networks with indigenous and colonist organizations throughout the Oriente to monitor oil activity and advocated for the environmental, health, and land rights of local communities. The unexpected guests entered the hall as Leonardo stood in front of the Assembly drawing a map of Pastaza on large sheets of butcherblock paper. Using colored markers, Leonardo drew major rivers running through the province, located each community represented in the Villano Assembly, and demarcated arco’s oil concession and well sites. He repeated words I had now heard many times: ‘‘Petroleum doesn’t affect just one community, it affects all of us.’’ Ironically, a helicopter flew overhead. ‘‘Helicopters fly by every hour,’’ shouted Leonardo over the receding roar. ‘‘Soon the drilling will stop. Neither Pandanuque nor a few outlying communities can decide the future of petroleum for all of Pastaza. The government has divided our territories into blocks. But those blocks make no sense. Ñucanchi shuc llacta, shuc allpa man. Our pueblo, our territory is one.’’ He repeated in Spanish, ‘‘If we begin to defend these [land] blocks, there will be chaos. If we allow for division within indigenous territory, we will be divided. We demand recognition as a pueblo, una nacionalidad, as a people whose ancestral territories are one.’’ opip members used the term territorio (territory) to denote ancestral space, the site of historically belonging within a lived landscape. Territorio could not be bought or sold; it embodied a social category of identity/locality, habitus/habitat, not an economic category of wealth and possession. Much more than signifying the physical and material contours of a region, territorio encompasses moralcosmological and political-economic complexes that shape identity and social relations. According to federation leaders, indigenous territory was both a practical and conceptual realm, extending at times over multiple river basins in which overlapping property regimes could coexist, yet over which a distinct nationality held control. This understanding was radically different from the rationally calculated scientific blocks that ierac codified and incarcerated through lines on a map. Far from being an ancient social fact, however, ‘‘territory’’ was itself a recent construction. While the concept resonated with culturally grounded, historical understandings and social relations in the Oriente, territorio as a political construct had emerged from Indian leadership in the mid-1970s. Naturalized as it was with a historical crude excesses 83

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imprint, and imbued with a purported authenticity that granted it legitimacy and weight, territorio was a key ideological component in a process of nacionalidad-making.46 Within the concept of territorio, decision-making over processes affecting multiple inhabitants required the participation of the majority. According to opip, Indians espousing the federation’s politics had just as much right to determine what was to occur in their lands as individuals who supported arco’s presence in Villano. While dicip’s concerns might be of special consideration, proximity in and of itself granted no special rights. The presence of the national/international delegation at the Assembly reflected growing networks of coordinated action with and through the pan-Indian movement. These new alliances and coalitions traversed time zones and power zones, often slipping through but never transcending the grasp of both the state and multinationals. They represented a politics articulated through multiple tactics, across intersecting temporalities, and along different fronts. Lorena, the activist from Acción Ecológica, underscored perhaps most clearly the international character and the global awareness of indigenous Amazonian struggles: ‘‘Though you are here in the middle of the selva, in the heart of Villano, you are not alone. An international alliance with el pueblo Amazónico is surfacing. I bring with me a message of solidarity from forty international environmental, human rights, and development organizations who have gathered together to form the Amazon Coalition.47 Your struggle is not isolated. Many eyes around the world are scrutinizing petroleum operations. . . . Across the globe multinationals are complicit in dividing, assassinating, destroying [local life ways].’’ In the minds of opip leaders and collaborators, late 1993 constituted a ‘‘unique moment’’ for confronting arco and supporting proopip indígenas in Villano. On November 1, Cofán Indians occupied and halted a Petroecuador well (Paujil-1) in their territory (Cuyabeno Reserve) in Sucumbios Province, demanding that the company implement environmental precautions and monitoring. On November 3, Ecuadorian lowland indígenas and colonos filed a $1.5 billion dollar class-action suit against Texaco in the New York Federal Court for alleged environmental and health damage in what were then Napo and Sucumbios provinces.48 Furthermore, conaie and Acción Ecológica had triggered a public debate throughout the country that challenged changes in the Hydrocarbon Law toward greater liber84

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figure 12. Leonardo Viteri speaking to the Villano Assembly. Suzana Sawyer, 1993.

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alization and privatization. Because of these recent events, both the state and multinationals were wary—nerviosísimos (extremely nervous) was the word opip leaders used—of local community action. Although arco was opip’s most immediate concern, there was more to come. Using the bright red marker that outlined arco’s Block 10, Leonardo added three more concessions on the butcher block paper. ‘‘We are at the doors of the Séptima Ronda,’’ Leonardo reminded, referring to the seventh round of oil concession bidding scheduled to begin the following month. ‘‘The government plans to license three, perhaps four, more 200,000-hectare oil concessions in Pastaza Province. This was cause for ashca preocupación [great worry]—for where there is now no block, soon there will be. This is all the more reason to force arco to talk now.’’ ‘‘Currently,’’ Leonardo observed, ‘‘arco controls the dicip leaders who dictate what happens in Villano. . . . But the people near the oil wells do not own this land. Nor does petroleum simply affect one community. arco’s [concession] is 200,000 hectares; many of us manage this land and many of our lives will be affected [by petroleum]. Three individuals directing dicip cannot decide the future of petroleum [activity] in our territory. Since more concessions are bound to come, it is critical that arco be made an example of how oil must work in [indigenous] territories.’’ crude excesses 85

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Clausura Unlike the 1992 march, the pilgrimage to Villano did not consume national attention. It was a moment of indigenous introspection, not of public spectacle. The Villano Assembly revealed the fractured, contradictory, and complex mosaic of indigenous consciousness, not a unified indigenous voice. There were no easy prescriptions on how most effectively to confront the realpolitik of multinational oil operations and indigenous unity and disunity within Pastaza. With the aid of the state, corporate capital emerged as a new site of governance, of ensuring the conduct of conduct among some— inscribing new senses of self, property, and resource use into indigenous bodies through a liberal rhetoric of work and progress. Indians who self-identified as members of dicip believed that the land blocks inscribed on the state’s adjudication map designated their new discrete and autonomous property. They were not as opipaffiliated Indians imagined part of the Quichua nationality’s territory. The lines on the state’s map and the multinational corporation’s actions served as techniques of enframing. They divided, contained, and naturalized as neutral new juridical divisions and the alliances and allegiances they formed. In the process, they exacerbated divisions and incited political factionalism within and among indigenous communities. Assuredly, antagonism and division were not new in Pastaza. Gender, class, age, ethnic, and religious differences already infused cross-cutting cleavages among and within indigenous communities. But at this particular historical conjuncture, arco’s petroleum operations disrupted previously understood— though not universally sanctioned—spheres of authority and conferred a distinct power on a formerly marginal group. On the closing night of the Villano Assembly, I sat under a precariously hung lightbulb on the veranda of Santa Cecilia’s meetinghouse. I read the Villano Declaration while Esperanza—the Assembly’s secretary and one of only two indigenous females working among the opip leadership—struck the stiff keys of the federation’s manual typewriter. A few opip leaders were compiling the final list of participants. Below us, couples danced to popular Ecuadorian tunes while others sat encircling them on the amphitheater benches. Beyond, fading into the darkness, clusters of men stood drinking, conversing, laughing. ‘‘Seems people are enjoying themselves,’’ I said absent-mindedly, wondering if in my exhausted state I would sleep despite the blaring of one of my least favorite music genres. ‘‘Do you 86

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realize who’s here?’’ Esperanza asked. ‘‘Where?’’ I responded. ‘‘Here at the clausura?’’ Among the clusters of men hovering in the shadows of night were opip and dicip ‘‘members’’ exchanging stories, exchanging rotgut, exchanging laughter. Divisions were real. As the dispute between opip and dicip demonstrates, no pure politics emerged ontologically from being indio: from having been born, grown up, and grown old in Pastaza. The historical accident of living in the same region of the world, experiencing shared histories of oppression, participating in similar livelihood practices, and speaking the same language imputed no common essence. There was nothing inevitable about an indigenous politics of opposition; it had to be produced. But then, such was also the case with an indigenous politics of compliance. Indigenous identity was anything but stable.

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3. NEOLIBERAL IRONIES

marco yelled at the top of his lungs as he leaned out the seventhstory window of a tall building in downtown Quito: ‘‘Jodidos, Si! Resignados, No! ’’ (Screwed, Yes! Resigned, No!). It was January 24, 1994, one month after the Villano Assembly, and the inauguration day of the Séptima Ronda de Licitación, Ecuador’s seventh round of oil concession bidding. Marco’s easygoing laugh drifted down to the street level as he secured conaie’s large billowing flag across the building’s facade. He waved as I took his picture from below. In coordination with conaie, confeniae, and Acción Ecológica activists, Marco (along with other opip members) had occupied Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Mines. Approximately twenty individuals had joined him and positioned themselves inside the ministerial building, taking hold of the Minister’s chambers on the seventh floor. conaie’s flag, the Tahuantinsuyu mosaic of indigenous pride that flowed into a rainbow of colors, signaled that protesters had successfully infiltrated the ministry and that they would not budge until the minister agreed to discuss their demands.1 Outside on the street below, Héctor Villamil stood in the flatbed of a pickup truck. In front of him, 150 indígenas had linked their arms to form a human chain and impede all traffic into and out of the ministry building. In the city park across the way, demonstrators pitched tents and protest banners, much as opip members did during the 1992 march, to register their conviction for their cause. This was opip’s second mobilization to Quito, though of a much humbler scale.2 This time, instead of fighting for legal rights to their lands, opip members fought to control activity within them. ‘‘With reason we oppose oil activity in the Oriente,’’ Héctor affirmed. ‘‘Petroleum has meant misery for our people.’’ He spoke through a battered megaphone, addressing a crowd of protesters and as many curious onlookers. Eager to gain public support and pre-

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empt detractors, Héctor continued, ‘‘This action affirms our democratic aspirations, for being counted—having our voice heard and our concerns addressed—is precisely what we seek.’’ Within the hour, television and newspaper reporters arrived on the scene, attracting even more attention in this congested sector of downtown Quito. As photographers clicked away, Héctor read from conaie’s ‘‘Manifesto’’: ‘‘The toma [takeover] is a peaceful action to denounce, and to demand changes in, [the state’s] petroleum policies. We insist that the life and territory of the nacionalidades indígenas be respected.’’ 3 The Séptima Ronda marked the occasion when multinational corporations across the globe would bid for rights to explore for and extract petroleum from ten new oil concessions in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Four of the ten new concessions were located in Pastaza Province, all in indigenous territory. With each new concession encompassing 200,000 hectares, this meant that the state had targeted two million more hectares (or approximately 800 square miles) of Ecuador’s rain forest lands for so-called petroleum development. These lands, of course, were home to thousands of indígenas and colonos. If future multinational oil operations were to mirror those in the northern Oriente over the previous twenty-five years, indigenous and nonindigenous peoples would find themselves increasingly mired in a conflict-ridden and contaminated landscape. The ministry occupation sought to interrupt this seeming inevitability. Indígenas and environmentalists opposed increased oil activity and proposed measures to mitigate the negative social and ecological consequences of existing operations. Tensions were high during the five-hour standoff at the ministry. Plainclothes security police communicated on walkie-talkies and cell phones as they monitored demonstrators and the growing crowd.4 Like all government buildings, the Ministry of Energy and Mines had ample security. Yet, despite threats to the contrary, officials were reluctant to deploy its force. This was, after all, the inauguration day of the Séptima Ronda, the day when oil executives from across the globe had gathered in Quito to explore the prospects of investing capital in Ecuador. Keen on attracting foreign investors, the ministry did not wish to call undue attention to any public opposition to future oil activity. Police intervention could lead to bad press, and bad press could put a damper on the ministry’s party. Even in moments of confrontation—as when guards attempted to stop a group of Quito youth known by some as the grafiti-guerrilleros 92 crude chronicles

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from spray-painting the ministry—the police backed down. Within minutes the ministry’s walls dripped with the black and red letters, ‘‘Fluye el petroleo, sangra la selva’’ (As oil flows, the jungle bleeds). The Séptima Ronda embodied the first public spectacle in Ecuador to codify recent changes in the Hydrocarbon (or Oil) Law. Only two months earlier, the National Congress had enacted reforms to the nation’s petroleum legislation. In line with directives from the International Monetary Fund (imf) and the World Bank, these changes echoed the neoliberal mantra that reverberated throughout the continent: ‘‘privatization, liberalization, deregulation, decentralization.’’ According to the Ecuadorian president and proponents of economic globalization, these changes established the legal framework necessary to ‘‘modernize’’ the oil sector. Protesters, however, believed otherwise. Under the watchful eyes of security guards and the threat of police retaliation, indígenas challenged these recent legislative changes and questioned the intensification of oil operations that the Séptima Ronda would unleash. This chapter explores the contradictions inherent in a neoliberal agenda. In general, policies such as privatization, deregulation, liberalization, and decentralization seek to stimulate international investment, boost the gnp, reduce state expenditures, and increase governmental efficiency. Like proponents of neoliberalism across the globe, the Ecuadorian executive branch believed that neoliberal reforms would stabilize the national economy, lead to progress, and thus establish the conditions essential for democracy to flourish. Yet, contrary to its intent, neoliberal changes provoked a crisis of governance and representation in Ecuador. As the state threatened to retract from its role, however theoretical, of protecting its citizens and transnational business was given more independence, citizens felt they had fewer channels through which to voice their concerns. In the void created by this crisis of representation, an ever more sophisticated and organized indigenous movement produced disruptive and defiant subjects. Legislative reforms seeking to modernize and normalize the Ecuadorian populace ironically helped produce transgressive subaltern subjects.

Liberal Legality and the Hydrocarbon Law

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The January 1994 ministry occupation occurred against the backdrop of recent changes in the Hydrocarbon Law and of a quartercentury of oil activity in the northern Oriente. This context is essenneoliberal ironies 93

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tial for understanding the relationship between neoliberal reform and popular opposition. As mentioned earlier, in 1967, Texaco discovered the first major oil reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon, launching the nation into the industrial world. Amazonia—historically classified by the Ecuadorian state as tierras baldías or tierras salvajes (barren or savage wastelands) in need of civilization—soon became the source of Ecuador’s black gold. By 1972, the Trans-Andean pipeline was completed and the first barrels of crude flowed from Amazonian fields to a Pacific port. In less than a year, Ecuador joined opec as its second smallest producer. The flow of crude set the pulse of national modernization. At the time of the ministry occupation in early 1994, oil revenues accounted for approximately one-half of the state’s budget and approximately fifty cents of each oil dollar went to pay the international debt.5 All major hydrocarbon reserves reside in the Ecuadorian Amazon—home to a million indigenous and nonindigenous Ecuadorians. In the early 1990s, economic analysts forecasted a grim future for Ecuador’s petroleum sector. Economic reports warned that the levels of known petroleum reserves would soon diminish. Experts estimated that in December 1992, 3.2 billion barrels of proven oil reserves remained beneath Ecuadorian soil.6 At the time, 1.95 billion barrels was under production. That left only 1.3 billion barrels in reserves yet to be exploited. Furthermore, as the per-barrel price of crude oil fell on the global market in the early 1990s, Ecuador garnered less revenue from its production. Some speculated that Ecuador’s petroleum reserves would be depleted in twenty years.7 While these doomsday projections were deemed to be exaggerated by some (including arco oilmen), together with the falling price of crude, they instilled and escalated fears in Ecuador that the nation was in imminent danger. Analysts maintained that in this new global economic order, the country needed resuscitating. As reported in an Ecuadorian oil trade journal, intensified oil activity would do the trick; it would ‘‘create employment, transfer technology, and generate economic resources for national development.’’ 8 Lacking economic resources, however, Ecuador depended heavily on foreign capital to boost oil flows and thus to stimulate the national economy. Multinational petroleum prowess was the only assurance, it would seem, for pumping more viscous wealth (what a number of statesmen called that ‘‘vital fluid’’) into la patria. Many Ecuadorian elites expressed considerable apprehension, 94 crude chronicles

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however, about the country’s ability to attract foreign capital. In early 1994, the Economist Intelligence Unit (the research publication of the Economist magazine) rated Ecuador as a ‘‘high-risk’’ country for foreign investment.9 The respected economic assessor described Ecuador as ‘‘politically unstable,’’ on the verge of a potential coup d’etat, and as very volatile economically, being the country with the highest per capita foreign debt ($12 billion and rising) in Latin America. Two other European reports, Le Monde and Cambio 16, corroborated the ‘‘high-risk’’ investment rating.10 Echoing the irritation of World Bank officials, international analysis concluded that Ecuador’s ‘‘weak and incompetent government’’ discouraged any commitment of further foreign capital. Between 1985 and 1992, a couple of oil companies had indeed discovered new reserves of crude oil in the Oriente. Yet these reserves largely contained heavy crude (10–18 degrees gravity api) and were far from existing infrastructure (i.e., roads, pipeline, and services).11 Consequently, these corporations had declared their discoveries noncommercial.12 Those few multinational corporations (including arco) that did express interest in developing the oil reserves they had discovered maintained that for oil companies to carry out additional exploration, Ecuador needed to enact legal changes that would ‘‘provide adequate incentives . . . along the lines of exploration incentives currently in effect in other countries seeking foreign investment.’’ 13 As an arco official stated in an early 1993 article published in the Oil & Gas Journal, one of the petroleum industry’s most reputable weeklies, ‘‘Ecuador has been fortunate to possess hydrocarbon rich basins, but to attract long term investment, Ecuador must establish an attractive and stable fiscal environment. . . . [A number of ] disincentives must be recognized and rectified to attract significant exploration and production capital.’’ 14 Not surprisingly, transnational capitalists and imf and World Bank officials applauded President Sixto Durán Ballén when in his 1992 inauguration speech he promised to boost the level of Ecuador’s petroleum reserves by establishing more attractive incentives for multinational investment. First, in November 1992, soon after being sworn into office, President Durán Ballén withdrew Ecuador from opec to produce in excess of the country’s production quota.15 This made Ecuador the first nation to resign from and thus renounce the cartel. In 1990, the opec production quota for Ecuador was 275,000 barrels a day.16 Once released from quotas, Ecuador’s oil production jumped sharply to 373,000 barrels a day by 1993.17 Second, in neoliberal ironies 95

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November 1993, Durán Ballén ushered amendments to the Hydrocarbon Law through the national congress. These changes constituted the primary legal mechanism ‘‘establish[ing] an attractive and stable fiscal environment’’ for foreign capital. Both moves sent a clear message to global capital: Ecuador was embracing a ‘‘free’’ market economy, unfettered by prior protections and restrictions. Drafted in close association with World Bank advisors, the amended Hydrocarbon Law aimed, in the words of the Minister of Energy and Mines, to ‘‘reduce the state monopoly in every activity, except with respect to its property ownership of subsoil resources.’’ 18 Legal changes dictated diminished state intervention and greater private involvement. They sought to deregulate the price of gasoline (thus cutting state subsidies and imposing taxes and duties); to grant marginal fields (i.e., reserves previously discovered by Petroecuador but not yet produced) to private companies; to allow private corporations to exploit gas in the Guayaquil Gulf (a right previously reserved solely for Petroecuador); to allow private corporations to participate in the expansion and operation of the TransEcuadorian Pipeline; and, importantly, to introduce a new type of exploration and exploitation contract—‘‘production-sharing contracts.’’ Under the preexisting arrangement—‘‘risk-service contracts’’— foreign companies rendered their services to the Ecuadorian government in return for a profit share of discovered oil. Multinationals engaged in exploration at their own risk (meaning at their own expense). If they did not find reserves of crude oil, their investment was for naught. If, however, they found oil, the Ecuadorian state reimbursed all exploration costs and paid multinationals for their services rendered (their profit share). For expenses to be reimbursed in the event of a discovery, corporations had to obtain approval from the state oil company for every expenditure made during exploration, even the most minor. Consequently, foreign interests regularly submitted reports to Petroecuador, and, at least theoretically, Petroecuador constantly monitored multinational activities where money was involved. With new production-sharing contracts, the surveillance of multinational activity would virtually disappear. Contracts were awarded to those companies that committed to investing the most capital, proposed the most elaborate exploration plans, and offered the state the best production-sharing deal. As no reimbursement of investment was involved, neither Petroecuador nor the Ministry of Energy and Mines needed to monitor investments and, con96

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sequently, multinational activity. As a ministry representative observed in an interview published in Energía: ‘‘the contractors [i.e., corporations] no longer need so much control and now have an incentive to minimize their costs.’’ 19 These changes were precisely what Indians and environmentalists feared. All existing contracts between multinational corporations and the Ecuadorian state—including arco’s risk-service contract—could be transformed into production-sharing contracts if so desired. The production-sharing contract was the new legally sanctioned arrangement under which multinational corporations conducted business. Through them, the government sought to lure more foreign investment and boost Ecuador’s reserves to four billion barrels.20 For this reason, the Séptima Ronda was highly symbolic for indigenous and environmental protesters. It marked the moment when petroleum companies would gain access to new oil concessions under more attractive, liberal terms. New contracts granted multinational corporations greater autonomy over their operations and a greater share in profits—what one former president referred to rather facetiously as ‘‘succulent incentives.’’ 21 But such incentives could only be realized by substantially altering relations between multinational corporations and the state, and between multinational corporations and local populations.

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a blinding sun reflected off the flatbed of the pickup truck where Héctor stood in front of the Ministry of Energy and Mines on January 24, 1994. He spoke passionately: ‘‘We must change the paternalistic and unequal relations that run through oil operations throughout the Oriente and we must stop the cultural and ecological chaos they produce. Changes to the Hydrocarbon Law will only aggravate this crude exploitation.’’ Indians and environmentalists were highly cynical about the new corporate contracts. Protesters both opposed the intensification of oil exploration and they objected to giving oil companies greater power, especially through incentives that encouraged a corporation to minimize its costs. As lowlanders’ experience with Texaco over the previous decades demonstrated, oil companies had perfected the art of disavowing any responsibility for the social and environmental degradation that their operations caused. Similarly, as opip’s experience with arco indicated, oil companies were adept in sidestepping dialog with and accountability toward local people. Behind Héctor, in the city park across the way, a banner susneoliberal ironies 97

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figure 13. Luís Macas and Rafael Pandam in the park across from the occupation of the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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pended between two trees captured demonstrators’ politics: ‘‘La defensa de la naturaleza y la justicia social son inseparables’’ (The defense of nature and social justice are inseparable). The struggles against social inequality and for environmental justice together formed the basis of dissent. Protesters’ principal demand condemned the Séptima Ronda and called for a fifteen-year moratorium on further petroleum exploration. Leonardo stood under the same banner as he spoke with a group of reporters later that afternoon. When asked about the logic of a fifteen-year moratorium, Leonardo set his piercing eyes on the reporter and calmly retorted, ‘‘Given the legacy of Texaco, how can anyone possibly believe that the conditions for safely expanding petroleum activity currently exist? A moratorium will provide the space for the Ecuadorian society to critically evaluate the impact of crude exploitation to date and to establish alternative policies and regulations that stop the continued indiscriminate and irrational exploitation of this nonrenewable resource.’’ Both the banner’s green letters and Leonardo’s voice exhorted a moral authority that was difficult to challenge. Other critics, in addition to indígenas and environmentalists, questioned Durán Ballén’s attempt to demonopolize, modernize, and privatize the hydrocarbon sector of the Ecuadorian economy.22 These critics likewise considered it dangerous to place ‘‘strategic state resources’’ in the hands of multinational corporations. In a published 98

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interview a former Minister of Energy and Mines under Ecuador’s military regime, Dr. Rafael Almeida, noted: ‘‘The constitutional precept that establishes subsoil resources . . . as the inalienable and imprescriptible property of the state is not merely . . . superficial rhetoric. It is a principle . . . that seeks to protect non-renewable riches for the common good . . . [and] the future development of coming generations in our country.’’ 23 Since the ‘‘rhythm’’ at which the state ‘‘depletes oil reserves’’ would ‘‘not always be concordant with the rates that a private company might consider optimum,’’ Almeida concluded that ‘‘the privatization of the hydrocarbon sector’’ was ‘‘unsuitable [inconveniente] to the interests of the state, of the nation as a whole.’’ Corporate interests primarily seek to secure the ‘‘best economic rents’’ regardless of whether or not ‘‘recoupable reserves would be depleted prematurely.’’ 24 This strategy, it would seem, worked against the interests of the Ecuadorian people.

Toxic Terror

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Hanging alongside conaie’s Tahuantinsuyu flag on the facade of the Ministry of Energy and Mines was a banner with the words ‘‘DON’T BUY TEXACO’’ cracking the middle of Texaco’s red star insignia. Underneath read the caption, ‘‘Texaco Destroyed Our Amazonia; It Must Pay for the Damage.’’ This was Acción Ecológica’s banner to boycott Texaco. On the street below, a young indigenous man held a sign that read, ‘‘No queremos otro Lago Agrio’’ (We don’t want another Lago Agrio). Lago Agrio was an oil town in the northern Oriente that Texaco established in the mid-1960s as the company’s base of operations. Despite being located in an oil rich region, Lago Agrio was (and is) poverty ridden. In 1994, roughly twenty-five years after its inception, Lago Agrio was still marked by potholed, crudestrewn, muddy streets, open sewers, and dilapidated housing with rebar jutting from half-built buildings up to the sky. It symbolized all the ills of oil work—what conaie characterized as ‘‘poles of disease, contamination, prostitution, and drug trafficking,’’ not ‘‘poles of development and modernization.’’ 25 Radiating out from Lago Agrio, Texaco indelibly transformed the northern rain forest, scoring it with thousands of miles of seismic grids, over three hundred oil wells, more than six hundred open waste pits, numerous pumping stations, an oil refinery, and the barebones infrastructure essential for petroleum operations. A network neoliberal ironies 99

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figure 14. conaie’s flag and anti-Texaco banner hanging outside the Ministry of Energy and Mines during the occupation. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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of roads linked oil towns and facilitated the homesteading of the region by over 200,000 poor mestizo farmers or colonos.26 As their lands dwindled from encroachment, many northern Oriente indígenas increasingly joined the economic ranks of the nonindigenous, semi-urbanized and rural peasants. The history of Texaco’s operations in Ecuador sets the stage for understanding indígenas’ and environmentalists’ protest against neoliberal designs to intensify petroleum operations in the Oriente. Eager to develop its hydrocarbon resources, Ecuador had historically put scant restrictions on multinational operations in the Oriente. As such, Texaco set the protocol for industrial operations. Throughout its twenty-eight years of oil activities (1964–1992), Texaco took negligible environmental precautions, allowing the company to engage in practices that, while illegal at home, boosted corporate revenues by the billions; they reduced the per-barrel costs of production by three to four dollars.27 Cost-cutting practices pervaded all aspects of Texaco’s operations: seismic exploration, exploratory drilling, extractive drilling, processing facilities, pipeline maintenance, and pumping stations. At each juncture Texaco employed minimal equipment, outmoded technology, and cheap labor. Unmonitored industrial activity over the past quarter-century contaminated water and soil systems and detrimentally affected local populations throughout the region.28 100 crude chronicles

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While such practices were sufficiently effective to start and keep oil flowing, they were environmentally and socially lethal. The company’s seismic lines and detonations essential for determining subsoil strata formations ripped thousands of miles of swaths and detonated thousands of pounds of dynamite across inhabited landscapes, irrespective of the location of homesteads, crops, or livestock.29 Environmental standards at Texaco’s drilling and processing facilities were deplorable. Alongside each exploratory well lay huge toxic earth pits. Into these Texaco regularly dumped untreated the chemical muds and industrial solvents essential for drilling, as well as the sludge and formation waters that had surfaced from oil reservoirs along with crude.30 When an oil well was proved to be productive, Texaco excavated even more pits at processing facilities where crude was separated out from the waters, sands, and gases also released from the earth. Unlined and open waste pits served merely as holding receptacles for eventual toxic seepage and overflow. Even during the early years of Texaco’s operations in the Oriente, it was already standard industrial practice in the United States to reinject highly toxic formation waters and subterranean sands back into the earth at least one mile below its surface, to process chemical solvents until they were environmentally safe, and to refine subterranean gases. In Ecuador, however, Texaco poured oil wastes into pits and periodically burned off their thick crude residue; the burning off of crude led to the phenomenon of ‘‘black rain’’—what some indigenous people called the ‘‘bleeding of the skies’’ with hydrocarbon soot. Similarly, volatile gases flamed freely into the atmosphere twenty-four hours a day. Researchers estimate that Texaco’s operations generated up to 4.3 million gallons of hazardous waste daily over a period of twenty years.31 Between 1972 and 1990 the Texaco-operated Trans-Andean pipeline spilled an estimated 16.8 million gallons of crude into Amazonian headwaters—over one and a half times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez.32 Estimates for secondary pipelines compete with that figure. Oil spills are an inherent risk in the petroleum business, and Texaco claimed that ‘‘natural’’ factors—especially the 1987 earthquake—were responsible for the major portion of crude that was spilled. Yet economic factors determined how the company chose to mitigate oil slicks or deal with them should they occur. Texaco invested minimal resources in maintaining deteriorating pipelines, and ‘‘clean-up’’ of petroleum spills often took the form of covering them up. With Oriente rainfall reaching between neoliberal ironies 101

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figure 15. Leonardo Viteri in front of a crude waste pit in Napo Province. Giovanna Tassi, 1990.

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four and five meters a year, buried oil spills and inundated pits have resulted in alarming toxic seepage throughout the northern Oriente. The fallout has been fatal; industrial wastes from oil operations contain known carcinogens that bioaccumulate. Crude oil’s most toxic components (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [pahs] and volatile organic compounds [vocs]) have been shown to negatively affect the reproductive and cellular development of all life forms and to lead to skin disease, reproductive abnormalities, nerve damage, and various forms of cancer among humans.33 Beyond the hazardous elements found in crude, drilling and production processes likewise generate toxic pollutants containing carcinogenic heavy metals, strong acids, and concentrated salts. Such pollutants are largely found in drilling muds (used to lubricate, cool, and control pressure during perforation) and industrial solvents. The 1994 ministry occupation coincided with growing evidence of the ecological dangers associated with petroleum production. Industrial accidents were rampant—a fact only brought further home when, on the day after the National Congress approved changes to the Hydrocarbon Law, a former Texaco well exploded into flames. The blaze was uncontrollable for a week and was finally extinguished by the Red Devils, a Houston-based company that was one of the teams sent to quell the Gulf War fires in 1991. A growing number of studies document the detrimental and deadly effects of over a quarter-century of crude seepage on Amazonian populations. In 102 crude chronicles

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figure 16. Oil spill from Texaco operations in Sucumbios Province. CEDIS, 1990.

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1992, cordavi (Corporación de Investigaciones Jurídicas y de Defensa de la Vida, a Quito-based human rights group) conducted studies showing that water in rivers near oil camps had a concentration of hydrocarbons 2,000 times that considered tolerable for aquatic ecosystems.34 In their 1993 investigation, Acción Ecológica reported that local inhabitants complained of an increased incidence of headaches, fevers, tumors, and miscarriages and skin and intestinal disease.35 The Center for Economic and Social Rights recorded contaminants in drinking water that reached levels 1,000 times the safety standards recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.36 A study by the Department of Tropical Medicine at the University of London reported that cancer rates in some colono communities exceeded standard cancer rates by up to 30 times.37 In July 1990, on my first tour of the region where Texaco worked, I crouched at the edge of a drilling waste pit and watched Leonardo use a sturdy stick to pull up the thick layer of crude on its surface. neoliberal ironies 103

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‘‘Qué horror! ’’ Leonardo murmured under his breath. At the time Leonardo was working with conaie, heading the confederation’s commission to investigate the effects of petroleum operations. Over the next hour, we walked the length of a secondary pipeline trying to locate the source of a recent leak. The company had hired local community men to contain and gather up as much of the seeped crude as possible. Hired hands were instructed to bury the rest. Every couple of feet, Leonardo punctured the earth with his stick. At one point he stopped dead in his tracks. As I followed his sight line, crude oil began to ooze from the ochre-colored soil where his stick pierced the earth. A number of women in the nearby colono community had complained to health workers at the local dispensary that their children were sick. ‘‘My huahua has not been well for a week now,’’ Sandra said as she sat in a shallow river washing clothes. She and her husband had moved to the northern Oriente from the coast about five years earlier. She stopped her chores and unwrapped the swaddled infant on her back. Small welts covered the little body; the child’s fingernails and toenails had fallen out. ‘‘This all happened in the last few days,’’ Sandra exclaimed. ‘‘I think it’s getting worse. Now she has fevers at night.’’ The effect of gross environmental contamination came further to the fore when in early November 1993, only weeks before the Hydrocarbon Law was amended, a Philadelphia law firm filed a $1.5 billion class-action suit against Texaco Inc. in a New York federal court on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian citizens.38 The plaintiffs sought reparations for health problems and environmental degradation resulting from over twenty-five years of Texaco’s petroleum activity in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The lawsuit alleged that Texaco made strategic decisions in its New York headquarters to minimize costs and maximize corporate profits by using substandard technology for oil operations in Ecuador. Negligent industrial practices and deteriorating equipment severely contaminated the environment and endangered local people. In 1994, one of the chief spokespersons for the plaintiffs walked with me behind his house ten kilometers outside Lago Agrio. A film of oil coated the water he pulled up from a well he recently drilled after the local stream became contaminated. ‘‘We live in a state of toxic terror,’’ he said. Around the time of the ministry occupation, conaie maintained in a letter to the Ecuadorian president that the Séptima Ronda was an act of outright aggression, ‘‘a declaration of war’’ and ‘‘a violation 104

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of the indigenous peoples that amounted to ecological terror and cultural violence.’’ 39 The reference to ‘‘ecological terror’’ brought to mind a piece of graffiti commonly sighted on walls across Quito in 1993 and 1994. Suspended in a drifting balloon—as if out of reach, untouchable—were the words Terrorismo Ecológico X A C O While the graffiti specifically attacked Texaco, its indictment extended to every oil company working in the Oriente. While signs on U.S. pumping stations warned North Americans that gasoline contains known carcinogens and cautioned them against inhaling gas fumes while filling their tanks, the graffiti on the walls of the Ministry of Energy and Mines denounced crude’s carnage in Ecuador: ‘‘Fluye el petroleo, sangra la selva’’ (As oil flows, the jungle bleeds). Over a quarter-century of petroleum production had led to anything but the ‘‘modernization’’ and ‘‘well-being’’ of Amazonian inhabitants, indigenous and nonindigenous alike. Rather, oil operations had exacerbated the poverty and exploitation of the region and its peoples. Far from infusing new vitality into the body national, crude exploitation tore at the margins of the nation and induced hemorrhaging. Thousands of Indians and Spanish-speaking peasants bathed, washed clothes, fished, and cleaned food in Amazonian rivers whose waters and sediments reeked of toxins.40 Were these echoes from the epigraph framing the Guayasamin mosaic, where the sacrifice of Indians was essential for Ecuador to attain its destiny? Oil operations seemed to depend on dividing practices that marked those chosen to carry out Ecuador’s destiny and those marked as racially inferior waste peoples who would be left to die. The ruling regime could claim that more robust oil operations would invigorate la patria, only by disavowing the fatal discharge that such activity released and by disavowing the subjectivities of Oriente people. To appropriate phrasing from Ann Stoler, the excesses of petroleum development did ‘‘away with life in the name of securing it.’’ 41

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Savage States On the evening of the Ministry occupation, newspaper headlines read: ‘‘Lanzas vs. Petróleo’’ (Spears vs. Petroleum) and ‘‘Tribus Contra Oro Negro’’ (Tribes Against Black Gold).42 By depicting Indians metonymically as ‘‘spears’’ and calling them ‘‘tribes’’—one of the more pejorative terms for identifying Amazonian Indians—the newspaper leaned on commonly held racist beliefs. Dehistoricized as anachronistic ‘‘tribes,’’ indigenous Amazonians were forest-dwelling savages and obstacles to ‘‘modernization.’’ Caricatured through obsolete technology and as being opposed to the development of Ecuador’s principal source of wealth (‘‘Spears vs. Petroleum’’), indígenas, it would appear, aimed to thwart the growth of the nation—they were opposed to the very fluid that represented the life force of la patria. The large photograph and the article below one of the headlines might have assuaged reactionary fears. The photo was of Rafael Pandam, the vice president of conaie and a prominent Indian leader: his long black hair draped across his shoulder, and his toucan headdress glistened in the sun. Tall and proud, Rafael cut a handsome figure of the ‘‘noble savage.’’ Yet, in being captured busily writing notes, dressed in a neatly pressed white shirt, sporting a stylish watch and large gold ring, Rafael seemed anything but an anachronistic, spear-chucking, forest-dwelling savage. Indeed, the article quoted him as saying that ‘‘protesters are not against development’’ (Ultimas Noticias, January 25, 1994). Rather, ‘‘they object to the model of economic globalization that the government has promoted in the name of modernization.’’ As it stood, according to Rafael, Amazonian Indians had yet to encounter ‘‘any good from so-called petroleum development and the Séptima Ronda offers not one single guarantee to the pueblos and nacionalidades indígenas.’’ Intensified oil activity only threatened to further disrupt the lives of indigenous people. After the five-hour standoff during the ministry occupation, protesters did finally condition a meeting with the Minister of Energy and Mines and his advisors.43 In his anger, the minister accused demonstrators of ‘‘illegally entering mi casa’’ (my house)—that is, the Ministry of Energy and Mines. In polite objection, Rafael reminded the minister that ‘‘this house [the Ministry] belongs to all’’—that is, to all Ecuadorian citizens. In a clever twist, Rafael noted that the selva, however, did not. It was not of the public realm. Rather, it had specific owners who inhabited its forested walls regardless of whether lands were legally titled or not. ‘‘La selva,’’ Rafael asserted, 106 crude chronicles

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‘‘is nuestra casa, Indians’ home and space of belonging. Any action by outsiders [be they state or multinational representatives] within indígenas’ casa necessitates negotiation with its owners. Trespassing—entering illegally, against our wishes—is precisely the crime committed when las compañías penetrate the selva.’’ 44 The interchange was telling. It revealed how race, class, and gender informed notions of citizenship and property. The minister suggested that a public space (the Ministry) belonged to him, a Harvardschooled lawyer of a blanco-elite family whose father headed the Ecuadorian Supreme Court. In claiming proprietorship, the minister thereby disavowed the citizenship of lowland Indians. A group marked as racially, socially, and economically inferior, possessing (as a whole) minimal formal education, and structurally marginalized from nodes of power, was denied its right of national belonging. Since according to the Constitution any individual born on Ecuadorian soil was a citizen (Article 6), the minister not only turned Amazonian Indians into noncitizens but also excluded them from the social fact of being born human within the borders of the Ecuadorian state. As reflected in the minister’s language, neoliberalism relied on exclusionary cultural principles that did more than divide Ecuadorian elites from the poor, disenfranchised, and dangerous waste populations. It determined whose claims to property rights, citizenship, and public relief were worthy of recognition and whose were not. These racialized distinctions went beyond marking difference; they rationalized the hierarchies of privilege and profit. They reaffirmed the cultural trappings essential for legitimate subjects of la patria and rendered the intellectual foundation for postcolonial neoliberal rule.45 The State entities increasingly disavowed their social responsibility and set the framework for hyperexploitation. To increase the flow of capital into and crude oil out of Ecuador, the executive and foreign corporations needed particular disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms in place. Yet, the indigenousenvironmental protest had managed to interrupt processes of accumulation and production. Protesters temporarily held the minister ‘‘hostage’’—forcing him to delay the inauguration ceremonies for the Séptima Ronda—when they occupied the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Furthermore, protesters’ action called to mind their other numerous occupations and demonstrations in Quito and their increasing obstruction of oil rigs and facilities in the Amazon. A neoliberal ironies 107

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number of recent indigenous protests had caught the public’s eye. Over the previous two months, there had been, as I mentioned before, the class-action lawsuit against Texaco, the occupation of an oil well by the Cofan, and opip’s Villano Assembly to protest arco activities. Even the Oil & Gas Journal noted: ‘‘Despite efforts by the government to increase private participation in Ecuador’s upstream [i.e., exploration/exploitation] activities, an unsettling note for prospective investors is mounting opposition by Amazon Indians.’’ 46

Multilateral Banks, Deregulation, and Popular Protest One month after the ministry occupation, in late February 1994, I sat next to Leonardo and Héctor on an airplane flight bound for the United States. ‘‘We’re going to tell them,’’ Leonardo joked when I ask how he and Héctor would present their case to the World Bank. ‘‘ ‘Look, we are the representatives of opip—la Organizacion Petrolera de Indígenas de Pastaza!’’ (the Petroleum Organization of the Pastaza Indians!). The play was on opep, the Spanish acronym for opec, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. ‘‘Hey, Héctor,’’ Leo said before taking a gulp of soda, ‘‘where’s your corona [feathered headdress]? You don’t look like an Amazonian.’’ In truth, Héctor was a bit concerned about his corona. He searched delicately for it in his Wall Street look-alike briefcase. The feathered headdress was a gift handed down from his great-uncle, and there had been debate about whether or not U.S. customs officials would take it away, since it was made from the feathers of exotic tropical birds. Having found the headdress, Héctor carefully unwrapped it and solemnly fastened it around his forehead. Turning to me and holding a toothpick in his hand as if it were a spear, he rather vigorously remarked, ‘‘Yes, we’ll just demand that the World Bank give us a loan to drill in their territorio!’’ I burst out laughing. Héctor and Leonardo were a team. They each had the capacity to both embody and caricature stereotypical global images of Amazon Indians. The two opip leaders were going to the United States as part of an Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Tour sponsored by the Seventh Generation Fund, a U.S.-based Native American foundation. They were intent upon using their seven-city tour as an opportunity to build international support for opip.47 Their first stop was Washington, D.C. There the Bank Information Center, a Washington-based ngo that acted as a watchdog on the World Bank, had arranged for Héctor and Leonardo to meet with World Bank officials.48 The World 108 crude chronicles

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Bank was close to finalizing a technical assistance loan (Public Enterprises Reform Technical Assistance Project 6ecuapa103) with Ecuador. That part of the loan designated for hydrocarbon reform ($13 million) sought to help implement neoliberal policy. In February 1994, Ecuador’s foreign debt had reached $12.9 billion; that was nearly double what it had been in 1982 ($6.6 billion).49 Given that this was the highest per capita foreign debt in Latin America, multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank, the imf, and the InterAmerican Development Bank (iadb) were keen on coordinating efforts to restructure the Ecuadorian economy and refinance its debt. All three banks imposed conditions on Ecuador to enact particular structural adjustment legislation and to implement neoliberal policies before obtaining further credit.50 The hydrocarbon sector of Ecuador’s economy was key to this endeavor. As outlined in an iadb report in July 1993, Ecuador needed ‘‘to step up oil exploration,’’ not only by establishing incentives for multinational corporations to increase their exploration and production activity, but also through legal reform that encouraged international corporate involvement in transporting, storing, and commercializing hydrocarbons.51 Two laws drafted in conjunction with World Bank advisors (the Modernization Law passed in October 1993 and the Hydrocarbon Law passed in November 1993) set the legal framework for institutionalizing neoliberal policies. In addition to establishing contracts more alluring to foreign investments (the basis of the Séptima Ronda), the Hydrocarbon Law allowed the government both to deregulate the domestic price of petrol by calibrating it to the international price of crude and to enable private companies to operate and further expand the Trans-Andean pipeline. In a small conference room on a brisk afternoon in late February, Héctor and Leonardo detailed their concerns to a World Bank officer over how the pending technical assistance loan would intensify hydrocarbon activity in the Oriente. In response, the Bank officer— the chief of the Regional Trade, Finance, and Private Sector Development Division—insisted that the loan was ‘‘simply a legal matter. It would not have any environmental impact in itself.’’ According to the official, the purpose of the loan was to demonopolize and modernize the hydrocarbon sector. Currently, he insisted, ‘‘there is a conflict of interest within Petroecuador because it is supposed to regulate production and yet at the same time it is a producer.’’ This confusion of roles apparently made Petroecuador both inefficient and ineffective. The technical assistance loan consequently sought ‘‘to separate the neoliberal ironies 109

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regulatory functions of Petroecuador from its productive functions [including the operation of Ecuador’s primary pipeline], and also to develop sector policies,’’ that is, deregulate the price of domestic gasoline. The Bank official vociferously insisted that the loan was not seeking to privatize Petroecuador.52 Revisions to the Hydrocarbon Law having passed, the loan would merely expedite the desired reforms. There was little doubt in opip leaders’ minds, however, that demonopolizing and deregulating Ecuador’s petroleum sector would have dire consequences for indigenous peoples and the rain forest. Even the World Bank’s Monthly Operational Summary reported that the loan was ‘‘to assist in developing a legal and regulatory framework permitting the restructuring of the energy sector, and promoting private sector participation in energy and other sectors of the economy.’’ 53 Despite the Bank officer’s insisting that the loan was merely ‘‘a legal matter’’ with neither social nor environmental effects, clearly ‘‘demonopolization’’ of Petroecuador implied that the state’s functions would be reduced and the private sector’s would be increased.54 Leonardo and Héctor’s visit to the World Bank was the first of three separate visits by delegations of Ecuadorian Indians in late winter and early spring 1994.55 Each delegation requested that the Bank reclassify the loan (from C to A) and that the Bank put into play its policy on indigenous peoples. As a category C loan—one that is ‘‘unlikely to have environmental impacts’’—the Bank could approve the technical assistance package without carrying out environmental impact assessment studies. As a category A loan—one ‘‘likely to have significant adverse impacts that may be sensitive, irreversible, and diverse’’—however, the Bank was self-mandated to complete thorough environmental impact studies on the potential effects of the loan.56 Similarly, the Bank’s ‘‘Operational Directive on Indigenous Peoples’’ mandated that the Bank carry out a social assessment on loans that could negatively affect indigenous communities and that it develop mitigating plans if deemed necessary. By couching its loan in procedural, technical, and legalistic terms, the World Bank could obviate its own more stringent environmental and social constraints.57 One area of critical concern in demonopolizing Petroecuador was the Trans-Andean pipeline.58 Constructed in 1972 and operated by Texaco between 1972 and 1990, the Sistema de Oleoducto Tran-Ecuatoriana (sote, Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline System) was the 110 crude chronicles

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highly coordinated system through which Ecuador’s lifeline pulsed. In 1990, Petroecuador took over the operation of sote. The state company maintained the pipeline and its pumping stations to guarantee a steady flow of oil over the Andes and regulated and administered the flow of crude from producing wells to refining facilities, storage tanks, and eventual export from the Pacific port of Balao. Proposals to demonopolize Petroecuador begged the question of who would operate sote and how. Since Ecuador’s crude production had nearly reached its capacity, Durán Ballén’s regime argued that to increase production the pipeline had to be expanded. In line with the agenda to ‘‘demonopolize’’ Petroecuador, then, the administration proposed plans to simultaneously construct a new parallel tube and privatize all pipeline operations. According to calculations from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, this ‘‘Build, Operate, and Transfer’’ project (bot in English) demanded a $700 million investment to increase the pipeline’s flow capacity by 150,000 barrels per day. Furthermore, the bot project would take the pipeline out of Petroecuador’s control for fifteen years. Plans to expand the pipeline sparked heated debate among multiple social sectors in Ecuador, not the least of which included former presidents (Osvaldo Hurtado and Rodrigo Borja), former energy ministers (the more vocal Gustavo Jarrín Ampudia and Rafael Almeida), and the armed forces, as well as indígenas. Opponents argued that there were other, more efficient and economical ways to expand production. Additional pumps could be installed; more crude could be transported through Colombia’s oversized southern pipeline.59 Opponents contended that if a parallel pipeline were built it would lead to overexploitation and exhaust oil reserves needed for the future. Given estimates of Ecuador’s declining rate of production, the line would be redundant and useless by 2012, precisely the moment when the pipeline would revert to state control. Over the intervening fifteen years, Petroecuador would have paid $1.5 billion to transport its own crude, largely in its existing pipeline. Consequently, many (including a World Bank–contracted study not connected with the pending technical assistance loan) declared the project not only ‘‘economically unjustifiable’’ but also bordering on the ‘‘absurd.’’ 60 As former Minister Rafael Almeida argued, ‘‘What is pushing the government’s proposal is neither the need to increase transport capacity nor [the need] to supplement scarce Petroecuador financial resources, but rather the zeal to grant to a private comneoliberal ironies 111

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pany this enterprise which is highly profitable and free of any investment risk.’’ 61 Regardless of how economically unsound the project might have been, Durán Ballén’s regime obstinately dug in its heels. Despite contentiousness surrounding the demonopolization of Petroecuador, it was evident that for new concessions ‘‘to be brought on line’’ (as they say in petro-lingo), sote would eventually have to be extended to the south and its capacity increased. Polemics from the executive and Ministry of Energy and Mines were often passionate and defensive, claiming that the pipeline unquestionably needed to be expanded, that it necessitated an investment beyond Petroecuador’s means, and that consequently it had to go into private hands. Indeed, the promotional materials that the Ministry of Energy and Mines circulated in New York, Houston, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Seoul indicated that ‘‘the Ecuadorian State has contracted the engineering for the construction of a pipeline parallel to the present one.’’ 62 Most intriguing about opip leaders’ visit to the World Bank (as well as those of two subsequent conaie delegations) was how it revealed the extent to which indigenous, environmental, and popular protest against Durán Ballén’s neoliberal measures surprised and disturbed Bank officials. Had they not anticipated resistance to neoliberal policies? In a meeting between the World Bank Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development and Washington-based ngos, one Bank official, clearly exasperated with Ecuador, called the country a ‘‘flaming democracy’’ in which Durán Ballén’s regime did ‘‘not represent a majority,’’ the National Congress did ‘‘not support the administration,’’ and popular groups ‘‘flagrantly obstructed executive policy.’’ 63 He went on to cite all the recent public demonstrations against changes imposed by the Durán Ballén administration. Despite the fact that the president is ‘‘committed to modernization,’’ the National Congress and ‘‘feisty’’ popular leaders foiled this process. Of specific concern were what the World Bank vice president labeled ‘‘two general strikes led by conaie that sought to overthrow the government.’’ 64 Such a comment coming from the World Bank concerned indígenas and environmental activists. What exactly was the Bank official referring to? In late January, only days after the ministry occupation, the Durán Ballén administration announced that it would raise the price of gasoline by 70 percent. Over the following week and a half, violent demonstrations broke out in Quito and every major highland and coastal city. Public transport stopped and public schools closed as 112 crude chronicles

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growing pockets of demonstration flared across cities. The demonstrations were reminiscent of the antineoliberal riots (‘‘imf riots’’) that swept through much of Latin America, most notably Venezuela, in the late 1980s.65 The Bank official was referring to these outbursts of popular protest in early February 1994. The protest gained strength when fut, the Frente Unitario de Trabajadores (United Workers’ Front), Ecuador’s largest workers’ union, called a twenty-four-hour strike to oblige government authorities to review their actions.66 While conaie leaders did urge ‘‘el pueblo to raise its voice of protest,’’ it would have been impossible to mobilize indigenous constituents to participate in fut’s general strike within the space of two days. Given conaie’s decision-making structure, its affiliated confederations and federations needed time to organize rural action. In part, this reflected the difficulty of organizing people spread across rural spaces. In part, it reflected the fact that conaie-affiliated federations would not be told what to do. In Indian leaders’ self-perception of their politics, conaie never dictated anything; it merely channeled what las bases desired. Decisions for action emerged from local assemblies through a process of consensus, even if (as was often the case) this was a consensus garnered among dirigentes. Rather than participate, then, in fut’s February 3 strike, conaie declared a forty-eight-hour rural reclamo popular (popular protest) on February 8 and 9. With the support of students and members of the Seguro Campesino and the National Federation of Heavy Transport, highland indígenas closed the Pan-American Highway running the length of the sierra. Blocking roads with felled trees, boulders, and ditches, protesters demanded that local authorities pressure Durán Ballén to reverse the gasoline price hike. Luís Macas denounced Durán Ballén’s fiscal politics as ‘‘terrorist measures’’ seeking to ‘‘aggravate the already critical situation of the poor and marginalized.’’ 67 In some areas, the police and army collided in confrontations with indígenas. Four indígenas were shot and numerous arrested in Azuay. In Cañar, Indians retaliated by kidnapping five police. Indian leaders had no intention, however, of overthrowing the state. The finance minister, César Robalino, sought to rationalize the hike in the price of gasoline. Between January and December 1993 the international price of crude oil fell from $15 per barrel to $10 per barrel. With petroleum revenues accounting for roughly half of the national earnings (47 percent in 1993), the decrease had led neoliberal ironies 113

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to a fiscal deficit of 1,200,000,000,000 sucres ($600,000,000).68 The minister argued that to ameliorate the budget crisis, the government had no choice but to take this ‘‘painful though necessary measure.’’ 69 In a televised news forum, Vice President Alberto Dahik called for national unity with all the conviction and passionate fervor of a preacher. Seated before the Republic’s flag, Dahik, known as ‘‘the energetic voice of neoliberal reform,’’ declared that Ecuador’s current economic emergency ‘‘calls for (requiere) a national effort of sacrifice on the part of all Ecuadorians. . . . We all must sacrifice for la patria.’’ The following day a political cartoon caricaturing the vice president captured his near-religious zeal. Portrayed with the exaggerated features meant to remind the public of his Middle Eastern heritage, Dahik, raising his right index finger, proclaimed: ‘‘Preparaos al ayuno infieles que ha llegado el Ramadan’’ (Prepare ye to fast, oh infidels, for Ramadan has arrived).70 The ‘‘holy’’ book from which the national leader read was titled ‘‘The Economist,’’ referring to that well-publicized Economist Intelligence Unit analysis that so perturbed the country’s economic analysts.71 With a near Godfearing righteousness, this Princeton-trained economist chided that as dutiful subjects of the Ecuadorian state, citizens needed to tighten their belts and shoulder the 70 percent price hike for the sake of la patria. Most Ecuadorians felt, however, that they should not and could not be responsible for weathering the ill currents in the international petroleum market. Some claimed that the increase was illegal.72 Various congresspeople challenged whether or not the fall in the price of crude oil was wholly responsible for the fiscal crisis. The caricature of Dahik wearing dark sunglasses would seem to suggest that there were perhaps shadier goings-on. In time the political cartoon would prove to be more prescient than first realized. By the end of 1995, Alberto Dahik would flee the country on a private jet bound for Panama only hours before the National Congress would charge him with corruption and move to impeach him. opip leaders’ visit to the World Bank precipitated a meeting between high-level representatives of the Ecuadorian state and World Bank officials.73 Clearly Durán Ballén’s regime was not pleased with indigenous leaders intervening in the Ecuadorian state’s relationship with the Bank. The Bank Information Center staff were invited to attend the ‘‘diplomatic exercise.’’ 74 Representatives of the Ecuadorian government were eager to demonstrate that the state worked 114 crude chronicles

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figure 17. Political cartoon of Ecuador’s vice president reading from the Economist, portending leaner times. Courtesy of Diario Hoy, February 13, 1994.

