Gender and Neoliberal States Feminists Remake the Nation in Ecuador1 by Amy Lind

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES 10.1177/0094582X02239204LindARTICLE / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR Gender and Neoliberal States Feminists Remake the Nation in Ecuador1 by Amy Lind

Ecuador’s recent history reveals some of the gendered contradictions of neoliberal reform in the context of nationalist politics. In August 1996, Presi- dent Abdalá Bucaram entered office on a populist platform. Bucaram had secured support for his election by promising to implement less severe economic policies and alleviate poverty, by identifying with the masses through (among other things) his musical talent (he produced his own CD while in office and performed publicly), and by handing out money to impoverished supporters as he toured the country. He appointed family members to key political positions and was therefore criticized for nepotism,2 but he also appointed the first female vice president, Rosalía Arteaga, and the first self- defined feminist labor minister, Guadalupe León. Once in office, Bucaram utilized a range of populist strategies, some of them laden with gendered contradictions. To maintain political support, one controversial and well- documented event was his formal support of Ecuadorian-born Lorena Bobbitt.3 After her trial in the United States, he invited Bobbitt to the Ecua-

Amy Lind is an assistant professor of women’s studies at Arizona State University. She has pub- lished numerous articles on gender, development, and women’s movements in Latin America. The research for this article was conducted in April 1998 and August 2001 and through ongoing e-mail correspondence, telephone conversations, and analysis of media coverage of the 1997 political crisis throughout the past five years. It is an extension of research on women’s organizations and neoliberal politics in Ecuador that began in 1988. The author thanks Fulbright-Hayes and the Inter-American Foundation for their support of her 1992–1993 research and the Women’s Studies Program and the Latin American Studies Center at Arizona State University for their support in later stages of the project. In Ecuador, she thanks the students in her April 1998 Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) course for their contributions to the ideas presented in this article. She also thanks Gioconda Herrera, Rocío Rosero, Maruja Barrig, Virginia Vargas, Vivian Arteaga, and Sonia Alvarez for their input, Silvia Vega and Patricia Palacios for information on the Coordinadora Política de Mujeres Ecuatorianas, and Susana Wappenstein for her comments on an earlier version of this article. Finally, she thanks the reviewers and editors for their comments and suggestions. While many people have provided insights, all opinions expressed in this article are her own. LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 128, Vol. 30 No. 1, January 2003 181-207 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X02239204 © 2003 Latin American Perspectives

181 182 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES dorian National Congress and honored her as a national hero for having “cut off neocolonial relations.” During the same period he proposed legislation calling for castration of convicted rapists and child molesters. He made this proposal with little if any prior consultation with feminist state policy makers and activists despite the long history of feminist organizing and institution building in Ecuador (Rodríguez, 1994). These populist antics damaged relations between Bucaram and sectors of civil society including business and political elites, nonprofit and other private organizations, and the poor urban and rural sectors that had supported his candidacy in the first place. During this same period, Bucaram and other male appointees in his administration were charged with misogyny and—in at least one well- publicized case—outright physical abuse of female state employees.4 In addition, Bucaram did not follow through on his promise of milder adjustment measures; rather, his administration implemented a stricter set of adjustment measures than had the previous conservative administration of President Sixto Durán Ballén (1992–1996). As a result, he lost his primary base of support—the urban and rural poor—and ultimately, in February 1997, was forced to resign following an unprecedented, spontaneous mobilization of over 2 million Ecuadorians and a congressional vote to remove him for “mental incapacity” (see Báez et al., 1997). Bucaram’s term in office was short-lived but significant. His populist strategies and the political crisis that ensued during his time in office opened the way for a series of important national debates about reforming the political system. These debates culminated in the drafting of the 1998 constitution and in significant reforms in political parties and campaigns, including the introduction of a quota system for female candidates (see Rosero, Vela, and Reyes Ávila, 2000). What was at stake in these discussions was nothing less than the nation itself, and what was accomplished was nothing less than a “remaking” of the nation through a series of negotiations, disagreements, and compromises among state and civil-society actors. Significantly, the political crisis—Bucaram’s “unmaking” of the nation5—led to the further democratization of civil society, at least as inscribed in law and policy, if not in practice. During the drafting of the constitution, indigenous, women’s, and other social movements were represented in the discussions alongside politicians and party representatives. Although their perspectives were not entirely incorporated into the final documents, they were nonetheless influential, and while these groups continue to be marginalized political actors their presence can no longer be ignored. The women’s movement is one example of a social movement that has worked for institutional change in this context. Women’s nongovernmental Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 183 organizations (NGOs) and women working within the state, in rural and community-based organizations, and in political parties all participated in the national strike leading up to Bucaram’s removal from office. Four strands of women’s activism were influential during this period: feminists working within the state women’s agency, the Consejo Nacional de las Mujeres (National Women’s Council–CONAMU), the Coordinadora Política de Mujeres Ecuatorianas, a network dedicated to engendering6 all state and political institutions, the Foro Permanente de la Mujer, and the so-called autonomous feminists. Indigenous women also organized, although at that time primarily from their positions within the indigenous movement. While their leadership has since become highly visible in Ecuador,7 during the Bucaram period they were organized primarily on the basis of their ethnic/ racial status rather than on the basis of gender. This division reflects a long history of cultural tensions over ideas about ethnic/racial interests and gender interests, stemming from colonialist ideologies, Eurocentrism within the women’s movement, and sexism within the indigenous movement.8 In this article I address the political crisis of 1997 and the strands of feminist action that became visible during that period,9 which serve to illustrate some of the gendered contradictions of neoliberal reform in the context of nationalist politics. I demonstrate how social actors operating from locations as divergent as the Office of the President, CONAMU, NGOs, and community-based grassroots organizations have contributed to remaking the Ecua- dorian nation through new legislation, public political discourse, and direct protest. Their strategies operate in the context of transnational discourses about gender, nation building, and development in Ecuador.10 They utilize particular notions of gender and national identity to intervene politically in the public arena, thus invoking a form of “strategic essentialism” in an attempt to challenge the state and remake the nation (Fuss, 1989; Butler, 1990). Yet as they struggle they also help, however unwittingly, to institution- alize neoliberal state formation in Ecuador. I begin by addressing the gender dimensions of neoliberal reform in Ecua- dor and demonstrating how some women have become the new recipients of development. Next I analyze the Bucaram administration and the roles played by the four above-mentioned feminist strands. I go on to address the contradictory institutional position and practices of CONAMU as a way of understanding the contradictory position of feminist policy makers within neoliberal states. Finally, I draw out the broader implications of this case for research on women’s movements, nationalism, and neoliberal state reform in Latin America. 184 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

