Racial ideologies and the quest for national development: Debating the agrarian problem in Ecuador (1930-50)

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 373-393

  Clark, A Kim ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000953341     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X98005082     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. For example from Latin America, see the various articles collected in Richard Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990); Nancy Leys Stepan, 'The Hour of Eugenics': Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1991); Eduardo A. Zimmerman, 'Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 72, no. 1 (1992), pp. 23-46.
2. For example from Latin America, see the various articles collected in Richard Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990); Nancy Leys Stepan, 'The Hour of Eugenics': Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1991); Eduardo A. Zimmerman, 'Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 72, no. 1 (1992), pp. 23-46.
3. For example from Latin America, see the various articles collected in Richard Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990); Nancy Leys Stepan, 'The Hour of Eugenics': Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1991); Eduardo A. Zimmerman, 'Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 72, no. 1 (1992), pp. 23-46.
4. See for instance, Jeffrey L. Gould, 'Vana Ilusión!: The Highlands Indians and the Myth of Nicaragua Mestiza, 1880-1925', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 3 (1993), pp. 393-429; Alan Knight, 'Racism Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940', in Richard Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990), pp. 71-113; Frank Safford, 'Race, Integration, and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (1991). pp. 1-33.
5. See for instance, Jeffrey L. Gould, 'Vana Ilusión!: The Highlands Indians and the Myth of Nicaragua Mestiza, 1880-1925', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 3 (1993), pp. 393-429; Alan Knight, 'Racism Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940', in Richard Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990), pp. 71-113; Frank Safford, 'Race, Integration, and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (1991). pp. 1-33.
6. See for instance, Jeffrey L. Gould, 'Vana Ilusión!: The Highlands Indians and the Myth of Nicaragua Mestiza, 1880-1925', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 3 (1993), pp. 393-429; Alan Knight, 'Racism Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940', in Richard Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990), pp. 71-113; Frank Safford, 'Race, Integration, and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (1991). pp. 1-33.
7. A. Kim Clark, 'The Redemptive Work': Railway and Nation in Ecuador, 1985-1930 (Wilmington, 1998), chapter four; for additional examples, see idem, 'Indians, the State and Law: Public Works and the Struggle to Control Labour in Liberal Ecuador', Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 7, no. 1 (1994), pp. 49-72.
8. A. Kim Clark, 'The Redemptive Work': Railway and Nation in Ecuador, 1985-1930 (Wilmington, 1998), chapter four; for additional examples, see idem, 'Indians, the State and Law: Public Works and the Struggle to Control Labour in Liberal Ecuador', Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 7, no. 1 (1994), pp. 49-72.
9. This does not mean that Ecuadorean liberals saw Indians as full and equal members of the nation, but rather that they did not unleash the kind of assaults on Indian identity, land and labour, that occurred in places like Guatemala.
10. This contrasts with other countries where Indians were a minority, and where images of a mestizo nation could thus erase public perceptions of the Indian presence in a different way (for examples from Nicaragua, see Gould, 'Vana Ilusión!' and idem, 'Gender, Politics and the Triumph of Mestizaje in Early Twentieth Century Nicaragua', Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 2, no. 1 [1996], pp. 4-33).
11. This contrasts with other countries where Indians were a minority, and where images of a mestizo nation could thus erase public perceptions of the Indian presence in a different way (for examples from Nicaragua, see Gould, 'Vana Ilusión!' and idem, 'Gender, Politics and the Triumph of Mestizaje in Early Twentieth Century Nicaragua', Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 2, no. 1 [1996], pp. 4-33).
12. Here racial ideologies include not only models that rely on biological, phenotypical or genetic explanations, but in general those that suggest that social groups have innate, ascribed characteristics 'determined at birth, and subject only to long, slow processes of change' (Knight, 'Racism, Revolution and Iadigenismo', p. 92).
13. For an analysis of current racism in Ecuador, see Carlos de la Torre, 'Racismo y vida cotidiana', Ecuador Debate 38 (1996), pp. 72-87. For an example of racial tensions among urban workers during the era under study, see the discussion of a strike by white-mestizo women textile workers in Riobamba when indigenous women were introduced into the factory labour force, in Hernán Ibarra, Indios y cholos: Qrignes de la clase trabajadora ecuatoriana (Quito, 1992).
14. For an analysis of current racism in Ecuador, see Carlos de la Torre, 'Racismo y vida cotidiana', Ecuador Debate 38 (1996), pp. 72-87. For an example of racial tensions among urban workers during the era under study, see the discussion of a strike by white-mestizo women textile workers in Riobamba when indigenous women were introduced into the factory labour force, in Hernán Ibarra, Indios y cholos: Qrignes de la clase trabajadora ecuatoriana (Quito, 1992).
