COPISA in Ecuador: Participation that Wasn't
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COPISA IN ECUADOR: PARTICIPATION THAT WASN'T
By
Erin Fiorini
______Copyright © Erin Fiorini 2015
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the
DEPARTMENT OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
In the Graduate College
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
2015
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 2
STATEMENT BY AUTHOR
The thesis titled COPISA In Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't prepared by Erin Fiorini has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for a master’s degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.
Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.
SIGNED:
Erin Fiorini
APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR
This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:
November 9, 2015 Jennifer Cyr, Ph. D. Date Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 3
Acknowledgements
First, I owe a debt of gratitude to my thesis committee, Jennifer Cyr, Marc Becker, and David Gibbs for their continual encouragement, insightful critiques and patience.
Especially Jennifer encouraged me throughout the writing of this thesis and inspired me to broaden my scope of analysis and to examine how COPISA both affects and reflects
Ecuador’s current democracy. Marc, thank you for your continued encouragement and lively defense discussion.
I’m also indebted to my family, including Judy Wellman. I finished this thesis with
Judy’s unconditional gifts and encouragement. I am grateful for my mom’s continual cheerleading and ability to listen calmly and my dad’s kind heart and his gifts of fresh vegetables from his garden. My sister, Brittney, Ben and kiddos continually encouraged me and made me laugh. I’m also indebted to and inspired by my friends – near and far – some of whom appear in this thesis. Last, thank you Betsy McTiernan for helping me to turn a corner in Great Berrington.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 4
Table of Contents
Abstract ...... 7
Chapter 1: Introduction and Research Methods ...... 9
The Theory of Participatory Institutions ...... 15
Thesis Framework ...... 18
Contributions to Literature ...... 20
Research Methods ...... 21
Chapter 2: Participatory Democracy and Food Sovereignty in Latin America, Ecuador ...... 28
Participatory Institutions & Experiments ...... 28
Participatory Experiments Emerge in Latin America ...... …29
Creating CONSEA ...... 32
Subnational Participatory Experiences in Latin America ...... 37
Ecuador’s Turn Toward Participation in Politics ...... 38
Subnational Participatory Democracy in Ecuador ...... 41
Food Sovereignty Meaning, Origins & Actors on International and Ecuadorian Stage....44
Corporate Food Regime and Food Sovereignty in Ecuador ...... 47
Chapter Two Conclusions...... 50
Chapter 3: Civil Society in Ecuador and Correa’s Arrival (1960-2007) ...... 52
Civil Society and Corporatism (1960-80) ...... 54
Civil Society and Neoliberalism 1980-2005 ...... 58
Public Exclusion, Political Society ...... 63
In Response ...... 68
Lucio Gutiérrez, Civil Society Disarray ...... 70
Correa’s Arrival ...... 73
2006 Presidential Elections ...... 73
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 5
Chapter Three Conclusions ...... 77
Chapter 4: Creating the Conference, COPISA ...... 80
Food Sovereignty in the 2008 Constitution ...... 81
Correa in Between ...... 86
Writing the Organic Law of the Food Sovereignty Regime (LORSA) ...... 88
Chapter Four Conclusions: Attempt to Transfer; Civil Society Excluded, Powerful
President ...... 93
Chapter 5: COPISA Design, Civil Society Influence, and Political Society Influence ...... 97
Section 1 — Design ...... 98
Establishing the Conference...... 99
No Vertical Participatory Institutions ...... 100
Little Horizontal Collaboration, Least Legislative Powers, Member Discord ...... 101
Ambiguous Design, Internal Tensions ...... 103
No Budget, Little Time, Big Task ...... 105
Top-down Operations, Patronage ...... 106
Rules of the Game, No Permanency ...... 111
LORSA Reform ...... 113
Regime Alignment...... 116
Design Conclusions ...... 119
Section 2 — Civil Society Relations with COPISA ...... 120
Civil Society Fragments and Low Collaboration ...... 122
Autonomous, Self-limiting Civic Organizations ...... 126
The Red Agraria & Commitments ...... 128
Internal Disputes, Red Agraria Dissolving ...... 130
Civil Society Conclusions ...... 132
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 6
Section 3 — Political Society Influence on COPISA ...... 134
Unrealized Agrarian Revolution and Food Sovereignty Model ...... 136
GMO Backtracking ...... 139
Agricultural Political Economy ...... 140
Government Limitation of Participatory Politics ...... 142
Government Oppression, Effects on Civil Society ...... 145
Political Society Conclusions ...... 146
Chapter Five Conclusions ...... 148
Chapter 6: Conclusions ...... 152
How did this happen? What Does the Change Reflect and How Does it Impact
Agriculture, Participatory Politics, and Democracy in Ecuador? ...... 155
Other “Participatory” Entities ...... 161
Changing Contexts ...... 166
The Theory of Participatory Institutions ...... 168
Improving COPISA ...... 171
Contributions to Scholarship ...... 172
References ...... 176
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 7
Abstract
Ecuador codified participatory democracy and food sovereignty in its 2008 constitution. It also called for the creation of a food sovereignty bill to expand and detail legal protections for these valued practices. In 2009, legislators proposed a bill to the president. It called for indigenous and peasant farmers’ increased access to state agricultural resources, such as land and loans, and the ability to direct national government agricultural policy. In essence, legislators wanted to democratize Ecuador’s agricultural economic model, one that had long marginalized peasant farmers who grow traditional crops for local markets, and had favored the production of large-scale commodities for export.
To accomplish this, they also included within the bill the creation of a power-sharing participatory institution, the National Council for Food Sovereignty, an institution first proposed by the food sovereignty-focused organizations Mesa Agraria and Colectivo
Agrario. The institution would comprise a council of representatives from small-scale producer and indigenous organizations as well as state actors who would jointly create national agricultural policy and ensure its implementation. Legislators wanted the council to increase peasant farmer authority in agricultural policy, to establish policy that would enable more egalitarian agricultural production and consumption systems, and to oversee the state’s completion of such policy.
Legislators and civic groups anticipated that President Rafael Correa, who in his 2006 campaign promoted citizen participation and equitable distribution of agricultural resources, would support such a participatory council. He did not. Instead, Correa partially vetoed the bill. He restructured the institution into a temporary committee and later a permanent state agency, Plurinational and Multicultural National Conference for Food Sovereignty
(COPISA), which was mandated to create supplemental food sovereignty bills with citizen participation. COPISA completed the task in 2012, but their bills have yet to become laws.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 8
COPISA claims to be a leader in creating food sovereignty policy with citizen participants and to enable their implementation; however, findings show differently. COPISA is a relatively weak state agency. The agency has yet to redistribute power or resources regarding food sovereignty or oversight of existing food sovereignty legislation. Instead, the
Correa administration (2007-present) has monopolized agricultural policy decisions and exponentially increased government investment in commodity crops, to the exclusion and detriment of peasant farmers. Indeed, the Correa administration seems to monopolize several supposedly state-sponsored “participatory” platforms, to the detriment of Ecuador’s democracy.
This text investigates why and how COPISA was restructured into a weak state agency, the perils of COPISA’s claim of being a participatory organization, and the ways that its status as a weak state agency impacts and reflects Ecuador’s participatory politics, democracy, and agricultural economies.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 9
Chapter 1: Introduction and Research Methods
Various countries in Latin American, including Ecuador, have attempted to implement participatory institutions at all levels of government to varying degrees of success
(Wampler, 2000, 2012; Van Cott, 2008; Ospina Peralta, 2012). Participatory institutions are
“specifically designed” political spaces of “permanent interactions” between state 1 actors and volunteer civil society 2 members who interact with the objective to jointly craft public policy
(Avritzer, 2009: 4, 9). Participatory institutions include citizens in the construction of their rules, enable distribution of power and resources among the citizenry, and provide government accountability (Avritzer, 2009: 63). They emerged in the 1990s as a popular citizens’ response toward systemically corrupt and unresponsive representative democratic systems that favored a few elite 3. Participatory institutions can take various designs, but ultimately, those who attempt to implement them do so with the purpose of authorizing citizens’ policy-making power to invert the “access of public goods, from rich to poor” and prevent political corruption (Avritzer, 2009: 114).
Since the 1980s, Ecuador’s citizens have been increasingly frustrated with their national representative system, which was almost entirely unresponsive to providing the vast majority of citizens with basic economic and citizenship 4 rights while engaging in political
1 State refers to the three branches of government, laws and policies, political jurisdictions and the political institutions that bind these entities (Linz & Stepan, 1996: 17).
2 Civil society is defined as the “ensemble of social practices that generate a space of voluntary association and the sets of relational networks, or social actors, that occupy that space. Within this scope, the cast of civil society actors includes all voluntary groups formed for the sake of the common aspirations and concerns of its members” (Zamosc, 2007). Civil society is distinct from the state, family and economic structures (Avritzer, 2006).
3Elites are “those who occupy the most influential positions or roles in the important spheres of social life. … [They comprise] … groups whose ‘cultural capital’ positions them above their fellow citizens and whose decisions crucially shape what happens in the wider society. Equally important, they are the groups that dominate ... the ‘means of orientation’ [whose] ideas and interests are hegemonic” (Bowen, 2011: 454).
4 Citizenship rights encompass the following three sets of rights in “any given state” (Yashar, 2005: 47). They are: civil rights — the “freedom of association, expression, faith, … religion, ... the freedom to own property, engage in contracts and seek justice; … political rights — the right to take part in government, including …
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 10 corruption with impunity (Silva, 2009; Sánchez-Parga, 2009). National-level political economic initiatives and international free-trade agreements in the 1990s produced wide- scale poverty in Ecuador. Small-scale farmers in the countryside, comprising mainly politically marginalized indigenous populations, were the hardest hit. In 2007, the poverty rate reached 85% in some rural areas (Mesa Agraria, 2007). The state provided few basic infrastructures, such as irrigation or loans for rural farmers, who, despite these conditions, still supplied the country with 60% of its agricultural produce. Meanwhile, the central government privileged growers of large-scale monoculture commodities for export, such as bananas and shrimp, providing them with access to subsidies, loans, land, and tariffs that subsequently favored their bottom line (Conaghan, 1988; Colectivo Agrario, 2009).
To counter this agricultural economic trend, in 2007, two civil society organizations – Mesa Agraria, 5 constituted of national-level indigenous and peasant farmer associations, and Colectivo Agrario, 6 constituted of urban academic professionals — publicly proposed that the state institutionalize food sovereignty. Food sovereignty 7 is an expansive agricultural and food consumption paradigm that, among other factors, values the use of indigenous knowledge and resources in farming. On a political scale, it encompasses the efforts to “democratize food politics … and agricultural governance” (Pena, 2015: 7). In order to democratize agricultural governance in Ecuador, Mesa Agraria and Colectivo
participating in a government council or voting in a political electoral race; and … social rights — the right to ... economic welfare and security [and full access to the] social heritage ... according to the standards prevailing in the society.” Access to housing, health, and education are included in social rights (Yashar, 2005: 46).
5Mesa Agraria consisted of the following campesino and indigenous farmer confederations: National Federation of Campesino, Indígenas and Black Organizations (FENOCIN); National Campesino Coordinator — Eloy Alfaro (CNC-EA); National Confederation of Campesino Social Security (CONFEUNASSC); Ecuarunari, and National Federation of Free Agro-industrial Workers, Campesinos and Indigenous of Ecuador (FENACLE).
6Colectivo Agraria consisted of the following national and international non-government organizations and think tanks: Heifer Ecuador; Terra Nueva; Intermón-Oxfam; Colectivo Agroecológico; Ecuadorian Corporation of Biological Agriculturists (CEA); Food First Information and Action Network; Veco Andino; Institute of Ecuadorian Studies (IEE); The Investigative System of Ecuadorian Agrarian Problems (SIPAE); Central Andes for the Formation of Social Leaders (COFALIS).
7 Food sovereignty is further defined and discussed in Chapter Two.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 11
Agrario proposed that the state: redistribute large land holdings; provide irrigation infrastructure, business loans, and subsidies for small-scale farmers; and spend 10% of the national budget on small- and medium-scale farming. They proposed these measures to reactivate the rural economy and culture and equalize state resources to improve the lives and livelihoods of peasant populations (Mesa Agraria, 2007).
Not only did the Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario want the state to institutionalize food sovereignty, but also to give peasant and indigenous farmers the power to decide and direct food sovereignty policy. Specifically, they proposed the state create a permanent, national-level participatory institution for food sovereignty: the National Council for Food
Sovereignty. They proposed that the council be a power-sharing body — that it be constituted of volunteer representatives from several indigenous, small-scale producer and consumer rights civil society organizations as well as representatives from several national-level state agencies. The stakeholders would jointly create national food sovereignty policy and oversee its implementation (Colectivo Agrario, 2009; Cecilia P., personal interview, July 24, 2012).
The council would hold bi-annual national conferences, that is, permanent, regular public forums where citizens debate and propose food sovereignty guidelines so that legislators can insert these proposals into national legislation. This permanent food sovereignty national council and its regular conferences, they posited, would place agricultural legislative decisions and governance in the hands small-scale producers (Peña, 2013). These groups proposed this council and conference system based on Brazil’s power-sharing participatory council, The National Food Security and Nutrition Council (CONSEA) and its annual conferences. They wanted to replicate in Ecuador what CONSEA actors accomplished in
Brazil. In short, they wanted to create a more inclusive agricultural policy-making system that would result in a more egalitarian and responsive agricultural state structure.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 12
Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario strategically proposed the council in 2007 to harness the political momentum generated by the newly elected President Rafael Correa, who promised to rewrite the national constitution with citizen participation (de la Torre, 2013). He proposed a Citizens’ Revolution 8 to enable an equitable, “democratic, active, … deliberative” government with participatory policy-making councils at all levels of government (Recalde,
2007: 21; de la Torre, 2013: 42). A component part of the Citizens’ Revolution was an
“Agrarian Revolution [to] democratize access to land, prevent water privatization, and, in general, foster access to strategic resources for ... the peasant sector” (Giunta, 2014: 12). This seemed the ideal political atmosphere in which these groups could unite and propose a participatory institution for food sovereignty.
The Constituent Assembly (September 2007-September 2008), the legislative body that enacted the constitution, held public forums for citizens to propose and debate policy guidelines, and the legislators incorporated these guidelines into the text. Several Mesa
Agraria and Colectivo Agrario food sovereignty guidelines were made constitutional clauses, including a transitory clause mandating that a food sovereignty law be enacted within 120 days of the constitution’s promulgation.
In January 2009, legislators of the Congresillo (November 2008-April 2009), the temporary legislative body immediately following the Constituent Assembly, drafted a food
8The Citizens Revolution (CR) was first presented in Correa’s campaign in 2006. First, the CR represents Correa’s socio-economic programs, policies and initiatives in order to return political and economic decision- making to sovereign Ecuadorian state actors, in contrast to previous decades where these decisions were highly influenced by international loan agencies and foreign governments (Recalde, 2007: 21). Correa and his electoral party, Alianza PAIS, proposed five points that would comprise the “revolution”. They were: ethics; production and economic; education; health; and sovereignty, and integration into Latin America (Vega, 2013: 104). By 2012 the administration included in its points: knowledge; justice; ecology; cultural, and urban areas (Agencia Publica de Noticias de Ecuador, 2012).
Each point entails specific material projects that pertain to its topic such as roads, bridges and hospitals, as well as services such as scholarships and school lunch assistance. The CR is conglomerates and centralizes all of these policies and programs within the administration’s control and oversight. The Citizens’ Revolution is also the brand name of these administration-created programs to promote these programs and services to the citizenry (Machado, 2014). That way, the CR comprises experiential projects and services as well as propaganda to promote them.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 13 sovereignty bill. It contained much of the Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario proposal, including the state’s creation of the National Council for Food Sovereignty. Among its mandates were to consult directly the president regarding national food sovereignty matters and to hold bi-annual national conferences to create food sovereignty legislation with the citizenry. The Congresillo anticipated hosting nationwide public forums for the bill, similar to those of the Constituent Assembly, to increase citizen input regarding its content.
However, after the constitution’s promulgation, the air of participatory democracy faded. President Correa who, after the constitution passed, had greater legislative authority and popular support which allowed him to hurry the legislative process. It became clear to the
Congresillo that it would not be able to host public forums. Instead, the Congresillo included in the bill’s transitory clause that the yet-approved National Council for Food Sovereignty create several supplemental food sovereignty bills with “ample citizen participation” and submit those to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Cattle (MAGAP) within 180 days of the council’s formation. Congresillo legislators used the proposed council to accomplish what it could not: to create a detailed food sovereignty law with citizen input. In February 2009, legislators submitted their food sovereignty bill to President Correa. He partially vetoed the bill, eliminating several protections for food sovereignty (Rosero Garcés, 2008).
Moreover, the President nearly eliminated the National Council for Food Sovereignty.
He changed its name to the “National Conference for Food Sovereignty” (presently the
Plurinational and Multicultural National Conference for Food Sovereignty, COPISA). He deleted its permanent roles and responsibilities and changed its composition to consist of only eight state-selected civil society representatives. Correa kept the bill’s transitory clause that mandated that the committee create several supplemental food sovereignty bills with citizen participation within 180 days. The text did not clarify whether the committee would last past
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 14 that time. The President’s version became the Organic Law of the Food Sovereignty Regime
(LORSA) in May 2009.
Despite these precarious beginnings, the National Conference for Food Sovereignty was formed in September 2009 as a temporary committee and, in 2010, was codified as
COPISA, a state agency. COPISA wrote the supplemental food sovereignty bills with civil society input via public forums between 2010 and 2012.
Scholars claim COPISA is a “participatory organization [that creates a] synergistic relationship between civil society and the state” to create food sovereignty policy (Pena,
2015: 10). COPISA states that it “leads the process in” and has the “principal job of formulat[ing] food sovereignty public policy with citizen participation” and “ensuring its implementation” (COPISA, 2015).
However, this thesis contests such claims. COPISA is neither a leader in creating food sovereignty national policy with citizens nor in overseeing its implementation. It is a relatively weak state agency that created national food sovereignty bills between 2010 and
2012, but, since then, only promotes food sovereignty to the public. This thesis investigates why and how COPISA was restructured into a weak state agency, the perils to democracy of
COPISA’s claims of being a participatory institution, and how its status as a weak state agency impacts and reflects Ecuador’s participatory politics, democracy, and agricultural economies. To that end, this thesis asks:
1. What were the prevailing factors that derailed the installation of the power-sharing
institution and crafted COPISA into an unleveraged state agency?
2. What impacts does COPISA’s status as an unleveraged state agency have on
Ecuador’s participatory politics?
a. What perils may there be in COPISA’s claim to be a participatory institution
for food sovereignty when, in practice, it is an unresponsive state agency?
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 15
3. What impacts does COPISA’s status as a weak state agency have on Ecuador’s food
sovereignty practitioners, national food sovereignty legislation, and government
agricultural initiatives?
4. What does COPISA’s status as an unleveraged state agency indicate about Ecuador’s
participatory politics, overall quality of governance, and agricultural economy?
The Theory of Participatory Institutions:
Leonardo Avritzer, a scholar of participatory politics, formulated the theory of participatory institutions based on a dense network of municipal-level participatory institutions that exist nationwide in Brazil. Some of these institutions are informal, but many are mandated by Brazil’s national constitution (1988). Avritzer says that participatory institutions are “specifically designed” political spaces of “permanent interactions” between state actors and volunteer civil society members who interact with the explicit purpose of jointly crafting public policy (Avritzer, 2009: 4). Participatory institutions include citizens in the construction of its rules, enable distribution of power and resources among the citizenry, and provide government accountability (Avritzer, 2009: 63). Participatory institutions are important because they can organize “diffuse” civil society demands and provide a legitimate, permanent political platform for citizens, particularly for the politically and economically disenfranchised, to channel their demands directly into the political arena
(2009: 9, 11). Well-run participatory institutions can result in the creation of a more level political playing field. Such a playing field is what Mesa Agraria, Colectivo Agrario and supportive legislators sought produce in Ecuador by proposing the National Council for Food
Sovereignty.
However, when it comes to establishing and maintaining participatory institutions, political and societal contexts matter. Avritzer (2009) concludes that the most effective participatory institutions emerge in contexts where the civil society desires their
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 16 implementation. Further, they have certain contours and characteristics. First, the civil society context should have a “tradition” of influential “civic or popular associations,” or associations that “forward the interests of the poor” (32, 41). These civic associations should be universally representative in membership and members should have authority to make and to carry out association decisions. Civic associations should remain autonomous from but should collaborate with other organizations and political society in a self-limiting manner. In other words, contexts with democratically behaving civil societies “tend to generate a strong constituency for participatory politics” (35) and increase the institution’s effectiveness. Few or low degrees of these qualities tend to have negative effects on the functionality of participatory institution.
Even more important than a democratic civil society to enable functional participatory institutions is the presence of influential political actors who are willing and able to facilitate their implementation (41). The institution’s functionality is “dependent” on state actors because it resides within the polity. Ulimately, it is up to state actors to facilitate
“participatory practices at the administrative level … [to enable] … universal access to public policy-making” (65). Avrtizer and other scholars find that the most pivotal political actor in the success (or derailment) of participatory institutions in Latin American is the Executive
Branch leader and his or her coalition for or against these institutions and their policies
(2009: 54). This is because Executive Branch leaders generally have the greatest amount of legal and political authority within the Executive Branch and among the other state branches of government (Mejia, et al., 2006). Without the Executive Branch leader and his or her coalition of support for the institution, it will likely fail or remain ineffective (Goldfrank,
2007). Avritzer adds that participatory institutions, in general, are not successful simply because they are prosposed by a democratic civil society or because they were ushered in by a supportive political coalition, but also because these types of civil and political society
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 17 stakeholders collaborated to design the institutions to accommodate their particular political contexts (64).
Ecuador’s civil society, prior to and during the attempted creation of the National
Council for Food Sovereignty in 2009, was not conducive to implementing a participatory institution for food sovereignty. Ecuador has a relatively low rate of participation in civic and popular associations compared to other Latin American nations (Farrington, 2012; Gallegos,
2013). By the 2000s, the most widely recognized and politically influential civic associations became increasingly combative and less democratic in behavior. Mesa Agraria and Colectivo
Agraria comprised few organizations, and their membership was not universal. Few citizens in Ecuador knew of their proposal or what food sovereignty meant in 2009. An autonomous, collaborative, universal, national-level front for a power-sharing food sovereignty institution never fully developed in Ecuador. These civil society features were a major reason why the
National Council for Food Sovereignty was derailed. These features persist, contributing to
COPISA’s status as low-level state agency.
The main reason for why and how the council was restructured into a temporary committee in 2009, then a token state agency in 2010, was President Correa’s had the legal authority and used it. His congressional coalition and popular support gave him the leverage to change the council with little societal backlash. Despite Correa’s initial campaign rhetoric, his political desire was, and still is, to centralize national policy decisions into the Executive
Branch, including agricultural policy. The administration exponentially increased agricultural funding to large-scale agri-businesses in order to “modernize” the agricultural production matrix, but has not completed its promised Agrarian Revolution (Clark, 2015). The president’s adversarial stance toward COPISA, food sovereignty, and participatory politics is the principal reason why COPISA is a weak agency within the government, the effects of which have been deleterious to participatory democracy and food sovereignty.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 18
Using COPISA as a case study and the theory of participatory institutions as a guide, this thesis argues that the charcteristics of Ecuadorian civil and political societies at the national-level in the decades leading up to and during 2009 were not conducive to the creation of a power-sharing participatory institution for food sovereignty. While COPISA expanded citizen political rights when it created the bills with citizen input during the 2010-
12 timeframe, the principal timeframe studied here, the bills are stuck in congressional committee. COPISA does not live up to its claim to be a “participatory” institution, but is, in effect, an unleveraged state agency that is beholden to the agricultural policies and plans of
Presiden Correa.
COPISA creators intended it to act as a hub for food sovereignty policymaking and program implementation. However, the administration rather than citizens directs COPISA.
This weakens small-scale farmers’ ability to gain permanent, equitable access to state agricultural political decisions and resources undermining the notion of participatory politics, in particular, and democracy, in general, in Ecuador.
Thesis Framework: This thesis proceeds as follows: Chapter Two defines and discusses the impetus for and examples of participatory institutions in Brazil. This examination provides an understanding of contexts that promote and facilitate functional participatory institutions in contemporary Latin America. Next, the chapter discusses participatory institutions and mechanisms in Ecuador and concludes that most municipal-level institutions have been less than successful. This chapter also argues that, prior to 2008, political society was decidedly against most civic organizations’ attempts to directly participate in national-level legislation in Ecuador. It then discusses the emergence of food sovereignty on the international and
Ecuadorian levels. Finally, it outlines why Ecuador’s Mesa Agraria embraced the food sovereignty model, how they practically apply it, and why Mesa Agraria and the Colectivo
Agrario sought a state-mandated, power-sharing institution for food sovereignty in Ecuador.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 19
Chapter Three discusses Ecuadorian civil society from the 1960s until 2007. Civil society organizations that formed in the 1960s and 1970s had limited organizational autonomy (Yashar, 2005; Chartock, 2012: 53). Independent, influential peasant and indigenous organizations emerged in the 1980s and increased their political power and access to some state resources. However, hierarchies within organizations emerged and collaboration among influential organizations decreased. Civil society overall is relatively unorganized in Ecuador compared to other Latin American countries. This chapter also demonstrates that civil society’s disorganization is largely owing to Ecuador’s fractured political system and unreliable democratic institutions — agencies, laws — that favor a few influential and elite citizens. These societal factors played a large role in why COPISA was not established as a power-sharing institution. This chapter ends with an introduction to
President Rafael Correa (2007-present), from his 2006 campaign until the constitutional rewrite in 2008.
Chapter Four discusses the construction phase of COPISA to explain how and why the National Council for Food Sovereignty was turned into a temporary committee (later a state agency) and how its construction phase affects its current function, or dysfunction.
Chapter Five is structured into three sections. The first discusses how COPISA was designed as a temporary committee, then a low-leveraged state agency, preventing it from being the participatory entity it claims to be. The second section outlines how certain civil society organizations dominated COPISA, which limited other civil society members from using it. It also demonstrates that civil society organizations abandoned the agency because it is ineffective to advance food sovereignty policy and programs. The last section argues that
President Correa, who controls or influences the vast majority of national-level political and economic decisions, is decidedly against food sovereignty and direct citizen participation in
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 20 national legislation. I demonstrate that MAGAP controls all agricultural programs in
Ecuador, including food sovereignty-focused programs.
Chapter Six discusses the ramifications of COPISA as a token state agency. Food sovereignty initiatives and programs are scattered throughout civil society and the government. Meanwhile the administration funds and aids large-scale production of commodity crops reflecting its goal to regulate and modernize agriculture. This chapter also discusses other national-level “participatory” mechanisms installed concurrent to COPISA, finding that they, like COPISA, are largely folded into the administration to the detriment of citizenry. This chapter suggests how COPISA can advance citizen authority in food sovereignty policy creation and implementation. It ends by demonstrating the contributions this thesis makes to the scholarship on participatory democracy and food sovereignty in Latin
America.
Contributions to the Literature:
Little has been written about COPISA. Those who have discussed it do so from the framework of food sovereignty or social movement theory (Pena, 2015; Clark, 2015). By contrast, this study focuses on COPISA from the framework of participatory democracy.
There are few seminal scholarly works published in English that contribute to the understanding of Andean participatory experiences (Van Cott, 2008; Cameron, 2010;
Cameron, Hershberg & Sharpe, 2012). Those that do exist focus mainly on Ecuador’s participatory practices at the municipal level initiated in the early 2000s. Several participatory mechanisms were codified in the 2008 Ecuadorian constitution and 2010 Law of
Participation (Pachano, 2010; Gallegos & Espinosa, 2012). Mounting investigations of these participatory assemblies and spaces, however, indicate that they are poorly attended
(Gallegos, 2013), relegate citizens to the roles of subjects and passive attendees in the
“participatory” process (Vega, 2013), and serve as a façade for the government to claim it is
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 21 expanding democracy, while co-opting civil society sovereignty (Pachano, 2010; Córdova,
2014). This thesis adds COPISA to the body of scholarship regarding these recently implemented “participatory” mechanisms in Ecuador. It indicates that COPISA’s story dovetails with these other participatory mechanisms meant to expand democracy that the
Correa administration has also encroached upon.
In addition, this study will advance Avritzer’s theory that context matters. Ecuadorian civil society members wanted to recreate CONSEA successes in Ecuador. However,
Ecuador’s current socio-political context did not have the qualities that Avritzer claims are most conducive to establishing and sustaining power-sharing institutions. Therefore, this investigation tests Avritzer’s premise that participatory institutional designs must fit the socio-political context in which they emerge. In the case of COPISA, Avritzer’s assertions are found to be correct.
This thesis adds to the growing literature on the centrality of President Correa’s power in Ecuador’s government and state institutions. Most striking about the literature on
Ecuador’s contemporary political economy, state policies, institutions, and civil society is that most of it agrees on Correa’s strong influence and decision-making power (Gallegos,
2012; Ospina Peralta, 2015). Last, this is a critical moment in COPISA’s history. New members were selected for COPISA in February 2014, and the agency completed its fifth year in August 2014. It seems a good time to examine COPISA’s accomplishments and failures.
Research Methods:
I argue that civil society and political society/system characteristics and qualities at the national level in Ecuador in the decades leading up to and during 2009 were not conducive to the creation of a power-sharing participatory institution for food sovereignty.
The failure by civil society and some legislators to implement a power-sharing institution for
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 22 food sovereignty was overwhelmingly the result of President Correa’s political ability to convert COPISA into an unleveraged state agency that is ultimately beholden to the administration’s agricultural policy decisions.
Had the power-sharing council been enacted, state and volunteer civil society collaboration to create and implement food sovereignty policy would achieved a permanent state mandate. The enactment of the power-sharing institution would have indicated the administration’s willingness to welcome citizen inclusion in policy making. The degree to which it would have functioned successfully is impossible to determine. At the least, the framework and political support of participatory politics for food sovereignty would have been established.
This conclusion and others I assert in this thesis were established through triangulating information collected from fieldwork, as well as primary and secondary sources.
I conducted two months of fieldwork in Ecuador between June 2012 and August 2012, during which time I was based in Riobamba, Ecuador, the provincial capital of Chimborazo. I traveled throughout Chimborazo and surrounding provinces to conduct interviews and research. I investigated additional primary and and secondary scholarship in the U.S. while writing this thesis.
Between February 2008 and February 2011, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in
Riobamba. As a volunteer, I collaborated on small-scale farming initiatives with several agriculture-focused, non-government organizations. I also participated in the first COPISA
Land and Territories forum in Riobamba in February 2010 and a COPISA Agricultural
Employment forum in April 2010. These experiences gave me exposure to participatory governance, rural farmer initiatives, and COPISA. These experiences motivated me to focus my research on COPISA and provided me with entree and access to interviewees for this research. I highly appreciate their help.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 23
At the beginning of my fieldwork in June 2012, I proposed to research COPISA’s participatory process to create the Land and Territories bill and the Agrobiodiversity, Seed, and Increased Agroecology bill. Owing to resources and feasibility, I focused on the
Agrobiodiversity, Seeds, and Increased Agroecology bill (Seed Bill).
In order to complete this task, I conducted 32 interviews with Seed Bill forum participants (“participants” from here forward). They were “specialized informants” because they occupied unique roles and had specific cultural knowledge about which they, and only they, could provide information (Russell, 2011: 197); specifically, they had participated in temporary COPISA-hosted Seed Bill forums. All participants belonged to one of three organizations: FENOCIN, Colectivo Agrario or the Federation of Coastal Producers.
Participants were principally low-income, rural farmers residing in either the Southern
Coastal or Central Sierra region of Ecuador. All but one identified as a small-scale agriculture producer. Participants’ genders and the forum location they participated in are as follows:
1) two females and two males — Guayaquil
2) nine females and six males — Riobamba
3) three females and two males — Quito
4) four females and three males — Ambato
5) one male — Loja (also a COPISA staff member)
Approximately 10 Seed Bill participants also participated in at least one other
COPISA forum. Five Riobamba participants and the one Loja participant self-identified as
“indigenous.” The remainder identified as “mestizo.” We discussed participants’ food sovereignty practices, experiences at the forums, relationships with COPISA members and the Seed Bill content.
I interviewed 28 participants at their respective farms. This was convenient for participants and enabled me to witness their farming experiences and daily lives. For the most
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 24 part, I depended on my personal network and those of COPISA members to contact participants. I also used a snowball technique, asking interviewees for the names of other participants to contact them as potential interviewees. Accessing participants outside of these regions and networks proved difficult because of limited time and logistics. Yet, the participants I interviewed varied in class, ethnicity, gender, and geographic regions, and were representative of the larger “participant” population.
I also interviewed seven female and three male small-scale farmers and producers who were unaware of COPISA. I interviewed them to gain a glimpse of why certain small- scale farmers who practice food sovereignty techniques and could potentially benefit from the legislation did not participate in COPISA forums. A sample size of 10 people is negligible for this category. However, the information they provided was instructive and enabled me to understand COPISA’s internal operations and (lack of) public presence.
In addition, I interviewed six of the eight members of COPISA’s first cohort (2009-
14), three high-ranking COPISA staff, 10 members of COPISA subcommittees, and Romelio
Gualán, a Red Agraria leader. They, too, were “specialized informants” because they, and only they, had particular information regarding COPISA’s procedures and operational systems.
Additionally, I conducted interviews with non-probability and purposeful populations whom I haphazardly sought, but who also had specific information I sought (Russell, 2011:
186). In this case, I wanted to speak with members of society who had general information regarding national-level and Chimborazo-level agricultural, food sovereignty, and government participatory initiatives. As such, I interviewed several governmental functionaries and nonprofit directors who worked with COPISA. They were: three regional affiliate members of the CONAIE; one MAGAP sub-director within the national MAGAP headquarters in Quito, and two from a regional MAGAP office with jurisdiction over the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 25 provinces of Chimborazo, Pastaza, Tungurahua, and Cotopaxi; the then vice-governor of
Chimborazo; three sub-directors of the Secretary of Social Control and Participation (now terminated); five directors of non-government organizations located in Riobamba; and one employee of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Ecuador. Nearly all of these interviews took place at informants’ offices or places of work, which was convenient for the interviewees and allowed them a familiar setting.