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closely with indigenous groups throughout Ecuador and simultaneously to delegitimize conaie and its affiliated federations. In the course of discussion, the Secretary General of the National Development Council (and soon-to-be Minister of Energy and Mines in late 1995), Galo Abril, noted that ‘‘conaie is a political organization, not an umbrella group like they say. They are communist.’’ 75 conaie, an organization striving to reconfigure the nation, was accused of wanting to overthrow the government and dismember the state. Such accusations revealed the extent to which its project to reclaim the space of the social—to reimagine political community and rewrite narratives of nation belonging—threatened entrenched interests.

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Contradictions Contrary to some analysts’ predictions, economic globalization was not leading to the dissolution of the state in Ecuador. Rather, the state was being redefined such that it increasingly assumed the role of an administrative and calculating organ that facilitated the workings of transnational capitalism. Indeed, a fundamental paradox characterizes neoliberal rule. A central contention among advocates of neoliberalism is that state interventions lead to a paralyzed and parasitic society. But as we see in the example of oil in Ecuador, a host of legal, institutional, and cultural interventions (either explicitly or implicitly dictated by the state, and often at the behest of multilateral lending institutions) suffuse neoliberal governing. Specific legislative reforms, institutional arrangements, and social conditions must be positively constructed. Economic globalization represented, then, not so much a dwindling of state interventions as a change in their form and intent. Likewise, as Roger Rouse has noted, globalization is ‘‘not so much a shift in the scope of corporate operations as a change in the terms under which such operations function.’’ 76 The shift in form and intent of government interventions increasingly transformed the state into a fiscal manager, and allowed it to relinquish many responsibilities for overseeing the welfare of its subjects. This tension exposed a fundamental inequality inherent in processes of transnational capital accumulation. Increased oil production would purportedly offer Ecuador the economic, political, and social stability of a ‘‘modern’’ nation and allow it to be more integrated and thus seemingly on par with those other liberalizingglobalizing economies around the world. But it was the bodies and lives of subaltern subjects that enabled transnational capitalists to expand their profit margin. Comparative advantage included not simply enchanting foreign capital with attractive contracts. It similarly meant providing cheap natural resources, scant industrial regulations, cheap labor, and a submissive population that would not protest. To attract foreign revenues, the state had to condemn Amazonian inhabitants (indigenous and nonindigenous alike) to the threat of toxic terror and undermine their rights as citizens. Thus, neoliberal ‘‘modernization’’ necessitated the marginalization and racialization of some. Oil monies produced the bourgeois distinctions that confirmed for the state and Ecuadorian elites that the nation was on the road to ‘‘modernization’’; yet they also exposed the murderous capacities of the postcolonial empires of neoliberalism. 116 crude chronicles

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This contradiction, however, sparked impressive resistance; for it brought to the fore the crisis of representation and accountability inherent in neoliberal rule. On the evening of the ministry occupation, protesters huddled around a bonfire in the city park where they were camped and reflected on the day’s events. A comment that Marco made about the Séptima Ronda and intensified oil operations stuck in my mind: ‘‘This amounts to petrolic excess—crude excess. So-called oil development merely produces crude exploitation’’— crude, that is, as in oil and raw. It amounted to the hyperexploitation of the country’s petroleum resources, which would ultimately render crippling effects and promised to exacerbate social and environmental injustice. The ministry occupation sought to spur a society-wide debate on the logic of the state’s petroleum policies and the problems that expanding the petroleum frontier would bring: Who exactly benefited from oil operations? Who suffered? And whose very exclusion and debilitation were essential for national and transnational profit? Was this a contemporary iteration of the story of conquest depicted and critiqued in Guayasamin’s mosaic? Protesters already believed the state’s oil policy was ‘‘irrational,’’ as lacking any coherent long-term planning. It was inherently foolhardy for a state as dependent on oil as Ecuador was to overexploit this limited, nonrenewable resource according to the whims of global capital. Yet more tangibly, protesters argued, neoliberal reforms promised to erode, not strengthen, Amazonian peoples and their social and ecological reality. While commonly hailed as the source of Ecuador’s development, for most Indian leaders, state oil policies constituted the core of ‘‘antidevelopment,’’ a condition ‘‘characterized by the exclusion and marginalization of our pueblos in the negotiations, decisions, and benefits’’ surrounding petroleum.77 The vociferous public debate that indigenous and environmental activists spurred did have effects. It interrupted the Séptima Ronda; only one of the four concessions up for bidding in Pastaza was leased. And heated debate on privatizing Petroecuador and expanding the pipeline ultimately compelled the World Bank to cancel the hydrocarbon section of its technical assistance loan. arco, in turn, had to delay its plans to exploit and extract the crude oil it discovered in Block 10 for six years, in great part because of the prolonged polemic around expanding the pipeline.

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4. CORPORATE ANTIPOLITICS

‘‘can you believe este indio forgot to bring my Gucci shoes?!’’ Samuel said in feigned exasperation. His cousin laughed and held open a large brass-framed door as nine indigenous leaders and I walked into the Oro Verde, one of Quito’s luxury hotels. Inside, the high ceiling echoed the low murmur of Euro-American executives conversing over coffee in the expansive lobby’s large leather chairs. It was January 25, 1994, the morning following indígenas’ and environmentalists’ occupation of the ministry. A testament to the wealth accumulated during Ecuador’s banana boom, the Oro Verde (Green Gold) had become the stage for launching the renewed exploitation of Ecuador’s oro negro (black gold). Here oil executives from across the globe convened to attend the inauguration ceremonies of the Séptima Ronda and to participate in a high-profile petroleum conference. The presence of lowland dirigentes, and the disjuncture it created, was mildly subversive, yet unsettling. The concierge anticipated our arrival and had a hotel attendant whisk us to our destination. Samuel’s faux leather shoes clicked loudly on the marble floor as we followed our hotel escort down the grand staircase and across the lush atrium to a lower level conference room for our appointed meeting. An elegant spread of croissants, freshly squeezed juices, and coffee welcomed us. Orchestrated Debussy flowed from the walls. Within minutes, the Minister of Energy and Mines arrived with seven state and corporate officials. Making good on his promise of the day before to encourage ‘‘transparent and direct dialogue,’’ the minister played mediator in this meeting between arco and opip. The minister sat at the head of the conference table flanked by two high ministry officials. Along the length of one side of the table sat the arco executive (the maximum authority of arco’s subsidiary in Ecuador), an arco lawyer, and three representatives of Petroecuador. Along the opposite side sat

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Héctor Villamil, Leonardo Viteri, the vice president of confeniae, two opip dirigentes, Samuel, his cousin, and two other rain forest community leaders. I stood behind them. The bodies, gestures, and attire of those around the table spoke volumes about the class, race, and power differences at play in so-called petroleum negotiations. Corporate and state officials appeared well-rested and confident, dressed in tailored suits, fashionable ties, and polished shoes. Indigenous delegates appeared neither well rested nor terribly comfortable. Only two of the indígenas, Héctor and Leonardo, had slept in a bed the previous night or showered that morning.1 The other members of the indigenous contingent had camped out in the city park across from the Ministry of Energy and Mines. A few donned clean shirts for the occasion. Others, like Samuel, had arrived and slept in their city best. As finely manicured, paper-shuffling hands shook hands sculpted by the selva, the differences became more and more apparent. As was common in such meetings, this was a gendered affair; I was the only female present. Initially, state and corporate representatives did not welcome my presence. More than once, the minister’s personal bodyguard readied himself to escort me out with an encouraging twist of the arm. Héctor and Leonardo objected. The arco executive spoke only in English, and Indian leaders insisted that they have a translator present whom they trusted. During the last opip–arco encounter (the August 1993 meeting I had watched and rewatched on videotape, described in the opening of this book), the company’s Villano field coordinator, who had acted as translator, had distorted the arco executive’s words. As a result, dirigentes were wary of arco controlling all translation. In the absence of a professional translator, I—having known Leonardo since 1990 and collaborated with opip over the previous seven months—was the person indigenous leaders most trusted to be their translator and linguistic watchdog. Following a verbal tussle, the minister allowed me to stay. The meeting in the Oro Verde was the first of a series of meetings over the following year between indigenous, arco, and state representatives. It precipitated three official meetings (with multiple preparatory meetings in between) that ultimately established an Environmental Technical Committee. Composed of representatives from indigenous organizations, the multinational consortium, and the state hydrocarbon sector, the Environmental Technical Committee was the first entity of its kind in Ecuador, charged with monitorcorporate anti-politics 119

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ing past and future petroleum operations. Over the course of these meetings, opip made impressive strides to consolidate consensus in an Indigenous Front and to compel serious dialogue among indigenous organizations, a multinational, and the state. Despite the odds, indigenous leaders began to transform the politics of petroleum. Yet the Environmental Technical Committee also served as an apparatus through which arco championed its concern for environmental protection while at the same time deflecting concerted scrutiny away from the politics of multinational operations. This chapter highlights the simultaneity of these contradictory processes and effects. It examines the tension between an indigenous ethnic-national politics of identity, representation, and legitimacy, and a corporate antipolitics of negation, dissimulation, and depoliticization. arco’s exclusive focus on the environmental as merely a ‘‘technical’’ and not a ‘‘political’’ or ‘‘social’’ realm functioned in ways similar to what James Ferguson calls an ‘‘anti-politics machine.’’ 2 That is, the way in which the company framed debate effectively precluded any discussion of social, cultural, political, and economic issues of great concern to Indians. Ultimately, the Environmental Committee served as a forum for depoliticizing (although not without struggle) the practice of petroleum by both arco and the state.3 This chapter examines the sequence of meetings that led to this.

A Wall of Pure Negation: January 25, 1994

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‘‘Señor Ministro, Señor arco,’’ Héctor Villamil calmly began, ‘‘we are deeply concerned about arco activities in Pastaza. La compañía is unquestionably manipulating compañeros in Villano and provoking an ever-worsening conflict that has the potential to spark a violent confrontation among the Nacionalidades Indígenas.’’ Since opip’s Villano Assembly only a month earlier, three separate events had troubled opip and community leaders. First, a group of men had broken into the home of a Villano family that had sponsored the December Assembly. After threatening to kill the family members and burn down their home, the intruders stole opip’s twoway radio. The radio was the only means of communication between the federation and pro-opip Villano families; a few days later, its shattered shell was returned to the family compound as a further threat. The nine men named as culprits were all members of dicip. Second, dicip members had recently held a meeting in Villano in which five Huaorani (a small indigenous group directly to the north 120 crude chronicles

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of Pastaza Quichua territory) participated and announced they were going to declare war on opip. At the time, Huaorani and opip leaders were not on the best of terms. The Huaorani had recently signed a contract with Maxus, a Texas-based oil company that operated Block 16, an oil concession in Huaorani lands. The contract guaranteed that the Huaorani would not obstruct oil drilling in their territory over the following twenty-five years in exchange for the education, health care, and airplane rides that Maxus would provide. opip leaders believed that the contract manipulated and exploited the Huaorani and that Villano indígenas might fall into the same traps. Third, soon thereafter, dicip leaders had marched into the Puyo Office of Bilingual Education and informed the directors that they no longer wished to participate in the bilingual education system. ‘‘arco has been very clever,’’ Héctor remarked. ‘‘The company uses its helicopters and airplanes to facilitate gatherings among indígenas, like in the case of the Huaorani meeting. It gives gifts such as sheets of tin [roofing], planefuls of food, and planefuls of clothes to poor communities and then makes absurd comparisons between arco and opip—claiming that la compañía is going to give you everything. It’s going to give you a communal meetinghouse. It’s going to give you a health center. It’s going to give you education. It’s going to give you all the benefits that opip has not given you in twenty years. We are deeply concerned.’’ Ignoring every word that Héctor had just expressed, the arco executive calmly addressed the minister and began to give the history of arco–opip relations. But first, a note on the politics of language use is perhaps in order before going on. Language use—who could understand what, who could pretend as though they did not understand, and whose words could be dismissed—was central to the microdynamics of these meetings. As I mentioned earlier, the arco executive spoke solely in English. What I found increasingly curious, however, was that he understood Spanish fairly well, though far from 100 percent.4 As a result, a situation existed in which all participants could understand Spanish (or at least grasp what was being said), but only some (corporate and state representatives) could understand English. A power differential held sway whereby knowledge of a language symbolized broader cultural and material capital. Furthermore, this slippage between comprehension and noncomprehension allowed the arco executive much leeway; language use symbolically paralleled imperialist desires. Despite translation, he often pretended not to understand or simply ignored statements, indulging corporate anti-politics 121

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figure 18. Graffiti on the cemetery wall in Puyo condemning the effects of petroleum capital. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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instead in what appeared as self-righteous assertions. Understandably, this led to tension as the arco executive was less dialogic than monologic, less engaging than pedantic. As the oil executive embarked on his history, Leonardo interrupted and confronted the arco head directly: ‘‘We have the impression that you are not listening and are not completely informed of what is happening in Villano. Our position and proposals for the future of Pastaza are the result of a series of analyses, which we’ve carried out over the past fourteen years. opip aims to create a space for serious dialogue and negotiation with multinational corporations where indígenas are heard, have an equal voice, and are not taken advantage of. What we are telling you is that by not listening and engaging with us but instead creating and sustaining dicip, you are creating intractable problems for us and for yourself.’’ Fiery discussion ensued, with participants talking over one another. The arco executive spoke the loudest: ‘‘arco is committed 122

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to environmental protection. arco is committed to address sociocultural concerns of indigenous populations wherever they may be. . . . As we said in our October letter we recognize opip as a representative organization for some of the indigenous population of Pastaza.’’ The minister interrupted the arco executive and asked, ‘‘Does opip represent (agrupa) all?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ Héctor replied. ‘‘One hundred thirty-three communities of the Shiwiar and Quichua Nationality. Encompassing approximately 20,000 inhabitants.’’ 5 Layers of simultaneous conversation followed, but again the arco executive overpowered: ‘‘We do recognize opip as representative of certain elements in Pastaza, but there are other elements.’’ The corporate executive stopped, cutting himself short, and listened as Héctor continued to explain opip’s organizational structure to the minister. Upon hearing Héctor accuse arco of financing dicip, the oil man harshly asserted, ‘‘No! No!’’ before I could even translate Héctor’s words. Discussion became even more heated. Samuel interjected: ‘‘Señor Ministro, let me give you an example. We filed a claim in the Puyo police headquarters denouncing those who destroyed our radio. So what happens? The man who headed the assault was arrested. He’s put in jail. And then what happens? arco paid 600,000 sucres [$300] bail to release him. Imagine, Señor Ministro! We have proof of this, Señor Ministro. The very same guy who was in jail told us.’’ arco’s executive interrupted again. His face was tense. ‘‘I’m not aware and I have not authorized anybody to pay any fine for anybody to get out of prison. Categorically. If that is being done, it is without my permission. I do not believe it has happened. I have not authorized it. And I would not authorize it.’’ Héctor interjected: ‘‘But two arco people were in the police station. We’ve seen the police records. The bail was paid.’’ ‘‘Exactly,’’ interrupted Samuel. ‘‘arco’s [Chevy] Trooper was right there. The company guys paid the bail. We were witnesses. In the future, what? We have to take pictures to prove it?’’ More heated accusations were sparked; I couldn’t parse them out. The arco executive interjected: ‘‘We do not want division.’’ ‘‘It’s possible that you don’t know what’s happening,’’ Héctor reiterated. ‘‘The people who are behind this may be doing it behind your back.’’ The arco executive grew angrier: ‘‘Any payment that is made will have to come to my desk. I will be aware of it. I will not be unaware of corporate anti-politics 123

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any payment that is being made. If it has happened it has happened without my authorization. And it should not have happened.’’ Further discussion roiled. When tensions eased, Leonardo observed once more: ‘‘From the beginning, Meester, we have the impression that you are not fully informed and we want you to be so.’’ The minister interrupted, addressing the indígenas: ‘‘I can assure you that it’s not la compañía’s fault. Unfortunately, it’s certain ecological groups who are creating problems. Why, you might ask, do I say this? I know every nook and cranny of this country, and I’ve seen this before. A few irresponsible ecological groups (they’re not all like this), they receive salaries from international organizations in dollars and they have to justify their salaries with impassioned and extreme behavior.6 The way they demonstrate that they are doing something is by creating problems among Ecuadorian hermanos. This is not the first time I’ve seen this. . . . I ask that you don’t let us, us Ecuadorians, be fingered or groped (manoseados) by foreigners, people who have nothing to do with our problems.’’ A short silence followed, whereupon the minister abruptly added: ‘‘And I’m not referring to the translator.’’ Samuel blurted, ‘‘But wait a second Señor Ministro, who is manoseando whom here? Isn’t the meddling of foreigners precisely why we’re here?’’ Much was at play in the minister’s statement and Samuel’s response. Only the day before, during the ministry occupation, the Minister of Energy and Mines had denied Indians their citizenship. The irony of the fact that he affirmed their common identity as Ecuadorians in the Oro Verde was not lost on the indígenas. Through an ethic of national brotherhood the minister sought to erase differences—the histories of class, race, and ethnicity—that marked those around the negotiating table. Indígenas knew only too well that such inequalities could not be so easily elided. Equally disturbing to them, however, was how the minister exonerated the multinational corporation from playing any role in Villano’s conflict. Just as the neoliberal state was unwilling to reprimand, let alone scrutinize, a corporation’s actions, so the minister was incapable of questioning arco’s ability to create strife and division. Not only did Samuel feel as though the multinational corporation was manipulating local communities, but he also felt that it was manipulating the state. Leonardo interjected: ‘‘Señor Ministro, in the case of Pastaza, please don’t mix us up with ecological groups. opip has its own technical advisors, its own directives (conducción). opip may have 124 crude chronicles

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contact with many organizations, be they governmental or nongovernmental. But what is happening in Villano is not the product of ecological organizations. If we want this dialogue to succeed and reach concrete results, in the short term, we ask arco: first, to immediately suspend all the divisive activities that their field managers are pursuing in feeding people foreign ideas.’’ More confusion ensued. ‘‘Second,’’ Leonardo continued, ‘‘please don’t include los hermanos Huaorani in issues that concern Quichua territory. It is only through the help of arco that Huaorani Indians were able to participate in dicip’s last meeting where they said they were going to declare war against opip. We the Nacionalidad Quichua stopped warring ninety years ago.’’ arco’s lawyer chuckled and asked the leader to repeat himself. Leonardo persisted: ‘‘Though we’ve protected our weapons, we don’t want to return to a highly dangerous interethnic conflict.’’ More nervous chuckling, punctuated by comments, came from the corporate/state side of the table. An uneasy blend of racism and paternalism momentarily overdetermined understanding in ways not too dissimilar from the Lanza newspaper headlines: simple yet dangerous spear-chucking savages inhabited oil lands. Yet opip leaders took the threat of a potential interethnic conflict quite seriously. Past episodes of violence between Quichua and Huaorani were still vivid in living memory. Rather than emerging from some primal essences, however, potential violence—as Leonardo made clear—would be the direct effect of arco meddling. The last spear killings near Villano occurred in late 1949 when Royal Dutch Shell was drilling in the area and Huaorani killed Quichua laborers working for the company at the time.7 And while many Quichua and Huaorani had since intermarried, especially near Arajuno, tensions were not completely eased. The potential for oil interests to set off violence again was all too real.8 The arco executive interrupted: ‘‘dicip has every right to do what they wish to do. We did not organize that meeting. Let me make a point. We did not create dicip. Period.’’ Samuel muttered under his breath half-sarcastically: ‘‘Brace yourselves, camaradas (comrades), here comes the wall of pure negation.’’ ‘‘Can you make that point?’’ the arco executive asked me. ‘‘We did not create dicip. We work with dicip as the democratically elected representatives of the Villano area communities. It’s their decision.’’ Under my translation the minister asked Héctor, ‘‘How many corporate anti-politics 125

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people are dicip?’’ ‘‘Two communities,’’ Héctor replied, ‘‘twenty to thirty people.’’ ‘‘Once comunidades,’’ the arco executive quickly interjected in Spanish, ‘‘once comunidades (eleven communities). dicip has their democratically elected positions. All we have to recognize here is that democracy is at work—if some people do not want to be affiliated with opip that is their decision. We did not encourage it. We recognized them when they sent us a letter saying, ‘We are the representatives of these communities, so you deal with us.’ ’’ Commentary flew left and right. Leonardo responded: ‘‘We have no doubt that dicip is the product of arco and that this organization survives artificially—in its economics, in its ideas, in its form of behavior, in its mobilizations, in its office there in Shell. In our view, there is no doubt. It survives artificially.’’ Before I could translate, the arco executive asked me: ‘‘Why is it artificial? I don’t understand. Why is it an artificial organization?’’ I responded as Leonardo continued: ‘‘Because, he’s saying, it’s funded by arco.’’ ‘‘Following our studies,’’ Leonardo noted, ‘‘there are two communities in Villano. Initially there was one and it divided in two. And now, a bunch of subcommunities have appeared. As we see it, this is part of a larger strategy to make it appear as though there are various communities that support dicip. It’s quite clear that in reality there is one community that then subdivided among two family groups and each has been baptized with a name—Pandanuque and Santa Cecilia. In this sense, there is no representation to speak of. It is fundamental that arco stop intervening in the political concerns internal to indigenous communities.’’ arco’s lawyer asked Leonardo to stop as he translated slowly. The arco executive retorted harshly: ‘‘I understand. We do not. We do not interfere.’’ Leonardo continued: ‘‘And we, we don’t want saviors from other places—not compañías, not ecologists, nor people from the government—coming to resolve our internal problems. In every pueblo there are difficulties and disagreements, just as there are harmonies and solidarities, all of this. But these internal dynamics are solely a concern internal to the indigenous communities. Consequently, the ability to speak of democracy internal to las Nacionalidades Indígenas is a concern that corresponds uniquely to us. No foreigner can come here giving lessons in democracy, saying that there democracy is, or is not, at work.’’ Leonardo continued, elaborating on the third area where petro126

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leum was creating division in Villano. ‘‘Bilingual education?!’’ The arco executive exclaimed in amazement. ‘‘We are sponsoring bilingual education?’’ he asked me in astonishment before I had time to translate; I shook my head no. Substantial discussion followed as to what education, bilingual or otherwise, had to do with petroleum. dicip members chose to withdraw from the ‘‘bilingual education system,’’ Leonardo explained, ‘‘because arco said they would supply the community with teachers, materials, supplies, what have you.’’ Héctor continued, ‘‘This is intensely serious for us. We fought long and hard for our alternative bilingual education [system]. We fought with successive governments so that our language, our identity, would be known and recognized.’’ Leonardo added, ‘‘I don’t know how foreigners interpret bilingual education, but for us it is the answer, the solution, to our situation; it is the education that we, as Nacionalidades Indígenas, that we need. And we don’t want arco going around planting ideas, like what is happening among the Huaorani where Maxus told them to pull themselves out of bilingual education because the company didn’t like it.’’ For opip leaders, the idea that arco encouraged dicip to withdraw from bilingual education represented an assault on twenty years of indigenous organizing in Pastaza and beyond. Finally approved in 1992, Ecuador’s bilingual education system symbolized that the state recognized the diversity of ethnic groups within the country, each with its own language and identity. But bilingual education was also an indigenized institution through which identity could be better known and developed by Indians themselves. It was a project of and for the future: of identity creation, community formation, and self-determination. Thus indigenous education—critically constitutive of imaginings of territoriality and nacionalidad—was not a trivial matter. It represented the emergence of local alternatives to state and corporate discrimination, exploitation, and disavowal. As abruptly as it began, the ninety-minute meeting was over. The minister had another appointment. As participants shook hands and committed themselves to continuing the dialogue, the arco executive approached me. My tape recorder was still on. ‘‘Tell him,’’ he said with respect to Leonardo, ‘‘that we don’t have anything to do with dicip. We didn’t create the organization. We do not dictate what it does.’’ I responded, ‘‘He knows that is what you claim.’’ arco executive: ‘‘So why do they think we do?’’ I slipped into the role of go-between: ‘‘According to the inforcorporate anti-politics 127

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mation that opip leaders have, arco is funding dicip. They know that individuals receive salaries; they know amounts; they know they have an office in Shell.’’ ‘‘But we do not pay salaries to anyone in dicip,’’ the arco executive contended. ‘‘We do not pay anyone.’’ ‘‘Perhaps then,’’ I suggested, ‘‘it would be fruitful for future understanding if you would put that in writing.’’ A long pause followed. ‘‘The only people we do pay,’’ he ventured, ‘‘are people involved in various projects, and we pay them to realize those projects.’’ That those individuals also happened to be the leaders of dicip did not seem to disturb the arco executive. A written statement asserting that arco did not finance anyone in dicip was not forthcoming.

Corporate Dissimulation: May 10, 1994

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As we climbed out of the pickup truck and looked up the hill, Marco jokingly muttered, ‘‘They would make good tsantsa,’’ referring to the two Euro-American corporate executives standing on a veranda overlooking the rain forest. Tsantsa are the shrunken trophy heads that historically lowland Indians (mostly Shuar and Achuar) made after head-hunting raids. ‘‘Wait until their hair grows longer,’’ I replied. ‘‘I don’t think apache’s hair does grow,’’ Elias mocked, using the Achuar word for foreigner or European. ‘‘Look at Suzana’s.’’ My blonde hair was cropped short, a measure I had consciously taken to decrease my chances of being harassed and one which indigenous leaders relentlessly teased me about. Chuckling, we scrambled up the slippery path that led to the meeting hall on the hill. Pastaza was receiving the daily quota of rain that made up its four to five meters of annual rainfall, and along with dozens of indigenous community representatives, the arco executive and his Italian counterpart had sought protection from the downpour under the veranda eaves. It was May 10, 1994, the first day of a two-day meeting among representatives of arco, its investment partner agip (the Italian oil corporation),9 the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Petroecuador, and the newly formed ‘‘Indigenous Front’’—the entity that theoretically represented all Indians within Block 10. This was the first time that either corporate or ministry representatives had visited Union Base, confeniae’s headquarters. Seven kilometers west of Puyo, Union Base sat on the edge of San Jacinto (the indigenous communal landholding closest to Puyo on the colonized plateau) and consisted of elegantly designed wooden office buildings, assembly halls, and 128 crude chronicles

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houses scattered among managed forest. The presence of high-level corporate and state representatives in indigenous territory spoke to the seriousness with which opip felt they were finally being treated. I participated in the meeting as a translator. I translated Spanish into English for the arco executive and his agip counterpart. Franco, an arco operations manager, translated English into Spanish.10 ‘‘Why are there so many Indians here?’’ the arco executive asked upon greeting me and introducing his agip associate. ‘‘They don’t intend to stay, do they?’’ The executive’s voice was strained. ‘‘Oh, you mean the community representatives,’’ I said. ‘‘Don’t worry, they’re only here as observers. They won’t participate in negotiations. They’re here to watch and learn. This is how indígenas hold their meetings. They’re open for everyone to observe.’’ My explanation offered little relief. ‘‘But where are they going to have lunch?’’ the arco executive queried. ‘‘Are we supposed to feed all of them?’’ In planning the May meeting, arco had agreed to cover the cost of food if opip would provide the locale. Including delegates from the Indigenous Front, conaie, confeniae, and rain forest communities, indígenas totaled 100 people, apparently more than the company had anticipated. ‘‘Problima imata?’’(What’s the problem?) asked Leonardo. ‘‘Our friend thinks there are too many pelones here,’’ I answered in Spanish. Pelones, meaning ‘‘bald ones,’’ was a term of endearing irreverence used among indígenas to refer especially to those with long hair. The Italian-speaking (and semi-Spanishcomprehending) agip representative gave me a puzzled look. ‘‘It’s a joke,’’ I responded. ‘‘Tell them,’’ Leonard wryly interjected, ‘‘that unlike their Texas and Quito headquarters, our communities don’t have faxes, as of yet. So they send representatives instead.’’ Neither executive smiled, let alone laughed. The arco executive paced the floor. Franco followed at his heels, trying to come up with solutions. Indigenous observers found a certain amount of enjoyment in putting Euro-American executives on edge and joked in Quichua that the apaches were afraid of being outnumbered, feeling pressured, and having their agenda usurped. Concern over the cost of feeding one hundred Indians reflected displaced corporate anxieties. I had to bite my tongue when my suggestion that arco order ham and cheese sandwiches from Puyo was countered with ‘‘I don’t think we can afford to feed them all.’’ Only days earlier, at a preparatory meeting over lunch, arco officials had treated Héctor to a lavish meal in Quito. According to Héctor, the lunch for four cost 500,000 sucres ($250)—an extravagant sum in a corporate anti-politics 129

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country where the minimum monthly wage was $45. The arco and agip executives were less than comfortable with the idea of being in indigenous controlled territory. The last time corporate representatives had been in opip territory was in Sarayacu in 1989, the occasion when corporate officials were, in their words, ‘‘held hostage’’ in the rain forest. ‘‘Suzana,’’ Samuel yelled from across the room, ‘‘come and see Héctor’s new purina [secondary forest residence]!’’ He held up a picture of Héctor and Leonardo posing in front of a large marble sign inset with the word ‘‘arco’’ in big gold letters. Behind them was a squat industrial park-like office building landscaped with flowers and a lush green lawn. While corporate representatives fretted over logistics in Union Base, Marco had circulated a stack of photographs among the indigenous observers. The pictures were from Héctor and Leonardo’s Indigenous Solidarity Tour in the United States. For their final stop, the leaders flew to Plano, Texas, the site of arco International’s corporate headquarters. This May 1994 meeting in Union Base was the direct result of Héctor and Leonardo’s visit to arco in Texas. opip leaders characterized their previous two meetings with arco (August 1993 and January 1994) as ‘‘unproductive bouts of intransigence and insults.’’ They felt that the multinational had dismissed their claims and disrespected their convictions. If, however, they could parlay their international connections and meet directly with those higher up the corporate ladder, leaders believed they could establish opip’s credibility and political significance and thus compel the corporation to engage in negotiations with them. On March 4, 1994, two months before the Union Base meeting, Héctor and Leonardo did indeed meet with U.S.-based senior executives who oversaw operations in Ecuador.11 Mediated by two senior officers from oxfam, the Plano meeting marked a turning point in the way arco interacted with indigenous peoples in Pastaza. Discussion during the twelve-hour Plano meeting predominantly tacked back and forth between the U.S.-based senior executive and indigenous leaders; the Ecuador-based arco executive was largely silent. The respect that the U.S.-based executive accorded opip leaders and the deference he exacted from the arco Oriente executive shifted opip–arco interactions beyond disjointed retort. arco Oriente’s strategy of dealing individually with isolated communities was proving increasingly difficult in Pastaza. Though still replete with misunderstandings and miscommunications, this meet130 crude chronicles

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ing represented the first meeting in which arco and opip representatives together discussed the future of oil in Pastaza. In particular, it moved toward the consolidation of a multilateral committee that in theory would plan, monitor, and assess all of arco’s activity in Block 10. arco agreed to engage in dialogue with opip if the federation could consolidate a consensus among indígenas in Pastaza and form an Indigenous Front. In line with agreements reached during the Texas meeting, opip leaders had made significant headway over the spring of 1994 in consolidating an indigenous consensus. Together with aiepra (Asociación de Indígenas Evangélicos de Pastaza, Región Amazónica), a small evangelical organization established in Pastaza around the same time as opip, they formed an ‘‘Indigenous Front.’’ Both arco and opip had encouraged Cristian Cruz to incorporate dicip into the Indigenous Front. But the dicip leader stubbornly resisted. Tensions between opip and dicip intensified. On numerous occasions Cruz publicly denounced opip and viewed opip’s ascendant association with the corporation—epitomized by the leaders’ trip to Texas—as undermining dicip’s desired exclusive hold on arco operations. Thus, on May 10, 1994, as all took their place around the negotiating table at Union Base, Cristian Cruz was conspicuously absent. Around the table sat the arco executive, myself acting as translator between him and his agip counterpart, Franco, two senior representatives of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and Petroecuador, Héctor Villamil, Leonardo Viteri, the vice president of conaie, the president of confeniae, the vice president of confeniae, the president of aiepra, the vice president of aiepra, and one proopip Villano community member. A senior representative of oxfam served as mediator. In his opening words, Héctor proclaimed, ‘‘Over the past quartercentury of hydrocarbon activity in Ecuador there has never, to date, been an opportunity for Indians to sit and seriously negotiate petroleum problems. This May 10th gathering at Union Base is the first of its kind in the history of the indigenous peoples, a gathering that came about principally through indigenous efforts.’’ Héctor stopped midway through his next thought. Cristian Cruz stood in the doorway. No one moved for what seemed like an intolerable time. Would Cruz fall into a tirade and denounce the meeting? Would he attack opip leaders? Would he stay? Exasperated by the tension and what I was beginning to feel was childish behavior corporate anti-politics 131

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by all present, I stood up abruptly, inadvertently flipping my chair over backward and breaking the silence. I walked across the room, grabbed an empty chair, carried it to the table, and said, ‘‘Compañero Cruz, come and sit down.’’ To everyone’s amazement (mine included), Cruz did just that. It took months for the jokes about my having scared Cruz into joining the Indigenous Front to die down. This was the first time dicip’s leader listened to and interacted with other indigenous organizations at a negotiating table. Héctor began again, directing his comments to Cristian Cruz as much as to arco, agip, and state officials: ‘‘The indígena/colono suit [referring to the class-action lawsuit against Texaco] clearly demonstrates that the government and petroleum companies have been misguided. Their strategies of penetration and extraction have been immoral, unprincipled, and exploitative. We, as the Indigenous Front, will oblige dialogue so as to change the relations between indígenas and multinational corporations. The señores of arco know perfectly well how to divide a pueblo, how to make our people fight among themselves. A politics of divisive social engineering has torn Villano and Moretecocha apart. But this will no longer do. Señores of arco,’’ Héctor continued, ‘‘from here on out we don’t want to receive your crumbs. We don’t want trinkets of rice, canned sardines, or sacks of sugar. . . . We have proposals that honor us as a pueblo, that will allow us to develop with dignity for our future generations.’’ aiepra’s president concurred with Héctor: ‘‘This rainy day in May is a historic occasion. Before, each organization struggled separately, independently. But now, we [indígenas] realize that if we work individually we will never be able to advance. . . . It is essential that we unite efforts. It is essential that we reach a consensus.’’ Cristian Cruz interrupted and rebuked the opip and aiepra leaders: ‘‘An indigenous consensus does not exist because some organizations in the province of Pastaza maintain a politics that is incongruous with the reality in which we live. As long as opip continues to claim absolute representativity in Pastaza without respecting the autonomy and representativity of other organizations, we will never reach a consensus. Consensus will emerge only and when you [opip] respect the autonomy of other organizations.’’ Edmundo Vargas, the president of confeniae, intervened: ‘‘Our proposals are not irrational,’’ he began in an attempt to counter Cruz’s claim that the federation’s politics were divorced from reality: ‘‘They have been misunderstood.’’ Edmundo spoke in his clear, precise, schoolteacher manner. ‘‘We wish to defend our territories, to 132 crude chronicles

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strive for plurinationality, to demand that our natural resources be managed wisely. These are not irrational desires. I kindly beseech the compañero from dicip to interpret our proposals well.’’ ‘‘What has happened in Sucumbios?’’ Edmundo queried rhetorically. ‘‘That province bathes in absolute filth. Is it irrational to insist that what has occurred there must never happen in the southern Amazonia? Historically, las compañías have employed a bad policy of working directly and exclusively with local communities and avoiding the broader organizational structure of the indigenous peoples. This is exactly what we ask them [multinational corporations] to respect. Why was opip organized? Why was confeniae organized? Why did conaie emerge? Precisely to fight for the rights of the pueblos at the local, regional and national level. We don’t claim to represent all indígenas in the Amazon . . . but we do claim to represent the great majority.12 And as such, we carry a representativity that has to be respected.’’ Similarly calling for unity among indigenous organizations, Rafael Pandam, the vice president of conaie, launched into one of his characteristically poetic speeches: ‘‘We have not come in the interest of any particular individual. We have not come to defend the economic interests of any company. We are defending our historic rights—our rights to life. United, organized, we want to guarantee a better life with dignity for our children, for future generations. Today we have our voice, our decision, our responsibility to be examples for Ecuador. I hope that we are able to civilize—more than the civilization that taught us to speak, read, and write Spanish—to civilize our minds, our thoughts, our hearts to realize that we should not bring war upon each other. Rather we must search for unity in diversity, respecting autonomy.’’ ‘‘Autonomy, however,’’ Rafael emphasized, ‘‘does not belong to just anyone. It is not intrinsic to what anyone is or does. It is the product of the mutual decision, the mutual responsibility, the mutual respect among different pueblos.’’ Autonomy in this view emerged from sociality, from social relations, connections, and responsibilities. It was not the free choice of an independent rational being. No such being existed, for being was always social. Much angry, terse interchange followed between opip leaders, community members, and Cruz. Debate was faster than I could possibly translate. ‘‘The issue is—,’’ I began, and the arco executive finished my sentence, ‘‘who represents whom?’’ ‘‘Exactly,’’ I responded. And at that point the arco executive spoke the loudest: ‘‘There corporate anti-politics 133

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figure 19. Indigenous, state, and arco officials at the Union Base meeting. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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are obviously very complex relationships among indigenous peoples in Pastaza. It is not surprising that such complications have led to misunderstandings. This meeting extends an opportunity to go beyond misunderstandings and confrontations to an open dialogue involving all representative organizations so that arco can go ahead with development activities in a responsible manner.’’ The arco executive recounted once more the corporation’s stance: ‘‘arco/agip has no interest, and has never had any interest, in creating divisions among the indigenous peoples of Pastaza. There can be no possible benefit in creating divisions. Division creates confrontation and conflict and would prevent us going about the operations of our business. We have never attempted to manipulate any of the population. . . . We have not created organizations. We have not bought consciences. We have tried conscientiously to respect the right of the indigenous populations.’’ Samuel muttered from among the observers, ‘‘Does he think we are stupid? He’s like a hunter pretending he’s a songbird when he’s really out to kill.’’ How arco could disavow its role, whether premeditated or not, in forming and sustaining dicip was beyond me. A month after the Union Base meeting, I caught a ride from Puyo to Quito with Paco, a field coordinator, and his boss Franco, my co-translator and an arco operations manager. On our way we stopped at dicip’s lime-green offices in Shell.13 Paco ran into the building to pick up an envelope. 134 crude chronicles

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It was 7:00 a.m.; he was obviously expected. I had never once seen Paco set foot in the opip office. Yet, he seemed quite comfortable and familiar with that of dicip. While we waited in the car, I asked, ‘‘Franco, how do they have money to pay rent for this house? I understand that the rent is over 200,000 sucres a month’’ ($100 a month, a substantial amount for the Oriente). Franco looked at me innocently: ‘‘I don’t know. They have their own money.’’ There was a pause. ‘‘Their own money,’’ I echoed softly. ‘‘Or maybe they pay with the student scholarships,’’ Franco half-heartedly speculated. ‘‘Ya, they must take the money out of there.’’ ‘‘So, how many scholarships are there?’’ I asked. ‘‘There must be eight or so,’’ Franco responded, ‘‘though some have dropped their studies.’’ Cruz, in his early thirties, was the recipient of an arco scholarship to finish his secondary education in the evangelical mission school in Shell. According to opip’s files, Cruz received 1,200,000 sucres ($600) a month from arco in the summer of 1994; this was his stipend at a time, I repeat, when the minimum monthly wage was $45. The conversation shifted. Paco climbed back into the Trooper and slipped an envelope to his boss, and the driver sped off. I had no doubt that there were divisions within and between Pastaza communities. But it was far from inevitable that such divisions coalesced and collided as they did. When those who opposed arco operations were refused, and those who supported arco operations were granted, certain benefits (education, transport, small gifts), this tangibly affected the contours of divisions and alliances within and across communities. More than simply material benefits, however, these services induced new sensibilities and subjectivities in Pastaza; they shaped the wills and desires of individuals such that they were more aligned with that of the independent, rationally maximizing, entrepreneurial liberal subject. The corporation’s gestures of beneficence served thus as vehicles for guiding the conduct of conduct (and the conduct of misconduct) in the Upper Amazon. There were indeed signs, however, that opip too was shaping arco. In the May 1994 Union Base meeting, even the arco executive’s compulsory lecture on ‘‘democracy’’ was changing: ‘‘A fundamental issue being debated among indigenous organizations is who represents whom. Democracy must be mentioned. A democratic system necessarily means that there is a majority who will represent the totality of the populations including the minority who may have disagreed with the policies of the elected majority. It is not for us to decide who represents whom. It is not for us to decide who is the corporate anti-politics 135

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majority. It is only our desire to work with the truly representative organizations. There are obviously differences of opinion, which is to be expected in a democratic society. It is not for us to interfere in those differences.’’ The arco executive seemed to seek to amend his earlier stance. He appeared to be shying away from dictating the mechanics of representation and regimenting democracy. His prior distinction between ‘‘group’’ rights (embodied in opip) and ‘‘individual’’ rights (embodied in dicip) collapsed into ‘‘majority’’ and ‘‘minority.’’ No doubt, Leonardo’s previous words in the Oro Verde and especially his words in Plano, Texas, had spurred reflection. In Texas, Leonardo clearly stated: ‘‘The federation considers arco’s practices to be equal to the strategies used by all multinationals against indigenous peoples. La compañía has inserted itself into the internal affairs of the nacionalidades indígenas, created division, bribed and manipulated community leaders, paternalistically granted communities trinkets, delegitimated the legitimate indigenous organization, and created dependencies. And then they dare to have the gall to proclaim themselves judges over democratic practice among our communities.’’ Yet the corporation was still masterfully skilled at untangling itself from the nasty knot of social relations it had created in Pastaza. In the present meeting in Union Base, the arco executive said, ‘‘Disagreement over representation could, however, pose a serious obstacle to progress—that is, to further dialogue. I suggest that clarifying issues of representation among the indigenous populations of Pastaza should be of fundamental concern. The organizations themselves need to make a genuine effort toward resolving differences so as to allow us [arco] to work with the agreed representatives in a constructive manner.’’ In his calm, even voice, the arco executive continued: ‘‘If we attempt to move forward with the divisions that are apparent, I believe we will necessarily find ourselves in further confrontational situations—where the company, even with its best efforts, will be interpreted as being the creator of those divisions and as the divisive entity in the dialogue. We do not want to be seen as that, that is definitely not our intention.’’ His words echoed a statement he made during the Texas meeting: ‘‘The problem is that the indigenous organizations need to resolve their differences.’’ I was not alone in finding these words unsettling. As before, the arco executive positioned the corporation outside of and detached from an indigenous reality. This obscured the fact 136

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that the multinational was integral to those divisions. Furthermore, an implicit warning shaded the arco executive’s words. If it were inevitable that the company would be perceived as the divisive culprit should dialogue continue under strain, arco had a convenient out—cut all relations. Many opip dirigentes speculated that arco field representatives were trying to stir up problems, making indigenous unity all the more difficult. Contriving further antagonism between opip and dicip would only serve to free arco from any obligation to deal with either, or at least with opip. In addition, the arco executive’s words provided a saving grace. Presumably the obverse of his statement was also true: if dialogue continued under an indigenous truce (rather than divisions), the company would be the savior (rather than the ‘‘divisive entity’’). The white man emerged, unscathed, as hero. It was a win-win-win situation. That same evening, on my way to drop off a note for a friend coincidentally staying in the same hotel in Puyo as the corporate representatives, I came upon the arco executive, the agip executive, and Franco dining with Cristian Cruz in the hotel restaurant. Elite, northern men indeed had influence, though it was influence they often disavowed.

