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Comunas and Indigenous Protest in Cayambe, Ecuador*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Marc Becker
Marc Becker*
Affiliation:
Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
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The 1930s was a period of slow and painful capitalist formation in the Ecuadorian highlands. Marginalized Indigenous peoples who lived in rural areas particularly felt this economic transition as modernizing elites utilized their control of state structures to extend their power to the remote corners of the republic. It was also a time of gains in social legislation, including new laws which dealt with the “Indian problem.” One of the primary examples of this type of legislation was the 1937 Ley de Comunas which extended legal recognition to Indian communities. In certain parts of the country such as in the central highland province of Chimborazo, Indigenous peoples quickly embraced this comuna structure and formed more comunas than any other area of the country (see Map 1). In similar situations in the neighboring countries of Colombia and Peru, Indian villages also used legal frameworks which the government imposed on their communities to petition for ethnic and economic demands.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , April 1999 , pp. 531 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1999

Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1997 meeting of the Midwest Association for Latin American Studies (MALAS) in St. Louis, Missouri, October 30-November 1,1997, and the 49th International Congress of Americanists, Quito, Ecuador, July 7-11,1997. Support for this research during the summer of 1997 in Ecuador was provided by the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Grant. The author would like to thank Licenciado Nogales for facilitating access to the comuna records at the Dirección Nacional de Desarrollo Campesino, Ministerio de Agricultura, and Cynthia Radding, Kim Clark, and Silvia Alverez for their comments on an earlier draft.

References

1 The use of a capital “I” in reference to Indigenous peoples in this document is intentional and represents a strong affirmation of ethnic identity on the part of the protagonists. Furthermore, the plural “peoples” indicates the broad diversity among Indigenous groups not only in Ecuador but throughout the Americas.

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3 See Becker, Marc, “Una Revolución Comunista Indígena: Rural Protest Movements in Cayambe, Ecuador,” Rethinking Marxism 10:4 (forthcoming Fall 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Prieto, Mercedes, “Haciendas estatales: un caso de ofensiva campesina: 1926–1948,” in Ecuador: cambios en el agro serraño, Murmis, Miguel et al, eds., (Quito: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO)—Centro de Planificación y Estudios Sociales (CEPLAES), 1980), pp. 101–30.Google Scholar

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16 The government understood that comunas and communities were two very different concepts. See Malo, , Memoria, anexo no. 5, p. 37.Google Scholar

17 Víctor, A. González, S., charts this history in Las tierras comunales en el Ecuador (Guayaquil, Ecuador: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Nucleo del Guayas, 1982).Google Scholar

18 In 1959, administration of the comunas passed to the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería (Ministry of Agriculture).

19 Bucheli, , Régimen, p. 18.Google Scholar

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21 Osvaldo Hurtado observed a high degree of correlation between the formation of comunas and areas of the country with a high density of Indigenous peoples. Hurtado, , Organización popular, p. 12.Google Scholar Zamosc, Leon revisits these same issues and questions in Estadística de las áreas de predominio étnico de la sierra ecuatoriana: Población rural, indicadores cantonales y organizaciones de base (Quito: Abya Yala, 1995).Google Scholar

22 Orbe, Alfredo Rubio, ed., Legislación indígenista del Ecuador, Ediciones especiales del Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, no. 17 (México: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1954), p. 96.Google Scholar The law, however, never established penalties for communities which failed to comply with this legislation. In 1940, the government made clear its intent to register new comunas on an ongoing basis. Malo, , Memoria, p. 82.Google Scholar

23 In comparison, during this same period Indians and peasants organized 156 comunas in the province of Chimborazo. Korovkin, , “Indigenous Peasant Struggles,” p. 29.Google Scholar

24 Cisneros, César Cisneros, Demografía y estadística sobre el indio ecuatoriano (Quito: Tall. Graf. Nacionales, 1948), p. 192;Google Scholar Report from the teniente político of Cangahua, “Comuna As-cázubi Alto,” Carpeta no. 55, Dirección Nacional de Desarrollo Campesino, Ministerio de Agricultura, Quito, Ecuador (hereafter DNDC/MAG).

25 “Reglamiento interno de la comuna Ascázubi Alto,” Carpeta no. 55, DNDC/MAG.

26 “Acto de formación de Eloy Alfaro de Yanahuaico,” Carpeta no. 54, DNDC/MAG. All of the following details on this comuna are from documents in this folder in this archive.

