Food sovereignty in Ecuador: peasant struggles and the challenge of institutionalization

Abstract

The Ecuadorian Constitution (2008) declared food sovereignty a strategic goal and a government obligation, embracing many of the proposals put forth since the late 1990s by Ecuadorian federations linked to Vía Campesina. The issue of food sovereignty has expanded from the inner circles of peasant organizations to the wider context of the whole Ecuadorian society. The paper provides an overview of this process, describing the collective actions that made it possible. Moreover, it attempts to explain the reasons why the ‘Agrarian Revolution’ is currently evaluated as weak, and the motivations for a gap between constitutional mandates and the ongoing official policies.

Keywords:

• Ecuador
• peasant movement
• food sovereignty

The author is grateful for the helpful comments given by the anonymous reviewers at the JPS. Moreover, she is thankful to the leaders of the Ecuadorian organizations linked to Vía Campesina for their cooperation, and to Annamaria Vitale for supervising ongoing research and for all her suggestions.

Notes

¹The paper is based on preliminary results of field research conducted between 2012 and 2013.

²In this paper formal constitution refers to the written norm, while material constitution to the concrete conditions determined by relations of power.

³A focus centred only on the event (Constituent Assembly) would reduce the analysis to the collective action at that circumscribed time and to the ability of institutions to embrace the movement's agenda, omitting the role played by social actors in creating the conditions necessary for the implementation of the constituent process.

⁴In 2010, with an average of 9 percent for the period 2000–2010.

⁵In this framework, it is key to add that peasants compete in unequal conditions with agro-industry (e.g. in terms of access to land, mechanization, services or infrastructures).

⁶ El Niño (1982–1983, 1997–1998), an earthquake (1987) and volcanic eruptions (1999).

⁷Between 1971 and 1981, foreign debt increased by 22 times. The payment of debt services increased progressively from 18 percent in 1980 to more than 50 percent of the national budget in 2000; meanwhile, social spending fell from 50 percent to 15 percent (Acosta 2006).

⁸This movement entered the political-electoral arena, marking the transition from an agenda based essentially on indigenous issues to a ‘national project’ to gather the demands of all the excluded in the country and to promote new radical forms of democracy and state (Larrea Maldonado 2004).

⁹While some important social rights (e.g. women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) and collective rights of indigenous people were recognized.

¹⁰GDP fell 31 percent between 1998 and 2000; in 1999, devaluation reached 216 percent and inflation 52 percent. In 2000, the incidence of poverty doubled compared to 1995 (reaching 71 percent) as did extreme poverty (35 percent) (Acosta 2006).

¹¹Ospina (2009) presents a literature overview of these factors, suggesting the addition of the inability to manage the differences inside the indigenous movement, which prevented it from acquiring the political strength necessary to promote more structural changes in Ecuador.

¹²Ramírez Gallegos (2010) refers to an ‘arena for change’ that has been favoured by a ‘mega bloc’ in the Constituent Assembly, a big and heterogeneous coalition. Moreover, Rafael Correa, as part of this coalition, was interested in pursuing an anti-neoliberal discourse as well as an opposition to the traditional party system.This favourable political conjuncture has permitted a significant dialogue and cooperation between social organizations and the democratic representative institutions. However, several contrasts have appeared within this ‘mega bloc’, especially on development model and environmental issues, plurinationality of the state and sexual and reproductive rights.

¹³After the break-up, the CNC called itself CNC-Eloy Alfaro.

¹⁴Since 2010, also FEI.

¹⁵This discontinuity of both networking and collective action, which increased after the Constituent Assembly phase, probably contributes to the future weakness in terms of implementation of food sovereignty principles, as we summarize in the last section of this paper.

¹⁶Affiliated to CONAIE, Ecuarunari is not a member of Vía Campesina (unlike the other federations).

¹⁷During Mesa Agraria's existence, the federations also collaborated with other networks engaged in similar issues (e.g. Foro de Recursos Hídricos, Colectivo Agrario [from 2007] or roundtables promoted by NGOs [such as Centro Andino para la Formación de Líderes Sociales (CAFOLIS)]).