Green Governmentality: September 24, 1994

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Cameras flashed as the Minister of Energy and Mines, the U.S.-based senior executive for arco International, and a top Petroecuador dignitary posed under a courtyard archway. The high-profile officials were in Puyo to instate the Environmental Technical Committee conceived during the May meeting in Union Base. The first of its kind, the tripartite committee was composed of delegates from arco, Petroecuador, and the Indigenous Front and represented a novel example of how corporate capital and local peoples might interact.14 The morning inaugural ceremonies were public. Local and national press, indigenous federation and community leaders, and provincial authorities were present as witnesses to the event. When the opening ceremonies ended and the high-profile dignitaries departed, however, it was obvious that there were vast differences of opinion on what exactly the committee would be. Those who sat around the negotiating table were the official delegates to the Environmental Technical Committee: a U.S.-based arco environmental scientist, the agip executive, Franco, and three Petroecuador officials participated on behalf of the corporation and state; Leonardo corporate anti-politics 137

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figure 20. arco’s Villano oil well site. arco, 1999. Courtesy of BP America Inc.

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and Marco and four other indígenas representing aiepra and dicip participated on the part of the Indigenous Front; the arco executive, Héctor Villamil, Cristian Cruz, and aiepra’s president were present as observers. arco had hired a professional translator this time. I was asked to participate as the meeting secretary, having participated in the preparatory meetings among opip, Petroecuador, and arco, as well as among the Indigenous Front. At face value, arco charged the committee with designing and monitoring an environmental impact study to evaluate the now completed exploratory phase of the company’s operations. Should arco declare commerciality, the committee would design and monitor environmental impact studies and management plans for future activities during the production phase. Yet indígenas fundamentally disagreed with corporate and state representatives on the starting point for any discussion. Leonardo began tersely, ‘‘This is our third substantive meeting with arco, and indigenous leaders still have pressing concerns that 138

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need to be addressed before the technical team begins work. In addition to establishing the rules of conduct between the company and indígenas in Pastaza, arco must give us a response to the proposal we presented to you in May.’’ opip envisioned the committee as being one of a cluster of forums that would bring dramatic changes to the practice of petroleum in Ecuador. As outlined in an agenda drafted by the Indigenous Front, indígenas insisted that there were ‘‘significant as yet unresolved issues still pending’’ that needed to be resolved before the committee could function. These included establishing clear, unobstructed lines of communication; outlining precise goals and guidelines for the committee; and, most importantly, getting arco to respond to the proposal that opip had submitted to the company in May of that year. The proposal that opip had given to arco outlined the conceptual framework and a budget for setting up an ‘‘Initial Fund’’—a fund that would launch pilot studies and projects for alternative development in indigenous territory in Pastaza. There was, however, striking disagreement over an ‘‘Initial Fund.’’ According to Héctor and Leonardo, arco officials committed to establishing an ‘‘Initial Fund’’ in their March 4 meeting in Texas. U.S.based arco executives were roundly impressed with opip’s plans for sustainable development and resource use in indigenous territory in Pastaza. Indeed, the document produced during the Texas meeting stated that ‘‘arco was generally supportive’’ of the points that opip had presented, enumerating each one. The last of the four read as follows: ‘‘The creation of funds for social development, environmental control, and biodiversity conservation in the indigenous territories of Pastaza. This will include an initial fund and, once petroleum production has begun, a long-term fund.’’ Furthermore, the Texas document stated that ‘‘opip will elaborate a proposal for establishing the initial fund for the development of the territorial plan for the indigenous peoples of Pastaza.’’ According to Héctor and Leonardo, both of these statements, together with hours and hours of discussion at arco’s Texas headquarters, indicated that arco itself had agreed to establish an ‘‘Initial Fund’’ for the region, given that the multinational would soon garner high revenues from oil production. The arco executive, however, fiercely objected to this conclusion. To his mind, the multinational had not agreed to any such thing. A discussion I had with the arco executive during the May meeting in Union Base is instructive along these lines: ‘‘What Leonardo is saying does not represent our [Plano, Texas] corporate anti-politics 139

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discussions about this document. It is a misrepresentation of the document. We did not agree to create any fund. We agree in principle in the idea that there should be funding, but where that funding comes from was up for debate. . . . Now to fundamentally say that arco agreed to create an Initial Fund does not reflect what we discussed. We spent twelve hours in these discussions; there was no misunderstanding.’’ ‘‘But—,’’ I interjected. ‘‘Now, there are no buts,’’ the arco executive responded: ‘‘To be perfectly honest, there are no buts.’’ ‘‘But there are buts,’’ I contested, ‘‘because people do have different understandings. The language offers a huge range of—’’ ‘‘Absolutely not,’’ the arco executive interrupted. ‘‘This document was created in Spanish. It took hours, hours to create this document. Believe me.’’ ‘‘I know,’’ I responded, ‘‘I transcribed every tape from that meeting, believe it or not.’’ ‘‘And there was no misunderstanding,’’ the arco executive continued. ‘‘Writing this document was a labor of love for three or four hours. There was no misunderstanding. You will see ‘apoya generalmente,’ ‘apoya generalmente.’ No misunderstanding.’’ ‘‘But, it’s how those words are interpreted, it’s not just what they mean to you,’’ I said. ‘‘No, no, no,’’ the executive countered, ‘‘There is no interpretation. This took three to four hours to create. There is no misunderstanding of any word in this document after three to four hours of effort. No. No misunderstanding. Héctor was there, Leonardo was there.’’ ‘‘But they can have different interpretations,’’ I retorted, ‘‘whether you agree with them or not.’’ ‘‘Well, I’m sorry,’’ the arco executive replied. ‘‘This is not playing the game by the same rules for the both sides. We’ve got to be honest; we’ve got to be transparent. And this is not being transparent. For Leonardo to sit there just now and say that arco agreed to create an initial fund is a total misrepresentation of our twelve hours of discussions in Plano. It is a total misrepresentation. And this document that took three to four hours to create leaves no scope for misunderstandings of words, or what they imply, or what the implications or ramifications are.’’ At issue here was not so much the fact that opip did not play by the same rules, but rather that the federation did not play by arco’s 140

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rules—the rules of free, equal, autonomous individuals within liberal capitalism, a realm incapable of acknowledging that interpersonal engagement entailed an ethics of interdependence and accountability. Having transcribed nine hours of tapes of the meeting in Texas, I knew that neither the U.S.- nor Ecuadorian-based arco executives used the English verb ‘‘create’’ when discussing the Initial Fund. But both Héctor and Leonardo repeatedly made forceful statements about the fact that arco had a moral responsibility to the indigenous peoples of Pastaza and that if the corporation wished to continue to work in the province it would have to fulfill that responsibility. By establishing an initial, and later long-term, fund once arco was producing oil, the multinational corporation would be fulfilling its moral, social, and political responsibility to indígenas and setting a new precedent for how oil companies and local people could interact. The arco executives never countered or challenged this statement or the fact that they indeed might be morally obligated to Pastaza indígenas. Furthermore, the Plano document stated that the federation would ‘‘elaborate a proposal for establishing the initial fund’’ (emphasis added). This implied that the creation of ‘‘the’’ fund was already mutually agreed upon. Fulfilling its side of the bargain, the indigenous front did present arco with a proposal during the May meeting in Union Base. Four months later, in the September meeting, dirigentes demanded a clear response. From the dirigentes’ perspective arco had had sufficient time to think through what steps they might take. opip leaders read arco’s negligence as a sign that the corporation was retracting its earlier promises. arco/agip representatives by contrast sought to dismiss these concerns, explaining that the Environmental Committee was an inappropriate forum for discussing the Initial Fund—a set of issues they labeled ‘‘political concerns.’’ The agip executive, a tall, impeccably dressed and distinguished Italian, stated: ‘‘This is not our job. Our job is to define the scope of work and terms of reference for a scheduled environment impact evaluation of exploration in Block 10. That is why we are here. The purview of the committee was to examine strictly technical aspects.’’ The arco executive interrupted, dictating the meeting’s procedure: ‘‘Discussion on these matters [the Initial Fund] was not the intent of this meeting. While concerns can be voiced, those points will not be discussed. We will listen but not discuss. This is a technical committee.’’ corporate anti-politics 141

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figure 21. Graffiti on the cemetery wall in Puyo denouncing both the social and ecological effects of oil development. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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Marco, one of opip’s delegates to the committee, spoke a bit incredulously: ‘‘It is absurd to think that the Environmental Technical Committee can function when there are still important issues to resolve. And it is impractical to dictate that it should. Who do you think we are? arco needs to take a stand now on how it is going to deal with the indigenous peoples of Pastaza. This includes how it is going to operate in the field, how it is going to operate with the Indigenous Front, and how it is going to assume its moral responsibility to the Nacionalidades Indígenas in Pastaza. Why otherwise should we trust you and sit around a table with you right now?’’ The agip executive grew noticeably agitated. ‘‘We have all read and seen your points,’’ he blurted in annoyance, referring to the Indigenous Front’s agenda. ‘‘But this is not the seat [forum] to discuss your position,’’ he added in his less than perfect English. ‘‘There may be another occasion. But we are here to work on this: what is stated in the agreement drawn up at the May meeting in Union Base. The 142

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purpose of this meeting is to define the specific responsibilities of the Environmental Committee: ‘To define parameters and terms of reference for an Environmental Impact Evaluation of the Exploration Phase.’ 15 This is the technical commission’s task. It is not a political task. We are not to discuss political issues.’’ The arco executive corroborated: ‘‘The work of the Environmental Technical Committee is entirely unrelated to any of the other issues. It can be conducted separate and in isolation from the other issues. The other issues look to the future. There is yet to be, however, a decision made on the Villano discovery [i.e., whether or not arco would develop the oil field]. A separate forum could address those separate points of a political nature that are remaining in the May 11 document.’’ ‘‘Let me clarify something,’’ Leonardo said. ‘‘The exigencies of the indigenous peoples are not solely confined to the environment—or confined to your narrow sense of the environment. No, they go much further. We don’t merely care about biological and geological management, we want to address the social security, the economic security, the cultural security, and ecological security of the indigenous peoples at whatever stage of petroleum development past, present, and future. It’s not as simple as saying, well, now we’ve agreed to participate in a monitoring team and will now work on environmental plans. That’s not enough.’’ arco and agip representatives had imposed an artificial division that indigenous representatives tried to suture back together. They sought to isolate so-called political concerns from so-called environmental concerns. But for opip leaders questions of the environment were inextricably linked to the corporation’s broader social and economic practices that defined oil operations. The politics of petroleum—the power matrixes that configured the daily operations of oil—intimately influenced the social, cultural, economic, as well as environmental reality in which people lived their lives. The tensions in the room rose. The agip executive’s face grew redder. He shoved his chair back and nearly shouted as he rose: ‘‘You are wasting my time!’’ The U.S.-based environmental scientist cautioned his Italian colleague to ‘‘tone it down’’ and show a bit more control. The environmental engineer then shifted discussion toward a more sympathetic note: ‘‘We have an opportunity to demonstrate to all of Ecuador and the rest of the world that we can make this, this committee, work. This evaluation is more than just an evaluation of Block 10, it is cocorporate anti-politics 143

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operation among indigenous groups, a multinational company, a state oil company, and the government of Ecuador. It is incumbent on us to make it a success.’’ The environmental scientist’s words echoed the self-congratulatory tone of the Minister of Energy and Mines and arco executives who celebrated their environmental saintliness. In his opening remarks on that morning, the minister had noted: ‘‘Personally, I feel very satisfied. This inauguration of the first Environmental Technical Committee proves that my words on the importance of the environment have not been in vain. This is just one more example of my, and the state’s, efforts in defense of the indigenous communities in the Amazon.’’ Similarly, in his opening remarks, the U.S.-based senior arco executive had professed, ‘‘This historic meeting affirms that arco/ agip are truly responsible in addressing environmental protection issues and the concerns of the indigenous communities. The Environmental Technical Committee is the first step in demonstrating how petroleum development can be accomplished for the benefit of el pueblo, for the benefit of the country, and in harmony with the environment.’’ And the Ecuador-based arco executive noted: ‘‘The Technical Committee emerged out of a commitment on arco/agip/Petroecuador’s part to evaluate the exploratory period. . . . The work of the Environmental Technical Committee is to address the past and to address it in a transparent fashion to the satisfaction of all interested parties that the work conducted by arco/agip has not brought damages of an environmental nature or socio-cultural nature to the Block 10 area.’’ arco/agip were eager for the Environmental Committee to draw up a list of criteria and considerations for an environmental impact study. The list would be the basis upon which environmental impact assessment companies would bid for the job. This process seemed slightly disingenuous and self-serving, however. Indeed, incorporating indigenous leaders into an arco agenda smacked of pretense: a multinational manipulating Indians as pawns in a corporate spectacle of environmental purity. I got the sense that contracting an environmental impact assessment of past exploratory work was a perfunctory gesture and that forming the Environmental Committee served as a foil for deflecting criticism and flaunting arco’s environmental and community conscientiousness to the rest of the world. As the arco executive made clear during the January 1994 meeting in the Oro Verde, arco had been ‘‘inundated with 144

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letters from North American and European ecological groups’’ condemning the corporation for contaminating the environment and for marginalizing opip. According to the arco executive, it was clear that arco had not inflicted ‘‘damages’’ on the environment or local peoples in their concession. The joint indigenous–corporate environmental evaluation would affirm the close relations that arco had built with indigenous organizations and champion the multinational for its environmentally impeccable work. ‘‘Not without struggle,’’ Héctor intervened, ‘‘are we able to sit at the table of negotiations. For indigenous peoples, this has been a long journey filled with national and international actions that have changed arco and the state. It began in the spring of 1989 with the Sarayacu Assembly. Next in May of 1992 there was the march to Quito. Then in December 1993 we organized the march to Villano. Soon after was the January 1994 visit to the minister and our occupation of the Ministry—followed by the Oro Verde meeting and more importantly the March 1994 meeting with arco in Texas. That was when things really began to shift. Then we had the May 1994 meeting in Union Base. And finally we meet here today. No, this meeting is not inevitable. Nor is it the result of corporate or state initiatives. It is the result of our struggle, a struggle that emerges from five hundred years of indigenous resistance to imperial power.’’ Separating ‘‘environmental’’ from ‘‘political’’ concerns was a way of dismissing the real inequalities that had long accompanied the extractive industries. Diffusing tensions, a key Petroecuador delegate suggested that Héctor made a cogent point in invoking a larger history and trajectory of struggles that simultaneously informed a particular sense of identity. ‘‘It is essential that we learn to know one another,’’ he said, and asked indigenous, corporate, and state representatives to say a few words about who they were. One by one, the six indigenous delegates, from aiepra, dicip, and opip, identified themselves through their nationality or pueblo: ‘‘Nacionalidad Zaparo,’’ ‘‘Nacionalidad Quichua,’’ ‘‘Pueblo Quichua,’’ ‘‘Nacionalidad Achuar,’’ ‘‘Nacionalidad Shuar,’’ ‘‘Pueblo Quichua.’’ In his thoughtful manner, the Petroecuador official reflected: ‘‘I believe that the important thing is to be from some place, to have a history. Only then is it possible to be universal. Only then is it possible to understand others. For this reason,’’ he continued, addressing corporate and state officials, ‘‘it is very important that each one [indígena] said ‘I’m Quichua,’ ‘I’m Achuar,’ ‘I’m Shuar.’ ’’ corporate anti-politics 145

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But in addition to citing their ethnic affiliation, Indian delegates located themselves within a ‘‘nacionalidad’’ or ‘‘pueblo’’: A ‘‘place’’ filled with territory and history, identity and directive, an understanding of power and exclusion. In particular, the concept ‘‘nacionalidad’’ brought to the fore the racial, economic, and social marginalization that marked indigenous agency in Ecuador and constituted the nasty knot of inequality at the core of the postcolonial empires of neoliberalism. Corporate intentions seemed oriented toward precluding these concerns. By establishing the Environmental Committee, arco sought to gather together what the company called all the ‘‘stakeholders’’ of Block 10 to discuss their ‘‘common concern.’’ But both of these concepts were artificial. A gathering among stakeholders implied a gathering among equals. But those around the negotiating table were not equal, autonomous, free individuals. They were unevenly situated within complex, global matrixes of power. They each had disparate access to political, economic, and cultural capital. The notion of ‘‘stakeholders’’ glossed over these crucial differences, as well as the practices that exacerbated these inequalities. Similarly, what arco defined as their common concern was not equally shared. Yes, indígenas were concerned about how oil operations might affect the environment. But they were concerned with the environment in a broad social (not a narrow bio-geo-technical) sense. By divorcing the environment from politics, arco disavowed all responsibility for the disruptive social effects of its operations and championed its own environmental consciousness. Such effects were by no means clean; they were continually contested and challenged by Pastaza Indians. Multinational attempts to disarticulate arco’s environmentally sound technology from the broader political-economic and racial contradictions that enhance their operations were challenged by local concerns over identity, notions of place/territoriality, and understanding of legitimacy and representation. Struggles over resource use and petroleum extraction were simultaneously struggles over historical exclusion, territorial propriety, and ethnic-national identity. Indians fought to be more than simply pawns—or even worse, as in Guayasamin’s mosaic, the bodies essential as a redemptive sacrifice—in charting and realizing corporate capital’s and the Ecuadorian state’s supposed destiny.

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5. CONTESTED TERRAIN

day 10. june 22, 1994. ‘‘If we have to die, at least we know we have truly lived.’’ Magdalena’s voice trembled after a sleepless night. She was enraged, and near tears. It was June 22, 1994. I sat wedged between others on a crowded wooden bench in a predawn gathering of indígenas and colonos in the dank assembly room at opip headquarters. Ecuador’s most spectacular indigenous protests to date had just come to an end. Over the previous ten nights, Magdalena and forty or so other lowland Indians had secured a roadblock on the only vehicular route that spirals down the central Andes to the central Amazon—the same route that sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadores had descended and twentieth-century Pastaza indígenas climbed. Their fortress was a long, red tarp stretched across a narrow one-lane bridge straddling El Topo River where it joins the Pastaza River, about an hour’s ride up the sierra from Puyo. The site was strategic. Tucked between two angular curves along the road that wrapped up the canyon wall to the Andes, indigenous protesters once more braced themselves against the wind, cold, and rain in defense of their lands. The pulse of protest reverberated throughout the Andes and the Oriente. Highland and lowland Indians, in conjunction with some campesino allies, had blocked all major transport arteries throughout Ecuador and paralyzed the country for ten consecutive days. They christened their protest the ‘‘Movilización por la Vida’’ (Mobilization for Life). At issue was newly passed agrarian legislation that threatened the livelihood of indígenas and campesinos. It brought an end to land reform, placed all land (including sacrosanct indigenous communal land) on the open market, and propelled Ecuadorian agriculture onto a neoliberal trajectory. More than once, I had heard Marco bellow loudly to protesters at Pastaza roadblocks:

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figure 22. opip members blocking El Topo River during the Mobilization for Life. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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‘‘No longer will we accept the audacious anti-democratic attitude of this government. We’ve always been marginalized from the creation of laws, and now it’s enough.’’ Protesters demanded that President Durán Ballén rescind the law and initiate a nationwide debate on the agrarian question. Soon after midnight on June 22, President Sixto Durán Ballén decreed a ‘‘state of emergency.’’ This was the government response that Indian leaders had dreaded—an ultimate signal of the primacy the state placed on force over dialogue. Any assurances were lost, citizen rights suspended, and military actions unpredictable. By 2:00 a.m., opip and confeniae leaders had retrieved protesters like Magdalena, who had braved El Topo and other Pastaza roadblocks, and brought them back to opip’s headquarters. Magdalena’s slight frame heaved with emotion as close to three hundred exhausted, distressed faces looked on. No one had slept for more than a few hours. Her waist-long hair loose with fury, as this four-foot, eight-inch middle-aged woman berated Indian leaders for having dislodged protesters from roadblocks, ridiculed leaders’ cowardliness, and questioned their actions. She spoke a language through which cultural pride flirted with mortality: ‘‘Why are we fighting if not ’til the ultimate consequences? The people who live fighting will never die. I am ready to spill my blood for our territory. 150

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At least my gravestone will say that I died fighting in 1994.’’ Magdalena captured the indignation and frustration of a people pushed to the brink by the desperation of their circumstance, by the injustice that haunted their daily lives. By early dawn on June 22, 1994, the president deployed military troops supported by an arsenal of tanks and artillery to ‘‘clean’’ the roads and open them for the ‘‘normalization’’ of transport and trade. That evening, television news reports spliced together images of truckloads of military soldiers barreling down an abandoned PanAmerican Highway and hosts of troops lifting tree trunks, moving boulders, and filling in ditches, while others with automatic weapons stood, feet planted apart, en guarde. This chapter explores the content and meaning of the Movilización in Pastaza Province. As with discussion of changes to Ecuador’s oil law in chapter 3, it looks at how neoliberal policies produced transgressive subjects. In particular, protest in Pastaza showed how indígenas and colonos (two groups historically antagonistic) forged a formidable counter-hegemonic front in opposition to state modernization policies. The tension between conservative interests and indigenous peoples tapped terrain more profound than merely agricultural. At issue was not simply a concern for how to modernize the agricultural sector but rather a social debate on the presumably natural topography of ethnicity, race, and nation in Ecuador—the national myth portrayed and critiqued in Guayamin’s mosaic. In contrast to many social movements in Ecuador (those composed of workers, teachers, transportationists) that demanded better working conditions and wages from the government, indigenous organizations demanded a new and different organization of the polity. Indigenous people demanded the right to participate in and to transform Ecuador’s political, social, and cultural reality. Therein lay their explosive character. Indians demanded democratic participation in a country where democracy had been merely nominal and often used to gloss over exclusion and inequality. Turning state rhetoric on its head, conaie deployed a language of citizenry, democracy, justice, and sovereignty to rally popular support for its cause and induce critical reflection on who governed and toward what ends. In particular, Indians rekindled their struggle to redefine the Ecuadorian polity such that Ecuador would be a plurinational state.

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Untangling the Legal Fray To understand the vehemence with which indígenas embarked on an unprecedented mobilization during the summer of 1994, it is important to understand its immediate history. Debate over new agrarian legislation in the National Congress was marked by a month of convoluted and underhanded deals and re-deals between the Partido Conservador Ecuatoriano (Ecuadorian Conservative Party, pce) and the Partido Social Cristiano (Social Christian Party, psc). This congressional behavior resonated with the all too frequent disdain, indifference, and dismissiveness that the central state had shown toward its indigenous population since the beginning of the Republic and that allowed elites to see the sacrifice of indígenas as inconsequential. On May 4, 1994, President Sixto Durán Ballén presented the Ecuadorian National Congress with a new law, the Ley de Ordenamiento del Sector Agrario. This new legislation would supercede the Agrarian Reform Law established thirty years before and would ‘‘modernize’’ the country through neoliberal reform. Printed on presidential stationery graced with the state motto El Ecuador ha sido, es y será País Amazónico (Ecuador has been, is, and will be an Amazonian State), the proposed legislation arrived in the National Congress under the rubric of ‘‘urgent character.’’ 1 According to the Ecuadorian constitution, if a law defined to be of economic concern by the president of the Republic is presented to the National Congress as being of ‘‘urgent character,’’ the National Congress or, in its recess, the Plenary of Legislative Commissions, must approve, reform, or reject the proposed law within fifteen days.2 In early May, the National Congress happened to be in recess and the Plenary of Legislative Commissions happened to be dominated by conservative members of the psc, the president’s party (the pce), and right-leaning independents. Since assuming office in August of 1992, Durán Ballén’s administration aimed to implement a program of modernization. Like the hydrocarbon sector, the agrarian sector was a key component of this larger scheme. The president’s proposal sought to liberalize and privatize land and water rights, guarantee land security and future land expansion, and intensify export production. Crafted in conjunction with landed and agro-industrial interests, the executive branch’s proposal aspired to re-entrench an agricultural oligarchy as an important political and economic force within Ecuador. As expressed by 152 crude chronicles

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the former president of the Chamber of Agriculture, Nicolás Guillén, Durán Ballén’s project was ‘‘vital’’ for Ecuador’s future: ‘‘It will permit the reactivation of agricultural activities such that they reassert their weight in an Ecuadorian economy which has become overly dependent on petroleum.’’ 3 The president of the Cattle Association and one of the legislation’s authors, Andrés Borja, captured the crux of the law in a newspaper article titled ‘‘Security: The Key Word.’’ ‘‘Productivity,’’ he claimed, ‘‘cannot improve if land tenancy is not secure.’’ Citing the same issue of the Economist Intelligence Unit that sparked considerable anxiety over foreign investment during debate of the Hydrocarbon Law, Borja noted: ‘‘An international magazine stated that there is no [foreign] investment in Ecuador because there is no security for it. . . . [Establishing security] is the basis upon which to uphold the modernization of agriculture. Modernization will enable Ecuadorian agriculture production to confront the challenges of the globalization of our economy.’’ 4 Private property needed to be ‘‘secured’’ to encourage the production of export crops. From the moment the law was submitted, indigenous and campesino organizations lobbied members of the National Congress to rescind the executive’s proposed legislation. Indigenous leaders maintained that the agrarian future of the country could not be established within a fortnight. Given that this legislation was the most important body of law for the agrarian sector since land reform in 1964, and, given that it would directly affect the majority of the indigenous and campesino peoples (over 50 percent of Ecuador’s total population), conaie insisted that new agrarian legislation demanded a broad, countrywide debate on the long-standing inequities that had permeated Ecuador’s agrarian reality since the Spanish invasion. This was not the first time that proposals to transform Ecuador’s agrarian law had been presented to the National Congress. Two years previously, indigenous and campesino organizations throughout the country, united under the umbrella of the Coordinadora Agraria Nacional (National Agrarian Coordinator, can), began a process of local and regional assemblies to discuss Ecuador’s agrarian reality. One year later, in June 1993, the Coordinadora presented its own legislative initiative, Proyecto de Ley Agraria Integral, to the National Congress. The Coordinadora’s proposal sought to establish the mechanisms for equitable access to land and credit, for justly expropriating land, for strengthening communal holdings, and for procontested terrain 153

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tecting renewable resources. During the interim year, the National Congress neither discussed nor took note of the Coordinadora’s proposal. conaie responded by stating: ‘‘Unfortunately, marginalizing a law that emerges from the heart (seno) of the people demonstrates the blatant inadequacies in the style of democracy and of the minds of the politicians who control power in this country.’’ 5 In May 1994, conaie spearheaded popular opposition to the executive’s proposed law within legislative halls, on city streets, and in community meetings. Opponents disagreed with five central points of the president’s proposal: (1) ending agrarian reform; (2) liberalizing the land market by allowing for the previously prohibited dividing and selling of communal lands; (3) privatizing water rights— a declared state resource; (4) publicly auctioning state-owned lands administered by ierac, which previously would have been granted to indigenous peoples or sold at a minimal cost; and (5) intensifying export production. Printed across the top of the first official conaie/Coordinadora response to the agrarian legislation were the bold, impassioned words: ‘‘THE EXECUTIVE’S PROJECT IS A PROJECT OF DEATH.’’ 6 Indigenous and campesino opposition stressed in particular the social consequences of attempts to privatize and rationalize agrarian production. Neoliberal policies oriented toward accelerating export-oriented agricultural production would benefit privileged sectors of economic strength, yet further disenfranchised the rural poor by making their small holdings more vulnerable. Luís Macas told reporters, ‘‘The law favors the large landowners who will begin to buy the land of poor commoners so as to extend their properties. . . . It will destroy community and cooperative systems [and] . . . will throw Ecuador back 100 years.’’ 7 As conaie repeatedly noted, indígenas and campesinos produced 75 percent of the food consumed in Ecuador. Undermining small producers would weaken the country’s food security and increase its dependency on the importation of basic foodstuffs, devastate subsistence agriculture, erode the agricultural gene pool, tighten the belt of misery in the rural sector, cause the reversion of Indians to serf labor, heighten violence in the countryside, and increase migration to urban centers.8 A conaie statement read: ‘‘We blame the President and his team of inhumane privatizers for the legal and social chaos this fateful project will engender.’’ 9 Speaking before Congress, in a moment of duplicitous party maneuvering, Luís stormed, ‘‘This country is committing a wave of 154

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larceny disguised under the mask of modernization. This government is sowing violence and will institutionalize it throughout the country. . . . Even though agrarian reform has yet to be implemented in Ecuador, the government intends to eliminate ierac and return the Ecuadorian peasant to an era of slavery.’’ He cautioned that should the plenary approve the president’s legislative proposal, indigenous peoples throughout Ecuador would engage in a national protest. Calling on fellow indígenas to join him in civil disobedience, Luís declared, ‘‘As long as we remain unsure as to whether the Congress will negate the Executive’s project it will be cadavers that you’ll remove from this Hall.’’ 10 In the early morning hours of May 18, after a marathon session, the plenary, composed of twenty deputies, rejected the executive’s agrarian proposal by a vote of sixteen to four. Complying with higher party orders, psc members retracted their prior positions and presented a report in opposition to the project.11 In a clear, though momentary, victory, conaie called off its protest. The aching question, however, was how to proceed. Everyone agreed that legal reform was necessary. They differed, however, as to what shape change should assume. Together with conaie, social critics and church, labor, and student leaders insistently called for a substantive debate on the agrarian question.12 In a move that surprised all, however, on May 27, the psc overpowered all debate and introduced its own law (Ley de Desarrollo Agrario, Agrarian Development Law) which was virtually identical to that presented by the president. Within the week, the psc swiftly maneuvered the legislation now in its name through the plenary. On June 2, the final evening of debate, I went to the National Congress to listen and observe. Addressing the plenary one last time during the second round of debates, Luís Macas warned, ‘‘Five hundred and two years after the Spanish invasion the forms of colonization, appropriation, and elimination of the pueblos indios have only been perfected. The passing of the project will provoke civil disobedience in our communities.’’ His long braid neatly combed back, his poncho doubled at his shoulders, Luís peered out from under the brim of his hat and continued: ‘‘We will not obey. We will not observe the law in our communities.’’ Following heated debate and more interventions by conaie, one by one, center and left congressional deputies deserted the hall in disgust. I, too, walked out to get some fresh air as debate seemed more and more futile. Rafael Pandam, vice president of conaie, accontested terrain 155

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companied me; his words stuck in my ears: ‘‘They’ve declared war. They will vote this evening and approve that wretched law. They can pass a law with seventeen people. Such is democracy in our country.’’ Outside the congress, a group of Otavaleños listened to their leaders: ‘‘This evening our luck has run out. . . . There will be massacres. The Agrarian Reform Law has just been overturned.’’ With a quorum of seventeen parliamentarians composed of the psc, pce, and independents, the plenary passed the Social Christian legislation in the early morning hours of June 3, to the foreboding chants of indigenous observers: ‘‘Long live the indigenous uprising.’’ 13 A poetic skeptic at heart, Rafael noted, ‘‘The bottom line is this: without a new agrarian law that appeases the World Bank and InterAmerican [Development] Bank, there will be no more international credit. Those conquistadores had to pass that law to survive.’’ As with the Hydrocarbon Law, the new agrarian legislation was a response to international pressures that conditioned access to new loans on structural adjustment reforms that privileged macroeconomic policies while eroding social conditions.14

The Calm Before The Storm

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On the day that followed the passing of the new agrarian law, an intriguing photograph appeared in the newspaper. It showed a group of indigenous women sitting on the floor against the rear wall of the congressional legislative hall listening to the final debate. In front of them stood police in riot gear. The caption beneath read: ‘‘The photograph speaks for itself of the impotence with which the indigenous people follow the development of a Plenary session that ended with the ratification of a law contrary to their interests.’’ 15 Indeed, the image rendered a sense of Indians being at a loss in the final moments while conservative legislators ruled the scene. Similarly, it hinted at the intimidating police presence, and the stakes they were commanded to defend, that lay at the core of these debates. Rarely, if ever, did the media cover the numerous protest marches to the National Congress over the weeks and their clashes with the police. Under the orders of the president of the National Congress, police forces prevented many indigenous peoples from observing the debates and denied them their right to voice protest. Two days later, a cartoon version of the same image appeared next to an opinion piece titled ‘‘The dynamite’s wick is alight.’’ The political cartoon showed indígena women sitting on the floor in the rear 156

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figure 23. ‘‘Aren’t there some little chairs in the Congress for our indigenous sisters?’’ Political cartoon responding to Indians’ perceived position during the agrarian debate. Courtesy of Diario Hoy, June 6, 1994.

of the National Congress, peering through the legs of a soldier. In the adjoining article, the author, Diego Araujo Sánchez, wrote: The mobilizing capacity of the indigenous organizations is very great. Who can doubt that after the 90 uprising? Thursday’s ratification appears to be blind provocation. It shows the incomprehension with which the government has officially managed the indigenous issue. The Plenary has lit the wick of a charge of dynamite. Conflict in rural areas will increase. Nearly six thousand unresolved cases of land-proprietary claims, the passing of water into private hands, the possibility of dividing communal property, are large caliber plugs.16

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Read differently, the image of indigenous women patiently sitting on the floor of the National Congress represents the vigilant calm before the storm. As Ramiro Rivera, a left-leaning plenary representative, declared: ‘‘There is no room to doubt that the law, hurriedly approved between political compromises, will create social and juridical conflict. It is a law that lacks social legitimacy, for legislators have ignored and depreciated the concerns of the campesinos and indigenous people.’’ 17 contested terrain 157

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As many social critics observed, the passing of agrarian law by a minority of legislators representing elite interests opened the doors of violence and ushered Indians along the path of Chiapas, Mexico. This was not the first time analogies were made with the 1994 Zapatista uprising. Yet this time, comparisons came from both the right and the left. A conaie statement asserted, ‘‘Indigenous resistance is not simply momentary but rather of centuries, because the abuse, sacking, displacement, and genocide of our pueblos have been for centuries. We will not let them [the state] continue to exclude us.’’ 18 Yet because the Movilización revolved specifically around one law and its dubious handling in the National Congress, conaie usurped an abstract language of the liberal state—‘‘democracy,’’ ‘‘citizenship,’’ ‘‘sovereignty’’—to argue its claims. Through a rhetoric that entwined, as it glossed, ethnic and racial oppression over centuries, conaie both further instantiated its identity as an ethnically based organization and welcomed collaboration with nonindigenous (as well as some indigenous) campesino organizations that defined their identity and struggle in terms of class. Another conaie statement read: ‘‘We will not allow them to continue humiliating us with the vices of power. We have the dignity of having resisted five centuries and we will continue to defend the existence of our pueblos. If the . . . [conservative] parties want to continue with their dictatorship, imposing their privatization plans . . . and an agrarian law of death on the rest of the social sectors there is nothing else to do but raise the banners of democracy, the defense of sovereignty, and life.’’ 19 Conventional wisdom in Ecuador, along with past and present state policy, dictated that ethnic identity would eventually dissipate —thin, not thicken. Yet indigenous leaders were quick to remind that after five hundred years of Spanish domination and on the eve of a new millennium, ethnic identity was a mobilizing force in ways previously unimagined. In a letter to the heads of the Conservative and Social Christian Parties, conaie noted: ‘‘Mr. President and Mr. Nebot. . . . know that you stain your cocktails red with the blood and misery of Ecuador’s poor.’’ 20 Not only were Indians determined to no longer be the sacrifice essential for Ecuador’s destiny; they also were expanding their struggle to embrace nonindigenous poor.

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The Practice of Protest in Pastaza On the morning of June 9, I woke to the sound of pounding at the front door of my Puyo apartment. It was barely dawn. ‘‘Suzana,’’ Marco ordered, ‘‘hurry up and get dressed. We have work to do. We need to check your correo electrónico.’’ Throughout my collaboration with opip, my e-mail was the only locally trusted and continuously working account. Consequently, at different moments it was used to collect and relay messages to and from conaie, as well as international solidarity organizations. The tension in Marco’s otherwise easygoing voice made me scramble out of bed. Half an hour later we were in opip’s offices and Marco was reading over my shoulder as I moved the cursor down the computer screen: ‘‘THE NEW AGRARIAN LEGISLATION IS AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL, ANTISOCIAL, RACIST LAW WHICH THREATENS THE TRUE DEVELOPMENT THE COUNTRY NEEDS.’’ Marco had just returned from a special assembly that conaie had called immediately following the passage of the new agrarian law. The assembly, held on June 7 and 8, gathered indigenous leaders from regional and local federations in Riobamba (the central sierra capital of Chimborazo Province and indigenous stronghold) to assess what had happened in the National Congress, to discuss the neoliberal legislation, and to define their future strategies. Following two days of debate, indigenous leaders resolved to stage a countrywide act of protest, ‘‘La Movilización por la Vida,’’ to demand that Durán Ballén veto the Agrarian Development Law.21 Marco was reading the Riobamba Mandate, the document that outlined the reasons for Indians’ actions of protest and their ten demands. Though the Agrarian Development Law was the primary motivation for the Movilización, the mandate also demanded that President Durán Ballén declare a moratorium of the Séptima Ronda, repeal petroleum price hikes, and pardon all loans owed to the Banco Nacional de Fomento (National Development Bank, bnf). As agreed upon in Riobamba, roadblocks were to be the core fixtures of the Movilización. In Pastaza, opip and confeniae leaders defined five strategic roadblocks that were to stop all transport into and out of the province: El Topo bridge (where Magdalena was) on the road eastward up the Andes; the Santa Clara bridge on the road northward to Napo Province; and three points on southbound roads —on the Via Macas at the junction to Union Base and at community centers on two minor roads through the Comuna San Jacinto. contested terrain 159

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Like the roadblocks throughout the Andes, the Santa Clara bridge and the two smaller barriers in San Jacinto were the only roadblocks in Pastaza within walking distance of an indigenous community. The other two strategic blocks, El Topo and Via Macas, were isolated and highly dependent on organizational logistics for support. opip and confeniae leaders busily coordinated arrangements and formed various commissions to secure roadblocks (digging trenches in roads, felling trees, moving boulders) and to arrange for food, security, health, communications, and press coverage. Leaders from Santa Clara and San Jacinto returned to their home communities to organize members. Those from Canelos organized the blocking of the Via Macas. An assorted group organized logistics at El Topo. Marco was in charge of coordinating communications in Pastaza during the Movilización. We printed out the document, made numerous copies, and sent it to indigenous communities and protesters, as well as to city officials, the media, and international solidarity groups. When I first visited El Topo, indigenous protesters had already been there for three nights. I accompanied Magdalena and three confeniae leaders carrying food for body and mind. We drove from Puyo up the Andes for slightly more than an hour to the point where the truck could go no farther. On the downhill side of a protracted sharp bend, protesters had semiconvinced/semicoerced the provincial tractor driver to bulldoze close vehicular passage. After climbing between meters-wide boulders and walking the ten minutes around the bend, we came upon a plastic red tarp anchored into the moss-laced, corroding bridge that crossed the El Topo River. There protesters slept on straw mats and sought shelter from the wind and rain. With Magdalena there were four women, a handful of children, and thirty-two men at El Topo. Fish and plátano soup cooked on the fire as we arrived. Two young children painted each other’s faces. Twenty-odd chonta spears rested against the bridge railing across from an older gentleman who whittled one more. Younger men listened to the radio. A few fished on the rocks below. Uphill, on the far side of their encampment, a large bonfire of wood and tires burned to signal their presence at night. Up to that point, indigenous sentinels had been singularly lucky. The usual pattern of nightly torrential rains seemed to have lapsed, an auspicious rarity that made both sleep and fish easier to catch and perhaps signaled a prophetic compassion for the protesters’ struggle. Two hours farther up this partly paved, largely dirt roadway, as 160

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figure 24. Women at roadblock in the Sierra. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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it peaked and opened onto the Andean plateau, were similar blockades, at multiple sites, patrolled and secured by highland Salasaca Indians. Here the Movilización began the evening of Sunday June 12. The following evening, the protest dominoed through nine other provinces: seven sierra provinces where the highest concentration of indigenous people live—Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Bolívar, Chimborazo, Cañar, Azuay, and Loja—and three strategic Oriente provinces—Napo, Pastaza, and Morona-Santiago. By the night of June 13 all major transit lines between provinces were blocked. With the PanAmerican Highway in the sierra and routes fingering off of it toward the Oriente and coast closed, the disruption to transport and commerce affected the entire country. The politics of roadblocks worked such that vehicular traffic, market produce, and commercial goods were not allowed to pass through barricades. Individuals, with their personal belongings or family necessities, were permitted to come and go as they pleased. The only condition was that they walk—sometimes simply over a bridge, other times for distances of twenty kilometers or more, carrying bags, leading horses, pushing bicycles, and hiring transport where available between blockades. By and large, the system functioned, although stories occasionally surfaced of market produce crossing roadblocks when substantial ‘‘contributions’’ or ‘‘donations’’ were made to indigenous protesters. The system, of course, was not foolproof, and indigenous resolve was far from unanimous, contested terrain 161

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especially in the face of impending violence. The ten-day protest took on a slightly different shape in each province. Events in Pastaza are particularly exemplary of the broad-based alliances that the Movilización achieved. In addition to closing all road transportation, indígenas and colonos joined forces in an unprecedented move to stage a week-long sit-in at the Banco de Fomento and to pressure reluctant provincial authorities to support their demands. day 1. june 13, 1994. ‘‘I am a woman, mother, campesina. Don’t I have the right to assert my rights?’’ Blanca stood as she spoke, her greying hair pulled back with a leather barrette, her hand-knit sweater worn at the elbows. The stillness that held the room accentuated the intermittent cracking of her voice and the sheen that glossed her eyes. ‘‘If we don’t do it now,’’ she continued, ‘‘tomorrow my family and I will be on the street. For my part, my finca [farm] is not mine. . . . The Banco de Fomento is exploiting, deceiving us until we grow tired, grow sick, grow old, and break. We, the campesinos, don’t have enough to provide for our children. So what shall we do? Cross our arms and wait? For what? Who are the owners of the Banco de Fomento? Shall we wait until the bank gentlemen tell us to get out, leave our farms? If we don’t make a decision now, we never will. . . . This is what we should have done a long time ago.’’ It was the morning of June 13, 1994. Approximately one hundred campesino men and women were gathered in opip’s assembly room. Most were unfamiliar faces to me, though I recognized a few. Blanca was a Spanish-speaking peasant from Riobamba. Approximately twenty years earlier, she, her husband, and five children moved to Pastaza and settled on a finca about ten kilometers north of Puyo. Originally settled by highlanders in the 1930s and subsequently subdivided, Blanca’s farm (once part of the forested lands of the Puyu Quichua) was a typical thirty-seven-hectare colono parcel. A plank house with its dull tin roof interrupted a landscape dominated by tall pasture devoid of cattle. To one side was a pineapple patch, a scrawny sugarcane stand, and a small plot of bananas, yuca, and corn for household consumption. To the other were scattered stands of piwa trees (a fast-growing softwood) and chota palms. Recent years had not been kind to Blanca and her family. Her husband became seriously ill, and the Banco de Fomento pressed for loan payment with increasing aggression. Blanca had sold the family’s cattle to stave off the bank and to put a dent in mounting medical debt. 162 crude chronicles

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As I leaned against the back wall of opip’s assembly room, I watched how leaders worked together for the first time to inspire colonist participation in the Movilización. At the table in front of the assembly sat Héctor Villamil, Domingo Peas (vice president of confeniae), and Manuel Sánchez (president of the recently established frededicap, Frente de Defensa de los Derechos de los Indígenas y Campesinos de Pastaza). As I have mentioned before, Héctor didn’t look particularly indigenous, with his softly tanned skin, light eyes, and receding hairline. Domingo, a handsome Achuar in his mid-thirties, looked quintessentially indigenous by comparison. His shoulder-length, jet-black hair was held back with a brightlycolored, toucan-feathered corona, and his broad shoulders extended the seams of his yellow T-shirt. Manuel, a colono from Tungurahua in his early forties, was a tall, slender cross between Omar Sharif and Gregory Peck, in cowboy boots. Manuel’s powerful voice and spirited green eyes gave him a certain charisma. As in some other provinces, action in Pastaza built upon a nascent but growing alliance between Indians and nonindigenous campesinos. These campesinos were colonos from the highland or coastal region who had acquired land from ierac over the past thirty years. Delineated crudely, the two sectors were historically antagonistic toward each other, though by no means were all colonos hostile toward Indians, nor were all Indians in agreement with opip politics. As I mention in chapter 1, opip’s struggle since the mid 1970s to attain legal rights to indigenous territory in Pastaza was rife with tension. Colonos were the primary elements threatening opip’s goal. Yet in 1994, historical factors brought these formerly inimical and isolated factions closer together. It was now two years after the state had granted legal title to the majority of indigenous lands. Indígenas were reasonably assured that the colonization frontier in Pastaza would not continue to advance substantially. Campesinos were reasonably assured that Indians would not take their lands. Socially progressive campesinos, many influenced by liberation theology, were assuming more and more responsibility in organizing colonos.22 These leaders recognized opip’s organizational prowess. Wishing to build a similar campesino political body, these leaders approached opip for advice and proposed ways to join forces. The first public event to mark this alliance occurred months earlier on February 12, 1994, Ecuador’s national holiday to commemorate the ‘‘Discovery of the Amazon.’’ Indígenas and colonos led an anticelebration march and rally to contested terrain 163

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protest oil development in Pastaza. Now months later, having kept in close contact, many campesinos in Pastaza saw themselves as a part of the 1994 mobilizing effort. opip and confeniae welcomed the opportunity to further bolster their struggle. As Blanca sat down, Héctor rallied: ‘‘This is not an indigenous mobilization. This is a mobilization for life!’’ With remarkable political savvy, he detailed the dangers of the Agrarian Development Law and the importance of the Riobamba Mandate. Yet, despite the fact that the Agrarian Development Law threatened small holdings just as much as it threatened indigenous communal lands, this was not the issue that vexed colonos. Rather, the most oppressive state entity that weighed daily on colonos’ lives was the Banco de Fomento. Since the inauguration of President Durán Ballén ten months earlier, interest rates for Banco de Fomento loans had risen from 38 percent to 58 percent and were threatening to go higher. This had devastated many small farmers throughout the country who were unable to pay the interest, let alone the capital. In Pastaza, both campesinos and indígenas living along the colonization plateau were in debt to the bnf. Numerous farms had been confiscated as a result of defaulted loans. Families were made landless and homeless and forced to seek aid from relatives or move. In a room representing slightly over eighty households, seventy-five had outstanding loans they could not pay the bank. Consequently, colono participation in the Movilización was initially raised by virtue of the seventh of the ten demands outlined in the Riobamba Mandate: 7. We demand that the President of the Republic pardon, by means of an executive decree, the interest to date which small and medium size agriculturalists and cattle raisers owe on capital they received from the Banco Nacional de Fomento. Héctor, along with confeniae and frededicap leaders, resolved that if colonos were to see the power of cohesive organizing and further support indigenous concerns, something would have to be gained in their interest. The practice of protest in Pastaza, therefore, was two-pronged. It entailed both blocking strategic roads and occupying the Banco de Fomento in Puyo’s city center.23

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day 2. june 14, 1994. As I walked into opip’s meeting room on the morning of June 14, Pedro, a stout, twinkly-eyed campesino, excitedly spouted, ‘‘It’s no coincidence that there are police in front of 164 crude chronicles

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the Banco de Fomento. They know what we are up to. . . . We either take it or it will take us. No one’s going to die. There won’t be any bombs [i.e., tear gas] or shooting. We’re going to enter successively two by two in a peaceful takeover. The women should go first. . . . Then we’ll sit down on the floor and force them to shut the doors. But we need more women.’’ Pedro continued: ‘‘How many injustices must we suffer? Must we wait until they seize our very way of life from us? The Bank is ours, not the state’s. . . . We are demanding that the government suspend coercive arbitrations, that the Executive pardon the interest, and that three functionaries from the Bank be fired. . . . ok now, everyone should bring along padlocks and posters. Though make sure they’re hidden. And don’t forget to bring along portable radios. And extra batteries too.’’ There within the confines of indigenous organizing headquarters, campesinos held forth in a meeting solely among themselves. opip and confeniae leaders had gone to the roadblocks and had left their offices under colono control. This sight was unimaginable only a year earlier. Close to seventy people busily chatted over details essential for coordinating the bank occupation. Manuel Sánchez, the president of frededicap, stood center stage, building animation through his performance: ‘‘How many years have we lived divided? We must educate our children to understand each other. We have all remained with our mouths closed while the robbers, the assassins of the people, the four hundred oligarchical families, are killing indigenous and campesino children the same. Where is the modernization? This government grants the goods of the state, of the nation, to corporate interests. This government has not solved any of our social problems. But, compañeros, compañeras, our future will be made with our own hands. Until there is pardon, we will not pay the debts. They are forcing us to a slow death. Never again will we let them [the state] rob us.’’ His words were echoed over midday TV news as indígenas from the Sierra expressed similar sentiments: ‘‘Until the interest is pardoned, we will not pay.’’

