The great shout of the wolves’ mouth: Indigeneity, social change and historical narrative in the Ecuadorian Andes

This thesis is a historical ethnography of the parish of Simiatug, from the turn of the twentieth century to the present but focused mainly between 1970-2020. Simiatug is a rural parish located in the Bolívar province in the central highlands of Ecuador, where Kichwa indigenous communities, a major hacienda (Hacienda Talahua), and a white-mestizo town coexisted until the early 1980s. Relationships of exploitation and racial discrimination against indigenous people were predominant during this period. Legislation such as the agrarian reforms were not implemented locally, due to the unassailable power of the landowning family, the Cordovez, who were able to maintain their estate despite the law. This began to change in the 1970s, and social change accelerated during the 1980s. Indigenous peasants organised themselves to create a Peasant House for adult literacy, founded independent bilingual schools and a Kichwa radio frequency. They also demanded changes in market relations with mestizos, refusing the asymmetrical exchange systems that had been usual until then. In April 1981, hundreds of people marched to occupy the land of hacienda Talahua, pressing for the application of land reform legislation. In 1982, they were successful, and the hacienda’s land was granted to the indigenous organisation Fundación Runacunapac Yachana Huasi (FRY). FRY still owns several hundred hectares of communal land, on which they have since carried out many agricultural and educational projects. Each chapter of the thesis analyses a different aspect of the transformation of Simiatug, contrasting observations made during fieldwork with archival material, including documents from the Land Reform Archive and several unpublished video interviews with indigenous leaders filmed by anthropologists in the 1980s. Chapter One describes the hacienda through the landowners’ and peasants’ concepts of land, Chapter Two portrays the town and its market as a second backdrop for the struggles, Chapter Three describes the uprising in which indigenous peasants occupied Hacienda Talahua, Chapter Four looks at education and Chapter Five reflects on indigeneity as a form of historical consciousness. The main historical narrative woven through the thesis has been reconstructed from the perspective of the generation who participated in the occupation of the hacienda. This narrative is complemented by other interpretations made by the indigenous youth, mestizos, and landowners. Focusing on indigeneity, from the point of view of different actors - including not only the indigenous peasants’ perceptions of their identity but also the mestizos’ and the elites’ discourses - I trace how being indigenous in Simiatug is a complex, intricate and changing reality. I argue that the struggles for land, education and fair commerce, as a practice and lived experience of political mobilisation, shaped certain forms of historical and ethnic consciousness. This allows the consideration of historical consciousness not only as an abstract process, but as a multi-layered, embodied experience, with a strong relation to certain forms of indigeneity. Unravelling these histories of change and the pivotal events that made change possible from the perspective of my interlocutors, I present the complexities of being indigenous in Simiatug in the recent past and today and across different generations.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Rojas Rodriguez, Lucia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lazar, Sian

• agrarian reform
• Andes
• bilingual education
• Ecuador
• ethnohistory
• indigeneity
• Kichwas
• memory
• Simiatug
• social change
• social movements

Licence

• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.93913

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/346498