15. Juan Maiguashca, 'Los sectores subalternos en los años 30 y el aparecimiento del velasquismo', in Las crisis en el Ecuador: las treinta y ochenta (Quito, 1991), pp. 79-94; Juan Maiguashca and Liisa North, 'Origenes y significado del velasquismo: Lucha de clases y participación politica en el Ecuador, 1920-1972', in Rafael Quintero (ed.), La euestión regional y el poder (Quito, 1991), pp. 89-159; Carlos Marchán Romero, 'La crisis de los años treinta: diferenciación social de sus efectos económicos', in Las crisis en el Ecuador, pp. 31-60.
16. Juan Maiguashca, 'Los sectores subalternos en los años 30 y el aparecimiento del velasquismo', in Las crisis en el Ecuador: las treinta y ochenta (Quito, 1991), pp. 79-94; Juan Maiguashca and Liisa North, 'Origenes y significado del velasquismo: Lucha de clases y participación politica en el Ecuador, 1920-1972', in Rafael Quintero (ed.), La euestión regional y el poder (Quito, 1991), pp. 89-159; Carlos Marchán Romero, 'La crisis de los años treinta: diferenciación social de sus efectos económicos', in Las crisis en el Ecuador, pp. 31-60.
17. Juan Maiguashca, 'Los sectores subalternos en los años 30 y el aparecimiento del velasquismo', in Las crisis en el Ecuador: las treinta y ochenta (Quito, 1991), pp. 79-94; Juan Maiguashca and Liisa North, 'Origenes y significado del velasquismo: Lucha de clases y participación politica en el Ecuador, 1920-1972', in Rafael Quintero (ed.), La euestión regional y el poder (Quito, 1991), pp. 89-159; Carlos Marchán Romero, 'La crisis de los años treinta: diferenciación social de sus efectos económicos', in Las crisis en el Ecuador, pp. 31-60.
18. One methodological advantage of looking at these estates is that since they were owned by the government, all parties involved in agrarian conflicts constantly explained their positions and justified their actions to the Junta Central de Asistencia Pública. As a result, there is extensive documentary evidence produced by lease-holders and by peasants, as well as reports by the commissions sent out from Quito to investigate problems. For additional analysis of conflicts in the Cayambe area north of Quito, see Marc Becker, 'Peasant and Indian Organizations in Cayambe, Ecuador (1925-1944)', Rethinking Marxism (forthcoming); Mercedes Prieto, 'Haciendas estatales: Un caso de ofensiva campesina, 1926-1948', in Ecuador: Cambios en el Agro Serrano (Quito, 1980), pp. 101-30.
19. One methodological advantage of looking at these estates is that since they were owned by the government, all parties involved in agrarian conflicts constantly explained their positions and justified their actions to the Junta Central de Asistencia Pública. As a result, there is extensive documentary evidence produced by lease-holders and by peasants, as well as reports by the commissions sent out from Quito to investigate problems. For additional analysis of conflicts in the Cayambe area north of Quito, see Marc Becker, 'Peasant and Indian Organizations in Cayambe, Ecuador (1925-1944)', Rethinking Marxism (forthcoming); Mercedes Prieto, 'Haciendas estatales: Un caso de ofensiva campesina, 1926-1948', in Ecuador: Cambios en el Agro Serrano (Quito, 1980), pp. 101-30.
20. Maiguashca, 'Los sectores subalternes'.
21. See Teodoro Crespo, Bases prácticas de política inmigratoria y colonizatión en el Ecuador (Quito, 1958); Edmundo Pérez Guerrero, Colonización e inmigración en el Ecuador (Quito, 1954); Emilio Uzcategui, 'Las actividades permitidas a los inmigrantes', Vez National (Quito), 2 Aug. 1939.
22. See Teodoro Crespo, Bases prácticas de política inmigratoria y colonizatión en el Ecuador (Quito, 1958); Edmundo Pérez Guerrero, Colonización e inmigración en el Ecuador (Quito, 1954); Emilio Uzcategui, 'Las actividades permitidas a los inmigrantes', Vez National (Quito), 2 Aug. 1939.
23. See Teodoro Crespo, Bases prácticas de política inmigratoria y colonizatión en el Ecuador (Quito, 1958); Edmundo Pérez Guerrero, Colonización e inmigración en el Ecuador (Quito, 1954); Emilio Uzcategui, 'Las actividades permitidas a los inmigrantes', Vez National (Quito), 2 Aug. 1939.