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day 3. june 15, 1994. By the third day, many Puyo residents were a bit testy over the fact that roadblocks had persisted for more than twenty-four hours—the time span that collective morality deemed to be tolerable for spurts of civil protest. The reaction of my neighbor is instructive. The male head of a double-income, middle-class, government-worker household, Dino was representative of many in contested terrain 165

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Puyo. An educated mestizo born in Pastaza—the provincial stronghold of Ecuador’s leading radical political party—Dino was a selfproclaimed revolutionary.24 As I greeted Dino like I did nearly every morning on my way to opip’s offices, he let loose: ‘‘Will these Indians never learn?! You can’t fight the government with incidental protests. What do they think they’re doing? The government will never listen. I was supposed to be in Ambato [a highland city] yesterday. This is crazy.’’ Behind him, through the open front door, a pet parrot climbed down the huge ceiling-to-floor banner of Che Guevara that dominated the family’s living room. The first time I sat under Che, Dino launched into a tirade on Indians’ inability to join the revolution as long as they retained their ‘‘nativist’’ and ‘‘tribal’’ politics, while his wife politely served me tea. A few minutes later, as I crossed the central plaza, I saw Franco, the arco manager, cruising the streets of Puyo in the company’s blue Chevy Trooper. ‘‘I’m on vacation,’’ he exclaimed from the car window as he stopped to say hello. ‘‘What a blessing that they’ve closed the roads on me! So tell me Suzana, how long will my luck last?’’ ‘‘Franco! What would your boss say!’’ I scolded jokingly. His pelada (sweet young thing) giggled from the passenger seat. ‘‘Oh, I keep telling him that things don’t always work the way one expects in Ecuador.’’ Franco had been in Puyo over the past week to finalize the arrangements for a scheduled meeting between arco, agip, and Frente representatives in early June. The representative from agip had just arrived from Italy and arco was eager for talks to proceed. When opip cancelled the meeting, corporate executives were quite irritated; Franco had stayed in Puyo to try and reschedule a date. By 8:00 a.m., opip’s assembly room was full of campesinos (many of whom had to travel for nearly three hours because of the roadblocks between their homes and Puyo). Pedro was reading a leaflet. Marco felt that protesters needed to educate the public of their concerns and could do so via fliers. The flier I had drafted the previous day at his request was, however, fairly flat and in dire need of some inspiration. Elisabet, a pretty campesina with a child at her knee, interjected: ‘‘But the agrarian law affects all of us, for the whole world aches. Let’s rally the entire city to join in solidarity with us.’’ What followed was a subtle analysis of the flows of international monetary and political capital, its links with the state, and the daily, mundane injustice it insinuated into rural lives. ‘‘We must insist that las compañías,’’ 166 crude chronicles

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continued Elisabet, referring to multinational corporations, ‘‘can’t simply do what they please here. . . . In our economy of life, the government wants to replace milk with coca cola, and mote [boiled corn] with chitos. When las compañías rule this country’s agriculture, we will never be able to afford basic foods for our families. . . . Well, I don’t know about Sixto, but my family doesn’t eat roses!’’ Elisabet’s jab alluded to a huge agro-export industry that had converted land that once produced corn and beans into land that now produced the latest luxury crop for northern markets. A booming flower industry covered hundreds of hectares in the northern highlands with a mantle of hothouses that cultivated roses, carnations, and astramelia for floral bouquets in the United States. Elisabet continued: ‘‘ ‘When have you last listened to the cry of a dying child?’ That’s what we will ask the manager [of the Banco Nacional de Fomento]. We are victims of a market of consumerism where prices keep rising and rising.’’ Pedro chimed in: ‘‘Yes, compañeros, the rise in [the price of ] gasoline is killing us. Our lumber is worth less because gasoline costs more. Our produce is worth less because gasoline costs more.’’ Building on the energy in the room, Manuel rallied: ‘‘Our struggle is forceful and conclusive, compañeros. Not only are we fighting the agrarian law, the Banco de Fomento, petroleum policies, and corruption, but also international interests. For it is international interests that are behind the restructuring proposed by the Modernization Law. They think that bringing more foreign business will bring more monies for the government to pay the foreign debt. But forcing the payment of the external debt is equal to killing a people, while the oligarchy continues to get rich. . . . At the Banco de Fomento, we are demanding the correction of innumerable injustices. They are robbing that which is ours.’’ The transnational flow of capital and government austerity measures encouraged by international creditors like the World Bank and the imf circumscribed colono and indígena choices and debilitated their control over their own lives. This instability provoked piercing questions about the legitimacy of state governance. Within minutes, Elisabet and I were sitting in front of one of opip’s computers, composing a second flier. She spoke and I typed away a message that campesinos and indígenas distributed over the course of the next week to fellow citizens at roadblocks, on Puyo streets, and in front of the Banco de Fomento. contested terrain 167

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NOW OR NEVER FOR LIFE! The Agrarian Development Law approved by the National Congress threatens indigenous communal property, facilitates the open selling of land to the highest bidder, privatizes irrigated water, and permits land which now produces for the family table to change its agricultural vocation and produce for export: When we don’t eat flowers! Privatization measures directly affect our lives and the future security of our children because it is the hands of indígenas and campesinos that feed this country. MOTHERS OF FAMILIES! FATHERS OF FAMILIES! UNITE! THE MOBILIZATION FOR LIFE MUST BE FOR ALL PEOPLE! indigenous-campesino alliance of pastaza province confeniae, opip, frededicap An hour later, at 10:00 a.m., roughly one hundred colonos marched to the Banco Nacional de Fomento in the center of town. As they came down the street, the police closed the bank’s heavy metal, garage-like doors. Campesinos walked onto the terrace entrance, and there they stayed for the following seven nights and seven days. While campesinos never entered the bank, their presence closed it down for a week. The nonviolent occupation of a state institution in the center of Puyo became a stage upon which to forge alliances and dismantle animosities. Literally a stage three feet above street level, the bank’s terrace entrance was the sight of spectacle. Roughly sixty men and women slept on straw mats and bundled in blankets provided by confeniae, ate stews and sandwiches donated and prepared by townspeople, and watched videos and news via a television furnished by opip. Over the following days, their leaders launched speeches and protesters joked, shared stories, sang songs, watched World Cup matches, and played cards with each other and with the police. Spectators gathered, some gawked, and many collaborated. One hundred and one debtors registered for the protest. Posters strung between pillars read: Viva la Movilización Indígena-Campesino de Pastaza; Cuando los Indígenas y Campesinos se Levantan Hasta la Tierra Tiembla; Se vende este Banco por Remate; Por la Condonación desde 80–94.

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day 4. june 16, 1994. On the morning of June 16, roadblocks outside of Puyo remained strong. By midafternoon a conaie delega168 crude chronicles

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figure 25. Sit-in at the Banco Nacional de Fomento in Puyo. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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tion arrived in Puyo composed of four indigenous highlanders—a female and male conaie leader, a female ecuarunari (the highland regional confederation), and an indigenous cinematographer. Slowly the delegation had progressed through the countryside, both to assess and to inspire the Movilización. To date, they had visited Latacunga, Cotopaxi, and Tungurahua and were now on their tour of the Oriente. Under normal circumstances, a private car could make the journey from Quito to Puyo in seven hours. With many protracted stops while roads were cleared for passage and with numerous rallies with protesters, it had taken the conaie delegation four days to reach Puyo. As in other areas, Pastaza had limited access to news. Not one newspaper reached Puyo. The news coverage on the one television station that transmitted to Puyo had been spotty to date. And neither of the city’s two radio stations was especially sympathetic to indigenous concerns. The conaie delegation brought with it news, moral support, and the sense that individuals in Pastaza were participating in something larger than themselves. Thousands of Indians throughout the Sierra participated in the Movilización. In all regions, the situation was intensifying. In Chimborazo, a province populated predominantly by indígenas, participation surpassed that of the 1990 Levantamiento, and the majority of protesters were women.25 There formerly divided Indians of different religious and political persuasions joined forces in securing roadblocks and held large rallies in city centers to gain provincial and contested terrain 169

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citizen support. In Tungurahua, protesters paralyzed industry, suspended school classes, intermittently closed banks, and compelled provincial authorities to publicly declare their support for indigenous concerns. In Napo, indigenous protesters blocked roads leading to petroleum wells and processing stations, disrupting the production of Ecuador’s principal source of foreign revenue. In Quito, diverse sectors held large coalition protest marches directed toward the Presidential Palace and the National Congress. That morning, I had received an e-mail from conaie stating that the minister of agriculture had extended an invitation to conaie to discuss differences. Indian leaders responded that the only person with whom they wished to meet was the president, Sixto Durán Ballén. With his thick glasses and short-cropped hair, one conaie leader rallied protesters in front of the Banco de Fomento. ‘‘Who are the majority?’’ ‘‘WE ARE,’’ yelled the predominantly campesino crowd of a hundred or so. ‘‘Who are WE, the rich or the poor?’’ ‘‘THE POOR,’’ the street responded. Tugging on concerns affecting the entire populace, the conaie leader continued: ‘‘We must denounce this law because it threatens everyone. . . . It’s not right that a piece of bread which cost 50 sucres two months ago costs 200 sucres now. . . . As the price of gasoline increases monthly, the prices of transport and basic commodities rise and rise. With this law things will worsen. Small farmers will no longer produce our basic food and we will not be able to feed our families. . . . We demand the derogation of this law.’’ Increasingly gaining her voice as a popular campesina activist, Blanca (the colona who spoke of the need for protest during the first indígena/campesino meeting) forcefully interjected: ‘‘Compañeras, compañeros. I have been a popular leader for years. Despite our differences, compañeros, in one way or another we are all Indians. We are all united under the same demands—inequality, domination, oppression. . . . Let us unite in sisterhood [sic] and be loyal till the ultimate consequences.’’ Manuel spoke a line oft repeated thereafter—‘‘Que nuestras manos sean un lazo de amistad y solidaridad’’ (May our hands become bonds of friendship and solidarity). I stood across the street in the back of the gathered crowd. An indigenous protester with a crown made of feathers and reeds on her head standing in the center of the crowd yelled, ‘‘Siga adelante el paro indígena-campesino.’’ A construction worker on the scaffolding behind me seconded her 170 crude chronicles

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plea, while the mestiza townswoman next to me nodded her head in agreement. That evening, I visited protesters at the bank as townswomen dished the last of that night’s pollo y choclo dinner soup out of brightly colored plastic buckets. A large group of campesinos, Indians, and townspeople were gathered around the television. The night before we had borrowed opip’s video player and set up the equipment on the bank’s terrace entrance. The evening news showed impressive shots of the paralyzation in the central and southern sierra where thousands of indígenas blocked roads. To date, televised images of the Movilización were scarce. As the news report wrapped up, organizers slid the video of conaie’s 1990 Levantamiento into the vcr. For the majority of colonos and mestizos, this was their first viewing of the Levantamiento tape. What they knew of the 1990 uprising came from their spotty access to newspapers, TV reportage, and urban lore. Indians in Pastaza did not for the most part take part in the 1990 Levantamiento, largely because the issues that fomented the uprising—specific land disputes and land recuperation—were distant from those that vexed life in the Oriente. opip, however, did present its Acuerdo Territorial to the government during the negotiations subsequent to the 1990 uprising. In 1990, most colonos were not sympathetic to indigenous organizations or their demands, and the Acuerdo Territorial threatened them. Who would have expected such a radical shift only four years later?

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day 5. june 17, 1994. On the morning of June 17, conaie leaders sent word from Quito that they had secured a meeting on the following Monday, June 21, with President Durán Ballén and Luís Felipe Duchicela, the national secretary of indigenous and ethnic minorities affairs. It was Thursday. The meeting was four days away. It had been a long five days since the Movilización started. Tensions and unrest had begun to challenge the veneer of cohesiveness among protesters. Sustaining the protest for four more days seemed like a stretch. Throughout the Sierra and the Oriente, the paralyzation had caused unrest in urban areas as city dwellers faced increasingly ominous shortages of fresh produce, cooking gas, and petrol. In many cities, fears of severe shortages were further reinforced by caustic rumors of Indians’ ulterior, more radical motives. Indigenous actions such as the temporary cutting off of water in Riobamba only contested terrain 171

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reinforced mestizos’ suspicions. In Tungurahua an indigenous protester was shot to death from a passing car; his assassins were suspected to be paramilitary agents. In Cañar, reactionary segments of the populace burned down the headquarters of the indigenous organization Ñucanchic Huasi in the provincial capital, along with the Center for Intercultural-Bilingual Education, a church, and five vehicles. The reactionary backlash killed three indígenas and injured a dozen more.26 In Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populated urban center, two days of riots broke out in markets as fresh food became increasingly scarce and price speculation more prevalent. Meanwhile, televised newscasts noted that the Movilización was ‘‘extremely dangerous’’ and ‘‘was provoking racist violence.’’ Near-daily confrontations between the military and Indians in Napo Province felt uncomfortably close to Pastaza. A reported two hundred people occupied and halted production of a petroleum well near Coca, while roadblocks disrupted the smooth production of crude at others. Military cargo planes, the ‘‘Boofalo’’ (Buffalo) as they were called, flew missions from Shell to Coca, often three times a day. Many concluded that troops were on the move. Word from Napo Province was that military repression was on the rise. Seven men from one indigenous community had disappeared and community members feared military foul play. Later, news confirmed that six of them had been arrested, detained, and beaten by the police. One never returned. A letter I received by e-mail from conaie and directed to President Durán Ballén, stated: ‘‘We have observed with grave concern the presence of many trucks and helicopters with dozens of military moving to the central provinces of the country. . . . The answer to our petition for dialogue cannot be the militarization of the country. This attitude will undermine any efforts toward dialogue and intensifies already existing levels of violence.’’ By the fifth day, apprehensions and uncertainty pervaded Puyo’s urban landscape. The vegetable, meat, and fish markets were empty; no one was selling canisters of cooking gas; and there was much conjecture about gasoline reserves soon running out. Leaders joked that as long as the liquor distribution warehouse still had beer, all would stay calm. There was plenty of dry food and no one was going to starve. If there was no cooking gas to be had, ‘‘then housewives should learn to cook with firewood!’’ a number of indigenous leaders asserted, oblivious to the gendered implications of their politics. Military helicopters buzzed like vultures over Puyo and its envi172 crude chronicles

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figure 26. Protesters blocking the Via Macas, the road leading south from Puyo. Suzana Sawyer, 1994.

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rons daily, inspecting roadblocks and intimidating protesters. Those at El Topo were on edge. The soldiers who were allowed to drive across the bridge the previous day had threatened, ‘‘We’ll be back. But next time it will be with bombs.’’ On the Via Macas (the roadway south from Puyo toward Macas), conditions were similarly tense. Transporters and merchants had begun to line up their heavy trucks behind the roadblock and voice their anger at not being able to pass. opip and confeniae leaders were afraid that there would soon be a confrontation. Public commentary in Puyo streets acted as a barometer calibrating mestizo concerns. Rumors circulated that indigenous protesters at roadblocks were confiscating goods from trucks and coercing people to leave them food. Popular hearsay swelled like Pastaza rivers after a torrential rain. Many merchants were convinced that Indians were intent on looting their stores—‘‘son capaces de todo’’— and that indígenas were angry enough to burn the homes of city dwellers. Similarly, rumors circulated that fedecap, the reactionary organization that had opposed opip during its 1992 march, was planning to burn down opip offices. Federation leaders heightened security and maintained a twenty-four-hour guard. While townswomen cooked for the protesters outside the Banco Nacional de Fomento and stores donated provisions for those at the roadblocks in Puyo, there were, similarly, a few rallies in opposition to the Movicontested terrain 173

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lización by townspeople wanting to instigate a counter-action. Hostilities, mistrust, and historical animosities coexisted with alliance building, compassion, and conviction in the same town, along the same road, in the same provincial offices. In light of the tensions, opip and confeniae called a private meeting among indigenous coordinators from various outposts to analyze the current situation, assess how they would hold out, and debate how to allocate reinforcements. The proposed dialogue between conaie and the president was four days away, yet morale was waning. Melding Spanish and Quichua, Héctor spoke forcefully to the Indians assembled: ‘‘Aguantasha. . . . canguna allpamanda. Hold out . . . for the sake of your land. We will not weaken our forces until the dialogue. Without force, without pressure, we will not be able to negotiate.’’ In his characteristically resolute yet undramatic manner, Domingo (the vice president of confeniae) remarked, ‘‘Well then, we need to petition [communities] to make more spears.’’ By this Domingo was implying that protesters needed to fortify their strongholds and prepare for worse to come. By 5:00 p.m., forty male youths from the Comuna San Jacinto arrived in Puyo with spears. The solidarity march through town that evening gathered two hundred people, largely indigenous, with a few campesinos and urban supporters. As the group marched by a popular restaurant Héctor pointed and yelled out, ‘‘Hey, Suzana, there’s your home!’’ Glowing on a large television screen in bright technicolor was a cheering crowd that filled the sports stadium at Stanford University. The World Cup had begun a few nights earlier and Stanford was the scene of that evening’s game.27 The disjuncture was abrupt. Both institutions seemed desperately alien.

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day 7. june 19, 1994. Tears filled Blanca’s eyes the morning of June 19 as she told me that on her way to opip’s headquarters a group of young city men called her a perra (bitch). ‘‘We are not putas [whores],’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘We are fighting for a just cause.’’ Sexual slurs underscored the extent to which the Movilización posed a challenge not only to the state’s agenda to modernize the agrarian sector, but also to the presumed natural topography of race, class, and nation in Ecuador. Female sexuality constituted a prime site for questioning political allegiances and undermining political projects. As that penetrable boundary delineating group identity, women were often signifiers of racial and national difference. Blanca’s political activity (along with that of other colonas) irritated dominant sen174 crude chronicles

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sibilities and the race/class/gender matrix upon which hierarchies were based. If Indians were not welcomed into the neoliberal nation, nonindigenous women were whores in forging alliances with them. Later that day, Indians and campesinos learned of police intentions to forcibly dislodge the protesters at the Banco de Fomento from their position. In response, opip and confeniae ordered sixty indigenous male bodies from the roadblocks and inner communities to reinforce protesters at the bank. Those from the Via Macas brought along with them their favorite posters. Alongside a drawing of a large tsantsa (shrunken head), the poster read: ‘‘This Is What We Want To Do To Sixto!’’ Protesters expected the police to shoot tear gas, perhaps bullets. Indigenous protesters were armed with spears. That evening I chatted with bank protesters into the late hours about their experiences at the roadblocks. Leaning against his cousin, Samuel said: ‘‘You know, we spent the last two nights with men from the colonia that claimed my wife’s grandfather’s land. We’ve always hated those people. But now, we have our land, and they have theirs, and together, out there under the stars on the Via Macas, we decided that future struggles would not be for the sake of indígenas or campesinos but rather for the sake of los pobres [the poor].’’ Even at roadblocks, out of earshot of leadership rhetoric, protesters were, if only momentarily, redefining their struggle. In an open letter to Puyo residents opip, confeniae, and frededicap noted similar sentiments: Under the guise of Modernization, the government continues to approve laws that further exacerbate our suffering. This Executive’s stance violates our fundamental rights and prevents us from developing with dignity and honor. . . . The Agrarian Development Law, the Banco de Fomento, the petroleum price hikes, the Séptima Ronda, have all created a dramatic, antidemocratic, antisocial, and racist political and economic situation . . . [We] demand our right to participate actively in making decisions that affect all of us. . . . We have forged an alliance between indigenous and colono populations conscious that our revindications pertain equally to all and that our strength lies in the union of our differences.28

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day 8, june 20, 1994. The scheduled meeting with Durán Ballén was still days away. Strained indigenous and campesino protesters, unsettled urban dwellers, and antsy instigators waited like rain clouds contested terrain 175

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on the verge of bursting. conaie sent a fax requesting that provincial leaders of the Movilización travel to Quito for the meeting with Durán Ballén. Since Edmundo Vargas (the president of confeniae) and Leonardo Viteri were already in Quito, Héctor chose to remain in Puyo and resolve local concerns. Indigenous leaders realized that if the conaie leadership engaged in dialogue with President Durán Ballén, negotiations would focus on the new agrarian law. The other nine demands outlined in the Riobamba Mandate would become eclipsed and campesinos’ concerns over their rising debt owed to the Banco de Fomento would not be addressed. Héctor and Manuel agreed that campesinos must not walk away with empty hands, given their struggle and sacrifice, and that, as leaders, they needed to reach some sort of provincial-level agreement with the bank. Despite rumors, the police did not dislodge bank protesters the evening before. Instead, the bank director conceded to meet with indigenous and campesino leaders on June 20. After three hours of tense negotiation, an official agreement was signed whereby the Banco de Fomento agreed to cancel all outstanding interest owed the bank and halt coercive arbitration. With the bank’s commitment in hand, jubilant Indian and campesino protesters marched from the bank to opip offices. Over two hundred women, men, and assorted children, some almost giddy with victory, gathered to applaud their success. Leaders and assembly members discussed the newly signed agreement with the Banco de Fomento point by point. A tall, thin woman stood to express her gratitude: ‘‘I am so thankful to the indigenous organizations who have helped us and perhaps are more noble than we. . . . It’s amazing how far an institution of the state can push a person.’’ Between halting tears she recounted a story of how one day, having reached the depths of despair, she sat herself on rotting boards behind her house, bent over, face in her hands, and planned the mass homicide of her family. ‘‘I decided I would prepare an elaborate feast, a lavish banquet, for my husband and children. And with the first few bites, I would poison them all to death. The bank would no longer be able to take our farm, seize our property, and my family would be in peace. All the humiliation, the pressure, the fighting would be over.’’ The pragmatic effects of cohesive protest were emotionally palpable. Yet the struggle was not over. Héctor attempted to refocus attention on the primary motive for the Movilización—the Ley Agraria. ‘‘This law,’’ he bellowed, ‘‘will affect small landholders as well as those who live on communal lands. With a free market, land not deemed 176 crude chronicles

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sufficiently productive can be sold to anyone with more economic power. The Ley Agraria is an issue for all. . . . This is why we are here, be it for the Banco de Fomento or Agrarian Law. But right now, we need reinforcements badly at the roadblocks. . . . We have carried out our struggle with pride and dignity. We have shown that yes, one can negotiate in a calm manner. . . . The Movilización is peaceful; it is for life. But nothing is free. If you don’t claim your rights, no one will hear you. . . . Throughout these days, I have worked in order that no one be excluded—that we all be beneficiaries. We have fought now for eight long days. And it has been at a cost, I know. A political, economic, and human cost. Perhaps a cow has died, a child is sick. But we must continue our struggle. We have to continue with force so that the compañeros [at the roadblocks] can continue forward.’’ Manuel added his thoughts with his powerful, appealing voice: ‘‘This is where support will be found, compañeros. Among one, two, three, and more, not in the temple praying. . . . We must live with our hands joined—indígena and mestizo—because in Pastaza there are no blancos. We must leave this damn racism behind. We must arrive at an understanding together. For that is where solidarity is forged.’’ After a long pause, he questioned: ‘‘So are we returning to our homes, compañeros?’’ ‘‘NO,’’ responded attentive voices. ‘‘Are we going to continue fighting?’’ ‘‘YES,’’ echoed a few enkindled faces. ‘‘If we choose to live divided,’’ Manuel continued, ‘‘we will never reach our goals. Let us—not the bank—be the owners of our selves. May we be united—indios, campesinos, cholos, and whoever.’’

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day 9. june 21, 1994. The morning of June 21, I woke to Héctor’s voice: ‘‘The only solution is to continue the blockade.’’ The habitual 6:00 a.m. blaring of my neighbor’s radio captured Héctor in an interview. Five hours later, in a closed meeting among top opip, confeniae, and frededicap leaders, however, indigenous dirigentes expressed concern over increasing tensions. Word from Quito confirmed that after three hours of negotiations, conaie leaders and the president had not reached an agreement. There was a certain uneasiness both in Puyo and at roadblocks. Townspeople complained there was nothing to eat. The Catholic Church in Puyo essentially declared itself in opposition to the Movilización. There was increasing pressure from the military at El Topo. Dirigentes were wary of state repressive powers. Both funds and donations were becoming more and more scarce. The organizations lacked the money to pay for food. Even plantains were difficult to come by. As Marco noted, contested terrain 177

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‘‘All these tensions are causing a lot of confusion among our people [protesters]. Things seem dicey and there are no guarantees. The roadblocks might be able to hold out one more day. We need to think about other, alternative strategies.’’ Various ideas were proposed: call an emergency meeting with all provincial authorities to gain their support; send out a second letter of solidarity to city dwellers; stop the paperwork with Banco de Fomento so that campesinos can reinforce roadblocks; and allow strategic openings in roadblocks so that local produce—vegetables, cheese, eggs, meat—could circulate through the province. Marco reminded, ‘‘While it is hunger that moves a people [i.e., spurs the Movilización], we don’t want it to move people against indígenas.’’ At 5:00 p.m., the requested meeting with provincial authorities took place.29 Present in the room were the sectional heads of most government agencies, indigenous leaders and organizers, and assorted others—twenty-seven people in all, including three gringas— an Italian reporter married to an indigenous spokesperson, an Italian collaborating with confeniae, and myself. The meeting was a forum in which to propose clear and practical solutions to the circumstances that gripped the province.30 Many noted Puyo’s lack of ‘‘vital products’’ and mounting citizen outcry and insisted that the roadblocks must be lifted. Others rallied for the need to support indigenous and campesino measures. Still others proposed that roadblocks within the province be opened to allow local produce to supply the city under the condition that indigenous concerns be addressed. All acknowledged the truth of Domingo’s words: ‘‘Never before had any other mobilization, halt, or strike gained this much attention or reached this level of crisis. It is time,’’ he rebuked, ‘‘that the provincial authorities demand that the government resolve the current problem. The struggle of the indigenous peoples is not merely for Indians but rather for everyone. In other regions, provincial representatives have met to demand by letter, by fax, that the state resolve the situation. It’s now time that you do the same.’’ Underscoring the class dimension to their struggle against structural adjustment policies, Manuel noted, ‘‘Yesterday, the director of the Banco de Fomento recognized our struggle is in defense of the poor (gente más pobre). It is not the fault of the indígenas and campesinos that today we find ourselves in this situation—privatizations, work layoffs, increases in the [price] of gasoline, [cooking] gas, food. 178 crude chronicles

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It is the government’s measures, not ours, that are violent and destructive.’’ Héctor spoke clearly and calmly. His sense of diplomacy and justice yanked at humanitarian sympathies. ‘‘From the beginning,’’ began Héctor, ‘‘we have wanted to search for a solution through dialogue. But the government has not extended a single opening. The Ley Agraria threatens the interests of indígenas and campesinos. It will engender grave social conflict and confrontations between powerful sectors and indígenas/campesinos.’’ Drawing comparisons with state–Zapatista armed conflict, Héctor solemnly noted, ‘‘We don’t want to reach the extremes that Mexico has. Rather we are and will continue to be an example in Latin America of local people demanding our rights. Our actions are recognized as such in the international arena,’’ he added, underscoring opip’s extensive transnational links. Citing the larger political-economic context of their struggle, Héctor asserted, ‘‘Many companies wish to develop Pastaza with aggressive industry—largescale lumber, mineral, and petroleum extraction. But we will not lose our territory or control of it. It has cost us much sacrifice and we will continue to protect it.’’ As if claiming higher ethical ground by virtue of being ‘‘indigenous,’’ he continued: ‘‘We will not permit the destruction of our conservation practices, the biodiversity, the Amazon, the lungs of the world.’’ Sliding his discourse toward the class concerns expressed earlier, the indigenous leader said, ‘‘We too are dying of hunger—it’s not just the town people. We too are dying, in the sun, in the wind and rain. . . . And with the welcome involvement of the campesinos we have raised a dignified voice to fight for what is ours. . . . I know that there is not food to eat. But as the Director of the Banco de Fomento understood, [we can] not ignore the hunger of campesino and indígena children who go to school without eating.’’ In a sincere voice, tinged with threat, Héctor made a final appeal: ‘‘I’m not asking for the impossible. At the very least send a letter to the president and the cámaras that you are in agreement with our concerns.’’ The prefecto (the highest elected authority for Pastaza), Roberto de la Torre, navigated around contention in the room: ‘‘We don’t need to resolve everything here. That would be to deceive the indigenous peoples and further deceive ourselves.’’ But to define direction and without condoning indígena-campesino actions, he concontested terrain 179

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tinued: ‘‘The problem is that there is a lack of sensitivity. . . . We must make a pronouncement to the state, to the president and the National Congress demanding a broad-spectrum national debate on the agrarian questions.’’ Having been a senator in the National Congress, he maintained, ‘‘Yes, legally one can rescind the law. One can unmake the law just as one can make the law. We need a document stating the need to derogate the Agrarian Development Law and make instead a law of consensus.’’ And so it was agreed. That evening the governor declared on the radio that indigenous protesters had no intention of sabotaging persons or property in Pastaza. The city remained calm. The next morning an official pronouncement was drawn up. On official state stationery, under the Ecuadorian seal and motto, El Ecuador ha sido, es y será pais amazónico, the document petitioned Durán Ballén and the National Congress ‘‘to repeal or to reform the 1994 Agrarian Law and to include Indígena and Campesino’s various criteria in order to reach the desired peace and normal development of our Country.’’ 31 All provincial authorities signed the document. Later that evening, after the meeting with the provincial authorities, indigenous and campesino dirigentes regrouped in opip’s office to define their strategy for the following morning’s tactical lifting of the provincial roadblocks. Héctor warned indigenous and campesino organizers, ‘‘We have to always say that this is an indígenacampesino struggle.’’ His words signaled a shift in how local peoples, divided by race and ethnic divides, might reimagine doing politics. If only momentary, the indígena-campesino alliance was carving out novel terrain for political expression. The interethnic coalition had forged a formidable counter-hegemonic instance that caused many to stop and question an elitist neoliberal rule in Ecuador. The interethnic Movilización in Pastaza begged the question of what exactly citizenship, democracy, nation, and sovereignty mean. The neoliberal reforms legislated by the 1994 Agrarian Development Law provoked a crisis of governance and accountability in Ecuador and encouraged widespread alliances. Support from nearly every sector (including the Durán Ballén–appointed governor) underscored the broad sympathy that existed for indígena-campesino concerns.32 As Manuel reminded authorities, it was ‘‘not the fault of the indígenas and campesinos’’ that Ecuadorians found themselves in desperate circumstances. Rather, these circumstances were the effect of neoliberal policies. These policies, in turn, had unwittingly produced 180 crude chronicles

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transgressive oppositional subjects with heretofore unimaginable coalitions. At 9:15 p.m., Héctor received a phone call. It was Sylvi, Puyo’s outspoken feminist. She had called to tell Héctor that a state of emergency would begin at midnight. Her neighbors had heard the announcement on a television news report. We turned on the television, which now had a prominent position in opip offices. Two lovers passionately kissed. Ah, for the drama of Latin American telenovelas! The news was over. Héctor called the commander of the 7th Brigade and the governor to verify the report. The commander could not be located. Héctor reached the governor at his home, who responded, ‘‘Nothing will happen here. . . . Continue with your plans. . . . I don’t have any instructions.’’ We thought the state of emergency was simply a rumor. Within hours, however, the news was confirmed, and by midnight I was knocking on my neighbor’s door. Dino owned a large truck and Marco asked if he would use it to help retrieve protesters. In the darkness of a moonless night, a man from whose lips frequently slipped racist remarks about Indians drove one of a dozen pickup trucks that gathered Magdalena and other protesters from roadblocks and brought them to safety in opip’s headquarters.

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6. LIBERAL LEGAL-SCAPES

it took an hour to convince the guards policing the entrance of the Presidential Palace to let me in on the afternoon of June 30, 1994. Past the heavy wooden doors and wrought-iron gates, a meeting was to begin between President Sixto Durán Ballén, representatives of the terratenientes (Ecuador’s landed oligarchy), and representatives of the indígenas. Under pressure from popular sectors, the president of the Republic and the president of the National Congress summoned a meeting to discuss solutions to the crisis of rule that had gripped the countryside over the previous weeks.1 During the week that had passed since President Durán Ballén had declared a state of emergency, apprehensions were high among indígenas and campesinos. Citizen rights teetered precariously, with the military free to act without restraint. Economic losses incurred during the Movilización por la Vida were steep—‘‘surpassing 200 million dollars,’’ according to the chamber of commerce.2 Social commentary in print and across airwaves voiced concern about a growing indigenous, ethnic secessionist movement. On the streets, such sentiments translated into the belief that indígenas were ‘‘incontrolables,’’ ‘‘irracionales,’’ ‘‘fanáticos,’’ and ‘‘subversivos.’’ 3 In response to the impressive militarization of Ecuador’s urban and rural landscapes, Luís Macas told reporters, ‘‘We, the indígenas, are not at war. We are fighting for our legitimate rights. We are open to negotiate [with the government] if and when we are given a fair playing field.’’ 4 A number of indigenous leaders insisted, however, that ‘‘the only way to end indigenous protest is to repeal the Agrarian Development Law.’’ 5 In a counter-response, President Durán Ballén appeared on television spots between World Cup matches to solemnly give witness: ‘‘The government is open to dialogue and proposes that a commission be formed to determine possible reforms to the law. In the meantime, conaie and, above all, Doctor Macas

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obstinately cling to their narrow point of view. Who, then, exactly, is being intransigent?’’ 6 The commission, according to the president, would ‘‘fix the problems’’ that had resulted from the nascent agrarian law by drafting potential adjustments and respective bylaws.7 Luís Macas publicly inveighed against Durán Ballén’s proposal: ‘‘One cannot transform a law by simply elaborating an appendix of bylaws. This will not in any way alter the spirit of the legal document. It is essential to note that there exists a dose of prepotency here—a particular way of looking at and treating indígenas continues to reign in Ecuador—as if we must accept that which a small sector does and undoes.’’ 8 Within days, however, Luís Macas and other leaders ventured into the president’s palace to test the dialogic waters. This chapter examines the workings of the commission that was formed to debate the newly passed Agrarian Development Law. For two weeks, government officials, the terratenientes, and indígenas argued legal terminology and interpretation of the law, article by article, point by point, word by word. I was fortunate enough to observe the vast majority of these meetings, which were filled with moments of enmity and dialogue, entrenchment and capitulation.9 The debates lay out the logic that enabled the state to relinquish responsibility for ensuring the well-being of its subjects and allowed it to assume the role of a fiscal manager. Similarly, the debates underscored the degree to which neoliberalism depends on particular state interventions to enable the magic of the market to function. In implementing specific legal regimes and creating particular institutional arrangements, the state (with the backing of private enterprise) sought not only to establish the mechanism essential for capital to rationalize the agrarian sector, but also to create subjects who appropriately maximized and utilized this new, rational agrarian landscape. The ideology of liberal legality was crucial to all of these endeavors. State and terrateniente representatives repeatedly appealed to abstract universal concepts (e.g., democracy, equality, individual rights) in order, as one terrateniente noted without a touch of irony, to justify the righteousness of the law by ‘‘writing history with truth.’’ 10 Indian leaders repeatedly appealed to history to rewrite the law and challenge injustice. In their minds, the liberal logic of abstract universals could not so easily be reconciled with the histories of discrimination that made Ecuador’s racially stratified social landscape. A lingering racism tinged the purportedly neutral language of liberal law such that it reinscribed difference and inequality. liberal legal-scapes 183

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The Staging of Negotiation The presidential hall was bustling with people by the time I walked in. The room was staged as a theater for soliloquy, posturing, and, perhaps, dialogue. At one end of the large hall, against a gold brocade backdrop, were three heavy wooden tables arranged in a broad, angular U. On the right flank of the U sat the representatives of the terratenientes—imposing, light-skinned, graying men dressed in elegant suits. Diametrically opposed sat the smaller-statured, darker-skinned, blacker-haired indigenous counterparts—some in traje (indigenous dress), others in the eclectic attire of third-world subaltern subjects. At the U’s communing link, centrally positioned to render the appearance of neutrality, sat President Sixto Durán Ballén, bolstered by select ministers and legislators on either side, and military bodyguards from behind. Observing the negotiating table—the stage of performance—sat a silent audience in twelve rows of plushly upholstered, tall-backed chairs. Seated spectators included more advisors, reporters, a handful of public intellectuals, and a few select invitees representing national and international human rights organizations. Behind them, in the peanut gallery (where I stationed myself ), were five television crews on a raised platform, Radio Nacional (the state radio station), more reporters, and military security. Together with a Belgian human rights advocate and a Swedish journalist, I was one of three gringas present. The meeting on June 30 between the president, terratenientes, and indígenas was performance par excellence. President Sixto Durán Ballén—in what one commentator called ‘‘all his saintly patience’’ 11 —played the master of ceremonies, concocting a mixture of omniscient power and earnest commitment:

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In the interest of democracy, I convened this mixed commission to study the law, and, precisely to take you into account, to defend the interests of the indigenous, campesino, and Afro-Ecuadorian sector. . . . My role as the President of the Republic is to ensure that there be order and development in our country and that there be equal rights for all its citizens. In this meeting, let us exchange ideas to create a law that will satisfy the needs of a modern state so that it can develop, as well as satisfy the interests of an important part of this nation, the indigenous communities. As I have mentioned before, personally, I believe that what we are talking about here are not changes in the law per se, but rather, points 184 crude chronicles

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of clarification. Some concepts undoubtedly need to be clarified and terminology needs to be modified, but nothing more. The president of the National Congress, Samuel Belletini, followed in a fiery tone: ‘‘It is our impartial state governing and discerning foresight that lead us to convene this meeting aimed to forge consensus and bring peace. I believe it is important to remember that it is the force of la democracia that has brought us here together!’’ A cursory glance around the negotiating table offered insight into the state’s commitment to democracy and democratic practice. The final participants around the table included ten representatives of the executive and legislative branches of government; three representatives from the Church; six representatives of the terratenientes (or Chambers of Production), with innumerable advisors; and six indigenous representatives with twelve advisors.12 The terratenientes and conaie did have equal numbers of official representatives around the table, but this was not the case for their advisors. The palace guards strictly monitored access to the meetings. Advisors and associates of the terratenientes came and went with ease and some interchangeably sat around the table as official delegates. By contrast, only a select group of indígenas named on a list of invitees was escorted into the Palacio. Key Indian leaders were denied access to the Presidential Palace. They included leaders from the regional confederations and local federations, such as Leonardo Viteri and Edmundo Vargas (the president of confeniae), and conaie’s own video documentary team. What made this racial disparity particularly disturbing was the fact that although admission was select, the meeting was not private. It was open to the press and broadcast live over the state radio station. Clearly, the politics of who was and was not permitted to enter the seat of executive rule as participants, advisors, or observers greatly shaped the content of discussions. What then, exactly, was meant by democracy? Racist and classist pretenses policed indígenas’ ability to enter the palace and similarly facilitated the ease with which the terratenientes—and I—could come and go.13 At the hour of deliberation, the meeting was unambiguously stacked in favor of the political and economic elite. As Guayasamin’s mosaic suggests, Indians were necessary to the unfolding of the drama that would affirm the nation but were denied rights to participate in it as equal subjects. In his calm but firm voice, Luís Macas deftly challenged the state’s appeal to ‘‘la democracia’’: ‘‘Make no mistake, we are here precisely liberal legal-scapes 185

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because of indigenous demands, indigenous exigencies. . . . We, los indios, have come with the aim, the desire, to engage in dialogue so that finally we will be taken into account as an important part of this country—something that historically Ecuador’s socalled democratic institutions have failed to do. It is time, we believe, to define our role and have our voice heard. We don’t want a law that serves the interests of the agro-industry. This law has to reflect the reality of our country, the multiplicity of sectors that are in the campo. We can’t live with the illusion, or even pretend, that models brought from elsewhere [i.e., wb and imf policies] will work here and save us. We want a law that takes our history, our diversity, into account.’’ Nina Pacari, conaie’s head of territorial concerns, continued. In a rhetorical move that invoked ethnic pride, and tactically excluded white power, Nina Pacari spoke her opening words in Quichua. Repeated in Spanish, they reverberated through the hall: ‘‘I speak in my language, Quichua, to give evidence to the fact that the problem stems from our philosophies, our different ways of seeing. A national agrarian law must deal precisely with all of us—indígenas, campesinos, small producers, and large-scale producers—all of us. And this entails dealing with differences.’’ She paused, and then continued, with all attentive to her soft and methodical voice: ‘‘It must take into account cultural differences: the pueblos indígenas, the Nacionalidades Indígenas, cannot be treated the same as the nonindigenous campesino or nonindigenous empresarios. It must take into account geographic differences: the Amazon and the coast cannot be treated the same as the Sierra. It must take into account economic differences: the indigenous economy is different from the campesino economy and the terratenientes’ economy. Any law that we can imagine for this country needs to capture this diversity.’’ In her concluding remarks, Nina Pacari suggested that the internal workings of the state had been less than transparent over the past weeks: that improprieties thrived in the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government with respect to the Agrarian Development Law.14 The president of the National Congress nearly bolted from his seat. In his slightly slurred Costeña accent, he stridently reprimanded: ‘‘How dare you make such accusations about el Ecuador, my country, the land where I was born, where my sons were born. This is a terrible lack of respect. I demand that Doctora Nina Pacari respect mi patria. She must respect mi patria,’’ he repeated, as if it belonged to him and not her. 186 crude chronicles

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figure 27. Political cartoon of Nina Pacari. Courtesy of Diario Hoy, July 9, 1994.

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Another anecdote further illuminates what was at play here and throughout the two weeks of negotiations. After days of lengthy debate, President Durán Ballén grew increasingly frustrated. In a moment of exasperation on the fifth day, the president lost his cool. Dressed in a dark suit with a red satin sash draped across his chest, the president leaned over the heavy wooden table and nearly yelled: ‘‘I have sat here over the past five days and have listened to you people [referring to conaie] bickering over words, over semantics. This is fastidious obstructionism, meticulous meddling. You have failed to fully appreciate the fact that the President of the Republic is personally and actively participating in these negotiations. Don’t you waste my time—the time of a president who has many other important issues to attend to!’’ In the press and in common conversation, the president’s words were reinterpreted as ‘‘Stop wasting my time!’’ 15 Two days later, a political cartoon played on Durán Ballén’s words. The cartoon depicted Nina Pacari—arguably the most ardent indigenous advocate during the negotiations—in her daily dress of ‘‘traditional’’ Otavaleña traje: her hair pulled back in a braid, rows of Hungarian glass beads around her neck, bands of red coral wrapped around her wrists, jewels dangling from her ears, and a shawl around her shoulders. Appearing equally exasperated with beads of sweat liberal legal-scapes 187

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flying from her brow, Nina Pacari retorted: ‘‘We have ‘wasted’ more than 500 years of our time.’’ Taken allegorically, the juxtaposed images of an exasperated president and an exasperated indigenous female offer a rich site from which to begin to decipher what happened within the tripartite negotiations, and how the larger debate about who did and did not belong in the nation was both challenged and contained. Durán Ballén and Nina Pacari—the (un)marked white male and marked indigenous female—exemplified two extremes along a continuum of bodily forms historically made possible in Ecuador.16 As Guayasamin’s mosaic makes explicit, Ecuador’s myth of the nation and national destiny depended on the precise categorizing, ordering, valuing, and distributing of bodies, both physically and symbolically in space and time according to the materiality of their purported differences. The ways in which bodies have historically been distributed and managed in Ecuador is intimately linked, and indeed has enabled, the accumulation of capital, the growth of productive forces, and the massive generation and redeployment of surplus value in the interest of a white male elite.17 Nina Pacari’s words sought to elicit this fact. As in many aspiring postcolonial states, history has engraved bodies with raced, classed, and gendered scars in Ecuador. These patterned scars mark people in apparently natural and predictable ways: the subject juxtaposed to the object, the dominator to the dominated, the oppressor to the oppressed, so as to form a white/indígena, patrón/peón, rational/irrational, civilized/savage, pure/impure schema. Law, in establishing labor relations, spatial segregation, and conjugal conventions, was complicit in establishing and perpetuating this matrix of power and practice. Indeed, law, legal rhetoric, and abstract liberal principles have often been the trump card of a privileged elite. Durán Ballén’s chiding and Nina Pacari’s imaginary response encapsulate much of the dynamic around the negotiating table. State paternalism that aimed to condition (in the sense of both setting parameters and shaping outcomes) collided with indigenous efforts to reinstate history and its effects. Her name often blurted as if one word, Doctoraninapacari was the only female (indigenous or otherwise) to engage in a historically defined white male debate on property, patria, and personhood in Ecuador. Nina Pacari’s words spoke as much to indígenas’ physical presence at the table of negotiation as to a growing, self-consciously indigenous positionality—a way of 188 crude chronicles

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becoming wrought through an alternative vision of the political that sought to transform the nature of rights and the content of the nation, that is, to transform democratic process. Having changed her name, as a young university student and indigenous leader, to nina pacari (‘‘dawn fire’’ in Quichua), this young, eloquent, indigenous lawyer embodied these indigenous politics to rewrite the history of the present. The debate around land production and expropriation illustrates the contours of these dynamics. In particular, it encapsulates the paradox at the core of liberal legality. An abstract language of equality and democracy neutralized and depoliticized contentious social inequalities produced through a history of exclusion and exploitation.

