O Connor Erin_Gender Indian Nation_pag 3-24

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~Gender. Indian. Nation

The Contradictions ofMaking Ecuador, 1830-1925

Erin O'ConnorFLACSO - Biblioteca

The University ofArizona Press Tucson


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, I dedicate this book topeople who have profoundly influencedmyview of the world:The indigenous women and men of Ecuador,whose struggles, pastand present, have taught me so much.May they togethercreate a more equitable future.

The Universityof Arizona Press 2007 The Arizona Board of RegentsAllrights reserved

- - - ,And to mymother,Martha O'Connor,

the strongestwoman I know.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataO'Connor, Erin, 1965-

Gender, Indian, nation: the contradictions of making Ecuador,183-1925/ Erin O'Connor.

p.cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8165-2559-1 (hardcover: alk. paper)1- Indians of SouthAmerica-Ecuador-Social conditions.

2. Indians of South America-Ecuador-Government relations.3. Indians of SouthAmerica-Ecuador-Politics and government.

4. Indian women-Ecuador-Social conditions. 5.Sex role-Ecuador.6. Patriarchy--Ecuador. 7.Ecuador-Social conditions. 8. Ecuador

Politics and government. 9.Ecuador-Ethnic relations. 1.Title.F3721.3s650362007

305.898'0866-dc22 2006039157Publicationof this book is made possiblein part by a grant from

Bridgewater State College.Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica on acid-free,

archival-quality paper containing a minimum of 50% post-consumerwaste and processed chlorine free.

12 I I 10 09 08 07 6 5 4 3 2 1


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~ 1 ~National Dilemmas

The Specter of Liberal Individualism in Ecuador

As long as all the classes ... do not have equal rights and duties:as long as there is a classwith' duties and without rights,

the Constitution is a joke,the Republic is a lie.-Minis te r of the Interior Francisco Icaza, 1856'

Indians presented a major challenge to nation-state builders in nineteenth-century Ecuador. Before 1857,Indian tribute stood out as the glaring example of Indians' failure to gain equal status with non-Indiansin Ecuador.As the opening quotation shows, the 1856 minister of theInterior identified such racial inequality as an insurmountable obstacle in the quest to make Ecuador into a true nation. Though tributewas abolished a year later, by 1915 statesmen were still bemoaningIndians' marginal status within the nation, this time focusing on theplight of indigenous debt peons on large estates. In 1915, politicianand scholar Agustin Cueva identified debt peonage as "the negation ofcommon laws of human nature, the corrosive and thinning substancethat retards the formation of national unity," In both eras, liberalstatesmen cited specific laws or practices that prohibited Indians fromparticipating fully in the nation, arguing that liberating Indians fromoppression was a prerequisite for nation b U i l d i n ~ . l The seemingly ahistori cal nature of Ecuador's Indian problem can be seen in otherways aswell: in both the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example,reforms were slow in coming and limited in impact. Members of the


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central state had desired the abolition of tribute since Independence,but the Indian head t remained intact until 1857, and its eliminationintensified rather th}n solved Indians' problems in Ecuador. Similarly,liberals took twenty-three years to abolish imprisonment for debts, andthe law failed to change the basic socioeconomic structures to whichindigenous workers were subjected on large estates. Yet statesmen ofboth periods claimed to have solved the Indian problem with their legislative acts and pressed forward with other agendas in their quest tobuild a strongstate and (wi th it) a coherent nation.

Despite these parallel themes, historians-myself included-areskeptical that such dynamics are ever stat ic.What, then, explains thecontinuities within Indian-state relat ions as the Ecuadorian nationwas taking shape?What changes marked the passage from one regimeto another, as well as the ways in which Indian-state relations wererestructured over time? More broadly, what does the Ecuadorian casehave to offer to t he impor tant and ever-evolving studies of Indiansand the nation, and gender and nation, in Latin America? To addressthese questions requires not only an overview of Ecuadorian Indianstate relations, but also consideration of how Ecuador fits within thebroader contextof theoretical and historical literature on nation-states,Indians, and gender.

The Problem ofNation-States in LatinAmericaStudying-even defining-nation-statesis challenging,because building a nation is a multilayered, contradictory, and constantly evolvingproject. 4 States themselves are complexentities, as PhilipAbrams notedwhen he differentiated between the state system, which encompassesgovernment infrastructure, hierarchy and policies, and the state idea,which comprises a set of ideologies aimed at legitimizing a given ruling regime. Abrams suggested that this emphasis on legitimacy was a"triumph of concealment .. . it conceals the real history and relations ofsubjection behind an a-historical mask of legitimating illusion."5 This


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triumph of concealment typically justified limiting the political nationto certain social groups while asserting the state's right and power torepresent and control all the people within its physical boundaries. InEcuador, the state system was in the hands of elite white-mestizo men,and the state idea used elite cultural values to justify the exclusion ofIndians, women, and the poor from participationwithin the nation."