I was acquainted with approximately half of all interviewees prior to my research.
These prior relations created the possibility of bias for myself and/or informants to provide, solicit, record, or interpret information incorrectly (Pannucci & Wilkins, 2010). However, I contend that these prior relations served as an asset to my research. It increased the amount of worthwhile information I gathered that I likely would not have obtained without these prior relationships.
Interviews were, on average, between 45 and 60 minutes long. All conversations took place in Spanish, which I transcribed into Spanish or English during the research analysis process in the U.S. All interviews were conducted using the semi-structured format. That is, the interviews were formal, and I used an outline of scripted questions and conversation points I hoped to discuss (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). This format provided me with structure, but also the opportunity to veer from planned questions to discuss related matters. Semi- structured interviews are optimal to use when the interviewer will likely have only one opportunity to converse with the interviewee (Russell, 2011). They also “provide reliable, comparable qualitative data” (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). I wanted to learn informants’ motives and narratives. The conversational format of semi-structured interviews tends to illicit this type of information that is not easily accessed via structured interviews or surveys.
I sought to converse with as many people involved with the COPISA Seed Bill project as possible and avoid follow-up interviews.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 26
Last, “Semi-structured interviews are often preceded by observation, informal and unstructured [discussions] in order to allow the researchers to develop a keen understanding of the topic of interest necessary for developing relevant and meaningful semi-structured questions” (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). I accumulated significant “informal and unstructured” exposure to food sovereignty and participatory governance actors and issues while a Peace
Corps volunteer between 2008 and 2011. The next logical step in my fieldwork was to conduct semi-structured interviews.
I also partook in several participant observation opportunities during fieldwork. They included an all-day assembly sponsored by various associations within the former Colectivo
Agrario to discuss the status of the Seed Bill and COPISA, a COPISA participatory forum for the Consumer Food Rights bill in Quito, a public hearing for the Seed Bill sponsored by the province of Pichincha and COPISA held in Quito, and two public meetings regarding the
Land and Territories bill sponsored by Red Agraria. I audio recorded and took copious notes of each event. During fieldwork, I studied and noted how the Ecuadorian media represented the food sovereignty bills, COPISA, and civil and political society actors who interacted with and discussed these entities. I “collect[ed] a broad database of information” (George Mason
University, 2009) to ensure contextual information around the Seed Bill.
I analyzed the raw data using “grounded theory,” inductive discourse analysis, that is,
I identified and categorized recurring and important themes that emerged organically and unexpectedly from the information (Russell, 2011: 492). This inductive analysis strategy also guarded against my possible attempts to solicit interview responses that “fit” preconceived conclusions during fieldwork research. Owing to this approach and the abundance of information I gathered during fieldwork, I was able to modify and to broaden my original thesis proposal from examining one COPISA bill to the COPISA process, participatory democracy, and food sovereignty in Ecuador. The end result is, I hope, a document that adds
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 27 useful and timely information to the literature regarding civil and political society, participatory governance, and food sovereignty policy and programs in Ecuador.
These conclusions and breakthroughs also evolved while analyzing an extensive list of primary information resources: official Ecuadorian government documents and websites;
Ecuadorian National Assembly debates; online newspapers, magazines, news reports, and blogs written by Ecuadorian and international scholars and journalists; and personal emails and social media outlets. In addition, my conclusions were corroborated by secondary information from peer-reviewed articles and books about Ecuadorian and Brazilian agriculture, democracy, environment, and political economy written by Ecuadorian and international scholars.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 28
Chapter 2: Participatory Democracy and Food Sovereignty in Latin America, Ecuador
This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section examines the scholarship of participatory experiences in Latin America, particularly in Brazil and Ecuador. This section pays close attention to the ways in which civil and political society contexts affect the emergence and success of participatory experiences. This chapter examines the political and societal contexts and origin stories that bore fruit to Brazil’s first power-sharing participatory council, which centered around public health, and to Brazil’s National Council on Food and
Nutrition Security (CONSEA). These institutions have enabled citizens to create policy that redistributes power and resources and ensure government accountability. Their respective contexts and stories, outlined in this chapter, indicate the conditions that are most likely to produce effective participatory institutions. Their stories contrast to examples of participatory institutions in Ecuador. Ecuador’s contexts were strikingly different to Brazil’s and resulted in participatory institutions that were less successful. Save one example, Ecuador’s participatory experiments have had limited success in expanding citizenship rights and even contribute to patronage relationships between citizens and politicians. These examples situate
COPISA within Ecuador’s marred participatory lineage.
The second section defines food sovereignty and examines its emergence on the international and Ecuadorian stages. Mesa Agraria was integral to the introduction of food sovereignty to Ecuador as a way to advance small-scale and peasant farmers’ political and economic rights. In 2007, Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario harnessed their shared activism for small-scale farmer rights and the political momentum to propose the National
Council for Food Sovereignty.
Participatory Institutions & Experiments:
Participatory institutions are “specifically designed” political spaces of “permanent interactions” between state actors and volunteer civil society members who interact with the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 29 objective to jointly crafting public policy (Avritzer, 2009: 4, 9). Most permanent interactions take places vis-à-vis councils or assemblies. Assemblies function most effectively when the number of citizens participants and state counterparts is “small enough to be genuinely deliberative, and representative enough to be genuinely democratic” (Pateman, 2012: 8).
All-citizen councils are often referred to as “bottom-up” councils. Participatory budget councils are the most well documented “bottom-up” designs (Avritzer, 2009: 84). The
“power-sharing” council consists of volunteer representatives from civil society organizations and state actors. The bottom-up and power-sharing designs are some of the most widely implemented participatory models in Latin America. Mesa Agraria proposed that The
National Council for Food Sovereignty adopt a power-sharing design.
Participatory Experiments Emerge in Latin America:
Cameron, et al. (2012) state that participatory mechanisms became prevalent throughout Latin America in the late 1980s, in response to the region’s “crisis of democratic representation.” That is, citizens perceived that their representative systems were defunct and politicians did not “adequately represent” them (Pachano, 2006: 15). Politicians suddenly and severely implemented economic austerity measures that cut social service programs, state subsidies and exponentially raised the prices of everyday goods for citizens. Simultaneously, elected governments “were plagued by levels of corruption, clientelism, and unaccountability that undermined” representative democracy’s legitimacy (Cameron, et al., 2012: 3). Citizen distrust of elected officials and government functionaries increased their attempts to implement participatory democracy. Citizens wanted to democratize democracy by directly inserting themselves in policy making and government oversight.
Brazil has perhaps the most abundant and well-documented participatory institutional system in Latin America (Sousa Santos, 1998; Wampler, 2004, 2007, 2012a; Avritzer, 2006,
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 30
2009, 2012; Pogrebinschi & Samuels, 2014). It is widely credited as the origin point of participatory institutions in Latin America (Wampler, 2012a). As Brazil emerged from a 25- year dictatorship in 1988, disenfranchised and politically repressed citizens, mainly in municipalities and large cities, began to unite to gain greater access to basic civil services, such as potable water and health care. They sought to counteract rampant political corruption and state actors who funneled resources to wealthier and more politically influential neighborhoods (Cornwall & Shankland, 2008). “During the course of the [democratic] transition, civil society actors reorganized themselves. . . . The neighborhood associations claimed many public goods and new policies to include the poor in politics” (Avritzer, 2010:
167).
Access to affordable or state-sponsored public health care was a central demand of citizens. In the late 1970s, public health professionals, academics, and NGO leaders formed the national Public Health Professional association, which criticized the dictatorship’s
“disregard for the health of conditions of the poor” (Avritzer, 2009: 118). They joined with the Popular Movement for Access to Health, comprising “groups of the poor that were organizing to claim better access to health care” (119).
Over the next decade, these activists and supportive politicians from all over the country crafted “the idea of a state-organized [public health care] system with civil society participation … and … control [of health care policy] at the federal, state, and municipal levels” (Avritzer, 2009: 122). These autonomous, relatively representative groups together outlined a “decentralized health system run with citizen participation” (122). They also worked closely with the Workers’ Party (WP) electoral party. David Samuels described the
WP when it emerged in 1980 as an organic party, a “hodgepodge of Marxists of all shades of red, liberation theology-oriented Catholic base community activists, moderate intellectuals, and union and social movement leaders [that both identified as and represented] labor
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 31 militants demanding autonomous negotiations with the state, poor city dwellers demanding urban infrastructure, and landless peasants demanding land” (2004: 1002). One of the WP’s principal agenda items was to root out systemic corruption. They wanted to rid their representative democratic system of clientelism — when politicians provide resources
(money, favors, a sense of economic and social security) to certain members of the electorate in return for votes, political support, or complacency (Ospina Peralta, 2012; Espinosa
Andrade, 2011). Participatory institutions would become an integral part of accomplishing these goals (de Sousa Santos, 1998: 463; Avritzer, 2009: 47; Wampler, 2012a).
According to Avritzer (2006, 2009), the WP was instrumental in expanding civic organizations’ access to the public sphere — the space where civil society negotiates with state actors to expand and protect citizenship rights, to increase citizens’ access to resources, and to enable government accountability. In 1990 the Popular Movement for Access, Popular
Movement for Access to Health, and the WP collectively proposed a national health care bill to codify a system of state-mandated, power-sharing councils at each level of government.
The councils would create and oversee the implementation of public health care policies.
This was the first time Brazil proposed a power-sharing institution. Brazil’s then-president,
Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-1992), partially vetoed the bill, “singling out the articles on participation” (Avritzer, 2009: 125). Citizens engaged in nation-wide street protests and circulated a petition that accumulated 60,000 citizen signatures in favor of codifying the health care power-sharing councils. A congressional stalemate ensued. Within months, congress passed a national health care law mandating that all jurisdictions within all levels of government install power-sharing public health care councils. The councils were mandated to create and oversee health care policy implementation within their jurisdictions; respective governments would be sanctioned for failure to create the council or implement its policies.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 32
The development of Brazil’s first power-sharing institution took approximately twelve years. It began in the late 1970s and comprised a wide swath of civil society organizations and sympathetic politicians who negotiated with initially unsupportive politicians to arrived at a participatory design that fit their context (Avrtizer, 2009: 125).
Ecuador’s national-level civil and political society contexts in 2009 differed considerably from Brazil’s in 1990. Consequently, Ecuador’s first attempt to implement a power-sharing participatory institution in 2009 went decidedly differently.
Creating CONSEA:
Brazil’s Citizens Action [CA] also emerged from Brazil’s societal restructuring during its transition to democracy. CA’s principal concern was to pressure the government
“at all levels to adopt policies to eradicate poverty and hunger, to improve working conditions, and to search for more inclusive patterns of development to change the structural causes of poverty” (de Carvalho, 1998). CA emerged in the late 1980s and has been described as a national civic organization of:
About 900 civil society organizations, including unions, NGOs, professional
associations, entrepreneurial associations, political parties, church groups …
gathering individuals from many walks of life, employers and employees,
[varied] religious traditions and denominations, political activists from
different parties, etc. The diversity of the individuals taking part, a large
number of whom without any kind of public experience, was perhaps the most
remarkable aspect of this movement (de Carvalho, 1998).
Members developed community councils in their towns and cities throughout Brazil to pressure local politicians to eradicate hunger. By December 1993, 95% of the population supported CA and its anti-hunger campaign; by 1994, approximately 5,000 food security community councils existed. CA members were the principal decision makers, enabling the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 33 rapid spread of the locally administered community councils. CA also collaborated with WP.
Workser’ Party leaders proposed to then-President Itamar Franco that the government create of the power-sharing National Council for Food Security and Nutrition (CONSEA) to
“coordinate strategies to fight hunger and extreme poverty” (de Carvalho, 1998: 23).
President Franco decreed the creation of CONSEA in May 1993. The council’s members, which included nine Executive Branch ministers and 21 civil society members — representing labor unions, nonprofit organizations, media, universities, and the business sector — were jointly chosen by the president and CA. Between 1994 and 1995, six states cut infant mortality rates by an average of 40%, owing to CONSEA programs (26).
When Fernando Cardoso was inaugurated in 1995, he changed the CONSEA name to
Community Solidarity (CS). Community Solidarity’s design and purpose remained the same, but its programs were sparse, and funding decreased. In 1995, CS worked with only 251 communities, mainly on school meal and immunization programs. It hardly had nationwide impact (36). This demonstrated that even once implemented, participatory institutions require continual and active support from the elected administration (or influential political actors) to implement the council’s programs.
With a change of administration on the horizon in 2001, there was renewed civil society momentum to reinvigorate anti-hunger programs within the government. Between
2001 and 2003, “approximately 100 organizations, including NGOs, social movements, children’s [organizations], academic institutions … participated in a huge effort … to carry out research, discuss and build proposals for tackling hunger in Brazil” (Menezes, 2011:
253). Autonomous, widely representative civic associations gathered to advance a collective agenda — in this case, the reestablishment and expansion of CONSEA.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), a founding member of WP, won the presidency in 2003. He immediately re-instituted CONSEA by presidential decree “to
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 34 address the multiple aspects involved in food and nutrition security and to ensure the participation of civil society in drawing up, implementing, and monitoring public policies in this field” (Maluf, 2011: 269). By 2004, food sovereignty was included within CONSEA mandate (Aranha, 2011: 89). Lula expanded the CONSEA committee to include 38 civil society representatives and 19 state representatives. This design mandates and facilitates collaboration among several state and civil society entities, enabling accountability among actors and their respective organizations and institutions (Menezes, 2011: 253). Not only did the administration reinvigorate CONSEA, it also implemented the Interministerial Chamber on Food and Nutrition Security, the Ministry of Social Development, and several other
Executive Branch institutions to carry out CONSEA-created policy. In sum, CONSEA is a component of “intersectoral coordination” within the Executive Branch to create and implement food security and food sovereignty policy and programs (Takagi, 2011: 184). In
2006, the Brazilian congress passed the CONSEA-created Organic Law of Food Security.
This illustrates the council’s level of political legitimacy and the Legislative Branch’s willingness to enact CONSEA bills. State institutions are legally obliged, but also politically willing, to implement food security and sovereignty measures.
CONSEA programs and policies are not just decided and implemented from the national level. State-mandated, subnational power-sharing councils for food security and sovereignty are critical to creating national CONSEA policies. CONSEA holds a National
Conference on Food Security roughly every four years. Prior to the national conference, subnational councils draft policy proposals and then collectively debate and compile these proposals at the conferences (Menezes, 2011: 254; Pogrebinschi, 2014). The conferences enable a vertical network of municipal and state-level councils for food security to channel local policy proposals to the national stage.
CONSEA anti-poverty measures helped decrease rural poverty from 41% in 2003 to
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 35
24% in 2009. In addition, by 2009 a CONSEA land redistribution program dispersed 47.7 million hectares of land to 574,532 families. The Lula administration invested $7 billion
Brazilian Reales in the initiative. The Lula administration represented 62% of all government combined land redistribution amounts since 1980. Seventy-four thousand small-scale farmers received low interest government loans that amounted to nearly 2 billion Reales (Del Grossi,
2011: 305-307). In 2008, the government executed 180 anti-hunger and agriculture projects nationwide (de França & Soriano, 2011: 240). CONSEA and the implementation of its policies are not without weaknesses (Menezes, 2011: 250-260). However, the long-term engagement of organized, autonomous, universally representative, collaborative civic organizations was critical to its initiation and maintenance.
The critical role the Executive Branch plays to maintain participatory institutions is evidenced by Franco and Cardosos’ weak implementation of their respective anti-hunger programs, versus Lula’s CONSEA programs. These participatory institutions enabled citizens to participate directly in policymaking that has had tremendous redistribution effects. The mandatory collaboration among several state institutions and civil society organizations facilitates their mutual oversight. These origin stories of the first power-sharing council in
1990 and CONSEA in 1993 indicate the important role of a democratic civil society and the critical role of supportive, leveraged political actors to negotiate the development and design of participatory institutions that best fit the social and political context.
Not only did Lula reimplement CONSEA, but his administration also installed 22 new national-level, power-sharing participatory councils between 2003 and 2008. This was a considerable increase from previous administrations that “scarcely” supported these councils
(Pogrebinschi, 2014). New councils were created to focus on public policy to protect and expand political, social, and civil rights and resources for gays, women, indigenous, children,
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 36 elderly, and blacks — in other words, some of the most socially and politically disenfranchised citizens of Brazil (Pogrebinschi, 2014).
Like CONSEA, these councils hold national conferences every several years so that subnational civil-society members and the state can jointly create policy “guidelines.”
Guidelines are submitted to the Executive and Legislative branches to consider them for policy. Between 2003 — Lula’s first year in office — and 2009, “presidential decrees that matched [national council] guidelines rose from … 12 to … 224”; congressional legislation also reflected the policy proposals crafted at these national participatory conferences, though to a lesser degree (Pogrebinschi, 2014: 195).
The overall effectiveness of Brazil’s participatory institutions drives participation. “In total, about seven million people participated in at least one of the [national conferences] held between 2003 and 2011, which is about 5% of Brazil’s adult population” (320). Effective participatory institutions also drive participation in civic organizations (Avritzer, 2009: 33;
Oxhorn, 2011: 11). The 2009-10 Opinion Poll of the Governability and Democratic
Convivience in Latin America conducted by Faculty of Latin American Social Sciences found that 30.3% of the Brazilian population regularly engaged in civic associations
(Gallegos, 2013: 145). Brazil ranked fourth among the 18 Latin American countries for participation in “civic organizations” (147).
The political and civil societies at the national level in Brazil bore fruit to national participatory mechanisms that enable civil society the authority to craft policy and political society has become increasingly responsive and accountable to implement citizens’ demands
(Pogrebinschi & Samuels, 2014).
Power-sharing councils at all levels of government, regarding several policy themes, have become a component and integral part of the socio-political milieu in Brazil.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 37
Subnational Participatory Experiences in Latin America:
Some Brazilian power-sharing participatory institutions have seen less-than-stellar results. The mayor of the municipality of Salvador implemented the power-sharing health council in the early 1990s only because it was legally mandated. Conservative and entrenched parties, the influential Catholic Church, and the mayoral administration had no
“strong concern with participatory policies,” limiting the council from developing policy to redistribute health care resources (Avritzer, 2009: 53). Salvador also has a low rate of universally representative, politically engaged civic organizations. Consequently, there was a low rate of active and engaged citizen participants within the council. Those who participated had little authority to direct the council’s rules or government health care spending (128-
130). These political and societal conditions resulted in an infant mortality rate of 2.23 deaths per 1,000 births in 2003, compared to other municipalities with functional power-sharing health councils that have a considerably lower infant mortality rate (136). Salvador’s political and societal actors prevented the Salvador health council from spending its budget on the health care needs of the most marginalized citizens. It was ineffective to redistribute power and resources to the poor.
Similarly, Benjamin Goldfrank (2007) found that participatory budget councils implemented in Caracas, Venezuela and Montevideo, Uruguay, had less-than-successful results. The councils were created to allow civil society the authority to help decide their respective government budgets. Both cities “possessed a relatively organized civil society” that included neighborhood associations and other civic organizations. The mayors of each city and their respective electoral parties were instrumental to the implementation of the budget councils. However, these mayors and their respective parties were too new and unleveraged in the political milieu to combat embedded “rival parties,” who were able to usurp control of the participatory processes. “Strongly institutionalized opposition in
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 38
Montevideo and Caracas derailed the incumbents’ participation programs, forcing changes” that subordinated citizen input at the councils (162). Established political parties controlled the council design, policy rules, and content. Participants’ input was suffocated and, seeing no return from their time and effort, citizen participation remained low.
Too much political society in the participatory process can be a bad thing — that is, when political actors are willing and able to dominate the participatory institution’s rules and policy content in order to harness it for their own political gain. Goldfrank’s study is a prelude to how leveraged, oppositional political forces in Ecuador controlled COPISA’s design and operations, shaping it into a weak state agency that civil society participants abandoned after seeing no return on their time and effort.
Ecuador’s Turn Toward Participation in Politics:
Ecuador’s path to participatory politics was similar to other Latin American countries.
State-imposed neoliberal market-oriented economic measures began in the early 1980s.
Neoliberal economic policy is “designed to minimize the role of the state in the economy
[and includes] the privatization of public firms, . . . public welfare provisions, …deregulation, free trade, state decentralizations and … [the recession of] … social welfare policies … for the poor” (Oxhorn, 2011: 51). Between 1980 and the mid 2000s, many Ecuadorian citizens were plummeted into poverty. During that time, approximately 50,000 public jobs were eliminated (Larrea & North, 1997), which weakened already precarious labor unions and middle-class income. President Sixto Duran (1992-1996) eliminated “subsidies to fuel, … food, transport, utilities, … health, education, credit, … and social insurance” (Silva, 2009:
161). President Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000) raised the price of “gasoline, electricity, cooking oil, and transportation … between 200 and 400%” in 2000 (176).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 39
State institutions and services were eliminated or reduced, leaving the “State structural intelligence incoherent and weak” (author translation, Echeverria, 2006: 27-28),
“increasing economic and social inequities, poverty levels, and social exclusion” (author translation Parga, 2009: 189). The state was failing to fulfill its obligations of governance and basic society rights, such as health, education, and public security (Oxhorn, 2011: 30). Civil society was “shut out of basic public services and judicial protections” (Pachano, 2010, 65).
On top of this, high-ranking Ecuadorian politicians engaged in egregious political corruption and mishandled public funds. President Abdala Bucaram (1996-97) hired friends and family to work within his administration and embezzled approximately $168 million
USD in government money (Goering, 1997). During a national economic crisis in January
2000, President Jamil Mahuad (1998-00) adopted the U.S. dollar as the national currency and froze citizens’ bank accounts (Silva, 2009: 176). However, scholars say these emergency fixes were the result of a pact between the president, his supportive “right-wing parties, and powerful business people and bankers … to directly benefit the oligarchy and to unite the dominant classes” (Walsh, 2001: 175).
Citizens were frustrated and disillusioned, not only with political leaders, but with the entire political sphere, which the citizenry deemed “illegitimate,” bringing on a “crisis of governability” (author translation, Pachano, 2012: 89-90). By 2005, Ecuadorian citizens rated their political system’s transparency and effectiveness at 2.5 out of 10 (Van Cott, 2008a: 25).
Civil society began to politically auto-represent itself, opting to still participate in politics and the public sphere, but creating open, public debate forums explicitly to craft policy outside of the failing representative system (Parga, 2009; Echeverría 2010).
As early as 1991, indigenous confederations, particularly the Confederation of
Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador In Ecuador (CONAIE), which formed in 1986 as a national confederation of regionally based indigenous organizations (Tuaza, 2011: 158),
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 40 created their own Popular Parliaments, or citizen councils, in 1991. These were civil society initiated and not state recognized. However, the councils fortified grassroots civil society networks, agendas and provided civic organizations with experience in participatory politics.
In 1998, Fabian Alarcon and conservative National Assembly members strategically excluded civil-society organizations from participating in the writing process for the 1998
Constitution. In reaction, civic organizations, principally CONAIE, formed the Alternative
Constituent Assembly (Andolina, 2003; Segura & Bejarano, 2004), which drew upon policy proposals articulated in the Popular Assemblies. These proposals included ending political corruption, neoliberal economics, expanding participatory governance, and “promoting diversity (in society and the political system)” (Andolina, 2003).
CONAIE channeled proposals to the National Constituent Assembly via legislators in the Pachakutik electoral party. Pachakutik, established in 1996, is an “organic” electoral party formed by the Social Movements Coordinator (CMS), CONAIE, various labor unions, and urban-based civil-society organizations to “advance their initiatives from the inside” (Van
Cott, 2008: 7). Similar to the Workers’ Party in Brazil, Pachakutik wanted to “replace the … inequitable social, economic, and cultural order” and provide disenfranchised civil society members with greater access to the economic and political spheres (Beck & Majeski, 2011:
40). Pachakutik gained traction and votes in certain regions and seats in the National
Assembly over the past two decades, but unlike the WP in Brazil, has not gained long-term presence or electoral power at the national level.
Despite this, in 1998, Pachakutik presence in the Constituent Assembly was critical to providing CONAIE and civic organizations with access to the constitutional process and enabled many, though certainly not all, Alternative Assembly proposals to be included in the
1998 constitution. The Alternative Assembly, nonetheless, represented tremendous organizational abilities and coordination between a “mature Indigenous movement” and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 41 sympathetic Pachakutik legislators (Becker, 2011: 58). At the same time, Alternative
Assembly was not a permanent, institutionalized participatory platform recognized by the state. Many politicians tried to delegitimize the assembly, indicating strong opposition to participatory politics at the national level in Ecuador (Andolina, 2003; Bowen, 2011). In the end, “constitutional advances resulted from an intersection” of civic organizational efforts, but were principally because of the “crisis of legitimacy and governability” (Becker, 2011:
58) and the unstable representative system. Political parties in 1998 were highly fractured and unorganized, which enabled civic organizations greater entrée to the public sphere. This scenario contrasts significantly with the attempted implementation of the National Council for Food Sovereignty in 2009. In 2009 civil society was less organized than in 1998 and most importantly, President Correa had congressional control, opposed genuine citizen participation, so could handedly exclude citizens from writing the food sovereignty bill and eliminate the council.
Subnational Participatory Democracy in Ecuador:
Ecuador’s central government has been supportive of municipal-level participatory experiences. The Law of Decentralization and Social Control and the Law of 15%, both passed in 1997, promoted citizen participation in municipal government budget allocation.
Donna Lee Van Cott (2008) studied several municipal-level participatory budget councils and assemblies in Ecuador in the early 2000s. These municipalities comprise, in general, a mix of mestizo and indigenous populations.
Van Cott found that the Cotacachi municipality in northern Ecuador established a relatively successful suite of participatory councils. In part, this was the result of an existing, fairly united network of multi-class, multi-ethnic civic organizations that formed in the 1970s and focused on redistributing political power and state resources; their membership and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 42 activity increased in the 1990s. She emphasized, though, that the success of this system was due mainly to mayor Auki Tituaña (Pachakutik, 1996-2009). He was instrumental to the establishment of the councils. He remained politically autonomous from influential civic associations and encouraged participation and collaboration between participants who were diverse in terms of ethnicity, class, and gender and state actors in the councils (215). He was also able to convince oppositional political actors to implement the councils and accept their policies.
Civil society participants designed the council rules, operational systems, policy topics “and the role of the municipal government” within the councils (Van Cott, 2008: 138).
Participation increased from 200 in 1999 to 600 by 2001. Debates “shifted from [participants] presenting lists of projects for their own communities to discussing broader development themes with greater geographic and temporal scope” (140-41). Van Cott asserts that the increased number of participants from a broad array of backgrounds was a result of civil society decision-making power in the participatory process. It was also result of the participants seeing immediate improvements to municipal infrastructure based on their budget decisions. Tangible results beget participation. While the Cotacachi participatory experience had its faults, such as disproportionate spending in the already resourced municipal center, the council provided a space for the typically disenfranchised to negotiate their demands and reduced “interethnic competition for resources by attending to the demands of all sectors” (82). Cotacachi contained the pivotal components that generally result in effective participatory institutions: active support from an administration that is willing and able to convince opposition to accept participatory policies, and an active, empowered, collaborative civil society that designs the council rules and policy content.
Van Cott and John Cameron (2010) agreed that Mariano Curicama, the mayor of
Guamote in central Ecuador, was imperative to the implementation of a suite of municipal
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 43 participatory councils in 1996; but he was also largely responsible for their demise.
International funders and politicians, including Curicama, designed the councils. Curicama quickly co-opted the Indigenous and Popular Parliament, a participatory budget council, and a Community Planning Council, which became “little more than institutions for rewarding supporters that provide unconditional support for the mayor” (63). There was no mechanism to audit or hold the council or parliament accountable to the proposed projects. Local-level
CONAIE affiliates largely dominated the parliament agenda and debates. Women became
“passive” onlookers, blocked from any real discussion or authority — as were mestizo participants (Cameron, 2010: 58). Curicama was unwilling and/or unable to facilitate collaboration among organizations. Eventually, CONAIE and the Council of Indigenous and
Evangelical Pueblos and Organizations of Ecuador (FEINE), another national-level indigenous confederation, and their respective political parties “refused to work with each other, [and] the Parliament ceased to function” (Van Cott, 2008: 162). Participants reported that councils accomplished “absolutely nothing” during their short existence (Cameron, 2010:
64). Guamote’s scenario is, in a way, a prelude to COPISA. While Correa does not directly interact with COPISA he designed it and his administration politically constrains the agency from enacting food sovereignty policy or from redistributing agricultural resources among the citizenry.
In a study of a participatory budget council established in the early 2000s by the
Provincial Gov. César Umajinga of Cotopaxi, Pablo Ospina Peralta (2005) revealed that the governor engaged in patronage relations with the electorate via the council. The Cotopaxi civil society tends to be unorganized except for one CONAIE regional affiliate: the
Indigenous and Campesino Movement of Cotopaxi (MICC). Umajinga and his administration organized the council but did not widely publicize it. Meanwhile those within the governor’s professional network who were aware of the council, including MICC, were “obligated” to
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 44 participate to remain in the governor’s good graces. They were rewarded with considerable access to council decisions (that coincided with the governor’s) and the potential to receive state resources, to the exclusion of the vast majority of provincial citizens. The council gave
Umajinga “discretional and personal power in managing relationships with base groups”
(2929).
Sadly, Guamote and Cotopaxi participatory experiences foreshadow the patronage dynamics that COPISA, too, reproduced. The Ecuadorian national experiences also indicate the flagrant degree to which Ecuador’s civil society associations — constituted of its most disenfranchised populations — are excluded from the public sphere. Contrary to the COPISA scenario, these municipal participatory experiences at least had executive leader support.
Chapters Four and Five indicate that COPISA did not have such administrative support, yet the administration still managed to dominate COPISA by co-opting the majority of its cohort, among other tacit and explicit tactics.
The following section defines and outlines the emergence of food sovereignty at the international and Ecuadorian levels, and how and why it is applied in Ecuador.
Food Sovereignty Meaning, Origins and Actors on the International and Ecuadorian Stage:
La Via Campesina first introduced the term food sovereignty at the 1996 United
Nation’s World Food Summit in Rome. It defined food sovereignty as “the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity” (Patel, 2009, 665).
By 2007, La Via Campesina and several small-scale farmer and fishing cooperatives around the world articulated a more comprehensive and profound notion of food sovereignty:
Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate
food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 45
right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations
and needs of those who produce, distribute, and consume food at the heart of
food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and
corporations. … It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current
corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral,
and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users. Food
sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies and markets, and
empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal fishing,
pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption
based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. [It] promotes
transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples, as well as the
rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the
rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock, and
biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food
sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality
between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes,
and generations (Neylani Declaration (2007) in Peña, 2013).
Food sovereignty, in practice, uses agro-ecological farming techniques. Agro-ecology includes: planting a diverse variety of crops on a rotation basis using; nearby nutrients, energy, and organic matter, rather than chemicals or externally sourced inputs, to plant and cultivate; native and/or local seeds and livestock; and using organic pest controls and composts to strengthen soil fertility, water retention, crop production, and sustainability. This manner of farming generates a higher yield of product “per unit area … than [monoculture production], with the same level of management. Yield advantages can range from 20% to
60%, … and makes more efficient use of the available resources of water, light, and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 46 nutrients” (Altieri & Toledo, 2011: 595). These agro-ecological practices are “traditional” practices used by the indigenous and farmers prior to the introduction of chemical and large- machine technologies.
Food sovereignty attempts to untangle agricultural and food systems from the exclusive, modern capitalist system. “Capitalism was dedicated to divorcing producers from any right over the goods they produced and encasing those goods in ever larger, ever more disconnected, … monopolized, and … destructive markets. Food sovereignty challenges all of that”, requiring that people not treat food as a commodity or market-traded good, but reconnect with the social and communal elements of how food is produced, prepared and consumed (Wittman, Desmarais & Wiebe, 2010: 4). Its applications attempt to make more equitable the economic, environmental, gender, and political disparities that the corporate food regime produces. Phillip McMichael (2012) states that the corporate food regime is the embodiment of government institutions and corporate entities the ability to, from the international level, further privatize, commodify, and monopolize food production, processing, and consumption systems. It facilitates “universal agro-exporting and requires states in the global South to open their economies to the Northern-dominated international food trade” (682).
La Vía Campesina formed in 1993 as a transnational, economically, and politically autonomous “peasant movement” that, as of 2014, consisted of 164 member organizations from 73 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. It consists of approximately 200 million peasants, immigrants, indigenous, and farm workers (Via Campesina, 2011). La Vía
Campesina has been described as the “most important transnational social movement in the world,” bridging the global North and South, food producers and consumers, and rural and urban spaces (Martinez-Torres & Rosset, 2010: 150).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 47
Under the food sovereignty banner, the Via Campesina creates cohesion and consensus among campesino, rural, and indigenous organizations across several continents to implement small- and medium-scale agricultural practices that are equitable to genders, classes, and ethnicities; and are environmentally, culturally and economically sustainable
(Wittman, 2009). This organization is an eminent leader of food sovereignty practices and helps constituent members articulate and advocate for food sovereignty via civil protest and international conferences, and national food sovereignty legislation, which was enacted in
Ecuador, Mali, Venezuela, and Bolivia (Martínez-Torres & Rosset, 2010: 160). However, food sovereignty is highly polemic because it requires that those who benefit from the corporate food regime to redistribute agricultural and food production resources to the disenfranchised. It requires the continual persistence of civic organizations and the presence of political actors to continually advocate equitable agricultural production and consumption practices. The Via Campesina, provided important discourse for the Mesa Agraria to articulate and promote the food sovereignty paradigm in Ecuador throughout 2000s.
