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The Values of Water: Development Cultures and Indigenous Cultures in Highland Ecuador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Robert Andolina
Robert Andolina*
Affiliation:
Seattle University
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Abstract

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This article examines the symbolic transformations and material consequences of an irrigation development project designed to empower indigenous peoples in Cañar, Ecuador. It argues that the project deepened market society and reproduced colonialism more than it empowered indigenous peoples, but indigenous people found ways to appropriate project resources and embed the market in alternative principles of social life. Market society deepened through the neoliberal hegemony of international development policy and through the indigenous movement's incorporation of market rationalities. Colonialism recurred through hierarchical representations of knowledge and skills reminiscent of long-standing stereotypes of natives, which local indigenous leaders internalized. Both processes unfolded through constructions of value and acts of evaluation. The gap between the market ideal communicated in the irrigation development project and the conditions of actually existing markets that local indigenous people engaged after project closure limited the concrete empowerment of indigenous peoples.

Resumo

Resumo

El presente artículo examina las transformaciones simbólicas y consecuencias materiales que resultaron de un proyecto de desarrollo en riego, concebido para empoderar a pueblos indígenas en la provincia de Cañar, Ecuador. El autor demuestra que el proyecto de desarrollo profundizó una sociedad de mercado y reprodujo la colonialidad, más que mejorar a los indígenas. No obstante, la organización indígena beneficiaria logró apropiarse de los recursos del proyecto e introdujo el mercado simbólicamente entre principios sociales alternativos. La sociedad de mercado se profundizó a causa de la hegemonía neoliberal en las políticas de desarrollo y a través de la incorporación de racionalidades mercantiles por la organización indígena local. La colonialidad se manifestó por medio de representaciones jerárquicas de conocimientos y capacidades, que reflejan viejos estereotipos de los indígenas, todavía internalizados por dirigentes actuales. Ambos procesos se efectuaron en construcciones del valor y actos de evaluación. Un empoderamiento concreto de los indígenas locales fue limitado por la brecha entre el ideal del mercado señalado durante el transcurso del proyecto de desarrollo, y las condiciones de los mercados actuales encontrados por los indígenas de la zona después del cierre del proyecto.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , 2012 , pp. 3 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

Some material in this article appeared previously in Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie, and Sarah A. Radcliffe, Indigenous Development in the Andes: Culture, Power and Transnationalism (2009, Duke University Press).

Part of the research for this article was carried out within the “Transnational Indigenous Communities in Ecuador and Bolivia” research project sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom (Nina Laurie and Sarah Radcliffe, principal investigators).

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