The course of Ecuadorian state formation was entangled with thedilemma of nation making, in which statesmen attempted to createan imagined community of people from different classes, regions, cultures, and genders. For a true nation to emerge, a majority of membersof these diverse groupswould have to develop a sense of belongingwitheach other andwith the state, despite the large size, social inequalities,and exploitation that are all central to the nation.' Latin America hasan especially complicated relationship to the history and theories ofnationalism, as anthropologist MarkThurner observedwhen he wrote,"Latin America's republics were 'old' like some European nations, butthey were also postcolonial like the African and Asian 'new states' ofthe twentieth cenrurv.'" Even the language of nation making has beenmore convoluted in Latin America than elsewhere, given that termssuch as republica simultaneouslyreferred to the colonial-based republicof Indians aswellas to the modern notion of republican government.9Adding to the complications was Latin American state leaders' acuteawareness that they were emulating European and United States models of nation making. Especially problematic was their assertion thatthey could achieve equality before the law and render meaningless thelegacyof colonial legal distinctions based on race. Colonial structureswould giveway to an era of individual rights, when citizens would beunfettered by corporate identities. Yet Latin American nation-makingprojects fellshort of equality before the law,particularlywith regard toIndians' place in the nation.

This elusive quest to replace colonial corporatism with individualequal rights haunted Latin American nations, leading me to refer to itas the specter of liberal individualism." This Latin American dilemmawas based as much on tensions within European liberal theory as it

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National Dilemmas / 7

was on colonial racial policies. UdayMehta noted that "In its theoretical vision, liberalism .. . has prided itself on its universality and politically inclusionary character.And yet, when i t is viewed as a historicalphenomenon . . . the period of liberal history is unmistakably markedby its systematic and sustained political exclusion of various 'groups'or ' types' of people. '? ' Mehta found the answer not in the contradiction between liberal theory and practice, but within liberal theory itself,because liberals suggested that universal rights and freedoms rested onpreconditions-notably the ability to reason. The assumptions thatwomen, lower classes, children, or colonized peoples lacked the abilityto reason meant that they could be "excluded from the political constituency, or what amounts to the same thing, they can be governedwithout their consent.?" In this sense, the universal liberal individual,unburdened by the weight of group identity, never existed. Small wonder, then, that Ecuadorian statesmen found it difficult to adapt European individualism to their own nation, since their archetype was constructed and fictional rather than natural and original.

Not only were indigenous peoples (and peasants more generally)marginalized within elite nation-making discourses, but until the pastfew decades, scholars too identified them as detached from centralstate politics and nationalism. Since the 1980s, however, numerousstudies have shown that these groups were engaged with the processof nation-state formation. This interaction was most pronouncedwhen wars threatened the nation-foreign invasion especially, butsometimes also periods of internal struggle.') Indigenous and peasantpolitical leaders, whose roles bridged the colonial and national periods,mediated between rural commoners and state officials in the transformation from colony to republic," Even indigenous peasant uprisingsare coming under new scrutiny, particularly how insurgents related toconcepts such as nation and republic. While it istrue that rebel leaderscalled on elite-generated national discourses, they also adapted theseideas, merging themwith national views thatwere shapedby their localeconomic, political, and cultural experiences, r{eeds,and values."

Together, these examinations of Indians, peasants, and nations


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have done far more than add the marginalized to the history of nationstate formation in L ~ t i n America. They have placed indigenous peoplesand peasants at the center of national histories, and many ofthem havecalled into question basic assumptions in earlier studies of nationstates. Historians and anthropologists have taken us into the realm ofwhat Thurner aptly describes as the "unimagined community"- t h enation as indigenous peoples perceived it, which was quite differentfrom elite perspectives." Even theterm "nationalism" has becomemorecomplicated:Florencia Mallon and Peter Guardino have argued persuasively that "alternative" or "popular" nationalisms coexistedwith stategenerated nationalisms in Latin America, and peasant nationalismssometimes affected government policies.'? In sum, though rural peoplesmay not have made the laws or run post-Independence governments,theywere actively involved in shaping the state idea behind nationalism; in fact, they influenced nationalism even when they ignored ratherthan employed state ideas or policies. Their silence speaks to the failure of ruling regimes to build programs that took regional realities intoaccount, and indigenous peoples ' refusal to act on state-driven ideasor policies set limits on the reach of the national project as it was envisioned by political elites."