WOMEN IN NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIES: THE NEW RECIPIENTS OF DEVELOPMENT?

As have other Latin American countries, since the early 1980s Ecuadorian governments have received loans and implemented International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank-inspired structural adjustment measures. In Ecua- dor these measures have included state downsizing, the privatization of state industries, trade liberalization, political decentralization, and, generally speaking, a move to insert Ecuador into the global economy by letting the “free market” work on its own. The Durán Ballén administration accelerated the process of restructuring through its “modernization plan,” a plan that included the reduction of trade barriers, the promotion of export-led development, and the privatization of key national industries. The administration also restructured and downsized social and economic ministries, laid off 20,000+ state employees, and implemented a World Bank/IMF-designed emergency social investment fund to address the “social costs” of structural adjustment. These policy changes occurred alongside of and partially contributed to an increase in nationalism manifested in the Ecuador-Peru border war in 1994 (EIU, 1995). Unlike its political predecessors, which had been fairly resistant to the privatization of national industries, the Durán Ballén administration instituted more drastic changes for the state and the economy. In the process, it alienated key economic and political sectors and marginalized others—a strategy that resonates with those of other Latin American governments that have implemented harsh adjustment policies by suspending some democratic rights, such as Bolivian President Víctor Paz Estenssoro’s “new economic policies” and the repression of mining labor in the mid-1980s, Peruvian Pres- ident Alberto Fujimori’s “Fujishocks” in the early 1990s, and former Ecua- dorian President Jamil Mahuad’s (August 1998–January 2000) economic policies, which resulted in a series of massive protests and riots that ended in a military takeover.11 In similar fashion, in 1999 the Durán Ballén administration came to represent the “failure” of the democratic political system for many sectors in Ecuador. In fact, this “failure” was really about the shift in relationships between the state, the private sector, and civil society that has characterized governments undergoing the change toward a neoliberal model and their integration into an increasingly global political economy. Bucaram announced his economic policy strategy relatively late, in December 1996, four months after entering office. By this time, Ecuador’s national foreign debt had reached more than US$12 billion and the government’s budget deficit more than US$1 billion (World Bank, 1999). The Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 185 administration further institutionalized neoliberal politics. While the president and the social welfare minister (his brother, Adolfo) handed out money to impoverished supporters throughout the country, citizens were asked to contribute to paying back the US$12 billion national debt by “sacrificing” for the nation, in essence, to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in the face of structural adjustments and other neoliberal reforms (Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar, 1998: 1). While this logic is not unique (see Phillips, 1998), Bucaram’s proposal was seen as deceitful, since just months earlier he had promised a lighter adjustment. His proposals caused the prices of elec- tricity, fuel, and telephone service to increase as much as 300 percent. High prices fueled protest by consumers as well as labor unions representing taxi drivers, street vendors, truck drivers, and small and large businesses, among others. His populist strategies may have pushed some sectors into further iso- lation, but they catalyzed others into immediate action—a common contradictory effect of neoliberal reform (Benería, 1992; Lind, 1997). As a result of his policies, coupled with charges of corruption and general mistrust of his administration, Bucaram faced opposition from people of all social classes and geographic origins. Since the early 1980s, numerous sectors of women have experienced specific, gendered impacts of structural adjustment policies (Moser, 1989; Rodríguez, 1994). Local women’s organizations in Ecuador have grown in the past two decades and have provided important networks for channeling resources and confronting the economic crisis on various levels. It is these types of organizations, most of which are of popular, working-class, rural poor, and/or indigenous backgrounds (Centro María Quilla/CEAAL, 1990), that have become the new recipients or targets of development. Historically, they have formed to respond collectively to the negative effects of economic crisis. Now that they have become further institutionalized, often with economic aid from the state, NGOs, and/or international development organizations, they are assumed to be capable of distributing resources to local communities at times when the state can no longer provide this type of welfare. Therefore their struggles for survival have become institutionalized and incorporated into the logic of development. As volunteer providers of goods and services to poor communities, community women’s organizations are the ideal recipients of neoliberal state policies. Symbolically and institutionally, women’s organizations are targeted as consumers—and also as producers—in the market economy. Their role as community organizers and volunteer distributors of local services and goods places them increasingly in the position of recipients of “development” because they have knowledge and experience in community planning 186 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES initiatives and the necessary community networks and structure to support local development endeavors. As CONAMU, along with the state itself, shifts toward a model of decentralization, including the delegation of state responsibilities to local communities and the state subcontracting of NGOs and community organizations, women’s organizations are targeted as poten- tial participants. This process, in which women’s organizations contend for state contracts, forces organizations to identify their activities in relation to the market economy: they are measured increasingly in terms of the costs and benefits of their activities and in terms of their “efficiency” as service providers and in resource management and distribution. What were once collective strategies to deal with a temporary crisis are now institutionalized and defined in terms of the market. This logic is evident in state and international development policies at large as well as in gender and development policies. CONAMU plays an important role in promoting gender issues from within the state and in defining its primary recipients: “poor women” and, most specifically, local women’s organizations. As it delegates project management and implementation to municipalities or to private women’s organizations, CONAMU may no longer be directly responsible for these aspects of the process, but it continues to define the parameters of state gender and development policy in the communities where projects exist. In this sense, CONAMU continues to act as a state interlocutor vis-à-vis its recipients, “poor women” and the loosely defined women’s movement (from which some CONAMU employees developed their political formation), despite its shift toward a decentralized, privatized model of state policy implementation. Contrary to the claim that state retrenchment leads to diminished state power over the economy and civil society (see Schild, 1998), CONAMU retains decision-making power in the gender and development arena. It continues to be the primary institution that determines how women are to be “integrated into development” in the country and thus retains “interpretive” and institutional power in this field.12 Therefore its relationship with local women’s organizations and with various sectors of women in general is fraught with contradictions.13