27 In 1925, the Ministry of Government and Social Welfare declared that alcoholism was one of the primary causes of the Indian degradation, and it was the government's responsibility to end this vice. See Moreno, Julio E., Informe del Ministerio de lo interior a la nación, 1926–1928 (Quito: Talleres Tipográficos Nacionales, 1928), p. 83;Google Scholar Albornoz, M.A., Informe del Ministerio de Gobierno y Previsión Social a la nación, 1930–1931 (Quito: Imprenta Nacional, 1931), p. 55.Google Scholar

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30 Guerrero, Edmundo Pérez, Colonización e inmigración en el Ecuador (Quito: Edit. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 1954), p. 151.Google Scholar

31 Letter from Juan Francisco Sumárraga to Director, Junta Central de Asistencia Pública, (JCAP), March 21,1946, in Correspondencia Recibida, Segundo Semestre, Segundo Parte, 1946, p. 1555, Archivo Nacional de Medicina del Museo Nacional de Medicina “Dr. Eduardo Estrella,” Fondo Junta Central de Asistencia Pública in Quito, Ecuador (hereafter JCAP); Letter from C. Anibal Maldonado, Administrador, to Jefe, Departmento de Haciendas, Asistencia Pública, October 10,1946 (Oficio no. 27), in Correspondencia Recibida, 1946, JCAP. For basic biographical data on Dolores Cacuango, see Peralta, Osvaldo Albornoz, Dolores Cacuango y las luchas indígenas de Cayambe (Guayaquil: Editorial Claridad S.A., 1975),Google Scholar and Rodas, Raquel, Crónica de un sueño: las escuelas indígenas de Dolores Cacuango: una experiencia de educación bilinge en Cayambe (Quito: Proyecto de Educación Bilinge Intercultural, MEC-GTZ, 1989).Google Scholar

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34 A photo in Vicuña, Elías Muñoz, Masas, luchas, solidaridad, Colección Movimiento Obrero Ecuatoriano; No. 8 (Guayaquil: Universidad de Guayaquil, 1985), p. 91,Google Scholar of a Central Committee meeting in Quito, July 26–28, 1947, shows seventeen people, of which Cacuango is one of three women and the only Indigenous person.

35 Cisneros, , Demografía, p. 192.Google Scholar Later, Paccha Pucará divided into two comunas with one taking the name “Paccha” and the other “Pucará.”

36 Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos (IEE), Políticas estatales y organización popular (Quito: Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos, 1985), pp. 124–25.

37 Salomon notes that early informers in northern Ecuador simply refused to use Inka terms like “ayllu.” See Salomon, Frank, Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: The Political Economy of North Andean Chiefdoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 14, 122 and 173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similarly, Powers recognizes the foreign origins of this concept but utilizes the term because of the success of the Spanish colonial power in imposing the label. Powers, Karen Vieira, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), p. 12.Google Scholar Caillavet cautions against the inappropriateness of using foreign terminology to understand a local reality. Caillavet, Chantal, “La adaptación de la dominación incaica a las sociedades autóctonas de la frontera septentrional del Imperio: (Territorio Otavalo-Ecuador),” Revista Andina (Cuzco) 3:2 (December 1985), 419.Google Scholar

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39 See chapter two (“Las comunas indígenas”) in Peñaherrera de Costales, Piedad and Samaniego, Alfredo Costales, “Comunas jurídicamente organizadas,” Llacta (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Antropología y Geografía (IEAG), Quito) 15 (November 1962), pp. 48–66.Google Scholar

40 Iturralde, Diego A., Guamote: campesinos y comunas, Colección Pendoneros, No. 28 (Otavalo, Ecuador: Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología, 1980), p. 113.Google Scholar See Art. 18 of Bolívar, Simón, “Establecimiento de la contribución personal de indígenas,” in Nueva Historia del Ecuador, Volumen 15: Documentos de la historia del Ecuador, ed. Mora, Enrique Ayala (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1995), p. 116.Google Scholar

41 Sáenz, Moisés, Sobre el indio ecuatoriano y su incorporación al medio nacional (México: Publicaciones de la Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1933), pp. 130–31.Google Scholar

42 Guerrero, Andrés, Curagas y tenientes políticos: La ley de la costumbre y la ley del Estado (Otavalo 1830–1875) (Quito: Editorial El Conejo, 1990).Google Scholar

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45 Malo, , Memoria, anexo no. 5, p. 37–38,Google Scholar and Marín, Carlos Andrade, Informe que el Ministro de Previsión Social y Trabajo presenta a la nación, 1941 (Quito: Talleres Gráficos de Educación, 1941), p. 103.Google Scholar

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48 IEE, Políticas estatales, p. 135.

49 Letter from Pedro Miranda to the Ministerio de Previsión Social, Trabajo, y Comunas, 29 March 1971, Carpeta no. 144 (Miranda La Libertad), DNDC/MAG. For other examples of Indian activists who used the comuna structure to advance their political goals, see A. Kim Clark, “New Strategies of Resistance in the Ecuadorian Highlands: Peasant Actions and Discourse, 1930-1950,” unpublished manuscript

50 Despite the original limitations of the law, Roberto Santana maintains that recently Indians have transformed it from legislation “a los” Indians to “de los” Indians. Santana, , ¿Ciudadanos en la etnicidad?, pp. 114–15.Google Scholar