Aswith allscholarly advances, these path-breaking studies ofIndianand peasant engagement with nationalism have their limits. Genderremains one of the least developed facets of these studies, thoughMallon's study of postcolonial Mexico and Peru, and Greg Grandin'sexamination of Guatemala, both evaluate how patriarchy related topeasant or indigenous involvementwith nation-state formation." Second, much more is known about subaltern leaders and intellectualsthan about the aspirations, views, or strategies of indigenous and peasan t cornmoners.?" Finally, geographic treatment of these issues isquiteuneven: to date, we know much more about how Indians and peasantsengaged with formative nation-states in Peru or Mexico than we do inmostother areas of Latin America, including Ecuador.

Though scholars have begun to identify the significance of theIndian problem to Ecuadorian political development, or examined


ways in which Indians interacted with the formative state, analysisof Indians' roles in the course of Ecuadorian nation making is sti ll inits early stages!' As the history of Ecuadorian Indians and the nationunfolds, interesting discoveries are being made regarding popular perceptions of and participation in politics." For example, A. Kim Clark'sstudy of the liberal period demonstrated that the failure of anyone elitegroup to dominate the process of nation making "created the openingsthat allowed subordinate groups to pursue their own interests withinthe bounds of the liberal project,'?' Studying past relations betweenIndians and the state is important no t only because of Indians' political act iv ism in the current day, but also because Ecuador's nationaldevelopment was markedly different from that of nations like Mexicoor Peru. Ecuador did share certain similarities with its Andean neighbors Peru and Bolivia in the early nineteenth century,when Indians inall three nations remained legally separate from non-Indians throughthe continuing collection of tribute. Yet in most ways Ecuador wasuncommon: unlike either Mexico or Peru, in Ecuador t her e was noforeign invasion for peasants to r es ist as a means of expressing theirown vision of nationalism; nor was Ecuadorian state formation in thenineteenth centuryled bya liberal government,as was the case in mostother parts of Latin America. Instead, Ecuadorian political turbulencewas generated solely from within, and state centralization began underthe conservative rule of Gabriel Garcia Moreno, since liberalism camelater to Ecuador than to most other LatinAmerican countries. Studyinga less-well-researched nation like Ecuador promises to highlight broadpatterns versus regional discrepancies in the history of Latin AmericanIndian-state relations.

To see how Ecuadorian Indian-state relations functioned in theera of nation-state formation, as well as to understand how and whygender analysis figures centrally in these developments, it is necessaryto explore the complicated processes of nation making in nineteenthcenturyEcuador. This again raises the dilemma posed at the beginningof the chapter-why and howdid Indian problems plague Ecuadorianstatesmen for more than a century? Attending to this question takes


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one from the colonial foundations of the Indian problem, through the1857 abolition of Indian tribute, and into the contradictions of statebuilding from 1861 to 1925.

From Colony to Tribute-Laden RepublicThough the Indian problemwas a specifically republican dilemma, itsroots were in the colonial period. The Spanish created the category of"Indian" to facilitate their rule, but actual Indian identity and culturewas a productof encounters, negotiations, and conflicts between Spanish colonizers and indigenous peoples." "Indian," however, was alsoa meaningful legal category that shaped colonial encounters, allowingthe Spanish crown to justify European rule and manage its Americancolonies. One o f the mostimportant aspects of Spain's Indian policieswas the division of the American colonies into separate Spanish andIndian republics, in which each group had different obligations andrights before the law. Spanish settlers were privileged and had rights toindigenous labor, bu t they were also supposed to protect and convertindigenous peoples. Indians were periodically conscripted to work forthe Spanish, and all Indian men between the ages of eighteen and fiftyhad to pay tribute to the Spanish crown and diezmos (firstfruits) to theCatholic Church (through state collectors). Local indigenous leaders(caciques, or kurakas) helped to link the two republics; they assisted theSpanish with tribute collection, meted ou t justice in their communities, and represented community interests to Spanish officials. To keepcaciques from gaining too much power, the Spanish created indigenouscabildos (town councils), which were elected annually to oversee localcustoms and mediate civil disputes. Indian leaders' strategies varied:some were primarilyconcerned with protecting and serving their communities, whereas others emphasized Spanish colonial interests overthose of communitymembers."

In addition to creating a juridical category of Indian that transcended pre-Columbian cultural and political divisions, the system of

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two republics also provided fertile ground for the development of racialstereotypes. Indians were secondary and inferior to members of theRepublic of Spaniards,who were exempt from tribute and laborobligations, were given preferential treatment in commerce, and controlled allupper levels of politics. This essential inequality was based at first primarily on religious principles, emphasizing that itwas necessaryto ruleover Indians and limit their rights and powers in order to bring themthe true faith. Over time, justifications more clearly identified Indians as niiiosconbarbas (bearded children) who, although they reachedphysical maturity, in other ways remained forever childlike and therefore required European guidance, protection, and rule. Indians weregenerally categorized by their culture, payment of tribute, and-for thevast majority-poverty and rural life. Bythe late colonial period, stereotypes emerged throughout SpanishAmerica that identified indigenouspeopleswith numerous bad quali ties, such asa propensity to drunkenness and idleness,which onlystrict supervision and rule could keep incheck."

