Suchergebnisse

AbstractMost studies of civil society in Latin America have focused on urban social and political actors. In the Ecuadorian Andes, however, civil society has crystallized around the institutions of indigenous rural community that developed historically in opposition to white-meztizo urban administrative centers. This article explores the evolution of indigenous communal institutions in relation to local government and national politics by focusing on the canton of Otavalo in northern Ecuador. It is argued here that over the past thirty years, Andean communities in Ecuador have played an important role in the national processes of democratization and decentralization.

In the age of corporate empires and free trade, little attention has been paid to those who live and work on the margins of the mainstream capitalist economies. In Ecuador, these workers constitute a vast sector of the national population. Some 60 percent of urban dwellers and probably a much larger proportion of rural families exist below the poverty line, eking their living out of family plots of land or micro-enterprises (World Bank, cited in Larrea and North n.d.). Many of these belong to indigenous ethnic groups and nationalities. What is the effect of capitalist expansion on these workers and the way in which they organize their economy? Are they destined for Marx's "dustbins of history," or have they been able to adapt to and even take advantage of capitalism without losing their historical specificity as noncapitalist producers?