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1 | A LTERNAUTAS 5 (1) – J ULY 2018 Alternautas La tri (Re)Searching Development: The Abya Yala Chapter [Pick the date] Alternautas – Vol.5 – Issue 1 – July 2018 The case of MINKA movement in Bolivia and its aim to re-politicize indigenous peoples – Melisa Gorondy Novak Lives Uprooted: Urban Inequality and Olympic Evictions in Rio de Janeiro – Margit Ytsanes Sumak Kawsay is not Buen Vivir – Javier Cuestas-Caza The quinoa boom and the commoditisation debate: critical reflections on the re-emergence of a peasantry in the Southern Altiplano – Maurice Tschopp Food Sovereignty in Latin America: a gendered and multiescalar perspective – Gabriela Pinheiro Machado Brochner The Trinity of Buen Vivir in Ecuador | La trinidad del buen vivir en Ecuador – Antonio Luis Hidalgo-Capitan & Ana Patricia Cubillo-Guevara Small-scale Farmers’ Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Peruvian Andes: A Case in the Quillcay River Basin – Anna Heikkinen Housing Movements and Participation in Institutional Spaces – Valesca Lima [Type the document subtitle] | user ISSN - 2057-4924 -- Alternautas is a peer EDITORIAL BOARD reviewed academic blog that publishes content Adrian E. Beling (Humboldt Universität, Germany – Universidad related to Latin American Alberto Hurtado, Chile) Critical Development Alexander D’Aloia (Australian National University, Australia) thinking. Ana Estefanía Carballo (University of Melbourne, Australia) Diego Silva (The Graduate Institute of International and Development It intends to serve as a Studies, Switzerland) platform for testing, Emilie Dupuits (Université de Genève, Switzerland) circulating, and debating Gibrán Cruz-Martínez (University of Agder, Norway) new ideas and reflections Johannes M. Waldmüller (Universidad de las Américas, Ecuador) on these topics, expanding Juan Jaime Loera González (Escuela de Antropología e Historia del beyond the geographical, Norte de México, México) cultural and linguistic Julien Vanhulst (Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile) boundaries of Latin María del Pilar Ramírez Gröbli (University of Bern, Switzerland) America - Abya Yala. We María Eugenia Giraudo (University of Warwick, United Kingdom) hope to contribute to María Mancilla García (University of Stockholm, Sweden) connecting ideas, and to Sue A. S. Iamamoto (Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil) provide a space for intellectual exchange and COLLABORATORS - COMMISSIONING EDITORS & COPY EDITORS discussion for a nascent Anna Grimaldi (King’s College, United Kingdom) academic community of Anne Freeland (Columbia University, United States) scholars, devoted to Dana Brablec Sklenar (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom) counter-balancing Laura Sauls (Clark University, United States) mainstream Louise de Mello (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain; Universidade understandings of Federal Fluminense, Brazil) development. Martina Tonet (University of Stirling & Newcastle University, United Kingdom) -- Sebastian Manuel Garbe (International Graduate Centre for the Study www.alternautas.net of Culture, Germany) f: /Alternautas t: @alternautas [email protected] London, UK. ISSN - 2057-4924 -- 3 | A LTERNAUTAS 5 (1) – J ULY 2018 Contents Preface .................................................................................... 4 The case of MINKA movement in Bolivia and its aim to re- politicize indigenous peoples – Melisa Gorondy Novak ........... 10 Lives Uprooted: Urban Inequality and Olympic Evictions in Rio de Janeiro – Margit Ytsanes .................................................... 33 Sumak Kawsay is not Buen Vivir – Javier Cuestas-Caza ......... 51 The quinoa boom and the commoditisation debate: critical reflections on the re-emergence of a peasantry in the Southern Altiplano – Maurice Tschopp .................................................. 67 Food Sovereignty in Latin America: a gendered and multiescalar perspective – Gabriela Pinheiro Machado Brochner ................. 86 The Trinity of Buen Vivir in Ecuador – Antonio Luis Hidalgo- Capitan & Ana Patricia Cubillo-Guevara ............................. 103 Small-scale Farmers’ Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Peruvian Andes: A Case in the Quillcay River Basin – Anna Heikkinen ........................................................................... 115 Housing Movements and Participation in Institutional Spaces – Valesca Lima ....................................................................... 135 Preface | 4 Preface Welcome to the fifth volume of Alternautas! 