Like many Latin American countries, Ecuador responded to COVID‐19 by restricting trade and travel, a decision that disrupted the prevailing model of regional trade integration. Among some analysts, observations have been made that the lockdown represents a new opportunity to revitalize rural livelihoods and smallholder agriculture. This paper evaluates these claims by exploring the impact of COVID‐19 on household food security and smallholder food production in Chimborazo, a highland province that is known for extremely high rates of poverty and the highest concentration of Kichwa‐speaking Indigenous people in Ecuador. Drawing upon original empirical research, it makes the case that the prospects for revitalizing smallholder production remain structurally constrained by a legacy of land inequality and failed agrarian reform. According to our findings, the only sectors that thrived during the lockdown were ones that served local markets. For those requiring significant shipping and storage, merchants and traders were able to drive down farmgate prices, squeezing local producers. At the same time, new government legislation made it easier for employers to terminate wage labourers, undermining a vital source of income and employment for low‐income households. Far from revitalizing smallholder agriculture, the pandemic appears to have further entrenched an economic model of supporting agribusiness at the expense of family farms and migrant labour.
Paying Indigenous communities to conserve land for carbon sequestration is a controversial way of tackling climate change. Critics argue that paying for ecological services (or 'PES') in the form of carbon offset programmes reduces land and social relations to an economic transaction that devalues Indigenous livelihoods and communities. At the same time, empirical studies have shown that Indigenous communities have accepted and even embraced the idea of being paid to conserve land for climate change mitigation. This paper explores this apparent contradiction by investigating the implementation of Programa Socio Bosque (PSB), a PES carbon sequestration programme in Ecuador. Drawing upon primary fieldwork in the highland province of Chimborazo, it makes the case that PES programmes need to be understood as form of state power that reconfigures and reinforces the ways in which Indigenous peoples engage with the state. Particularly important in this regard is the role of the state in reinforcing the agrarian conditions under which Indigenous communities use and interpret PES payments while at the same time reconfiguring new forms of land conservation. Empirically, the research reveals important complementarities between the goals of carbon sequestration PES programmes and Indigenous land-use practices. Methodologically, it highlights the importance of situating the study of PES programmes in a context of land struggles, community-state relations and agrarian change.
El ensayo analiza la memoria histórica de las comunidades indígenas sobre la intervención de la Misión Andina y los cambios sociales, identitarios y políticos que generó este organismo de cooperación en las décadas de los cincuenta y sesenta del siglo pasado. Asimismo, señala la emergencia de las mujeres indígenas en la vida comunitaria y organizativa como fruto del trabajo de la misión, a través de las misioneras Lauritas. El método que se aplica en esta reflexión es la etnografía, en base a las técnicas de entrevistas a profundidad a los miembros comunitarios, hombres y mujeres beneficiarios de los programas de desarrollo promovidos por la mencionada agencia de desarrollo. Palabras clave: cooperación, transformación social y mujeres indígenas. ABSTRACT The essay analyzes the historical memory of the indigenous communities about the intervention of the Andean Mission and the social, identity and political changes that this cooperation organism generated during the 50’s and 60’s in the last century. In the same way, it points out the emerging of Indigenous women in the community and organizational life as a result of the mission’s work, through Lauriat’s missioners. The method applied in this reflection is ethnography, using the technique of profound interviews to community members, men and women who benefited from the development programs promoted by the above mentioned development agency. Keywords: cooperation, social transformation, Indigenous womenRecibido: abril, 2013Aprobado: junio, 2013
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