24. Clark, 'Indians, the State and Law'.
25. Andrés Guerrero, 'The Construction of a Ventriloquist's Image: Liberal Discourse and the "Miserable Indian Race" in Late 19th Century Ecuador', Journal of Latin American Studies, vol 29 Part 3 October 1997, pp. 555-90.
26. Ecuadorean socialists and communists shared many assumptions with the indigenistas, who focused on denouncing the exploitation of Indians, and who suggested that due to that exploitation, Indians were not themselves capable of defending their rights. They differed, however, in that the indigenistas assumed that Indians' problems would be solved by full national incorporation, while socialists and communists assumed that indigenous peasants faced similar problems as urban workers, and should adopt the same models of organisation. Once all workers united, then society would eventually be transformed through their revolutionary actions.
27. Petition transcribed in Subsecretario de Ministerio de Prevision Social y Trabajo to the Director de la Junta Central de Asistencia Pública, Quito, 29 Jan. 1943, AAP/MNM Libro de Comunicaciones Recibidas (hereafter LCR) 1943-I h. 679-81.
28. Petition from Ventura Chaluisa and José Chaluisa to the Ministro de Previsión Social, Quito, 22 May 1939, AAP/MNM LCR 1939-II h. 816-7.
29. Petition from the Indians of Pucará to the Ministro de Previsión Social, Quito, 2 Feb. 1943, AAP/MNM LCR 1943-I h. 707.
30. A small circle of lawyers represented indigenous campesinos from state-owned haciendas throughout the north-central highlands, including Gregorio Cordero León, a member of the first Central Executive Committee of the Socialist Party when it was formed in 1926.
31. This alliance with workers had its limits, since workers continued to demonstrate paternalistic attitudes towards Indians, as Guillermo Bustos has shown in his analysis of the 1938 Workers' Congress in Ambato ('La identidad "clase obrera" a revision: una lectura sobre las representaciones del Congreso Obrero de Ambato de 1938', Procesos, no. 2 [1992], pp. 73-104). There were also outright conflicts between mestizo workers and Indians when the latter seemed to be invading the former's economic space, as Ibarra has shown (in Indios y Cholos). Perhaps there was most room for constructive alliances when each group kept to its own socially-designated space: mestizo workers in urban areas and indigenous campesinos in the countryside. The fact that the aim of campesino strikes tended to be precisely to secure the necessary conditions to be able to stay in the countryside and avoid having to migrate to the cities may have made this a particularly likely site of peasant-worker cooperation.
32. Flyer from the Comité Sindical de Santo Domingo, Cayambe, 1 June 1934, AAP/MNM LCR 1934-I h. 789-90.
33. See Andrés Guerrero, 'La desintegración de la administratión étnica en el Ecuador', in CEDIME (éd.), Sismo étnico en el Ecuador (Quito, 1993), pp. 91-112; Jorge León Trujillo, 'Las organizaciones indigenas: Igualdad y diferencia', in Iadios: Una reflexión sobre el levantamiento indigena de 1990 (Quito, 1991), pp. 373-418.
34. See Andrés Guerrero, 'La desintegración de la administratión étnica en el Ecuador', in CEDIME (éd.), Sismo étnico en el Ecuador (Quito, 1993), pp. 91-112; Jorge León Trujillo, 'Las organizaciones indigenas: Igualdad y diferencia', in Iadios: Una reflexión sobre el levantamiento indigena de 1990 (Quito, 1991), pp. 373-418.
35. Petition transcribed in Subsecretario de Previsión Social to the Director de la Junta Central de Asistencia Pública, Quito, 20 Nov. 1942, AAP/MNM LCR 1942-II h. 759-61.
36. Petition from José Trinidad Chaluisa, Ventura Chaluisa, Nicolás Chaluisa, Mariano Pallo and Francisco Ante to the Ministro de Previsión Social, Quito, Dec. 1942, AAP/MNM LCR 1942-II h. 786-7.
37. For a discussion of this approach in a subsequent period, see the analysis in Ronald Stutzman, 'El Mestizaje: An All-Inclusive Ideology of Exclusion', in Norman E. Whitten Jr. (ed.), Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador (Urbana, 1981), pp. 45-94.
38. I thank Marc Becker for pointing out to me that coastal peasants were also involved in this project.
39. Ministerio de Gobierno y Previsión Social, Informe del Ministro de Gobiernoy Previsión Social, M.A. Albornoz, a la Nación (Quito, 1931), p. 6.