Indigenous peoples also provided the backbone of the colonial andrepublican economies, which developed to exploit Indian laborers andnatural resources. In the Ecuadorian highlands, the temperate and relatively dry climate led to an economy dominated bylarge estates gearedtoward textile production, with labor performed primarily by indigenous indebted workers (conciertos). By the late seventeenth century,there were approximately two hundred textile obraies (workshops),with most found in the north-central highlands:? The tropical coastalclimate favored the development of cacao plantations, which spreadin the late eighteenth century. Around this time, however, highlandobrajeswere in decline, making it possible for highland Indians to provide much of the labor force for the cacao boom, since highland hacendados and obraje owners did no t need as manyIndian workers as theyhad in more prosperous periods." Economic cris:,s in the north-centralhighlands often presented opportunities for coastal landowners sinceIndians would migrate from the highlands search of work." The


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opposite was also t rue: a ptosperous highland economy led to laborscarcity on coastal es}ates. This pattern of alternating economic advantages between thesoast and the highlands continued throughoutmuchof the nineteenth century."

Indians too could benefit from economic crises that hitthe highlandelite. For example, the decline of obrajes created business opportunitiesfor some Indian peasants to provide home-produced textiles for localmarkets. Since the relative decline of large estates typically meant moresecure and autonomous peasant production, the late colonial and earlyrepublican periods look better if viewed from indigenous rather thanelite perspectives. The extent to which indigenous peoples could takeadvantage of changing economic and political conditions, however,differed based on demographics, especially the ratio of poor peasantsto large estates. In the northern highlands, fewer peasants experiencedeconomic crises that pushed them into debt peonage, whereas in thecentral highland province of Chirnborazo, there were more poor Indians in need of loans than there were positions on large estates. Therefore, estate owners in the northern highlands competed for workers.while indigenous peoples in the central highlands competed for work.Even though the system of two republics gave the generic category of"Indian" real legalmeaning, a diverse range of indigenous lives,customs,and opportunities flourished under colonial administration.

Indian commoners did find ways to make colonial l ife manageableand sometimes beneficial despite the exploitative nature of the systemof two republics. In return for ethnically specific obligations, Indianswere exempt from military service. most other taxes, and the majorityof court fees-all of which made subsistence easier to maintain. Thet ribute sys tem also helped indigenous communities preserve communalland rights and local indigenous political officials, as the statedeemed both necessary to allow Indians to meet tribute requirements.Indians who found tribute too burdensome sometimes fled their homecommunities, becoming [orasteros who escaped the heaviest obligations to the state. Stil l more Indians used the colonial court system toprotest excessive exploitation or abuse: given the crown's proclaimed

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National Dilemmas/13

goal of protecting indigenous peoples. court cases could bring sufficient relief from the mostonerous burdens and abuses.When peacefulmeans failed, Indian communities resorted to violence. though rebellions sought to address specific problems rather than reject the colonialsystem as a whole.Despitethe inherent contradictions of the system oftwo republics, and the complications of the dual system with the riseof mestizo and forasrero populations. the structure proved enduringbecause it could be manipulated from both above and below," For thestate, the separate republics, along with the conversion of native peoples to Catholicism, justified ethnic divisions and inequalities inherentin the colonial project.The system's emphasis on protection, however.also gave indigenous peoples outlets to defend their communities. subsistence, and local autonomy.

Independence brought an end to the precarious balance betweenIndians and the state. Independence leaders had identified Spanishrule as tyrannical and identified (often justifiably) Spanish policies asthe source of racial inequalities. Yet they were not inclined to changethe socioeconomic and racial hierarchies from which they benefited.nor did they think that Indians should enjoy a direct political voice inthe nation. In short, early Ecuadorian statesmen were caught betweentheir proclaimed desire to fashion a nation outofliberal individuals andtheir deeply embedded conviction that Indians were unfit for inclusionin the nation. Indian tribute stood out as the most glaring example ofEcuador's failure to overcome its colonial legacyin the early nineteenthcenturybecause it rested on colonial-style corporatism. National politicians therefore viewed it as the primary obstacle to creating a nationbased on the tenets of liberal individualism.

