Carmen Martínez Novo. Undoing Multiculturalism: Resource Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Ecuador. Pitt Latin American Series. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. 312 pp. $50.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8229-8808-3; $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4663-2.
Reviewed by Germán Vergara (Georgia Tech)
Published on H-Environment (September, 2022)
Commissioned by Daniella McCahey (Texas Tech University)
“Neoliberalism” and “pink tide” are two widely used categories among social science and humanities scholars focused on Latin America’s recent past and present. Typically, works will tackle only one of these forms of political economy. In addition, they tend to offer—in my experience—fairly abstract theorizing about their subject matter, especially regarding neoliberalism. Carmen Martínez Novo’s new book, Undoing Multiculturalism, not only examines both simultaneously—or, rather, the transition from one to the other—but also bases its analysis on two decades’ worth of ethnographic work and research. It is this combination of a comparative or, more precisely, diachronic approach and empirically based discussion that are at the heart of the book’s academic contribution (which is substantial). Martínez Novo uses this framework to examine the relationship between neoliberalism and Ecuador’s pink tide government under Rafael Correa (2007-17) and multiculturalism and indigenous rights.
She argues that while neoliberal governments extended only symbolic recognition of indigenous rights as a strategy to avoid or delay genuine redistribution of wealth among ethnic minorities, the retreat of the neoliberal state paradoxically gave indigenous groups more room to organize. The indigenous movement became a major player in Ecuadorian politics around this time. The pink tide government of Correa, on the contrary, undermined indigenous rights in order to break opposition to the extraction of natural resources, particularly oil and minerals, located in indigenous territory and used to fund social programs. Despite the Correa government’s lip service to multiculturalism and the indigenous movement, in practice indigenous communities bore the burden of extractive industries while accruing few to none of the benefits, which mostly went to Correa’s mestizo urban base.
The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 gives the nonspecialized reader a brief overview of Ecuadorian history and geography from colonial times to the present day. Chapter 2 examines the early days of Correa’s “Citizens’ Revolution” and its policies toward Ecuador’s indigenous population. In essence, while the country’s new constitution of 2008 recognized the multicultural and ethnic diversity of the nation, it emphasized antidiscrimination measures and affirmative action over actual indigenous political autonomy and control of natural resources. The administration also sidelined indigenous organizations and established the conditions for the emergence of what Martínez Novo calls the “nationalist-extractivist” project. Chapter 3 analyzes how the Correa administration used state tools, such as the census, to weaken the indigenous movement. By manipulating official statistics, the Correa administration not only undercounted the indigenous population but also inflated the impact of its anti-poverty programs in indigenous communities. Chapter 4 tells the story of the demise of bilingual education in Ecuador, viewed by the author as part and parcel of the Correa administration’s goal to undermine the indigenous movement by attacking a cornerstone of indigenous identity and culture. This chapter also includes a scathing critique of Correa’s economic model, touted as innovative by government officials but, according to the author, largely a copy of exhausted models, such as the old export-oriented economy and Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI). Chapter 5 turns to ethnographic research on anthropology and anthropologists themselves, including indigenous scholars. After providing a brief history of Ecuadorian anthropology until the 1970s, Martínez Novo examines how anthropologists navigated the neoliberal and pink tide eras. The former was characterized by meager academic funding, job precarity, and close collaboration between anthropologists and the indigenous movement. Under Correa, some scholars became government propagandists, while others self-censored to avoid government backlash. Funding increased along with government control of research agendas. A handful of indigenous scholars entered academia but remained on the margins. The next chapter (chapter 6) looks at the role played by Salesian missionaries during the neoliberal and pink tide eras. It suggests that the order was instrumental in the growth of the indigenous movement between 1980 and 2000 and in the resistance of neoliberal policies. After 2007, some higher-ups tried to remain on good terms with Correa (a Salesian layperson himself) and his government, while many missionaries on the ground openly opposed the administration’s extractivist policies. The final chapter characterizes the state under Correa as a “ventriloquist” that spoke on behalf of indigenous people and, when challenged, resorted to outright repression. The chapter also strongly criticizes self-described “decolonial” scholars who supported the Correa administration, which the author describes as perpetuating colonial legacies, such as paternalism toward indigenous people.
Anthropologists will be better positioned than me to assess the contributions of Undoing Multiculturalism to their discipline. From the perspective of environmental history (my own field), the book’s main value lies in demonstrating the close connection between the environment and political economy in contemporary Latin America. The location, availability, and distribution of natural resources deeply shaped government choices over the roughly forty-year period on which the book focuses. In turn, politics and economic systems profoundly transformed large swaths of Ecuadorian ecosystems, with long-term implications. Historians, sociologists, and political scientists interested in left-wing politics will also benefit from Martínez Novo’s critical analysis of pink tide extractivist policies. While few doubt the capacity of free-market, capitalist economies to change or degrade nature, Martínez Novo’s book reminds readers that socialist or capitalist but left-leaning governments are just as capable of causing such damage (one only has to think of the extremely poor environmental record of both the Soviet bloc and Cuba). Even today, in the age of global warming and the growing biodiversity crisis, large parts of the Latin American left continue to show considerable hostility toward environmentalism, indigenous or not. Mexico’s current administration is a good example of this. This may be also a legacy—which, unfortunately, Martínez Novo does not examine—of Promethean views among socialist intellectual traditions in Latin America, and not just a result of the reliance on the extraction of natural resources to fund social programs. We will have to wait to see whether the mix of progressivism and environmentalism of the newly elected Colombian left-wing government will be able to definitively break with this tradition.
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Citation:
Germán Vergara. Review of Martínez Novo, Carmen, Undoing Multiculturalism: Resource Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Ecuador.
H-Environment, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2022.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=57522
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