Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries: Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context

Governing relations between people and things: Citizenship, territory, and the political economy of petroleum in Ecuador

Neoliberal reforms throughout Latin America are intended to promote development by opening up economies and encouraging market-oriented practices. These reforms have deeply affected the lives of indigenous peoples and their relationship with extralocal actors. Today, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, some indigenous peoples participate in oil-extraction negotiations, tourism, and intensive cattle ranching and agriculture as part of increased market integration. In the midst of these changes, questions about what ‘indigeneity’ means, both in integrating into and in resisting neoliberal reforms, are increasingly important for understanding social justice and environmental conservation issues in the Amazon region. The author explores how engagement with neoliberal practices and ways of knowing the world has opened up spaces for questioning fixed notions of indigenous identities and their role in representing, imagining, and developing indigenous alliances and rights claims in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

On Indigeneity, Change, and Representation in the Northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon:

This paper uncovers a fact that has not been well appreciated: tariffs in Latin America were far higher than anywhere else in the century before the Great Depression. This is a surprising fact given that this region has been said to have exploited globalization forces better than most during the pre-1914 belle epoque and for which the Great Depression has always been viewed as a critical policy turning point towards protection and de-linking from the world economy. This paper shows that the explanation cannot lie with output gains from protection, since, while such gains were present in Europe and its non-Latin offshoots, they were not present in Latin America. The paper then explores Latin American tariffs as a revenue source, as a protective device for special interests, and as the result of other political economy struggles. We conclude by asking whether the same pro-protection conditions exist today as those which existed more than a century ago.

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The roots of latin american protectionism: looking before the great depression

GLOBALIZATION AND GROWTH Some describe the first half of the nineteenth century as decades of lost Latin American economic growth while the region struggled with independence conflicts and their aftermath. Latin America’s growth performance in the second half of the twentieth century was also disappointing. By comparison, during the half century between the 1860s and the 1910s, Latin American economies performed fairly well: they kept pace with European growth rates, grew more than other peripheral regions, but grew less than the big winners of the period, the United States and those European countries catching up with Britain. The term “fairly well” may understate Latin American growth given that, after all, it took place during a century that created a truly huge economic gap between the core and the rest of the periphery. Table 1.1 documents that performance for real per capita income and purchasing-power parity – adjusted real wages of unskilled urban workers, both relative to Great Britain. Using the macroeconomist’s rhetoric, there was some Latin American catching up on the hegemonic industrial leader in Europe: per capita income in Latin America rose from 38 to 42 percent of Britain’s. Because Britain was losing that leadership to some powerful latecomers, perhaps a better comparison is with a more inclusive European industrial core, including Britain, France, and Germany: here Latin American performance is a little less impressive, with its relative position to that of the fast-growing core falling from 53 to 51 percent. Another relevant comparison is between Latin America and the source of its European immigrants, Iberia and Italy: here, Latin America improved its European immigrants, Iberia and Italy: here, Latin America improved its position from near-parity, with income per capita about 97 or 98 percent of Latin Europe, to a 5 percent advantage.

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Vittorio Corbo

Papers

Development Strategies and Policies in Latin America: A Historical Perspective