Ecuador

En el presente estudio se analizan los avances del neoconstitucionalismo y la democracia participativa en Bolivia, Ecuador y Venezuela. Desde 2006, estos tres países han dirigido la llamada transformación hacia la izquierda en América Latina y el socialismodel siglo xxi. ¿Cómo se reflejan las ideas de la democracia radical en las nuevas Constitucionesandinas y cuáles son los probables desafíos y contradicciones acerca de la implementación de estas medidas para animar la participación popular local e inclusión de los sectores previamente excluidos? Adicionalmente, un objetivo principal del artículoes aplicar un nuevo concepto para el debate académicosobre el desarrollo político en América Latina: descentralización socialista. Consecuentemente,el propósito es problematizar el debate teórico sobre la descentralización y la democracia radical participativa en los tres países andinos, e igualmente indicar algunos desafíos para los proyectos políticos participativos alrededor de los presidentes Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales y Rafael Correa.

This study deals with the tensions and contradictions between resource governance, welfare policies, and the constitutionally recognized rights of nature and the indigenous peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador. We have identified a certain reductionism in current debates on these issues and propose a more systematic analytical focus on class and the class-ethnicity duality, as expressed in historical and contemporary indigenous struggles, and also confirmed via our ethnographic material. Drawing on the double bind as expressed in Joseph Heller´s Catch-22 wherein the protagonists face situations in which they do not have any choice to achieve a net gain, this article centres on how national governments have to choose between the protections of rights – in this case ethnic and environmental rights-and welfare provision financed by extractive revenues. From the perspective of ecologically concerned indigenous actors, the Catch-22 is articulated in the choice or compromise between universal welfarism on the one hand, and ethno-environmental concerns on the other hand. The article draws primarily on ecosocialist arguments and on indigenous-culturalist perspectives on Good Life (Sumak Kawsay or Vivir Bien). A central finding is the existence of awareness among involved actors-oppositional movements and government authorities-that the Catch-22 quandary and joint class-ethnic concerns are unavoidable ingredients in their discourses, struggles, and understandings of Good Life.

Volume 16, Number 1, April 2017
Table of Contents

Special Issue: Critical Geographies in Latin America
Guest Editors: Anne-Marie Hanson and John C. Finn

Critical Geographies in Latin America
pp. 1-15 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0008
John C. Finn, Anne-Marie Hanson

The Incorrigible Subject: Mobilizing a Critical Geography of (Latin) America through the Autonomy of Migration
pp. 17-42 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0007
Nicholas De Genova

Space, Power, and Locality: the Contemporary Use of Territorio in Latin American Geography
pp. 43-67 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0009
López María F. Sandoval, Andrea Robertsdotter, Myriam Paredes

Geografías de sacrificio y geografías de esperanza: tensiones territoriales en el Ecuador plurinacional
pp. 69-92 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0016
Manuela M. M. Silveira, Melissa Moreano, Nadia Romero, Diana Murillo, Gabriela Ruales, Nataly Torres

Beyond Removal: Critically Engaging in Research on Geographies of Homelessness in the City of Rio de Janeiro
pp. 93-116 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0013
Katharina Schmidt, Igor M. Medeiros Robaina

Turismo, abandono y desplazamiento: Mapeando el barrio de La Boca en Buenos Aires
pp. 117-137 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0015
Jorge Sequera, Tomás Rodríguez

“I risk everything because I have already lost everything”: Central American Female Migrants Speak Out on the Migrant Trail in Oaxaca, Mexico
pp. 139-164 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0012
Leigh Anne Schmidt, Stephanie Buechler

JLAG Perspectives Forum:

Celebrating Critical Geographies of Latin America: Inspired by an NFL Quarterback
pp. 165-171 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0010
Sharlene Mollett

Geografiando para la resistencia
pp. 172-177 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0006
Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador

Perplexing Entanglements with a Post-Neoliberal State
pp. 177-184 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0014
Japhy Wilson

The Challenge of Feminist Political Geography to State-Centrism in Latin American Geography
pp. 185-193 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0011
Zoe Pearson, Nicholas J. Crane

Attending to Researcher Positionality in Geographic Fieldwork on Health in Latin America: Lessons from La Costa Ecuatoriana
pp. 194-201 | DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0005
Ben W. Brisbois, Patricia Polo Almeida

Within the broader context of the global nutritional transition, in this article we examine local dietary practices in the northern highlands of Ecuador drawing on ethnographic research. The results of this study demonstrate that the communities studied continue to prepare whole foods for the most part.  However, processed foods are also desired and consumed in some households in the area. Finally, we discuss two discourses that motivate dietary choices in this region: nostalgia and cosmopolitanism.

The aim of this paper is to investigate to what extent buen vivir (‘good life’), Latin America’s new concept for collective well being, can be considered a way forward beyond current paradigms related to economic growth, development, ideology and state building, with its strengths and potential weaknesses or just a new version of political discourse. In order to answer this question, we will briefly review the literature that can help to trace the buen vivir origins in the cosmovisions of Latino American indigenous peoples, and to connect it to reflections made in different areas of social, economic and political sciences, trying to identify the areas in which divergences arise using established approaches and frameworks. In the conclusions we will also try to look at the added value brought by the buen vivir towards a renewed understanding of political, social, and economic objectives of the associated life.

En la presente investigación se realizó un aislamiento en medio Mac Conkey Agar y el análisis cuantitativo de bacilos Gram negativos encontrados en muestras de jugo de naranja natural elaborados y expendidos en los alrededores de la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana-Sede Quito, Campus “EL Girón”, el proyecto se realizó en el Centro de Investigación y Valoración para la Biodiversidad , para la investigación se tomaron cinco muestras de diferentes lugares del
sector, trabajando a seis diluciones (10−1 a 10−6 ml) en agua fisiológica. Se cultivaron las muestras a una temperatura de 35 a 37◦C durante tres días, las primeras 8 horas se cuantificaron cada 2 horas según el tiempo habitual de consumo y por lo recomendado en la norma INEN se cuantificaron las Unidades Formadoras de Colonias hasta las 72 horas. De los resultados obtenidos se comprobó que el 40% de los jugos de naranja expendidos a los alrededores de la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana-Sede Quito, Campus “El Girón” no son aptos para el consumo humano ya que sobrepasan los límites permisibles máximos de coliformes totales establecidos en la Normativa Técnica Ecuatoriana INEN 2337:2008.