Although the tax troubled statesmen. indigenous peoples' views oftribute were mixed. On the one hand, many indigenous communitiesfound the, tr ibute system preferable because it provided exemptionsfrom other taxes and secured communal and cultural rights. On theother hand, there were individuals during the period who struggled toescape tribute payments. either becausetheywere unableto shoulderthetax burden or perhaps because of looser cultural ties within their com-


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munities. In thelongrun, itwas economic necessity, no t elite politics orindigenous concerns, that kept the tribute system alive. Protracted andexpensive Independence wars, followed by economic stagnation in the1830S and 1840s, left the new national government with few sourcesof revenue to keep it afloat. During this time, tribute accounted for 35percent of state income, making it impossible for legislators to abolish the head tax." Only in the 1850s,when rising cacao exportsmeantthat tribute accounted for a mere 8.5 percent ofthe government's totalfinancial resources, did Ecuadorian statesmen more seriously considerdoing away with i t. "With financial confidence and emphatic declarations that the Indian was being liberated from centuries of colonialoppression, Congress abolished tribute in October 1857.14 The abolition of tribute complicated rather than solved the Indian dilemma inEcuadorian nation making, bu t Indians' formal equalitybefore the lawpaved theway for Garcia Moreno's state-building projects in the 1860sand 1870S.

Indians, the Nation, andGarcianismoHistorians have long classified Gabriel Garcia Moreno as a conservative, and certain aspects of his rule uphold this categorization, mostnotably the prominent role of the Church in Garcian state building.Although Garcia Moreno's commitment to the Catholic Church wasstrongly influenced by his religious upbringing and education, religionalso provided himwith a powerful political tool to unify a fragmentedcountry," Rather than point to the supremacy of law, GarciaMorenoheld that onlyGodwas infallible, henceonlyGod's laws could provide atruly stable foundation for Ecuadorian society; republicanism thereforehad to beinfusedwith Catholicism."The relationship betweenChurchand stateduringthis periodwas mutually beneficial: an 1862 concordatwith Rome gave the Church propertyaswellas control of education andcensorship, while Garcia Moreno had the right to expel many Ecuadorian religious officials from their posts, replacing them with foreignpriests and nuns." The introduction of foreign Church officials rested

fI National Dilemmas/ 15on Garcia Moreno's admiration of the French Catholic Brothers' educational strategies; perhaps i twas also related to his careful distinctionbetween "uncorrupted Catholic faith and corruptible Catholic authorities,'?" Religion further provided Garcia Moreno with a tool for socialcontrol, a means to augment state (and his own personal) power, andjustification for political repression." By the second phase of Garcianrule, from 1869 to 1875, Catholicism was even a requirement for Ecuadorian citizenship."

Yet to label GarciaMoreno simply as a conservative, particularly toassociate h im with backward-looking or colonial-style government,based on the centrality of religion to his rule would be a mistake. Historian DerekWilliams has argued that Garcian religious policies wereneither simply strategic nor seeking to bring back an earlier style ofrule. Instead, he asserts thatGarciaMoreno aspired to an age of "Catholic Modernity" and used Catholicism to unite Ecuador into a singlenational community." If Garcia Moreno fused state formation withCatholicism, he did so in such away as to ensure that the state was thedominant partner; he manipulated religion to bring coherence to thefractured nation and to increase the power of the central government.Similarly, his administrative goals were centered on national growthand modernization, as his commitment to improving roads and building railroads showed. Garcian educational projects also embraced themodern nation, given that Garcia Moreno's proclaimed goal was toimprove the opportunities for all Ecuadorians and to expand the political nation by raising literacy rates. Even Garcia Moreno's relationshipto different elite sectors defied simple conservative categorization. Ifhighland hacendados had the greatest direct influence in national politics during Garcianismo, the government also supported cacao exportsand lightened trade restrictions-both policies that benefited coastallandowners.

At the same time that Garcianismo supported religious corporatismand social hierarchies, itwas a political projecr..emphasizing individualresponsibility and equality before the law, even though it identified thisequality as an evangelical rather than secular national community."


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Morality-based equality before the law meant that the specter of liberal individualism hajmted this conservative state, and as usual thecore difficulty lay with the plight of Indians in the nation. Though theIndian problemwas supposedly solved by the abolition of tribute, Garcian policies (especially from 1869 to 1875) led to increased tensionsbetween I nd ians and the state. After the abolition of tribute, Indianswere obliged to pay taxes from which they formerly had been exempt,and the new requirements were frequently more burdensome thantribute had been. Moreover, by the late 1860s the central state stoppedrecognizing, let alone supporting, indigenous protective laws, communal lands, or indigenous leaders. At the same time, indigenous workerswere the primary labor force for infrastrucrural projects, marking thecontinuation of ethnically distinct obligations in the nation. The central government response to Indians' contradictory status was silence:withinthe space of a fewyears, Indians' plightwent from being a prominent national concern to an issue that was rarelymentioned in Quito.