Reckoning Production and Expropriation

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The 1994 Agrarian Development Law aimed to revolutionize agriculture through neoliberal reforms promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. As Ricardo Izurieta, the former director of ierac and now the president of the National Development Bank, clarified on the first day of negotiations: ‘‘The law aims to initiate a new historical era in which all actors in the agricultural sector will have sufficient guarantees, sufficient support . . . to achieve high productivity and grand production. . . . Markets previously unknown in Ecuador will open and access will be possible to other fantastic markets. Ecuador will follow the example of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Chile, and other countries. It will gain true revenue and a formidable richness in the countryside, in the agriculture sector.’’ Through trickle-down economics, such wealth, according to Izurieta, ‘‘would improve the conditions of all of us who are in the agrarian sector. It will put an end to and supersede demagogic alliances and enable all to compete equally.’’ 18 Land reform had only stagnated, if not eroded, the agrarian sector. Now was the time for a ‘‘new historical era to modernize’’ Ecuadorian agriculture, to enhance its ‘‘comparative advantage,’’ and to ‘‘integrate it into a global free market.’’ Modernization entailed securing land tenancy to increase foreign investment, increasing production through expanding the accumulation of private property, orienting crop production toward export, and intensifying flexible labor regimes and mechanization. According to the terratenientes, the factor that had undermined liberal legal-scapes 189

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agricultural production in Ecuador was the ability (codified in the 1964 Agrarian Reform Law) to legally expropriate property, productive property. This lurking threat that land could be expropriated made tenure insecure, and insecure tenure led to a decline in productivity. To rectify this situation, the 1994 Agricultural Development Law outlined only three scenarios in which land could be expropriated: (i) when owners used illegal labor practices, (ii) when owners seriously degraded renewable resources, and (iii) when owners fail to work arable land for more than three consecutive years. conaie, by contrast, proposed ten causales (conditions) under which land could be appropriated. Two conditions, in particular, dominated debate for three days. First, conaie proposed that land could be expropriated after two (rather than three) consecutive years of not being worked, as long as that land was not under ancestral management. Second, conaie proposed that land could be legally expropriated and redistributed to the surrounding populations if it were subject to great demographic pressures. Let me begin with the first condition.

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ancestral management On the sixth day (after much lobbying), conaie’s delegation expanded to include lowland indigenous leaders and the Coordinadora Agraria Nacional (can), the indigenous-campesino agrarian alliance. As such, Leonardo Viteri and Edmundo Vargas, along with two Afro-Ecuadorian leaders, gained entrance to the Presidential Palace and joined the debate.19 The first issue on the agenda was ancestral management. Leonardo Viteri began discussion: ‘‘With all due respect, we were never consulted in the writing of this law. This law treats all land the same, and that is ludicrous, because land under ancestral management must be treated differently. In the Sierra it makes sense to expropriate land not worked for two consecutive years because the ecological conditions allowed for near-continuous exploitation. But this is not the case for the tropical forests. You never asked us about our land-use strategies. Over the millennia, indígenas and our Afro-Ecuadorian brothers have developed agricultural technologies that form a complex of land management strategies appropriate for the regional ecology. Long-term cyclical rotation integrates intensive production, extensive production, managed fallow, and managed forest to regenerate the forest—the Amazonia we all depend on, the lungs of the world. It is wrong to think our land is not sufficiently worked. We don’t want intensive agribusiness in the Amazonia. We 190 crude chronicles

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don’t want monoculture. That has only led to problems. . . . We have our own managed form of ancestral production . . . and this must be respected.’’ Without a doubt the new law made lowland holdings very vulnerable. The terratenientes lashed out in their rebuttal with precision. Fabián Corral, a lawyer for the terratenientes and central architect of the Agrarian Development Law, was the first to speak: ‘‘It appears that there is an attempt to narrow the framework of the law when deemed convenient and, in turn, to expand the framework of the law when deemed convenient. The law, however, is not so expedient. Los indígenas want to exempt property from completing its social function [e.g., producing food] when it is in the hands of ethnic communities under so-called ancestral management. But what is ancestral management? . . . Defining ancestral management seems paramount, as all contemporary agriculture is Western agriculture. The sickle is Western, as far as I know. The Europeans had already invented it when they came here. The same with the machete—Europeans invented it. What is ancestral management? Is ancestral management an economic modality? Or is it sociological nostalgia? Or is it a concept that has come to us as a new form of cultural colonialism under the disguise of ecologism?’’ With cold eyes, Corral focused on me and the Swedish journalist, the only foreigners observing the meeting that day: ‘‘I would like to address the Europeans here in this hall. With all clarity and all frankness, what are we talking about? Are we talking about incorporating indigenous communities and all members of the Ecuadorian community into a rational economy and free market where all can prosper while maintaining their cultural identity? Or do we want to convert Ecuador into a museum? We need to be clear. This concern that we are dealing with today is not specifically unique to agrarian rights. It is a sociological concern and as such very subjective. . . . Is this concept of ‘ancestral management’ a sufficient pretext for land not to be exploited? Where is the consistency? In some contexts [the Sierra], they [indígenas] want to be able to expropriate land that has not been worked for more than two years. Yet, in other contexts [the Amazon], they say never—that certain land cannot be touched.’’ The president of the cattle lobby, Andrés Borja, continued: ‘‘As individuals we are all equal before the law and we should not, we cannot, create exceptions. It would appear to me to be very dangerous if we began asking privileges for each sector. The treatment of the law should be equal for all Ecuadorians. . . . As discussion over liberal legal-scapes 191

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the previous days indicates, this country does not have the luxury of leaving land unexploited. We are in total agreement about this. So if there are reasons for affecting expropriation for one, there should be for all.’’ Neptali Bonifaz, another author of the Agrarian Development Law and the heir of one of Ecuador’s larger landholding families, picked up the discussion: ‘‘conaie’s current proposal of ancestral territory contradicts their earlier stance. On the first day of negotiations, they insisted that the ‘objectives of agriculture’ as detailed in Article 3 be expanded. They insisted then that agriculture must first guarantee internal food security and not have its primary function be producing crops for export. ‘Ancestral management’ has a pretty ring to it, but the argument could be made that this concept goes against guaranteeing food security. Ancestral management means the ancestral use of land with ancestral technology and low productivity. . . . And what happens to food security? What happens then to the first articles of the law that obliges the country to have sufficient food for all Ecuadorians?’’ Ricardo Izurieta expanded further: ‘‘The law is designed for and will rule all Ecuadorians. All must view her with the same lens, with equal aspect. Articles 17, 18, and 19 oblige those who have land to make that land produce, to make it fulfill its social functions. It seems dangerous to make this apply to some but not others. Establishing preferential treatment would be paramount to establishing racial differentiation, or differentiation based on group, which has no place within the law of a democratic country. The law must be equally obligatory for all.’’ Alberto Portilla, the president of the chamber of production, reminded: ‘‘We must not forget that according to the Constitution, we are all equal before the law, regardless of our social status or [our] social or economic condition. There are no exceptions.’’ An Afro-Ecuadorian leader protested: ‘‘If the state proposes to adjudicate ancestral land—as outlined in Article 36—then it must protect these territorial rights and respect distinctive agricultural practices within that land. Not one of you Sirs, for all your capacity, your intelligence, your knowledge of history, can negate that we, the Blacks and indígenas, have been here long before this land was called Ecuador. Our history, that of Blacks, is even more tragic than that of indígenas—for they at least still speak their language. Centuries ago, our brothers arrived from Africa. As you know, they were tortured and humiliated to such an extent that even their tongues were 192 crude chronicles

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cut out. And for this reason, until this day, we do not possess our own language. By granting us legal title the state is recognizing the hundreds of years of human management and protection that we have given to our forested lands. And since these lands are in danger of being invaded by colonists, as well as by timber interests, why adjudicate them to us if the state is not willing to protect them? The law must guarantee the security of land tenancy for traditional or ancestral occupation.’’ His appeal to land security was reminiscent of that of the terratenientes. But whereas the terratenientes claimed rights as citizens to private property that they legitimately bought or inherited according to law, Indians and Afro-Ecuadorians claimed their right to land on the basis of their prior historical presence within a landscape. Their rightful ownership and protection of ancestral lands was the just recompense for the many injustices they had survived. Leonardo Viteri spoke even more forcefully on indigenous claims to ancestral lands: ‘‘Our form of land tenancy is completely different from that of the agricultural industry. For indigenous peoples of the Amazon, territory, our ancestral lands, has multiple objectives and within it there are multiple things to defend. Land is not simply of use for economic betterment. It is fundamental to our right to develop our culture, to develop our technology—our right to develop our agriculture, education, religion, social, and economic structure. Our form of land tenancy must be considered in a unique manner because having land, living in a territory, is not simply an economic venture. Our territory does not simply produce crops. It is the basis for our culture, our identity.’’ Land, it would seem, was more than merely an economic commodity for the generation of capital. Leonardo continued, ‘‘And Indians are wary of any corporation or state institution imposing technology on them. We know that some technologies can provoke profound socio-cultural transformations and serious environmental effects. We have seen this in the Oriente where there has been real devastation as a result of so-called petroleum and agro-industrial development. Furthermore, we know some technologies can provoke a series of effects that will affect the cultural security and life of indigenous peoples. We possess our own agricultural technologies that need to be recognized. It is not simply a coincidence that the Amazon jungle is green. It is the product of indigenous peoples’ traditional management of the forest, of the animals, of the rivers, of the lagoons, of the places sacred. While indígeliberal legal-scapes 193

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nas wish to perfect these technologies, we wish to do so on our own terms. We don’t want a law that will condition us to produce things we don’t wish to, or in ways we don’t wish. For Amazonian Indians self-sufficiency comes first. Without self-sufficiency, we would become dependent on production from other regions or other countries and we do not want to fill the impoverished ranks of the [urban] migrant and unemployed in fifteen or twenty years. Where we have dominion over our territory, we are a people. We are owners of our future.’’ Leonardo continued reproving terratenientes: ‘‘This is not a racist proposal, or a proposal that gives privileges, as has been suggested. Rather, the proposal shows the maturity of recognizing particularity. The belief that we are all the same thing, that we can all be put in the same sack . . . is precisely what has made people think that we are backwards, that despite having our traditional technologies we need to copy what others do. No one here is in a position to talk of racist proposals, nor that privilege is being created. We need to consider the particularities that were historically created and are scientifically demonstrable. A country that recognizes particularity is one that will indeed advance, will engage in a true process of modernization.’’ At issue were differences in how indígenas and terratenientes conceived of rights, property, personhood, and the nation. The terratenientes upheld bourgeois liberal law and sought to use the law to establish universal absolutes. Underlying their notion that the law must apply to all equally and that all must respect the law equally was the conviction that all beings were equal. While indígenas and Afro-Ecuadorian leaders agreed with this conviction theoretically, they knew that in practice this was surely not the case. Neither those around the negotiating table nor those who formed the rural sector were on equal footing, with equal capacities and opportunities. Rather, social inequalities throughout history had created an uneven playing field. Lowland leaders objected to any agrarian law being universal and absolute and continually emphasized the need to take historical specificities into account. The belief that the Smithian logic of neoliberal economics would benefit all seemed to ethnic leaders (depending on their level of cynicism) horribly naïve, disingenuous, or downright cruel. But the exchange between terratenientes and lowland leaders also marked regional differences within conaie that reflected disparate interests and imaginable concessions. A significant contradiction was at work here. One of the primary concerns of the Agrarian Devel194

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opment Law was production. As such, even according to the terratenientes, land that was not being sufficiently productive for more than three years could be expropriated by the state. Highland Indians, for whom land was scarce, wanted to intensify the ability to expropriate unexploited land and lower the number of unused years from three to two. But because Indians’ and Afro-Ecuadorians’ ancestral territory would not be considered sufficiently productive by the state or terratenientes, these ethnic minorities sought to have their lands exempt from potential expropriations. Despite insisting that the law must take into account regional specificities and their mutual incommensurability, conaie was unable to advocate coherently for the needs of both the lowlands and the highlands. Ultimately, the Sierra-dominated Coordinadora did not press for the need to exempt ancestral territory from expropriation. Lowland Indian and Blacks’ concern for protecting ancestral lands fell to the wayside. Perhaps this was a tactical move, given that discussion was at times volatile and would only become more so. Because ancestral rights and ancestral management were already acknowledged in Article 36, which obliged the state to legalize Indian and Afro-Ecuadorian land under ‘‘ancestral possession . . . on the condition they respect their proper [authentic] traditions, cultural life, and social organization,’’ many indigenous leaders concluded this was enough. 20 Without interruption, attention turned to conaie’s second concern related to land expropriations: demographic pressure.

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demographic pressure As if weighed with thought, the former president of the chamber of agriculture, Nicolás Guillén, methodically pushed back his chair and rose to speak. A tall, distinguished gentleman in his mid-sixties, with sharp features and an elegant voice, Guillén gave arguably the most impassioned speech to be made during the two weeks of negotiations. ‘‘The [1964] Agrarian Reform Law had ten causales [justifications] for expropriation,’’ he declared, enunciating his words slowly and carefully. ‘‘These causales signaled the collapse of investment and the loss of confidence in the agrarian sector. We will never allow this mistake to be repeated. Demographic pressure will never be a sufficient reason to expropriate land and take over the ownership of any property sufficiently worked. My property is the property of my father, the property of my grandfather, and the property of my great-grandfather. liberal legal-scapes 195

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Through four generations my family has worked and suffered for that land.’’ Appealing to the sanctity of private property, the patriarchal right of rule, Guillén continued, as if the words pained him, his voice reverberating, his eyes steadily fixed on conaie/can leaders: ‘‘We too, los propietarios [the landowners], have suffered, and we too have a right to land. We work hard to educate our children and send them away to school. We work hard to better the conditions for more efficient production. Never will we allow indígenas and campesinos to take our lands. Never will we permit them to enter and invade our property under the pretext of demographic pressure, because of indígenas’ irrational zeal. Such an injustice and such disrespect will never be shown toward my inherited right of ownership. Such expropriation is inhumano [inhuman or inhumane]. It is anticristiano [unchristian].’’ Silence held the room as Guillén sat down. The conflation of (neo)colonial nostalgia and visceral anger resurrected the specter of violence in the countryside and the threat of paramilitary action. In the northern and central Sierra, indigenous federation and community leaders had been the target of paramilitary forays over the decades. Many received death threats; selected ones were assassinated. The reactionary violence during the Movilización only brought this home. The interjection of one of conaie’s legal advisors—‘‘But property has never been absolute. It has always had its limits’’—fell on deaf ears. The legacy of the racial/class hierarchy that had ruled since the Spanish empire momentarily froze the silenced hall. Luís Macas diplomatically intervened, redirecting energies. ‘‘There is a need,’’ he opened, ‘‘to reflect on the fact that Ecuador lives a deep social problem, a social problem in the countryside that worsens by the day. We must all be conscious of this. And we are all obligated to offer a solution.’’ In a supple analysis, he demonstrated how political economic conditions shape the lives of Ecuadorians in drastically divergent ways. Neoliberal structural adjustment policies to liberalize a land market would not alleviate the harsh conditions of the majority. ‘‘It is our experience of misery that leads us to advance this reasoning, that demographic pressure be taken into account as a condition for expropriation. The vital element essential for our people to develop is precisely land. Let me give you a contemporary example. We are now in the era in which the flower industry has brought this country much foreign revenue. We recognize this. . . . But what happens when surrounding the hectares and hectares of 196 crude chronicles

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greenhouses there are people who need this basic element, land, for their survival? . . . Distinguished representatives of the Chamber of Agriculture, if we don’t solve this problem, it will unquestionably intensify.’’ Macas continued: ‘‘We do not seek privileges for any sector. We are only too aware that it is precisely the specific privilege of some [alluding to the terratenientes] that has dominated Ecuador’s reality over the centuries and has led to inequalities. But with this modification, the inclusion of this causal, there will be something for those people who in reality are in need. . . . By resolving the social problem, the problem of misery, of poverty, then yes we are in conditions to insert ourselves in a process of development. If we are left marginalized, impoverished, I assure you, none of us will come out from under our present reality.’’ A congressional representative from the President’s political party (pce) intervened in a slightly mocking tone: ‘‘conaie seems to be confused. On the one hand, indígenas desire free agricultural land and want to quench this desire under the pretext of demographic pressure. And on the other, indigenas have confused two issues by defining demographic pressure as a social problem. Without doubt, there is a social problem, but it originates precisely from the general conditions of our country—un-der-de-ve-lop-ment, not overpopulation. We will never raise the nation above underdevelopment through this misdiagnosis, through conflict, through privilege, and through confusing problems. Overpopulation is a cultural, biological issue, not a social problem. Don’t confuse the two. . . . The fundamental spirit established in this law aims to guarantee the security of property equally for all. Absolutely for all. No causal of expropriations can nullify or weaken this fundamental precept.’’ A host of state and terrateniente representatives joined the debate. Samuel Belletini, the president of the National Congress, began first: ‘‘Why is production per hectare in Ecuador the worst in the world? We are patrocinando [patronizing, both in the sense of supporting and being patronizing toward] extensive production. Are we unable to accept intensive production? . . . Global agricultural technology is so advanced and we are in a position so rudimentary. In those countries with advanced agriculture, at the most 6 percent of the population dedicates itself to an agricultural enterprise because they use sophisticated technology. If a community grows, it must produce more. It has to be efficient and produce more. Must comuliberal legal-scapes 197

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neros [those living on a communal landholding] be condemned to produce with rudimentary technology? Are we condemning Ecuador’s collectivities always to produce through extensive systems?’’ Bonifaz intensified the momentum, harking back to egalitarian notions of the democratic liberal subject: ‘‘There is no lesser and there is no greater Ecuadorian. We all have the same capacity. If there is a piece of land on which one thousand people live and eventually there are two thousand people, why is it not possible to make that land produce more? Let me give an example. In Ecuador we produce 10 quintales of maize per hectare. Yet other countries produce 50 quintales. If indígenas are faced with a greater population, they need to produce more.’’ Belletini concurred: ‘‘Precisely, should we [the ruling elite] leave them [indígenas] sleeping as they are with their ancestral management? Should they stay in this untouched form? Should we not bring them into the 20th century?’’ Bonifaz continued: ‘‘It seems to me that codifying demographic pressure into the law as a causal for expropriation would make for a terrible law, one that is conspiratorial against mi patria.’’ Highlighting potential undesired consequences, Andres Borja, the president of the chamber of cattle raisers, noted: ‘‘There are communities in the Amazonía who received hundreds of thousands of hectares from the previous government [referring to the over one million hectares that the state granted Pastaza Indians after opip’s 1992 march]. And in this same area one also sees a situation in which most colonos have properties of only forty to fifty hectares. Be careful when you speak of [a land] monopoly. Be careful when you speak of demographic pressure. A rhetoric of monopoly and demographic pressure can turn against the very same indígenas.’’ The congressman interjected again: ‘‘It’s not simply Ecuador but the entire globe that faces this challenge: to produce a higher quantity and quality of food at better prices for its populace and for export. This will contribute to a higher level of wealth for the country and of course for those who produce. There is no doubt that the causales for expropriation within the [1964] Agrarian Reform were the sources of insecurity and conflict. We must avoid subjectivities that lead to dangerous interpretations and would cause injustice and imbalance. The law attempts to give the nation an instrument for the harmonious development of all people dedicated to work the land. We need to make the law transparent and give guarantees to all equally.’’ 198

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But the congressman’s rhetoric were overpowered by an AfroEcuadorian leader: ‘‘The representative speaks of ‘equality’ and ‘harmonious development.’ I would like to ask the congressman of what equality, of what harmonious development, does he speak when in this country the poor coexist with the rich, scarcity with abundance, the exploited with the developed? Of what equality does he speak when in this country there are those continually excluded? Of what equality does he speak when in indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian communities alike, people cannot simply live, but rather must strive to survive? There are agro-industries that abuse [tratan a la patada] their workers and pay them salaries of starvation. Of what equality exactly can one speak here?’’

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at issue was a concern that has long vexed legal scholars. As many note, more often than not, liberal democracies grant ‘‘all persons entrance into the public on condition that they do not claim special rights or needs, or call attention to their particular history or culture, and that they keep their passions private.’’ 21 Such was the case in debate over the Agrarian Development Law. Seemingly at every step, conaie sought to introduce history and particularism into a law neoliberal powers insisted—in Izurieta’s words—‘‘must be equally obligatory for all.’’ 22 If, as bourgeois legal logic argues, all are equal before the law, then legislation must both demand universal submission and be scripted for universal application. Although the terratenientes might concede incidentals to appease indigenous concerns, the law must govern all equally. This logic serviced capital and elite desires well. Yet the reality of social disparity experienced by the raced, classed, and gendered indígena bodies around the negotiating table collided with bourgeois notions of the liberal subject. If, as conaie believed, subjects were not equal in society, legislation must be drafted to address the specificity of their circumstances. For conaie, the law had to accommodate the ever-persistent historical effects of rural exploitation. Ultimately, after hours of deliberation, negotiators agreed that demographic pressure could be considered a causal for appropriation if, and only if, the property owner does not abide by the articles (17, 18, and 19) that outlined the labor laws and social function of land. The fact that the state could already confiscate landholdings were these articles not observed—regardless of demographic pressure—was never discussed. liberal legal-scapes 199

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Liberal Law and Ethnic Essentialism In a newspaper interview, Nepalí Bonifaz, one of the authors of the Agrarian Development Law and the director of idea (Instituto de Estrategias Agrícolas), a conservative think tank funded by usaid (as indigenous leaders were quick to note), explained some of the fundamental tenets informing the legislation. Recapturing discussion during the third day of negotiations, Bonifaz noted: ‘‘The Indians and campesinos complained to the president that they were not included in the law. The president responded, ‘But you are the private sector!’ They had not captured the fact that they are part of the private sector. The country is divided into two sectors: the public sector, which is the government, and the private sector, which is all the rest. And they are among the rest.’’ 23 He went on to explain: ‘‘The [Agrarian Development] law elevates all Ecuadorians to the same level. The earlier law consecrated two distinct classes of Ecuadorians, those of first and those of second class. As first-class Ecuadorians, we could dispense of our goods and possessions whenever we wanted. The second-class Ecuadorians, who are the indigenous communities, could not sell, mortgage, or even lease as usufruct their property because they were part of a comuna. This situation cannot continue. What the new law does is permit any cooperative or comuna to dissolve voluntarily. . . . [In this way,] one can buy and sell land freely, exactly like a shirt.’’ According to Bonifaz, the market functioned in two internally homogeneous sectors, each composed of undifferentiated, equal individuals ostensibly playing by the same rules. conaie’s leaders were not schooled in these fundamentals. But liberal legality would save the day. It defined all individuals as the same and treated all the same without exception. Similarly, it defined all land as the same, as equally alienable property, and all persons must have equal right to possess and dispense freely of it. History and its effects in shaping individuals and circumscribing them through racial, class, and gender discrimination were inconsequential. An implicit racism laced Bonifaz’s words. Equal access to an open free market was just as problematic as baptizing the meetings ‘‘tripartite’’(i.e., three separate and equal groups). Indigenous leaders noted that bestowing a theoretical equality among subjects and deregulating landholdings would in practice only expand the elite’s possibilities for accumulating land. Only the privileged possessing capital, or access to it, could truly 200 crude chronicles

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compete for land. For most Indians and campesinos, the ‘‘free, open market’’ symbolized their selling of land or labor to terratenientes. As Nina Pacari argued during the negotiations, ‘‘Breaking up communal lands . . . would lead to land monopolies, to those who have and those who don’t. It will produce migration to the cities and unemployment in the countryside. It will cause the belt of misery to tighten.’’ Furthermore, the rhetoric of the free open market obscured the perverse intimacy between the political and economic elites, and their dependence on indígenas as cheap, expendable, flexible labor. For Ecuador’s primary ‘‘comparative advantage’’ was cheap land and labor. The agenda hauntingly resembled Mexico’s agrarian restructuring of 1992 and its larger program for global-market integration— the so-called miracle soon to turn brittle. The irony was that while conservative analysts compared the Movilización por la Vida to armed conflict in Chiapas, few noted that it was the neoliberal, freemarket trade policies that had spurred the Zapatista uprising, let alone that despite having implemented neoliberal policies, the Mexican economy was ever more unstable.24 Racist undertones, however, were not always so explicit, let alone intended. During the first meeting, Fernando Guerrero, a congressman sympathetic to indigenous concerns, addressed the president and terratenientes by making a plea for ‘‘the need to understand the other culture which is not the same as our own [blanco] culture. Exaggerating for a moment,’’ he began, ‘‘there is a saying that the Indian even values the earth below his nails. For us, earth underneath our fingernail is synonymous with desaseo [uncleanliness, untidiness, slovenliness]. For him it is the reason for being, for existing. . . . They, los indígenas, are not irrational beings. They have a cultural pattern which we must incursionar [make incursions into]. We must understand them.’’ Guerrero’s anecdote reminded me of a political cartoon published at the onset of the agrarian debate during the summer of 1994. The cartoon depicted a queue of peasants lined up before a bureaucrat who leaned against his desk. Dressed in hats, poncho-like jackets, and sandals or rubber boots under short or long pants, the peasants could have been indigenous, but were definitely poor. The bureaucrat, on the other hand, bore the appearance of an educated white: he was dressed in a suit, wore glasses, and had a voice. ‘‘What do you mean you don’t have lands!’’ exclaims the bureaucrat. ‘‘Let’s see, . . . show me your nails.’’ The line of peasants/indígenas hold out their liberal legal-scapes 201

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figure 28. Political cartoon of interchange between state bureaucrat and indigenous/campesinos over the ownership of land. Courtesy of Diario Hoy, May 16, 1994

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hands, some looking down to examine them. ‘‘You see? Don’t you see . . . ?’’ queries the bureaucrat with arms outstretched as if perplexed. The cartoon played off of racist beliefs unwittingly present in Guerrero’s words too. Unquestionably the most progressive politician in the presidential hall, Guerrero sought to explain difference to conservative government and terrateniente representatives by highlighting the unique place that land held within an indigenous sense of self and community. Unfortunately, however, the image of Indians cherishing dirt invoked uncomfortable stereotypes. Indeed, his speech incarcerated indigenous bodies within a racist scheme of ethnic essentialism: Indians had simple needs; they lived day to day in nature’s chaos; they lacked notions of hygiene, order, progress, and reason—that is, the foundations of modern society. This identity through lack led to easy moral corruption. Furthermore, Gue202 crude chronicles

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rrero’s words evoked an implicit dichotomy between those who are closer to nature, who engage in manual labor, who are the peones (laborers), and those who are not. By definition, blanco-mestizos engaged in more refined and less manual endeavors, apparently higher on the evolutionary scale, where cleanliness, order, progress, and reason ruled. These old, tattered themes emerged over and over throughout the agrarian debate. The government and terratenientes often dismissed indigenous contentions as unfounded (‘‘many challengers have, in all certainty, not read the law in its entirety’’), as ignorant confusion (‘‘some of the agrarian law’s terminology is not understood by the campesino and indigenous sector’’ or ‘‘the indigenous sectors are confused by the text of the law’’), or as merely senseless clutter (‘‘it’s a semantic problem, everything is words’’). As with Bonifaz’s comments, these statements implied that Indian and campesino leaders were incapable of reading a legal document and unable to assimilate, let alone comprehend, the purity of neoliberal economics, and that their claims lacked content, as they were merely semantic. The fact that two eloquent indigenous lawyers (Luís Macas and Nina Pacari) sat across from the terratenientes at the negotiating table was eclipsed by a notion that Indians are essentially different: they love dirty fingernails and are content in their primitive ways. As a number of scholars suggest, many overtly biological notions of racism have given way to ethnic essentialism—a form of racism that locates difference inside identity as an inherent primordial, cultural characteristic. In particular, essentialized notions of difference increasingly appear as a means to justify the disparity present in democratic states whose subjects are purportedly equal.25 In Ecuador, forms of ethnic essentialism melded culture and biology to impute a pseudo-biological quality to communal life.26 This was particularly evident during the 1994 negotiations, when land use and agricultural practices were discussed. The argument went as follows. Terratenientes asserted that thirty years ago to the month the state had taken decisive measures to reverse inequitable patterns of landholding and unjust labor relations by enacting the 1964 Agrarian Reform Law. By 1994, according to idea studies, indigenous people held the majority of land—60 to 90 percent in some cantons and three-quarters of all properties of 100 or more hectares in the northern sierra were indigenous owned. Agrarian reform had redressed inequitable land distribution: ‘‘Land reform in Ecuador has completed its objective.’’ Consequently, Indians’ pervasive liberal legal-scapes 203

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poverty and marginalization could not be due solely to material inequality or sociopolitical processes. Land reform had already fixed those problems. Terratenientes and state representatives concluded that the crux of indígenas’ problems resided in their form of organization, production, and culture. Their logic followed a belief common under liberal law: ‘‘If the powerful and persistent ministrations of law do not bring certain racial identities into society that must be because the identities are essentially different and naturally incapable.’’ 27 Another congressman, less a champion of indigenous concerns but still a sympathetic listener, noted: ‘‘One of the greatest revolutions in human history occurred during the Neolithic, when ten thousand years ago man decided to invent and dedicate himself to agriculture, thereby leaving behind his vocation as a hunter and gatherer and becoming sedentary. Since that time, there have been a series of changes in the process of agricultural exploitation. There has been an evolution and there have been a series of landmarks. . . . and these landmarks have become consecrated in a series of universal principles that should be respected . . . to benefit the development of man, the benefit of the collectivity, to benefit the development of the nation. [The reigning] universal principle of the day is intensive industrial agriculture on private holdings.’’ What to do, then, with indigenous people? It would seem they were living relics of some earlier stage of agricultural development. As elites’ concerns over ancestral management and expropriation suggest, indígenas lived in a premodern culture that had stunted their agrarian practice in some epoch long forgotten by modern agriculture. In Belletini’s words, they were ‘‘sleeping’’ and ‘‘untouched.’’ Marking indigenous people as evolutionarily frozen implicitly labeled the white male as the agent of history. As multiple scholars observe, the construction of the other allowed for the consolidation of the West and the ‘‘man of reason.’’ 28 By defining himself against that which he was not, the free, civilized, rational subject was born. Thus, Nicolás Guillén’s words were even more telling. By insisting that indígenas were moved by an ‘‘irrational zeal’’ and that their demands were ‘‘inhumano’’ (inhuman or inhumane) and ‘‘anticristiano’’ (unchristian), the former president of the chamber of agriculture conjured up an image of Indians as savages, infidels, irrational, and lawless and of himself and those he represented as bearers of progress, righteousness, and civilization. Particularly disturbing was how Indians and indigenous land use 204 crude chronicles

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were compartmentalized as being essentially different, rooted in primitive irrationality and estranged from elite understandings of rational land use. Indígenas were seen as outside the political economic system, when their very labor was what enabled capital accumulation. Indians’ relationship with land was divorced from an analysis of their historical exploitation and their indispensability for elite success. Because the political and economic elite did not see Indians as the product of history, the conditions in which they lived were easily essentialized and biologized. Difference was located on the body in a cultural (qua biological) essence, unaltering and eternal. It was not the effect of historical patterns of political-economic domination and exclusion. Demographic pressure, for instance, was a biological/cultural problem intrinsic to indigenous identity, not the result of social processes. Similarly, as long as Indians were not historical beings, they could, in Leonardo Viteri’s words, ‘‘be put in the same sack’’ and then be defined as ‘‘backward.’’ The fact that indigenous notions of self and land emerged dialectically within exploitative relations of production in which indigenous labor has produced for the global market since the arrival of the Spanish slipped from terrateniente consciousness. Indians were seen as essentially different, not—to borrow words from Paul Gilroy—‘‘as a product of one of modernity’s most significant and enduring countercultures.’’ 29 Ethnic essentialism not only enabled Ecuadorian elites to blame indígenas for their plight; it also compelled elites to develop a sense of their own culture as threatened.30 Either indígenas were dangerous, subversive threats to the nation or they were dupes of an international conspiracy. In varying degrees throughout the three-month debate on the agrarian question contentions surfaced, yet again, about the subversiveness of indigenous tactics, the infringement of international organizations on ‘‘national’’ terrain, and an anxiety over the state of the nation.31 Both in print and in negotiated interchange, terratenientes and government officials gave the impression that indigenous peoples were not to be fully trusted. Only days before the negotiations began, Fabián Corral, a central architect of the Agrarian Development Law and a powerful voice at the negotiating table, wrote an opinion piece in the more conservative Quito daily. The essay was titled ‘‘The War of the Ponchos,’’ a title that both caricatured Indians through their dress—their essential cultural difference—and alluded to their insurgent goals. ‘‘Behind the guerra de los ponchos,’’ Corral began, ‘‘there is something liberal legal-scapes 205

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more than the simple questioning of the new law. . . . There is a political perspective that questions the state and places under challenge the legitimacy of the system. There is an aggressive combat against the ‘blanco-mestizo society.’ Lurking in the background is a political project that aims to declare the state plurinational and divide it into small fiefdoms with their own territory, judicial administration, authorities. The underlying goal is to create very small nations with enormous power for their leaders.’’ 32 He then rhetorically asked, ‘‘What is at issue here? Is this really about a concern for ‘property’ or does it reflect a hidden aspiration for sovereignty?’’ The question resonated with a number of terratenientes, as well as others. As one anti-conaie indigenous leader said during the meetings, ‘‘conaie’s use of the term territorio is a pretext for establishing their political agenda of plurinationality—a reality that would lead to another Bosnia and Sarajevo.’’ A few days earlier, the more progressive Quito daily had printed a commentary on its opinion pages titled ‘‘When Blood Calls, Blood Kills.’’ The ‘‘blood’’ that the title was referring to was that of indígenas. In fact, the title caricatured Indians as being defined by blood, as people who were driven by blood impulses, primitive instincts, irrational zeal. Employing a rhetoric that splices culture into biology, the author began: ‘‘The indigenous problematic . . . is fundamentally racial and, given its political derivation, it concerns the entire nation. conaie’s political project is essentially racist; it does not seek to insert the Indian man [sic] into Ecuadorian society. . . . The true and original aim, which now its leaders can no longer continue to disguise, is to divide Ecuador into two nations, one blanco-mestiza and the other indigenous. This would represent a cunning blow to the unity of la patria.’’ 33 Indigenous aspirations to change the configuration of the Ecuadorian state—to redraw the lines of power, participation, and privilege—were interpreted as a racist agenda for a segregated society and as seditious, as dismantling the unity of la patria. Citing a recent article titled ‘‘Race or Nation,’’ the author of ‘‘When Blood Calls, Blood Kills’’ wrote: ‘‘ ‘The nation is not conceived through a genetic complicity that emanates from the past, but rather as a life project moving forward, toward the future, among people whose tie of union is not blood but rather the free will to associate.’ . . . The ideologues of this ethnic organization [conaie] forget that nation is a political concept that transcends the ties of blood.’’ 34 In a gesture aimed to erase history, the editorial’s author claimed 206 crude chronicles

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that conaie-led efforts to challenge the myth of the Ecuadorian nation represented indígenas’ proclivity to revert to blood instincts. Associated with depravity, Indians, it would seem, were incapable of rising above their inherent nature; blood’s dictates threatened to engulf the nation. The racism implicit in such depictions of indígenas consolidated an elite notion of the nation and the identity of its members.35 Inherently racialized and ethnicized beings, indígenas could never embark on a truly political project, a project that necessitated the presence of the free will of rational man—the subject of law and the subject of the nation. As other scholars note, liberal ‘‘legality. . . . celebrates and elevates the law to an exalted status as the expression of the unity in the nation.’’ 36 Critically, the subject of the law is by definition the subject of the nation.37 Yet in a land where inequality and exclusion occur along ethnic lines, law and its self-declared honorable subjects stigmatize indigenous people as either incapable of and/or unwilling to enter the nation of reason. Looking down at the palace courtyard from the second-floor balcony, a terrateniente told me, ‘‘conaie is perpetuating a circuit of terrible misinformation about the Agrarian Development Law. For the objective of the law is precisely for the good of the nation. Their claims are an assault on la patria. It is national belief that Ecuador marches forward toward development, modernization.’’ By circumscribing agrarian law such that it could not address difference, such that it could not accommodate the discriminated, the political and economic elite further categorizes indígenas as deviant misfits essentially different, and incapable of entering the nation.

Ambiguous Endings

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Relistening to the tapes of the tripartite negotiations, I found myself gripped with sadness. Although conaie had succeeded in markedly changing some articles of (and indeed purported to its constituents to have radically transformed) the law,38 successes were far from conclusive. The ultimate outcome of the renegotiated Agrarian Development Law was ambiguous. Rightly, conaie trumpeted its and can’s ability to alter the position of indígenas within the law and make it more receptive to indigenous and campesino needs. They forced the state and terratenientes to recognize the diversity of the agrarian sector and indígenas’ and campesinos’ mobilizing force. The Agrarian Develliberal legal-scapes 207

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opment Law now speaks of the agrarian sector in social rather than simply economic terms. Local internal food production is now, theoretically, as important as agribusiness export production. Agrarian reform is now to be ‘‘perfected’’ rather than abolished. The distribution of land is now as important as its concentration. Environmental concerns are now highlighted more. Yet at crucial junctures—articles pertaining to communal holdings, expropriation, water rights—conaie only succeeded in softening the wording and adding a few caveats to the legal phrasing. Take communal holdings as an example. From the beginning, the state and terratenientes were set on dissolving formerly sacrosanct communal holdings. Perhaps for this reason, two groups for whom communal holdings are of paramount importance, lowland indígenas and Afro-Ecuadorians, were not initially allowed to be present at the negotiating table. conaie did manage to change the wording of the law such that dismantling communal holdings is now neither absolute nor inevitable; but it can still be done, should two-thirds of the residents wish to sell their lands. A thought to how the state has adjudicated communal holdings in Pastaza and how corporate interests have created division among residentes allude to this article’s potentially tragic effects. Thus softening wording and adding conditions make the Agrarian Development Law more ambiguous rather than fundamentally challenge its neoliberal tenets. Undeniably such ambiguity opens space for future indigenous and campesino action. And according to some conaie leaders, there will be future opportunities to further consolidate indigenous communal interests. But the general neoliberal policies that the law was designed to promote will advance without difficulty. The overall thrust of the law—securing private property and facilitating further land acquisition in order to produce for export—has not substantially changed. This is not to imply that conaie failed. Given the political and economic power inequalities around the negotiating table, what more could be achieved in working from the opposition’s text? As many social commentators noted, if nothing else the negotiations left one thing clear: indígenas were imposing political actors. conaie/can forced the executive, legislature, terratenientes, and the Ecuadorian public to recognize an indigenous and campesino presence and consider their demands. On the first day of negotiations, Nina Pacari noted, ‘‘It has been said that behind the indígenas stand the politicians and foreigners. 208

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But Sirs, this is not so. Behind the indígenas is the country, is la patria. . . . You see us now with force, force capable of mobilizing 50 percent of the population. In this we have not been manipulated. Rather, we are conscious of our exclusion. This is why the Movilización occurred—to give value to those rights that we have always been denied and that now must be recognized. This is la democracia.’’ Toward the end of that first day, President Durán Ballén lifted the state of emergency. He warned, however, that his declaration would only prevail if conaie vowed to maintain peace in the countryside. Unwittingly, this decree only underscored the state’s inability to do so except through brute force, and conaie’s authority over a growing number of the country’s citizens. Unintentionally, the president exposed the truth of the indígenas’ indictment: Ecuador’s democracy was counterfeit, the state’s hegemony was feeble, and indigenous historical exclusion was no longer acceptable.

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CLOSING: A PLURINATIONAL SPACE

mo·sa·ic, noun. Biology: an organism or one of its parts composed of cells of more than one genotype. mo·sa·i·cism, noun (1926). Genetics: the condition of possessing cells of two or more different genetic constitutions. —Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2000

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the equatorial sun shone brightly as Clara ran out to greet me from the column of marchers spanning one side of the Pan-American Highway. It was early October 1997. The women of Pastaza were already on the twelfth day of their journey from Puyo to Quito by the time I met them in the central Andes. Two hundred strong, these sinchi huarmiguna, or powerful women (as they called themselves), had embarked on the second opip-affiliated march to the nation’s capital that decade. Carrying children and protest placards, grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and daughters once more reversed the expeditions of sixteenth-century conquistadores and walked from their Amazonian homelands to the seat of political power. They sought to denounce exclusionary state rule and intensified petroleum activity in Pastaza. Clara’s mother was one of four women holding the wide banner that headed their procession. Framed by the image of a woman whose limbs transformed into the roots and the branches of a tree, the banner read: ‘‘Pachamama: A March for Life, the Forest, and Respect for the Cultural Integrity of Indigenous Peoples. No to the Petroleros.’’ Yet the political process in which these sinchi huarmiguna would ultimately participate encompassed and went beyond what their protest banner suggested. Their procession served as a catalyst, generating popular protest throughout the country. Indeed, the

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figure 29. opip-affiliated women marching along the Pan-American Highway from Puyo to Quito. Suzana Sawyer, 1997.

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chants of the women from Pastaza were the beckoning calls for thousands of people—indígenas, campesinos, workers, and urban groups from the Sierra, the coast, and the Oriente—to oppose the ruling regime. ‘‘La Marcha,’’ Clara’s mother sang, ‘‘is a boa’’—a snake with mythological powers of reproduction, clarity, and strength— ‘‘slinking across the country. We are a gigantic snake. Gigantic as women. Gigantic as mothers. Gigantic as grandmothers. Gigantic as a pueblo. A boa growing more and more gigantic as it slinks across the land.’’ At a highland rally on the day that thousands of marchers joined these sinchi huarmiguna, Nina Pacari cried out, ‘‘The women of Pastaza have given us more than solidarity. Their strength inspires. It gives us trust in ourselves—in the wisdom that comes from our experience of oppression—and it gives us confidence to continue.’’ Not only did the women’s courage motivate others, but their determination to revindicate their identity and rights also animated aspirations for and fantasies of reconfiguring the nation and transforming the democratic process in Ecuador. At the highland rally Luís Macas observed: ‘‘Ecuador lacks any coherent power. It lacks legitimate authority. Corruption and deception plague the presidency and legislature. Only the pueblo has the authority, the power, the capacity to direct the destiny of our country. . . . Today, the women of Pastaza are symbols of courage and resistance for all of us. Change 212

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figure 30. Highland Indians from Saraguro along the Pan-American Highway on their way to Quito. Suzana Sawyer, 1997.

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will not come from the national congress. Change will not come from the presidential palace. Change always emerges from the plazas, from the streets, from the marches. Like all significant challenges to power—whether it was in 1990, 1992, 1994, or now, 1997—it will come from indigenous protest in public spaces.’’ On the morning of October 12—a portentous day in the Americas —an estimated ten thousand protesters flooded Quito in an ironic requiem to the conquest. Symbolically inverting the Spanish invasion 505 years earlier, hundreds of marginalized groups (dominated numerically by indígenas) took possession of Quito’s streets in their toma, or takeover. The toma was a public spectacle: lowland women, their faces painted with elaborate designs, danced and twirled through the streets; Amazonian Indians wearing feathered headdresses struck a rhythm on their drums; negros (Blacks) and montubios (coastal peasants) wearing straw hats clashed their machetes overhead between shouts; highland indígenas cloaked in colorful ponchos waved Tahuantinsuyo flags to protest chants. Far from being folkloric tokens, these bodily markers embodied a specific historical experience. As the Saraguro Indian who carried Taita Inti (the Quichua sun god) from his home in the southern Andes noted, ‘‘This hat [pointing to his broad-rimmed felt hat], this hair [pointing to his long black braid], this poncho [pointing to his black poncho draping over his knee-length pants] symbolize indigenous resistance.’’ closing 213

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figure 31. The October 12 Popular National Constituent Assembly in Quito. Suzana Sawyer, 1997.

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Markers of racial, ethnic, and gender difference signaled histories of oppression as well as opposition. On the afternoon of October 12, protesters inaugurated a popular National Constituent Assembly.1 The October march and Constituent Assembly marked a shift in indigenous politics, expanding even more the broad-based popular coalition forged during the 1994 uprising. For an entire week indígenas, campesinos, negros, montubios, workers, and human rights and environmental groups worked together to draft a new constitution. This coalition sought to celebrate and affirm the mosaicked content of the Ecuadorian nation. That is, the Assembly was an occasion in which popular groups debated ways to change the political structure and the citizen rights and guarantees that define the nation. Importantly, the October 1997 spectacle focused on a core concern of the indigenous protest movement: plurinationality. Over the previous decade, conaie (with the support of its regional and local Indian federations) repeatedly proposed constitutional reform in Ecuador. The first article of the Republic’s proposed constitution would read: ‘‘Ecuador is a plurinational, sovereign, independent, democratic, and unified state which recognizes, protects and respects cultural diversity.’’ 2 In the mid-1990s, conaie elaborated more fully on this proposal in its Political Project, a manifesto outlining the confederation’s strategies and goals. conaie wrote in 1994, 214

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Our historical experience as Indigenous Nationalities has been one of continuous struggle, first against Spanish colonialism, then against constitutional republican regimes, and now against imperialism. . . . [This experience is what] compels us to push for change. . . . In these difficult and unpredictable times, when poverty, misery, and exploitation are worsening, and neoliberalism has assaulted our national resources, conaie invites all the men and women who are fighting against social injustice, economic exploitation, racial discrimination, human rights abuses, natural destruction, and environmental contamination to support our Political Project, a project whose principal objective is to construct a New State Model and Plurinational Nation.’’ 3 The Political Project continued: In spite of the marginalization, discrimination, oppression, and exclusion that we have experienced from the dominant sectors of society that control political, economic, and military power, we, as the Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities, seek to recuperate the Political Space usurped from us in 1492 in order to question and expose social injustice and economic exploitation, an inefficient and outdated juridico-political system, and the antidemocratic character of the [Ecuadorian] State and Institutions of Power.’’ 4

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There was no doubt, for conaie, that neoliberal policies aiming to privatize, liberalize, and deregulate the economy were wreaking havoc on the majority of Ecuador’s population and creating a serious crisis of accountability. The Constituent Assembly’s signature motto echoed conaie’s project: ‘‘Por un Estado Plurinacional Sin Privatizaciones’’ (For a Plurinational State Free from Privatizations). Not only had the state implemented policies that facilitated greater foreign investment and encouraged a scarcely monitored corporate capital to run its own show, but it had also simultaneously disavowed its responsibilities for ensuring the welfare of its citizens. In the wake of the growing social, economic, political, and environmental ills caused by unchecked capitalist activities, indígenas found the state unresponsive to the tragedies tormenting their lives. This reality convinced conaie that Ecuador was governed by a ‘‘uni-national bourgeois state,’’ a state whose rule was ‘‘exclusionary, antidemocratic, repressive, and pro-imperialist.’’ 5 closing 215

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figure 32. One of the oldest and one of the youngest female protesters near the Presidential Palace in Quito. Suzana Sawyer, 1997.