¹⁸After the constituent assembly phase, Mesa Agraria was engaged in the debate on the law called Ley Organica de Soberania Alimentaria (LORSA), as well as the initial debate on water and land laws. After 2009, the meetings became less frequent, until the coordinating group completely dissolved, without any official statement. Federations then joined renewed areas of coordination, some founded spontaneously and others were promoted by the government, including the Red Agraria.

¹⁹FENOCIN is historically related to the Socialist Party, while the CONFEUNASSC and CNC were founders of the Pachakutik-Nuevo País, which they later quit. Since 2006, they have all maintained relations, even if in different manners and unstably, with the current governing party, Alianza País.

²⁰Over the years, the Mesa Agraria received the support of various Ecuadorian NGOs, such as Acción Ecológica, Fundación de Campesinos María Luisa Gómez de la Torre (FMLGT), Heifer Ecuador, Terranueva and international organizations such as Centro Regionale d'Intervento per la Cooperazione (CRIC), Terra Nuova, Intermón Oxfam or Solidaridad Suecia-América Latina (SAL). Terranueva was designated to take on the ‘technical-operational secretariat’ but operating on the basis of the political mandate of the federations. It would be interesting to analyze this kind of alliance with NGOs, especially compared to what it has implied in terms of expanding the capacity for the federations’ action and, also, with respect to their autonomy.

²¹In meetings against the Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (ALCA) such as the ‘Encuentro Hemisférico de lucha contra el ALCA’ (La Habana, November 2001), the Andean meeting ‘El ALCA y sus impactos económicos y ecológicos’ (Quito, March 2001), the Third Congress of CLOC (México, August 2001) and even the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (Brazil, February 2002).

²²Translated by the author.

²³Translated by the author.

²⁴The LORSA, as modified by the presidential partial veto, entered into force without a previous review, within the 30 days established, by the National Assembly (Rosero Garcés et al. 2011).

²⁵The social function is generating employment, productive and sustainable use, re-distribution of income (but not distribution as in the original version of the law, later modified by presidential veto), while the environmental function refers to the conservation and respect of the rights of Nature.

²⁶They are: land, water, productive model, use of GMOs and agro-fuels.

²⁷Coast and Amazonia: 500 hectares, highlands: 200. Moreover, it distinguishes between properties exceeding those limits as either productive or unproductive, each receiving different treatment (processing, sale or expropriation).

²⁸The composition of Alianza País is heterogeneous: it has been promoted by leaders of traditional leftist parties, leftist intellectuals, ecologists, social and women activists as well as people without political trajectory but aligned to Correa or coming from catholic and center-right sectors. This diversity, held together and governed by Correa, has generated tensions, during and after the Constituent Assembly (see e.g. Ramírez Gallegos 2010; Ramírez Gallegos et al. 2013).

²⁹In this regard, Rafael Correa has declared, on several occasions, that the launching of drastic transformations in rural development is the biggest debt that the government owes to Ecuadorians.

³⁰Which are, as argued in the first part of this paper, FENOCIN, CNC-EA, CONFEUNASSC and FENACLE, among others.

³¹In this sense, the latest demand of peasant organizations for the establishment of a Ministry of Food Sovereignty, rather than persisting with a transformation of the Ministry of Agriculture, could be an indicator.

³²Welfare spending quadrupled between 2006 and 2012; the promotion of gratuity improved significantly the access to education and health while poverty (income based) decreased by 10 percent. The regained centrality of the state in the planning and implementing of development strategies led the launching of significant plans to improve mobility and transport infrastructures as well as the quality of human settlements (e.g. housing, water, sanitation) and the increase of cash transfer programs (see e.g. SENPLADES 2013b). All these measures were focused on more vulnerable populations, including those in the rural areas.

Additional information

Isabella Giunta is a PhD candidate, Doctoral School in Knowledge and Innovation for Development, A. Gunder Frank, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Calabria (Italy). A graduate in Social Anthropology, Ms. Giunta lived for more than 10 years in Ecuador working on cooperation and research projects, conducted mainly with indigenous and peasant organizations. She is currently carrying out comparative research between Ecuador and Italy on the collective actions of organizations linked to Vía Campesina.