Indians did not passivelyaccept their fate during this time of mounting crisis. Those who cou ld aff ord to do so sought titles that wouldprotect their land rights. Others went to court to complain that largeestate owners had either taken their land or had blocked their accessto vital resources-these cases, however, typically failed because ofhaccndados' dominance of local political and judicial processes. Without recourse against hacienda owners, most Indians were left to eithersquabble with each other over remaining lands or turn to haciendasfor employment (temporary or permanent) to meet subsistence needs.Occasionally they rebelled against abusive officials or unbearable taxburdens, managing-as they had since colonial t imes-to alleviatetemporarily the most intense demands and abuses. The most outstanding rebellion in this period occurred in the central highland province ofChimborazo, where in December 1871Indians from Punin, Yaruquies,and Cajabamba protested violently against rising taxation. Althoughthe uprisingeased tax burdens only briefly, it greatly alarmed membersof white-mestizo society, reminding them of the potential danger ofpushing disgruntled indigenous communities too far.

!;1iII1rIIII,

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Garcia Moreno's death by assassination in August 1875brought anend to Catholic state building and marked the return of political turmoil, with conservative forces split and liberals not yet able to win statepower. In the meantime, the political and economic rivalry betweenthe coast and the highlands continued to build. In this atmosphere ofintense regional and political polarization, a moderate leader such asAntonio Borrero (1875-1876) faced potential criticism from conservatives for suggesting reforms and possible rejection by liberals for notpushing reform along far or fast enough.4) Others, like Ignacio deVeritimilla (1876-1883), promised to suppOrt radical liberal ideals but oncein power proved to have dictatorialleanings.44 Political upheaval hadtangible results: though the economy was booming in the highlandsand on the COast, road and railway construction came to a halt, andmany public roads fell into disrepair.45 By1895 tensionswere at a peak,and liberal forces were finally powerful enough (both politically andmilitarily) to overtake the national governmenr.v For the next thirtyyears, from 1895 to 1925, liberals controlled the presidency; Congress,however, remained mixed with liberals and conservatives and was frequently the site of heated debate over liberal reforms. Given that Garcianismo had been the last period of orderly (if authoritarian) nationstate development, the conservative regime had a lingering impact onliberal projects. If on the one hand Garcian Catholic conservatismwasanathema to secularizing liberals, on the otherhand they had much incommon with their conservative predecessor's educational and infrastructural projects. And, of course, they inherited the still-unresolvedIndian problem.

Liberals, Indians,and the NationLiberal secular iz ing pol ic ies from 1895 to 1925 were in most waysopposed to Garcia Moreno's Catholic unity. Whereas Garcia Morenohad emphasized Catholici sm as a uni fy ing national force, liberalsargued that Church and State had to be separated, and they presentedthe nat ion as a s ecul ar brotherhood. Many liberal reforms attacked


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the Church's social and economic power, made the Church dependenton the s ta te , and promoted freedom of worship. Liberal reforms alsoreplaced ecclesiastic control of education and marriage with secularinstitutions. These were not only strikes against a powerful nationalinstitution but attempts to ensure that the next generation of Ecuadorians would cultivate loyalties to the state rather than to the Church.Theregional bases of the two regimes also differed: political powerrested inthe hands of highland landowners during Garcianismo, while coastallandowning and banking elites were the driving socioeconomic forcesbehind the liberal revolution.

Liberals claimed that they would regenerate the nation, saving itfrom the debilitating impact of religious and landowning authorities inthe highlands(whowere, conveniently, their greatest rivals for sociopolitical power). Indians featured prominently in liberal discourse, withreformers professing they would liberate highland Indians from theirtraditional oppressors. One aspect of this mission was evident whenthe state took over Church-owned haciendas in 1904.41The law allowedliberal reformers to claim that they had saved highland Indians fromcorrupt Church authorities while it gave the central state new political and financial power in rural areas. The abolition of concertaje (debtpeonage) was, however, t he mos t important liberal crusade againstIndians' subjugation. Liberal rhetoric blamed hacendados for keepingIndians in an oppressed and semifeudal state, while identifying conciertos as good and honorable workers.t" Coastal liberals argued that itwas necessary to drag the highlands into modernity by eliminating thepractice of debt peonage and replacing itwith wage labor,which wouldin turn result in a more efficient indigenous workforce and encouragehacendados to adopt new technologies." Such assertions also justifiedthe liberal takeover of the central state, allowing liberals to argue thattheir regime aimed at finally making all citizens equal before the law, incontrast with previous regimes that had reinforced oppressive hierarchies and practices.

