Clayton Frederick Is Approved
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara The Practice of Food Sovereignty and Buen Vivir in Ecuador’s Sierra Region A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Global Studies by Clayton David Frederick Committee in charge: Professor Aashish Mehta, Co-Chair Professor John Foran, Co-Chair Professor Raymond Clémençon September 2015 The thesis of Clayton Frederick is approved. ____________________________________________ Raymond Clémençon ____________________________________________ John Foran, Committee Co-Chair ____________________________________________ Aashish Mehta, Committee Co-Chair September 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the faculty and staff of the Global Studies department at UC Santa Barbara for their support, especially those faculty members who graciously agreed to serve on my thesis committee. I would also like to express my gratitude to the staff of Huayra Causay, without whose help my fieldwork would have been impossible, for the late-night conversations and camaraderie. Finally, I must express my humble thanks to all the Ecuadorians with whom I interacted during my time in the field but especially to the peoples of Quillán, Uksha, and El Valle for their generosity in welcoming me into their communities and their homes. iii ABSTRACT The Practice of Food Sovereignty and Buen Vivir in Ecuador’s Sierra Region by Clayton Frederick Ecuadorian member organizations of the transnational social movement La Vía Campesina won legal recognition of the state’s responsibility to guarantee one of their central demands, food sovereignty, or the people’s right to determine their agri-food systems and the extent to which this right can be exercised, in that country’s 2008 constitution and 2009 food sovereignty law. These victories came after decades of uprisings by rural and indigenous social movements resulted in the election in 2006 of Ecuador’s populist president, Rafael Correa, who denounced neoliberalism and made the alternative development paradigm of buen vivir (or “living well,” from the Kichwa sumak kawsay) a central part of his Citizen’s Revolution. Academic literature in the wake of these developments has focused on the ideas of plurinationality and ecologically sustainable development embodied in the concept of buen vivir (Davalos 2009, Escobar 2010, Cobey 2012, Oviedo 2014), analysis of state-social movement interaction in institutionalizing the food sovereignty policy regime (Peña 2013), and participation in this process by urban consumer movements (Van Ongeval 2012). iv Nevertheless, research into the praxis of food sovereignty and buen vivir by rural communities themselves remains limited. In order to address the dearth in academic literature on these topics and investigate the gap between food sovereignty in principle and in practice, this project takes an action research approach to investigate practices of food sovereignty in three communities of the Sierra region of Ecuador. Specifically, the questions of 1) how practices of food sovereignty mesh with or contradict state policy and social movement rhetoric, 2) how such practices inform the notion of buen vivir as an alternative development strategy, and 3) the extent to which an action researcher can contribute to the food sovereignty of the communities being studied are addressed. These are addressed via the researcher’s participant observation at the invitation of each community as a participant on a multicultural exchange program sponsored by the Quito-based NGO Huayra Causay, for whom the researcher interned for a period of six months. The study finds positive outcomes such as mobilization for grassroots land reform, collaboration with multinational NGOs for targeted investment in irrigation infrastructure and the creation of community governance for its oversight, and partnership with municipal governments to promote rural producer’s associations with direct marketing opportunities such as farmer’s markets. However, significant obstacles still remain, such as contradictory policy, high rate of return conditionality for state investment, and intransigence of the national assembly in the participatory legislative process for food sovereignty, making the notion of buen vivir a still-distant ideal for the communities studied. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Background .................................................................................................. 4 Methods ..................................................................................................... 33 Results ....................................................................................................... 36 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 95 Appendix ................................................................................................. 100 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 111 vi List of Acronyms AAPP – Asociación Agrícola Plaza Pallares, Plaza Pallares Agricultural Association AASM – Asociación Agrícola Santa Marta, Santa Marta Agricultural Association ABAPP – Asociación de Bienes Agrícolas y Productores de Píllaro, Association of Agricultural Goods and Producers of Píllaro APAzuay – Asociación de Productores Agroecológicos de Azuay, Association of Agroecological Producers of Azuay BNF – Banco Nacional de Fomento, National Development Bank CODENPE – Consejo de Desarollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador, Council for the Development of the Nations and Peoples of Ecuador CONAIE – Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador, Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador CONFEUNASSC-CNC – Confederación Nacional de Afiliados al Seguro Social Campesino – Coordinadora Nacional Campesina, National Confederation of Beneficiaries of Peasant Social Security – National Peasant Coordinator COOTAD – Código Orgánico de Organización Territorial, Autonomía y Descentralización, Code of Territorial Organization, Autonomy, and Decentralization COPISA – Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria, Plurinational and Intercultural Council for Food Sovereignty ECUARUNARI – Ecuador Runakunapak Rikcharimuy, Indigenous Movement of Ecuador ERAS – Escuelas de la Revolución Agraria, Ministry of Agriculture Schools of the Agrarian Revolution FENOCIN – Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas y Negras, National Confederation of Peasant, Indigenous, and Black Organizations FLACSO – Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Social Sciences University of Latin America, Ecuador campus FOCCAP – Federación de Organizaciones Campesinas de la Parroquia San Andres del Cantón Píllaro, Federation of Peasant Organizations of the San Andres Parish of the Canton of Píllaro IEPS – Instituto Nacional de Economía Popular y Solidaria, National Institute for a People’s Economics of Solidarity vii LORSA – Ley Orgánica del Régimen de la Soberanía Alimentaria, 2009 Food Sovereignty Law MAGAP – Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería, Acuacultura y Pesca, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture and Fisheries MCPGAD – Ministerio de Coordinación de la Política y Gobiernos Autónomos Descentralizados, Ministry of Policy Coordination and Decentralized Autonomous Governments (defunct) MIPRO – Ministerio de Industrias y Productividad, Ministry of Industry and Productivity PAU – Programa de Agricultura Urbana, Urban farming program of the city of Cuenca PNBV – Plan Nacional del Buen Vivir, National Plan for Buen Vivir PRONERI – Programa de Negocios Inclusivos Rurales, Ministry of Agriculture Program for Inclusive Rural Business SENPLADES – Secretaria Nacional de Planificación y Desarollo, Secretariat for Planning and Development viii Introduction A cornerstone of the political success of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, his left-wing coalition Alianza PAIS’s Citizenʼs Revolution, and the developmental paradigm of buen vivir (or “living well,” from the Kichwa sumak kawsay) in Ecuador has been the enshrinement in that countryʼs 2008 Constitution of the right of the people to food sovereignty, or popular control over the agri-food system, and the state’s responsibility to guarantee it. This result was in no small part thanks to the growing outcry for food sovereignty by the transnational social movement La Vía Campesina, which since its origins in the early 1990s has made food sovereignty a master concept in its struggle to promote the livelihoods of its millions of members worldwide, and whose member organizations within Ecuador played an important role in the coalition that brought Correa to power. In 2009, the Ecuadorian national assembly further codified the country’s approach to food sovereignty into law with the ratification of the LORSA food sovereignty law. This law defined the tenets of food sovereignty to be recognized by the state, such as producers’ right of access to land, water, and other productive resources, and established a council comprised of civil society and social movement actors, COPISA, charged with the participatory elaboration of public policy for food sovereignty. Despite these hard-won victories, however, implementation of the LORSA’s provisions remains far from the ideals of buen vivir, an alternative to neoliberal development linked to an indigenous cosmovision for indigenous rights and the rights of