Corporate Food Regime and Food Sovereignty in Ecuador: The corporate food regime is embedded into Ecuador’s political economic system.
Since the 1960s, the vast majority of Ecuadorian government investments in agriculture have been allocated to agro-exports production (Giunta, 2014). The most fertile, arable land is occupied by a few large land-holders. In 1995, in the Sierra region, 42.9% of land was occupied by 1.6% of landholders (Lefebvre, 2003). By 2007, 47% of small-scale farmers had access to only 2.04% of arable land, while 3.32% of the country’s large-scale producers possessed 42.57% of the land (Mesa Agraria Proposal, 2007). Government loan institutions
— developed to provide poor, small-scale farmers with easy access to long term, low-interest loans — are laced with corrupt functionaries who allocate the bulk of loans to medium- and large-scale agro-export companies (Carrión & Herrera, 2012: 94-96).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 48
Government farming programs implemented in the 1990s, supposedly designed to help small-scale farmers “upgrade and commercialize” their farms, were consistently underfunded and mismanaged, impeding rural farmers’ ability to take advantage of these resources (Korovkin, 2003: 136). By the 2000s, Ecuador continued to facilitate the corporate food regime, investing largely in monoculture, commercial export crop production, such as banana, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, and flowers (Houtart, 2014), and offered little financial support to family-run farms that supplied 60% of domestic consumption. Meanwhile, 86% of the rural farming populations lived in poverty (Mesa Agraria Proposal, 2007). Peasant farmers could not compete with corporate agriculture businesses, such as Ecuadorian grain company PRONACA and supermarket chain SuperMaxi, which monopolize agriculture production and consumption patterns in Ecuador (Rosero Garces, 2008).
To combat such statistics, in 1999, campesino and indigenous groups formed the
Mesa Agraria (1999-2009). Original Mesa Agraria members included four indigenous and campesino organizations: National Confederation of Indigenous, Campesino and Black
Organizations (FENOCIN), National Kichwa Confederation (Ecuarunari), National
Campesino Corporation-Eloy Alfaro (CNC-EA), and National Social Security Campesino
Confederation (CONFEUNASSC).
FENOCIN, a founding member of Via Campesina, has for three decades taught small- scale, organic farming techniques, initiated women’s agriculture cooperatives, and created local markets for farmers to sell directly to consumers. Ecuarunari, formed in 1972 to gain access to land, education, and the “freedom to organize and participate in political decision- making” (Tuaza, 2011: 156), is the Sierra regional affiliate of the CONAIE, but not a Vía
Campesina member. CNC-EA and CONFEUNASSC formed in 1992 and politically advocate for peasants’ equal access to agricultural land, irrigation, and market access, social security, education, and health care in rural regions.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 49
The Mesa Agraria shifted membership several times during its short existence, mainly because of political and ideological rifts between organizations. Ecuarunari left the conglomerate in 2003; CONFEUNASSC left in 2007. In 2005, the National Federation of
Agro-industrial Workers (FENACLE), an agricultural labor union established in 1969, joined the Mesa Agraria until the conglomerate disbanded in 2009 (Giunta, 2014).
In the early 2000s the Mesa Agraria collaborated with national and international non- governmental organizations (NGO) in Ecuador — including Heifer Ecuador, Terra Nueva, and Intermon-Oxfam — to gain financial, technical, and political support. These NGOs
“facilitated and strengthened the Mesa Agraria work, but the ideas were born from them”
(Maribelen M., personal interview, July 2012). These NGOs provided financial and logistical support to the Mesa Agraria to teach and implement agro-ecological farming techniques to constituent members. For example, SwissAid helped members of FENOCIN to implement agro-ecological gardens and a fair-trade market for members to sell their harvests directly to local consumers. This way, agro-ecologically produced foods are bought and sold locally and at equitable prices and pay.
In 2007, in anticipation of the rewriting of the national constitution, these NGOs conglomerated with other national and internationally sponsored NGOs in Ecuador, the
Colectivo Agro-Ecologico, Ecuadorian Corporation of Biological Agriculturists, Food First
Information and Action Network, Veco Andino, Central Region of Cooperation, and
Education for Aid Activities, as well as academic think tanks Institute of Ecuadorian Studies
(IEE), The Investigative System of Ecuadorian Agrarian Problems (SIPAE), and Central
Andes for the Formation of Social Leaders (COFALIS), to form the Colectivo Agrario. The
Colectivo Agrario consisted primarily of urban, professional Ecuadorians and international expatriates who implemented agro-ecological projects and/or produced academic research regarding Ecuadorian agriculture.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 50
The Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario strategically united in 2007 to demand that the food sovereignty paradigm be introduced into the newly announced constitutional rewrite
(Colectivo Agrario, 2009). To them, food sovereignty was a more viable rural development mechanism than the existing corporate food regime that favors “multinational agribusinesses and domestic agriculture elites” (Mesa Agraria Proposal, 2007). Specifically they sought for the Ecuadorian government to provide small-scale farmers with adequate access to land, water, and social services (Gortaire, Ramos, Yungan, 2013) that they asserted would enable peasant farmers with a dignified income, decrease rural migration, rural poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation. To these groups, food sovereignty policies would install a more democratic food production and consumption system in Ecuador.
They sought state support to expand democracy to Ecuador’s most marginalized in a way it had been accomplished in Brazil – a food sovereignty-focused participatory institution.
They sought for the state to construct a power-sharing participatory institution at the national level that would enable civil society, particularly small-scale farmers, to permanently participate in food sovereignty policy making and its application.
Chapter Two Conclusions:
This chapter summarized that participatory institutions in Latin America originated mainly from Brazil whose civil society and political society actors designed and implemented them to root out political corruption during the nation’s return to democracy in the late 1980s.
Brazil’s experiences show that the participation of politically engaged, autonomous, universally-representative, and collaborative civil society organizations facilitated that several of its participatory institutions were implemented and sustained. Most critical to the functionality of Brazil’s participatory institutions are supportive administrations that have a coalition of support for the institutions and its policies.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 51
Other countries, including Ecuador, in reaction to its crisis of representation throughout the 1990s, attempted to implement participatory institutions within their own contexts, but to varying degrees of success. The Cotacachi experienced reiterates the importance of support from Executive Branch leaders to implement functional participatory councils. In fact, all Ecuador participatory experiences demonstrated the Executive leader’s power to, especially in the midst of weak and disorganized civic associations, either enable or derail these institutions. At the national scale in Ecuador political society, mainly presidential administrations and the majority of legislators, have not been supportive of citizens’ direct participation in policy making, as witnessed by the constitutional writing process of 1998, which forced CONAIE to make an “alternative” assembly outside of the formal political sphere.
This chapter also outlined the food sovereignty paradigm origins at the international and national level. During the 2000s Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario worked together to articulated food sovereignty in Ecuador through practicing and promoting agro-ecological farming techniques using local, indigenous knowledge and resources. As the constitutional rewrite approached these groups expanded and proposed that Ecuador, too, permanently include citizens, particularly farmers, in food sovereignty policy.
However, as outlined in Chapter One, the proposed power-sharing participatory council, the National Council for Food Sovereignty, was redesigned by the administration into a weak state agency. The theory of participatory institutions claims that the civil society context and its characteristics play a critical role in determining the eventual participatory institution’s effectiveness. The following chapter provides the important background and analysis of Ecuadorian civil society attributes and dynamics that contributed to the derailment of the National Council for Food Sovereignty in 2009.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 52
Chapter 3: Civil Society in Ecuador and Correa’s Arrival (1960-2007)
Civil society is the “ensemble of social practices that generate a space of voluntary association and the sets of … social actors, that occupy that space. … The cast of civil society actors includes all voluntary groups formed for the sake of the common aspirations and concerns of its members” (Zamosc, 2007: 4). Civil society is distinct from the state and political society structures, family/private spaces, and economic structures (Avritzer, 2006a).
It plays an important role in the installation and eventual functionality of participatory institutions.
Within civil society, however, “only certain types of associations have democratizing effects on public life” (Avritzer, 2009: 32). A participatory institution’s relative success relies heavily on the presence or lack of a “strong civic associative tradition,” that is, associations engaged in defending and advancing the expansion of citizenship rights and redistribution of state resources (41). It is not enough that civil society organizations be dedicated to sports, religions, recreation, or “bird watching” to increase the potential success of participatory mechanisms. Instead, there is a “democratizing effect of affiliation … found mainly among members of civic or popular associations. Not by chance, these are individuals who join participatory arrangements in the area of public policy” (32).
Civic and popular associations that are inclusive, enable member authority, remain autonomous from other groups or politicians, are self-limiting in nature, and do not attempt to dominate the public sphere or monopolize state resources, but collaborate with other groups
(Van Cott, 2008), tend to “generate a strong constituency for participatory politics,”
(Avritzer, 2009: 35). The greater the momentum and influence of civic associations with these qualities, the greater their collective “brokerage power” to influence the install or reinforce effective participatory institutions (Avritzer & Wampler, 2004; Avritzer, 2006,
2009; Wampler, 2007).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 53
These are civil society ideal types, and consistently high levels of all characteristics cannot be expected. However, scholars have indicated that civic associations with these qualities — particularly when members have decision-making authority and remain autonomous — that engage in participatory institutions tend to enable the institution’s functionality.
This chapter demonstrates that Ecuador’s national-level civil society characteristics in the decades prior to the attempted creation of the National Council for Food Sovereignty in
2009 did not meet these ideal types, which contributed to its failed implementation, but was not the main factor. Until the 1990s, Ecuador had a tradition of relatively low levels participation in civic associations (Conaghan, 1988; Larrea & North, 1997). Even in 2005, the percentage of citizens participating in civic associations hovered at 14% of the national population (Ospina Peralta, 2005), well below Brazil’s national average of 30% (Gallegos,
2013: 154).
Civic organizations, such as CONAIE, became nationally and internationally recognized for their street protests in the 1990s that enabled them a seat at the national-level political table to negotiate for greater political power and resources for Ecuador’s most disenfranchised populations: the indigenous and poor. These organizations are Ecuador’s most influential organizations, but were mainly constituted of and advocated for indigenous and campesino constituents and do not necessarily encompass a representative swath of the citizenry. Their protests resulted in limited resource gains from the government. The political and material gains they did achieve went to higher echelons of the indigenous organizations, which disrupted CONAIE’s internal operations in the 2000s as it became increasingly exclusive and hierarchical. Relations among CONAIE and Mesa Agraria members grew contentious.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 54
This chapter adds that this scenario resulted largely from government and elites systematically excluding average citizens from state institutions and the public sphere, leaving them with less access to state resources and forcing them to resort to disruptive tactics to gain their share of resources (Oxhorn, 2011: 19; Bowen, 2011). Legislation increased presidential powers between the 1980s and 2000, which gave President Lucia
Gutierrez (2003-05) and current president (and candidate) Rafael Correa increased legal authorities. They both exacerbated civic-association rifts between and within the CONAIE and Mesa Agraria.
This chapter ends with introducing candidate then later, President Correa. It demonstrates that he dominated the Executive Branch and the legislature during the 2007-09 timeframe. His electoral hegemony, frayed organizations and a media-savvy team within the administration, enabled him to quickly control political discourse vilifying the groups
(mainly CONAIE) and communities that disagreed with his political plans and decisions.
Although Avritzer contends that civic association collaboration is important to the installment of participatory institutions, he and other scholars assert that, ultimately, success is
“dependent” on support from the executive office and the ability to rally a coalition. As early as Correa’s inauguration in 2007, signs were showing that his administration would not welcome the civil society decision-making that a power-sharing institution would have enabled.
Civil Society and Corporatism (1960-80):
Until the 1960s, Ecuador’s economic and sociopolitical system was based on a feudal system manifest vía large haciendas (Korovkin, 1997). Individual haciendas often occupied hundreds of acres of arable land, mainly in the Sierra region of the country. The feudal/hacienda system “bound indigenous peasants to … work for the landlord in exchange for land use, advanced wages,” and other resources necessary to farm (Yashar, 2005: 91).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 55
Hacienda owners and, less directly, political elites and Catholic Church authorities, controlled the means of agricultural production, the country’s most important economic sector, as well as indigenous’ private relations, religion, and finances (Korovkin, 2001).
Indentured indigenous had no fundamental civil or social rights, which constrained the emergence of an independent civil society (Avritzer, 2006a; Oxhorn, 2011).
A mix of social and political economic pressures between the 1930s and 1960s gradually ended the feudal system. These changes included indentured servants, politicians, and “urban leftists” organizing and pressuring the government to end the feudal system
(Becker, 2008: 12); Ecuador’s “banana boom” between 1948 and 1965 that prompted labor migration from Sierra haciendas to Coastal banana plantation wage jobs; increased international political pressures to modernize agriculture and end the feudal system (Larrea &
North, 1997; Conaghan, 1988: 38); and hacienda owners’ (slightly) decreased political leverage and willingness to produce crops that required fewer indentured servants (Zamosc,
1989, Kovrokin, 2001).
These factors coalesced in 1964 when the military administration outlawed the feudal socio-economic system (Conaghan, 1988: 40; Zamosc, 1989). The administrations also created state institutions to facilitate the redistribution of hacienda lands and provide health and education programs for the newly freed, mainly indigenous populations. Looking to erase their indigenous identity, integrate the former servants into the national mestizo culture,
“capture political support, and ... control the masses,” the administration forced those who wanted to partake in these state programs to organize on a class basis and form peasant confederations (Yashar, 2005: 95).
Under these conditions, the peasant confederation, now known as FENOCIN, formed in 1965 and FENACLE formed in 1969 (Tuaza, 2011: 154). They crafted their agendas to conform to state welfare services, which co-opted their collective autonomy and “reinforced
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 56 the segmented, highly unequal nature of civil society” (Oxhorn, 2011: 41). Adding to this insult, land redistribution and social service programs were grossly underfunded and the distributive effects were limited (Conaghan, 1988: 95; Larrea & North, 1997: 191; Korovkin,
1997: 40; Tuaza, 2011: 152).
Despite these pitfalls, the reforms “freed indigenous people from semi-feudal working conditions,” facilitated their legal right (and obligation) to organize, and gained them a degree of civil and economic rights (Yashar, 2005: 92). The new state social programs allowed limited access to the public sphere to negotiate their rights with political society.
The Ecuarunari formed in 1972 to continue to pressure the government for unrealized land redistribution and to “participate in political decision-making” (Pallares, 2002: 180).
They and FENOCIN reinforced pressure on the military administration (1972-79) to reinstitute redistribution legislation. The military regime was seemingly willing to negotiate with confederations to rewrite national agricultural law and reinvigorate land distribution.
However, the Chamber of Agriculture, a collective of large-scale landholders, did not agree with the planned redistribution policy. The chamber was also more politically and economically powerful than the military government. In the end, the chamber and other influential elites in the economic sector inserted their demands that the government support monoculture agricultural production and processing for export markets. These demands, rather than redistribution, were codified the Agricultural Modernization Law of 1973
(Conaghan, 1988: 85).
The negotiation process made salient the degree of economic elites’ political hegemony over state actors, including the president. During the 1960s and 1970s, “for the dominant classes, the state was both a source of wealth … as well as an institutional buffer to protect its interests from … other classes” (Oxhorn, 2011: 39), which was evidenced by
Ecuador’s limp implementation of land redistribution and social welfare programs, while
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 57 rich, leveraged civil society organizations dominated the public sphere. Carlos Larrea and
Liisa North (1997) concluded that “the regionally based, … commercial-financial-industrial groups emerged out of, or were linked to, the traditional landlord classes, penetrated directly into the state apparatus and cultivated clientelist political networks, while popular organizations remained weak, incoherent, and divided” (924). Political society was a pushover to dominant groups who, in non-self-limiting manner, took all state rewards and resources for themselves, while the indigenous and popular groups remained excluded and divided. Meanwhile, the middle class was sandwiched, too poor to be elite, but largely fearful of associating or organizing with popular/poor classes or the indigenous (Larrea & North,
1997). These civil society dynamics and contours largely persist today.
The 1964 and 1973 agriculture laws ended feudalism and distributed some land. Civic associations, such as FENOCIN, FENACLE, and Ecuarunari, emerged in the 1960s and
1970s under governmental conditions, although they unevenly gained social services and organizational autonomy from the state (Yashar, 2005: 95; Tuaza, 2011). Several indigenous associations emerged in the Amazon region of Ecuador. The latter groups organized to protect their communities and cultural identity from domestic “colonizers” and international oil companies that were expanding into the Sierra region. They remained autonomous and even isolated from the state. But they were, to varying degrees, subordinated in power to oil companies and/or the Catholic and Protestant churches that helped form them. Civic organizations were forming and gaining some recognition, as well as political leverage to negotiate in the public sphere, and basic civil and social rights. Yet class and ethnic discrimination against these groups created the constant threat of losing their already limited rights and resources to the state and businesses (Yashar, 2005: 115).
Additionally, the bulk of the population lived in rural sectors during this time. There was little industrialization or urban development. Labor unions and “mass-based or popular
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 58 organizations” were few and unleveraged, and presidential administrations did not facilitate the creation of urban organizations the way it had in the countryside. This left “Ecuadorian society [with a] relatively passive character” (Conaghan, 1988: 101). Social scientist Philip
Oxhorn asserts that “the state often plays a central role in strengthening civil society through
… incentives and resources to encourage its organization. …[In] Latin America … civil society has historically remained weak — often because state policies … intentionally suppress it” (2007: 103). Administrations in Ecuador in the 1960s and 1970s conditioned organizational formation mainly in the rural Sierra. By not encouraging the formation of unions or civic organizations in more populated cities, such as Cuenca (Southern Sierra),
Quito (Central Sierra), or Guayaquil (Coast), “neither the middle nor the working classes achieved significant autonomous organizational development” (Larrea & North, 1997: 924).
Urban lower- and middle-class citizens were not encouraged to organize and were less engaged in the public sphere to defend or expand their citizenship rights. Meanwhile, economic and political elites, via their small, exclusive business groups and/or nepotistic connections, dominated the public sphere, exacerbating political and income inequality in
Ecuador (Conaghan & Malloy, 1994: 86).
Ecuador passed a new constitution in 1978, the indigenous gained suffrage, the military dictatorship was removed from the central government, and Jaime Roldos (1978-
1981), who was less aligned with elites than previous administrations, was democratically elected. The constitutional text even “reflected a reformist bent.” However, Ecuador, along with the rest of Latin America, began to deeply cut welfare programs, particularly in rural areas, and devalue the national currency; inflation rose quickly (Conaghan & Malloy, 1994:
94).
Civil Society and Neoliberalism 1980-2005:
State welfare programs and services began to recede in the early 1980s and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 59 communities lost “their interlocutors with the state, land security, and social resources”
(Yashar, 2005: 64). Civic organizations that formed along “ethnic lines” organically emerged. This is likely owing to the absence of state-imposed organizational conditions and influence from the Latin American renaissance of indigenous identity and consciousness.
In 1980, FEINE (Council of Indigenous and Evangelical Pueblos and Organizations of Ecuador) formed to advance members’ indigenous and religious identity and agenda. In
1986, CONAIE formed. For its first several years CONAIE existed under a relatively low profile. After several land disputes where landowners killed or injured rural peasants for trying to gain access to their fallow lands, CONAIE publicly contested such violence. In
1990, CONAIE closed parts of the Pan-American Highway in Ecuador, prohibiting movement of people and goods for 10 days and demanding the land redistribution that did not happen in the 1960s and 1970s (Kovrokin, 2001; Zamosc, 2007; Silva, 2009: 158). The state and NGOs eventually facilitated some land redistribution and loans (Cesar A., personal interview, August 4, 2012). In 1992, CONAIE affiliate members from the Amazon marched
150 miles to the president’s palace in Quito to pressure him into granting indigenous communities legal ownership of 2 million hectares of their communal lands (Sayer, 1992).
They were titled just over half of the land.
In 1993, President Sixto Durán Ballén (1992-1996) eliminated several social-services programs, including rural health care and public employee subsidies. CONAIE and national labor unions created street protests, though separately (Silva, 2009: 164). Nonetheless, civic organizations pressured the administration enough that Durán reinstated several of these state services. CONAIE earned a reputation as “the region’s most powerful indigenous movement”
(Yashar, 2005: 151). Leon Zamosc (2005) added that CONAIE was the only indigenous movement in Ecuador capable of national-level influence over political society policy decisions, and was the most politically powerful of all Latin American indigenous
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 60 confederations.
Yet not all civic organizations in Ecuador were on board with CONAIE or its operational tactics. In 1994, FEINE’s president said CONAIE was unruly and “instructors of yelling,” while FEINE was “peaceful” and respected the government (Lucero, 2003). These ideological and operational differences between these organizations expand and contract depending on their leadership and political context (Lucero, 2006). It is too much to expect organizations to not disagree. However, these civic organizations were some of the most politically and socially influential in the 1990s. Much of the public either participated with or depended on them to protect against government infringement of economic and political rights. They also consist of and represent the most politically and economically disenfranchised in Ecuador. Their collaboration, then, became that much more critical to their ability to both protect and expand indigenous and poor sectors’ access to citizenship rights and state resources, and pressure administrations and the legislator to functional democratically.
At the same time, in 1994, CONAIE, FENOCIN, and FEINE banded together and pressured the president to rewrite parts of the 1994 Agriculture Modernization Law. The text initially called for water privatization, ending land redistribution, providing loans for large- scale agricultural businesses, and easing the sale of communal indigenous lands. After pressuring the government, leaders of these indigenous associations were given the opportunity to negotiate to rewrite parts of the law. The final version of the law prohibited the sale of communal land to individuals and prohibited water privatization (Yashar, 2005: 149;
Zamosc, 2005: 198). Yet the bulk of the text remained supportive of neoliberal agricultural trade and eased foreign investors to purchase Ecuadorian farmland (Carrión & Herrera, 2012:
52).
The indigenous and peasant organizations were gaining some access to negotiate in
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 61 the public sphere and even reversed some administration-imposed austerity measures, which lent them public legitimacy. President Durán proposed a plebiscite that would have allowed the government to cut state subsidies, privatize certain state services, and weaken unions. In reaction, civic organizations conglomerated in 1995 and created the Social Movement
Coordinator (CMS). The CMS consisted of provincial-level professionals, blue-collar unions, neighborhood associations, student associations, and informal labor organizations. The CMS and CONAIE created nationwide public assemblies and consults with local organizations to rally support for a “no” vote of the referendum, which was defeated and these civic groups were credited for it (166-7).
Although relations between these organizations fluctuated throughout the 1990s, civic organizations were autonomously forming and giving constituent members decision-making authority. Popular organizations had some brokerage power to negotiate with political society to create programs for the disenfranchised. In 1996, the CMS and CONAIE formed the
MUPP-NP electoral party, which became Pachakutik, and provided popular and indigenous a representative political party and seats within the National Assembly and local governments
(Silva, 2009: 168).
FENOCIN, CONAIE, and FEINE, together with the World Bank and President
Durán's administration, negotiated together to establish the state agencies Development
Project for Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian Peoples (PRODEPINE) and Development
Council of Ecuadorian Nationalities and Pueblos (CODENPE) (Lucero, 2003). Their stated goals were to eliminate rural poverty through small-scale agricultural and artisanal business projects (Chartock, 2012: 62). They were funded largely by the World Bank and Ecuadorian government — also CONAIE, FENOCIN, and FEINE (Lucero, 2003) — but were administered by and for these civic organizations.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 62
However, the confederations quickly began to compete for administrative power and control of the agencies, even prior to their full implementation (Lucero, 2003). Once operational, the agencies increased schisms between and among the organizations.
FENOCIN, which largely managed CODENPE, preferred working with subnational organizations that self-identified as mestizos, which was how FENOCIN identified.
CONAIE, which managed PRODEPINE, prioritized working with indigenous-identifying communities and organizations, similar to CONAIE membership. Communities resented being overlooked by the agencies if they did not fit a certain ethnic or class profile and
“fragment[ed] social actors according to their ethnic identity” (Breton, 2008: 607). Much like what would occur with COPISA a decade later, CODENPE and PRODEPINE became outlets to express “long-standing disputes between … the competing organizations, ... CONAIE
[and] FENOCIN” (Lucero, 2003: 40).
The funding structure of the agencies channeled World Bank and Ecuadorian state funds directly to FENOCIN and CONAIE to execute projects. In that way, the state and
World Bank could influence, at least covertly, how money was spent and which projects were executed. The agencies threatened the confederations’ autonomy. Scholars claim agencies were World Bank and Ecuador’s “co-optive attempts to make Indianness safe for neoliberalism” (Chartock, 2012: 53). These (and other) internationally funded agencies created for indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorians refocused the increasingly politically leveraged
FENOCIN, CONAIE, and FEINE away from advocating for political economic structural changes and citizenship rights toward small-scale business projects for export markets
(Breton, 2008). The agencies have been described as “neo-colonial, … political anesthesia” for civic organizations, limiting their autonomy and ability to unite and negotiate in the public sphere for “any long-term political transformation” (Breton, 2008: 608).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 63
These agencies created tension not only between FENOCIN and CONAIE at the national level, but also within communities where their programs were installed. One
PRODEPINE participant stated that the agency’s projects “brought more misery to the communities. [We all] ended up fighting [and] competing over who would get the greenhouse [and] artisanal center” (Tuaza, 2011: 213).
By 2005, CONAIE negotiated with the government to terminate PRODEPINE because of its fragmenting effects on the organization and rural communities (Becker, 2011:
30). These were the mounting relations in Ecuador among the most influential civic organizations, not firm foundations for participatory institutions.
Public Exclusion, Political Society:
As civic organizations gained and sometimes lost political leverage, neoliberal economic measures increased. Abdalá Bucaram (1996-97) cut subsidies for agricultural inputs, such as seeds and chemicals (Silva, 2009: 170). Rural-to-urban migration rose drastically in the 1990s. “People living in rural areas decreased from 45% in 1990 to 39% … in 2002” (Vaillancourt-Laflamme, 2005: 9), which “destabilized rural indigenous communities” and overburdened urban-sector infrastructure and services (Valle, 2003: 90).
Urban unemployment rose to 14.4% in 1999 and citizens working in the informal, unprotected economy skyrocketed (Vaillancourt-Laflamme, 2005).
The government was rescinding its role and responsibility to provide basic social rights in the market-based political economic approach (Yashar, 2005), which were increasingly available only to those who could afford them. In the market-driven economic model, “individuals’ personal economic resources largely determine the extent and nature of their political and social inclusion” (Oxhorn, 2011: 57). The majority poor had to work longer at low-wage jobs (because of high inflation) in urban areas to afford basic civil rights
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 64 and social services, depleting them of time and energy to organize and integrating them further into the market economy. The Ecuadorian administration prioritized individualism rather than the collectives of the 1960s and 1970s. Administrations limited “collective action undermining civil society’s” ability to organize. Disenfranchised citizens were driven farther from the “public sphere from which to gather political and material resources” (Oxhorn,
2011: 11-12).
All the while, economic elites could afford their social services. In fact, they controlled the means to construct de facto and de jure policies. In Ecuador, “elites construct the entire political representative system, all the procedural forms, institutions, discursive, and normative. [They] were the real receptors of power and … restrict the rest of civil society” (Davalos, 2002: 4 author translation). Ministry leaders and other elites “continued to reject the practical implications of indigenous participation in what had previously been the exclusive domain of the white and mestizo upper classes” (Bowen, 2011: 470). Political society made short-term political decisions, based on the immediate economic crisis and even the demands of the elite. Whether or not national-level politicians purposefully or consistently made political decisions to benefit the elites, economic gaps increased, creating a poorer poor and precarious middle class, and the economic elites either benefited from or were economically buffered from austerity measures. Class gaps widened. When nations experience a “concentration of power resources … civil society is undermined. …
Concomitant declines in social equity [create] long-term threats to democratic stability”
(Oxhorn, 2011: 22).
The socio-political environment became increasingly chaotic. This was particularly glaring during the Abdalá Bucaram administration (1996-97). Bucaram ramped up austerity measures, made a mockery of the presidency and engaged in gross corruption and nepotism.
Popular organizations and even middle-class factions and the National Assembly agreed to
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 65 remove Bucaram from the presidency and he was ousted six months into his term (Silva,
2009: 173). “Public policies lost their dynamism to resolve social demands. This provoked a disconnection between civil society actors and the state, and the representative system. The representative system became an oligarchy and could not uphold universal rights, which … stemmed from the economic model” (Echeverria, 2010: 91, author translation). This
“disconnect” stemmed not only from the economic model, but from state institutions that facilitated state dysfunction, political corruption, and impunity (Mejía Acosta & Polga-
Hecimovich, 2011).
A slew of well-intentioned but contradictory electoral legislation passed between
1978 and 1998, meant to ameliorate political corruption and volatility, had the opposite effect
(Pachano, 2006; Mejía Acosta & Polga-Hecimovich, 2011). Immediate re-elections were banned, but the law was overturned in 1994 (Mejia Acosta, et al., 2006: 21). Congressional coalitions were illegal between 1979 and 1996, leading to rampant party switching, legislative deadlock, clandestine coalitions, and even national-level corruption (Mejía Acosta
& Polga-Hecimovich, 2011: 90). Party entry became more accessible and candidates who represented regions proliferated and were over-represented in the assembly (Pachano, 2006;
Mejía, 2003). In 2003, Ecuador’s electoral parties ranked within the 25% most regionalized in Latin American (Jones & Mainwaring, 2003).
Parties were highly non-institutionalized. Institutionalized party systems reproduce political regularity, dependability, legitimacy, and accountability between political society and the electorate. “In more institutionalized systems, party organizations are not subordinated to the interests of a few ambitious leaders [facilitating] effective democratic governance” (Mainwaring & Torcal, 2006: 205-06). On the other hand, in non- institutionalized systems, like Ecuador’s, parties are: shortest-lived; have little to no ideological or practical agenda (Parga 1998; Mejia, 2003: 305); foster short-term political
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 66 planning and coalitions; and weaken political accountability and sound governance
(Mainwaring & Scully, 2008). Between 1952 and 1992, Ecuador's party system ranked the
11th least institutionalized of 12 Latin American countries (Mejia, 2003: 305).
Political society is the intermediary between civil society and the state that regulates conflict and enables a rule of law — the state’s and civil society’s commitment to government procedures, the constitution, and legislation (Linz & Stepan, 1996: 10). Ecuador did not have a party system because the term implies patterns and institutionalized regulations and rules, as well as a measure of predictability (Mainwaring & Torcal, 2006:
205). There was almost no effective rule of law, and political society, by and large, could not provide basic social and civil rights. Simon Pachano states simply: “It is difficult to find a
[political] system that does a better job of fostering personalism and fragmentation” (119).
Brazil, too, has earned a reputation for having an inchoate, fragmented political system. However, compared to Ecuador, Brazil’s electoral legislation and political system facilitates greater party coalitions and incentivizes accountability between the three branches of government (Mejía Acosta, 2010). Thus, Brazil’s political system, “unlike their
Ecuadorian counterparts, provides social movements with institutional channels to influence policy without disrupting the democratic order” (Mejia Acosta, 2010). Their political system seems to have provided a firm foundation at the national level, upon which to establish national participatory institutions.
In Ecuador, the solution to continual legislative deadlock in the 1990s was to grant presidents more legislative powers, decree-making ability, and control over the state apparatus and national budget. Ecuadorian presidents now have considerably greater legislative powers compared to their Latin American counterparts (Mejia Acosta, et al., 2006:
15). The president’s disproportionate power weakened the other state branches (Parga, 2009,
191). Presidential hegemony over the other state branches was the most determining factor in
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 67 making the entire state system “vulnerable” and precarious (Pachano, 2006). Independent, rogue, populist presidential candidates became the norm in the 1990s, fueling personalism and clientelistic relations between presidents and the electorate. Ecuador fostered anti-system politics and populist politicians (Echeverria, 2010). Bucaram (1996-97) and Mahuad (1998-
2000) were both populist leaders. Ecuador also has had a tradition of populist leaders since the 1940s.
Populism is a litmus test. The presence of populist leaders indicates that the larger political system and formal state institutions are unresponsive, unpredictable, and unaccountable to the electorate. The populist tends to bypass these defunct institutions to create and shape rules that benefit their personal power (Echeverría, 2006; Echeverria, 2010;
Oxhorn, 2011: 44). Populist leaders provide the citizenry with a modicum of social services, and the citizens provide their vote and/or political support. This direct interaction creates the
“illusion of … popular participation so that the common people feel they can present their demands” to a populist leader who will alleviate their hardships (de la Torre, 2013: 41).
Rather than creating “autonomous, self-constituted” civic organizations to demand change, often economically and politically desperate citizens take the immediate concessions of the populist (Oxhorn, 2011: 21).
Often, populist presidents do not have the best interests of the populace in mind when deciding policy. They often, at least in the case of Ecuador, reproduce political economy models that widen economic gaps, maintain civil-society disorganization, and thus citizens’ access to the public sphere (Oxhorn, 2011: 87). They are the “antithesis [of] citizenship rights” (Oxhorn, 2011: 21). Populist President Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000) promised to do away with neoliberal measures during his campaign (Davalos, 2001) and began a direct cash welfare program to the poor. Yet a month after taking office, he privatized the “oil, telecommunications, and electricity sectors” and changed tax policy to benefit the wealthy
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 68
(Silva, 2009: 175). Citizens were further thrust into economic peril at the whim of the president. There were no fixed policies or routines, and no means of holding political society accountable to their economic measures.
In Response:
Between 1998 and 2000, CONAIE and civic organizations protested nearly continually, and while the Mahuad administration made occasional economic concessions, no structural, economic or political changes occurred. Instead, the “cycle of unrest and cathartic victory … increase[d] electoral volatility and party system disintegration” (Van Cott, 2008a:
42). By January 2000, CONAIE’s political behavior became more radical and exclusionary.
On January 21, 2000, a few CONAIE leaders, a few student organizations, and former military leaders took over the National Congress in Quito to “demand the overthrow of … the national Congress, the Supreme Court, and the government” (Walsh, 2001: 176). The groups managed to oust the legislators, then the president.