Yet highland hac iendas were far from unchanging, and liberalreformers were no t as progressive as they claimed to be. Although lib-

National Dilemmas z'ro

erals identified concertajewith feudalism, hacendados often expandedproduction in order to take advantage of new markets, most recentlynew transportation routes created during Garcianismo. Moreover, inthe early decades of the twentieth century, many hacendados of thenorth-central highlands were adopting modernized agricultural techniques or switching from grain to dairy production; both shifts loweredtheir labor needs and meant that concertaje was on the decline in portions of the highlands even before its 1918 abolition.>" The elimination of Indian debt peonage was also no t as fundamental to the liberal platform as many social reformers claimed. Besides the fact thatit was twenty-three years into the liberal regime before imprisonmentfor debts was made il legal, concertaje was based on much more thanhacendados' ability to send indigenous workers to prison for the debtsthey owed. Instead, highland estate owners secured indigenous laborthrough a complex system of obligations and rights, coercion and persuasion, cruelty and kindness. Though liberal legislators congratulatedthemselves on having eliminated concertaje, the 1918 law did no t dismantle the system, which survived (under the name huasipunyaie forthe subsistence plots male workers received) unt il the 1964 agrarianreform law. The limitations of the "abolition" of concertaje were no tlost on social critic Pio Jaramillo Alvarado, who not ed how difficult itwas to address the problem of interethnic exploitation on haciendasbecause "this form of slavery [concertaje] has been theoretically abolished. [Since] imprisonment for debt has been extinguished, concertajehas lost its greatestsupport! But is i t true that this legal disposition isenough to extirpate this gangrene that has paralyzed .. . agriculture? "51

Liberals' principal motive to eliminate imprisonment for debts onhighland estates stemmed from coastal landowners' desire to gainaccess to indigenous laborers. Unlike the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries, when periods of economic expansion (o r crisis)alternated between the highlands and the coast , in the late nineteenthcentury, coastal and highland estate owners experienced simultaneousgrowth, which led to conflicts over the acquisition of Indian workers.As historian Yves Saint-Geours aptly pu t i t, "The Indian during this


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period is a [critical] factor in the struggles between highland hacendados and large p r o p e r ~ owners on the coast.'?" Abolishing imprisonment for debts also gave the central state authority to mediate disputesbetween hacendado;and indigenousworkers, strengtheningstate officials' power over highland elites."

Although based on opposed premises, Garcianismo and liberalismshared much common ground. One of the more obvious links betweenthem was their commitment to national unification, beginning withthe physical nation: construction of the Guayaquil-Quito railway, forexample, began under Garcia Moreno's rule and was completed during the liberal period. The railway was to do much more than simplyimprove transportation: its proponents hoped it would encouragepeoples of all classes and regions to feel the presence of the state andto begin finally to think of themselves as belonging to the Ecuadorian nation." In general, both Garcianismo and liberalism attemptedto unite the fragmented country and recreate it into a modern nationthrough the development of a strong central state. Both regimes, however, failed to achieve a fundamental aspect of their goals because oftheir inability to resolve the problem of Indian difference within thenation.

Gender, Nation, and IndiansWhile an overview of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century state formation projects reveals how changes in Ecuador's Indian problem relatedto broader political, economic, and social transformations, questions stillremain. A matter of special concern is how central government officials,regional authorities, and Indians themselves comprehended and actedon the intricate pattern of continuities and changes in nineteenthcentury Indian-state relations. Given the uneven development ofIndian-state relations, how did both state officials and Indian commoners make sense of new and old themes regarding Indians' positionin the emerging nation? Likewise, the specter of liberal individualismcalls for deeper exploration. How did political leaders reconcile pro-

National Dilemmas /2 1

claimed egalitarian goals with practical reinforcement of racial difference in each era of nation making? Towhat extent did any of the idealsof liberal individualism penetrate indigenous communities or at leasttheir negotiations with state officials as the nation took shape?

Gender analysis can be applied to explore, evaluate, and enunciate the changes in official polit ical discourses about Indians fromIndependence through 1925; i t also reveals the distinct relationshipsthat indigenous men and women developed with the emerging stateand the nation i t claimed to represent. Gender offered a critical tool(though, certainly, not the only one) that state officials and indigenouspeoples ~ s e d to contendwith the many challenges and contradictionsinvolved in making Ecuador. Gender ideas were central to Indian-staterelations because they had been essential to colonial Indian-state relations; moreover, both elite and indigenous peoples used gender as afundamental component for structuring their own societies. It therefore stood to reason that gender concepts would prove important in theinter- and intraethnic struggles of nation-state formation, because theyhad been critical to maintaining social order for centuries. Whetherreinforcing old concepts,or alteringpatriarchal precepts to fit new conditions, manipulating gender ideas was a natural, perhaps even unselfconscious, choice to make sense of the contradictory and unsettlingchanges that came with forging a nation.

