Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Ecuadorian ecologist and indigenous movements understand current socio-environmental conflicts and operate accordingly. It also analyzes the forms that the movements converge in confronting Correa's post-neoliberal regime.

Paper long abstract:

Conventionally, two strands have been identified inside the Ecuadorian indigenous movement agglutinated under CONAIE, the National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, and its affiliates. The first strand organizes the struggles around land as a mean of production, assumes the form of class struggle with the historical subject being the peasant (the rural proletarian). The second strand emerged with a re-born indigenous identity as the historical subject, thus demanding cultural, political and economic autonomy. The classist and culturalist strands respond to the historical particularities of the Amazon and the Sierra indigenous organizations, the strongest of the country.

Each tendency influences the ways in which the indigenous movement approaches the ecologist movement in Ecuador today. It appears that the ethnic strand articulates with the ecologist movement against oil and mining developments that threatens territories mostly in the southern Amazon and the southern Sierra. Meanwhile, the classist strand prevails in the Central and Northern Sierra and appears to have a milder anti-extractivism character, thus the convergence with ecologists is virtually non-existent.

The paper argues that unless the movements are able to identify a common force of exploitation of bodies, territories, and cultures which can act as a unifier force, there are few possibilities to confront Rafael Correa's regime, which in some areas has reach important levels of violence.

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