Citizens were against Mahuad’s administration and frustrated by the representative system, but did not support and were shocked by CONAIE and the military’s government takeover (Walsh, 2001; Gallegos, 2011). CONAIE was civil society’s politically legitimate
“go to” organization that garnered more trust than the representative system (Walsh, 2001;
Andolina, 2003). CONAIE advanced “important functions for Ecuador’s democratic institutions” and tried to increase government accountability (Zamosc, 2007).
However, when disenfranchised civil society organizations respond to their political exclusion with “revolutionary and reactionary” acts, but offer no alternative plan, this can further dismantle democratic institutions, thus weakening their ability to collectively negotiate with the state via institutions (Zamosc, 2007). Conservative politicians and citizens reacted to the CONAIE role in the takeover with racist slander against CONAIE; FENOCIN
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 69 and FEINE accused the CONAIE of acting unilaterally, “monopolizing the representation of the Indians” (Walsh, 2001: 198). The CMS accused CONAIE of adopting an exclusive indigenous agenda to the exclusion of other Ecuadorian ethnicities and interest groups.
CONAIE’s role in the presidential and congressional takeovers exacerbated long-term discord between civic groups. The overthrow decreased CONAIE’s legitimacy among the citizenry and polity (Zamosc, 2007).
Such accusations were not necessarily accurate. CONAIE’s role in the government overthrow was not orchestrated by community-level members or even its national-level leaders, but by a few individual, rogue leaders within the organization who claimed to act for the benefit of the entire citizenry (Walsh, 2001; Petras & Veltmeyer, 2005; Majeski & Beck,
2011: 70). When CONAIE first formed, community-level members had authority to make decisions, but this decision-making system was eroding by 2000. Internal hierarchies emerged within CONAIE, but also within FENOCIN and FEINE, and “growing gaps between the leaders and the grassroots” members evolved (Martínez, 2013: 117). The organizations’ continual civil society uprising throughout the 1990s benefitted some leaders in the form of clientelist rewards and government jobs (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2005: 170;
Majeski & Beck, 2011: 61). Some indigenous organization leaders became “technocrats” in
PRODEPINE and CODENPE, who were “focused toward national and international contexts and … lost contact with the communities. Communities [did] not see enough change at the grassroots level. This has led indigenous people to … become tired of organizing and demonstrating without seeing results” (Martínez, 2013: 117). A knowledge gap also grew between leaders, who were making unilateral organizational decisions in Quito without consulting community members (Tuaza, 2011). Local-level members were increasingly disenfranchised and without authority within their own organizations. Member authority within civic associations is a critical component to creating robust organizations and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 70 participatory institution constituents, who expect their authority will be welcome within these institutions. The decreased community-level authority and member engagement within
CONAIE, FENOCIN, and FEINE in the early 2000s debilitated their ability to unite and advocate for a national participatory institution for food sovereignty in 2009. Political and social volatility created the perfect breeding ground for a populist and corrupt president Lucio
Gutiérrez.
Lucio Gutiérrez, Civil Society Disarray:
Initially, CONAIE, FEINE, and FENOCIN, CMS, urban intellectuals, leftist groups, and the Pachakutik party endorsed Lucio Gutiérrez for the presidential nomination in 2002, and he won the 2003 presidential election. In populist fashion, Gutierrez appealed directly to the poor, promised to reinstate public services, and renounced privatization. Once elected, he appointed CONAIE and Pachakutik leaders to his cabinet (Majeski & Beck, 2011: 91).
However, he quickly privatized oil production, electricity, and telecommunications operations, enabling the rich to buy up these services (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2005: 158). He appointed family members to government positions, and they later embezzled large sums of government funds. Gutierrez built clientelist relations with community-level CONAIE members, leaching the organization of its base-level support and aggravating the already hierarchical, strained relations between members and leaders (Majeski & Beck, 2011: 110).
CONAIE found itself within a neoliberal-friendly, corrupt administration, a profile it once soundly protested, but with only “fragments of power” (Zamosc, 2005: 221).
FENOCIN was the first to group to pull its support of Gutierrez (Becker, 2011).
Seven months later, the Ecuarunari and Pachakutik electoral parties followed suit. However,
CONAIE’s Amazon and Coastal affiliate members remained with the administration, nearly
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 71 splitting the CONAIE organizational unit (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2005: 150; Majeski & Beck,
2011: 98; Becker, 2011: 90-91).
On the food sovereignty front, Ecuarunari left Mesa Agraria. Meanwhile, FEINE aligned more closely to Gutierrez and began to recruit members in “traditionally” CONAIE
“territory” (Zamosc, 2005: 219; Beck & Majeski, 2011: 97). FENOCIN and FEINE accused
CONAIE of monopolizing CODENPE and PRODEPINE, which CONAIE denied (La Feine y Fenocin Reclaman Espacios, 2005). Whether the accusations were accurate is irrelevant.
The fractures and tension between and within CONAIE, FENOCIN, and FEINE were authentic. Civil society’s principal organizations were, more than ever, internally fragmented, politically co-opted, and undependable for their constituents (Echeverria, 2006: 107). After trying to reappoint the Constitutional Court, Gutiérrez was finally ousted in April 2005, not by these indigenous organizations that wanted him removed, but a relatively few, unorganized, urban mestizo (Echeverría, 2006; Beck & Majeski, 2011: 100; Gallegos, 2011).
Indigenous and campesino organizations were on the political sidelines with little leverage.
During the 1990s, they, by and large, collaborated against a common public enemy — neoliberalism, which often benefitted their members and non-members. They did so from
“outside” formal politics. As CONAIE, FENOCIN, and FEINE entered the political system in the late 1990s and early 2000, internal hierarchies and infighting increased, as did their autonomy, public legitimacy, and ability to hold political society accountable. Yet many citizens held CONAIE, and to lesser degrees FENOCIN, FEINE, and Pachakutik, partly responsible for the ascent of Gutierrez’s corrupt, neoliberal administration (Gallegos, 2011:
80). These organizations’ entrances into electoral politics “manifest a fundamental problem for social movements” that enter formal politics, “the accommodation [of] political dynamics
… inevitably … leads to the demobilization of the … social movement” (Petras &
Veltmeyer, 2005: 165).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 72
All of these societal and political events become more understandable by looking at
Ecuador’s historical socio-political and economic relations. A recent examination of
Ecuador’s democracy led one scholar to conclude that it has had a “delegative democracy” since its independence in 1822, so that the indigenous, women, Afro-Ecuadorians, children, and other minority groups are highly marginalized from political decisions and spaces of social influence. The political system and branches of government are “weakly institutionalized, prone to nepotism, patronage, and corruption, whose survival depends on
[populist] leaders and ... technocratic groups within decision-making processes” (Farrington,
2012: 18). Delegative democracies enable political corruption and facilitate that a few elite continually create political rules and dominate resources and power. These democracies hardly enable the organization of autonomous civic associations that can negotiate in the public sphere their share of state resources and power.
CONAIE, FENOCIN, FEINE, and the CMS elevated the presence of poor and minorities — and their political demands — to the national scale. Mainly, though, they worked on the defensive to disrupt, but not change, the neoliberal economic incursions. Their civil rights to education and health are sparse and not sustained; neither is their membership, which began to decline as members became “tired” of organizing with no return on investments (Tuaza, 2011: 329). Ecuador’s state structure and political institution actors are able to systematically exclude them from the polity (Farrington, 2012), which weakens civil society’s organizational ability, autonomy, and leverage. A civil society is only as articulated as its state, or as its state actors will allow. As demonstrated, Ecuador’s national political system is one of the least articulated or functional in Latin America, making it very difficult for organizations for and by disenfranchised sectors to remain autonomous, organized, and sustaining over time.
This political and civil society was not the ideal foundation upon which to establish a
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 73 participatory institution for food sovereignty. It was, however, the perfect scenario for the ascension of President Rafael Correa (2007-present).
Correa’s Arrival:
The theory of participatory institutions concludes that their implementation is critical and largely “dependent” on political society (Avritzer, 2009: 54). It is particularly important that the executive leader (president, mayor) be supportive of the participatory institution in instances where he/she enjoys electoral hegemony (Wampler, 2004; Avritzer, 2009: 54). This is particularly the case for the Ecuadorian presidency who enjoys some of the greatest legislation agenda-setting powers among all Latin American presidencies. This section demonstrates how President Correa dominated the political field and, rather quickly, gained electoral support from the unleveraged civil society during 2006-07.
2006 Presidential Elections:
The leading presidential candidates in Ecuador’s 2006 elections hailed from the
“traditional” electoral parties, which the electorate interpreted as corrupt and responsible for the economic and political chaos they just experienced (Recalde, 2007). Rafael Correa, on the other hand, was the “outsider” candidate. He had never run for public office. He tapped into the public’s deep anti-political sentiment and fear of returning to the crisis of governability.
The “politics of anti-politics seemed to be the dominant force” of the election campaign
(Becker, 2011: 109). He portrayed himself in the media as the confident newcomer willing and able to “clean up” the corrupt assembly and presidential post (Recalde, 2007; Conaghan,
2008; Echeverría, 2010: 97). He advertised his experience as Ecuador’s former Minister of
Economics in 2005, which legitimized his claims that he had witnessed political institutions from “within” and was the most equipped to fix them.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 74
To further distance himself from existing representative electoral parties, Correa established his own party, Patria Altiva i Soberana (PAIS) in 2006, which he formed with former academic and state colleagues. It was later changed to Alianza PAIS (AP). Correa ran on the PAIS ticket in the 2006 election, promising “rapid, radical, and profound changes” to the political and economic systems (Hernández & Buendía, 2011: 132).
Correa attracted left-leaning academics, social movement members, and members of leftist, socialist, and centrist parties. Founding members strategically formed Comites
Ciudadanos in urban and suburban neighborhoods throughout the country. This agglutinated his support from a wide array of the citizenry. Unorganized lower- and middle-class conservatives, “urban and rural salaried workers, … petite bourgeois, … individual small- and medium-scale merchants, intellectuals, bureaucrats, professionals, members of the public transportation sector, laborers, and many individual businesses … with ideas of nationalism” either joined Comites or supported Correa for president (Gallegos, 2011: 94). He also gained support from the disillusioned community-level members of the indigenous and campesino organizations (Martinez, 2013). This heterogeneous support from different classes, ethnicities, and geographic regions was a counterpunch to the highly regionalized, established party candidates who also ran for office (Recalde, 2007). On the ground, Correa and AP seemed to welcome universal membership to the party.
However, in contrast to the Brazil WP electoral party, which formed organically from the ground up, by and for civil society, AP was constructed in a top-down fashion. Or, perhaps better said, from the inside out. Correa and a few “core” members spread outward, engulfing the unorganized via the Comites and clever media advertisements (Recalde, 2007).
Correa displayed confidence and charisma and promised to install what he named a Citizens’
Revolution, a 21st Century Socialism (Sierra, 2013: 138) that included a “democratic, active,
… and deliberative” government (Recalde, 2007: 21; de la Torre, 2013: 42). While his
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 75 version of socialism “remained vague on the details” (Becker, 2011: 116), his Citizens’
Revolution (CR) included rewriting the constitution with citizens’ participation and constructing a Citizens’ Branch state institution that would enable oversight committees at all levels of government, as well as participatory councils within each government ministry and secretary (Wolff, 2009).
He proposed to transform the agriculture economic structure, redistribute land, and protect natural resources (Hidalgo, 2013: 161). He met with Mesa Agraria leaders and signed a pact promising that, if elected, he would install an “Agrarian Revolution [to] democratize access to land, prevent water privatization, and in general, foster access to strategic resources for … the peasant sector” (Giunta, 2014: 12). He claimed his aim was to upend the neoliberal reforms these groups and CONAIE had fought to overturn for decades. Mesa Agraria and
Colectivo Agrario members largely supported Correa (personal interview, Ceci P., August 4,
2012), as did the majority of citizens.
On the other hand, tensions between Correa and CONAIE arose during his campaign.
Correa refused to run with a CONAIE member on the AP electoral ticket, seemingly not wanting to run with an indigenous candidate. CONAIE leaders accused Correa of racism and
“deliberately stirring up conflicts among indigenous sectors in order to advance his candidacy” (Becker, 2011: 105).
Correa won the March 2006 election with 56% of the vote and entered the office of the presidency in January 2007 (Recalde, 2007). At his presidential inauguration in January
2007, he announced that, “banks, political parties, factions, or interest groups no longer call the shots, but that the pueblos in neighborhoods and towns … in the Sierra and jungle are constructing nationhood” and promised to bring Ecuador out of the “long night of neoliberalism” (Ramonet, 2013). He emphasized that he wanted to “rescue the state from powerful group factions” to create a more stable and productive nation (Recalde, 2007: 21;
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 76
Nunez, 2014). Ospina Peralta (2009) points out that Correa and AP members had a longstanding, but not widely discussed, view that civic organizations, unions, and even business conglomerates leech power from the state and have a negative effect on the political system and society. To AP, organizations “manipulate and control the state” for their particular interests at the expense of the “common good,” limiting civil society access to basic goods and fundamental rights. This leads to an “inefficient state, weakens institutions, increases corruption,” and poses dangers to economic development and democracy (Ospina
Peralta, 2009). According to the regime, corporatist groups hark back to the “familial hacienda” era. They are the antithesis of Correa’s desire to create a modern, efficient, state- centered government (Ospina Peralta, 2011). He began to lump together politically elite interest groups and civic organizations, such as CONAIE, that advocate for equity, within the
“corporatist” category (Becker, 2011).
At the same time, Correa quickly began to tour the nation and implement his Citizens’
Revolution programs. This included an increase in direct cash assistance to the poor and the creation of several Executive Branch institutions (Machado Puertas, 2007), including
SENPLADES (National Secretary of Planning and Development). The administration promised to construct the administration’s socio-economic plan with citizen input (Ecuador,
National Government, 2007). 9 Correa began his Saturday morning Citizen’s Link (2007- present), a three-hour live “talk” transmitted via all audio/visual media outlets that enabled him to inform the citizenry of the government’s initiatives and successes from the week, and who were enemies of the Citizens’ Revolution. Citizens’ Revolution propaganda ramped up on graffiti, billboards, television commercials, and radio jingles (Conaghan, 2008).
He also made good on his promise to rewrite the nation’s constitution. In September
2007, 80% of the Ecuadorian electorate approved Correa’s referendum to rewrite the nation’s
9There are currently three published Plans that cover the following time frames: 2007-10; 2010-13; and 2013-17 (de la Torre, 2013: 45).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 77 constitution for the 20th time since its independence in 1822. In his speech to inaugurate the
Constituent Assembly in September 2007, Correa declared that Ecuador no longer constituted groups, ethnicities, and regional blocs or unions, but was one nation, an “entire pueblo”
(Ospina Peralta, 2011; Vega, 2013: 103).
In November 2007, Correa sent national militia to an Amazon town that blocked new oil drilling. The militia arrested 45 people for protesting (Becker, 2013). Correa said that,
“enemies of oil and mining are not part of the AP” (Denvir, 2008). The public was encouraged to not only vilify AP opposition, but to criminalize protest against the country’s new revolution. With the mix of Correa’s political power, welfare programs, participatory rhetoric, media-savvy charm, and charisma, a constitutional rewrite on the horizon, and the public’s exhaustion of protest and disruptive politics, the majority of citizens were willing and able to ride the wave of support for Correa despite the administration’s violent interventions against the protests.
Chapter Three Conclusions:
The most able constituents for participatory institutions in a particular context extend from civil society organizations that, first and foremost, work toward political equity and enable membership authority. He also contends that civic organizations that remain autonomous are inclusive, and collaborate with other civic organizations to increase their collective probability to implement effective participatory institutions. This chapter demonstrates that the most influential civil society organizations in Ecuador at the national level just prior to 2009 — such as CONAIE, FENOCIN, FEINE, and other organizations within the Mesa Agraria — were combative and internally fragmented. Their membership, rather than being inclusive, was mainly limited to rural campesino and indigenous populations. Although the CMS temporarily brought together urban organizations and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 78 unions, they had largely disbanded by the mid-2000s.
Indigenous organizations that were known for their consultative, egalitarian decision- making had been weakened by entering the political system, and jeopardized their organizational autonomy by making political concessions with corrupt politicians, who they also overthrew. This chapter also demonstrated that the larger political and economic systems were hardly able or willing to expand citizenship rights to indigenous, minorities, or poor, but were instead more than willing, via austerity measures and corruption, to weaken the representative system and rescind civil rights. Economic gaps increased, which also lessened the poor and middle class’ ability to organize and leverage the public sphere dominated by elites. The political leverage and democratic qualities of civil society are only as democratic as the political context within which they reside. Ecuador’s political society does not seem willing or able to facilitate the emergence of an organized, autonomous and democratic civil society.
Certain CONAIE leaders acted unilaterally with the military to overthrow Bucaram for their own personal political gains, damaging Ecuador’s already precarious democratic institutions (Zamosc, 2007). Schisms developed within peasant organizations and membership dwindled as community-level members saw no returns for their protest efforts.
This chapter also demonstrated that the presidency, via legal and de facto means, became the most powerful political actor within the Executive Branch and among the other state institutions. Populist presidents, like Gutierrez, who appealed directly to the citizenry were able to emerge. He quickly tried to co-opt organizational leaders within CONAIE, and he manipulated organizations and exacerbated schisms between CONAIE, FENOCIN, and
FEINE.
Correa’s political machine — the Citizens’ Revolution — had just provided a plebiscite to rewrite the constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved. His populist style
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 79 of governing is, as Conaghan (2008) terms it, a plebiscite presidency where he goes “over the heads” of state institutions to make direct appeals of support to the citizenry, meanwhile controls or influences all national political decisions. Avritzer contends that strong support from leveraged political society actors is the most critical factor to install a participatory institution (2009: 41). In the case of Ecuador at the national level in 2009, this meant the president needed to support and gain a coalition of support for any participatory institution that would allow citizen authority in decision-making, or else it was likely that the institution would go nowhere.
The lack of autonomous, democratic, and collaborative civic associations did not create the ideal scenario for Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario to negotiate the implementation of their food sovereignty power-sharing institution. Moreover, though, the most critical factor in the installation of participatory institutions is the executive office — particularly its leader, in this case, President Correa. Unfortunately there were growing signs during his first two years in office, what he would not be responsive to citizen participation in politics and policy decisions.
The theory of participatory institutions stresses that the interactions and negotiations to implement a participatory institution are critical to understanding its eventual design and effectiveness. These negotiations between the politically powerful Correa and the Congresillo that proposed power-sharing institution are explored in the following chapter.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 80
Chapter 4: Creating the Conference, COPISA
As indicated in the previous chapters, state actors and elite groups in Ecuador generally control not only public policy content, but also policy-making rules and arena. This scenario of exclusion benefits the few actors and disenfranchises the majority of citizens’ access to political power and resources. Participatory institutions are meant to reverse this
“typical” way of doing politics. Ideally, influential, self-limiting, universally representative, autonomous civic organizations and a “political society concerned with universal access to public policy-making” jointly design the participatory institution appropriate to their context
(64, 65). When a participatory institution is “jointly made by state and civil society actors …
[the latter] … move up in the claiming of public goods” (66, 131).
Yet civil society largely depends on political actors to enable civil society access and authority to design the rules, structure, and purpose of the institution. If the Executive Branch leader and influential state actors are unsupportive and/or cannot gain a coalition of support for the participatory mechanism, it likely will not to be implemented, will be weakly implemented, or will fade away (Goldfrank, 2007; Van Cott, 2008; Avritzer, 2009: 54).
In the end, “the consequences produced by [participatory institutions] are related to the origin of the institutional innovation” (Avritzer, 2009: 74). In other words, the participatory mechanism’s origin story leaves an indelible stamp on its effectiveness. For that reason, it is critical to examine COPISA’s origin story to understand how and why it was transformed from a power-sharing institution into a weak state agency.
Chapter Three indicated that the national-level Ecuadorian civil society hardly had the qualities that facilitate participatory institution implementation. This chapter indicates that, in addition to this unleveraged food sovereignty front, civil society was largely shut out of the creation process for the proposed participatory institution during the Congresillo in 2009.
This chapter also demonstrates that President Correa enjoyed Congresillo majority and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 81 legislative power, which made his support of the power-sharing institution for food sovereignty that much more imperative. His political leverage, as well as growing resistance to participatory democracy and food sovereignty — which are highlighted here, as well — allowed him to easily reconstruct the permanent participatory institutions for food sovereignty into a small and weak committee, the National Conference for Food Sovereignty
(later, the Pluri-national and Intercultural Conference for Food Sovereignty, COPISA).
This origin story demonstrates, according to the theory of participatory institutions, that Ecuador’s national-level civil and political societies were nearly the opposite of what can facilitate participatory institution implementation. The Conference’s design phase, purpose, and structure, outlined here, will highly influence the Conference’s later (in)effectiveness, outlined in Chapter Five.
Food Sovereignty in the 2008 Constitution:
The creation of the National Conference for Food Sovereignty began during
Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. The National Constituent Assembly (November 2007-October
2008), the entity charged with writing and enacting the constitutional text, elected Alberto
Acosta (AP) as its president. This was an encouraging sign to CONAIE and Colectivo
Agrario, as Acosta was a left-leaning academic, longtime collaborator to CONAIE and
Colectivo Agrario members, and an ardent advocate of participatory democracy (Denvir,
2008a).
Acosta emphasized that this constitution would usher in a new era of “citizen power as a state power guaranteeing civil, political, and collective rights” to all Ecuadorians
(Acosta, 2008: 23, author’s translation). He and the assembly proposed to write the constitution with direct citizen participation, “so all citizens [could] exercise their power, be a part of public policy decisions, and control their political representatives.” He assured the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 82 citizenry that the assembly would carefully analyze all their policy recommendations (41).
This was the first time in Ecuador’s history that the state created official participatory assemblies to channel citizens’ proposals directly to the assembly.
Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario members publicly released the food-sovereignty demands they wanted included in the new constitution (Mesa Agraria Proposal, 2007;
COFALIS, 2007). They wanted the state to embrace the food sovereignty paradigm, and promote small-scale, agro-ecological, family-run farms and the circulation and cultivation of native seeds. Moreover, they wanted the state to create the National Council for Food
Sovereignty for peasant farmers and small-scale producers to be decision-makers in the formulation and implementation of food sovereignty policy and programs.
Approximately 115,000 citizens participated in the constitutional writing process
(Rosero Garces, Carbonell & Regalado, 2011: 87; Gallegos, 2011). The Constituent
Assembly arranged eight roundtables to facilitate this level of citizen input. Pedro de la Cruz
(AP), former FENOCIN president, presided over Roundtable Six, the “Work, Production,
Equity, and Social Inclusion Roundtable.” Members of Mesa Agraria, Colectivo Agrario, and
CONAIE were often present at this roundtable, but could not engage in policy debate (Rosero
Garces, 2008). Roundtable Six included food sovereignty–focused protections and outlined
National Council for Food Sovereignty in its constitutional draft (Rosero Garcés, et al., 2011:
87). The council would provide the indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorians, women, youth, and campesinos with a permanent, participatory space to develop “food sovereignty policies that increase campesino and family-based agricultural production, protect the ecosystem, and strengthen cultural identity” (Langler, 2007: 41). This council would reside within the
National Food Sovereignty System (SINASAN). SINASAN was not clearly articulated, but was described as a “complex vision of local, regional, national, and international
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 83 governments, [as well as] cultural, political, and economic … institutions” in Ecuador that would jointly direct food-sovereignty policy and programs (40).
However, just as Roundtable Six was about to present this draft to the full assembly, these protections and proposals were erased and replaced by agricultural provisions introduced by President Correa and the MAGAP. This version called for the state’s increased support of the agro-exportation of monoculture crops, chemical fertilizer subsidies, and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in agricultural production (Roser Garces, et al., 2011: 88) — component parts of the corporate food regime. This draft was debated in the full assembly in April 2008.
Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario contested this sudden revision. They wrote an open letter to the MAGAP, accusing it of retreating from “food sovereignty initiatives promised by Correa” and of “unilaterally … excluding social organizations and citizens [… promoting] … agro-combustibles, monoculture crops, and international neo-colonial controls over Ecuador … [while] … disabling small-scale farmers equal access to land, irrigation, credit, and participatory spaces for Ecuadorians to create food sovereignty policy” (n.d., author translation).
Roundtable Six reconvened with contentious debate. FENOCIN member Luis
Andrango favored more “radical” food-sovereignty policies that allowed state expropriation of fallow lands for redistribution. Former FENOCIN President (1992-2005) Pedro de la Cruz
(AP) and other assembly members, on the other hand, supported food sovereignty, but favored more moderate food sovereignty protections. A second draft of the food sovereignty articles re-established state supports for small-scale farmers and their equal access to agricultural land, farm subsidies, low-interest loans, and irrigation water. However, the proposed institutions, National Council for Food Sovereignty and National System for Food
Sovereignty, were eliminated from the text. The text prohibited the entry of genetically
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 84 modified (GM) seeds into Ecuador. At the last moment, though, President Correa spoke directly to Alberto Acosta and convinced the latter to change the text to allow GM seeds in
Ecuador in “substantiated circumstances,” with joint presidential and congressional approval
(Constitution, 2008: Art. 401; Rosero Garcés, et al., 2011: 92).
Halfway through the writing process, Correa accused Assembly President Acosta, a founding AP member, of slowing the constitution’s writing with his “excessive” debate style
(Becker, 2011: 141). Acosta requested that the assembly extend the timeline to write the constitution in order to debate the civil society proposals. The president was “infuriated” at the request and the assembly denied the extension. Acosta resigned as president, but remained an assembly member (Denvir, 2008).
The writing process proceeded at breakneck speed and was accepted by the assembly in July 2008 (Becker, 2011: 150). At this point, even before the constitution was approved, the president and the MAGAP circulated an “Agriculture Law” that supported the import of agro-chemicals and subsidies for large-scale farming (Denvir, 2008). This made salient the importance of agriculture and food production in Ecuador, the president’s growing monopoly over legislative procedures, his adherence to the corporate food model, and the polemic nature of agricultural politics in Ecuador. Colectivo Agrario members said this proposal was
“clearly geared toward agroindustry and ... subordinated family farming” (Francisco H., personal interview, author interpretation, July 25, 2012). It was “very neoliberal, exclusive, with a focus on business; very pro-PRONACA [Ecuadorian agro-industry company] … without a real focus on food sovereignty” (Cecilia P., personal interview, author interpretation, July 24, 2012). A slew of Ecuadorian and international organizations, including members of CONAIE, Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario, presented an open letter to the Constituent Assembly, President Correa, and the MAGAP, contesting the circulating food sovereignty bill. They insisted the state should “consolidate resources and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 85 efforts around food sovereignty and include campesino organization and social movements
… in the redesign of agricultural and fishing policies” (Mandato Agrario Alternativo, 2008, author translation).
Acosta, FENOCIN, CONAIE, and Pachakutik party members jointly retorted with a food sovereignty bill that supported small-scale farmers. This version was debated in the
Constituent Assembly just days before it disbanded in July 2008 (Denvir, 2008). It became the basis of the eventual food sovereignty law.
In September 2008, the public voted on and approved the constitution. In the end, it codified food sovereignty and established state support of “ecological and organic technologies in farm and livestock production [and] redistribution that will enable small farmers to have access to land, water, and other production” (Ecuador National Constitution,
2008: Chap. 3, Art. 281). The presence of organized and leveraged pro-food-sovereignty civil society and legislators, and the scarcity of a corporate food lobbyist, facilitated that national food sovereignty protections were legalized for the first time Ecuador, and indeed the world
(Rosero Garcés, et al., 2011).
Colectivo Agrario and Mesa Agraria leaders complained, however, that the food sovereignty articles reflected a “lite” version that did not fully articulate food sovereignty policy. They said it left loopholes for the corporate food regime to further monopolize
Ecuador’s food production and consumption systems; they were apprehensive to approve the constitution (Denvir, 2008). However, the constitution creators included a transitory mandate in the text that called for the creation of a food sovereignty law (and four other national laws) to be passed within 120 days of the promulgation of the constitution (Ecuador National
Constitution, 2008: Transitory Dispositions). Civil society groups would still have the opportunity to detail food sovereignty protections and propose the National Council for Food
Sovereignty.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 86
Correa in Between:
Scholars and the administration praised Correa for ushering in a more equitable political economic system and opening citizen access to state resources and decision-making
(Ellner, 2011; Ospina Peralta, 2011; Vega, 2013). Yet civic organizations were not convinced. Many in Ecuador felt Correa had made himself the sole decision maker in the constitutional writing process. Several times, the president insisted the assembly change the text (Denvir; Becker, 2011: 136, 147). Correa was crafting himself into the “caudillo … the hyperactive omnipresent leader, the sole government decision-maker who does not allow deliberation, monopolizes the orientation of the government and ministries, and … rules all things. Nothing else is recognized outside of this fact” (Sanchez-Parga, 2009: 210, 206).
Economist Pablo Dávalos noted that the constitutional writing process and text “constructed a political system that turned … absolutely toward the president of the Republic” (2014).
Scholar Santiago Basabe-Serrano reiterates that the constitutional text “reinforced and strengthened presidential dominance over all other state powers” (2009: 388), including giving the President of the Republic co-legislator status within the assembly.
Correa reshaped the AP’s inner circle, inviting and uninviting members. He removed
Acosta from the party. Monica Chuji (AP), member of CONAIE and AP Constituent
Assembly member, left the party just after the constitution was passed, criticizing President
Correa’s authoritarian governing style (Becker, 2011: 172). At its essence, the AP “depended exclusively on Correa’s leadership to convoke members and include whom he wanted in the party. He could invite or not invite its members. … [He] did not allow collective decision making or member ability to nominate candidates” (El Comercio, 2012). The president and
AP continued to talk in support of equity and social rights; however, in practice, they expanded market-oriented and natural resource extractive policies (Becker, 2011: 180;
Dávalos, 2014).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 87
He instigated fractures between CONAIE and FENOCIN during the constitutional process. He was politically amiable with Pedro de la Cruz (AP), FENOCIN, and FENACLE
(Lalandar & Ospina Peralta, 2012), but dismissive of CONAIE and their policy demands throughout the writing process. CONAIE declared itself in opposition to the government in
May 2008 (Denvir & Riofranca, 2008). Correa retorted in July that the “the biggest dangers for our national project [are] the infantile” left and ecological organizations (Lalander &
Ospina Peralta, 2012: 43).
At this time, the administration’s Citizens’ Revolution political economic initiatives were bearing fruit and gaining the “revolution” further political support. Between 2007 and
2009, the administration increased government public welfare spending by 5% over the 2001-
2006 timeframe, increased the availability of business loans from $400 million USD in 2006 to $1,480 million USD in 2009 (Gallegos, 2010: 183), increased the government welfare cash transfer program from $15 USD per month in 2007 (Ospina, 2006) to $30 USD in 2009
(raised to $50 just prior to the 2013 presidential elections), and increased the tax-collection rate. Ecuador’s Gini coefficient, measuring income inequality, fell and the poverty rate decreased from 38% to 35% between 2006 and 2009 (Polga-Hecimovich, 2013: 140). Correa was largely credited for the decrease in poverty (Ospina Peralta, 2013).
In 2009, Correa did not renew the U.S. Manta base contract and did not sign the free- trade agreement with the U.S., and in 2008 voided the country’s external debts. He trumpeted that these political maneuvers demonstrated that he was recuperating Ecuador’s political and economic sovereignty from “imperialist” international governments and loan agencies that had hijacked Ecuador’s economy throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He “expropriated” and disbursed assets to the former customers of a defunct bank that collapsed in the late 1990s because of fraud (Becker, 2011: 118-119). This was a sharp break from previous administrations’ complacency to bank and business corruption. To many, these initiatives
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 88 represented a reliable, equitable, and independent administration that was taking on embedded political and economic corruption (Gallegos, 2011).
The “Citizens’ Link” allowed President Correa, weekly, to celebrate the Citizens’
Revolution's (CR) programs and accomplishments. Correa began to restructure the national identity, insisting that the ideal, patriotic citizen is one aligned with the CR, and that dissenters were unpatriotic (de la Torre, 2013: 43) and even terrorists of the state (Pasara,
2014). Citizens were increasingly supportive, or at least complacent, to the administration’s policies (Lalander & Ospina Peralta, 2012; Gallegos, 2011; de la Torre, 2013: 46).
Correa and the AP decided to whittle the Constituent Assembly into a to a 76-member
Congresillo (November 2008-May 2009) that would last until they held regular congressional and presidential elections in April 2009. Forty-six of the 76 Congresillo members were AP affiliates, which gave Correa congressional majority (Becker, 2011: 159). The Congresillo was responsible for writing and enacting the food-sovereignty law, along with four other national laws.
This was the political climate leading into the proposal for the power-sharing participatory council for food sovereignty: the politically leveraged President Correa whose support of the council was imperative to its formation, but whose heavy-handed style of governing, congressional majority, constitutionally-increased legislative authority, and popular support were allowing him to direct national policy, and exclude citizens’ from making legitimate policy demands.
Writing the Organic Law of the Food Sovereignty Regime (LORSA):
The Congresillo used the Constituent Assembly’s food sovereignty bill and Mesa
Agraria and Colectivo Agrario’s 2007 proposal as a base for its first food sovereignty bill draft. The text called for state incentives to cultivate heirloom seeds, and for state programs
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 89 to redistribute land and provide loans to small-scale farmers (Health and Environment
Special Commission National Assembly Ecuador, January 21, 2009; Denvir, 2008).
Moreover, this draft included the creation of the permanent National Council for Food
Sovereignty. The council would consist of six members of Executive Branch ministries and eight volunteer representatives from indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian, rural producer, small-scale farmer, or consumer-rights organizations. The joint council would create national food- sovereignty regulations and ordinances, directly consult with the president of the Republic on food sovereignty policies, and facilitate a bi-annual National Conference for Food
Sovereignty. The draft also called for the creation of an Inter-ministerial Cabinet that would carry out the council’s food sovereignty proposals. These institutions would reside within the
National System of Food Sovereignty and Nutrition (SISAN), a vaguely defined “umbrella” institution for food sovereignty within Ecuador. The full congress debated this version in
January 2008.