There is a well-established precedent for asserting that gender wasa centralfeature of nation-state formation. Phillip Corrigan and DerekSayer identif ied patriarchal familial relat ions as "a major organizingmetaphor for the state," and Anne McClintock has gone so far as tocontend that "all nationalisms are gendered; all are invented; and allare dangerous."55 Within Latin America, various scholars have foundthat gender analysis illuminates and alters our interpretation of hownations and nationalisms took shape . Where supposedly genderneutralstudies suggested thatwomen aswellas men benefitedfrom liberal secularization policies, gender-sensitive investigations have oftenfound the opposite, helping us to better understand the limits andcontradictions of nineteenth-century liberalism.t" Tensions between


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women and nation in Latin America can be seen from Independenceforward, and they were predicated on a basic association between citizenship and patriarchy. Rebecca Earle and Elizabeth Dore, for example,have both demonstrated that patriarchal principles defined citizenshipin nineteenth-century Colombian and Nicaraguan constitutions.57Nations were thus buil t on the powerful combined force of law andpatriarchy. While this dynamic between gender and nation worked toelite men's benefit in most cases, it had a mixed impact on poor andnonwhitemen. On the one hand,men like the artisans that Chambersstudied in Arequipa, Peru, adapted elite-generated notions of honorto their own benefit, marking a democratization of honor that made itpossible to assert their rights as citizens within the new nation.58 Onthe other hand, politicians could use notions of male authority andpaternalism to reconceprualize and reinforce ethnic hierarchies in thenew republican setting. Both RossanaBarragan for Bolivia andAndresGuerrero for Ecuador have indicated that gender ideas helped to reconcile the paradox of theoretically universal law codes coexisting withdiscriminatory regulations."

Overall, various scholars have found that not onlywas gender central to nation-state formation, bu t patriarchy was in fact strengthenedin the process. Chambers concluded that the democratization of honorin nineteenth-centuryArequipa rested in part on women's subordination, and her findings reflect studies done in other regions as well.GoLaw as well as custom deepened patriarchal rights, particularly withregard towives' legal status: as men gained new rights, women's powerswere legally circumscribed, and wives especiallywere more clearly andfully subordinated within marriage." Therefore, while poor and nonwhite men might in some circumstances be placed under the paternalpower of white eli te men, all men shared legally endorsed power overwomen.This aspect of republican patriarchywas one facet that disringuished it from colonial structures." In all cases,whether an individualman's patriarchal powerswere primarilystrengthened or-weakened, theprocess of nation making in Latin America modernized patriarchy,'?

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One important gap in the literature on gender and the nation pertains to the urban-rural divide. We certainlyknow more about middleclass and urban elite women and men's relationships to nation makingthananyothergroup, thoughour understanding of poorer urbandwellers' experiences has expanded significantly in recent years. Studies ofgender and nation in the countryside, however, are fewer and typicallyless well developed. Important exceptions that combine the fields ofgender and peasant studies for nation-state formation are Grandin'sworkon Guatemala and Mallon's work on Mexico and Peru. Grandin'sexamination of Indian-state relations has shown that indigenouselites' authority as patriarchs over their own families and communitieswas essential to theiradaptation to political and economic transformations in the nineteenth century. Likewise, he has tracedways in whichindigenous women's maintenance of outward signs of ethnic identitywas critical to the urbanization and modernization ofMayan identity.64For Mexico and Peru, Mallon has argued that patriarchy was centralno t only to state formation from above, bu t also in the developmentof peasants' alternative nationalisms. She has proposed that genderideologies, and patriarchy in particular, were on equal footing withclass and ethnic hierarchies in "reproducing systems of domination.t""Mallon, especially, has not only shown that genderwas an importantpart of the history of nationalism bu t also suggests that nationalismcannot be seen as having only one meaning among peoples of different classes, ethnicities, and regions. Her discussion of gender furtherhighlights ways in which subaltern peoples did no t simply adopt elitenationalisms bu t rather reshaped them to address their own internalcommunity relations, problems, ideologies, and goals." Yet even thesepioneering works tend to focus on Indians and peasants in leadershiproles, and they offer l it tle sense of peasant and indigenous commoners' experiences of and impact on nation making, given that Grandin'sstudy focuses mainly on male indigenous elites, and Mallon's on peas-an t intermediaries.

Oneway to meetthe challenge of filling gaps in the historical litera-


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ture on gender, Indians, and the nation-state is by exploring the unevenand often conrradictcjy processes of nation making in nineteenthcentury Ecuador. F ~ c u s i n g this exploration on the countryside. andincorporating women as well as men. commoners as well as communityleaders. when analyzing the relationship between indigenous peoplesand the formative nation not only complements studies of Mexico,Peru, and Guatemala but also offers a new view of the overall processof state formation and nation making. Such an undertaking is particu-larly critical for Ecuador in order to understand indigenous women'sparadoxical relationships to the rise of indigenous activist politiesfrom the mid-twentieth century forward. Though the transformationsin gendered interethnic politics in Ecuador were often irregular andincomplete, new sociopolitical conditions had taken shape by1925 thatmade it possible for modern Indian-state relations to take root. Thismodernization of Indian-state relations in the making of Ecuador hadsignificant, and divergent, effects on Indian men and women.

Documents

O Connor Erin_Gender Indian Nation_pag 3-24