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This crisis of accountability—in conjunction with the moral bankruptcy of Sixto Durán Ballén’s and then Abdala Bucaram’s regime (those contemporary echoes of a longer history of corrupt rule)—left a political vacuum that conaie and its affiliated federations were more than capable of filling. Indeed, in their protests, marches, paralyzations, and assemblies, indígenas usurped a political space in which to construct a new democratic, participatory order that emanated from el pueblo. A playful chant that protesters sang on October 12 as they marched through Quito’s streets underscored this point: ‘‘Arriba, abajo, el pueblo, carajo! Izquierda, derecha, el gobierno a la mierda!’’ Politics as it was known could go to hell; left and right political parties had for too long ignored ‘‘the people,’’ the bodies individual and collective in all their dimensions that filled the nation. These forgotten bodies were now asserting their voice and seeking to vindicate prior and ongoing injustice. Against a backdrop of over five hundred years of racial exploitation, the fierce material consequences of neoliberal legislative reform collided with an ever-astute subaltern opposition. This collision sparked heated debate on the nature of the nation under neoliberalism and led to the production of disruptive political subjects with alternative political imaginaries. Neoliberal policies—and the perceived injustices they meted out to popular groups—became a staging point from which indigenous groups launched a public de216

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bate: about who did and did not count as agents of history; who could or could not participate as citizens in the representative process; who might or might not have a voice in decision making; and who would or would not benefit from the state’s so-called modernization. Importantly, conaie was not ‘‘seeking to take power.’’ Rather, the indígenas’ goal was ‘‘to transform the nature of the present power of the uni-national, hegemonic, exclusionary, antidemocratic, and repressive State, and construct a New Humanistic, Plurinational, Society.’’ 6

Disabling Petro-Politics ‘‘Fuera [Get out] Tripetrol!’’ Magdalena shouted. ‘‘Fuera!’’ responded the women around her. ‘‘Fuera arco!’’ she called; ‘‘Fuera!’’ responded the women. ‘‘Fuera cgc!’’; ‘‘Fuera!’’ It was October 20, 1997. The Constituent Assembly was nearly over, but the concerns of the women of Pastaza were not. In coordination with Acción Ecológica, one hundred of them staged a protest and blockaded the entrance of a high-rise building in an upscale sector of Quito. Behind the women stood twenty police, shoulder-to-shoulder in riot gear, guarding the glass doors. The building housed the headquarters of Tripetrol, an Ecuadorian multinational petroleum corporation.7 Tripetrol, along with cgc (Compañía General de Combustibles, an Argentinean petroleum corporation), had each gained rights over a 200,000-hectare oil concession in Pastaza Province during the 1994 Séptima Ronda. But Ecuador’s tumultuous history in the mid-1990s derailed operations. In January and February 1995, Ecuador was consumed by a fierce war with Peru over their Amazonian border. The war and its aftermath curtailed all new oil activity in the Oriente for nearly two years. In Pastaza, arco’s field operations in Block 10 were at a total standstill, and had been so since late 1994. In addition to being affected by the war, arco had reached a stalemate with the government of Ecuador over who would build, and under what terms, a pipeline connecting oil wells in Block 10 with the TransAndean pipeline. Tripetrol began its seismic work in early 1997. cgc had yet to begin. Consequently, at the time of the Constituent Assembly, Tripetrol was the only oil company operating in Pastaza. In contrast to that of arco and cgc, Tripetrol’s concession was situated on the colonized plateau surrounding Puyo, a densely inhabited area populated by indígenas and colonos. From the beginning Tripetrol met fierce closing 217

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resistance. Indígenas and colonos sabotaged the company’s seismic work. They ripped out seismic cables, detonated explosives, confiscated equipment, and threatened workers.8 ‘‘They entered by force,’’ Clara began, speaking into the microphone of a television reporter who had arrived at the Tripetrol headquarters a few hours after the protest began. ‘‘La compañía wants [to gain entrance] by corrupting indigenous people,’’ she continued. ‘‘They want to enter our territory a la grosera [crudely, in a crude manner] without asking the permission of its owners, of those who live in the forest. But, we want to live as our ancestors left us. We are willing to die for our pachamama, we are willing to spill blood.’’ In the background was a chorus of honking cars. Two indigenous women held signs on the heavily trafficked street that read, ‘‘Honk for the Amazonia!!’’ Magdalena interrupted and continued the interview, ‘‘We started walking on September 28,’’ she said, staring into the camera. ‘‘Two hundred women representing five nationalities—Quichua, Shuar, Achuar, Zapara [she named only four]. We walked and arrived here to speak with the petroleros and put things in order, because we do not want petroleum companies to exploit Pastaza.’’ An activist from Acción Ecológica started off the protest chant—‘‘Fluye el petroleo, sangra la selva.’’ ‘‘We don’t want Pastaza to turn into another Sucumbios,’’ Magdalena continued, ‘‘Another Lago Agrio. The companies are contaminating the environment. They will destroy simply for money. . . . We don’t want any agreement. We don’t want crumbs. We don’t want leftovers. We are sick and tired of this. The indígena is always deceived with a sack of rice, by leaders whose consciences have been bought. There is a lot of corruption. And we have decided it has to stop—among indígenas, among mestizos, among blancos, among everyone.’’ Magdalena was not only referring to the corruption that permeated Abdala Bucaram’s short presidency, but also to that which had recently torn opip apart. In 1996, Héctor Villamil (the organization’s one-time fierce leader) was elected to the National Congress as one of Pastaza’s two provincial representatives and soon became embroiled in the corruption schemes that suffused Bucaram’s regime. Héctor was impeached, charged with corruption, and at the time of the Tripetrol protest was still hiding from authorities in the Oriente.9 The fierce divisions within the organization that Héctor’s actions created would haunt opip into the next millennium. 218

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The protest did not go well. Indeed, these sinchi huarmiguna had no effect. Five hours after the protest began, violence broke out. The police, together with security guards, started beating women back from the building. The women stood their ground and fought back. The police pulled out their pepper spray. Chaos ensued. Ultimately the women were overwhelmed. The garage door opened and two luxury cars chauffeuring Tripetrol executives screeched away. One of the cars hit one of the women. Corporate maneuvers continued to be disabling.

Nation Under Neoliberalism As this book demonstrates, the path to creating an alternative vision and polity is littered with obstacles. The demand for a plurinational state unsettled and continues to unsettle elite foundational fictions of the nation in Ecuador.10 As Guayasamin’s mosaic reminds, Indians are essential to the elites’ mythical nation, but only as sacrifice, not as agents. Over the course of the 1990s, indigenous politics exposed the fictiveness of nationhood in Ecuador. Ecuador was ruled by an exclusionary, antidemocratic, pro-imperialist state; this was the dilemma of nation in the (post)colonial empires of neoliberalism—a predicament that is simultaneously postcolonial and colonial. The epigraph and implicit critique in Guayasamin’s mosaic remain salient today. Colonial inequalities uncomfortably suffuse Ecuador’s present political-economic landscape as structural adjustment reforms—those supposed gateways to true participation in global free trade among ‘‘equal’’ nations—re-inscribed racial hierarchies, though always in complicated ways. It would seem that many believe that sacrificing Indian blood is still essential for realizing Ecuador’s destiny. Grand theories contend that the emergence of the nation is a historical inevitability with the advent of modernization. Focusing primarily on processes in Europe, many theorists assume an unproblematic coincidence of nation-ness, capitalist development, and state formation.11 There is a problem, however, when one translates this to the third world. A number of scholars question this ‘‘functional fit’’ of state consolidation, capitalist expansion, and nation building, and are skeptical about whether it ever existed, even in the metropolitan core.12 Critics argue that nationhood is not inevitable and that when it occurs, it is conflict ridden. For many Latin American countries, especially those with a large indigenous population, inclusive closing 219

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nationhood has only recently become a state concern and historically has often been antithetical to the consolidation of state power.13 In Ecuador, it was not until the late 1970s that the state ventured a discourse to nationhood that included those not of Spanish descent, approximately 35 to 45 percent of the population.14 But because there is a contradiction between the effects of neoliberal policy and a language of inclusion, state-driven efforts have failed to produce any semblance of the nation as the ‘‘imagined community’’ that Benedict Anderson describes.15 Since the 1960s, a host of indigenous political organizations have emerged in Ecuador (and throughout Latin America) from the fissures created in the state’s failure to secure a national hegemony.16 Significantly, political identities of indigenous difference gained increasing potency through the 1980s and 1990s precisely at the moment when flows of transnational power and capital integration infused Ecuador’s political economy with a neoliberal zeal. Predictions that processes of economic globalization would lead to homogenization fell flat in Ecuador. Just as the neoliberal state was maintaining that it could not accommodate Indians—that everyone needed to modernize and become good, rational, liberal subjects—indigenous organization and resistance dramatically increased. Within the vast literature accounting for the eruptions of ethnic identity seen across the globe at the close of the twentieth century, many scholars have interpreted ethnic militancy as a reaction by groups in defense of their threatened cultural integrity.17 Others see outbursts of ethnic consciousness as the product of shared symbols and signifying practices that elites manipulate in their interests.18 Given the right conditions an ethnic ethos erupts to protect itself from external dangers. There is, however, a latent primordialism—an assumption that some social groups retain deep, essentialized, cultural attachments—that underlies both lines of reasoning. It would appear that those belonging to ethnic groups are infused with a primal, eternal core, whereas the rest of us move about as rational creatures in the late twentieth century. Such analyses fail to recognize that cultural difference is produced through historical connection, not isolation.19 Ethnicity is not some preexisting ontological germ, dormant and waiting for the right conditions for it to erupt. To rethink theories of ethnicity, the nation, and neoliberalism in the Ecuadorian context, let me begin with a working definition. Ethnic identity is a process of constant negotiation over collective senses of being that naturalizes certain attributes (anything from 220

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skin color to religion) as innate possessions stemming from a mythical history.20 Thus, ethnicity (along with any form of cultural identity) is a relation, not a thing, and, consequently, a terrain of struggle. How different groups define who is and is not indigenous is a political act. As a relation, the content of ethnic identity is forged from ongoing historical conflicts; it is, in John Comaroff ’s words, an artifact of power-laden conflicts that ‘‘inscribe material inequalities in cultural difference.’’ 21 What becomes of interest then is the how of ethnicity—not the what or why—that is, how ethnic identities come to assume their particular forms. Rather than reflecting a cultural essence, ethnic identity is best understood as what Stuart Hall calls a way of positioning, as well as being positioned, through which subaltern groups re-present the past and imagine the future.22 In Ecuador, Indians consciously positioned themselves against the state through the language of the ‘‘nation’’—a language diametrically opposed to elites’ discourse of ‘‘patria.’’ La patria is the right of conquest. It is the prize of the patrimony—that which belongs to the father, the conquistador—and as such, it is the possession, the property, of a patriarchal white male elite. This is precisely what Guayasamin’s mosaic portrays and critiques. By contrast, nacionalidad is not a possession for Indians. It is a chosen self-ascribed cultural and political identity, a process of creating a collective sense of belonging, participating, engaging. Plurinationality—as both an emblem of indigenous difference and a realm of popular polity—formed the core of indigenous politics. Making claims simultaneously to both bedeviled the dichotomy between modernity and tradition that undergirded dominant understandings of the nation. Nation was an explicit site of struggle. In contrast to what many theorists of the nation predict, nationhood has not been inevitable in Ecuador. Capitalist expansion and state power have largely been premised on national division, not cohesion. The example of Ecuador demonstrates that in our transnationalizing, globalizing world, ‘‘nation’’ or ‘‘nationness’’ is not a thing that unfolds—either naturally or conflictively—but rather is ‘‘a symbol’’—what Katherine Verdery calls a ‘‘sorting device’’—that social groups use to authenticate ‘‘the grounds for [their] authority and legitimacy.’’ 23 Nation is a global, hegemonic medium through which to challenge social orders ‘‘that limit and legitimize peoples’ access’’ to resources within particular states and within the interstate system.24 By unhinging the hyphen between nation and state, subaltern groups redeployed nation-as-symbol, turning it into a site of closing 221

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struggle for forging an alternative politics of difference with material effects. Ethnicity, thus, is best understood as a relational local identity imbricated in global processes, not an essence outside history. Nation is best understood as a symbol variously deployed to assert authority and legitimacy. Neoliberalism is best understood as an unstable process whose outcome is far from certain. The material stakes of struggle over the nation under neoliberalism remain enormous. As critical anthropology attends to the culturally and historically specific formations emerging under globalization, it will need to map the space opened up from the severing of the hyphen between the nation and the state. Challenges to the singularity of the nation and proposals for a plurinational state hold both peril and promise for alternative imaginings of a place of political belonging. The reinscription of power is never simple reproduction, the crude imitation of the past. As the previous pages have illustrated, power inequalities reconfigure themselves and reinsinuate their effect in always problematic, punctuated, often unpredictable ways. Power, as Foucault so keenly instructs, produces new identities, territories, and relations.25 It is those spaces of production, assertion, and reinsertion that become, then, the Gramscian terrain of struggle.26 That which emerges— often through violent collision in a force-field of power—inevitably transforms through impact.27 The task becomes unraveling the historically specific conjunctures for how and why effects emerge the way they do. This book has shown how indigenous agency continually disrupted elite Ecuadorian national narratives rooted in, and routed through, the conquest. It is full of local histories illustrating how the marginalized disrupt, and are thwarted by, dominant desires to gain physical and symbolic terrain. It has probed the processes whereby material and symbolic struggles are constitutive of contest over the nation as political community. And it has explored the contradictory capacity of liberal thought to both enable and contain. The symbolic significance of staging the ‘‘Toma de Quito’’ on October 12 cannot be underestimated. The act of capturing political space and challenging constitutional powers on this infamous day was a barbed indictment of colonialisms, imperialisms, and racisms, past and present. However, mid-October symbolizes more in Ecuador than the period marking the Spanish invasion. As Luís Macas noted at the inauguration of the Constituent Assembly, in 222 crude chronicles

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October 1794, Eugenio Espejo hung red banners throughout Quito as a revolutionary symbol against Spanish domination and exploitation. On October 12, 1997, conaie did the same. This time, however, the mosaic-cum-rainbow symbol of Tahuantinsuyu—both conaie’s flag and that of the newly conaie-endorsed Movimiento Pachakutic—draped the city. conaie’s banners conjured up three historical junctures of colonial and (post)colonial rule in Ecuador: the fifteenth-century conquest, eighteenth-century imperial Spain, and twentieth-century neoliberal capitalism. Like Espejo’s red banners, conaie’s flag was similarly defiant: the multicolors of conaie’s banner incited a movement to include those of all shades within a plurinational state.

Postscript

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

In March 1997, arco resolved its dispute with Petroecuador over the construction of a pipeline linking Block 10 with the central Trans-Andean pipeline and the company declared ‘‘commerciality’’ —meaning that they had committed themselves to developing and producing oil in Block 10. In April 1998, the Ministry of Energy and Mines approved arco’s environmental impact assessment and management plan. In May 1998, arco signed a production-sharing contract with the government of Ecuador for rights to explore and exploit oil in a second oil concession in Pastaza (Block 24). Within a month, arco began drilling nine more oil wells in Villano and building a pipeline to connect with the Trans-Andean one. In August 1999, the first barrels of crude oil flowed from Villano to the main pipeline.28 In March 2000, arco was bought by the megaconglomerate British Petroleum–Amoco. BP–Amoco relinquished its Ecuador concession. Block 10 is currently under the management of agip (arco’s former 40 percent investment partner) which had merged with eni as the European conglomerate’s exploration and production partner in January 1998. Relations between agip and the vast majority of Pastaza Indians continue to be tense.

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NOTES

opening 1

2

3

For more on identity, social movements, and globalization see Alvarez et al. (1998), Escobar et al. (1992), Featherstone (1990, 1995), and Lowe and Lloyd (1997). For more on this process and its relationship to governmentality, see Barry et al. (1996), Burchell (1996), Dean (1999), Escobar (1995), Ferguson (1994), Foucault (1991), Rose (1989, 1996, 1999), and Scott (1995). Estimates of the indigenous population in Ecuador vary greatly. According to the state, Indians account for 25 percent of the national population. According to conaie, they represent 45 percent (conaie 1989, 1994; Pacari 1996). In 1993, the World Bank noted that indígenas accounted for 30 percent of the population (‘‘Indigenous People in Latin America,’’ hro Dissemination Notes, No. 8, June 7, 1993). In part, this variation reflects the politics of the entity doing the reporting. But in part, this variation also reflects the difficulty of quantifying who or what is indigenous. Indigenous identity is a moving target that has no simple or static determinate. Defining what precisely is and is not an indigenous identity

4

is problematic, debatable, and in transition, as people’s personal identifications of themselves change through time and according to circumstance. See Allen (1996), Boyer (1990), Gordon (1988), Hall and Jacques (1989), Harvey

5

(1990), and Lipietz (1987). Fordism—the large-scale, assembly-line mass production that had led Western economies to impressive growth—had reached the limits of its productive capacity, work forces resisted ever-increasing repetitive work, and consumption

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

6

patterns shifted more quickly than production could match. Corporate capitalism responded by gradually transforming its regime of accumulation away from standardized, mass production and toward flexible, specialized, just-in-time batch production. In general, companies employed two strategies toward this end. First, many industries transformed the labor process by automating the workplace within industrialized nations, a move that polarized a significant portion of the Western work force into deskilled and reskilled workers. Second, a record number of multinational corporations began to ex-

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pand their operations overseas. By setting up productive activities in third-world countries, corporations sought to lower their energy costs, tap ever-growing pools of cheap labor, maintain their productivity, and find new markets. Within the oil industry, this was the period when exploratory activities overseas increased and a slew of new subcontracted service industries (seismic, drilling, construction, refining) emerged. 7

See Martz’s (1987) analysis of the history of petroleum in Ecuador. For further history see Jacobsen and Neff (1970, 1973), Masters (1921, 1923), Sawyer (1975), Sinclair (1929), Sinclair and Wasson (1923), Tschopp (1953), and Wasson and Sinclair (1927). For a synopsis of this history, see Sawyer (1997). Euro-American oil conglomerates began exploring for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon in the 1920s despite the fact that commercial reserves were not found until many years later. In 1973, Texaco completed the Trans-Andean pipeline connecting Amazonian oil fields with a Pacific port from which crude oil could be exported.

8

Between 1970 and 1981, Ecuador’s gdp grew by 147 percent (Thoumi and Grindle

9

1992, 16). Eisner (2001), Nazmi (2001, 4). In 2001, Ecuador had the highest foreign debt to gdp ratio (104 percent) in Latin America.

10 11

Hurtado (1990 [1]: 126). Schodt (1989), Thoumi and Grindle (1992), de Janvery et al. (1991).

12 13

Thoumi and Grindle (1992, 52). During this time, Ecuador still maintained many of its nationalist industries and

14 15

export substitution policies. Smith (1976, 476). It should be noted that there were other multinational oil conglomerates exploring for oil during this period. Their discoveries were brought into production,

16

however, after 1992. See cesr (1994), Mera and Montaño (1984), Trujillo (1981, 1987), Uquillas (1984, 1985, 1989, 1992), Vickers (1984), and Zevallos (1989).

17 18

See Foucault (1991). See Foucault (1991), Gordon (1991), Rose (1996), Burchell (1996), Escobar (1994), and Ferguson (1994, 1999).

19

See Almeida (1992), Brysk (1994, 2000), Korovkin (1997), Macas (1991), Meisch (1992, 1994, 1997, 2002), Rubenstein (2001), Sawyer (1997a, 1997b), SelverstonScher (1993, 1994, 2001), Whitten (1996, 1997), and Zamocs (1990, 1994). For insightful scholarship on the simultaneity of material and symbolic struggles

20

with particular reference to oil, see Coronil (1997), Karl (1997), and Watts (1997, 2001). In other contexts see Berry (1993), Moore (1996a, 1996b, 1998), Peluso and Watts (2001), and Schroeder (1999).

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

21 22 23

See Hall (1980, 1990, 1991, 1996), Nelson (1999), and Watts (1992). Garcilaso de la Vega (1996 [1503–1536]); Guamán Poma de Ayala (1987 [1613]). Klein, Ernest (1966). A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, ‘‘crudus,’’ p. 377. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company. In Spanish, crudo means a raw, coarse, cruel, and grievous condition, happening, per-

226 notes to opening

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son, or sentiment, as well as petroleum. Following the Oxford Latin Dictionary, crudus can mean ‘‘rude, coarse, or unrefined’’ when referring to matter or manner, ‘‘raw and bleeding’’ when referring to wounds, ‘‘fierce and wild’’ when referring to persons, and ‘‘bitter and grievous’’ when referring to experience (Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1968, ‘‘crudus,’’ p. 462). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Etymologically crudus is related to the Latin cruor, ‘‘blood (flowing from a wound).’’ The 24

now obsolete English and the still used Spanish cruor means ‘‘blood’’ or ‘‘gore.’’ Before I started graduate school, my travels to Ecuador in 1988 inspired in me an interest in indigenous politics, specifically the way in which indigenous identity was being recrafted as a mobilizing force to reconfigure the social order. I had not been in Ecuador since 1984, when as a backpacker tourist I traveled in the country with my sister and a friend. The time before that was as a child in 1969 on a family vacation, when we lived in northern Peru. Though I was unaware in 1969, indigenous peoples had already begun organizing; the Shuar Federation in the province just south of Pastaza was established in 1963 (Harner 1972; Rubenstein 2001, 2002; Salazar 1977, 1981, 1985; fsc 1976). By 1984, Puyo was still a wild-west-like Amazonian frontier town and opip was five years old. By 1988, Ecuador’s indigenous organizations were, as they continue to be, impressively energized with an urgency and weight scarcely seen in Latin America; Bolivia, Mexico, and Colombia present interesting parallel studies. For further research on the indigenous movement in Mexico and Central America, see Benjamin (1994), Collier (1994), csq (1994), Warren (1998), Nash (2001), Seider (2002), Stephen (2002), and Warren and Jackson (2002). While a handful of Ecuadorian scholars had engaged with this growing social movement over the years, northern scholars had hardly scratched the surface. For Ecuadorian scholarship at the time on the indigenous movement see Bustamante (1995), Cornejo (1992), Ruiz (1992), Trujillo (1992), and Uquillas (1992). For North American scholarship at the time see Selverston (1993) and Zamoc (1990, 1994). By the time I finished my dissertation, a burgeoning cohort of younger scholars had emerged. Those scholars have now published works on indigenous politics in Ecuador: Brysk (1994, 2000), Meisch (1992, 1995, 2002), Pallares (2002), Rubenstein (2002), and Selverston (1993, 1994, 2001).

25

Oil was not new to me. My connection to petroleum extended beyond merely being an overconsuming yanqui. Via kinship I was long imbricated, and hence complicit, in multinational oil extraction since the early decades of this century. My paternal family had roamed the globe in search of oil over the previous eighty years. My grandfather, father, and uncle had worked in Latin America (although not Ecuador) for Standard Oil of New Jersey-qua-Esso-qua-Exxonqua-ExxonMobil as an engineer, geologist, and geophysicist, respectively. My

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

grandfather, Guy H. Sawyer, began his oil career in Bolivia as a civil engineer for Standard Oil in 1921. Subsequently, he worked for Standard Oil in Argentina and then Venezuela until his death in 1948. My uncle, Herbert Sawyer, worked in Venezuela and Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. As I was growing up, my father, J. Allan Sawyer, worked as a petroleum geologist in Libya (my birthplace) and

notes to opening 227

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then Peru and Panama. And though we moved to the United States just before my thirteenth birthday, he continued to do exploratory work in Venezuela and Surinam. After I graduated from high school, while I worked as a ballet dancer in Europe and then later while I was in college, I visited my parents over a sevenyear period in Colombia, Argentina (my father’s birthplace), and Egypt. This family history, with the wealth of knowledge it conveyed about the industry, together with my close relationship with opip, turned me into something of a curiosity for many corporate, state, and elite representatives. Since I had grown up around oil—a fact I openly disclosed—and I knew a significant amount about oil operations, many in the oil industry assumed that I shared a common orientation and understanding with them and that, despite my work with opip, I would be sympathetic to their concerns. This was especially true of EuroAmerican oilmen, in great part, I believe, because they could speak English with me. At different moments, both EuroAmerican and Ecuadorian representatives of arco saw me as a conduit through which to obtain information about, and transmit information to, opip and indigenous leaders. Similarly, because I was a doctoral student from a prestigious U.S. university, many government officials and upper-class landowners assumed a degree of shared perspective, a common ideological affinity. Obviously opip’s struggle was not my struggle: what was a gringa from Stanford doing working with a radical Indian group? Both of these puzzles triggered all sorts of outbursts, from racist and patronizing remarks, to romantic musings, befuddled questions, and supportive praise about Indians. It was my close ties with opip that allowed me, then, to develop relations with corporate executives, U.S. and Ecuadorian oilmen, state officials, government workers, and members of the landed class, as well as with indigenous leaders, Indian community members, and mestizo peasants.

1. amazonian imaginaries 1

2

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

3

Although I was not able to accompany the Indians on their march, I did meet up with them as they arrived in Quito. My descriptions arise from having spoken to dozens of people about the event, watched over thirty hours of opip videotape, and read numerous newspaper articles on the march. I call this region the ‘‘jungle’’ here, though, of course, how it is understood has changed dramatically over time. For excellent scholarship on the tropics and their changing symbolic content within the Western imagination see Arnold (1996), Raffles (1999, 2002), and Slater (1994, 1996, 2001, 2003). For Friar Gaspar de Carvajal’s [1541–1542] eyewitness account, other official letters to the Spanish crown of the time, and a wonderful scholarly analysis of this first European transcontinental voyage see Medina (1934). Together, these works leave little doubt that the nearly two-year ‘‘discovery’’ of the Amazon was a harrowing expedition of brutality, treachery, and fear.

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4

Quito, Marzo 1541 Origen de nuestro destino La Epopeya de Fco. de Orellana Atlántico, Agosto 1542 El Sacrificio de tres mil aborigenes glorifica la presencia del Ecuador en el rio de las Amazonas. La ruta está marcada por su sangre en nuestro espíritu. (Palacio de

5

Gobierno, Quito, Ecuador) Shortly after the voyage’s end, many Spanish chroniclers accused Francisco Orellana of treason to the Spanish crown. See Medina (1934, 58–96).

6 7

See Stuart Hall (1990, 1986) and Gayatri Spivak (1988). This is elites’ ‘‘mosaicked’’ (as in derived from Moses) history of national creation. See quote from OED, 1622 Stillingfl. Orig. Sacr. II. iii. 6 The Mosaick history of the Creation.’’ Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, p. 1108. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

8

See Johannes Fabian (1983) and Anne McClintock (1995).

9

Guayasamin wrote, ‘‘Mi pintura es para herir, para arañar y golpear el corazón de la gente. Para mostrar lo que el Hombre hace contra el Hombre. . . . [H]e pintado como si gritara desesperadamente, y mi grito se ha sumando a todos los gritos que expresan humillación y la angustia del tiempo que nos ha tocado vivir’’ (www.pntic.mec.es/telemaco/98/enero/guayasa2.htm).

10

11 12 13 14

Hvalkof (2000), Naranjo (1987), Oberem (1974, 1980); Oberem and Moreno Y. (1995), Phelan (1967), Reeves (1988a, 1988b), Taylor and Landázuri (1994), and Whitten (1976). See also Diario Hoy, April 26, 1992. See FCS (1976) and Salazar (1977, 1981). See Bebbington (1992, 1993) and Selverston-Scher (2001). Though recognized by the state, conaie is not a government institution. Its actions have been largely in opposition to state agendas and it has only won recognition by the popular force of its mobilizations. Though conaie represents the majority of Indians in Ecuador, it does not represent all; over the past decade a handful of anti-conaie organizations have arisen often with the direct support of the state.

15 16

Relations with the Huaorani are often tenuous, however. opip is organized into three levels: the community, the association, and the federation, each with a democratically elected leadership. An association is a collection of ten or more communities whose leadership together with opip leaders has sought to control colonist incursions, petroleum development, lumber extraction, and prior to the march, land titles. The leadership of federation headquarters in Puyo is elected every three years. opip’s estimated num-

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

17

ber of constituents is most probably exaggerated. The number of opip member communities has progressively declined since 1992 as the Achuar, Shiwiar, and Zapara established their own federations over the subsequent decade. Many scholars have documented rebellions and protests by lowland Amazonian

notes to chapter one

229

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peoples since Inca and Spanish times. For insightful histories and analyses see Harner (1972), Karsten (1937), Muratorio (1991), Phelan (1967), Oberem (1974, 1980), and Taylor (1988, 1994). 18

See Hicks (1990), Macdonald (1981), Uquillas, (1984, 1989), Vickers, (1984), and

19

Zevallos (1989). See ierac (1994).

20 21

Ibid. See Acción Ecológica (1993a, 1993b), cesr (1994), and Kimerling (1991, 1993, 1996).

22 23

See opip (1989). See Borja Regime (1990).

24

See Cornejo (1992), Field (1991), Macas (1991), Rosero (1990), Selverston-Scher

25

(1993, 1994, 2001), and Zamosc (1994). See opip (1990, 9).

26

See opip (1990, 10).

27 28 29

In Ortiz (1992, 177). In Ortiz (1992, 139); see also Ruiz (1992); Punto de Vista, August 6 and 27, 1990. See Diario Hoy and El Comercio, August 24 and 25, 1990.

30

Originally the Tahuantinsuyu flag was said to be made of colored mosaic squares. conaie and confeniae have each kept a mosaic version that they use on some occasions. But since the flags became mass produced, stripes were easier to weave. The now ubiquitous version of conaie’s flag is one in which the mosaic

31 32 33 34

pieces had been transformed into a dazzling rainbow. See Hennayake (1992) and Karakras (1984). See conaie (1994) and Varese (1988). See reprinted in Punto de Vista #429, 12–13; Almeida (1992); Ruiz (1992).

35

El Comercio, April 19, 1992; Diario Hoy, April 15, 1992; Ultimas Noticias, April 21, 1992. opip soon embarked on a tactic to challenge exclusive state occupation of the

36

region by establishing new communities throughout the zone. However small, these communities have been effective in asserting an indigenous presence. See cesr (1994) and Kimerling (1991, 1993, 1996).

37

38

This has been a worldwide trend; see Agrawal (2001), Agrawal and Sivaramakrishnan (2000), Brosius (1999), Darier (1996), Gregory (2001), Peluso (1992), and Vandergeist and Peluso (1995). Leonardo and I debated at length the use of this rhetoric and the claims of ‘‘patri-

39

mony’’ in particular. For my critique of one dominant discourse of conservation biology, see Sawyer and Agrawal (2000). At other times, indigenous hyperbole mimicked popular Western apocalyptic

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

beliefs associated with the destruction of the Amazon. More than once I heard Marco, along with other opip leaders, argue that if Indians did not protect this ‘‘biodiversity, the rich patrimony of our country, we [meaning, the world] are headed toward an abyss. After a time our oxygen will end.’’ See also Expreso, April 24, 1992.

230

notes to chapter one

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40

See Conklin and Graham (1995), Graham (1994), Hecht and Cockburn (1990), Jackson (1991, 1995), Keck (1995), Keck and Sikkink (1998), Little (2001), Schmink and Wood (1992), Turner (1991, 1993, 1995), and Warren and Jackson (2002).

41

Engaging in a green rhetoric, however, precipitated unintended consequences. opip’s 1992 proposal of territorial delineation stated that communities needed to develop resource management plans so that their titled lands would ‘‘protect the ecological environment and biodiversity of the region’’ (opip 1992). So successful were Indian arguments intertwining indigenous livelihood with environmental protection that the May 1992 adjudication codified this linkage into law. Now indigenous peoples’ rights to newly titled land were legally contingent upon sustainable resource management and ecological conservation. The title deeds stated that ‘‘to retain ownership’’ and ‘‘to protect the Ecuadorian Amazon . . . indigenous communities’’ had to elaborate ‘‘plans for the management of renewable natural resources in the zone’’ (title deeds granted by ierac 1992). This conditioning placed indigenous lands in a compromised position. As chap-

42

ter 2 details, with time different Indians would come to hold opposing views about what Pastaza’s social and ecological landscape should look like. See Harley and Woodward (1987, 506) in Harley (1988, 281); Irvine and Gal

43

(2000). See Taylor (1992).

44

See Harley (1988, 1989, 1990).

2. crude excesses 1

dicip stands for Directiva Intercomunitaria de las Comunidades Independientes de Pastaza. It was formed in July 1993. At a generous estimate, dicip represented 100 adult individuals in December 1993. dicip subsequently changed names a number of times: in late spring 1994 to asodira (Associación de Desarrollo Indígena Región Amazónica); in June 1994 to acipae (Asociación de Comunidades Independientes de Pastaza de la Amazonía Ecuadoriana); in early 1996 to fippra (Federación Independiente de la Provincia de Pastaza, Región Amazónica); and sometime in 1998 back to asodira.

2 3

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4

Mitchell (1991, 44). See also Maurer (1997). In particular, opip leaders questioned a contract that was in the process of being signed at the time between the Huaorani (a small, highly marginalized indigenous group with what most would consider a tragic history), Maxus (a relatively small but powerful Texas-based oil company), and the Ecuadorian state. dicip’s president was not a public figure (i.e. he was not known to the Ecuadorian public and did not appear in newspapers or on radio); therefore I have chosen not to use his real name. Because he professed to be a strong Protestant Christian, I call him Cristian Cruz. dicip leaders and community members were visibly agitated, even riled on December 15, 1993. Unknown to opip, the president of the Republic, Sixto Durán Ballén, had been scheduled to arrive in Villano with arco heads that same day.

notes to chapter two

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In the area on other official business, President Durán Ballén purportedly canceled his trip because of opip’s ‘‘hostile’’ presence. Through later conversations I became aware that dicip leaders concluded that opip directly sought to sabotage the presidential visit. While opip leaders might at some point have learned of Durán Ballén’s plans to travel to the Oriente, the Villano Assembly was not a scheme concocted to foil dicip/arco plans. It was merely coincidence, not conspiracy, that the two events were scheduled simultaneously. I know this because I was the one who suggested that opip’s assembly begin on December 15. I merely threw the date up for discussion as a possibility in the meeting in which opip leaders and indigenous advisors agreed to take action. This meeting occurred one month to the day before the Villano Assembly, time enough to prepare but not too close to December holidays, when much in Ecuador closes down, in5

cluding public attention. Santa Cecilia had been one of the sites of an older, long inhabited indigenous settlement, called Huitu, which Spanish missionaries wrote about in the seven-

6

teenth and eighteenth centuries. See Figueroa (1986 [1661]), Joaanen (1941–43), Maroni (1988 [1737]), and Requena (1994 [1785]). As World War II came to a close and more readily accessible oil could be produced in the Middle East, Shell capped its well and abandoned its operations in 1950. Thirty years would pass before another multinational oil giant would

7 8 9

probe for petroleum in the area. ierac delineated the land for the Villano military installation in 1979 (ierac Archives). It titled colono holdings in 1982 (ierac Archives). This estimate was given to me by dicip members. Most probably it includes adults, children, infants, and perhaps even those soon to be born. In June 1988, arco Oriente Inc.—the majority holder in a consortium that included agip (Overseas) Ltd., and Denison Mines Limited—signed a risk-service contract with cepe after nearly nine months of negotiations. arco Oriente Inc. was a subsidiary of arco International Company of Plano, Texas, a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Company, of Los Angeles, California, the sixth largest oil company in the United States and the leading gasoline retailer on the West Coast at the time. arco was one of three companies awarded concessions in Pastaza in Ecuador’s fifth round of petroleum licensing. The fifth round was the conservative Febres Cordero regime’s last attempt to encourage further foreign investment in oil exploration in the Oriente. arco proposed to spend a minimum of $16 million on exploration, acquiring data from over one thousand kilometers

10

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11

of new seismic lines and drilling at least one exploratory well. The two other oil companies (Unocal and British Gas) pulled out of Ecuador within a few years. See also opip letter: ‘‘arco quiere destruir la unidad comunitaria en Pastaza, May 7, 1993.’’ Sarayacu was about an hour’s ride on a propeller plane from the military airbase at Shell, seven kilometers east of Puyo. If one were traveling from Puyo to Sarayacu by foot and canoe, it would take three days. Reversing the journey took longer as it entailed poling upriver.

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12

Plantamientos opip, May 4, 1989.

13 14

Borja Regime (1990). This decree was registered a year after the fact. By that time, cepe had changed its name to Petroecuador. Registro Oficial, No. 510, 29 de Agosto de 1990. Acuerdo

15

No. 438 ‘‘El Ministerio de Energía y Minas.’’ Clearing for the Moretecocha rig site began in April 1990. By August 1990, arco began constructing a drilling platform, and Moretecocha residents and nonlocal arco workers established a presence at the site of operations. By the end of 1990, arco was helicoptering in its drilling rig from the company base camp on Via Chontoa (the road leading to Canelos). The actual drilling of the well started in January 1991, and the well was capped in July 1991 (arco letter to ran, n.d. 1991; cedr 1992, 21).

16

In late spring 1991, arco successfully completed its oil well, discovering the lightest petroleum in the Oriente, despite—according to one high-level ministry official—potentially explosive drilling problems. A major rupture in the well and geological fault line forced the company to pump thousands of pounds of cement up the fault to seal the well. Before the reserve size was determined, the discovery hit the news. In 1991, arco’s Moretecocha-1 well ‘‘flowed 500 b/d of 36.8 degrees gravity oil on Block 10 . . . the highest [thus lightest] gravity crude found in the basin’’ (ogj 5/25/91:107). Quichua from Sarayacu embarked on a handful of scouting expeditions to survey the Moretecocha well site. Eyewitness reports claimed that soldiers surrounded the area. Rumors varied as to the number (from nine to fifty, with plans to build barracks for 150 soldiers), and the degree to which they were armed (rifles to machine guns) and whether or not an electric fence enclosed the drilling zone.

17 18

19 20 21

ierac archives 1990. According to ierac archives, the actual legal titling took place in February 1991. An environmental assessment report for arco suggests that adjudication had occurred slightly later (Knapp 1992). Significantly, Pandanuque abutted the parcel previously granted to Moretecocha the year before. Convenio de Ayuda Entre la Compañía Arco Oriente Inc. y las Comunidades de Pandanuque y Santa Cecilia, 1991. Diario Hoy, April 22 and 23, 1992. arco’s Villano-2 successfully flowed 2,500 b/d of 21-degree gravity crude from an estimated 164-million-barrel reserve (ogj 7/6/1992:68). A prominent Ecuadorian geologist confided, however, that arco’s find was potentially the largest discovery in Ecuador this decade, making it perhaps four times official assessments. Unofficial reports from the Ministry of

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

22

Energy and Mines maintained that the discovered field reached 700 million barrels. While reserve size was in dispute, Villano’s crude, together with that from Moretecocha, flowed significantly lighter (and, hence, was more valuable) than that previously encountered in the Oriente during the 1990s. Intercommunitarian Directive, May 2, 1993.

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23

These estimates are rather vague and, again, most probably include adults, chil-

24

dren, infants, and perhaps even those soon to be born. To distinguish 1992 land adjudication ‘‘blocks’’ from oil concession ‘‘blocks,’’ I will refer to the former as ‘‘Land Blocks’’ and to the latter as simply ‘‘Blocks.’’

25 26

opip, August 2, 1993. Ibid.

27 28

See opip Document, August 25, 1993. arco, August 4, 1993.

29

Ibid.

30

Ibid. At this point, opip had already requested the meeting with arco I discuss in the opening of this book.

31

arco, October 25, 1993.

32 33

arco, October 26, 1993. arco, October 25, 1993.

34

ierac named this land segment ‘‘Block 12, Comunidad Liquino.’’ Significantly, however, Pastaza Indians called this zone ‘‘Land Block 12.’’ Comunidad Liquino had no social referent and made no social sense. While by the end of the 1990s there was a community in the area named Liquino, at the time of adjudication

35

in 1992 there was not. As opip leaders joked a couple of times: ‘‘The only good thing about Chuyayacu

36

is that you get to have two wives!’’ See also Guzmán Gallegos (1997), Macdonald (1984), Reeves (1988a, 1988b),

37

38

Whitten (1976, 1985). See Irvine (1989) for insightful research on resource management among lowland Quichua in Ecuador. For excellent research on indigenous resource management in the Amazon region see Balee (1989, 1992, 1995), Denevan and Padoch (1988), Descola (1994, 1996), Posey (1982, 1985, 1994), and Posey and Balee (1989). Usually planes flew tin sheets into a community, but since Chuyayacu had no airstrip, the metal sheets were helicoptered in. Having walked the trail between Chuyayacu and Villano (the nearest landing strip), I knew that it was impossible to carry ten-feet-plus of tin sheeting through rugged forest trails and across rivers. Most would conclude that arco did the incipient community a significant

39

favor by helicoptering roofing material to Chuyayacu. On the morning of December 14, two opip leaders were to arrive in Villano by plane to start preparing for the Assembly. They carried with them food and medical supplies for the meeting. According to those in the plane, as the plane was about to land, the pilot pulled up the nose at the last minute and returned to Shell. Had opip’s pilot not seen that logs blocked the grass strip, the plane would have crashed. The military in Shell demanded that the airstrip be cleared;

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

40

234

the plane flew back to Villano and landed safely. This event heightened already existing tension from the summer before, when sixteen people in Santa Cecilia had received death threats from dicip leaders (see opip, July 13, 1993). This was not the first time that a liberal-economic work ethic raised its head in Villano around oil. Between 1921 and 1937, Standard Oil of New Jersey via a sub-

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7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 249 of 310

sidiary intermittently explored for oil in Pastaza, using indigenous labor (Owen 1975; Sawyer 1975; Sinclair 1929; Wasson and Sinclair 1927). Between 1937 and 1950, Royal Dutch Shell explored for oil directly in the Villano region using indigenous labor (Blomberg 1956; Tschopp 1953). In both periods, each company 41

found labor to be undisciplined, unreliable, and quixotic. arco Stockholders and Proxy Statement (1996, 4,7); arco Annual Report

42

(1995); UNDP Human Development Report (1995). The words are from opip’s letter seeking solidarity from the international indigenous rights and environmental community (Carta Fall 1993).

43

Representatives of the more radical communities pledged their determination ‘‘to take possession of [arco’s] well and paralyze activity’’ until both la compañía and the government conceded to their demands. Representatives from more cautious communities noted their disagreement with multinational maneuvering and sought to use the Villano Assembly as a forum to analyze the situation. Significantly, a handful of Villano residents who disagreed with dicip also participated in opip’s Assembly, including a leader who previously had signed one of the May 1993 letters claiming disaffiliation from opip. Firsthand accounts of how ‘‘arco and dicip leaders manipulated local people’’ facilitated cohesion

44

among Assembly participants. opip leaders planned their ‘‘march on Villano’’ to coincide with conaie’s congress. The leaders felt that by holding the two events simultaneously they could shift both national and international attention from the Sierra-dominated

45

46 47

Indian movement toward the Amazon and petroleum in particular. Having garnered significant international support from European and North American state and nonstate agencies, coica both instantiated and transformed a discursive space called ‘‘Amazonia,’’ which carried a new import within the global power play of resources. I thank Dominique Irvine for reminding me of this. Among the Amazon Coalition’s priority actions at the time was an attempt to pressure the White House into monitoring (and for the idealist ultimately circumscribe) the activities of U.S. multinationals across the globe. U.S. corporations were invariably exonerated for their mishaps abroad. The Clinton administration, however, had established an Office of Environmental Policy headed by a deputy assistant to the president himself. Under the influence of overinflated expectations, U.S. environmental organizations speculated that with sufficient pressure this presidential unit might provide unexpected openings. In October and November 1993, I helped an opip leader draft and send a letter to Bill Clinton’s deputy assistant. The letter asked that the Environmental Policy Office ‘‘pressure arco . . . to reinitiate serious, just, and direct dialog . . . with opip

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

48

so that jointly they could negotiate the future plans of petroleum exploitation’’ (opip, November 17, 1993). The deputy assistant’s office never replied. See Kimerling (2000), Sawyer (2001, 2002), and Switkes (1995) for an in-depth analysis of this transnational lawsuit.

notes to chapter two

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3. neoliberal ironies 1

To get access to the building, members of Acción Ecológica had previously arranged for a meeting that morning with Francisco Acosta, the then Minister. By 11:00 a.m., the hour of the designated appointment, however, roughly twenty lowland Indians had surreptitiously filtered their way up to the seventh floor. In tandem with three Acción Ecológica environmentalists, protesters blocked all doors to the minister’s office and refused passage through the anteroom until

2

the minister agreed to discuss their demands. Since the beginning of my collaboration with opip in June 1993, Indian leaders spoke of the need to launch opposition to future oil concessions in Pastaza by building coalitions on multiple fronts. Among the multiple strategies discussed was the idea of staging a protest in Quito to pressure the government and multinationals to think twice about intensifying oil operations in the Oriente. Despite the fact that during this second mobilization to Quito, indígenas were fewer in number and had traveled by bus rather than by foot this time, the occupation proved to be key in building broader alliances and popular support.

3 4

conaie Manifesto, January 24, 1994. One undercover cop pulled me aside and demanded to see my passport and visa. It was clear that I was not simply a curious tourist. Many in Ecuador believed that radical and revolutionary foreigners were fomenting indigenous unrest. Along with other foreign supporters, I was potentially one.

5

In 1988, oil accounted for approximately 70 percent of foreign revenues (Uquillas 1989; Zevallos 1989). In 1990, 46 percent of the foreign revenue came from oil exports (OJG 4/23/1992:23). In 1993 ‘‘exports of crude accounted for more than 50% of the state budget’’ (Energía, November/December 1993, 30). In 1994, oil production contributed 50 percent of the national budget (cesr 1994; Jochnick 2000).

6 7

8 9

10 11

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

12

236

National Directorate of Hydrocarbons, in International Petroleum Encyclopedia (1994, 117). It was believed that if new reserves were not found, Ecuador would become a net importer—rather than an exporter—of crude oil by early in the twenty-first century, given its growing rate of internal consumption. Energía, January/February 1994, 26. Economist Intelligence Unit, Diario Hoy, February 14, 1994. Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and Nicaragua were the other countries in this category. Diario Hoy, February 14, 1994; Diario Hoy, April 2, 1994. A crude gravity of 10–18 degrees api poses problems for both lifting and transporting crude (ogj 7/6/1992:66). The thickness and viscosity prevent crude from rising unassisted from below the earth and impede its ability to be pumped along the pipeline. To make it flow, heavy crude is diluted with lighter crude, a costly process. ogj 7/6/1992:66. As exploration results fell below expectations and frequent gov-

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7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 251 of 310

ernment delays impeded exploration plans, Unocal and British Gas abandoned their waning operations in Pastaza Province in mid-1991. Both British Gas and Unocal’s blocks were situated in Achuar and Shiwiar territory in the eastern part of Pastaza Province near the Peruvian border. Because of the concerted efforts of confeniae and then Achuar confederation president Luís Vargas, British Gas abandoned its operations in Ecuador in large part as a result of indigenous resistance. For a sympathetic rendition of this process see Llamas en la Selva (video). 13

ogj 3/1/1993:56.

14 15

ogj 3/1/1993:61. Ecuador ostensibly left opec because of the cartel’s high membership fees—an estimated ‘‘$2 to $3 million/year’’ (ogj 8/28/1992:34)—and its negligible benefit. It was widely understood, however, that the principal reason why Durán Ballén withdrew Ecuador from the cartel was to increase the country’s production beyond the opec-defined quota.

16 17

ogj 3/25/1991:25. This was raised following the Gulf War in 1991. ogj 2/15/1993:42–43. The 1994 output was expected to increase further to about 405,000 barrels a day (ipe 1994, 117).

18 19

Energía, November/December 1993, 21. Energía, November/December 1993, 33.

20 21

ogj 2/7/1994:38. Energía, November/December 1993, 21. As in earlier bidding rounds, companies interested in submitting bids for the Séptima Ronda were first required to buy a package of technical, economic, and legal information from Petroecuador for $100,000. Upon review of the government-established exploration parameters for each block, companies submitted a proposal stating the amount they were willing to invest, their exploration plan (number of seismic kilometers and exploratory wells), and what they proposed as the state’s share of production. Contracts were awarded to those companies that committed to investing the most, proposed the most elaborate exploration plans, and offered the state the best production-sharing arrangement. The state obtained additional revenues from taxes levied on the company’s share of production.

22

The manner in which the legislation was passed is intriguing. President Durán Ballén introduced the law to the National Congress on two separate occasions under the aegis of ‘‘urgent economic character.’’ Urgent economic character was a constitutionally defined executive prerogative that allowed the president to force the National Congress to approve or reject changes to hydrocarbon legislation within fifteen days of submission. The first time it was introduced, the law sought to drastically restructure Petroecuador and privatize its production,

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

transportation, and refining activities, recently acquired from Texaco between 1989 and 1992. This was roundly rebuked by the National Congress. The second time around, the legislative reform package focused largely on exploration and transportation, leaving future congressional debates to battle over how to

notes to chapter three

237

7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 252 of 310

privatize Petroecuador. As with events surrounding the June 1994 changes to the Agrarian Law, congressional debate focused as much on what many deemed Durán Ballén’s ‘‘abuse’’ of presidential powers as on the actual content of the legislative changes. It was the resubmitted, modified law that the National Con23

gress passed on November 24, 1993. Energía, November/December 1993, 25.

24 25

Ibid. Moratoria conaie/ae, January 24, 1994.

26

cesr (1994), Trujillo (1987), Uquillas (1985, 1989, 1992), Vickers (1984), Zeva-

27

llos (1989). Sawyer (2001).

28

Kimerling (1991, 1993, 1996).

29 30

Rosania (1994, personal communication). Rosania (1994, personal communication), Kimerling (1991).

31

cesr (1994), Kimerling (1991, 1996).

32 33 34

Kimerling (1991, 1993, 1996). Eckardt (1983), Green and Trett (1989), iarc (1989), Reis (1992). Real López (1993, 54).

35 36

Acción Ecológica (1993a, 1993b). cesr (1994).