Unlike the Constituent Assembly, the Congresillo did not provide the citizenry with local forums to provide input into legislation. Luis Andrango, FENOCIN leader and eventual president (2010-12), complained that FENOCIN only had access to “filtered down” drafts of the food sovereignty bill. He said that civil society was excluded from the writing process, and that Correa was rushing legislative debates (Bartra, 2009). Jaime Abril Abril (AP), president of the Health and Environment Special Commission, which was charged to write the food sovereignty bill, defended the commission’s effort to include citizens in the bill’s writing process. He stated that the commission gathered input for the bill from several civil society organizations, including Colectivo Agrario, Mesa Agraria, and the average citizen via seven public assemblies (Health and Environment Special Commission National Assembly
Ecuador, 2009).
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 90
However, Abril admitted that the commission was rushed to finish the food sovereignty bill and needed more time to develop its contents with citizen input. Non-AP legislators said the Executive Branch was purposefully rushing the writing process so that AP
Congresillo members could write the bill to their liking (PAIS Plantea Extender El Plazo,
2009). The Congresillo was only required to pass the food sovereignty law, and four others.
Correa was taking full advantage of his new co-legislative authority. He submitted 24 national bills to the Congresillo within its first 100 days (Congresillo Cumple Cien Dias,
2009) leaving the Congresillo no time to debate any legislation.
The president’s legislative powers and entitlement were evident; so was the
Congresillo subordinate posture and lack of legal and political leverage. AP and non-AP legislators stated: “We just wait for the proposals to enter the Assembly and we simply process them. … The Carondelet [presidential palace] sends legislation to be approved as a formality. … Anyone who denies this is being political” (Congresillo Cumple Cien Dias,
2009). Ecuadorian social scientist Simon Pachano stated that the Congresillo was at the lowest level of the decision-making ladder, after the president and the AP political machine.
The Congresillo was an “instrument of the government, without its own agenda, with little time to debate [policy, and] was submissive to the Executive. It had no control over the
Executive” (Congresillo Cumple Cien Dias, 2009).
With no political leverage and the April elections closing in, Jaime Abril announced that the food sovereignty law would be the “first step toward … food sovereignty legislation created with … ample citizen participation” (PAIS Plantea Extender El Plazo, 2009). His commission hastily inserted a transitory clause into the food sovereignty bill that read that the
National Council for Food Sovereignty, along with the previously outlined responsibilities, would, in its first 180 days, create a slew of supplemental food sovereignty laws with “ample citizen participation” (Health and Environment Special Commission National Assembly
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 91
Ecuador, 2009). These bills would cover “use and access to land, territories, and communities; agro-biodiversity and seeds; agrarian development, employment and industry; indigenous and small-scale farmer public credit; and farmer insurance” (Health and
Environment Special Commission National Assembly Ecuador, 2009).
The politically unleveraged Congresillo punted to the yet-passed National Council for
Food Sovereignty to accomplish the task it could not — to create a detailed food sovereignty law with civil society input. President Correa’s pressure to finish the bill along with the other legislation before the April elections forced the Congresillo’s hand.
The Congresillo submitted its food-sovereignty bill to the president on February 17,
2009. He returned it on March 19 with approximately 10 changes to the text. These changes included increased leniency for GM seeds to be cultivated in Ecuador, subsidies for agro- combustible crops, and fishing companies’ continued monopolization of large tracts of coastal lands (Rosero Garcés, et al., 2011). The changes amounted to sustained supports for corporate-based food production and exportation.
Moreover, the president restructured and weakened the National Council for Food
Sovereignty. First, he changed its name to the National Conference for Food Sovereignty.
What’s in a name? According to social scientist Pablo Ospina Peralta, the name change reflected Correa’s aversion to “consejismo”; that is, the Correa and core AP-member repulsion of civic organizations, collectives, unions, banks, or associations with political leverage that could potentially “manipulate the state in function of their particular interests … weakening the common good ” (2011, emphasis original). The revision indicated Correa’s desire to rid civil society of its ability to organize and make political decisions while reinforcing state centrality to determine public sphere decisions. Correa eliminated the Inter-
Ministerial Cabinet that would have carried out council policy. Certainly, Correa is not averse
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 92 to creating government ministries, but he and the AP are in charge of their construction and implementation (Friedenberg, 2012; Basabe-Serrano & Polga-Hecimovich, 2013).
He eliminated the council’s ability to directly consult the president on food- sovereignty policy and eliminated national conferences. The partial veto also eliminated the most crucial aspect of a power-sharing participatory institution — its bipartite state-volunteer civil society composition. Correa’s “Conference” would comprise state-selected civil society organization members (LORSA, 2009: Art. 34), making it clear that the state would design, but could not be bothered to participate in, the new Conference. Its only function was to write supplementary food sovereignty bills within 180 days with citizen participation, and send them to the MAGAP. The MAGAP would have 180 days to review each bill before sending it to the National Assembly (LORSA, 2009: Art. 35). It is likely Correa did not eliminate the council entirely because this would have been too politically abrupt and unpopular with the
Mesa Agaria and the Congresillo. Instead, he compromised by crafting a weak committee whose permanency was unclear.
According to Ecuadorian law, the Congresillo had 30 days and three choices to proceed with the partially vetoed bill: vote in favor of the president’s bill, vote in favor of its original bill, which required a two-thirds congressional supermajority, or wait 30 days, after which time the president’s version would automatically pass into law (Mejía Acosta, et al.,
2006: 15; Constitution, 2008: Art 138). The assembly chose the last option. The Congresillo could not, or would not, gather a two-thirds majority to pass its original bill. “It remained there. Frozen” (C. Ponce, personal interview, author’s interpretation, July 24, 2012), then passed, uncontested. The Organic Law of the Regimen on Food Sovereignty (LORSA) was enacted on May 5, 2009. Colectivo Agrario members stated that the Congresillo “did not deeply process critical [food sovereignty] topics” in the LORSA, but instead used the new
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 93
“conference … to postpone debates regarding conflictive topics, such as land redistribution”
(2011: 98).
The power-sharing, participatory institution was turned into a temporary committee with a difficult mandate and the least political leverage or authority to accomplish its duties.
The partial veto “left a harmless, innocuous [National] Conference of Food Sovereignty” (C.
Ponce, personal interview, author’s interpretation, July 24, 2012).
The System of Food Sovereignty and Nutrition (SISAN) was also nearly eliminated.
Its responsibility was to “promote public deliberation” (LORSA, 2009: Art. 31). Cecilia
Ponce summed up what happened: the “Executive Branch forgot to eliminate SISAN … [in the] law. … They didn’t have the precaution to erase it. Because this one little term, SISAN, remained in the law, it became a judicial mess” (personal interview, author interpretation,
July 24, 2012). The presence of an undefined SISAN in the LORSA would lead to the
LORSA reform in 2010.
Alberto Acosta said the LORSA was made “without genuine participation” (2009).
He chided the presidential restructuring of the National Council for Food Sovereignty, saying it “deprived Ecuadorian citizens the space to participate, deliberate, and arrive at consensus regarding a vital topic for our present and future. … This begs the question, what type of political regime is being built? Does it coincide with one that … allows more democracy, and space for opinion and discussion?” (2009).
Chapter Four Conclusions — Attempt to Transfer; Civil Society Excluded; Powerful
President:
Avritzer underscores that participatory institutions cannot be easily transferred from one context to another. Ecuadorian civil society organization and legislators attempted to integrate a food sovereignty, power-sharing institution developed and implemented in Brazil into their own national context. In Brazil, however, the introduction of its first power-sharing
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 94 institution took years of collaboration among grassroots, universally representative, civil society organizations united for health care reform that worked with a coalition of supportive political actors, who collectively convinced President Collor to accept their institution.
On the other hand, in Ecuador, the impetus for the first national-level, power-sharing participatory institution did not involve long-term, national-level collaboration among universally representative organizations from varying classes and backgrounds. The proposal came from Colectivo Agrario (2007-09), a short-lived organization comprising a handful of middle-class, mestizo, (mainly) male, academic professionals and nonprofit organization directors in Quito, and Mesa Agraria. Mesa Agraria organizational affiliates came and went during its short lifespan between 1999 and 2007, based on national political contentions. Its principal decision makers and creators of the power-sharing council were its few leaders, not community-level constituents. These constituents and the citizenry at large were unaware of the proposal (Rosero Garces, Maldonado & Villarroel, 2007: 41). The engineers behind the food sovereignty power-sharing council were mainly well-intentioned architects, advocates, and guardians of the food-sovereignty paradigm in Ecuador.
Also, CONAIE was largely absent from the food sovereignty bill making process. It had long advocated for food sovereignty mandates, including land redistribution and participatory democracy, but in 2003, Ecuarunari left Mesa Agraria because of disputes with
FENOCIN (Giunta, 2014). CONAIE was not included in drawing up the 2007 proposal.
Some CONAIE members were involved with food sovereignty provisions during the
Constituent Assembly. This was mainly because the Constituent Assembly offered more opportunities for public participation. Also, there was a greater presence of CONAIE- sympathetic legislators in the Constituent Assembly than the Congresillo, who buffered contentious relations between the two organizations. Additionally, CONAIE was preoccupied with other pressing national legislation during the Congresillo. Their absence from
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 95 advocating for the national power-sharing council punctuated that the food sovereignty front was not collaborative or inclusive, reinforced schisms between these nationally influential civic organizations, and weakened any potential national brokerage power to advocate for the
National Council for Food Sovereignty.
This chapter affirms scholarship that states that if the executive leader has a congressional coalition and electoral hegemony, and is against participatory mechanisms, it is highly unlikely the participatory institution will be created, or it will be redesigned to the liking of the executive leader and his or her coalition (Goldfrank, 2007; Wampler, 2004,
2007; Avritzer, 2009: 59-60; 152-158). The formation of the National Council for Food
Sovereignty came down to President Correa and the AP-led Congresillo. The majority of
Congresillo members initially supported the power-sharing council.
It is unclear if the Congresillo could have gained a supermajority to counter the
President’s partial veto and pass their original bill. The main point though is that they did not attempt it. Had the Congresillo attempted to counter the President’s partial veto, Correa likely would have hurled insults at them, which was increasingly a common tactic he used against opposition, and/or threatened to resign, another common Correa practice. He likely would have accused legislators, even AP affiliates, of creating legislative deadlock, preying on the public’s rock bottom trust of the legislator and the public’s greatest political fear that the
Congresillo would recreate the congressional legislative impasse that had brought the government to a standstill repeatedly throughout the 1990s. It would have been political self- destruction for Congresillo members to oppose the President, risk his accusations, and remotely appearing to obstruct the government functionality and stability Correa seemed to have installed. The President’s legal authority and popularity solidified his ability to take these actions had the Congresillo opposed him. The President held this knowledge in his pocket, and made it coercively clear to the Congresillo that he was the principal lawmaker
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 96 and would govern over the citizens and his AP party. The Congresillo knew and abstained from countering the President’s partial veto, ensuring Correa that his changes to the council would remain as law. Only a few politicians and academics publicly questioned the
President’s elimination of the council.
The Congresillo phase was also a part of the President’s vetting process to craft the
AP in his image. Those AP members in the Congresillo who opposed his policies or governing tactics could leave the party. Those who remained in the party, or wanted to run on the AP ticket during the upcoming April elections, would have to be AP and Correa loyalists and adhere to the party’s rhetoric and initiatives; there could be no in-between support for
Correa.
Citizens’ lack of authority in the creation of the Conference was embedded into its eventual operations. The Conference did create the food sovereignty bills with citizen participants. However, its flimsy design and low stature within the government, the fragmented civil society and, principally, an omnipotent president averse to food sovereignty and participatory politics, limited COPISA’s ability to enable citizen continual participation in policy making, or for COPISA to implement and oversee food sovereignty programs or initiatives. These factors and their implications on Ecuador’s civil society and its access to food sovereignty resources and protections are explored in the following chapter.
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Chapter 5: COPISA Design, Civil Society Influence, and Political Society Influence
Congresillo legislators proposed the creation of the National Council for Food
Sovereignty in their food sovereignty bill. Correa, however, partially vetoed the bill, adulterating and diminishing the council. He changed its name to the National Conference for
Food Sovereignty and its composition from a power-sharing participatory council to a temporary, state-selected committee of civil society representatives mandated to create several supplemental food sovereignty bills with citizen participation. This version, the president’s version, was enacted in May 2009. This finding supports Leonardo Avritzer’s hypothesis that one cannot expect a participatory institution that functions in one context to thrive, or even emerge, in another context (2009: 1). President Correa made it clear that a power-sharing participatory institution for food sovereignty did not “fit” Ecuador’s national political context at that time.
The Organic Law of the Regimen on Food Sovereignty (LORSA) mandated that the
Conference construct food sovereignty bills with citizen input. The Conference hosted hundreds of participatory forums between 2010 and 2012 to gather citizen input, and included much of their demands into the bills. Scholars claim COPISA is a “participatory organization [that creates a] synergistic relationship between civil society and the state”
(Pena, 2015: 10). COPISA states that it constructs “proposals for public policies, laws, and programs with active debate and participation of civil society organizations regarding food sovereignty” (COPISA, 2015). COPISA however, is not a participatory institution. Rather, it is a relatively weak state agency. This distinction is important and discussed throughout this chapter and Chapter Six.
The first section of this chapter outlines that contrary to its claim, the conference is by design and operation, a state agency, and not a participatory institution. It also discusses the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 98 negative ramifications the Conference design had on the quality of the Conference public participatory forums held between 2010 and 2012.
The second section of this chapter outlines the ways in which certain civil society organizations dominated the Conference; weakening its ability to provide a sound, democratic, and reliable platform upon which all of civil society could help create the bills, and serve as Ecuador’s clearing house for food sovereignty. The last section of this chapter outlines the ways the President and the administration exhausted COPISA of popular and political support, legitimacy, and leverage, greatly weakening its capacity to include a wider expanse of the citizenry in its bill-writing phase, and facilitating that COPISA be relegated a token agency for food sovereignty within the MAGAP.
I refer to the agency as the “Conference” in the first section when discussing events between 2009 and 2010, and as “COPISA” after the 2010 LORSA reform that officially changed its name to the Pluri-national and Intercultural Conference for Food Sovereignty.
This distinction is important because the reform not only changed the entity’s name but its responsibilities and legal status as a permanent agency.
Section 1 — Design :
Participatory institutions are “specifically designed” political spaces of “permanent interactions” between state actors and volunteer civil society members who interact with the objective to jointly craft public policy (Avritzer, 2009: 4, 9). Participatory institutions include citizens in the construction of its rules, enable distribution of power and resources among the citizenry, and provide government accountability (Avritzer, 2009: 63).
This contrasts with how political rules and policy are typically created in Latin
America and Ecuador — that is, by a few state actors with, at most, a handful of influential citizens. When civil society members help create policymaking rules, they often increase their authority in the policy-making processes and policy content, thereby enabling policy
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 99 content that mandates increased distribution of state resources and power (Wampler, 2007:
90-92; Avrtizer, 2009: 66). Participatory institutions include ways and means for civil society to hold political society accountable for implementing policy and sanctioning “state actors in case of noncompliance” (Avritzer, 2009: 68). Without this component, civil society has no legal or de facto leverage to hold political society accountable.
Conference employees (state actors) direct the agency’s rules and operations. The agency does not hold permanent interactions with the citizenry. Only temporarily did
Conference create the supplemental food sovereignty bills with citizen input. However, as of
2015, the bills are stuck in either the MAGAP or the assembly, and the Conference has not redistributed state resources for food sovereignty initiatives. Neither forum participants nor the Conference has a way to hold the government apparatus accountable for this legislative impasse or non-adherence to existing food sovereignty legislation. This section discusses how the Conference design impedes it from acting as a declared participatory institution.
Establishing the Conference:
The LORSA was enacted on May 5, 2009. It mandated that the state create a National
Food Sovereignty Conference (Conference); a committee of eight state-selected civil society members. Each member was required to hail from a civil society association with one of the following themes: university and/or think-tank, artisanal fishing, small-scale farmer or producer, or food consumer rights. Forty-four citizens applied. The eight Conference members were chosen by the Council on Citizens Participation and Social Control (CPCCS) and were announced on August 26, 2009 (COPISA, 2012). They were:
• Pedro Quimbiamba: small-scale agricultural producer, FENOCIN
• Wilma Suárez: small-scale agricultural producer, FENOCIN
• Patricio Santi: small-scale agricultural producer, FEINE
• Roberto Gortaire: consumer rights, Colectivo Agrario
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 100
• Richard Intriago: small-scale agricultural farmer, Federation of Coastal Campesinos
• Miguel Riofrío: university/think tank, university in Guayaquil
• Jorge Chiriboga: artisanal fishing and aquaculture, Deep Blue Ocean Association
• Flavio López: small-scale agricultural farmer, Corporation of Organizations of Pilahuín
They were tasked with writing several supplemental food sovereignty bills related to land access and use, territories and communities, agrobiodiversity and seeds, agriculture development, and credits and subsidies for rural, small-scale farmers.
No Vertical Participatory Institutions:
The eight Conference members began to meet in Quito in September 2009. The
LORSA mandated the members establish the Conference’s internal operational rules. They did so without citizen input. However, division among members regarding these rules emerged quickly. A self-proclaimed “minority faction” emerged within the Conference, composed of Roberto Gortaire, Flavio López, and Richard Intriago (Gortaire, personal interview, June 14, 2012; Intriago, personal interview, June 24, 2012). According to Gortaire, the Conference, “the majority wanted to contract experts, lawyers … to write the bills.” The
“minority” faction, drawing from previous participatory experiences in Ecuador and the vertical participatory system in Brazil, thought it was “fundamental to construct provincial, permanent assemblies within each province to discuss and construct the proposals” (Gortaire, personal interview, author interpretation, June 14, 2012).
However, when the Conference began its mandate in 2009, there were no formal or informal, municipal or provincial-level power-sharing participatory councils in Ecuador for food sovereignty. There was no cogent or congruent vertical, institutional structure to channel local-level civil society food sovereignty policy suggestions to the national Conference. This finding supports Avritzer’s claim that participatory institutions are not easily implemented
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 101 into all political contexts and frameworks. The lack of existing institutional structures debilitated the Conference to complete even its partially participatory phase.
Little Horizontal Collaboration, Least Legislative Powers, Member Discord :
Avritzer (2009) and Van Cott (2008) emphasize that within a given context,
“horizontal” collaboration between the participatory institution, the Executive Branch, and the Legislative Branch is critical to participatory institutions, particularly in their infant stages. This is because these branches of the government are generally well established and leveraged. Participatory institutions depend on these branches to facilitate their operations and rescind a degree of power to them in order for the new participatory institution to gain some political presence, authority, and effectiveness within the political milieu (Wampler,
2004; Wampler & Avritzer, 2004; Avritzer, 2009; Van Cott, 2008: 143). Cooperation between the participatory institutions and the branches of government can reduce political tensions that sometimes arise when participatory institutions are introduced, leading to their effective implementation (Van Cott, 2008: 149). “Participatory institutions [can even] strengthen horizontal potentials [and] … block hierarchical elements already present in the polity” (Avritzer, 2009: 10). That is, participatory institutions can reinforce a balance of powers between the branches of government.
When the Conference was introduced, it barely existed within the polity. In Ecuador, the LORSA mandated that the Conference write the bills within 180 days, then submit them to Ecuador’s MAGAP. The MAGAP was allowed 180 days to review and revise each bill, before submitting them to the National Assembly. This structure placed the Conference on the lowest rung of the legislation-making ladder. The Conference “minority” faction of
Gortaire, Lopez, and Intriago tried to convince the other Conference members to initiate horizontal collaboration by creating a joint committee constituted of the Conference,
MAGAP, and National Assembly. Gortaire explains:
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 102
[The Conference] makes a proposal and passes it to the MAGAP, which has
180 days to review the bill and then send it to the Assembly. We were always
against this. We said, “This is bad” because each entity will practically make
their own draft [of each bill] from scratch. The MAGAP won’t understand
[bill] content if they haven’t participated from the beginning of the process.
The same with the Assembly. They’ll all begin from ground zero. … From the
beginning we proposed that the three actors — [the Conference], National
Assembly, and MAGAP coordinate and create the debates, forums and bills
together (personal interview, June 14, 2012).
The minority suspected that the MAGAP and National Assembly would rewrite bills because they would not understand them. Moreover, the minority feared the MAGAP, grounded in the corporate food regime and congress and dominated by the AP, would legally change the bills to align with Correa’s demonstrated support of the corporate food production. They hoped a joint committee of the MAGAP, National Assembly and
Conference would elevate the Conference’s public presence, lead to increased public participation and support for the bills, build collaboration and consensus among the three institutions to craft legislation that reflected the food sovereignty model rather than the corporate food model, and facilitate that the bills pass in a timely manner.
It is unclear why, but the five other Conference members did not support the idea of a joint committee. “This [joint committee] didn’t happen. We even tried to force this topic a little, to create coordination among the Conference, MAGAP and assembly, but we lost that battle” (Gortaire, June 2012, personal interview). There were no legal mandates for horizontal collaboration among the entities. The majority of Conference members were not willing to initiate horizontal collaborations. This absence of mandated or informal horizontal relationships reinforced the Conference’s last-place standing.
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Ambiguous Design, Internal Tensions:
Power-sharing councils are constituted of civil and political society. This composition
“ensures a sound dialogue between different governmental sectors and an equally diverse representation of social sectors” (Maluf, 2011: 280). The president’s partial veto left the
Conference in an ambiguous space as its eight members were state-selected and worked within the government apparatus, but were also required to be civil society representatives.
Ospina Peralta (2011) asserts that “participatory” state agencies that consist of state-selected civil society representatives are ultimately, “of the state,” because rather than being selected by their civil society peers, they are selected by other state actors on the basis of their resumes to work for the government. Once members were chosen for the Conference, they were no longer strictly civil society representatives, but state employees, albeit without pay until January 2011.
Despite Ospina’s accurate analysis, in practice there was no clear consensus as to which societal sector members belonged to — civil or state? Conference documents stated that “the LORSA text did not explicitly state the character of the entity” (COPISA, Modelo de Gestión, 2011: 8). Ecuadorian social scientist, Francisco Hidalgo, said: “the partial veto created intermediate thing, a hybrid, a government agency of civil society representatives”
(August 4, 2012, personal interview, author interpretation). Wilma Suarez, Conference president between 2010 and 2013, reported, “other government agencies … just dismissed us and said we weren't really an institution, not from the state, just a civil organization” (August
4, 2012, personal interview, author interpretation). In contrast, and discussed in the following section, CONAIE abandoned the Conference in 2010 saying it was “of the state.” There was no civil society-state bipartite composition to the Conference. Instead, members straddled political and civil society, leaving their roles and allegiances muddled and unclear. Some state actors saw the Conference as belonging to civil society and dismissed it. Some in civil
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 104 society saw the Conference as being of the state and distrusted it. In each instance, its political leverage suffered.
Also unclear was the Conference lifespan. It was mandated to create the supplemental bills within 180 days. However, the LORSA language was unclear as to whether the
Conference would continue past this timeframe. Members initially assumed the committee would last six months and then disband. They had little incentive to create a cohesive group.
On the other hand, they had established trusted relationships and obligations toward their respective civil society associations. Conference members first identified with and worked on behalf of their civil society organizations; identification and obligations to the Conference came second. This contributed to the confusion about those whom Conference members represented.
The unclear timeframe and member allegiance to their respective groups also contributed to the internal factions; thus “majority” and “minority” factions emerged. Miguel
Riofrío stated that he was disappointed that COPISA members “only represent their organizations and behaved individually” rather than for the collective (personal correspondence, December 16, 2013). Francisco Hidalgo said, “Conference members are very fragmented. They didn’t develop a united team” (personal interview, author interpretation, August 4, 2012). Of course, some cohesion, internal alliances, and collaborations evolved between the eight members. Still, many accused each other of falsifying agency documents, sabotage, and spying while the minority group self-sequestered within the Conference work space (Gortaire, R., personal interview, June 14, 2012; Jacome
P., personal interview, July 3, 2012; personal experience). Miguel Riofrio confessed, “I feel like I have a sandwich board on me that reads ‘enemy’ [to the other Conference members]”
(personal email, author translation, December 16, 2013). The Conference design contributed
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 105 to internal rifts; aiding in members’ inabilities to create as many participatory forums as possible and collectively lobby for the passage of bills in congress.
No Budget, Little Time, Big Task :
The Conference was not allocated a budget when it formed in 2009. Roberto Gortaire reported, “There were no resources. There was no office. There was nothing” (personal interview, author interpretation, June 14, 2012). Wilma Suarez stated that, “the LORSA mandated the creation of [the Conference], but this law had lots of errors. … We were formed without resources. How were we supposed to create spaces [of debate and] … consult the people without resources?” (personal interview, author interpretation, July 26, 2012).
Members debated whether they should proceed with or without a budget or resources
(Gortaire, R. personal interview, June 14, 2012). A member of the former Colectivo Agrario pointed out that the “lack of … time … budget, [and] state resources” made it “impossible to make announcements in daily newspapers, on TV … or radio telling people they could participate. This was a part of the Conference’s job. It wasn’t easy”(Jacome, P., personal interview, author interpretation July 3, 2012).
Budgets and resources are imperative for any agency or institution to function. A
Porto Alegre participatory budget council member states that in order for participatory institutions to function, “you need money. It is not enough to have the [political and societal] will if you don’t have money” (Goldfrank, 2007: 165). In April 2010, eight months after the
Conference convened, Conference member Pedro Quimbiamba publically stated, “The
LORSA creators forgot to give [the Conference] a budget, so we haven’t advanced much in debate, deliberation and generation of food sovereignty proposals that are integral to civil society” (En Fase Cero, 2010). Conference documents assert that its lack of budget inhibited its “ability to create a participatory process” (COPISA, 2011: 15). The lack of resources also forced Conference members to dedicate time to fundraising. The Conference relied on
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 106 members’ organizations as the principal source of funding (Gortaire, R., personal interview,
June 14, 2012; Suarez, W., personal interview, July 26, 2012). By May 2010, the Conference received funding from two government ministries, with additional funds from the FENOCIN
(COPISA, 2011: 11; Peña, 2013) and Colectivo Agrario (Jacome, P., July 3, 2012, personal interview).
It is not clear if the lack of budget was government oversight or willful neglect.
However, the Conference’s lack of budget and materials constrained its capacity to expand its public presence and increase participation, reified the Conference’s low level of legitimacy within the government, and reinforced member alliances to their respective civil society associations and the agency’s obligation to these civil society donors. Time was another withheld resource. Conference President Wilma Suarez reasonably states that it “was operationally and methodologically impractical to formulate law proposals in 180 days with citizen participation” (August 4, 2012). The time limit established by the Congresillo and
President constrained the Conference ability to include more citizens in the bill writing process.
Top-down Operations, Patronage:
Despite these hurdles, the Conference developed its internal rules and methods of operation. Civil society was not included in the rulemaking process. The Conference established eight sub-committees specific to each food-sovereignty bill topic it was charged to write. The subcommittees were:
• Credits, Subsidies & Insurance
• Consumer & Nutritional Health
• Food Safety & Quality Control Regulation
• Artisanal Fishing & Aquaculture
• Land & Territories
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 107
• Seeds, Agrobiodiversity & Agroecology
• Communal Lands
• Agricultural Employment
Each subcommittee was presided over by one principal Conference member and two assisting Conference members.
With no national vertical participatory system in place, each subcommittee was charged with organizing participatory public forums in towns and cities throughout Ecuador, gathering civil society input at the forums, and integrating the information into its respective bill. For example, Miguel Riofrio presided over the Agricultural Employment subcommittee.
He held a public forum regarding this topic in Cuenca in March 2010. He integrated participant input into the Agro-industry & Agricultural Employment bill.
Conference public forums were held between February 2010 and November 2012.
There were approximately 188 participatory forums (Peña, 2013: 24). The number of forums and participants were as follows:
# Civil # # Organizations/State Policy Proposal Society Forums Institutions Represented Participants
Land & Territories 24 3,319 1,363
Artisanal Fishing, Aquaculture, 22 3,787 351 Mangrove & Fisheries
Seeds, Agrobiodiversity & 21 2,296 518 Agroecology
Territories & Communal 12 858 324 Property
Food Safety & Quality Control, 31 1,898 1232 Regulation
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Agricultural Employment 28 1,246 450 Credits, Subsidies & Insurance 24 968 467
Consumer Rights & Nutritional 26 1,500 350 Health
Total 188 15,872 5,055 Source: (Peña, 2013: 24)
Social scientists claim that while participatory institutions can be spaces of innovation and democracy, they are “often fashioned out of existing institutional bricolage, using whatever is at hand and re-inscribing existing relationships, hierarchies and rules of the game” (Cornwall, 2004). In order to accomplish this nationwide forum process without a budget or public presence, Conference members relied on leaders of their respective civil society organizations — FENOCIN, FEINE, members of the former Colectivo Agrario and
Mesa Agraria, and other agricultural organizations within their professional networks — to invite community-level organizations located near the upcoming forums to attend them
(Gortaire, R., Jacome, P., personal interviews). Specifically, the Conference “was responsible to tell national-level organization leaders of upcoming forums by telephone, email, and conventional mail. … Leaders were supposed to invite participants at the local level”
(Jacome, P., personal interview, July 3, 2012). On rare occasions, a local radio station or government agency announced an upcoming forum (López, A., personal interview, July 24,
2012; Ruiz, L., personal interview, July 23, 2012; Peña, 2013: 21). By and large, Conference members depended on their existing networks to engender forum participation. Flavio López of the Conference commented that “sending … personal invitations to … the organization directors gave the best results” of forum attendance (July 24, 2012).
The Conference “invite” system led to a patronage system similar to the one developed in the participatory budget council in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, discussed in Chapter
Two (Ospina Peralta, 2005). While Conference actors were not elected officials, as was the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 109 case in Cotopaxi, they were state actors directing a “participatory” process. “Invited” civil- society members, in order to remain in good standing with Conference members, were
“obliged” to participate in participatory forums. Meanwhile, those citizens outside of the
Conference network, that is, the vast majority of Ecuadorians, were entirely excluded from participating.
Some civil society members participated in Conference forums to fulfill a social or business obligation to a Conference member. In doing so, they reinforced their professional connections and dedication to the Conference and respective organizations (Flor, N., personal interview, August 1, 2012; Moyalema, B., personal interview, July 19, 2012; Chango, E., personal interview, July 28, 2012; Moreto, A., personal interview, July 28, 2012).
Simultaneously, “invited” forum participants were mainly peasant and indigenous farmers who wanted to be included in this historical event. This was one of the first times in history that the Ecuadorian state provided these marginalized civil society members with the ability to contribute to national food sovereignty legislation that could potentially protect their culture and livelihood. This was a watershed moment in Ecuadorian democracy. Those in the Amazon region made strong efforts to participate in a “Credits, Subsidies and
Insurance Bill” forum because it was the first time the state had requested their input regarding agricultural policy (Peña, 2013). One farmer who participated in a Riobamba forum said, “It was very interesting to contribute. Everyone … had an opportunity to give their input, their criticisms. … Someone [was] available to listen to my voice” (Quishpe, L., personal interview, July 20, 2012). Participants of the Riobamba, Ambato, and Guayaquil forums expressed that by attending, they learned about the Conference, existing food sovereignty legislation, practical agro-ecological farming techniques from other participants, and the chance to meet other food sovereignty advocates. Civil society participants increased their knowledge of national food sovereignty policy and practical applications, expanded
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 110 their food sovereignty professional network, and moreover felt included in state policy making and procedures (Cisneros, D., personal interview, June 30, 2012; Lopez, M., personal interview, July 28, 2012).
What did Conference members gain from using the “invite” system? Convenience.
Many Conference subcommittees outlined their bills prior to convening forums (Escobar, F., personal interview, June 28, 2012; Gortaire, R., personal interview, June 14, 2012; Mera, J., personal interview, July 28, 2012). Invitees and participants were principally known and networked food sovereignty advocates and adherents. Considering the conference time frame, this further ensured that their proposals and suggestions aligned to the food sovereignty paradigm, which facilitated forum debate and proposal consensus, and quickened the writing pace. Conference members incorporated Chamber of Agriculture and the
MAGAP recommendations into the bills, as well. However, forum participants were principally community-level members of agricultural associations.
Conference members also gained hope — the hope that by including community-level campesino association members in the forums, these same participants would dedicate time and energy to advocating for the passage of the bills. Last, this “invite” system enabled
Conference members to assure themselves and the wider polity (among those aware of the
Conference) that they were fulfilling their legal mandate to create the bills with “ample” participation.
However, the invitation to Conference forums read that only two representatives from each invited association could participate, which excluded the vast majority of members within networked groups. This exclusion fostered resentment toward the Conference
(Echeverria, M., personal interview, July 11, 2012; Moreta, A., personal interview, July 28,
2012; Terranueva Representative, personal interview, July 25, 2012). Gortaire admitted,
“There are plenty that say, ‘no one contacted me,’ and to a degree they are correct. … There
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 111 were limitations — internal [Conference] conduct difficulties, [and] … budget limitations. …
There were lots of problems in convening people. It could have been a lot better, but there weren’t opportunities (Gortaire, personal interview, author interpretation, June 14, 2012).
To the credit of the Conference members, they included input from some of the most politically and economically excluded members of society who could also benefit most from the food-sovereignty policy. Seen this way, the Conference expanded political rights, if only temporarily. However, President Correa and the Congresillo crafted the entity’s design, composition, and responsibilities, and allotted the Conference little legal stature, but tremendous legal obligation. The emasculated Conference had no political leverage or authority, and could not pass on political power or authority to civil society participants. The
“invite” system seemed the only pragmatic way for the Conference to complete its mandate.