2018 is witnessing two major processes affecting Latin-American politics in very different ways. On the one hand, the political crisis in Brazil has developed in alarming and dramatic events with the politically motivated murder of Marielle Franco, a socialist and black feminist city councillor in Rio de Janeiro, and the scalating interference of the Army and the Judiciary in the presidential elections, resulting in the arbitrary arrest of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The combined reading of these events indicates that Brazilian institutions are failing to act impartially and are having a significant impact on the country’s democracy. On the other hand, in the past months Nicaragua has witnessed a wave of protests from different sectors of society, which have been met with violent repression by the Ortega/Murillo government. During this time, access to cities has been blocked, protesters have been arrested and disappeared, and some accounts report more than 300 deaths in 75 days of demonstrations. The role of the state in these events is linked to the deployment of the riot-squad police and of pro-government youth groups who have been accused of acting as paramilitary agents. Sparked by student protests, the movement has been joined by labour unions, business groups, academics and intellectuals in an uproar that goes beyond opposition to the state’s negligence and oppressive policies. The demonstrations are also fueled by the discomfort caused by the malfunctioning of the democratic systems and by alliances of the government with segments of society that a large part of the population interprets as a betrayal of the Sandinista ideals. In the face of these political processes, academia is progressively taking position to clarify the empirical facts and produce rigorous analysis. Alternautas reproduced an 5 | A LTERNAUTAS 5 (1) – J ULY 2018 article1 by Professor José Luis Rocha where he explains the events leading up to the demonstrations. Alternautas is committeed to supporting these kinds of initiatives, by analysing these events through the framework of critical development studies. We are an academic blog focused on discussing development through critical lenses with a particular Latin-American perspective. During the last five years, we have published original and translated articles from young and prominent scholars from Latin America and other parts of the world, contributing not only to academic discussions, but also to creating a fertile environment where non-mainstream ideas and perspectives on development can flourish. The contributions presented in this fifth issue offer valuable debates and analyses that resonate with the contemporary transformations and challenges faced by Latin America and the world. The different papers offer both theoretical and empirical discussions on a variety of issues including Buen Vivir, climate change vulnerability, food sovereignty and gender, popular participation, urban inequality, the indigenous movement and the modernisation of peasantry. Melisa Gorondy Novak’s contribution examines the emergence of MINKA (Indianista Katarista Movement), a Bolivian indigenous social movement whose main aim is to reflect on indigenous identities and knowledge in the contemporary context. The movement criticizes how the idea of the indigenous has been constructed and enacted by the MAS government, producing specific forms of power and knowledge. In addition, the movement aims to challenge colonial forms of power and bring a new layer of politicization to Bolivian society. The article uses the concept of “power-knowledge regimes” in order to analyze how MINKA, through specific knowledge-practices, is challenging what is conceived as ‘the indigenous’. Margit Ytsanes’ article seeks to analyse the eviction of over 22.000 families from their home as Rio de Janeiro prepared to host the 2016 Olympics. Margit argues that while often applied as part of ‘urban renewal’ processes in different locations, forced evictions are highly problematic. The discussion is based on ethnographic fieldwork 1 The article has been originally published in http://www.alternautas.net/blog/2018/7/10/opinion- the-nicaraguan-tiger-and-the-april-rebellion, on July, 10th, 2018. Preface | 6 of the author in Vila Autódromo and among former residents, during and after the eviction process. It is inspired by the concept of ‘root shock’ developed in psychiatric studies. This concept takes the loss of home and its surrounding environment as a traumatic event with enduring impacts for individuals as well as for communities. Javier Cuestas-Caza’s essay seeks to deepen and broaden the discussion on the translation of the term Sumak Kawsay into Buen Vivir. By this way, Javier discusses its meaning from each epistemic community, its cultural referent and its relationship with development. Despite being widely used as synonyms, the author argues on the imprecise translation, their different epistemology, and different ontology. These three arguments are the result of an extensive bibliographic review of more