37 38

Sebastián and Córdoba (1999). Case presented to the United States District Court for the Southern District of

39

New York: Aguinda v. Texaco Inc., 93 CIV 7527 (VLB). Attorney Cristóbal Bonifaz (based in Amherst, Massachusetts) and co-counsel Kohn, Nast, & Graf (based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) presented the case. conaie, March 28, 1994.

40 41 42

Garzón (1995), Kimerling (1991), Switkes (1995). Stoler (1995, 84); cf. TM52. Ultimas Noticias, January 25, 1994.

43

After the five-hour standoff, the minister met with sit-in demonstrators. Protesters presented five demands: (1) a fifteen-year moratorium on further oil exploration in the Oriente; (2) international mediation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (oas) to facilitate the investigation of alleged human rights violations connected to oil development; (3) participation of indigenous and ecological organizations in the investigation, negotiation, and sanctioning of Texaco for the deleterious effects of their twenty-plus year operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon; (4) creation of a permanent, participatory system of technical monitoring for all petroleum activity in which a technical monitoring team composed of indigenous

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

44

238

and ecological groups would participate; and (5) insistence that arco stop dividing indigenous organizations in Pastaza and that they engage in negotiations directly with opip. As Dominique Irvine reminded me, casa is a metaphor that Indian organizations have used for many years.

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7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 253 of 310

45

See Stoler (1995, 27).

46 47

ogj, February 7, 1994:40. The Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Tour was organized by Chris Peters of the Pomo Nation and director of the Seventh Generation Fund—a Native American foundation concerned with education and intercultural interchange between North and South Native Americans. Both Héctor and Leonardo first met Chris Peters during the 1990 Continental Congress of Indigenous Peoples held outside Quito. In addition to touring a number of reservations, the lowland leaders, through the extensive use of their transnational networks, met with World Bank officials in Washington, D.C., and arco officials in Plano, Texas. On February 22, 1994, Héctor Villamil and Leonardo Viteri met with Nancy Katz, U.S. Executive Directors’ Office, World Bank, and Mark Rentschler, U.S. Treasury Office of Multilateral Development Banks, and five ngo representatives. On February 23, 1994, opip leaders met with the World Bank’s Paul Meo, Regional Trade, Finance, and Private Sector Development Division; Danielle Berthelot, Loans Task Manager; Marcel Cartagena, Alternative Executive Director for Ecuador; Fernando Manibog, Senior Environmental Specialist in Country Dept. IV; and five ngo representatives. I did not attend the meeting between these opip leaders and World Bank officials. But Héctor and Leonardo filled me in on the details after. I thank Kay Treakle for providing the Bank Information Center’s minutes to these meetings

48

through the assistance of Glen Switkes. This was opip’s first contact with the Bank Information Center. This relationship had been initiated through opip’s long-standing connections with oxfam and Acción Ecológica. Accompanying opip leaders to the World Bank were rep-

49

resentatives of the Bank Information Center, oxfam, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Diario Hoy, June 7, 1994; Diario Hoy, February 5, 1994.

50 51 52

See especially Diario Hoy, February 1, 1994. Cited in Treakle (1998, 7). Discussions with Héctor and Leonardo supplemented by minutes from the Bank

53 54

Information Center meeting on February 23, 1994. Treakle (1998, 227). As described in a letter addressed to Acción Ecológica, the Bank’s Regional Trade, Finance, and Private Sector Development Division chief, Paul Meo, said the Bank’s assistance ‘‘would be quite far from actual privatization. . . . The objective of the Bank’s assistance is essentially aimed at ending the public monopoly in the hydrocarbon sector and deregulating hydrocarbon prices’’ (World Bank to

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

Acción Ecológica, November 22, 1993; also see Treakle (1998). As indication that the Bank had a larger agenda, Mr. Meo noted while in a meeting between World Bank Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development Ismail Seregaldin and the Bank Information Center and other ngos: ‘‘Ecuador is the highest [per capita] indebted economy in Latin America.

notes to chapter three

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The imf is currently in Ecuador trying to determine what to do about the debt and interest payments. The World Bank and the IADB are interested in helping. ‘‘In the past, it was illegal for the government [of Ecuador] to increase petroleum prices, and because of this domestic prices were inappropriate. The new hydrocarbon law has changed this provision, and now that it is legal to raise prices the government has done so. The Bank, which has been pushing for pricing changes that would bring Ecuador’s prices in line with international prices, is very pleased with this result’’ (wb official, bic minutes, wb-ngo meeting, February 17, 1994). 55

In early March, Rafael Pandam (Vice President, conaie) and Nina Pacari (Director of Territorios and Natural Resources Department, conaie) met with World Bank officials. In early April, Luís Macas (President, conaie) and Cecilia

56

Cherrez (President, Acción Ecológica) met with World Bank officials. World Bank Operational Directive 4.01, Environmental Assessment, in Treakle (1998).

57 58 59

60

This was not the first time the World Bank sought to sidestep its own policy. See Goldman (1997, 1998) and Treakle (1998). bic minutes, wb meetings, February 17, 22, 23, 1994. In September 1994, Ecuador was producing 390,000 barrels/day. 356,000 barrels/day were transported through sote; 34,000 barrels/day were transported via Colombia’s pipeline. Diario Hoy, July 13, 1994; Hoy Blanco y Negro, September 18, 1994. See especially economist Alberto Acosta’s editorial titled ‘‘Una cuestión política’’ (Diario Hoy, July 13, 1994). Below is a rather succinct analysis of the argument against the pipeline expansion. ‘‘El oleoducto transecuatoriano (sote) cuesta 2.000 millones de dólares [i.e. the construction of a line parallel to existing sote; this cost did not include southern extensions]. La compañía que hará la ampliación será su operadora durante 15 años. Cuál es el beneficio que ella recibirá? La tarifa actual del oleoducto es de 1.02 dólares, con una utilidad actual de 0.75 centavos de dólar por barril. Y el ministro Francisco Acosta ha dicho que esa tarifa subirá cuando el sote esté en manos de una compañía petrolera. Él ha hablado de pagar 2 dólares por barril transportado. Esto quiere decir que por 450 mil b/d la compañía operadora va a facturar 900 mil dólares diarios. Por los 15 años de operación del oleoducto los ingresos de esa compañía serán de 4.927 millones de dólares, más o menos. En la práctica, esa suma deberá pagar el Ecuador por evacuar su proprio petróleo. El beneficio de la operadora significará que se encarecerá el transporte del petróleo de Petroecuador. Pero se facilitará el desalojo del crudo qeu extraen las

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

transnacionales, en el cual el país tiene una reducida participación. En el año 2012, cuando oleoducto se revierta al Estado, según las proyecciones del Ministerio de Energía el Ecuador, tendrá 15 millones de habitantes, una producción diaria de 140 mil b/d, y un oleoducto e infraestructura gigantesca e inutilizada’’ (Hoy Blanco y Negro, September 18, 1994).

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7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 255 of 310

61

Round-table forum organized by Acción Ecológica in early spring 1994.

62

The quote is from ministry documentation distributed while promoting the Séptima Ronda under the title Séptima Ronda: Aspectos Generales del País (Ministry of E&M, January 1994, 7). Two former Ministers of Energy during the Febres Cordero presidency (1984–1988) vindicated the construction of a parallel pipeline by claiming that it was essential for future foreign investment; without it, the Séptima Ronda would founder. As Fernando Santos noted, the news of an expanded pipeline is precisely ‘‘what animated offers’’ (Hoy Blanco y Negro, September 18, 1994). In slightly melodramatic rhetoric, Minister Acosta asserted: ‘‘My decision, I assume before my country, before all Ecuadorians, and in the face of history with full responsibility. . . . I would rather be fired tomorrow as a result of the pipeline expansion than let the [project] implode’’ (Hoy Blanco y Negro, September 18, 1994). Soon thereafter, Minister Acosta did indeed lose his job. In November 1995, he fled Ecuador on charges of embezzlement; he now lives comfortably in Orlando, Florida.

63 64 65

bic minutes, February 17, 1994. Ibid. For detailed reporting of the demonstrations see reports in El Comercio and

66

Diario Hoy during the first two weeks of February 1994. Diario Hoy, February 1, 1994. In 1982 a massive protest forced then-President Hurtado to reevaluate a 100 percent gasoline price hike; union organizer Edgar Ponce urged ‘‘workers, students, housewives, public employees, and the general

67 68 69

public’’ to repeat that effect in 1994. Diario Hoy, February 1, 1994. Ministerio de Finanzas, in Diario Hoy, December 9, 1993. Hoy Economía, February 14, 1994.

70 71 72

Diario Hoy, February 13, 1994. Diario Hoy, February 12, 9, 14, 1994; Hoy Economía, February 14, 1994. Various legislators argued that only the Congress could impose taxes, and duty

73

could only be imposed on imported products. Present were Luís Felipe Duchicela (Secretary of Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Affairs), Edgar Teran Teran (Ecuadorian Ambassador to the United States), and

74 75 76

Galo Abril (Secretary General of the National Development Council). Treakle (1998). In Treakle (1998). Rouse (1997, 33).

77

conaie Manifesto, January 24, 1995.

4. corporate anti-politics

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

1

Héctor and Leonardo spent the night in opip’s decaying Quito casa. Soon after the 1992 march, opip bought a grand house (that was falling apart) in downtown Quito. It served as a place for leaders to stay when they were in the capital and as a home to opip members who studied at the state university.

notes to chapter four

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2

Ferguson (1994).

3

For further scholarship examining the capacity of discourse on the environment and liberal scientific rationality to neutralize a political terrain see Braun (1997, 2000), Braun and Castree (2001), Darier (1996), Durham (1979), Gregory (2001),

4

Grove (1993), and Gupta (1998). Though my role as translator changed through time, in the January meeting indigenous leaders asked that I translate the arco executive’s words into Spanish. This I did sentence by sentence, making sure that indigenous leaders understood exactly what was said. arco’s lawyer translated opip representatives’ words into English. This he did by paraphrasing when he thought it appropriate, occasionally asking for clarification. Initially, I thought the arco executive did not fully understand what was being said, and more than once I interrupted to ask him as much when certain sentiments were not translated directly. Later I came to realize that in great part he could understand, though at times there were important gaps. In the Oro Verde meeting, all non-Indians could understand English.

5 6

Including myself, this was half of those present in the room. By this time the Achuar were establishing their own nascent federation. As such, the absolute number of opip members was probably lower. The ecological group most prominent in the minister’s mind was Acción Ecológica. Members of Acción Ecológica—all of whom were Ecuadorian citizens, most of whom were mothers, and some of whom were single mothers—were culpable of affronts to Ecuadorian sovereignty. They were the tools of foreign

7

manoseo; they were creating ‘‘problems’’ and ‘‘chaos’’ among Ecuadorians. In 1949 it was reported that ‘‘one Shell Company workman and a Government guard were killed’’ (Hass 1950, 1414; Blomberg 1956, 17–27, 190). These men were both Quichua. Villano residents I came to know recounted histories of this event

8

as well as an attack on a household along the Villano River that and the following year (see also Blomberg 1956, 17–27, 190). A few months after the Oro Verde meeting, Huaorani men speared five Shuar

9

Indians to death on the Via Auca, the road that Texaco built extending to the southern tip of its concession. In 1998, agip merged with Eni to form Europe’s third largest oil conglomerate.

10

Since neither Franco nor I was a professional translator, everyone agreed that this was the best arrangement for precise translation, as dialogue often sparred quickly across the room. It also allowed me a chance to interact more closely with arco/agip representatives. More significant, however, for the progression of the meeting were the graceful moderating skills of Juan Aulestia, of oxfam fame. He had been at the March 4 meeting in Plano, and his presence and sensitivity were invaluable.

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

11

Despite the fact that the March 4 meeting in Plano, Texas, between arco and opip was private, I came to have intimate knowledge of it. Upon their return to Puyo, opip leaders asked if I would transcribe nine hours of tapes from the all-day session. Because I was not present on March 4 and because those present did not know that I would eventually be transcribing their words, I have circum-

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7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 257 of 310

scribed my discussion of the meeting. Here, I consider only those parts of the meeting that are linked with my larger argument on the impact of broad-based alliances and neoliberal policies on petroleum activity in Pastaza. 12

According to Edmundo Vargas’s statistical breakdown, confeniae had 200,000

13

indigenous members; 50,000 lowland Indians were not members of confeniae. The color was hard to miss. So too were the seven-foot rebar spikes shooting into the sky. They looked as though they would soon accommodate more concrete. The building was being expanded, and a second story was being built.

14

Originally, the September meeting was scheduled for June 9–10, 1994. Much to arco/agip’s displeasure, that meeting was canceled because of the nationwide indigenous mobilization that I discuss in chapters 5 and 6. On June 7, I ran into agip and arco representatives at Ecuador’s first ‘‘Petroleum and Environment’’ conference/industrial fair held in the Oro Verde. Having traveled from Italy to participate in the scheduled meeting with the indigenous front, the agip representative was less than pleased that indígenas had out-and-out canceled their

15

June meeting. Little did corporate executives realize that Indian leaders were preparing for the largest paralyzation in Ecuador’s recent history. Entendimiento, May 11, 1994.

5. contested terrain 1

2

In his preamble framing the law to Congress, Durán Ballén stated, ‘‘Con base en lo dispuesto en el inciso cuarto del Art. 66 de la Constitución Política de la República, he calificado al proyecto de URGENTE EN MATERIA ECONOMICA’’ (Presidential Oficio No. 94–3809 -DAJ-T.320, 4 de mayo de 1994). How and why a law is deemed ‘‘urgente’’ by the Executive remains a mystery. Article 66 of the constitution states: ‘‘Si un proyecto de ley en materia económica fuere presentado por el Presidente de la Republica y calificado por él de urgente, el Congreso Nacional o, en su receso, el Plenario de las Comisiones Legislativas, deberá aprobarlo, reformarlo o negarlo, dentro de un plazo de quince días. Si no lo hiciere, el Presidente de la República podrá promulgarlo como DecretoLey en el Registro Oficial y entrará en vigencia hasta que el Congreso Nacional

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

3 4 5 6

lo reforme o derogue.’’ Diario Hoy, May 7, 1994. Diario Hoy, May 11, 1994. conaie, press release, May 16, 1994. conaie/can, n.d. [1994]. Within the National Congress, id, dp, mpd, and pre —Ecuador’s leading left-leaning political parties—opposed the legal package. As outlined by Maria Eugenia Lima, representative of the mpd, Durán Ballén’s proposed legislation: ‘‘1) shatters indigenous peoples’ millenary cultural practice given that the project proposes the elimination of communal work and the possession of communal lands; 2) prohibits community sectors from acquiring land; and 3) establishes large property holdings, or la hacienda, as the alternative for the development of the agricultural sector’’ (Diario Hoy, May 10, 1994). Yet

notes to chapter five

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within the Plenary of Legislative Commissions, left-leaning deputies accounted for only seven out of the twenty-eight members. Of the four legislative commissions that comprise the Plenary, it was the task of the Economic, Agricultural, Industrial, and Commercial Commission (eaic Commission) to write majority and minority opinions and initiate debate on the Executive’s agrarian proposal. This commission, composed of seven representatives, included three members of the Social Christian Party (psc), one from the Ecuadorian Conservative Party (pce), two Independents, and one from the Popular Democracy (dp). 7

Diario Hoy, May 16, 1994.

8 9

conaie/can, n.d. [1994]. conaie, press release, May 16, 1994.

10

Diario Hoy, May 13, 1994.

11

During the first debate and vote, all psc members were in favor of the Executive’s legislation. Without apologies, however, the psc reversed its stance when their leader and 1996 presidential candidate, Jaime Nebot, denounced the Executive’s agrarian project. In a party report disseminated to the National Congress and the press, the psc argued: the legal project that the Executive sent to the Congress is simply a law for the security of land tenancy and nothing more. . . . Once again we are confronted with a myopic vision, diminutive and extremist, of reality and we are definitively not going to support it with our votes. We will never advocate inappropriate and unjust extremes which harm Ecuadorians. We will maintain our distance from those who paradoxically aim to modernize with troglodytic positions and yet maintain a status quo, that is, maintain things as they are. Both sectarian positions accentuate social injustice in the country. . . . We will legislate to secure and guarantee property holders of land that fulfills its social function; but also in order to grant property titles to those who do not have land despite their right to it. We will legislate to promote all means to encourage production, except to those who assault the dignity of man.’’ (Diario Hoy, May 13, 1994)

12

13

Even the president of the eaic Commission and member of the psc, Alfonso Monsalve, noted that the commission would entertain a broad debate on agrarian change among all sectors involved (Diario Hoy, May 20, 1994). Although supportive of the Coordinadora, left parties were powerless in the face of psc usurpation. In the words of one social critic, it appeared to the left intelligence in general that ‘‘the countryside remains a literary souvenir [for the left] over which once upon a time they expressed their interest and social commitment’’ (Roque Espinosa, ‘‘Finalmente caen las mascaras,’’ Diario Hoy,

14

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15 16

244

June 7, 1994). This point was made on numerous fronts including by conaie, social critics, and ecological groups. See editorials by Javier Ponce, Diario Hoy, June 5, 1994. Diario Hoy, June 4, 1994. Diario Hoy, June 6, 1994.

notes to chapter five

7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 259 of 310

17

Diario Hoy, June 4, 1994.

18 19

June 16, 1994. conaie statement, June 1, 1994.

20

conaie statement A, June 16, 1994.

21

Following the June 3 congressional passing of the Social Christian law, conaie appealed to President Sixto Durán Ballén to rescind a law whose passing they declared unconstitutional. According to the Ecuadorian constitution, ‘‘No project of law or decree can be discussed unless its text has been submitted with 15 days of anticipation to each deputy’’ (Art. 68). As noted by conaie and oppositional political parties, the psc’s legislative proposal could not legally enter debate within the plenary until June 2. Following constitutional protocol, the president now had ten days in which to execute or reject the newly passed Agrarian Law. Turning a deaf ear to popular protest, on June 13 President Durán Ballén put the law into effect prior to flying to the Cartagena Summit in Colombia. Following Executive promulgation, conaie likewise appealed to the institutional judicial bodies responsible for constitutional regulation—the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees (El Tribunal de Garantías Constitucionales, tgc) and the Hall of Constitutional Law in the Supreme Court (La Sala de lo Constitucional de la Corte Suprema)—to declare the law unconstitutional. The tgc declared the law unconstitutional on procedural grounds. The Supreme Court strategically withheld its ruling and delayed making a ruling, eventually declaring that it would uphold the outcome of the tripartite negotiations.

22 23

24

A joking refrain used by one soon became popular: ‘‘Que vayan con Dios y Che’’ —May God and Che be with you (i.e., Che Guevara). Initially, campesinos planned two occupations—of the National Banco de Fomento and of the provincial headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture in Puyo. While the former was effective, the latter never occurred. fadi (Frente Amplia Democrática de la Izquierda), considered to be Ecuador’s officially recognized ‘‘radical’’ political party, had strong support in Pastaza. Pastaza’s prefecto, Dr. Roberto de la Torre, was a member of fadi. In 1990, de la Torre was elected to be the provincial representative in the National Congress. In 1992, he was elected prefecto, a post he continued to hold until 1998.

25 26

For more on women in the Sierra protest see Meisch (1995). Ñucanchic Huasi, Quichua for ‘‘Our House,’’ was the organizational headquarters of the Cañari indigenous community and leadership. The organization has existed for thirty years. The headquarters housed the Cultural Center for sociocultural and education research; a learning center; a radio station; artisan, carpentry, and mechanical workshops; a book and audio library; and dormitory facilities.

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

27

The World Cup is potentially the most fanatical and absorbing ritual observed throughout Latin America by blancos, mestizos, and increasingly indígenas alike, every four years. Indigenous leaders were concerned that the games would distract attention from the crisis at hand. Though this was the case in 1993 with the America’s Cup, this was not the case in 1994.

notes to chapter five

245

7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 260 of 310

28

opip/confeniae/frededicap, June 19, 1994.

29

The most prominent participants included: Fausto Espin, the governor of Pastaza (a Durán Ballén appointee and representative of the state); Dr. Roberto de la Torre, the prefecto (the elected provincial head [what would be the governor in the United States] and a former provincial deputy in the National Congress); Patricio López Cobo, the alcalde (elected city mayor); Coronel de la Rosa, Commander of Shell Military Brigade; the Head of Police; Dr. Jorge Vacas, manager of the Banco de Fomento; Dr. Raúl Valverde, regional head of the Ministry of Agriculture; and the indigenous-campesino leaders of opip, confeniae, and

30

frededicap. The only vocal opposition during the meeting came from the local priest. According to him, the protest had transformed from ‘‘the Measures for Life’’ into

31

‘‘the Measures for Death.’’ Puyo Government Authorities, June 22, 1994.

32

Opposition from the church underscored the ambivalent relationship that indígenas and liberation-theology-influenced campesinos maintained with the conservative church in Pastaza.

6. liberal legal-scapes 1

2 3

reported, a number of Durán Ballén’s cabinet members objected to the president’s gesture. The president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, Luís Trujillo (‘‘Fuertes perdidas,’’ El Comercio, June 24, 1994). Even a vocal spokesperson for fenoc (a state-sponsored indigenous organization that supported the government) urged Durán Ballén to take swift and harsh

4

action ‘‘to stop the subversion’’ and ‘‘not be manipulated by conaie’’ (Diario Hoy, June 22, 1994). El Comercio, June 24, 1994.

5 6

Diario Hoy, June 22, 1994. See also, Ernesto Albán Gómez, ‘‘¿Más vale tarde?’’ Diario Hoy, June 29, 1994.

7

El Comercio, June 27, 1994. Diario Hoy, June 22, 1994. My analysis of the negotiations among the state, terratenientes, and indígenas/ campesinos emerges from notes I took while physically present to observe the negotiating sessions, documents from those sessions, audio tapes of all the sessions made by Radio Nacional, newspaper clippings, and discussions with indigenous leaders and the Secretary for Indigenous Affairs. These are the words of Dr. Ricardo Izurieta, Palacio de Gobierno, June 30, 1994. Or so one commentator, Oswaldo Davila Andrade, described Sixto Durán Ballén (‘‘Ley Agraria: de la intemperancia a la sensatez,’’ El Comercio, July 9, 1994).

8 9

10 11

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Not all agreed that the meeting should be convened. As the Secretary of Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Affairs told me in an interview, and a few newspapers

246 notes to chapter six

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12

As reported in El Comercio, July 1, 1994, the table was surrounded by seventy leaders and advisors. These advisors were largely for the government and terratenientes. In an attempt to debilitate conaie’s cohesion, the government invited a representative of fenoc to participate.

13

I gained entrance to the Presidential Palace as an American scholar doing research on state-indigenous relations in Ecuador. Yet the palace guards denied entrance to the very Indians involved in politics I was studying, despite my pleas to the contrary.

14

See Sawyer (1997) for an elaboration on this issue.

15

Durán Ballén’s words were reported in the press as follows: ‘‘No desperdicien mi tiempo!’’ (‘‘Diálogo con Tropiezos,’’ Diario Hoy, July 8, 1994). The following are the dates when the tripartite commission met (all in 1994): June 30; July 1;

16

July 4–5; July 7–9; July 11–14; July 18. As many scholars note, although bodies appear as the most self-evident and intimate mode for thinking, they are in fact constructed and acquire their shape through the effects of power. Foucault reminds, ‘‘Nothing is more material, physical, corporeal than the exercise of power’’ ([1975] in Gordon 1980, 57–58). See Foucault (1980a), Nelson (1995, 1999), Stolcke (1993), Stoller (1992), and

17

Smith (1995). See Goldberg (1990, 305).

18

Izurieta’s words during negotiations of the Agricultural Development Law on July 5, 1994.

19

The majority of Ecuador’s Afro-Ecuadorian population (approximately 3% of the populace) also lives in the ‘‘lowlands,’’ but this ‘‘lowlands’’ consists of the tropical forests west of the Andes Mountains on the Pacific Coast, not the Amazon.

20

Article 36 read as follows. The segments in italics refer to additions made during the tripartite negotiations. El Estado protegerá las tierras del INDA que se destinen al desarrollo de las poblaciones, montubias, indígenas y afroecuatorianas y las legalizará mediante adjudicación en forma gratuita a las comunidades o étnias que han estado en su posesión ancestral, bajo la condición que se respete tradiciones, vida cultural y organización propias, incorporando, bajo responsabilidad del INDA, los elementos que coadyuven a mejorar sistemas de producción, potenciar las tecnologías ancestrales, lograr la adquisición de nuevas tecnologías, recuperar y diversificar las semillas y desarrollar otros factores que permiten elevar sus niveles de vida. Los procedimientos, métodos e instrumentos que se empleen debe preservar el sistema ecológico.’’

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

21 22 23

Young (1987, 75), quoted in Collier et al. Ricardo Izurieta, July 11, 1994. The interview appeared in an article titled ‘‘Ñuca Llacta,’’ Quichua for ‘‘Our Community/People/Nation’’ (El Comercio, July 19, 1994).

notes to chapter six

247

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24

See Collier (1994), Nash (1995, 2001), and Stephens (2002).

25

See Barker (1981), de la Cadena (2000), Fitzpatrick (1990), Goldberg (1990), Gilroy (1987, 1990), and Stolcke (1993, 1995).

26

See Gilroy (1990, 267).

27 28

Fitzpatrick (1990, 259). Said (1978), Mohanty (1988), Todorov (1984), Collier et al. (1995), Goldberg

29

(1990). The quote is from Gilroy (1990, 279), something he observes of British Blacks.

30

See Collier et al. (1995, 18).

31

During the state of emergency, the military raided and dismantled two radio stations. Army officials ordered the stations’ closure on the pretext of their foreign ‘‘radical nun’’ director having ‘‘sublevado a los indígenas’’ (incited Indians to rebel). On more than one occasion, at particular junctures during the Movilización, indigenous leaders advised me to keep my distance, as state response was not predictable. During negotiations there were reiterative attempts to reinscribe the sovereignty of national boundaries and to condemn illicit international intervention in ‘‘national’’ concerns on ‘‘national’’ terrain. From the use of terminology (e.g., ‘‘food security’’) to concepts (e.g., ecological conservation), terratenientes and state officials accused Coordinadora leaders of being manipulated by or colluding with foreign interest—be they the un Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (cepal), international greens, liberation theologians, or international revolutionaries. Durán Ballén welcomed ‘‘the presence of external observers,’’ ‘‘but only as observers.’’ Dávalos insisted that negotiation must restrict itself to strictly ‘‘authentic’’ concepts pertaining to Ecuador. The fact that the neoliberal policies propelling the formation of the new Agrarian Development Law were not endogenous to Ecuador was not, how-

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

ever, noted. El Comercio, June 27, 1994. Diario Hoy, June 25, 1994. Enrique Valle Andrade, ‘‘Cuando la sangre llama, la sangre mata,’’ Diario Hoy, June 25, 1994 (internal quote by Mariano Grondona in the Visión). See Fitzpatrick (1990, 258). Summer (1979, 293) in Fitzpatrick (1990, 257). See Gilroy (1987, 74). See the pamphlet conaie produced in July 1995 directly after the negotiations had ended, titled ‘‘La Ley de Desarrollo Agrario.’’

closing 1

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2

conaie, in conjunction with the national campesino organization (Confederación Unica Nacional de Afiliados al Seguro Social Campesino) and a newly established social movements coordinator (Coordinadora de Movimientos Sociales), resolved to convene this popular National Constituent Assembly on October 12. conaie, Document 1989.

248 notes to closing

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3

conaie (1994, 1).

4 5

conaie (1994, 5–6). Ibid.

6

conaie (1994, 7).

7

Tripetrol was owned by one of Ecuador’s wealthiest families, the Peñafiel—a family that could trace its genealogy back to the days of the Spanish Empire. In an ultimate irony, Tripetrol went bankrupt the following year during major financial and bank frauds that racked the Ecuadorian economy. No new company has taken over the oil concession.

8

At the time of the female indígenas’ protest at Tripetrol headquarters, a number of opip and community leaders were being sued by the corporation for acts of vandalism and kidnapping. Earlier in the summer, these same indigenous women and many more stormed Tripetrol’s office in Shell (just outside Puyo), detained the company’s chief engineer in Pastaza, and promised to release him once the president of the corporation agreed to abandon its concession. Though they treated the engineer well, these indigenous women held the Tripetrol man for over two days. The situation was resolved when the Pastaza police agreed not to arrest anyone if the women would free the engineer.

9

10 11 12

with corruption and served a prison sentence (1997–2002). The phrase ‘‘foundational fictions’’ comes from Sommer (1991). See Anderson (1983), Gellner (1983), Hobsbawm (1990). For highly insightful critiques with special reference to Latin American, see Smith (1990a, 1990b) and Mallon (1995). For other regions, see Bhabha (1990), Chatterjee (1994), Comaroff (1996), Foster (1991), Malkki (1990, 1992, 1994), and

13

Williams (1989, 1990). Bollinger and Lund (1982), de la Cadena (2000), Mallon (1995), Smith (1990a, 1990b), Urban and Sherzer (1991), Varese (1982, 1988, 1991).

14 15 16

For critical and detailed accounts see Crain (1990) and Whitten (1976). Anderson (1991). For indigenous organizing outside of Ecuador see Alvarez et al. (1998), Appel-

17

baum et al. (2003), csq (1994), Collier (1994), Holloway and Pelaez (1998), Jackson (1991, 1995), Stephen (2002), Nash (1995, 2001), Seider (2002), Warren (1998), Warren and Jackson (2002). See Horowitz (1985) and Smith (1986).

18 19

20 21 22

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Héctor Villamil surfaced a year later, served a prison sentence and in 2002 became involved in indigenous politics once more. Rafael Pandam was also charged

See Brubaker (1994), Gagnon (1995), and Kaplan (2000). For an excellent accounting of this argument see Gupta and Ferguson (1992, 1997). See also Barth (1969), Hobsbawm (1983), Nixon (1994), Ranger (1983, 1985), Stutzman (1981), Swedenburg (1990), Vail (1989), and Watts (1991, 1992). See Tambiah (1989, 1996), Malkki (1995), Jackson (1991, 1995), Starn (1991, 1992). Comaroff (1995, 165). For critical work on ethnicity by Stuart Hall see Hall (1980, 1981, 1990, 1991, 1996).

notes to closing 249

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23

Verdery (1996, 226).

24 25

McClintock (1995, 353). See Foucault (1980a, 1980b).

26

Gramsci (1971).

27 28

See Hall (1981, 1996). For a more detailed analysis of these events see Sawyer (2003, 2004).

250

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A C R O N YM S

aiepra: Asociación de Indígenas Evangélicos de Pastaza, Región Amazónica (Association of Evangelical Indians of Pastaza, Amazonian Region); founded 1980 arco: Atlantic Richfield Company; bought out by BP–Amoco in 2000 bnf: Banco Nacional de Fomento (National Development Bank); lends primarily to the agricultural sector can: Coordinadora Agraria Nacional (National Agrarian Coordinator) cepe: Corporación Estatal Petrolera Ecuatoriana (Ecuadorian State Petroleum Corporation); created October 22, 1971; activated June 23, 1972; changed name to Petroecuador in 1990 cgg: Compagnie Générale du Géophysique (General Company of Geophysics) coica: Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations in the Amazon Basin) coice: Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Ecuadorian Coast) conade: Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo (National Development Council); created by 1979 Constitution conaie: Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador); founded 1986 confeniae: Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon); founded 1980

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

dicip: Directiva Intercomunitaria de las Comunidades Independientes de Pastaza (Intercommunitarian Directive of Independent Communities of Pastaza); founded in 1993 ecuarunari: Ecuador Runacunapac Riccharimui fedecap: Federación de Desarrollo Campesino de Pastaza (Federation of Peasant Development of Pastaza); founded 1985 frededicap: Frente de Defensa de Derechos de los Indígenas y Campesinos de Pastaza (Front in Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights in Pastaza); founded 1994 fut: Frente Unitario de Trabajadores (United Workers Front)

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gnp: Gross National Product iadb: Inter-American Development Bank ierac: Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización (Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization); established 1964 imf: International Monetary Fund ngo: Nongovernmental Organization opec: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries opip: Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza); founded 1978–1979 oxfam: Oxford Famine Relief Organization, USA Headquarters, Boston, Massachusetts ran: Rainforest Action Network, San Francisco, California une: Unión Nacional de Educadores (National Teachers’ Union) usaid: United States Agency for International Development

252

glossary of acronyms

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GLOSSARY OF TERMS

camarada: ‘‘comrade.’’ Usually used as a joking term of camaraderie among Indian leaders (often, but never exclusively, with those leaders who have engaged in university studies in Cuba or the former Soviet Union), largely poking fun at the anti-communist/Marxist sentiments in Ecuador. campesino: ‘‘peasant.’’ In the lowlands, campesino almost always refers to mestizo colonos, as opposed to indigenous colonos. In the Sierra, however, it can refer to a small farmer, whether mestizo or indigenous. campo: ‘‘countryside,’’ ‘‘a field,’’ or ‘‘the field.’’ Usually, though not always, the campo is conspicuously worked land (i.e., that labored by the campesino) and is differentiated from the forest (selva, monte, bosque). colono: ‘‘colonist.’’ Refers to anyone who lives in an ierac-designated individual parcel and has come to the area from someplace else to homestead the lowlands. This could include people from the coast, people from the Sierra (be they indigenous or nonindigenous), or even indigenous lowland peoples from a different region. Often, though not always, Shuar who have settled in provinces outside Morona Santiago are considered colonos. Sometimes lowland Quichua who live in ierac-designated plots in a region that was once considered ancestral territory are also considered colonos. comunero: ‘‘commoner.’’ Anyone living in communally titled land. Usually this person would be considered indigenous, but not always. compañero: ‘‘partner’’ or ‘‘companion.’’ Used to refer to a friend or a work/task colleague.

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

dirigente: ‘‘leader.’’ Comes from the verb dirigir (to direct or manage). Within Indian organizations, this term was used interchangeably with líder (also leader). Occasionally, yet virtually exclusively when joking, indigenous leaders might refer to another as camarada (comrade). indígena, indio: ‘‘Indian,’’ or ‘‘indigenous.’’ I use all four terms interchangeably, just as people in Ecuador do, both indigenous and nonindigenous. At times, Indians who live in communal territory make a distinction between themselves as being indígena and Indians who live in individual ierac-delineated plots as being indio. The logic here acknowledges that they are all of the same ‘‘race’’ or shared ‘‘ethnicity’’ but that the level of self-awareness and consciousness differs; those

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who live on and own private property, it is thought, are less conscious. Importantly, however, this belief is not globally held, and I never could determine the extent to which it was shared across class, gender, and age divides. While in some areas of Latin America indio has pejorative connotations, today in Ecuador it virtually does not. If and when, however, people have pejorative things to say about Indians they most often use the term indio over any other: ‘‘El indio vago.’’ ‘‘El indio no hace producir la tierra.’’ ‘‘El indio boracho.’’ ‘‘El indio bravo.’’ la compañía: ‘‘the company.’’ All multinationals and the various service industries they subcontract, regardless of site of origin, are called la compañía. This does not imply, however, that people think that there is just one big company that owns and controls all oil operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Rather, it indicates that people feel and experience the patterns of petroleum exploration and exploitation as inherently all the same. monte, bosque, selva: For the most part, I have translated all of these as ‘‘forest.’’ Although selva is often translated as jungle, there is a Spanish word jungla that captures the imperialist connotations of ‘‘jungle’’ (derivative of Hindi for ‘‘desert’’). nación: ‘‘nation.’’ Refers almost exclusively to an ‘‘imagined community’’ (Anderson 1983) coexisting within the territorial boundaries of a state. Importantly, who exactly is included in or excluded from that ‘‘imagined community’’ is the terrain of debate. nacionalidad: ‘‘nationality.’’ By contrast, however, nacionalidad does not refer to the Ecuadorian nación. Nacionalidad is the term indigenous organizations have appropriated as their self-defining term. It stands in counterpoint to ‘‘ethnicity’’ or ‘‘ethnic group’’ and is understood as a political term of chosen (rather than ascribed) identity. patria: I have not translated patria. The closest English equivalent is ‘‘native land,’’ ‘‘homeland,’’ or the gendered ‘‘father/motherland’’ (although in white, liberal North America that is usually a reference to Europe). In Ecuador, the term patria is a terrain of struggle for defining the configuration of the nación. In dominant Ecuadorian discourse, patria (often erroneously translated as ‘‘fatherland’’) is uniquely gendered and sexed female. More than simply any female, la patria is referred to as the Señora (as noted in the national anthem)— a married, heterosexual female. Above all, however, she is the cherished possession of the pater/padre. Thus in Ecuador a masculinist state staunchly defends the honor of any violation of the patria by outside males (namely, other states) or internally by devious females (namely, Indians and environmentalists). When indigenous leaders deploy the term (which is infrequently) it refers to a

Tseng 2004.3.17 07:22

mass of people, those who make up the popular classes. patrimonio: ‘‘patrimony.’’ Again, the term is gendered in Ecuador and has a unique, racially coded history. pueblo: ‘‘a people’’ or ‘‘a town.’’ Here, it is used exclusively to mean ‘‘a people,’’ often with a capital P.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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arco. 1987. Estatutos de arco ORIENTE INC. June 24. . 1988. cepe-arco Contract. . 1995. arco Annual Report. . 1996. arco Stockholders and Proxy Statement. Arnold, David. 1996. The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion. Oxford: Blackwell. Balée, William. 1989. ‘‘The Culture of Amazonian Forests.’’ In Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, edited by D. Posey and W. Balee. Bronx, N.Y.: New York Botanical Gardens. . 1992. ‘‘Peoples of the Fallow: An Historical Ecology of Foraging in Lowland South America.’’ In Conservation of Neotropical Forests, Working from Traditional Resource Use, edited by K. Redford and C. Padoch. New York: Columbia University Press. . 1995. Footprints of the Forest: Káapor Ethnobotany—The Historical Ecology of Plant Utilization by an Amazonian People. New York: Columbia University Press. Balibar, Etienne. 1990. ‘‘Paradoxes of Universality.’’ In Anatomy of Racism, edited by David Theo Goldberg. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. . 1991. ‘‘The Nation Form: History and Ideology.’’ In Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, by Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein. London: Verso. Barker, M. 1981. The New Racism. London: Junction Books. Barry, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds. 1996. Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown. Bebbington, Anthony. 1992. Searching for an ‘‘Indigenous’’ Agricultural Development: Indian Organizations and NGOs in the Central Andes of Ecuador. Cambridge: Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. Bebbington, Anthony, and Graham Thiele, with Penelope Davies, Martin Prager, and Hernando Riveros. 1993. Non-governmental Organizations and the State in Latin America: Rethinking Roles in Sustainable Agricultural Development. London: Routledge. Becker, Marc. 1997. ‘‘Class and Ethnicity in the Canton Cayambe: The Roots of Ecuador’s Modern Indian Movement.’’ Ph.D. diss., Department of History, University of Kansas. Benjamin, Craig. 1994. ‘‘The Zapatista Uprising and Popular Struggles against Neo-Liberal Restructuring.’’ Labour, Capital, and Society 27(1): 109–28. Berry, Sara. 1993. No Condition Is Permanent. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1990. ‘‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation.’’ In Nation and Narration, edited by Homi Bhabha. London: Routledge.

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opip 1989. Plantamientos al Gobierno 1989. Acuerdo de Sarayacu 1990. Acuerdo Territorial. (Full title: Acuerdo Sobre el Derecho Territorial de los Pueblos Quichua, Shiwiar, y Achuar de la Provincia de Pastaza a suscribirse con el Estado Ecuatoriano 1992. Documento de Legalización Territorial (March 1992) In addition, this book uses multiple internal federation documents from opip, confeniae, and conaie.

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INDEX

Locators in italics indicate photographs or illustrations.

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Acción Ecológica: advocacy of, 82–84; conaie elections, 81–82; Ecuadorian government and, 124, 242 n. 6; Ministry of Energy and Mines occupation (1994), 91, 99, 236 n. 1; Tripetrol protest, 217–19, 249 n. 8; on water contamination, 103 Achuar, 5, 27–28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 77, 218 Acosta, Alberto, 240 n. 60, 242 n. 62 Acosta, Francisco, 236 n. 1 Acuerdo Territorial, 46, 49, 50, 171 Afro-Ecuadorians, 192–95, 199, 208, 247 nn. 19, 20 agip (Italian Oil Corporation): Block 10 operations, 223, 232 n. 9; Environmental Technical Committee and, 137, 141–43; Union Base meeting (1994), 128–36, 141 Agrarian Development Law (May 1994): classism in, 179, 200; communal holdings and, 208; conaie and, 194–95, 207–08, 245 n. 21; idea on, 200, 203; land expropriation and, 189–90, 194–95, 199; multinational corporations and, 166–67; production and, 194–95; psc introduction of, 156, 245 n. 21; racism and, 201–05; Riobamba

Mandate, 158–59, 164; Zapatista uprising (1994), 157, 179, 201. See also Land rights; Movilizacíon por la Vida (1994); Presidential Palace meeting (1994) Agrarian reform: Agrarian Development Law (1964), 19, 43–45, 156, 189–90, 195–96, 203–04; agricultural production and, 152–54, 194–95, 197–98; Banco de Fomento loans and, 164–65, 176; can, 153– 54, 190, 195, 244 n. 6, 245 n. 13; demographic pressure, 196–99, 205; indígena women’s protests, 157, 159; indigenous agricultural technologies, 193–94; Proyecto de Ley Agraria Integral (1992 [can]), 153–54, 244 n. 6; rhetoric of free market, 189, 191, 200–201; Riobamba Mandate, 158–59, 164. See also ierac; Land rights Agrawal, Arun, 230 nn. 37–38 aiepra (Associación de Indígenas Evangélicos de Pastaza, Region Amazonica), 131–32, 137, 145 Alliance for Progress (United States), 43–44 Allochronism (Fabian), 35 Almeida, Rafael, 99, 111

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Alvarez, Sonia, 225 n. 1, 249 n. 16 Amazon Coalition, 84, 235 n. 27 Amazonia: as discursive terrain, 54; coica on, 54, 235 n. 45; indigenous peoples’ rights to, 231 n. 41; as tierras baldías, 44, 94; as tierras salvajes, 94. See also Ecuador; National identity Anachronistic space (McClintock), 35 Ancestral territory (territorio): Amazonia as, 44, 53–54, 94, 231 n. 41, 235 n. 45; ancestral management, 47–48, 53, 75, 83, 190–93, 195, 230 n. 39; ethnic identity, 77, 83; family networks and, 67–68; land blocks and, 4, 50–51 (50 map 5), 64, 69– 70, 73–76, 80–81, 83, 128, 234 n. 34; memory and, 51, 66, 77, 83; nationality (nacionalidad), 5–6, 67, 83–84, 145–46; pueblos and, 47–48, 61, 132–33, 145–46; territorio as political construct, 83–84. See also Land rights; Maps and mapmaking; National identity arco (Atlantic Richfield Company): acquiring concession, 64, 232 n. 9; agip, 128, 134, 137, 141–44, 223; bail payments by, 122–23; bilingual education programs, 127; Block 10, 4, 64, 65 map 6, 68, 117, 128, 217, 223; Campaña Tungui and, 81; community disaffiliation and, 70–71, 78–80; on democracy, 6–8, 125–26, 135–36; dicip as offshoot of, 8, 71– 73, 123–26, 134–35; divisiveness of, 4, 70–73, 121, 126, 132, 134–37, 146, 238 n. 43; Ecuador-Peruvian war (1995), 217; Environmental Technical Committee and, 119–20, 137–46; gifts for compliance with, 8–9, 57, 64, 68–69, 78–80, 121, 134–35; Indigenous Front, 120, 128, 131–32, 137, 139; Initial Fund for alternative development in Pastaza, 139–42;

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Moretecocha protest (1990), 66– 67, 132, 233 n. 16; opip, recognition of, 72–73, 123; Oro Verde meeting (Jan. 1994), 118–22; Plano, Texas, meeting with opip (March 1994), 130–31, 139, 145, 243 n. 11; Quito meeting (Aug. 1993), 1–7, 119; Sarayacu uprising (1989), 64–67, 81; seismic explorations, 45, 64–66; Union Base meeting (May 1994), 128–36, 141; U.S. government monitoring of, 235 n. 47. See also dicip; Environment; ierac; Military; opip; Villano Arnold, David, 228 n. 3 Art of government (Foucault), 14 Balao (Pacific port), 111 Banco de Fomente (bnf): bank loans, 162, 164–65, 176; indígenascampesino alliances against, 164– 65, 175–76; takeover of, 168–70, 175–76, 178 Bank Information Center, 108, 114, 239 n. 48 Bank loans: Adam Smith and, 12– 13, 79; Banco de Fomente (bnf) loans, 162, 164–65, 176; Ecuadorian austerity policies and, 11–12, 15; International Monetary Fund (imf), 12, 93, 109, 239 n. 47; neoliberal economic policies and, 12–13, 156; World Bank, 12, 93, 108–10, 112, 114–15, 156, 239 n. 47 Barry, Andrew, 225 n. 2 Belletini, Samuel, 185, 197 Benjamin, Craig, 227 n. 24 Block 10, acquisition of, 64, 232 n. 9; agip management of, 223; dicip representation in, 72–73; indígenas disruption of seismic work in Sarayacu (1989), 64; Indigenous Front, 120, 128, 131–32, 137, 139, 142; map of, 65; Pandanuque and, 68;

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pipeline construction in, 117, 217. See also arco; dicip; Villano Block 16. See Maxus (Texas oil company) Bonifaz, Neptali, 192, 198, 200 Borja, Andrés, 153, 191, 198 Borja Cervallos, Rodrigo: ancestral land distribution, 50–51; communal land titles, 45; on indígenas disruption of seismic work in Sarayacu (1998), 64; land blocks, 51; meeting with indígenas (1992), 28–29, 40– 41, 47, 53; on pipeline expansion, 111; on the Sarayacu uprising, 64, 66; on security zone, 51 bot (‘‘Build, Operate, and Transfer’’), 111 British Petroleum-Amoco, 223 Brosius, Peter, 230 n. 37 Brysk, Alison, 226 n. 19, 227 n. 24 Bucaram, Abdala, 216, 218 Burchell, Graham, 225 n. 2, 226 n. 18 Bustamante, Teodoro, 227 n. 24

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Cacique Palati, 42 Campaña Tungui (Tungui Campaign), 81 Campesinos: Banco de Fomente (bnf) loans, 164–65, 176; Confederacion Unica Nacional de Afiliados al Seguro Social Campesino, 214, 249 n. 1; indigenous peoples’ solidarity with, 163–68, 170–71, 175–77; National Constituent Assembly, 214–15, 249 n. 1; provincial authorities and indigenous-campesino leaders meeting, 178–80, 246 nn. 29–30 Cañari community, 172, 245 n. 26 can (Coordinadora Agraria Nacional [National Agrarian Coordinator]), 153–54, 190, 195, 244 n. 6, 245 n. 13 Canelos, 42, 73–75, 160 Canelos-Chuyayacu dispute, 73–76