Conference members acknowledged the system’s weaknesses, but defended their participatory record as a marked improvement over previous law-making practices. Gortaire stated, “For those who did participate, it was strong, but how was it before? There was an expert contracted who [wrote a bill], then it went to the Assembly and it was passed. That was it” (personal interview, June 14, 2012). Richard Intriago agreed that “the typical way that laws were made [consisted of] three or four big-wigs who got together and wrote a … law. …
That’s what we used to call citizen participation. … What we did was create real citizen participation” (personal interview June 24, 2012). Six Conference members echoed that there were flaws in the participatory forums, but defended it as more participatory and inclusive than previous law-making experiences in Ecuador.
Rules of the Game, No Permanency:
Avritzer (2009) defines the rules of participatory institutions as the “methodical ways of dealing with the interactions among social actors” and political society (66). He adds that
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 112
“rules always include power and access to resources” (11). Avritzer (2009: 66) and Wampler
(2007: 11) assert that a critical component of participatory institutions is that state and civil society jointly formulate their rules. “Civil society actors change the way rules work by introducing a more horizontal principal into rulemaking” (Avritzer, 2009: 66). This starts a positive spiral effect. When typically excluded citizens have authority in the rulemaking process of participatory institutions, they often gain authority in the policy-making process and policy content (39). This can increase citizens’ access to political rights and resources, power within the institution, long-term dedication to the participatory institution (Wampler,
2007: 111; Van Cott, 2008: 140-142; Avritzer, 2009: 92), and ability to hold political society accountable to enact public policies (Wampler, 2007: 90-92; Avritzer, 2009; Pogrebinschi,
2014).
Contrarily, when civil society participants are excluded from the rule-making process, the participatory rules will likely be stacked against them, and they become “emasculated … passive participants” with little authority or control over procedures or policy content
(Wampler, 2007: 39, 69; Goldfrank, 2007), driving many to quit the process entirely
(Wampler, 2007: 204).
The eight Conference members (state actors) created the Conference rules and procedures. This violated a core component of what participatory institutions do: include civil society authority in establishing its rules. For example, the eight Conference members established the rule that once a topic was debated and decided upon in one forum, it could not be revisited at future forums. Civil society participants at forums in 2011 were disappointed they could not discuss genetically modified seeds because this issue had been debated at a previous forum. Several farmers felt they had little control of the forum processes, were disempowered by the rules they did not help create, and, although they felt listened to in the forums, were frustrated the Conference was in charge of all procedural decision with last say
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 113 over bill content (A. Moreto, personal interview, July 28, 2012; Ibarra, I., personal interviews, July 30, 2012; Oyol, C., personal interview, July 19, 2012). This limited participants’ willingness to advocate for the bills’ passage in the assembly or MAGAP.
Some civil society members were included in the inner Conference circle and had decision-making power, but this was limited to the same few association leaders from the
Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario who proposed the power-sharing proposal in 2007. For example, Francisco Hidalgo, scholar and member of the former Colectivo Agrario, drafted
COPISA’s Land and Territories bill in 2010 prior to any participatory forums. Former
Colectivo Agrario and Mesa Agraria leaders occupied Conference subcommittees with
Conference members; together, they finalized the bills (Olivera, J., personal interview,
August, 16, 2012; Gortaire, R., personal interview, June 14, 2012; Echeverria, M., personal interview, July 11, 2012). The Conference and organization leaders dominated the
Conference agenda, the effects of which I examine in the following section. As such, the
Conference reproduced the internal hierarchies and knowledge gaps between leaders and community-level members within the Mesa Agraria.
The Conference also suffered the consequences of these existing knowledge gaps. In
2009, Gortaire commented that “the majority of the people in the forums have no idea about the food sovereignty policies created by the constitution and LORSA” (Gortaire, R., email correspondence, author translation, November 2009). Some participants arrived not knowing what the forum was about (Flor, N., Cisneros, D., Quishpe, B., personal interviews). In 2012,
COPISA still dedicated a considerable portion of each forum to informing participants about
LORSA and their food sovereignty rights (personal interview, Roberto Gortaire, June 2012).
LORSA Reform:
Since the Conference formed in 2009, members and some legislators wanted to elevate its political status within the government, clarify and strengthen its long-term goals
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 114 and purpose, and establish its permanency. They paired with supportive politicians, such as
Pedro de la Cruz, a former FENOCIN president and AP National Assembly representative
(2006-13). De la Cruz sponsored a LORSA reform bill in October 2010. It proposed that the
Conference directly counsel the presidency on national food sovereignty policy. President
Correa vetoed this provision, but accepted several others including that the agency be named the Plurinational and Intercultural Conference for Food Sovereignty (COPISA) (I refer to the agency as COPISA from here forward), consist of nine rather than eight members, limit member terms to four years, and be a permanent state agency.
Contradictorily, COPISA members and legislators also proposed that COPISA be designated the MAGAP Consejo Sectorial Ciudadano, required by Ecuador’s Law of
Participation (2010). According to the law, each ministry and secretary must install a Consejo
Sectorial Ciudadano (Art. 52); a “participatory” committee constituted of volunteer civil society representatives who “deliberate and evolve [the] ministry’s public policy”
(SENESCYT, 2011: 35). Yet these two designations, one as a state agency, the other a volunteer committee, are not possible at once. All parties overlooked this detail and COPISA was designated to fulfill both posts simultaneously.
COPISA continued to hold forums and write the bills. It was allotted an approximate annual budget of $1.7 million USD (COPISA, 2012) and made a permanent state agency housed within and financed by the MAGAP in Quito. Instead of strengthening COPISA as a participatory entity that enables citizen political authority, the reform formally integrated the agency into the government.
LORSA reformists also wanted to clarify and strengthen SISAN (National System of
Food Sovereignty), the nebulous “umbrella” system for food sovereignty introduced by
LORSA (2009). LORSA reformers proposed that SISAN consist of COPISA, the MAGAP, and three other ministries to mandate horizontal collaboration to create food sovereignty
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 115 proposals. Yet COPISA was already responsible for creating these proposals; the text overlapped agency responsibilities. The reform was enacted in December 2010. Rather than clarify and strengthen COPISA or SISAN, the text further muddled their roles. Some
COPISA members attempted to arrange a SISAN in 2011, but there was little political will on part of COPISA or the MAGAP, so SISAN was not formed.
Some former members of the Colectivo Agrario and COPISA members were frustrated by the LORSA reform, stating that it further incorporated COPISA into the state apparatus. Francisco Hidalgo observed, “COPISA is housed in the 8th floor of the MAGAP.
It’s very limited by the state structure. … They aren’t strong and not participatory” (personal interview, author interpretation, August 4, 2012). Gortaire stated that after the LORSA reform, the agency became “something bad, bureaucratic. It’s another public office with budgets and staff, not a place of public participation, not the organism necessary to generate participation and pass the bills” (personal interview, author interpretation, June 16, 2015).
On the other hand, COPISA members Wilma Suarez and Patricio Santi were pleased that COPISA was officially institutionalized as a state agency because this led to economic resources and increased the agency’s political legitimacy (personal interviews, July 26,
2012). To some COPISA members then, the agency’s integration into the state represented a positive change; to others it meant a reduction in autonomy and increased encroachment by the administration.
While Gortaire complained that COPISA was bureaucratic, it seems his real misgiving was that COPISA was a weak bureaucratic state agency. He later asserted
“COPISA should be strong institution, a strong state institution for food sovereignty — like a ministry. Right now, it’s just a weak public institution with limited participation” (personal interview, June 14, 2012). Pedro de la Cruz, in a June 2012 press conference, stated that he wanted Ecuador to implement an “inter-ministerial system” for food sovereignty to
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 116 coordinate between COPISA and state agencies the implementation of food sovereignty programs, like in Brazil (personal notes). COPISA members, scholars, and even AP assembly members were frustrated by COPISA’s design and status as a low-level state-agency status.
Despite COPISA’s legal status as a state agency, it still claims to be a participatory institution that creates food sovereignty policy with the public and ensures its implementation
(COPISA, 2015). However, participatory institutions are “specifically designed” political spaces of “permanent interactions” between state actors and volunteer civil society members who interact with the objective to jointly craft public policy (Avrtizer, 2009: 4, 9). COPISA forums were not permanent, but only held between 2010 and 2012. The forums were not regular or routine, but scattered throughout the country, according to Conference member schedules. Aside from making the bills, the Conference did not offer the citizenry any of the component parts that constitute participatory institutions – permanent access to creating its rules and public policy, providing equitable distribution of power and resources, and government accountability. The danger in the disconnection between COPISA rhetoric and practice is discussed in Chapter Six: Conclusions.
Regime Alignment:
COPISA was a new institution in 2009. Its first cohort (2009-13) established its internal rules and “base logic”, that is, the “reality [and] orientation, [that] defines the nature of its solutions, collective conceptions, and the implementation of its programs” (Colectivo
Agrario, author translation, 2009: 19). A group’s most influential members set its base logic.
Two COPISA members were from FENOCIN, including Pedro Quimbiamba, a former FENOCIN vice president with former FENOCIN President Pedro de la Cruz. Pedro de la Cruz was a Mesa Agraria leader who helped create the food sovereignty proposal in
2007, met with Correa to discuss the Agrarian Revolution in 2006, presided over the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 117 construction of food sovereignty text in the constitution, and was integral to the LORSA writing in 2009 and reform in 2010. In 2012, de la Cruz sponsored the Seed Bill as a
“legislative initiative,” which took the bill directly to the National Assembly and bypassed the MAGAP. FENOCIN gave money and resources to COPISA between 2009 and 2010.
Coupled with this, De la Cruz was also criticized as early as 2009 for “unconditional alignment to the president” (Explored, 2009).
According to Roberto Gortaire, in turn, “The pauta (ruling paradigm) of COPISA was the FENOCIN. … They had a great influence on COPISA. … The FENOCIN and others thought [COPISA] was a perfect space where they could politically position themselves, take resources, and place personnel. COPISA was really an instrument of this logic. It was played.
Food sovereignty became secondary. …This limited COPISA. …The COPISA could have been a much more autonomous entity” (personal interview, author interpretation, June, 14,
2012). A Colectivo Agrario member stated that FENOCIN behaved as though “no other groups were necessary” to COPISA (Jacome, P., personal interview, author interpretation,
July 3, 2012).
Adding to this, four COPISA members were AP supporters (Peña, 2013), prompting
Gortaire to opine that, “COPISA was … quickly co-opted by the [Correa] regime.” He stated:
“Those who entered into COPISA were from social organizations aligned with the regime. …
The regime thought it had found a focal point in COPISA” (personal interview, author interpretation, June 14, 2012). Francisco Hidalgo concurred that COPISA was constrained by the regime and lacked political autonomy. He added that because of COPISA’s alignment to the government, members “worked limitedly to try to get the bills passed. They could have done more” (personal interview, July 2012,).
Once COPISA received funds in January 2011, FENOCIN’s influence over COPISA was more evident. In July 2012, a FENOCIN member and COPISA administrator stated, “I
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 118 worked with [FENOCIN] in 2006 and in 2010. This is how I got here. Así es. And, lately,
COPISA is working a lot with FENOCIN. FENOCIN is like, uhm, the directors, and there are people in COPISA that are in FENOCIN ” (Olivera, J., personal interview, author interpretation, emphasis added, August 16, 2012). Another FENOCIN member and high- ranking COPISA staff member stated that “after COPISA received resources, Wilma
[Suarez] invited me to help her” (Zumbal, A., personal interview, author interpretation, July
25, 2012). Several COPISA staff members were also FENOCIN members. Richard Intriago asserted that FENOCIN competed to “control” COPISA “jobs, to control a government
[resources] … and to insert themselves into political power” (Richard Intriago, personal interview, June 24, 2012). Yet Intriago, Gortaire, and Riofrio also hired members from their respective civil society organizations and networks to work for COPISA. Gortaire admitted that there was “a lot of interference from civil society organizations” on COPISA operations
(June 14, 2012, personal interview).
While some claimed COPISA was highly influenced by FENOCIN and the Citizens’
Revolution, Flavio López expressed that COPISA was “a novelty, a public institution that offers a space of democratic participation e autonomous from the government” (personal interview, July 24, 2012). Richard Intriago stated that the agency “escaped the government’s control” (personal interview, June 24, 2012), and even Gortaire expressed that to a degree,
COPISA remained independent of President Correa’s influence.
None of these assessments can be denied. On the one hand, particularly before the
LORSA reform, the agency operated more autonomously and “under the radar” of the administration. COPISA created participatory forums and developed food sovereignty bills with input from thousands of rural farmer citizens, without state funds, and within a political context that was increasingly against food sovereignty and participatory governance. On the other hand, COPISA was officially designated a state agency. COPISA members — state
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 119 actors — made its decisions, and civil society organizations vied for control of the agency’s agenda, rules administration, and resources. The effects of this adverse civil and political society are discussed in the remainder of this chapter.
Design Conclusions:
This section established that COPISA, by design, is not a participatory institution, but a state agency. This is demonstrated most obviously by the fact that members are employees financed by and housed within the MAGAP, and because COPISA does not permanently create food sovereignty policy with the citizenry. Participatory institutions enable political and civil societies to jointly create the institution’s rules. Citizens and even the forum participants who helped write the bills between 2010 and 2012, did not have access to creating COPISA rules and operations. COPISA members and Mesa Agraria and Colectivo
Agrario leaders were the principal initiators and decision makers in all phases of food sovereignty legislation. COPISA reproduced the internal hierarchies present within Mesa
Agraria organizations by reducing community-level participants’ rule-making authority in the bill-writing processes. This is the opposite of what participatory institutions are intended do: expand citizenship rights and resources and enable government oversight. The remainder of this chapter and Chapter 6 illustrate that COPISA does not hold permanent participatory forums, and has neither redistributed food sovereignty resources nor demonstrated oversight capacity to hold entities accountable for food sovereignty violations.
At the same time, COPISA had no leverage or authority to pass on to civil society. It was mandated to make the writing process participatory, but lacked resources, time, and public profile or political leverage itself. It was nearly impossible for COPISA to empower participants or include a wide expanse of citizens in the bill-writing process. The lack of vertical or horizontal collaboration with COPISA constrained its ability to garner
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 120 participants. The agency’s lack of resources essentially forced members to seek support and funding from their respective organizations. This fueled COPISA members to align toward their respective organizations rather than their collaboration among agency members. This brewed a culture of individualism and reproduced a patronage/client reward system between members and their respective organizations rather than facilitating licit policymaking and resource distribution for food sovereignty to benefit the entire citizenry.
Nonetheless, COPISA managed to include input from several thousand civil society members in the food sovereignty bills. Participants were hopeful that their participation would lead to policy change; it seemed COPISA was expanding citizen political rights, if only temporarily.
The Conference submitted all food sovereignty bills to the MAGAP and/or National
Assembly by April 2013. As of October 2015, the bills in the National Assembly are Land and Territories; Seed, Agro-biodiversity and Increased Agroecology; and Fishing and
Mangroves. The bills in the MAGAP are Territories and Community Property, Agro-industry and Agricultural Employment, Agricultural Produce and Livestock Health and Sanitation,
Commercial Agriculture, Agricultural Food Consumer Rights, and Agriculture Credits and
Subsidies. Legally, COPISA has no control of the bills’ passage. This reinforces AP- dominated legislators’ ability to control citizen-created food sovereignty proposals, and to participants, COPISA seems unable to finish the job they started together.
These events and dynamics did not occur simply because of COPISA design. They were also the result of the civil and political society context in Ecuador. Civil-society influences on COPISA’s inability to be a participatory institution are addressed in the following section.
Section 2 — Civil Society Relations with COPISA: COPISA is a state agency, owing to its design. COPISA included citizen demands in the national bills it wrote between 2010 and 2012, however, civil society organizations
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 121 dominated this participatory process and contributed to COPISA’s status as a weak state agency.
Participatory experiences, even when temporary, function best in contexts where there is an abundance of politically leveraged, universally representative civic associations whose members are active decision makers within their associations. That is, they function best where civil society organizations and citizens behave democratically. Civic associations and individual citizens who are engaged in the participatory platform should also remain autonomous from other political or social actors in the participatory process. Otherwise, they risk being co-opted and “steamrolled by the government or other groups,” and become less able to “vigorously defend their initiatives” (Wampler, 2007: 38). Participants who create a self-limiting, collaborative, and cooperative front can increase their political leverage and negotiation power with political society actors, increasing the likelihood that their policy will be enacted and implemented (Wampler, 2007: 96; Van Cott, 2008: 81-83; Avritzer, 2009:
11).
National-level civic association membership was relatively low in Ecuador compared to other Latin American countries in the 2000s (Ospina Peralta, 2005) and between 2009 and
2013 (Gallegos, 2013: 154). This low level of civic engagement limited the pool of potential
COPISA participants. Adding to this, the organizations that engaged most with COPISA
(Colectivo Agrario and Mesa Agraria) to craft the food sovereignty bills hardly exhibited the qualities that facilitate functional participatory experiences. Their behavior was a result of various factors, not the least of which was Executive Branch influence and manipulation of these civil society organizations. Whatever the reason, civil society organizations’ behavior contributed to COPISA’s status as an unleveraged state agency.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 122
Civil Society Fragments and Low Collaboration:
When the eight COPISA members first gathered in September 2009, the principal national civic organizations were in relative disarray. Both Mesa Agraria and Colectivo
Agrario dissolved in 2009. CONAIE was in continual confrontation with President Correa and protested the administration’s national “Water Bill” in 2009 (enacted in 2014), claiming it violated constitutional protections of Ecuador’s natural resources. The government sent in national militia to break up the protests and killed an indigenous activist (Becker, 2011: 185).
CONAIE said this was part of Correa’s larger project to delegitimize and criminalize civil society dissent against his natural resource policies and practices (Pasara, 2014). The president’s continued popularity weakened CONAIE’s legitimacy, protests, and political agenda (Becker, 2013). Additionally, in March of 2009, the Executive Branch shut down the nonprofit organization Acción Ecológica for two months after the former member of
Colectivo Agrario and frequent CONAIE collaborator criticized the president’s large-scale mining projects (Denvir, 2009). These were some of the key, food sovereignty-focused civic organizations that COPISA needed to help widen its visibility among civil society and gain participation. Government repression of these organizations diverted their focus from
COPISA to the more immediate concerns of direct violence. This weakened COPISA’s ability to convene participants and increase its food sovereignty front.
At the same time, President Correa continued to build alliances with FEINE,
FENOCIN, and Federation of Indigenous Ecuadorians (FEI) (Becker, 2013) and FENACLE
(Lalander & Ospina, 2012). Scholars say Correa’s relationship with these historically less influential campesino organizations is a political masquerade motivated by his efforts to consolidate their support for the administration and deplete civil society support for CONAIE
(Lalander & Ospina, 2012). Similar to what Correa had done with the AP party, he crafted two options for civil society: to be with the government or against it. This framing weakened
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 123 these organizations’ attempts to create a united front for food sovereignty. Gortaire noted that
“civil society, social movements … aren't making an intelligent struggle because we are entering into the idea of — either you’re with me or you aren’t — because this is how the government frames” its arguments (personal interview, June 14, 2012).
Simultaneously, these organizations realized it was in their best collective interest to set aside political resentments and take advantage of the opportunities COPISA offered — a government agency constituted of their peers and “friends” (Gualan, R., personal interview,
July 26, 2012) dedicated to, and possessed of, political access to further institutionalize food sovereignty and participatory governance. This was a seemingly ideal scenario to advance their food sovereignty agenda. Yet, it was not until February 2010 that COPISA, FEINE,
Ecuarunari (of CONAIE), FEI, FENOCIN, National Campesino Coordinator-Eloy Alfaro
(CNC-EA), and the regional fishing associations publicly declared they would create a national front to advance and strengthen food sovereignty legislation and implementation in
Ecuador. They held an all-day forum in Quito and declared 2010 the “Year of National Food
Sovereignty” in Ecuador. They announced, “We will make our own political platform. … We will write and execute the agricultural policy we want applied in the countryside, not the administration or congress” (Acuerdo de Organizaciones, 2010).
These organizations and COPISA undertook the food sovereignty topic they felt was the most fundamental, controversial, and least fulfilled by the government: land and territory rights. These organizations felt the government had yet to complete its land redistribution obligations outlined in the Agricultural Reform laws of 1964, 1973, and 1994.
COPISA’s first forum, held that same month in Riobamba, gathered approximately
180 civil and political society members to debate and propose land-access guidelines.
However, unity among the campesino and indigenous organizations was not sustainable.
Relations between CONAIE and President Correa were increasingly combative.
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Simultaneous to the Riobamba forum, CONAIE cut off talks with the government, saying the administration lacked “respect for Indigenous people”, and was extracting and mining natural resources in nationally protected areas (Becker, 2011: 187). By June 2010, CONAIE
“rejected the economic and social policies of the government” (CONAIE, 2010) and announced it would not participate in government-led initiatives, including COPISA. Most
CONAIE leaders viewed the agency as “oficialista ,” a state-run agency aligned to the administration (La Participación de las Organizaciones Fue Contundente, 2012).
In response to CONAIE, Pedro de la Cruz (AP) declared CONAIE a “destabilizer” of the government and accused members of trying to overthrow the presidency. He reinforced
FENOCIN support of the Citizens’ Revolution, citing COPISA and other agricultural programs as indicators that the president was dedicated to implementing participatory governance and food sovereignty programs (Asamblea Nacional, 2010). CONAIE leaders called de la Cruz and indigenous organizations that collaborated with the regime “indigenous elitist” and sell outs (de la Torre, 2013: 44). COPISA depended most on these agencies to convene forum participants. Organization leaders’ contentious tendencies sapped COPISA of the support it needed to establish its national profile and gain community-level participants and supports for food sovereignty.
Brian Wampler (2007) states that there should be “solidarity within and among” participating organizations of participatory mechanisms, as solidarity enable them to gain political traction, collectively negotiate their projects with political actors, and ultimately pass and enforce the projects (104). It is important that participating civic organizations “share the attitude that they must work together to pressure government offices to secure the implementation of their project. … If groups are bitter rivals… [the participatory process] … tends to weaken because it becomes a political space that rival groups try to occupy and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 125 control” (91). Consequently, the civic organization(s) that win out the space can dominate and “steamroll” the participatory process and policy agenda (100).
This downward-spiral effect occurred within COPISA. Rifts between CONAIE,
FENOCIN, and President Correa led CONAIE to retreat from COPISA. The regime-aligned
FENOCIN, FENACLE, and CNC-EA were able to dominate COPISA’s agenda and base logic. COPISA was left with fewer autonomous, self-limiting, and collaborative civil society organizations with whom to create participatory forums. Gortaire pleaded to organizations in his professional network in June 2010 to help COPISA “revive its process,” asserting that
“social organizations must give COPISA a buen SACUDÓN [robust shake] to recuperate the collective elements of the participation, or it will dissolve into the government bureaucracy”
(June 3, 2010, personal correspondence, author translation, emphasis original).
Unfortunately, COPISA was already a state agency within the administration, and largely controlled by Correa, who was outwardly against citizen authority in policy-making.
It is likely that no amount of civil society participation can extract COPISA from the state apparatus that was politically and economically unsupportive of participatory initiatives and food sovereignty.
In addition, Ecuador’s citizenry is, in general, not highly organized or engaged in civic associations. Ecuador ranked the fourth lowest in civic association participation among
18 Latin American nations in 2011 (Gallegos, 2013: 145). A 2009-10 Opinion Poll of the
Governability and Democratic Convivience in Latin America, conducted by Faculty of Latin
American Social Sciences, found that only 14% of surveyed Ecuadorians had participated in an “organized association” in the previous 12 months, which is on par with national poll data from 2005 (Ospina Peralta, 2005). A 2008 Ecuadorian government-conducted survey found that of all polled Ecuadorians, only: 3.1% were active members in neighborhood associations,
1.65% were active members in a volunteer association, and 1.45% were active in a workers’
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 126 union (Gallegos, 2013: 142). These broad civil society contours increased COPISA’s dependence on the contentious campesino organizations to participate in forums and engage with the agency.
Autonomous, Self-limiting Civic Organizations:
It is critical that civic associations and individuals engaged in participatory experiences remain autonomous and not co-opted by political society. This is because autonomous organizations are more likely to “work with their fellow citizens rather than establish private political deals with the government” (Wampler, 2007: 90). In other words, participating individuals and organizations that remain autonomous are less likely to engage in private negotiations with politicians to gain privileged access to political power and resources. Rather, they use the participatory mechanism to engage in transparent, democratic policy making. This does not mean that organizations do not collaborate with political society, but that they refrain from engaging in closed-door negotiations with politicians.
When civil society participants engage in the participatory mechanism in a democratic manner, the integrity, trustworthiness, transparency, and overall effectiveness of the participatory mechanism is enhanced.
FENOCIN and Pedro de la Cruz are highly aligned to the Presidency and had resigned their autonomy to the administration. In 2012, political pundits remarked that de la
Cruz was “part of the bureaucratic logic in the [Correa] administration and had lost his capacity to protest. … His rhetoric is completely in line with whatever President Correa says”
(January 17, 2012, Carlos Rojas). In exchange, FENOCIN and de la Cruz were politically rewarded for their allegiance. FENOCIN leader Segundo Andrango was named Ecuador’s ambassador to El Salvador in 2011 (Andrango, nuevo embajador, 2011). In 2013, the administration selected de la Cruz to represent Ecuador in the Parlamento Andino; an assembly of the five Andean nations that creates regional policy and accords. In July 2014,
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De la Cruz lauded President Correa for installing the promised “Agrarian Revolution”, and was confident the assembly would pass the food sovereignty bills (Miranda, 2014). One month later, FENOCIN officially declared its affiliation to the AP, leaving behind the organization’s 49-year alliance to the Socialist Party (Fenocin pasará del socialismo a
Alianza PAIS, 2014).
Several COPISA members were also FENOCIN members closely aligned to de la
Cruz. FENOCIN and de la Cruz acted as conduits between the administration and COPISA, ensuring that COPISA towed the administration’s line. COPISA submitted the Land and
Territories bill to the MAGAP in September 2011 (Borrador Ley de Tierras: Palabras de
Rafael Correa y Luis Andrango, 2011). Although COPISA was not legally obliged to lobby its passage, some COPISA members and forum participants came to expect COPISA to consistently lobby the bills. Francisco Hidalgo said that COPISA “handed in the bill, but lacked dynamism and didn’t follow up with it. [COPISA] didn’t play it actively, move it, promote it” (personal interview, author’s interpretation, August 4, 2012). Richard Intriago, of
COPISA, was more critical. He stated emphatically, “there are people in COPISA who aren’t able to confront people in government. They don't want to be very radical. Many members don’t want to confront the current government because they don’t want political problems or they want to run for [political] office” (personal interview, June 24, 2012). Gortaire added,
“The president of COPISA [Wilma Suarez, of FENOCIN] did not conduct politics, conduct the administration or budget, but was influenced by the logic” of FENOCIN alignment to the administration (personal interview, June 14, 2012).
FENOCIN and (some) COPISA members were trading their political autonomy to the administration to remain in the administration’s good graces and receive key political positions. COPISA leaders who were also FENOCIN members, remained conservative in their efforts to lobby the COPISA legislation. Not only did COPISA’s design constrain its
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 128 participatory breadth and capacity, but civil society pressures on COPISA influenced the agency to limit its effort to lobby the bills, which constrained participatory democracy and food sovereignty in Ecuador.
FENOCIN, FENACLE, and the other regional organizations aligned to the administration became the hegemonic social force of COPISA. Meanwhile, CONAIE was both largely unwelcome and unwilling to engage with COPISA. Some regional CONAIE affiliates participated in forums (personal experience), but national CONAIE leaders were adamantly against COPISA. In fact, CONAIE leaders wrote their own Land and Territories bill, saying theirs was more radical and redistributive than the COPISA bill (Cevallos, 2015).
CONAIE absence from COPISA limited CONAIE’s ability to harness this formal, legitimate government agency built to advance food sovereignty. While CONAIE does not use the term, the idea coincides with CONAIE’s longstanding agriculture and participatory governance agenda. CONAIE’s absence limited COPISA’s access to potential campesino and indigenous participants, excluding the very food sovereignty practitioners who could benefit most from food sovereignty protections and provisions. CONAIE, by creating its own bill, reinforced its opposition to FENOCIN and COPISA, and dispersed and diffused the food sovereignty movement. This civil society behavior pushed COPISA further away from being Ecuador’s government clearinghouse for food sovereignty.
The Red Agraria & Commitments:
Citizens who are engaged in participatory mechanisms need to perceive early in the process that their participation can affect their access to state resources and political power.
“Without a direct link between participation and [access to] provisions” (Goldfrank, 2007:
165), participants may remain in the process halfheartedly (Wampler, 2007), abandon it entirely (Van Cott, 2008), or can convince other civil society members not to join the participatory mechanism (Goldfrank, 2007).
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With this in mind, when COPISA submitted the Land and Territories bill to the
MAGAP in September 2011 (two years after its initial formation), Red Agraria harnessed the iniciativa popular . Red Agraria formed in June 2011 and consisted of FENACLE, FEI, CNC-
EA, Corporation of Coastal Campesinos (CORMONLIT) at first (Cinco gremios se unen,
2011), and FEINE and FENOCIN by March 2012 . In effect, Red Agraria was Mesa Agraria, minus CONAIE. They were the organizations working closest to COPISA.
The iniciativa popular is a participatory mechanism introduced in the 2008
Constitution that “enables individuals, community-based organizations, and local governments the opportunity to propose, create, amend or repeal laws [directly to the
National Assembly] by collecting a petition” of .25% of the electorate’s signatures (Peña,
2013: 18). Once the assembly accepts the legislation and petition, its initiator(s) work “within a committee in the National Assembly to negotiate directly the provisions of the law.” This allows them voice, but no vote in the assembly (18).
On March 20, 2012, Red Agraria, regional civil society organizations, and COPISA marched to the National Assembly in Quito and submitted to assembly members their Land and Territories bill; the same bill COPISA submitted to the MAGAP months prior, plus the
40,000 signatures necessary for the iniciativa popular (Peña, 2013). Simply put, COPISA and
Red Agraria, seeing that their Land and Territories bill was stuck in the MAGAP, harnessed the iniciativa popular to take the same bill directly to the assembly.
Certain scholars frame Red Agraria’s use of iniciativa popular as a demonstration of
Ecuadorian “indigenous and peasant movements ability to shape policy” (Peña, 2015). This present analysis however, highlights the Red Agraria employment of the iniciativa popular in a different light. It indicates COPISA as a weak state agency that has no legal or de facto capacity to enact or implement citizen-created bills, or any other proposals. Red Agraria was caught in the crossfire of COPISA as a state agency with low political status that could only
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 130 bring the bills to a certain point — MAGAP. COPISA and Red Agraria mutually agreed that
Red Agraria should harness the iniciativa popular (Peña, 2015), bypass the MAGAP, and bring the bill directly to congress. COPISA (political society) had to “send in” Red Agraria
(civil society) to negotiate with the assembly because COPISA did not have the legal capacity or perceived political will. For many organization leaders, COPISA’s purpose expired at this point. COPISA inspired such a lack of confidence within Red Agraria and even COPISA, that they all decided it was politically more lucrative to use the iniciativa popular to try to pass the Land and Territories bill.
COPISA was intended to be the nation’s clearinghouse for citizen participation in food-sovereignty policy and programs. However, after three years, COPISA had not delivered results; debate and bills were not enough. Even though Red Agraria had political leverage within COPISA, it was not seeing a return on its investment. COPISA forums continued and Red Agraria's constituents participated, but its leadership largely retreated from COPISA and negotiated the bill directly with the National Assembly (Roberto Gortaire,
July 2012).
Internal Disputes, Red Agraria Dissolving:
Van Cott observes that (2008: 117) disputes internal to civil society organizations can
“distract” members from engaging in democratic practices. As the food sovereignty bills were nearing finish, not everyone within FENOCIN was content with the organization’s alliance to Correa. In 2012, FENOCIN President Luis Andrango (2010-12) criticized Correa for not completing his campaign promise to enact an Agrarian Revolution, intentionally stalling the Land and Territories bill in the assembly, and criticized de la Cruz’s loyalty to the government (La Fenocin resuelve hoy si apoya o no al Gobierno, 2012). He tried to create
“alliances and agreements” between FENOCIN, CONAIE, and FEINE leaders and
Pachakutik National Assembly members “in order to pass the Land and Territories bill.”
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 131
However, De la Cruz protested Andrango’s efforts, stating, “I totally disagree [with these alliances] because CONAIE, and to a degree, FEINE, are in rabid opposition to the process
“and the current government administration. … An agreement will be hard to solidify” (De la
Cruz, molesto por posible acuerdo entre Fenocin y Conaie, 2012). The following month,
Andrango declared that FENOCIN, CONAIE and FEINE would collaborate and advocate the passage of the Land and Territories bill and citizen participation in policy making. Again, De la Cruz protested that he did not want FENOCIN to collaborate with groups “not aligned with the Citizen’s Revolution” (La Fenocin resuelve hoy si apoya o no al Gobierno, 2012).
Eventually, Andrango’s insistence died down.
This demonstrated the degree to which de la Cruz was willing to align FENOCIN to the administration, weakening FENOCIN’s political autonomy and the likelihood of a united front for food sovereignty. As COPISA ended the bill-writing process, Romelio Gualan, president of CNC-EA and Red Agraria leader, pledged Red Agraria’s vote to Correa in the
February 2013 elections (Romelio Gualán: Daremos el Voto a Correa, 2012). Soon after,
Gualan was elected president of the MAGAP Consejo Sectorial Ciudadano, despite the
LORSA reform (2010) codifying COPISA as the MAGAP Consejo Sectorial Ciudadano
(Ecuador: Consejo sectorial Ciudadano Campesino del MAGAP, 2013).
Whether or not the CNC-EA realized it usurped COPISA’s post as the MAGAP
Consejo is unclear. What is evident is that Red Agraria was rightly trying to access all participatory opportunities — COPISA, the iniciativa popular, and MAGAP Consejo
Sectorial Ciudadano . Yet as of 2015, none have been effective at advancing food sovereignty.
