Tracing the Political Life of Kimsacocha: Conflicts over Water and Mining in Ecuador’s Southern Andes

• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17726088
• Author: Teresa A. Velásquez
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 222, Vol. 45 No. 5, September 2018, 154–169

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17726088

© 2017 Latin American Perspectives

154

Tracing the Political Life of Kimsacocha

Conflicts over Water and Mining in Ecuador’s

Southern Andes

by

Teresa A. Velásquez

In 2009, farmers in the highlands of Ecuador challenged a proposed water law by stag-

ing public rituals to venerate their watershed, called Kimsacocha, as the embodiment of

the Pachamama (Mother Earth). They rejected the proposed law because it allowed for

mineral extraction in communal watersheds. They argued that human and nonhuman

entities are interconnected and that the state should designate communal watersheds as

no-mining zones to defend the right to life. While some scholars have argued that indige-

nous ontologies decolonize the political realm, in fact they have uneven outcomes when

mobilized in contentious mining politics. Indigenous ontologies enabled farmers to build

a multiethnic movement in defense of life, but this did not lead to the implementation of

their demands. Instead, the state appropriated the language of the Pachamama to produce

a revised water law that promoted piecemeal environmental conservation.

En 2009, agricultores de la zona montañosa de Ecuador rebatieron una propuesta de ley

de aguas mediante la organización de rituales públicos dirigidos a la veneración de la cuenca

conocida como Kimsacocha, la encarnación de la Pachamama (la Madre Tierra). Rechazaron

la propuesta de ley dado que permitía la extracción de minerales en cuencas hidrográficas

comunitarias. Argumentaron que los seres humanos se encuentran interconectados con

aquellos no humanos y que el Estado debe designar las cuencas comunes como zonas libres

de extracción, defendiendo así el derecho a la vida. Mientras que algunos estudiosos han

argumentado que las ontologías indígenas descolonizan el espacio político, en realidad éstas

tienen resultados irregulares cuando se las emplea en políticas mineras controvertidas. Las

ontologías indígenas permitieron que los agricultores construyeran un movimiento multi-

étnico en defensa de la vida, pero esto no llevó a la implementación de sus exigencias. En

lugar de eso, el Estado se apropió del lenguaje de la Pachamama para producir una ley de

aguas revisada que promovía la conservación fragmentada del medio ambiente.

Keywords: Progressive extractivism, Sumak kawsay, Indigeneity, Ontology, Post-

neoliberalism

Kimsacocha is the Pachamama. She nourishes us, she sustains us. . . . If the miners

take out the gold, it’s like taking out a liver or a kidney.

—Rosita Chuñir, Victoria del Portete, Ecuador, 2009

Teresa A. Velásquez is an assistant professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and

has conducted research on extractive industries in Ecuador since 2000. The manuscript was

greatly improved by suggestions from Emily Billo, Marc Becker, Nicole Fabricant, and an anony-

mous reviewer. Fieldwork was funded by an Inter-American Foundation grassroots development

fellowship and a National Science Foundation doctoral dissertation improvement grant. The

Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito provided institutional support.

726088LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17726088Latin American PerspectivesVelásquez / Water and Mining in Ecuador

research-article2017

Velásquez / WATER AND MINING IN ECUADOR 155

In the past decade, the emergence of an ideologically heterogeneous group

of progressive governments has signaled a new era in Latin American state

making. Critical of the Washington Consensus, post-neoliberal governments

tend to protect national markets, expand investment in social sectors, and pro-

mote the values of “social well being, fraternity, and social solidarity” (Ellner,

2012: 106). Led by Rafael Correa, the Ecuadorian “Citizens’ Revolution” coin-

cides with a decrease in poverty, increased literacy, and overall economic

growth (Becker, 2013). Notwithstanding the social gains made under Correa’s

administration, the national indigenous movement has remained divided over

its support for it. Some indigenous organizations have challenged what they

perceive to be the exclusion of the resource rights of many farmers. The politi-

cal tensions are representative of the challenges that post-neoliberal govern-

ments face in the region as they try to maintain political legitimacy while

carrying out century-old extractivist policies (Galeano, 1973). This paper

focuses on conflicts over state-backed projects in Ecuador in which farmers,

with the help of the national indigenous movement, have mounted significant

opposition to mining.

In the Andean parishes of Victoria del Portete and Tarqui, family farmers

perceive a disjuncture between the administration’s language of social inclu-

sion and state support for mineral extraction. The 2008 constitution produced

by Correa’s party, Alianza País, in response to the demands of indigenous and

environmental organizations established Ecuador as a plurinational and inter-

cultural country,1 incorporated sumak kawsay (life in plentitude) as an alterna-

tive notion of development to balance environmental sustainability with

growth, and granted Mother Earth (Pachamama) the right to “maintain and

regenerate cycles of life, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes”

(Républica del Ecuador, 2008: Article 71). While these articles appeared to chal-

lenge the commodification of nature under neoliberalism, the constitution also

allowed the state to exploit nonrenewable resources in environmentally pro-

tected areas if such projects were declared to be “of national interest” (Républica

del Ecuador, 2008: Article 407). Eduardo Gudynas (2009: 188) critically refers to

this development strategy as “progressive extractivism.” He observes the ten-

dency of progressive governments to “maintain a style of development based

on the appropriation of Nature” in which the state “plays an active role and

gains a greater legitimacy through the redistribution of some of the profits gen-

erated by such extractivism.”

This paper follows dairy farmers as they challenged a proposed water law

that would allow for mineral extraction in communal watersheds, strategically

reappropriating and transforming the Andean epistemologies incorporated

into the constitution as a new language of protest against state- and multina-

tional-financed mineral projects. The proposed law aimed to centralize water

resources so as to overcome the sharp inequalities in access to water that had

historically plagued the country (see Acosta and Martínez, 2010). It also opened

up the possibility of mineral extraction in fragile and sensitive wetlands,

including rural watersheds. Given the state’s concomitant efforts to expand

mineral extraction, farmers feared that the law would enable the state to dis-

tribute water to multinational mining companies that would then monopolize

or harm their communally managed water supplies. Farmers affiliated with a