Hugo Cerón-Anaya, Privilege at Play: Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. xii + 217

Abstract

portions of the central highlands and southern Amazon to mining, despite protests from local Shuar communities (some of whom were displaced to make way for two large-scale mines).Reality of Dreams is a tour de force, and an essential text for anyone trying to make sense of Correa's Ecuador (I recommend reading it alongside Carmen Martínez Novo's outstanding Undoing Multiculturalism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)). Though it is grounded in critical theoryranging from Marx and Foucault to Freud and Lacanit is empirically rich and highly readable, with lively, engaging prose. Ultimately, what emerges from Reality of Dreams is a picture of the Correa administration as hubristic, performative and incompetent. In the flowery discourse of the Citizens' Revolution, the 'socialism of buen vivir' was a utopia that 'allows us to walk … in an emancipatory direction toward the transformation of existing social relations', the 'egalitarian redistribution of resources', and the 'inclusive participation of the indigenous peoples' (quoted on pp. 3-4). But as one critic wryly commented, 'Lo que digas es fantástico, y lo que hagas es una cagada' ('What you say is fantastic, and what you do is a piece of shit', quoted on p. 173).