Rather than serving as a clearinghouse for food sovereignty that civil society can consolidate around, COPISA’s weaknesses have forced organizations to abandon it and harness other state-sponsored “participatory” mechanisms to advance their food sovereignty legislation.
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This has fractured civil society efforts to advance food sovereignty initiatives, and decreased the probability that a united, democratic food sovereignty front will emerge any time soon.
Civil Society Conclusions:
First, and most broadly, Ecuador has a historically low level of “civic” participation in national-level associations, resulting in few civically engaged constituents available to participate in COPISA. As discussed in the previous section, relatively few people in the general public knew about the power-sharing proposal or the LORSA.
Second, successful participatory institutions “transform diffuse [civil society] demands into an organized conception of participation at the state level” (Avritzer, 2009: 10).
COPISA had the opposite effect. It both fractured the civil society organizations that worked most closely with it and was also weakened by them. COPISA’s overall alignment to the regime, and the administration’s broad hegemony over state agencies, enabled the government-algined FENOCIN and Red Agraria to dominate COPISA’s agenda and administration. COPISA became not only a state agency, but also a relatively passive bureaucracy with little leverage to enact food sovereignty programs. Gortaire, Intriago, and
Suarez initially lobbied the assembly to pass the Seed Bill in 2012. However, their efforts were short-lived and legally out of COPISA’s jurisdiction. Members were unwilling to assertively and continually lobby their bills in congress.
CONAIE refused to participate in COPISA because of the government’s hegemony over the agency, leaching COPISA of rural farmer participants who could potentially advocate for and benefit from the bills. Red Agraria was caught in the crossfire of COPISA’s design, which only enabled it to write the bills. Red Agraria leadership harnessed the iniciativa popular, but in doing so abandoned COPISA. This weakened COPISA’s political profile, legitimacy, and value in the process. The CNC-EA then took over COPISA’s position
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 133 as the MAGAP Consejo Sectorial Ciudadano . All of these interactions not only drained
COPISA of political power, but created melee and diminished the possibility of building any united civil society state front for food sovereignty. Gortaire commented in 2012 that “the
FENOCIN, CNC-AE, CONAIE are split. There is a crisis. I don’t know how this will end”
(personal interview, author translation, June 14, 2012). The overall lack of democratic, autonomous, and self-limiting collaboration among these organizations played a major role in debilitating COPISA.
Pablo Ospina Peralta adds that “indigenous and campesino federations are not organized.” He asserts that the Land and Territories bill does not pass because, among other factors, “the ‘base pressure’ is missing [from the] principal indigenous and campesino organizations that demand land redistribution” (Ospina Peralta, 2011a). COPISA procedures and operations emasculated community-level members within the FENOCIN and other Mesa
Agraria organizations. Whether intentional or not, COPISA operations reproduced these organizations’ hierarchies and contributed to the lack of community-level “base pressure” to lobby the legislation.
By July 2012, a provincial-level FENOCIN affiliate expressed frustration and exclusion from COPISA. He asked, “What do we matter to COPISA? Since the forums ended, they don’t work with the pueblo. … They don’t communicate with us” (Moreto, A., personal interview, July 2012). Roberto Gortaire worried that “the agrarian reform food sovereignty isn’t advancing. These communities are asking, Where are the results?” (personal interview, June 19, 2012). Powerless participants relied on the eight COPISA members to lobby the passage of the food sovereignty bills (Intriago, personal interview, June 2012).
When disenfranchised civic organizations exert strong democratic efforts for access to state resources, such as the case with forum participants, but receive no tangible results, the “lack of noticeable impact from such [efforts] can feed frustration and, perhaps, paradoxically,
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 134 further shrink the public sphere [because] people withdraw from it” (Oxhorn, 2011: 16). Most community-level participants, frustrated by the process, abandoned COPISA and any collective effort to pass the bills, shrinking the universal characteristics of the public sphere in Ecuador.
Innovators had the best intentions of expanding democracy via a participatory institution for food sovereignty. However, community-level members of campesino organizations (and the wider citizenry) were not involved with or aware of the power-sharing proposal in 2007, LORSA construction in 2009, or COPISA operations between 2009 and
2013, which left civil society participants disillusioned by the COPISA process. The absence of a national-level, inclusive, representative, collaborative, and self-limiting civil society food sovereignty front was a key factor that led to COPISA being a weak state agency.
However, most of the civil society behavior and events discussed in this section were highly influenced by pressures from political society, mainly President Correa and his administration. President Correa and his party hegemony and congressional coalitions are the main reasons why COPISA is an unleveraged state agency rather than a participatory institution. These factors are discussed in the following section.
Section 3 — Political Society Influence on COPISA:
Nearly all scholarship of participatory governance within Latin American concludes that political society support is critical for participatory institutions to be implemented and function. Particularly, the executive leader must also be politically willing and able to convince any strong and influential opposition to “accept participatory policies” (Goldfrank,
2007). If he or she cannot or will not, the institution will likely be weak or fail. In addition to the legal hegemony Ecuador’s presidency enjoys over the other state branches, President
Correa has enjoyed congressional party majority and/or coalition majority since 2007, and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 135 will do so until his term ends in 2017. Correa, his administration, and the AP party form a
“hegemonic political force” within the state (Gallegos, 2013: 33). His popularity remained strong between 2011 and December 2014 (Freidenberg, 2012), and by May 2014, 75% of polled Ecuadorians approved of President Correa and his policies (Se Mantiene Popularidad de Correa, 2014). There has been virtually no viable opposition to his policies since his first election.
Though not a participatory institution, COPISA completed its temporary mandate to create the food sovereignty bills with citizen participation between 2010 and 2012. This section demonstrates that the difficulties COPISA faced, outlined in the previous two sections, were mainly the result of Correa’s opposition to the agency and citizen authority in policymaking and food sovereignty. Correa’s tremendous decision-making power and political influence in Ecuador enabled him to relegate the agency to its low status within the administration.
This section first highlights how President Correa, his administration, and the AP coalition had the greatest impact on weakening COPISA during the 2009-13 timeframe.
Correa, as a candidate and president, promised to implement an “Agrarian Revolution.” In practice, the administration gives paltry support to food sovereignty programs, yet continues to finance the corporate food production industry, further stretching economic and political gaps within the agricultural sector (Ospina Peralta, 2015). This is not to say the administration has made no effort to implement food sovereignty-focused programs.
However, the Correa administration charged MAGAP to define and implement food sovereignty under the government’s Agrarian Reform banner. This leaches COPISA of political relevancy and ability to be the nation’s food-sovereignty clearinghouse, and delegitimizes its purpose. These “participatory” spaces are cloaks of participation, and in practice serve to convert participants into passive political clients (Vega, 2013). By and large,
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 136 the administration attempts to control participatory governance and civil society organizations in general.
Unrealized Agrarian Revolution and Food Sovereignty Model:
During President Correa’s 2006 electoral campaign, he declared that if elected, he would initiate an “Agrarian Revolution [to] democratize access to land … and in general, foster access to strategic resources for the peasant sector” (Giunta, 2014: 12). In doing so, the administration began to swap what Ecuadorian civil-society affiliates of the Via Campesina named “food sovereignty,” with the administration’s term, “Agrarian Revolution.” This began the Executive Branch’s slow usurp of these organizations’ agricultural definitions, agendas, and goals.
Correa charged the MAGAP with implementing the Agrarian Revolution separate from any COPISA initiatives. His first MAGAP head ministers, Carlos Vallejo (2007-08) and
Walter Pavedo (1/2008-7/2009), lethargically implemented the Agrarian Revolution programs. Pavedo introduced a land redistribution program, Plan Haciendas, but failed to outline its goals, strategies, or who within MAGAP was responsible for its execution. Later,
Vallejo introduced a loan-and-credit program that would have made low-interest, long-term loans available to small-scale farmers through the state-run National Growing Bank (BNF).
This program was hardly executed. In fact, BNF loans available to small farmers decreased from $314,917,518 USD in 2007 to $36,691,321 USD in 2009 (Rosero Garces, et al., 2011:
60).
Ramón Espinel, minister of MAGAP from July 2009 until April 2011, on the other hand, was more supportive of the food sovereignty model. He had a positive relationship with members of the former Colectivo Agrario (Ponce, C., personal interview, 2012) and sought to make MAGAP the “ministry of the campesinos” (Rosero Garcés, et al., 2011). Espinel implemented programs to provide small-scale farmers with training in agro-ecology
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 137 production and marketing techniques. Under his direction, MAGAP began to provide farmers markets for rural, small-scale producers to sell directly to consumers, enabling a more equitable commerce. He reinstated the land-redistribution program under the name Plan
Tierras to provide “young families … indigenous … [and] impoverished women” with access to state-foreclosed lands (Rosero Garcés, 2011: 78). Members of the former Colectivo
Agrario were enthusiastic about these programs because they “coincided with the LORSA.”
They thought they would “be able to spread the food sovereignty law in a context that promotes agro-biodiversity and food sovereignty,” in contrast to previous “MAGAP policies that concentrated on agro-industry and monoculture” production (Ponce, C., personal interview, July 24, 2012).
Despite Espinel’s efforts, MAGAP and the administration were resistant to these food sovereignty-focused programs. MAGAP “resisted food sovereignty. It lacked defined processes, procedures… personnel, logistics” to implement these programs (Rosero Garces, et al., 2011). Land redistribution followed the same slow pace as it had in previous decades.
Civil society leaders criticized the Plan Tierras program for its “absence of legal recommendations and political will” (Moran, 2011). By 2011, Plan Tierras was the least funded of any MAGAP program. Redistribution of land “did not advance one millimeter”
(Lelander & Ospina Peralta, 2012: 37). A COPISA administrator commented that, “COPISA is confronted by government institutions [that] don’t want to change. They are at home, and it is difficult” to advance food-sovereignty policies (Olivera, J., personal interview, author translation, August 16, 2012).
As of 2015, 80% of arable lands were controlled by large-scale agriculture businesses that possess 15% of all farm plots. Inversely, 84.5% of farmers occupied only 20% of
Ecuador’s land surface (Cevallos, 2015). These statistics were nearly the same as in the
1950s (Brasel, Herrera, La Forge, 2008: 22). Yet small-scale farmers play a pivotal role in
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 138
Ecuador’s economy and provide 60% of domestic markets with their fresh produce (La
Agricultura Familiar, 2014). A tremendous number of people could benefit from land redistribution and other food sovereignty initiatives.
However, after COPISA introduced its Land and Territories bill to MAGAP in
September 2011, President Correa, in a “Citizens’ Link” broadcast, immediately called the proposal “inefficient” and “disastrous” to agricultural production (Lalander & Ospina Peralta,
2012: 37). He dismissed COPISA and the legislation, saying: “This — the Council of Food
Sovereignty. I don’t exactly remember the name of the council. They only have the vision of justice, but, be careful to look for justice, justice in parenthesis [motions hands], that we destroy efficiency and make everyone equal, but equally miserable, poor ” (Borrador Ley de
Tierras, 2011, author interpretation, emphasis added). Hidalgo offers:
It’s complicated because there are government advances in agroecology, food
sovereignty. The government runs Plan Tierras for people with little land, but
this is really limited. The environment is adverse [to food sovereignty]. This
isn’t the dominant [paradigm]. It goes against the current (personal interview,
August 4, 2012).
Other social scientists concur that, “The government sees it must put an accent on redistribution and support small- and medium-scale farmers, but at its foundation, it continues to orient and support agriculture toward large-scale, monoculture production” (Lelander & Ospina Peralta, 2012: 47). The Correa administration admits its “agricultural development model excludes rural peasants and [promotes] the concentration of arable land” (Cevallos, 2015).
In addition to land, the administration has strategically conglomerated irrigation water, building 70% of irrigation infrastructure in provinces with the highest production of agro-export crops (Clark, 2015). Small-scale farmers, who represent 86% of all irrigation
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 139 water users, have access to only 13% of the water. Large-scale landowners control 64% of irrigation water usage (Gaudichaud, 2013). A few people control irrigation water while the poor majority has severely limited access to water.
The BNF makes loans more available to medium- and large-scale farmers, rather than the country’s small-scale, rural farmers — the very citizens the bank was initiated to help
(Carrion & Herrera, 2012: 82-83). In 2013, Correa threatened to close the BNF because of potential fund mismanagement. Yet rather than holding the BNF accountable to the supposed misconduct, Correa threatened to shut it down and transfer its responsibilities to a “private bank” (Presidente Rafael Correa Advierte al BNF, 2013). This did not occur, but indicates the president’s ambition to privatize food sovereignty programs and rescind the government responsibility of providing the Agrarian Revolution.
GMO Backtracking:
COPISA’s “Agro-biodiversity, Seed and Increased Agro-ecology” bill was submitted to the National Assembly via a legislative initiative in March 2012. The text reiterates the constitutional provision that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can only enter into
Ecuador in case of national “emergency” with presidential and congressional approval
(Ecuador National Constitution, 2008). However, in June of 2012, a branch of MAGAP sent a 25-page criticism of the bill to President Correa, urging him to dismiss the draft. By
September 2012, the president began a public crusade to reverse the national ban on GMOs.
He announced that he should not have allowed “infantile environmentalists” and legislators to “convince” him to ban GMOs in Ecuador, claiming that “we made a mistake… an error” by constitutionally prohibiting GMOs (Correa cambiaría agricultura, 2012). That same month, the president and ministry leaders visited seven agriculture research centers and universities in the U.S. that focus on genomic engineering in order to learn about “advances in health and biotechnologies” (Correa Viaja a EEUU, 2012). In 2013, the Ministry of the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 140
Environment created radio propaganda promoting the health and production benefits of
GMOs. Former members of Colectivo Agrario and COPISA contested the ads, which the attorney general eliminated (Denuncia Sobre Publicidad, 2013).
Agricultural Political Economy:
The government is not only averse to land redistribution, native seed preservation, and loan access for small-scale farmers, but supportive of commodity production of large- scale mono-culture crops for exportation, which is the fundamental and overarching nexus of the corporate food machine. Francisco Hidalgo stated succinctly in 2012:
The state has a fundamental modus operandi toward agroindustry … and
external markets. Agriculture in Ecuador is geared toward agro-industry and
also in the context of South America n agro-exportation is increasing. ... There
is increased demand for agro-combustibles from Europe on the Third World.
In years to come, the amount of agro-combustible demand is supposed to
increase 20 to 30% and is supposed to be supplied by what used to be called
the Third World. There is pressure to gear everything [in Ecuador] toward
agro-exportation — cacao, banana, African palm, shrimp, and flowers.
Meanwhile there has been a decrease in the last 10 years of land dedicated to
growing for internal markets — rice, potato, and vegetables. These are grown
less. There is a confrontation between agro-exportation and food sovereignty.
(Francisco Hidalgo, personal interview, author’s translation, July 2012).
In 2010 alone, MAGAP spent 55% of its budget on the production and exportation of large-scale agriculture commodities (Carrion & Herrera, 2012), such as “banana, African palm, sugar cane, broccoli, … ethanol” (Houtart, 2014: 168, author translation), rice, ... soy
(Rosero Garces, et al., 2011: 62), coffee, and chocolate (La Agricultura familiar, 2014). The
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 141 following graph indicates that, “as more land is dedicated to cultivating agro-export commodities, such as bananas, rice, and cacao, land used to grow crops such as onions, potatoes, and tomatoes for national markets decreases.”
Graph 1: Average Production of agro-exportation and agro-industry commodities (bananas, corn, rice, cacao) versus production of domestic market products (coffee, onions, tomato, potato) 1970-2000. Source: SENPLADES, 2013-17 (Cevallos, 2015 author translation)
The administration drives out small-scale, rural farmers from the geographic landscape, replacing them with commodity-based agro-export growers (Hidalgo, 2013: 164).
By doing so, the administration hopes to make farming more modern and “efficient,” and make Ecuador’s agricultural products competitive on the world scale (Hidalgo, 2013: 164).
By systematically supporting the corporate food regime, the administration is concentrating resources into the hands of a few monoculture, agro-export businesses and inversely constraining food sovereignty practices and production for domestic consumption.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 142
The administration implements the Agrarian Revolution and its supposed food sovereignty programs just enough to create the illusion of support for small-scale, rural farmers, but not strong enough to catalyze a more equitable, food sovereignty-based agricultural model that would enable a basic and dignified standard of living for rural farming populations. This state-controlled agricultural plan and COPISA’s status as an unleveraged, token agency are the principal reasons for COPISA’s inability to perform as a participatory institution. COPISA has few resources, no legal capacity to enact or implement food sovereignty programs, and little political power to be effective in the midst of the administration-supported corporate food model.
Government Limitation of Participatory Politics:
President Correa’s opposition to participatory governance and COPISA was demonstrated several times. He restructured and weakened the power-sharing institution into
COPISA, the state agency with a limited budget, no political leverage, and few legal authorities; denied COPISA the ability to direct the president on food sovereignty policy and programs via the LORSA reform; and publicly dismissed COPISA and its Land and
Territories bill in 2011. He and his administration antagonized rifts between FENOCIN and
CONAIE, limiting the possibility of a collective front to fortify COPISA.
Correa and the Citizens’ Revolution rhetorically claim to expand public participation. However, Roberto Gortaire argues against such claims, stating:
The government has so much power right now it is...jealous. ...The Presidency
and the AP are scared of participation because they want to be the principal
decision makers; a “Citizen Revolution” with an enormous fear of the citizen.
… It tries to co-opt all the participatory spaces. [The Correa administration]
only wants those who are aligned with the government in these spaces. This
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 143
creates more bureaucracy. There should be more autonomy for the
organizations. We shouldn't exclude the state from this process, but we have
to figure how to use them so they facilitate the process, but don't co-opt the
process (June 14, 2012).
Scholars conclude that nearly all national-level government participatory initiatives are controlled by the administration (Pachanos, 2010; Lalander & Ospina Peralta, 2012: 43).
The National Planning and Development Secretariat (SENPLADES) creates the National
Plan of the Good Life (Plan)—the administration’s political economic handbook written every four years. SENPLADES claims to create the Plan with the input of thousands of citizens. Scholars however, criticize SENPLADES’ participatory forums as “superficial exercises … where the citizenry, more than participatory and critical actors … stare at
PowerPoint presentations ... and are grateful, passive, and obedient beneficiaries” (Vega,
2013: 117). The Plan text is technical and unapproachable to the average reader, as though written by SENPLADES technocrats, who indeed wrote it (de la Torre, 2013).
In addition, in 2009, the Council on Social Control and Citizen Participation (CPCCS) was formed by constitutional mandate. In theory, it is an embodiment of the Fifth Power, that is, the Citizens’ Branch of the government, on par with the other three branches of the government whose purpose is to facilitate civil society participation in policy making and increase government accountability. CPCCS is a committee of eight state-selected civil society representatives charged with, among other mandates, appointing the national comptroller, attorney general, inspector general, and Judicial Council within the National
Electoral Council, and is part of the committee to select members of the Constitutional Court
(Pachano, 2010: 24). It also selects the COPISA cohort every four years. CPCCS also selects citizen applicants who serve on oversight committees of subnational and national government agencies. In sum, the institution has a significant number of mandates to potentially influence
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 144 the authorities and direction of several high-profile and politically important positions within the national government and subnational jurisdictions.
However, before it was created, assembly members were afraid the agency would become the “absolute concentration of executive power and the President of the Republic”
(Desafio Participacion Ciudadana, 2008). In practice, the CPCCS has been accused of corrupt practices and operating under the direction of the administration. Citizens accused the
CPCCS of “rigging” the selection process of several of the committees it is mandated to appoint, favoring civil society applicants aligned to the government. Scholars note that the
“highest authorities in the ... CPCCS institution are closely linked to the regime. … For example, General Prosecutor Galo Chiriboga was previously Correa’s ambassador to Spain, and is now the head of the Judicial Council” (de la Torre, 2015).
Similar to COPISA, the CPCCS lacks political autonomy from the administration, as well as political legitimacy among other national and subnational agencies mandated to collaborate with the agency (Gallegos, 2013: 157). CPCCS has become a vehicle for the
Correa administration to have decision-making power over the selection of high-profile and politically important national and subnational committees and actors.
Overall, “the government does not allow democratic participation or opinion in the creation of the state” (Basabe-Serrano, 2014: 78). Meanwhile, the government still touts
SENPLADES and CPCCS as participatory opportunities within the Citizens’ Revolution.
There is danger in this disconnect between participatory rhetoric and practice. Citizens take part in “participatory” assemblies or spaces with the message and the notion that they are directing the agenda and fulfilling their civic duty. Yet in practice, COPISA and
SENPLADES employees, state actors, direct the assemblies. The administration has the opportunity to implement its political plan in a top-down manner, infringing on civil society’s decision-making authority and autonomy. Participatory agencies “legitimize, empower, and
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 145 concentrate citizen energy and support into the Executive Branch” (Cordova, 2014: 20). In other words, rather than citizens being the sovereign, authoritative decision makers and political agents, as is supposed in democracies, political actors are the agents and the citizens are the political subjects (Cordova, 2014).
COPISA forums were similar. COPISA arrived with pre-formulated topics and questions, and mediated discussions and debates. Citizens gave their input for the bills, but had no rule-making or long-term decision-making power in the agency’s processes or procedures. COPISA members are highly confined by the administration’s Plan and adversarial stance toward small-scale farming and food sovereignty, preventing them from expanding the agency’s public profile or political power. Past making the bills, COPISA has become a token agency that the government can reference as a way to say it is fulfilling its constitutional responsibility to support participation and food sovereignty.
The AP and administration have managed to create the illusion of citizen participation and citizen authority in policy making via COPISA, CPCCS, SENPLADES, the national ministerial councils, and other municipal-level “participatory” platforms. These agencies become the standard of what participation looks like in Ecuador. Citizens are often rewarded only with the sense that, by attending these assemblies, they fulfill a citizen responsibility or can enact political change. Meanwhile, the time and energy spent in “participatory” spaces does not lead to structural government changes that enforce political accountability or redistribution. The administration’s monopolization of national-level political decisions and plans allows it to continually construct and reconstruct national agendas and programs
(Freidenberg, 2012; Sierra, 2014: 30-33).
Government Oppression, Effects on Civil Society:
Opposition to Citizens’ Revolution policies exists; however, the administration
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 146 criminalizes such opposition. By 2011, 167 citizens had been charged with terrorism and/or endangering the state. The administration shut down an environmental NGO in September
2013 for supposed sabotage against the state. The international human rights organizations
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, and Ecuador’s own attorney general, state that “government criminalization of protest to human and nature rights violations has become a form of social control to intimidate, neutralize, inhibit, and harass anyone that questions the state and even private entities” aligned to the government
(Pasara, 2013: 76, 79). The government creates fear and self-censorship in civil society, weakening civil society’s ability to organize or engage in “civic” associations that are near- requisite foundations upon which to create functional participatory institutions.
The administration has been able to continue such crackdowns by leveraging patronage relations (Cuvi, 2014: 44), elaborating infrastructural projects (roads, bridges), services (scholarships, hospitals), and crafting rhetoric that opposition to Citizens’
Revolution polices threatens democracy and political stability. Despite its bureaucratic size, the administration is stealthy, makes quick turns, highly influences media political messages and broadcasts its own messages via social media. Additionally, on his own whim, the president shape-shifts policies and plans, staying one step ahead of opposition. Civic groups publicly opposed to administrative policies, such as labor and professional unions, students,
CONAIE, and environmental groups, have yet to gain enough continual long-term traction against the administration.
Political Society Conclusions:
MAGAP and the Executive Branch sponsor instances of food sovereignty-based programs and collaborate limitedly with COPISA. MAGAP’s Agrarian Revolution programs are implemented in a limp manner and are underfunded, but manage to gain a following of
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 147 small-scale farmers who engage in their market programs. They also detract from COPISA’s ability to be the government’s principal institution for food sovereignty and undermine any long-term, fundamental changes in the agricultural economy toward food sovereignty, as mandated by the constitution and LORSA, that could potentially create a less stratified, but more equitable, agricultural economy. The president directly ridiculed and dismissed
COPISA and its food-sovereignty bills.
Overt government support of large-scale exportation of agricultural commodities not only simultaneously exports Ecuador’s natural resources, but also constrains COPISA’s legitimacy, relevance, and power to support small-scale farmers and their growing methods and markets. With little political, financial, and technical support from the government, the personal livelihood and culture of small-scale, peasant farmers that produce for domestic markets are increasingly at risk, potentially eliminating a fundamental sector of the economy.
This widens the socio-political gap between small-scale farmers and the economically supported monoculture, agro-export growers, and further disenfranchises the rural, poor, small-scale farmers from the public sphere and political decisions.
The Correa administration claims to provide citizens with the opportunity to decide policy and national-level politics. However, scholarship and citizens are critical of these claims. They say the government’s instances of participation, in practice, transform citizen
“participants” into passive clients or subjects of the government. The scope and topics that the Citizens’ Revolution — from economics, production, and cultural patrimonial — centralizes the overwhelming majority of national, and often subnational, decisions into the precincts of the president, his administration, and even the AP-controlled National Assembly.
The administration’s and Correa’s near monopolization of all things governmental, and even societal by repressing public protest to his policies, not only constrains COPISA and other national and subnational “participatory” mechanisms, but prevents them from
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 148 autonomously organizing. Participatory mechanisms in Ecuador at all levels need a coalition of support from influential and leveraged political actors who enable their entrée into the public sphere and political apparatus. President Correa, on the other hand, who is the principal decision maker and influencer within the AP (which controls the assembly), as well as myriad Executive Branch ministries and secretaries, has built an orb, a coalition of centralizing state decisions back to the president’s desk. This paradigm does not leave space for citizens to make political rules or policy that could potentially redistribute power and resources and expand government transparency. This coalition of citizen exclusion in policy making is the principal reason for COPISA’s status not only as a state agency, but as an unleveraged, token agency for food sovereignty.
Chapter Five Conclusions:
I outlined in Section One of this chapter that, contrary to COPISA and recent scholarship claims, COPISA is not a “participatory” organization or institution. It’s designed as a state agency, a branch of MAGAP. Temporarily, the first COPISA cohort (2009-14) enabled citizens to participate in assemblies to add their input to the supplemental food- sovereignty bills COPISA was mandated to construct. COPISA as a state agency, however, controlled the agenda, times, and procedural rules. This was in part, because of the agency’s lack of horizontal collaboration, budget, resources, time, and COPISA’s initial temporary status, which limited its capacity to include a wider expanse of the citizenry in forums and left COPISA members in a hurry to complete their mandate. The lack of resources also left members to rely on their civil-society organizations for political and economic assistance.
This scenario facilitated patronage relations between COPISA and the civil society organizations that financially and politically supported the agency, ironically, corrupting the very entity that is supposed to equally distribute resources and power by the very
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 149 organizations of the former Mesa Agraria that proposed it.
Moreover, the “participatory” process was not permanent, disqualifying it as a participatory institution. COPISA does not create routine or regular interaction with the citizenry, when regularity is a component part of what makes an institution an “institution.”
The lack of routines disables citizens’ ability to hold COPISA or political society accountable to the citizen-created policy.
COPISA’s legal mandate, and what it claims to complete, is to, “create food sovereignty public policy with citizen participation and ensure and oversee they are implementated” (COPISA, 2015). The agency claims to be a participatory institution, but has yet to complete this mandate. It does not have the design or political capacity to allow civil society the authority to help direct the agency’s rules, distribute political power and resources for food sovereignty, or, enable government accountability of food sovereignty, as participatory institutions do. The danger in the disconnection, between COPISA rhetoric and practice, is interrogated in the next chapter.
There is no mechanism in COPISA that enables citizens to hold the agency accountable to implement existing food sovereignty policies or lobby the bills created with the citizenry between 2010 and 2012. Participants gave their time and effort to the process and perhaps increased their network of food sovereignty supporters, but there are no tangible results, except perhaps growing apathy and frustration with COPISA.
Disunity, distrust, and political fractures between the principal campesino and indigenous organizations that worked closest with COPISA, such as FENOCIN, CONAIE,
FEINE, CNC-EA, and Colectivo Agrario, were more powerful than their ability to create a united and democratic front for food sovereignty and COPISA. Their fragments and discord played a part in weakening COPISA’s ability to garner participants and gain a greater public profile for food sovereignty. CONAIE’s leadership left COPISA perceiving it was controlled
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 150 by the administration. This enabled the FENOCIN and regional campesino organizations to direct the agency’s agenda and more closely align it to the administration’s paradigm of state centrality, rather than public participation. Red Agraria contributed to the diffusion of a civil society front for food sovereignty by leaving COPISA and using the iniciativa popular, and later the MAGAP Consejo Sectorial Ciudadano to try to pass the Land and Territories bill.
Their leaving COPISA demonstrated and reinforced COPISA political unreliability to advance food sovereignty legislation or initiatives.
The most influential factor in the derailment of COPISA, however, has been President
Correa and his administration’s ability to stymy public and political support for participatory politics and food sovereignty in Ecuador. The Citizens’ Revolution political economic model crafted by Correa and the AP enables almost all national-level political and societal decisions to be centralized into and made by the Executive Branch, controlled by Correa. This political scenario closes citizens’ opportunities to create political rules and policy, including those governing COPISA.
Correa’s partial veto of the LORSA made COPISA a weak committee in 2009 and a state agency in 2010. Correa personally and publicly dismissed COPISA and the Land and
Territories bill, while the administration neglected to fund the agency its first year and half.
The administrations usurped COPISA as the principal government clearinghouse for food sovereignty in Ecuador, and redefined food sovereignty as the Agrarian Revolution executed and administered (limply) by the MAGAP. The administration’s agricultural economic model concentrates support for the corporate food regime’s monoculture, agro-export production, which weakens and delegitimizes food sovereignty practices and expands income and political gaps.
In addition, Correa, whether or not purposefully, instigated rifts and polarized
CONAIE on one hand, and FENOCIN and organizations within the Red Agraria on the other.
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These splits are not always black and white, but overall COPISA administration, was swayed heavily by the presence of FENOCIN members and administration, to align with the administration. The COPISA cohort self-constrained its advocacy of food sovereignty, preferring to toe the administration line instead of acting independently and assertively advocating for food sovereignty practices in Ecuador, including lobbying their bills.
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Chapter 6: Conclusions
In 2007, Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario civil society organizations proposed that the Ecuadorian government create a national power-sharing participatory council for food sovereignty, National Council for Food Sovereignty. This council would be constituted of state actors and volunteer representatives from campesino and small-scale producer organizations who would jointly craft and oversee the implementation of national food sovereignty policy proposals. This council, they hoped, would ensure the state’s permanent obligation to implement food sovereignty initiatives, including, but not limited to, the redistribution of land and water, cultivation of native seeds and plants, and insurance subsidies for small-scale, peasant farmers whose poverty rates reach 86% and who are also the most politically marginalized sectors of society (Mesa Agraria, 2007).
These campesino organizations asserted that the state’s current agricultural paradigm systematically disenfranchised rural, mainly indigenous, farmers in favor of a few companies that produce monoculture crops for export. These same indigenous and peasant farmers, despite their poverty and lack of agricultural infrastructure, manage to provide the country with 60% of its agricultural produce. Much of this produce is native to Ecuador or the
Andean region, thus, demonstrating the economic and cultural impact rural farmers have on
Ecuador’s food production and consumption systems.
At the same time, then-presidential candidate Rafael Correa promised a Citizens’
Revolution that would “facilitate participatory democracy and the pueblo’s sovereignty”
(Cordova, 2014: 20). He attracted political support from left-leaning politicians and civil society groups, such as Mesa Agraria which sought to directly participate in the planning and building of a more inclusive government (Ortiz & Webber, 2015). Correa’s proposed
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Citizens’ Revolution seemed to dovetail with what Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario sought: a greater disbursement of political decision making power and state resources.
Correa was elected in 2007 and, as promised during his campaign, initiated a
Constituent Assembly to rewrite Ecuador’s constitution for the 20th time since its independence in 1822. The Constituent Assembly (2007-08) held hundreds of public forums to gather citizen input and include its proposals in the text, including food sovereignty, which was protected in several articles and clauses of the 2008 constitution. A constitutional transitory clause mandated that the Congresillo (November 2008-April 2009) write a detailed food sovereignty law to outline food sovereignty protections that were left unfinished during the Constituent Assembly. The Congresillo drafted a version of the food sovereignty bill that called for increased insurance for small-scale farmers and native seed conservation, among other topics. To ensure small-scale farmers continual legal access to craft agricultural policy and oversee its implementation, this draft also included the National Council for Food
Sovereignty, the power-sharing food sovereignty institution. Legislators proposed that this participatory council consult the President directly regarding national food sovereignty plans and policies.
The Congresillo wanted to host participatory public forums to debate the food sovereignty bill in detail with citizens in order to gather their input and include it in the bill.
However, the momentum for participatory politics decreased during the Congresillo. The constitution gave President Correa greater legal authority and political leverage. He was not interested in convening public forums for the food sovereignty law, or for any other legislation. Instead, he hurried legislative debates and glutted the legislature with his own bills.
The Congresillo responded to the President’s hurried pace by inserting a transitory clause in the food sovereignty bill. The clause mandated that the yet to be created National
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Council for Food Sovereignty construct, with citizen participation and within 180 days of its formation, several supplemental bills that detailed food sovereignty policy in Ecuador and submit them to the MAGAP. The President partially vetoed the bill, eliminating the National
Council for Food Sovereignty. He changed the Council’s name to the National Conference for Food Sovereignty (later the Plurinational and Intercultural National Conference for Food
Sovereignty, COPISA). He changed its composition so that the Conference would consist of eight state-selected civil society members whose sole purpose was to create supplemental food sovereignty bills with citizen input, then submit them to the MAGAP. The bill’s language did not clarify the lifespan of the Conference. In May 2009, the President’s version was passed and enacted as Ecuador’s Organic Law for the Food Sovereignty Regime
(LORSA).
