Titles of Contention: Sociocultural Change and Conflict over Legalization of Indigenous Lands in Southeastern Ecuador

• Author: Raúl Márquez Porras,María Beatriz Eguiguren Riofrío,Ana Vera Vera
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18792005
• Subject Matter: ArticlesIndigenous Communities and the State

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 223, Vol. 45 No. 6, November 2018, 68–80

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18792005

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

68

Titles of Contention

Sociocultural Change and Conflict over Legalization

of Indigenous Lands in Southeastern Ecuador

by

Raúl Márquez Porras, María Beatriz Eguiguren Riofrío, and Ana Vera Vera

Translated by

Victoria J. Furio

Shuar communities in southeastern Ecuador are receiving collective property titles to

their ancestral lands. This is being done as a way to guarantee their material and cultural

survival, but the titling triggers sociocultural changes and conflict and its outcomes

depend largely on the way it is implemented. The consequences of the titling process in

communities in Nangaritza and El Pangui in which Shuar, Saraguro, and mestizos coex-

ist include both tensions and informal arrangements to resolve the historically conflictive

issue of access to the land.

Las comunidades Shuar en el sureste de Ecuador están recibiendo títulos de propiedad

colectiva de sus tierras ancestrales. Esto se está haciendo como una forma de garantizar su

supervivencia material y cultural, pero la titulación desencadena cambios y conflictos

socioculturales y sus resultados dependen en gran medida de la forma en que se imple-

mente. Las consecuencias del proceso de titulación en comunidades de Nangaritza y El

Pangui en las que cohabitan Shuar, Saraguro y mestizos incluyen tensiones y arreglos

informales para resolver el problema histórico del acceso a la tierra.

Keywords: Land titling, Sociocultural conflicts, Indigenous peoples, Shuar, Ecuadorian

Amazon

The policy of legal recognition, or titling, of indigenous peoples’ territories

has a long history. The relevant literature points to the 1989 adoption of the

International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, which stressed ceding

ancestral lands to indigenous peoples to foster their preservation, as a land-

mark event (Aylwin, 2011; Plant and Hvalkof, 2006; Stocks, 2005). However,

Ecuador has been legalizing indigenous territories since the 1960s on an ad hoc

basis through the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización

(Ecuadorian Institute of Land Reform and Colonization—IERAC) and on a

regular basis through a new constitutionalism enshrined in the Constitution of

Raúl Márquez Porras teaches social anthropology at the Universitat de Barcelona and coordinates

the Grup de Recerca en Antropologia Jurídica. María Beatriz Eguiguren Riofrío is director of the

Observatorio de Conflictos Socioambientales at the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja. Ana

Vera Vera is a researcher at the Observatorio. Research for this article was carried out with the

support of Ecuador’s Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación

through a Prometeo grant awarded to Raúl Márquez. Victoria J. Furio is a translator living in New

York City.

792005LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18792005Latin American PerspectivesMárquez et al. / LEGALIZATION OF INDIGENOUS LANDS IN ECUADOR

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