40. Raquel Rodas, Crónica de un Sueño: Las Escuelas Indigenas de Dolores Cocuango (Quito, 1989).
41. Dolores Cacuango, one of the leaders of the FEI, was an illiterate campesina from Cayambe and the principal promoter of bilingual schools in that area's haciendas. Illiteracy did not prevent her from informing herself fully of indigenous rights and making aggressive claims before the government and local landowners. In fact, she memorised the full 480 articles of the 1938 Labour Code in order to be able to challenge political and police authorities effectively (see Rodas, Crónica de un Sueño).
42. Petition transcribed in Subsecretario del Ministerio de Previsión Social y Trabajo to the Director de la Junta Central de Asistencia Pública, Quito, 29 Jan. 1943, AAP/MNM LCR 1943-I h. 679-81.
43. Petition from the peons of Ichubamba to the Director de la Junta Central de Asistencia Pública, Riobamba, no date (early 1934), AAP/MNM LCR 1934-I.
44. 'Origen de la organización que se piensa formar', AAP/MNM LCR 1945-II h. 502-7.
45. Report by Ing. G. Noroña and Ing. A. Suárez Dávila to the Director de la Junta Central de Asistencia Pública, Quito, 27 April 1945, AAP/MNM LCR 1945-I h. 946-7.
46. Enrique Coloma Silva, El problema inmigratorio en el Ecuador (Quito, 1934), p. 6.
47. Pérez Guerrero, Colonización e inmigración, p. 8.
48. José R. Chiriboga V., 'Como debe entenderse la inmigración', Eslabón, no. 2 (1941), p. 25 (emphasis added).
49. Pétez Guerrero, Colonización e inmigración, p. 9 (emphasis added).
50. For a discussion of the problems encountered with the so-called Ayora Colony, see Rafael Alvarado, 'El problema de la colonización en el Ecuador', Revista de la Sociedad Juridico-Literaria, no. 133 (1953), pp. 115-30.
51. Ministerio de Prevision Social, Memoria de Enrique Malo, Ministro de Previsión Social, Mayo de 1939 a Marzo de 1940 (Quito, 1940), p. 100.
52. 'Presumably' because in the Amazon region 'vacant' lands were often integral parts of indigenous foraging territories, or areas of extensive cultivation temporarily left fallow.
53. The frontier thesis, or the proposal that the agricultural settlement of the American West was part of the social basis for the US democratic tradition, is however challenged by the facts that this also involved the 'pacification' (relocation and sometimes extermination) of the American Indian and a war of territorial expansion against Mexico.
54. Jorge Trujillo, La hacienda serrana, 1900-1930 (Quito, 1986), p. 124.
55. The colonisation of the area around Santo Domingo de los Colorados in the 1940s formed the spearhead of banana cultivation in the zone, where much of the banana boom of the 1950s was based. In the 1940s and 1950s, both land distribution and credit policies in this region favoured medium producers.
56. Ministerio de Previsión Social y Trabajo, Informe que el Ministro de Previsión Social y Trabajo, Dr. Carlos Andrade Marín, presenta a la Natión (Quito, 1941), p. 94.
57. Víctor Gabriel Garcés, 'Inmigración e indigenismo', América Indígena, vol. 14, no. 4 (1954), pp. 289-302.
58. Many such documents were encountered in the archives dealing with the haciendas of Asistencia Pública. In addition, the only published source found from the period that acknowledged that indigenous campesinos were indeed applying for land, and outlined the special difficulties entailed for them, was written by someone who was working for the Ministry of Colonisation at the time and was thus well aware of indigenous interest in claiming vacant lands (see Pérez Guerrero, Colonización e inmigración).
59. Victor Gabriel Garcés, 'Inmigración e indigenismo', América Indígene, vol. 4, no. 2 (1944), pp. 99-100.
60. A. Kim Clark, 'New Strategies of Resistance in the Ecuadorean Highlands: Peasant Actions and Discourse, 1930-1950', unpublished manuscript.
61. Galo Ramón, El Regreso de los Runas: La potencialididad del proyecto iadio en el Ecuador contemporáneo (Quito, 1993).
62. This argument is made more thoroughly in Kim Clark, 'Raza, cultura y mestizaje : la construcción estadística de la nación ecuatoriana (1930-1950)', paper presented at the 49th Congress of Americanists in Quito, July 1997.
63. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977), p. 110.