The original COPISA cohort (2009-2014) did indeed create nine supplemental food sovereignty bills that detail how the state should administer farmer insurance, agricultural subsidies, and encourage native seed circulation and organic farming techniques, among other policies. This effort had the direct participation of more than 5,000 citizen participants over the course of 180 public forums between 2010 and 2012. COPISA worked with few resources and submitted all bills to the MAGAP by 2013. The forums ended when COPISA completed its temporary mandate. Though far from the original intention—to permanently enable citizens’ authority to decide food sovereignty policy and its implementation—these forums helped to expand, at least temporarily, participants’ knowledge of their legal food sovereignty rights and of their professional network of food sovereignty proponents.
COPISA claimed to “create food sovereignty public policy with citizen participation
… [and] … oversee the implementation of food sovereignty policy” (COPISA, 2015). In practice, between 2010 and 2012 the COPISA cohort and a few civil society organization leaders directed the forum topics, rules and agendas in a top-down manner. COPISA was
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 155 codified as a state agency within the MAGAP in 2010. Since 2013 COPISA has completed a different LORSA mandate, “promoting” and “educating” the public about food sovereignty at public and private meetings with civil society and with subnational governments. COPISA crafts the agency’s agenda in a top-down manner based on the administration’s agricultural plans. It does not fulfill its claim to be a participatory institution because it has no legal or political leverage to do so. It is a state agency whose website speaks the rhetoric of
“participation” though COPISA does not have the political leverage, or authority, to live up to such rhetoric.
How did this happen? What Does the Change Reflect and How Does it Impact Agriculture,
Participatory Politics, and Democracy in Ecuador?
Leonardo Avritzer posits that participatory institutions, that is, institutions especially designed to enable citizen participation, distribution of power and resources, and government accountability (2009: 4), are most likely to be implemented and effective when three inputs converge. First, the context (a national context in the case of COPISA) should comprise individuals and organizations that are politically engaged, influential, autonomous, inclusive, democratic, and seek to establish participatory institutions. These organizations must be willing and able to collectively advocate for the implementation of participatory institutions.
Second, influential political society actors must be willing and able to welcome citizen authority in policy making. Last, these two entities — civil and political society — must be willing and able to design institutions that enable citizens to help create their rules and public policies, as well as a way to hold governments accountable to implement their policies. At this juncture, Ecuador’s national social and political context cannot sustain a power-sharing institution for food sovereignty.
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This is, in part, because Ecuador’s civil society is relatively unorganized (Conaghan,
1988; Larrea & North, 1997). Moreover, only a few leaders of Mesa Agraria and Colectivo
Agrario were the principal authors of the power-sharing food sovereignty institution in 2007.
The CONAIE was excluded from the process, and community-level, indigenous and peasant farmers (the food sovereignty practitioners) were largely unaware of the power-sharing institution proposal. There was no national-level, influential, universal front for the food sovereignty power-sharing council, which abled powerful President Correa to easily turn the council into a state agency.
The principal reason COPISA was restructured into a state agency was that Correa was politically willing and legally able to reshape the participatory council into an unleveraged, low-status agency. He had tremendous legal powers and controlled the AP majority-led Congresillo. Despite Correa’s rhetoric to enable citizen authority in policymaking, he had the practical intention to install a “modern,” state-centered form of governing, one that did not include civic organization participation in policy making (Ospina
Peralta, 2009: 3-4). Congresillo did not have the political leverage to counter the President’s partial veto in 2009. It was this strong political coalition against the food sovereignty power- sharing council that derailed it.
Had the National Council for Food Sovereignty been enacted, national-level state and volunteer civil society collaboration to create and implement food sovereignty policies would have been mandatory. The enactment of the power-sharing institution would have indicated the administration’s willingness to welcome citizen inclusion in policy making and might have initiated the process to democratize access to agricultural resources. To speculate how well it would have functioned is impossible. However, the framework and political support for participatory politics would have been established.
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COPISA’s efforts to craft food sovereignty protection bills with citizen input were overshadowed by Citizens’ Revolution plan to “modernize the production matrix” (Clark,
2015: 12) and to industrialize agricultural production. To do so, President Correa enacted the
“National Code of Production in 2010, which legalized state-agribusiness alliances”
(Hidalgo, 2013: 163). The administration enacted trade tariffs that favor the expansion of domestic agricultural corporations and domestic supermarket chains (Ospina Peralta,
November 2015). Further, the administration began to invest heavily in agricultural infrastructure in the provinces where farmers are networked into producing for these domestic agricultural corporations and supermarket chains (Clark, 2015). The plan is to consolidate, modernize, and industrialize the domestic production, distribution, and consumption of food and agriculture. This domestic agricultural plan may bolster the economy, but it also creates farmer dependency on manufactured chemical inputs and on national-level food-buying trends, detracting from a food sovereignty paradigm that encourages agro-ecological production and local supply chains. Any attention the government pays to small-scale farmers is with the intent to “integrate [them] into agro- industrial commodity chains and monocrop production” (Clark, 2015: 17). In certain provincial capitals, the MAGAP teaches agro-ecological techniques to small-scale farmers and provides them with market space to sell their produce. However, the MAGAP controls and regulates produce variety, pricing, and the market space, which may weaken the producers’ ability to autonomously organize (16).
The Correa administration has increased its investments in agricultural infrastructure in the provinces of Manabí, El Oro, and Guayas, provinces which traditionally cultivated commodity crops geared for exportation (Clark, 2015: 15), and has enabled these provinces to increase their volume of production for bananas, shrimp, canned fish, and cut flowers by
60% each year between 2007 and 2013 (Hidalgo, 2013: 163). Social scientists say that this
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 158 agricultural economy continues Ecuador’s “primary-export model … displacing peasant farming with agro-industrial intensification. … This has been the capitalist modernization project under Correa” (Ortiz & Webber, 2015). The economic gap between small-scale and large-scale industrial farmers has worsened since 2007 (Ospina Peralta, 2015). Economic gaps weaken poorer civil society members’ ability to organize autonomously and leverage collective power (Oxhorn, 2011: 11). In Ecuador, this has meant that rural farmers are less willing or able to invest in or to advocate collectively for food sovereignty practices or for farming in general. Seeing no economic incentive to farm, and without government assistance, rural people are increasingly migrating to urban areas to work in low-wage, informal economy jobs (Ortiz & Webber, 2015), enabling large-scale agri-businesses to dominate the agricultural public sphere and policy.
There are several negative effects of an unleveraged COPISA. Without a reliable power-sharing COPISA, or without even a state agency with the power to implement food sovereignty policies, there is no government entity to oppose the voice of the agro-industries.
Further, without a reliable COPISA, participants and the public have no agency to lobby for the nine food sovereignty bills. Without the laws, there are no policies around which to create agricultural plans that can benefit small-scale farmers, farmers who are already the poorest and most marginalized in society. Instead, MAGAP (barely) offers only a few food sovereignty-like programs under the administration’s “Agrarian Revolution.”
Without a reliable COPISA, there is no national government institution that advocates on behalf of citizens against illegal infringements of the LORSA or food sovereignty constitutional protections. For example, the President threatened to change the constitution to allow genetically modified seeds into Ecuador, which is against the Constitution. Also, when a former COPISA member found genetically modified soy plants growing in the province of
Guayas in August 2015 (Sherwood, 2015), he reported the findings to the Ministry of the
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Environment. The Ministry declared the matter was not under its jurisdiction. He then took his finding to a Guayas provincial court. To date the court has made no decision (Sherwood,
2015). Perhaps not surprising, he did not seek help or legal support from COPISA as he had no confidence in COPISA’s ability to do anything about this constitutional violation.
COPISA claims to create food sovereignty proposals, to ensure their implementation and to hold other entities accountable to adhere to food sovereignty policy. Yet, it does not have the legal or political leverage to deliver on these promises. COPISA forum participants were under the impression that the bill making process would lead to food sovereignty policies and their implementation. When this did not happen, participants became wary, frustrated by, and distrustful of COPISA, and finally, retreated from the agency all together.
Most felt powerless in the COPISA process, and few of the original participants currently lobby for the passage of the bills or work with COPISA. When citizens feel powerless or alienated by politics, they tend to retreat from formal politics and the public sphere (Oxhorn,
2011: 77). Participants’ exclusion from COPISA’s decisions and their retreat from agricultural politics enables the already powerful administration to monopolize agricultural decisions and COPISA’s operations. This robs the most disenfranchised peasant farmers of access to an agency to advance food sovereignty policy and its implementation in Ecuador.
COPISA was given a low rung on the political ladder and, as a result, is unable to fulfill the agency’s rhetoric to redistribute rights and resources. Disappointed participants, such as Romelio Gualan, leader among the Red Agraria, began to distrust not only COPISA’s ability to fulfill its participatory claims, but he alsodistrusts individual COPISA members and their respective civil society organizations. This phenomenon foments animosities among these already fractured organizations and weakens relationships within Ecuador’s the indigenous and peasant populations. Many Colectivo Agrario members retreated from
COPISA because they viewed it as co-opted by FENOCIN and the administration. COPISA
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 160 became a clearinghouse, not to support food sovereignty and participatory politics, but to further fragment civil society organizations.
Without a leveraged strong COPISA, frustrated civil society organizations are left to negotiate directly with the more powerful agencies of the Executive Branch and are more likely to be co-opted. For example, in 2014, the National Secretary of Political Action reincorporated the leaders of the former Red Agraria (FEI, FENOCIN, FENACLE, CNC-EA, and CONFEUNASSC) into what the secretary named the National Mesa Agraria, promising
(again) to implement an Agrarian Revolution (Secretaria Nacional de Gestion de la Politica,
2015). This new organization was allowed to meet directly with the National Assembly, where the group requested that the assembly decide the pending food sovereignty bills (Mesa de la Reforma Agraria Ecuador, 2014). On the same day CONAIE and other government opposition groups were protesting Correa-led initiatives. Has National Mesa Agaria been co- opted, or will their meeting with the National Assembly lead somewhere? Only time will tell.
The Correa administration controls the agricultural economy, investing heavily in agricultural industrialization. The MAGAP plays lip service to food sovereignty practices, but mainly seeks to incorporate and regulate small-scale farmers into the formal, central government-controlled agricultural economy. Meanwhile, COPISA is relegated to the sidelines as a token state agency for food sovereignty, with few resources and little political leverage. Without COPISA as the central clearinghouse for food sovereignty with citizen authority, as it was originally intended, the very meaning of food sovereignty is redefined and diluted. Food sovereignty initiatives are fractured and dispersed throughout civil society and the government, weakening any chance for a united, democratic, food sovereignty front or farmers’ ability to gain permanent, equitable access to state agricultural political decisions and resources.
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Other “Participatory” Entities:
Concurrent to COPISA, several other “participatory” entities were mandated by the
Constitution and several national pieces of legislation and norms passed between 2008 and
2010 (Pachano, 2010; Ospina Peralta, 2011, 21012; Gallegos, 2013), emblematic of the
“participatory” politics fashionable at that time. How do these other entities fare in terms of enabling citizen rule-making, policy-making authority, and enforcing government accountability? Is COPISA’s story unique? The Council on Participation and Social Control
(CPCCS) was perhaps the most highly anticipated national-level participatory mechanism implemented during Correa’s administration. Its stated goal is to include citizens in policymaking and to enable citizen accountability of government entities from the local to the national level. Formed in 2009, the CPCCS is constituted of eight civil society representatives selected by the state to serve a four-year, full-time paid government position.
The CPCCS is assigned to select several national-level committees, including COPISA and citizen oversight committees as necessary.
Despite these important mandates, by 2011, only 15% of citizens in a national poll conducted in Guayaquil and Quito knew what the CPCCS is and its role within the government (El Control Social aun es Lejano y Limitado para los Ciudadanos, 2011).
Citizens selected by the CPCCS for an oversight committee say CPCCS members did not know how to conduct the oversight procedures or put accountability into practice
(Participacion Ciudadana Burocratizo, 2011). Former oversight committee members and scholars say the CPCCS selects educated professionals to serve on oversight committees, excluding less educated and poorer classes. CPCCS state actors, not citizens, make the agency’s rules (Ospina Peralta, 2012: 149).
Worse yet, applicants for the first CPCCS cohort in 2009 said the process was “not independent” from the administration, and that CPCCS members were chosen based on their,
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“alignment to the political order” (Participacion Ciudadana Burocratizo, 2011). Luis Pasara
(2014) says the CPCCS was an extension of the Executive Branch, which in turn influences the selection process of the high-level committee that the CPCCS selects. Recently appointed
Constitutional Court judges, whom the CPCCS helped select, were former Executive Branch functionaries and are aligned with the government. This has led to a low-quality Judicial
Branch (71) that has “little independence or autonomy from the other state branches … in comparison to other Latin American countries” (Verdezoto, 2013).
The second selection process of the CPCCS cohort, conducted in July 2015, was highly contentious. In mid-process, applicants demanded investigations of the process, saying that the highest-ranked candidate was also the ex-minister of transportation (47 Postulantes al
CPCCS Solicitaron Recalificacion de Meritos y Oposicion, 2015). Several non-AP National
Assembly members abstained from the CPCCS swearing-in ceremony in October 2015, claiming the selection process was “illegal, illegitimate, and arbitrary” and that the CPCCS members are “government party militants” (Integrantes del CPCCS Reconocen Haber Sido
Militantes de AP y Laborar con el Ejecutivo). Also, as these “participatory” institutions are turned into state agencies, they offer an abundance of employment and good salaries
(Machado, 2014; Clark, 2015) to educated left-leaning middle-class citizens who may have otherwise tried to use these mechanisms as they were intended, that is, to advance citizen- created public policy. Instead, these agencies have become much needed employment opportunities for the citizenry, while the administration can inculcate potential opposition into its folds.
When Red Agraria attempted to use the iniciativa popular to negotiate the Land and
Territories bill directly with the National Assembly’s Committee for Food Sovereignty in
2012, the committee rewrote the bill only “incorporating select articles” from the Red
Agraria/COPISA bill into its own (Pena, 2015). Then in January 2015, the committee said it
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 163 would conduct a consulta pre-legislativo of the assembly’s Land and Territories bill. The consulta pre-legislativo is a “participatory” mechanism where the National Assembly conducts public forums across the country to gather citizen input for certain bills.
This process may seem like a positive step toward inclusive politics, but Romelio
Gualán, president of the CNC-EA, and Luis Andrango, former FENOCIN president, contested the constitutionality of the consulta pre-legislativo, saying it was another way the congress was delaying a decision on the bill. They took their case to the national
Constitutional Guarantees. The judge dismissed it (Negada Accion de Proteccion Para Frenar
Debate de Ley de Tierras, 2015). The vice president of the Committee for Food Sovereignty dismissed Gualán and Andrango’s efforts, saying, “We can’t give you co-legislative status.
The only co-legislator is the President of the Republic” (Asamblea Agpureba por
Unaminidad Consulta Prelegislativa pora Ley de Tierras, 2015). While the president does have co-legislative powers, the iniciativa popular , in theory, also gives citizenry legal authority to co-legislate national policy. According to the assemblyman, only one person, the president of the Republic, has legitimate claims to create policy with the legislator — the citizens’ representative, law-making body. Civil society does not have that right.
The AP-led congress hijacked not only representative democracy but also participatory democracy. The assembly usurped the citizens’ iniciativa popular participatory mechanism with the assembly-controlled consulta pre-legislativo , and deemed the President as the only legitimate co-legislator. These political acrobatics contorted and weakened democratic rules and functions. Elected AP-officials egregiously direct political rules, legislation, and the electorate.
The assembly conducted the consulta pre-legislativa of the Land and Territories bill in several Ecuadorian provinces between June and July of 2015, where approximately 6,000 people participated (Termina Fase de la Consulta para Ley de Tierras, 2015). CONAIE
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 164 refused to participate because of its prior negative experience with a previous national consulta pre-legislativa (CONAIE y Eurunari no se Insecribieron en proceso de Consulta
Prelegislativa Sobre la Ley de Tierras, 2015). The assembly has not made a decision on the
Land and Territories bill.
Taken together, these nationally mandated “participatory” agencies and mechanisms seem to be on par. That is, they are not very dependable or effective and, in some form or another, are manipulated by the administration and AP for their own political gains. This denies the citizenry their legal and sovereign rights to access these “participatory” outlets legally authorized to them. These participatory agencies and mechanisms were implemented with the intention, and claim to, enable the citizenry to be the nexus of democracy. The citizenry was supposed to be an integral part of establishing policymaking rules and, in turn, policy content. The CPCCS, in particular, was created to deter rampant and institutionalized corruption among politician and government functionaries at all levels of government.
These mechanisms were hard won by the public and even political society. The
Executive Branch and AP political takeover of these “participatory” mechanisms, on a national scale is a wide-scale civil society let down. This foments citizen (and politician) distrust not only of state actors and authorities that mishandle them, but also of the mechanisms themselves, which can deter citizens from employing them in the future.
CONAIE abstained from the consulta pre-legislativo for the Land and Territories bill, leaders said, because of the organization’s prior negative experience with the pre-legislativo popular for the creation of the Water Law (2014). The administration’s mishandling of these participatory platforms can incite citizen distrust for the participatory mechanisms and administration as well as for adjacent state institutions, such as the Judicial Branch (via
CPCCS) and the Legislative Branch (via COPISA, iniciativa popular and pre-legislativo popular ).
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Citizens who participate in CPCCS and COPISA (2013-present) assemblies are bombarded with messages that they are model citizens “participating” in and directing national policy. In practice, participants become passive, uncritical, and co-opted attendees, subjects who are directed by state actors who are the active agents and ensure the audience agrees to administration’s policy plans (Vega, 2013; Cordova, 2014: 20). Participants, rather than being active decision makers, become an audience. Sensing there is no room in the assemblies for genuine debate or dissent, they self-censor or do not return to the arena. These
“participatory” entities have merely become avenues for the administration to “use
‘participatory’ institutions to enlarge the Executive Branch” (Palacios, 2012).
As state agencies promise “participation,” but merely offer up administration plans and initiatives to participants, autonomous citizens and state actors cannot begin to develop, on their own sovereign and collaborative terms, procedures, rules, best practices, and expectations of the mechanisms. They are robbed of the opportunity to practice and to implement good governance. Instead, it becomes normal, universally accepted, and institutionalized (Mainwaring & Torcal, 2006) that the administration and AP, rather than citizens, direct and implement the rules of “participation” and policies.
Other citizens note the disconnection between the COPISA and CPCCS participatory rhetoric and their adhesion to the administration’s plans and abstain from the agencies altogether, exampled by CONAIE when it abstained from COPISA and the consulta pre- legislativa for the Land and Territories bill. Again, this denies citizens their democratic spaces to make legitimate claims on the state, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities for the public to exercise their democratic rights. Further investigation is necessary, but as the administration denies citizens access to these institutions, it may drive them to opt for change using public protests, which, since 2013, seem to be increasing both in number and the degree of violence.
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Government agencies’ violation of legal rules and procedures of the participatory mechanisms undermines the “participatory” system’s legitimacy and dependability. It perverts and erodes Ecuador’s already precarious democratic procedures, norms, and rule of law. These mechanisms were implemented to stamp out the crisis of representation. If these mechanisms fall prey to the same cycle of corruption and monopolization by government actors, a “crisis of participation” may develop.
Ironically, as these participatory platforms and procedures are weakened by the administration, decisions regarding the national political, economic, and social spheres are driven back to the realm of the populist, caudillo President Correa. In 2009, he declared, “The
President of the Republic … the boss of the entire Ecuadorian State,” a claim which he has largely put into action (Pasára, 2014: 68). The president’s political value and decision- making worth continue to increase. Thus, Correa provides the most accessible avenue to functional governability when compared to the other defunct state institutions and agencies.
This cyclical effect perverts, and then normalizes, a dysfunctional form of democracy.
Changing Contexts:
Brazil, on the other hand, where the Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario found inspiration for the power-sharing council for food sovereignty, is an innovator of participatory governance in Latin America. Brazil’s first national, power-sharing institution for public health was hard won over a 12-year period by civil and political society collaborations when it was finally codified in a 1990 national health care law. However, the first national power-sharing conference for public health, where “representatives from all … levels of Brazil’s government … [and] … representatives from relevant” civil society organizations create national health care policy guidelines, was initiated in 1941
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(Pogrebinschi & Samuels, 2014: 320). Citizens and government officials have been developing rules, procedures, and expectations of the conferences for decades.
According to scholars, the guidelines created at these health conferences have been widely accepted and implemented, and have had direct, positive causal effects on the accessibility and quality of health care for poor and disenfranchised populations of Brazilian society. Between 1986 and 2003, the “proportion of poor households accessing health services rose [from 9.73% to 14.18%]. Between 1992 and 2004, the national under-5 mortality figures fell from 65 to 27 per thousand … due in no small part to the nationalized health care system” that citizens help create and oversee (Cornwall, 2008: 2174).
Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-10) reinvigorated and expanded the
CONSEA power-sharing council in 2003 (Chmielewska & Souza, 2011; Pogrebinschi &
Samuels, 2014). In addition, he was instrumental to expanding the number and breadth of national conference topics during his two terms in office. Between 1992 and 2010, presidential administrations convened 83 national conferences on various topics. Lula alone convened 58 of them, 31% of which addressed “minority” rights issues. These conferences were legal and politically legitimate avenues for historically marginalized populations to propose policy (Pogrebinschi, 2014: 186), which Lula enacted by decree, as did congress via national legislation (Pogrebinschi, 2014: 198). Lula’s actions support the argument made earlier in this thesis that support from the Executive leader and his or her coalition is critical in the creation of functional participatory institutions. Brazil’s national-level administrations and institutions, it seems, are more responsive to the direct participation of a plurality of citizens in policy making compared to contemporary Ecuador.
Pogrebinschi & Samuels (2014) assert that “Brazil’s National Public Policy
Conferences pass the crucial test for any theory of participatory democracy … [and] participatory conception of democracy, … [which is] … participation’s causal efficacy on the
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 168 exercise of power … and governance … at the national level” (Pogrebinschi & Samuels,
2014: 317). In sum, in Brazil, participants in power-sharing mechanisms are often independent from government overreach, and citizens have the authority to direct national policy so that policy is more inclusive and universal in scope.
The Theory of Participatory Institutions:
The “exercise of power and governance” that Pogrebinschi & Samuels (2014) assert is the pinnacle of participatory experiences is similar to what Avritzer contends creates effective participatory institutions. Specifically, participatory institutions include citizens in the construction of its rules, enable distribution of power and resources among the citizenry, and provide government accountability (Avritzer, 2009: 63). Of these elements, citizen ability to jointly construct the institution’s rules with state actors is the most fundamental. If citizens and groups, in an autonomous and self-limiting manner, collectively collaborate with political society to create the rules of the institution, it is more likely that the rules and subsequent policies they help make will enable power and resource redistribution and elicit government accountability. Also, if citizens have authority in this process, it generally indicates that not only are participants organized and leveraged, but that influential and powerful political actors welcome citizens in policy making, which is the most critical feature in the creation of effective participatory institutions. Still, is it too much to expect that citizens help make their rules and policies and that the institutions deliver resources, power and government accountability to the people?
First, this theory was based on several municipal-level participatory institutions in
Brazil that have fulfilled these criteria, some to a greater degree than others. Cotacachi’s participatory institutions also met them. Representative democracies that are responsive to the plurality of the citizens in policy and programs and that avoid rampant corruption also
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 169 meet these criteria, so these criteria are not unattainability. Second, the democratic elements that participatory institutions can produce are the very elements for which civil society organizations in Ecuador have long fought. CONAIE and other organizations fervently demanded to be included in the rule-making and policymaking process of the 1998 constitution in order to mandate the redistribution of state resources. Civil society groups are widely credited with ousting three presidents on counts of corruption and with the goal of making government accountable. Also, Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario proposed the
National Council for Food Sovereignty to redistribute land and water resources and policymaking powers.
Constituent Assembly (2007-08) members wanted the constitution to codify participatory mechanisms at the national level in Ecuador to attain the goals that Avritzer says participatory institutions can provide. Assembly members sought, “new forms of direct participation … to empower citizens with the greatest capability to incite political policy and decision processes. … Participatory mechanisms are formulated with the notion to create accountability. … In contrast to the representative crisis, … participatory interaction between the citizenry and the political will … improves the quality of public services and governability, strengthens … public policies, … and deconcentrates power” (Langler, 2007:
96-97).
Ecuador codified participatory mechanisms, including COPISA, in several pieces of national legislation between 2008 and 2010. These mandates occupy several pages of national legal documents, and their presence can be found in budgets, buildings, and bureaucracy. Participatory platforms also occupy a space within the public imagination and expectation to enable redistribution and counter corruption. However, it is not so much that the goals and elements of participatory institutions, that both Avritzer and the Constitutent
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 170
Assembly put forth, are too high, but that perhaps Ecuador’s national-level context cannot support such elements of democracy at this juncture.
Avritzer states that participatory institutions are permanent interactions between the citizenry and the state to create policy. In his case studies he mentions that regular meetings were a part of the participatory institutions. However, he does not conceptualize the rudimentary importance that regular interactions can have on the functionality of participatory institutions (or institutions in general). Regular interactions among stakeholders of participatory institutions can help to establish routines, a procedural system, and, potentially, to enable accountability among the actors within the institution.
For example, Scott Mainwaring and Mariano Torcal (2006) assert that regular interactions within and among political parties and their constituents is the key component to developing a party system, which is critical to the functionality of representative democracies. In order to attain a political party system, though, regular, continuous, and
“patterned interactions” between and among parties and the citizenry need to emerge (205).
Only from there can a party system form. “A party system implies some continuity in the parties that form the system — that is, the institutionalization of political parties.
… Institutionalization refers to a process by which practices of organizations become well established and widely known, if not universally accepted. Actors develop expectations, orientations, and behavior based on the premise that this practice or organization will prevail into the foreseeable future. … Institutionalized systems manifest … stability in patterns and less volatility, [which] develops legitimacy [and] helps stabilize party systems” (206). Scott
Mainwaring & Timothy R. Scully add that “institutionalized party systems foster greater accountability,” a foundation for effective, sound governance (2008: 120). If Avritzer were to include in his theory the importance of regular, mutually agreed-upon interactions among participatory institutions’ stakeholders (perhaps in his discussion of participatory institution
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 171 design), he could assert that “regularity” is an important element of institutional design to enable accountability. Regular, “permanent interactions” are the foundation of what makes an institution an institution. It seems logical then that the element of regularity be included within the theory in order to get to the heart of what, in fact, makes an institution.
Though not a political party system, COPISA creators intended it to enable more effective governance. However, COPISA’s design never enabled, and members never created regular, permanent interactions among stakeholders. A system never evolved between
COPISA and the citizenry. Its procedures were not “well established” or “widely known.”
This weakened both its dependability among the public and its own political leverage to provide tangible food sovereignty policies, services and programs.
Improving COPISA:
Though a weak state agency, COPISA may still be able increase its ability to implement food sovereignty policy. A possible solution is that COPISA continues to do what it is doing. In 2014 COPISA held approximately 23 meetings with sub-national governments and civil society organizations, promoting and educating them about food sovereignty practices (Rendición de Cuentas: COPISA, 2014). As discussed in Chapter Two, the
Citizens’ Action civil society organization in Brazil played a large role in gaining government support to implement the first iteration of CONSEA in 1993 (Silva, Del Grossi,
De Franca, 2011: 10). The Citizens Action brought together, on a national scale, organizations whose members included a variety of classes, ethnicities, and genders whose purposes varied, but who were all united to end hunger in Brazil. If COPISA continues to rally support for and knowledge of food sovereignty at the community and provincial levels, and COPISA accumulates a critical mass of bottom-up support for food sovereignty that is
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 172 universal in scope and representation, COPISA may strengthen and gain public support for food sovereignty over the long term.
Horizontal collaboration is another factor that enables effective participatory governance. National System of Food Sovereignty (SISAN) is the horizontal group of government actors mandated by the LORSA reform (2010) to work with COPISA on food sovereignty initiatives. SISAN held its first meeting in October 2015. It is constituted of one representative each from the ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Public Health, and
Social and Economic Inclusion, as well as the National Secretary of Planning, COPISA, and one representative from several sub-national government agencies. This SISAN meeting initiated formal dialogue among various influential national-level state agencies. If these vertical and horizontal relations can be fostered and converge around COPISA, then, at minimum, this could increase its political legitimacy and leverage to enable COPISA to be a supportive hub of food sovereignty programs. Perhaps COPISA should continue as it is and foment gradual, solid support along the vertical and horizontal axes to establish food sovereignty as a permanent, authoritative component of the government.
Contributions to Scholarship:
The theory of participatory institutions questions the assumption that a participatory model that functions in one context will work in another. This was the unfortunate assumption, or hope, that Mesa Agraria, Colectivo Agrario, and legislators made when they tried to introduce a power-sharing food sovereignty institution from Brazil into Ecuador.
Effective participatory institutions emerge because local stakeholders create them to fit their context. This study of COPISA affirms Avritizer’s assertion that the necessary civil society and political society characteristics and their interactions (inputs) are necessary to install a power-sharing participatory institution (output). Ecuador’s context did not meet these
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 173 necessary inputs, resulting in an unleveraged state agency (output). This study also affirms
Avritizer’s and other studies of participatory institutions, studies that argue that the Executive leader and his or her coalition for or against the institution will likely determine if the institution is functional or derailed.
Mainwaring & Scully (2008) say that “historical legacies shape the prospects for the future success of democratic governance,” but neither do histories necessarily determine futures. This thesis contributes to this notion that standards of governance and democracy persist over time. I demonstrate in this thesis that Ecuador has a long history of a weak rule of law as well as an inchoate, corrupt political representative system. It also has a history of failed participatory institutions. I assert that COPISA’s transformation into a weak state agency is an outgrowth of Ecuador’s tendency to be a delegative democracy unresponsive to the plurality of the citizenry.
This thesis also adds to the body of literature of state and civil society interactions in
Latin America. CONAIE dominated the public sphere as the most influential civil society organization throughout the 1990s in Ecuador (Zamosc, 1994; Yashar, 2005; Silva, 2009:
166). However, the political context shifted in the 2000s and presidents became increasingly powerful and populist. President Correa has the most legal authority of any Ecuadorian president before him. He also enjoys congressional party majority, which has not occurred in decades. This grants him tremendous decision-making authority. These political and governmental changes have influenced and affected civil society behavior. Primarily because of the political ambience of the Correa administration CONAIE holds much less space within the public sphere and is, in fact, criminalized. Meanwhile, the traditionally less influential
FENOCIN, because of its alignment with the President and the AP, has become politically more leveraged than in previous decades.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 174
Not only does this thesis add to the discussion of the particular contours of Ecuador’s civic associations, but it also lends support to Oxhorn’s (2011) assertion that “States … play a role in directly creating or strengthening civil society actors. … [They also] … play an important role in structuring the public sphere, … the arena in which … the state works … with civil society … [to] expand citizenship rights, … and the degree to which they enable citizens to relate to one another … in the public sphere” (17-18). In other words, state actors and institutions can and do directly influence citizenship rights, and how citizens interact among themselves and within political society. This thesis demonstrates the degree to which
President Correa and his tremendous de jure and de facto powers, political coalition, and public support have enabled him to shape and direct civil society groups, in this case, to the detriment of democracy.
This thesis adds to the growing literature on the centrality of President Correa in the very functionality of Ecuador’s state, politics, and society. Perhaps most striking about the literature on Ecuador’s political economy, state policies, institutions, and civil society is that it converges on Correa’s strong influence or decision-making power over all these topics in contemporary Ecuador (Gallegos, 2012; Ospina Peralta, 2015). Mainwaring & Scully (2010) say that “populist leaders” like “President Correa, … tend to implement policies detrimental to the future of their countries [and] frequently have tenuous commitments to democracy”
(4). By examining COPISA, this thesis contributes to the discussion of whether, or to what degree, Correa and the AP currently compromise Ecuador’s quality of democracy.
This thesis contributes to the literature on COPISA from the point of view a participatory democracy. When COPISA is discussed in the literature, which is limited, authors focus on the food sovereignty aspects of the agency. For example, Patrick Clark states (2015) in his recent publication, “Can the State Foster Food Sovereignty? Insights from the Case of Ecuador,” that he contributes to the discussion of the “political processes that led
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 175 to the institutionalization of food sovereignty … in the case of Ecuador” (2). However, Clark basically ignores COPISA, likely because COPISA currently plays such a weak role in the political food sovereignty panorama. Karla Pena (2015), too, discusses COPISA in her recent article, “Social Movements, the State, and the Making of Food Sovereignty in Ecuador.” She discusses COPISA as one way “social movements and the state articulate … food sovereignty as a national policy” thus, suggesting that COPISA is truly participatory. However, when one applies a participatory governance-based theory to COPISA, as does this thesis, one sees that
COPISA is not the participatory institution that COPISA and Pena (2015) claim it is. It is, instead, a state agency providing a cover for the lack of real citizen authority in policy making.
It is important to understand how and why COPISA, too, fits into the mural of
“participatory” spaces in Ecuador. There are a few seminal scholarly works published in
English that contribute to the understanding of Andean participatory experiences (Van Cott,
2008; Cameron, 2010; Cameron, Hershberg & Sharpe, 2012). This thesis helps fill the gap in the participatory democracy literature of the Andean region.
Finally, this text also adds to the nascent discussion on the myriad new
“participatory” agencies introduced in Ecuador between 2009 and 2010. Gallegos (2013) discusses that mandated municipal-level participatory entities are hardly attended; Ospina
Peralta (2011, 2012) discusses how the CPCCS is relatively exclusive and only accessible to certain classes and educational backgrounds; Pachano (2010) says the CPCCS cannot be participatory because, by design, it is not independent from the government or administration, and citizens have no authority in its operations. This discussion of COPISA adds to this conversation about recently installed “participatory” agencies in Ecuador that have a common characteristic theme — that is, they wear a cloak of participation, but have been effectively co-opted by the administration.
Copisa in Ecuador: Participation That Wasn't 176
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