Carvajal, Gaspar de, 31, 228 n. 3 Catholic Church, 177, 185, 246 nn. 30, 32 Center for Economic and Social Rights, 103 cepal (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), 248 n. 31 cepe (Corporación Estatal Petrolera Ecuatoriana), 45, 64, 232 n. 9 cgc (Compañía General de Combustibles), 217 cgg (Compagnie Générale du Géophysique), 64 Chiapas, Mexico, 157, 201 Chimborazo Province, 159, 169 Chuyayacu, 69–70, 73–76, 234 n. 34 Citizenship, 7, 107, 116, 124, 215, 217 Classism: access to due process, 185, 208; language comprehension and, 2, 6, 119, 121–22, 140–41, 242 nn. 4, 10; at Presidential Palace meeting (1994), 185, 247 n. 13; rhetoric of free markets and, 189, 191, 200–201 Coca petroleum well demonstrations, 172 Cofán Indians, 43, 84, 108 coica (Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica), 54, 81–82 coice (Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana), 43 Collier, George, 227 n. 24, 248 n. 24, 249 n. 16 Collier, Jane, 248 nn. 21, 28, 30 Colonos. See Homesteaders Comaroff, John, 221, 249 n. 12, 250 n. 21 Comuna San Jacinto, 42, 160, 174 conaie (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador): Agrarian Development Law (1994), 194–95, 207–08, 245 n. 21; agrarian

index 279

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conaie (continued ) legislation and, 154–55, 157–59, 245 n. 21; ancestral management practices, 48, 53, 83, 190–92, 230 n. 39; authority of, 132–33, 209, 243 n. 12; can, 153–54, 190, 195, 244 n. 6, 245 n. 13; colonos cooperation with, 165; Durán Ballén administration and, 115; Ecuador’s crisis of accountability and, 216; Edmundo Vargas, 132–33, 176, 185; Hydrocarbon Law, 84–85, 93–94, 102, 109; indígenas represented by, 133–34, 243 n. 12; investigations of petroleum operations, 104–05; Levantamiento (uprising; 1990), 46, 169, 171; Ley de Ordenamiento del Sector Agrario (1994), 154–56, 244 n. 6; Ministry of Energy and Mines occupation (1994), 91, 97– 98, 106–08, 117, 145, 236 n. 1, 238 n. 43; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 49, 113, 149–51, 159–62, 168, 245 n. 21; Movimiento Pachakutic, 222–23; on myth of the Ecuadorian nation, 206–07; National Constituent Assembly, 214, 249 n. 1; Political Project (1994), 124–25; purpose of, 43, 194–95, 229 n. 14, 247 n. 20; reclamo popular (popular protest), 113; rhetoric of democracy, 157–58; Riobamba Mandate, 158–59, 164; on Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 104–05, 159; Tahuantinsuyu mosaic, 47, 99, 222–23, 230 n. 30. See also Macas, Luís; Pacari, Nina; Pandam, Rafael Conduct of conduct (Foucault), 14, 30, 50, 56, 59, 86, 135 confeniae (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana), 21, 43, 81–82, 119, 230 n. 30; frededicap cooperation with, 164, 175; indí-

280 index

genas represented by, 133–34, 243 n. 12; Ministry of Energy and Mines occupation (1994), 91, 97– 98, 106–08, 117, 145, 236 n. 1, 238 n. 43; statement on Modernization, 175; Union Base meeting (1994), 128–36, 141 Coordinadora de Movimientos Sociales, 249 n. 1 cordavi (Corporación de Investigaciones Jurídicas y de Defensa de la Vida), 103 Coronil, Fernando, 226 n. 20 Corral, Fabian, 191, 205–06 Crisis of accountability, 15, 93, 117, 151, 167, 175, 180, 215–16 Crude oil: health risks, 102; production of, 95, 111, 172, 237 nn. 11–12; revenues from, 11, 94, 113–14; TransAndean pipeline and, 111–12, 226 n. 7; transportation of, 111–12, 172; wordplay on ‘‘crude,’’ 17, 226 n. 23 Cruz, Cristian (dicip): arco and, 137; on community independence, 60–61, 69; Indigenous Front and, 131–32; on opip authority, 60–61; pseudonym, 231 n. 4; on rhetoric of work, 78–79; at Union Base meeting (1994), 131–33 Cuyabeno Reserve, 84 Dahlik, Alberto, 114–15 Darier, Eric, 230 n. 37, 242 n. 3 Dean, Mitchell, 225 n. 2 Debt reduction: crude oil prices, 11, 94, 113–14; foreign debt, 11, 13, 95, 109, 239 n. 54; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109–10, 237 n. 22; oil production increases, 13, 94–95, 109; opec membership and, 94–95; technical assistance loans, 109–10, 239 n. 54 de la Cadena, Marisol, 248 n. 25, 249 n. 13

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de la Torre, Roberto, 179–80, 245 n. 24, 246 n. 29 Democracy: arco and, 6–8, 70– 72, 125–26, 135–36; capacity to dehistoricize/neutralize, 7–8, 72– 73, 136–37, 139–41, 145–46, 189; in conaie’s language of protest, 157–58; in relation to dicip, 6–8, 69–76, 125–26; enframing in, 60, 86; equality in, 192, 199; hypocrisy of, 151, 154, 158, 185–86, 209; indígenas challenge to, 8–9, 120, 150–53, 175; individualism, 8–9; land allocation and, 192. See also Liberalism; Neoliberalism Demonstrations: Banco de Fomente takeover (1994), 168–70, 175– 76, 178; Campaña Tungui, 81; at Coca petroleum well, 172; Cofán Indians’ takeover of oil well, 84, 108; conaie’s language of protest, 157–58; 15-year moratorium on petroleum exploration, 81, 98; gasoline price increases, 112–14; graffiti, 92–93, 105, 122, 142; indígenas-campesino unity in, 163– 68, 170–71, 175–77; kidnappings, 45, 64, 113; Levantamiento (1990), 46, 169, 171; military confrontations, 172–73, 182; Ministry of Energy and Mines occupation (1994), 91, 97– 98, 106–08, 117, 145, 236 n. 1, 238 n. 43; Moretecocha protest (1990), 66–67, 132, 233 n. 16; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 49, 113, 149– 51, 159–62, 168–69, 196, 245 n. 21; Pan-American highway roadblocks (1994), 49, 113, 149–51, 159–62, 177, 245 n. 21; Pastaza-Quito march (1992), 27–28, 30, 40–43, 46– 47, 69, 77; police confrontations and surveillance, 113, 156–57, 172; public reactions to, 112, 166; PuyoQuito march (1997), 211–12, 216;

reclamo popular (popular protest by conaie), 113; Riobamba Mandate, 158–59, 164; Santo Domingo Cathedral occupation (1990), 45– 46; at Sarayacu (1989), 45, 64–66, 77, 145; Shuar Federation, 42–43, 227 n. 24; of sinchi huarmiguna, 211–12, 217–19; Toma de Quito (1997), 213, 222–23; of Tripetrol, 217–19, 249 n. 8; Villano Assembly (1993), 58–59, 77–78, 80–81, 86, 108, 120, 231 n. 4, 234 n. 39, 235 n. 43; Zapatista uprising (1994), 157, 179, 201 Denison Mines Limited, 232 n. 9 dicip (Directiva Intercomunitaria de las Comunidades Independientes de Pastaza): anti-opip violence in Villano, 77–78, 234 n. 39; as arco offshoot, 8, 71–73, 123–26, 134–35; authority of, 8, 71–73, 125–26, 132; bilingual education programs, 127; Canelos-Chuyayacu dispute, 73– 76; Cristian Cruz and, 60–61, 69, 79, 131–33, 137, 231 n. 4; as democratically elected representatives, 125–26; disaffiliation from opip, 69–76; ethnic affiliations, 145–46; formation of, 4, 6, 70; gifts for cooperation with arco, 8–9, 57, 64, 68–69, 78–80, 121; Huaorani opposition to opip and, 120–21, 125; labor for oil industry and, 79, 81, 235 n. 40; modernization and, 62–63; Pandanuque and, 62, 68– 70, 79–81, 126; Santa Cecilia and, 61, 68–70, 126, 232 n. 5; standoff at Villano with opip, 58–63, 235 n. 44; state modernization projects, 63; at Union Base meeting (May 1994), 131–33; in Villano, 72, 77– 81, 86, 234 n. 39, 235 n. 43; work as distinction of, 78–79. See also opip; Villano

index 281

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Disaffiliation: arco’s gifts to communities and, 78–80; CanelosChuyayacu dispute, 73–76; dicip and, 69–76; Land Block 12, 70, 73–76 Discovery of the Amazon River (mosaic by Guayasamin), 30–34, 36–37, 52, 105; national holiday 163 Discovery of the New World commemoration (1992), 27 Duchicela, Luís Felipe, 171 Durán Ballén, Sixto, regime of: Agrarian Development Law (1994), 152–55, 180, 182–83, 244 nn. 6, 11; conaie and, 112, 115, 171; crisis of accountability, 117, 215–16; gasoline price increases, 112–14; government incentives for multinational investment, 95–96; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109, 237 n. 22; indigenous groups’ relations with, 114–15; Movilización por la Vida (1994) and, 150, 181; Nina Pacari and, 186–89, 201, 208–09, 240 n. 55; privatization of hydrocarbon sector, 98; racism and, 35, 185, 201–06, 247 n. 13; rhetoric of democracy, 184–85; Riobamba Mandate, 158–59, 164; on TransAndean pipeline expansion, 111–12, 241 n. 62; Villano march and, 231 n. 4; withdrawal from opec, 95– 96; World Bank and, 112, 114–15. See also Presidential Palace meeting (1994) Durham, William, 242 n. 3

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eaic Commission (Economic, Agricultural, Industrial and Commercial Commission), 244 n. 6 Economist Intelligence Unit, 95, 114, 153 Economist (magazine), 79–80, 95, 114–15

282

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Ecuador: agricultural production in, 152–54, 166–67, 194–95, 197– 98; austerity policies in, 11–12, 15; bilingual education programs in, 127; citizenship in, 7, 107, 116, 124, 215, 217; crisis of accountability in, 15, 93, 117, 151, 167, 175, 180, 215– 16; Léon Febres Cordero and, 12, 232 n. 9, 241 n. 62; foreign debt of, 11, 95, 109, 239 n. 54; foreign investment, 94–95, 232 n. 9; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109, 237 n. 22; mapping of, 38–39, 51–52, 55; Modernization Law (1993), 109, 167; myth of national unity, 47, 188, 206–07, 219; oil revenues in, 94–96, 109, 236 n. 5; opec membership, 11, 44, 94–96; Peru and, 51–52, 55, 62– 63, 217; privatization of oil industry in, 109–12, 117; Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 85, 91–93, 97, 107–08, 117–18, 159, 175, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62; serfdom (huasipungo) in, 44; social responsibility of, 9, 14–16, 59, 96–97, 107, 116–17, 215–16; Spanish exploration of, 30–35, 228 n. 3, 229 n. 9; state motto, 38, 152, 180; World Bank technical assistance loans to, 109–10, 239 n. 54. See also Agrarian reform; Bank loans; Borja Cervallos, Rodrigo; Durán Ballén, Sixto, regime of; Guayasamin, Oswaldo; Ministry of Energy and Mines; Petroecuador; World Bank Ecuadorian Conservative Party (pce), 197, 244 n. 6 Ecuadorian Institute for Land Reform and Colonization. See ierac Ecuador-Peruvian wars (1941, 1981), 62–63; (1995), 63, 217 ecuarunari (Ecuador Runacunapac Riccharimui), 43, 169 Enframing (Mitchell), 60, 86

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Environment: Acción Ecológica and, 82–84, 124, 218, 242 n. 6; Amazon Coalition, 84, 235 n. 27; black rain, 101; Campaña Tungui (Tungui Campaign), 81; class-action lawsuits, 84, 104, 132; cordavi, 103; deforestation, 65–66, 101; dynamite use, 65–66, 101; Environmental Technical Committee, 119–20, 137, 141–45; Exxon Valdez, 101; 15-year moratorium on petroleum exploration, 81, 98; health disorders, 100, 102–04; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109–10, 237 n. 22; indigenous peoples and, 52–53, 193–94, 230 n. 39; Initial Fund for alternative development in Pastaza, 139–42; Lago Agrio, 99, 104, 218; oil spills, 101; rain forests, 13, 52–54, 67, 92; road construction, 13, 72, 100; seismic explorations’ impact on, 45, 64–66, 99–100, 218; selva, 84, 106–07; social justice and, 97–98, 101, 104–05, 110, 139– 43, 238 n. 43; technology and, 44, 54, 100, 104, 193; toxic earth pits, 101, 103–04; Villano-3 (oil well), 68–69, 71–72; water contamination, 44, 78–81, 100, 103, 235 n. 40; World Bank technical assistance loans, 109–10. See also arco; Oil industry; Texaco Environmental Protection Agency (U.S.), 103 Environmental Technical Committee, 119–120, 137–46 Escobar, Arturo, 225 n. 1, 226 n. 18 Espejo, Eugenio, 222 Ethnic essentialism, 201–05 Ethnic identity: ancestral land, 47–48, 53, 83–84, 190–92, 195, 230 n. 39; bilingual education programs and, 127; blood, 34–35, 206–07; defined,

220–21; demographic pressure, 196–99, 205; ethnic essentialism, 201–05; history, 145–46; language and, 186; memory and, 51, 66, 77, 83; pueblo and, 47–48, 61, 132–33, 145–46; race and racism, 201–03 Exxon Valdez, 101 Fabian, Johannes, 35, 229 n. 8 fadi (Frente Amplia Democratica de la Izquierda), 245 n. 24 Febres Cordero, Léon, 12, 232 n. 9, 241 n. 62 fedecap, 173 Ferguson, James, 120, 225 n. 2, 226 n. 18, 242 n. 2, 250 n. 19 Feudal system (huasipungo), 44 Fitzpatrick, Peter, 248 nn. 25, 27, 35–36 500 Years of Resistance, 27 Foreign investments: bank loans for, 12–13, 93, 96, 108–10, 112, 114–15, 239 n. 47; foreign debt and, 11, 13, 95, 109, 239 n. 54; government incentives for, 95–96; modernization, 116–17, 189; neoliberal economic policies and, 7, 11–13; oil production as incentive for, 13, 94–95, 109; oil revenues, 94–95, 109, 236 n. 5 Foucault, Michel, 14, 59, 86, 222, 225 n. 2, 226 nn. 17–18, 247 n. 16, 250 n. 25 frededicap (Frente de Defensa de los Derechos de los Indígenas y Campesinos de Pastaza), 163–65, 167, 177, 246 n. 29 fut (Frente Unitario de Trabajadores [United Workers’ Front]), 113 Gilroy, Paul, 205, 248 nn. 25–26, 29, 37 Globalization: defined, 7; export agricultural production, 152–54,

index 283

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166–67, 194–95, 197–98; international support for opip, 53–54, 69, Globalization (continued ) 82–85, 144–45, 239 n. 47; transnational capital accumulation, 9, 16, 116–17. See also Debt reduction; Liberalism; Modernization; Multinational corporations; Neoliberalism; Oil industry Goldberg, David, 247 n. 17, 248 nn. 25, 28 Governmentality: exercise of government, 14, 50, 56; shaping subjects’ wills, 9, 56, 59, 183 Grafiti-guerrilleros, 92–93 Gramsci, Antonio, 222, 250 n. 26 Grefa, Valerio, 47 Gregory, Derek, 230 n. 37, 242 n. 3 Guayaquil, 172 Guayaquil Gulf, 96 Guayasamin, Oswaldo, 31–34; portrayal and critique of elite notion of nation, 43, 50, 52, 56, 105, 117, 146, 151, 158, 185, 188, 219, 221, 229 n. 9 Guerrero, Fernando, 201–03 Guillen, Nicholas, 195–96, 204 Gupta, Akhil, 242 n. 3, 250 n. 19 Guzman Gallegos, Maria Antonieta, 234 n. 36

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Hall, Stuart, 33, 221, 226 n. 21, 229 n. 6, 250 nn. 22, 27 Harner, Michael, 230 n. 17 Health disorders, 100, 102–04 Helicopters, 29, 61, 65, 72, 83, 121, 172–73 History: Afro-Ecuadorians in, 192–93; bodies and, 188, 201–06, 213, 247 n. 16; erasure of indígenas from, 7– 8, 32–35, 37, 50–51, 106; indigenous reaffirmation of, 7–8, 145–46, 188, 192–93; ethnic essentialism, 203, 205; exploitation of Amazon in, 53–

284 index

54; indígenas excluded from, 10, 34–35, 37, 204–05, 209, 217; land rights in, 67–68, 77, 83–84, 192– 93; of opip authority, 71; elite male agency in, 204. See also National identity; Spanish conquest Homesteaders, 3, 13, 44–45, 48, 54, 100, 163–67 Huaorani, 43, 120–21, 125, 127, 231 n. 3, 242 nn. 7–8 Huaycayñan (Trail of Tears), 33–34 Hurtado, Osvaldo, 11–12, 111 Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109–10, 237 n. 22 iadb (InterAmerican Development Bank), 109, 156, 239 n. 54 idea (Instituto de Estrategias Agrícolas), 200, 203 ierac (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización): Agrarian Reform Law (1964), 44; cadastral map of, 50–51 (50 map 5), 59–60; land blocks, 50–52 (50 map 5), 70, 73–76; land titles and, 42, 154–55, 163; Moretecocha and, 67– 68; Pandanuque and, 69; Sarayacu (1989), 45, 64 Indígenas: Afro-Ecuadorians alliance with, 192–95, 247 nn. 19, 20; agricultural production of, 152, 154, 194–95, 197–98; ancestral management practices, 48, 53, 83– 84, 190–95, 230 n. 39; Banco de Fomento (bnf) loans, 164, 176; campesino solidarity with, 163–68, 170–71, 175–76; citizenship and, 7, 107, 116, 124, 215, 217; democracy and, 7–9, 125–26, 135–36, 192–93; Ecuadoran identity of, 34–35, 188; environmentalism of, 52–53, 230 n. 39; erasure from history of, 7–8, 32–35, 37, 50, 51, 106; historical exclusion of, 10, 34–37, 204–05, 209,

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217; homesteaders and, 3, 13, 44– 45, 48, 54, 165–67; Huaorani and, 120–21, 125, 127; labor for oil industry, 65, 69, 81, 100, 104, 235 n. 40; legal action against oil companies, 84, 104, 132; nationhood and, 38– 39, 47–49, 51, 219–21; population of, 10, 225 n. 3; rain forest, 13, 52– 54, 67, 92; Spanish exploration of Ecuador, 31–35, 229 n. 9; purported subversiveness of, 46, 49, 112, 115, 173, 205, 246 n. 31; territorial claims, 5–6, 70, 73, 75–76, 234 n. 34. See also Ancestral territory (territorio); dicip; Environment; Ethnic identity; Nacionalidad; National identity; opip; Presidential Palace meeting (1994); Race and racism; Terratenientes Indígenas-campesino alliances: Banco de Fomente (bnf) takeover, 164– 65, 175–76; can, 153–54, 190, 195, 244–45 nn. 6, 13; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 163–65, 167–70, 175–80, 246 nn. 29–30; solidarity, 163–68, 170–71, 175–80, 246 nn. 29– 30 Indigenous Front, 120, 128, 131–32, 137, 139, 142 Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Tour, 108–09, 239 n. 47 Instituto Geográfico Militar, 38 Intercommunity Committee (Pandanuque, Santa Cecilia), 68–69 Intercommunity Directive of Independent Communities of Pastaza. See dicip International Monetary Fund (imf), 12, 93, 95, 109, 113, 167, 189, 239 n. 47 Irvine, Dominique, 234 n. 37, 235 n. 46, 239 n. 44 Izurieta, Ricardo, 189, 192

Jackson, Jean, 227 n. 24, 231 n. 40, 249–50 nn. 16, 20 Jarrín Ampudia, Gustavo, 111 Jumandi, 28, 43 Karl, Terry, 226 n. 20 Karsten, Rafael, 230 n. 17 Kimerling, Judith, 230 n. 36, 236 n. 48, 238 nn. 28, 30–32, 40 Lago Agrio, 99, 104, 218 Land rights: Acuerdo Territori, 46, 49, 171; Agrarian Development Law (1994), 176–77, 244 nn. 6, 11; Agrarian Reform Law (1964), 19, 43–45, 156, 189–90, 195–96, 203– 04; Banco de Fomente (bnf) loans, 164, 176; borders and, 51–52, 55; Borjas administation and, 45, 50– 51; conaie, 21, 43, 46, 229 n. 14; demographic pressure and, 196–99, 205; dicip and, 61, 69–70, 73– 74, 86; ethnonationalism and, 47 (map 4), 47–48; fifth-round licensing, 232 n. 9; historical claims and, 67–68, 77, 83–84; homesteaders, 44–45, 48, 54, 100; ierac, 42–45, 67, 154–55, 163; indigenous agricultural technologies and, 193–94; international support for, 53–54, 84; land blocks and, 4, 50–51, 50 (map 5), 64, 69, 70, 73–76, 80–81, 83, 128, 234 n. 34; land expropriation, 189–90, 194–95, 199; Moretecocha, 67–68; open free market, 200–201; opip map and, 45, 47 map 4; in Pastaza, 5–6; PastazaQuito march (April 1992), 27–28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 69, 77; production and, 194–95, 197–98; resource management, 231 n. 41; Riobamba Mandate, 158–59, 164; Sarayacu Accord (May 1989), 45, 65–66; Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 85,

index 285

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91–93, 97, 107–08, 117–18, 175, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62; state surveillance Land rights (continued ) and, 51–52; of terratenientes, 49, 182, 193–96, 221; territorial unity, 5–6, 60; territory (territorio) v. land (terra), 48; titles to indigenous territory, 41–42, 45. See also ierac; Maps and mapmaking; opip; Séptima Ronda de Licitación Language: of ancestral space (territorio), 48; bilingual education programs, 127; classism in use of, 2, 6, 119, 121–22, 140–41, 242 nn. 4, 10; erasure of indígenas through, 7–8, 32–35, 37, 50–51; ethnic identity and, 186; green rhetoric, 52–54, 230 n. 39, 231 n. 41; of racism, 106, 206; rhetoric of democracy, 184– 85. See also Democracy; Liberalism; Liberal Legality Levantamiento (uprising; 1990), 46, 169, 157, 171 Ley de Desarrollo Agrario. See Agrarian Development Law (May 1994) Ley de Ordenamiento del Sector Agrario (1994), 152–55, 176–77, 180, 244 nn. 6, 11 Liberalism: capacity to depoliticize/dehistoricize, 7–8, 72–73, 136–37, 139–41, 143–46; capital accumulation and, 9, 16, 116–17; land use policies and, 194–96. See also Democracy Liberal legality: capacity to depoliticize/dehistoricize, 93, 183, 188–89, 194, 199–200. See also Democracy; Language; Liberalism Liberation theology, 42, 163, 246 n. 32 Lima, Maria Eugenia, 244 n. 6

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Macas, Luís: Agrarian Development

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Law, 182–83; on democracy, 185–86; on demographic pressure, 196–97; on Durán Ballén’s fiscal policies, 113; on indígenas resistance, 182– 83; on the Ley de Ordenamiento del Sector Agrario (1994), 154–55; Villano and, 82; World Bank meeting and, 226 n. 19, 230 n. 24, 240 n. 55 Maps and mapmaking: of ancestral territory, 47–48 (47 map 4), 51; Block 10, 4, 64–65 (map 6), 68, 72– 73, 117, 128, 217, 223; borders in, 51–52, 55; Discovery of the Amazon River (mosaic by Guayasamin), 30–34, 36–37, 52, 105; Ecuadorian state shield, 38–39; enframing, 60, 86; erasure of human habitation in, 44, 50–52, 55, 94; homesteaders and, 44–45, 48, 54, 100; Indigenous Lowland Territories (1994), 3 (map 2); land blocks and, 4, 50– 52, 64, 69–70, 73–76, 80–81, 83, 128, 234 n. 34; memory and, 51, 66, 77, 83; national identity in, 38–39, 51; opip map of Pastaza, 47–48; Rio de Janeiro Protocol (1942), 38; of security zone, 51–52, 55; titles to indigenous territory, 41–42, 45; Yasuni National Park, 52, 55. See also ierac Martz, John, 226 n. 7 Maurer, Bill, 231 n. 2, 248 nn. 21, 28, 30 Maxus (Texas oil company), 121, 127, 231 n. 3 McClintock, Anne, 35, 229 n. 8, 250 n. 24 Media coverage: Agrarian Development Law and, 156–57, 159; gasoline price increases, 114; of Ministry of Energy and Mines occupation, 106; of Movilización por la Vida (1994),

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169, 171; of National Congress, 157; Oil & Gas Journal, 69, 95, 108; of Pastaza-Quito march (1992), 41, 77; racist stereotypes of indígenas in, 106, 125, 205–07 Medina, José Toribio, 228 n. 3 Meisch, Lynn, 226–27 nn. 19, 24 Military: indígena women and, 156–57, 159; Movilización por la Vida (1994) and, 151, 172–73; in Napo Province, 172–73; oil production security by, 61–62, 67; Pan-American highway roadblocks (1994), 113; security zone, 51–52, 55; in Villano, 61–62 Ministry of Energy and Mines: ‘‘Build, Operate, and Transfer’’ (bot), 111; on citizenship of indigenous peoples, 107, 124; Environmental Technical Committee and, 119–20, 137, 141–45; occupation of, 91, 97–98, 106–08, 117, 145, 236 n. 1, 238 n. 43; at opip-arco meeting, 131; opip-arco-Ministry of Energy and Mines meeting (1993), 1–7; on opip representation of indigenous peoples, 123; Oro Verde meeting (1994), 118–22; Quito meeting (1993), 1–7, 119; Trans-Andean pipeline and, 111, 223; Union Base meeting (1994), 128–36, 141 Ministry of Energy and Mines occupation (24 Jan. 1994): demands made, 238 n. 43; grafiti-guerrilleros, 92–93; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109, 237 n. 22; media coverage of, 106; police intervention, 92–93, 236 n. 4; as second march to Quito, 91, 236 n. 2; Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 91–93, 97, 107–08, 117–18, 175, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62 Mitchell, Timothy, 60, 231 n. 2

Modernization: Agrarian Development Law (1994), 175, 189; debt relief, 12–13; dicip and, 62–63; export agricultural production and, 152–54, 166–67, 192, 194–95, 197– 98; foreign investment and, 116–17, 189; indígenas and, 35, 106; land expropriation and, 189–90, 194– 95, 199; Modernization law (Oct. 1993), 109, 167; opip on, 175; petroleum price fluctuations, 11, 94, 109, 112–14, 175; racism and, 106, 116– 17. See also Agrarian Development Law (May 1994); Environment; Hydrocarbon Law Moretecocha protest (1990), 66–67, 132, 233 n. 16 Mosaics: definitions of, 30, 33, 35, 36; Discovery of the Amazon River (mosaic by Guayasamin), 30–34, 36–37, 52, 105; exclusion of indígenas in, 34–35, 37; plurinationalism and, 10, 46, 106, 214–15, 219, 221–22; Tahuantinsuyu mosaic, 47, 91, 99, 213, 222, 230 n. 30; visualization of, 36–37 Movilizacíon por la Vida (June 1994): Agrarian Development Law (1994), 152–55, 176–77, 180, 244 nn. 6, 11; Banco de Fomente (bnf) takeover, 168–70, 175–76, 178; Catholic Church and, 177, 246 nn. 30, 32; indigenous-campesino alliances, 163–65, 167–70, 175–80; military response to, 151, 172–73; opposition to, 173–75; provincial authorities and, 178–80, 246 nn. 29, 30; roadblocks, 159–60, 165–66, 168–71, 181; shortages caused by, 171–72, 177–78, 182; state of emergency, 181–82, 209, 248 n. 31; vandalism during, 171–73; violence during,

index 287

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196; women in, 149–51, 161–62, 169, 174–75 Movimiento Pachakutic, 222–23 Multinational corporations: Hydrocarbon Law and, 85, 93–94, 102, 109, 237 n. 22; manufacturing methods, 225 nn. 5–6; Modernization law (Oct. 1993), 109, 167; monitoring of, 96–97, 235 n. 47; production-sharing contracts, 96, 97, 223; risk-service contracts, 96, 232 n. 9; Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 91–93, 97, 107–08, 117–18, 175, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62. See also arco; Demonstrations; Durán Ballén, Sixto, regime of; Petroecuador; Texaco Muratorio, Blanca, 230 n. 17

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Nacionalidad: democracy and, 126; Ecuadorian identity and, 7, 35; education and, 127; identity and, 145–46, 221; land rights, 5, 85, 145–46; Pastaza as nacionalidades indígenas, 5–7, 142; Quichua, 67; self-determination and, 85–86 Napo province, 44, 84, 170, 172–73 Nash, June, 227 n. 24 National Congress: Agrarian Development Law (1994), 152–55, 180, 244 nn. 6, 11; Ecuadorian Conservative Party (pce), 197, 244 n. 6; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109, 237 n. 22; media coverage of, 157; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 170; Presidential Palace meeting (1994), 184–85; Social Christian Party (psc), 155–56, 158, 244 nn. 6, 11–12, 245 nn. 13, 21; women’s vigil at, 156–57, 159 National Constituent Assembly, 214–15, 249 n. 1 National identity: Amazon region

288

index

and, 38–40; ancestral territory (territorio) as, 67, 145–46; blood as kinship in, 34–35, 206–07; citizenship and, 7, 107, 116, 124, 215, 217; in Discovery of the Amazon River (mosaic by Guayasamin), 34–37; indígenas exclusion from, 34–37; mapping of, 38–39, 51, 221; memory and, 51, 66, 77, 83; myth of national unity and, 47, 188, 206– 07, 219; plurinationality, 10, 27, 46, 106, 214–15, 217, 219, 221–22; pueblo and, 47–48, 61, 132–33, 145–46 Nebot, Jaime, 244 n. 11 Nelson, Diane, 226 n. 21, 247 n. 16 Neoliberalism: citizenship and, 7, 107, 116, 124, 215, 217; conduct of conduct (Foucault), 14, 30, 50, 56, 59, 86, 135; defined, 7; democracy and, 6, 8–9, 70–72, 125–26, 135–36, 157– 58, 184–85, 192, 199; deregulation and, 96–97, 223, 232 n. 9; Economist (magazine) and, 79–80, 114–15; export agricultural production, 152–54, 166–67, 194–95, 197–98; governmentality, 9, 14, 50, 56, 59, 183; government responsibility and, 9, 14–16, 59, 107, 116–17, 215–16; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109–10, 237 n. 22; Modernization law (Oct. 1993), 109, 167; privatization and, 96, 109–12, 237 n. 22; Adam Smith and, 12–13, 79; social responsibility and, 4, 71–73, 97–98, 101, 104–05, 107, 110, 143, 215–16; state retraction and corporate expansion, 7, 9, 14, 59, 86, 93, 110, 116, 154, 183, 215. See also Agrarian Development Law (May 1994); Agrarian reform; Debt reduction; Demonstrations; Environment; Maps and mapmaking; Oil in-

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dustry; Race and racism; Séptima Ronda de Licitación Ñucanchic Huasi, 172, 245 n. 26 Oberem, Udo, 229 n. 10, 230 n. 17 Office of Environmental Policy (U.S), 235 n. 47 Oil & Gas Journal, 69, 95, 108 Oil industry: Block 10, 4, 64, 65 (map 6), 128, 217, 223; Environmental Technical Committee, 119, 120, 137, 141–45; 15-year moratorium, 81, 98; fifth-round licensing, 232 n. 9; gifts for cooperation with, 8–9, 57, 64, 68–69, 78–80, 121; Huaorani, 43, 120–21, 125, 127, 231 n. 3, 242 nn. 7–8; indigenous labor for, 65, 69, 79–81, 100, 104, 235 n. 40; legal action against, 84, 104, 132; Maxus (Texas oil company), 121, 127, 231 n. 3; opec, 11, 44, 94–96; petroleum price fluctuations, 11, 94, 109, 112–14, 175; privatization of, 109–12, 117; production-sharing contracts, 96–97, 223; revenues, 94, 100, 109, 112–14, 175, 236 n. 5; risk-service contracts, 96, 232 n. 9; seismic explorations, 45, 64–66, 99–100, 218; Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 85, 91–93, 97, 107–08, 117–18, 175, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62; social justice and, 4, 71–73, 97–98, 101, 104–05, 110, 139–43, 238 n. 43; technologies of, 44, 54, 100, 104, 193; TransAndean pipeline, 70, 101, 110–11, 223, 226 n. 7, 240 n. 60; Yasuni National Park, 52, 55. See also arco; Bank loans; Crude oil; Demonstrations; Environment; Land rights; Movilizacíon por la Vida (1994); Texaco; Villano opec (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), 11, 44, 94–96

opip (Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza): Acuerdo Territorial, 46, 49, 171; aiepra, 131–32; Amazanga (research institute), 3; Amazon Coalition, 84, 235 n. 47; on arco’s gifts to communities, 61, 70–72, 80; attack on opip households, 120, 242 n. 7; authority of, 4, 60–61, 71–73, 83, 123, 132–33, 238 n. 43; on bilingual education programs, 127; Campaña Tungui, 79– 81, 235 n. 40; Canelos-Chuyayacu dispute, 73–76; Chuyayacu and, 69–70, 73; on colonization, 44– 45; dicip anti-opip violence in Villano, 77–78, 234 n. 39; disaffiliation from, 69–76; Environmental Technical Committee, 119–20, 137, 141–45; green rhetoric and, 52– 54, 230 n. 39, 231 n. 41; Huaorani conflict with, 120–21; Indigenous Front, 120, 128, 131–32, 137, 139; Initial Fund for alternative development in Pastaza, 139–42; international support for, 53–54, 69, 82–85, 144–45, 239 n. 47; Ministry of Mines occupation (24 Jan. 1994), 91, 97–98, 106–08, 117, 145, 236 n. 1, 238 n. 43; Moretecocha protest (1990), 66–67, 132, 233 n. 16; national identity and, 5, 6, 49, 145– 46; organization of, 229 n. 16; Oro Verde meeting (Jan. 1994), 118–22; Pastaza-Quito march (1992), 27– 28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 69, 77; Plano, Texas, meeting with arco (March 1994), 130–31, 139, 145, 243 n. 11; Quito meeting (Aug. 1993), 1–7, 119; Sarayacu and, 45, 64–66, 77, 81, 145; Séptima Ronda de Licitación, 85, 91–93, 97, 107–08, 117–18, 175, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62; standoff at Villano, 58–63, 235 n. 44; statement

index 289

7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 304 of 310

on Modernization, 175; on state occupation of Pastaza, 51–52, 230 n. 35; territory (territorio) v. land (terra), 48; Union Base meeting opip (continued ) (10 May 1994), 128–36, 141. See also Demonstrations; Movilización por la Vida (1994); Presidential Palace meeting (1994); Villamil, Héctor; Villano Orellana, Francisco, 32–34 Orellana province, 44 Oriente (Amazon region): arco Oriente, 71–72, 130–31, 232 n. 9, 243 n. 11; colonization in, 44; heavy crude oil in, 95, 237 nn. 11–12; Texaco oil exploration in, 4, 13, 44, 100–102; water contamination in, 44 Oro Verde (Jan. 1994), 118–22 Oxfam usa, 81–82, 130, 239 n. 48

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Pacari, Nina, 186, 187–89, 201, 208–09, 212, 240 n. 55 Pallares, Amalia, 227 n. 24 Pan-American highway roadblocks (1994), 49, 113, 149–51, 159–62, 177, 245 n. 21 Pandam, Rafael, 106, 133, 155–56, 240 n. 55 Pandanuque, 62, 68–70, 79–81, 126 Pastaza: aiepra, 131–32, 137, 145; arco-opip meetings in Plano, Texas (March 1994), 130–31, 139, 145, 243 n. 11; arco Oriente in, 130–31, 243 n. 11; Block 10, 4, 64–65 (map 6), 128, 217, 223; colonization in, 44–45; Initial Fund for alternative development in, 139– 42; as nacionalidades indígenas, 5–6; opip as representatives of, 72, 123; opip map of, 47–48; PastazaQuito march (1992), 27–28, 30,

290 index

40–43, 46–47, 69, 77; Sarayacu Accord (1989), 45, 65–66, 145; security zone, 51–52, 55; Séptima Ronda de Licitación and, 92; state occupation of, 51–52, 230 n. 35; women of, 211–12 Pastaza-Quito march (April 1992), 27–28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 52–53, 69, 77, 230 n. 39 Peluso, Nancy, 226 n. 20, 230 n. 37 Peru, 38, 51–52, 55, 62–63, 217 Petroecuador: arco-Indigenous Front meeting, 137; demonopolization of, 96, 109–12, 237 n. 22; Environmental Technical Committee, 119–20, 137, 141–45; Guayaquil Gulf explorations, 96; Paujil-1 takeover by Cofán Indians, 84, 108; sote, 110–12; Trans-Andean pipeline, 110–12, 223, 240 n. 60; Union Base meeting (May 1994), 128–36, 141 Phelan, John Leddy, 229 n. 10, 230 n. 17 Plurinationalism, 10, 46, 106, 214–15, 219, 221–22 Popular Democracy (dp), 244 n. 6 Portilla, Alberto, 192 Postcoloniality, contradictions of, 2, 35, 37, 116, 188, 215, 219 Presidential Palace meeting (1994): access to, 185, 208; agricultural productivity, 194–95, 197–98; agricultural technologies, 193–94; ancestral management, 190–95; on demographic pressure, 196– 99, 205; on historical exclusion of indígenas, 204–05, 209; purported indigenous subversiveness and, 205, 246 n. 31; on indigenous landuse strategies, 190–91; Nina Pacari at, 186, 187–89, 201, 208–09, 212, 240 n. 55; racism at, 35, 185, 202–06,

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247 n. 13; rhetoric of democracy at, 184–85 Privatization: Agrarian Development Law (1994), 152–55, 176–77, 244 nn. 6, 11; crisis of accountability and, 15, 93, 117, 167, 175, 215–16; export agricultural production and, 152–54, 166–68, 194–95, 197– 98; Hydrocarbon Law, 85, 93–94, 102, 109–10; of Petroecuador, 96, 109–12, 237 n. 22; Trans-Andean pipeline and, 110–12; of water rights, 154, 157. See also Séptima Ronda de Licitación Proyecto de Ley Agraria Integral (1992 [can]), 153–54, 244 n. 6 Pueblo, 47–48, 61, 132–33, 145–46 Puyo: Communa Canelos, 42, 73–74; Comuna San Jacinto, 42, 174; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 172–74; Tripetrol, 217–19, 249 nn. 7–8 Quichua, 58, 67–68, 186, 218; ancestral land, 48; confeniae and, 43; Huaorani conflict with, 125, 242 n. 7; Moretecocha protest (1990), 66–67, 132, 233 n. 16; Nacionalidad Quichua, 67; oil exploration and, 5; opip representation of, 123; Pastaza-Quito march (1992), 27– 28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 69, 77; rain forest, 67 Quito: Ministry of Energy and Mines, occupation of (Jan. 1994), 91, 97– 98, 106–08, 117, 145, 236 nn. 1–2, 238 n. 43; opip-arco-Ministry of Energy and Mines meeting (1993), 1–7, 119; Pastaza-Quito march (1992), 27–28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 69, 77; Santo Domingo Cathedral, occupation of (1990), 45–46

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Race and racism: access to due pro-

cess, 185, 208; Agrarian Development Law (May 1994), 201–05; in agrarian reform debates, 201– 04; blanco-mestizos, 201–03, 206; blood, 34–35, 206–07; bodies, 188, 201–06, 213, 247 n. 16; citizenship and, 7, 107, 116, 124, 215, 217; in Discovery of the Amazon River (mosaic by Guayasamin), 30–34, 36–37, 52, 105; ethnic identity and, 48, 201–05; indígenas as subversive and, 46, 49, 52, 205, 246 n. 31; indígenas images in the media, 106; modernization and, 106, 116–17; national identity and, 34–35, 48–49; otherness of indígenas, 34–37, 201–05; patria v. nation, 221; in Presidential Palace meeting (1994), 35, 185, 201–06, 247 n. 13 Raffles, Hugh, 228 n. 3 Rain forests, 13, 52–54, 67, 92 Reeves, Elizabeth, 229 n. 10, 234 n. 36 Rio de Janeiro Protocol (1942), 38 Rivero, Ramiro, 157 Road construction, 13, 72, 100 Robalino, César, 113 Roldos, Jaime, 11 Rose, Nikolas, 225 n. 2, 226 n. 18 Rouse, Roger, 116 Royal Dutch Shell, 62, 68, 125, 232 n. 6 Rubenstein, Steven, 227 n. 24, 226 n. 19 Ruiz, Lucy, 227 n. 24 Salesian priests, 42 Sánchez, Manuel, 163, 165, 167, 177 Santa Cecilia, 61, 68–70, 79, 126, 232 n. 5 Santos, Fernando, 241 n. 62 Sarayacu: Accord (May 1989), 45, 65– 66, 145; Assembly (1989), 64–66, 77, 81; Association of Sarayacu, 77;

index 291

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indígenas disruption of seismic work (1989), 64; Pronouncement (1989), 66; seismic explorations, 45, 64–66 Sawyer, Suzana, 20–22, 226 n. 7, 226 n. 19, 227 n. 24, 227 n. 25, 228 n. 1, 230 n. 38, 236 n. 48, 238 n. 27, 247 n. 14, 250 n. 28 Seismic explorations, 45, 64–66, 99–100, 218 Selverston-Scher, Melina, 226 n. 19, 227 n. 24, 229 n. 13, 230 n. 24 Séptima Ronda de Licitación: conaie on, 104–05, 117, 159; foreign investment incentives and, 97, 237 n. 21, 241 n. 62; indígenas opposition to, 91–93, 107–08, 117–18, 159, 175; land rights and, 85. See also Hydrocarbon Law Serfdom (huasipungo), 44 Seventh Generation Fund, 108, 239 n. 47 Shiwiar, 5, 27–28, 30, 40–43, 46–47, 77, 133 Shuar Federation, 42–43, 227 n. 24, 242 n. 8 Siona, 43 Slater, Candace, 228 n. 3 Smith, Adam, 12–13, 79 Smith, Carol, 247 n. 16, 249 nn. 12–13 Social Christian Party (psc), 155–56, 158, 244 nn. 6, 11–12, 245 nn. 13, 21 sote (Sistema de Oleoducto TranEcuatoriana). See Trans-Andean pipeline Spanish conquest: Gaspar de Carvajal, 31, 228 n. 3; Discovery of the Amazon River (mosaic by Guayasamin), 30–34, 36–37, 52, 105; indígenas and, 31–35, 229 n. 9; Francisco Orellana and, 32–34; Toma de Quito (12 Oct. 1997), 213, 222–23 Spivak, Gayatri, 33, 229 n. 6

292 index

Stephen, Lynn, 227 n. 24, 248 n. 24, 249 n. 16 Stoler, Ann, 105, 238 n. 41, 239 n. 45, 247 n. 16 Sucumbios province, 44, 84, 133, 218 Tahuantinsuyu mosaic, 47, 91, 99, 213, 222–23, 230 n. 30 Taylor, Anne Christine, 229 n. 10, 230 n. 17 Terratenientes (landed oligarchy): Agrarian Reform Law (1964) and, 189–90, 195–96, 203–04; Chamber of Agriculture, 49; ethnic essentialism, 201–05; indígenas as subversive, 46, 49, 205, 246 n. 31; land expropriation, 189–90, 194– 95, 199; land rights, 49, 182, 193, 194–96, 221; Presidential Palace meeting (1994): access to, 185, 208; agricultural productivity, 194–95, 197–98; agricultural technologies, 193–94; ancestral management, 190–95; on demographic pressure, 196–99, 205; on historical exclusion of indígenas, 204–05, 209; indígenas subversiveness and, 205, 246 n. 31; on indigenous land-use strategies, 190, 191; Nina Pacari and, 186, 187–89, 201, 208–09, 212, 240 n. 55; racism and, 35, 185, 201– 06, 247 n. 13; rhetoric of democracy and, 184–85 Texaco: Acción Ecológica and, 99; black rain, 101; environmental damage by, 4, 13, 84, 98–101, 113; first commercial petroleum reserve in Ecuador, 11, 94; graffiti protest against, 105; Lago Agrio, 99, 104, 218; legal actions against, 84, 104, 132; oil revenues, 100; oil-spill cleanup, 101–02; in the Oriente, 4, 13, 44, 100–102; seismic exploration, 99–100; toxic waste pits,

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101, 103–04; Trans-Andean pipeline, 101, 226 n. 7, 240 n. 60, 241 n. 62 Trans-Andean pipeline: expansion of, 70, 109, 111–12, 240 n. 60, 241 n. 62; oil spills from, 101; Petroecuador and, 110–12; Texaco and, 226 n. 7; Villano and, 70 Tripetrol, 217–19, 249 nn. 7–8 Trujillo, Jorge, 226 n. 16, 227 n. 24, 238 n. 26 Union Base meeting (10 May 1994), 128–36, 141 United Nations International Convention of the Rights of Indigenous People, 46 Uquillas, Jorge, 226 n. 16, 227 n. 24, 230 n. 18, 236 n. 5, 238 n. 26 usaid, 200

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Vargas, Edmundo, 132–33, 176, 185 Verdery, Katherine, 221, 250 n. 23 Villamil, Héctor: arco-opip meetings, 1–7, 119–20; corruption charges, 218–20; on dicip, 4, 126; Ministry of Mines occupation (24 Jan. 1994) and, 91, 97–98, 145; on modernization, 178–79; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 163; on oil company manipulations, 4, 57, 60, 120–21, 136; opip leadership and, 2–3, 123; on Villano, 57, 60, 120; World Bank meeting, 108–10 Villano: arco gifts to, 78–80; dicip anti-opip violence in, 77–78, 234 n. 39; divisive social engineering at, 126, 132; military in, 61–62; as new petroleum capital, 80; oil wells at, 61, 68–69, 71–72, 138; Pandanuque and, 62, 68–70, 79–81, 126; Quichua-Huaorani conflict in, 120– 21, 125, 242 n. 7; Santa Cecilia and, 61, 68–69, 126, 232 n. 5; standoff at,

58–63, 235 n. 44; Villano Assembly (Dec. 1993), 58–59, 77–78, 80–81, 86, 108, 120, 231 n. 4, 234 n. 39, 235 n. 43 Viteri, Leonardo: on agricultural self-sufficiency, 193–94; Amazanga (research institute), 3; on ancestral lands, 193–94; on arco divisiveness, 4–7, 76, 136; on Canelos-Chuyayacu dispute, 76; green rhetoric of, 53; Presidential Palace meeting (1994), 176, 185; on Texaco’s environmental contamination, 4; on unity of nacionalidades indígenas, 5–6; World Bank meeting, 108–10 Warren, Kay, 227 n. 24, 231 n. 40, 249 n. 16 Water contamination, 44, 78–81, 100, 103, 235 n. 40 Watts, Michael, 226 nn. 20–21, 250 n. 19 Whitten, Norman, 226 n. 19, 229 n. 10, 234 n. 36, 249 n. 14 Women: in Acción Ecológica, 242 n. 6; agrarian reform and, 157, 159, 166–67; Banco de Fomente (bnf), 162, 168; as community leaders, 77; on dicip, 78; Movilización por la Vida (1994), 149–51, 161– 62, 169, 174–75; National Congress vigil, 156–57, 159; opip and, 64, 66–68, 74; in Pastaza-Quito march (April 1992), 41–42; police action against, 156–57, 159; Puyo-Quito march (1997), 211–12, 216; sexual hierarchies and, 174–75, 188; sinchi huarmiguna, 211–12, 217–19; Toma de Quito (1997), 213, 222–23; Tripetrol protest, 217–19, 249 n. 8. See also Pacari, Nina World Bank: Agrarian Development Law and, 156, 167, 189; Bank Infor-

index 293

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mation Center and, 108, 114, 239 n. 48; Durán Ballén regime and, 112, 114–15; Ecuador foreign debt (1994), 109, 239 n. 54; on foreign investment in Ecuador, 95; Hydrocarbon Law (Nov. 1993), 93, 96, World Bank (continued ) 109–10; indígenas protests’ impact on, 112; Modernization law (Oct. 1993), 109; neoliberal economic

294

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policies and, 12; Operational Directive on Indigenous Peoples, 110; opip leaders’ meeting with (1994), 108–10, 114–15, 239 nn. 47–48; technical assistance loans to Ecuador, 109–10, 239 n. 54 Yasuni National Park, 52, 55 Zamosc, Leon, 226 n. 19, 227 n. 24, 230 n. 24 Zapara, 218 Zapatista uprising (1994), 157, 179, 201

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7046 Sawyer / CRUDE CHRONICLES / sheet 310 of 310

Suzana Sawyer is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sawyer, Suzana. Crude chronicles : indigenous politics, multinational oil, and neoliberalism in Ecuador / Suzana Sawyer. p. cm. — (American encounters/global interactions) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8223-3283-3 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 0-8223-3272-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Indians of South America—Ecuador—Economic conditions. 2. Indians of South America—Ecuador— Politics and government. 3. Petroleum industry and trade—Environmental aspects—Ecuador. 4. Indians of South America—Ecuador—Social conditions. 5. Ecuador—Economic policy. 6. Protest movements— Ecuador. I. Title. II. Series.

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f3721.3.e25s29 2004 2003025004

986.607'400498—dc22