RESISTING BUCARAM: FOUR FEMINIST STRANDS

A series of events have led to an unprecedented level of protest in Ecuador in recent years, even before the February 1997 protests (e.g., Dash, 1997a, b). The indigenous movement, led most visibly by the Confederación de Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 187

Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Ecuadorian Indige- nous Nationalities—CONAIE), has staged many national protests and provided an important critique of state hegemony and political power through its demands for a pluralistic state (see Sawyer, 1997). The women’s movement has gained significant visibility in the past two decades, and more recently other identity-based social movements—including environmental, human rights, gay and lesbian, sex workers’, and Afro-Ecuadorian—have also gained visibility. Bucaram’s ousting was significant in many ways. To begin with, the massive protest that led to his departure from office was unprecedented in con- temporary Ecuadorian history. A wide range of interests, reflecting diverse political positions and identities, was represented in the protest. Likewise, a number of issues were addressed by what were previously disconnected political movements. Identity-based social movements coincided with the already strong indigenous movement and more traditional labor movements in demanding political and economic change. “Neoliberalism” provided the political rubric under which seemingly diverse political movements and actors converged to address the political and economic crisis. The broad- based challenge reflected dissatisfaction both with the current economic model and with Bucaram’s nationalism and the general lack of democratic process. Few studies of the Bucaram protest emphasize political participation other than that of labor, CONAIE, and the indigenous movement (but see Rosero, 1997 and Arboleda, 1998), but feminist and women’s organizations played an important role in the February protest itself and in the subsequent organizing efforts at the state level and in NGOs and political networks. State-based feminists worked to reform and engender neoliberal state policy. The Coordinadora Política de Mujeres Ecuatorianas worked to engender state institutions and political parties. The Foro Permanente de la Mujer, then led by Guadalupe León and housed in her organization, the Centro de Estudios y Investigación de la Mujer Ecuatoriana (Center for Studies and Research on Ecuadorian Women—CEIME), sought support from a wide range of women in civil-society organizations. The “autonomous” feminists chose to remain ideologically and/or institutionally independent of the state and the internationally funded NGOs. While there is overlap between these strands, feminists themselves have distinguished them, and they reflect growing disagreement among feminist policy makers and activists regarding feminist action in the development arena. Each strand has responded to the political and economic crisis by developing an explicit strategy for addressing state, constitutional, and economic reform. 188 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Feminists from all four strands were critical of the contradictory practices of the Bucaram administration, the political transition,14 and the transition government of the former president of Congress, Fabián Alarcón. In a state- ment issued in Quito on February 27, 1997, after the national protest, the Coordinadora listed the following reasons for its dissatisfaction with the administration: (1) the designation of an unqualified director for the Direccion Nacional de la Mujer (National Women’s Department— DINAMU), (2) the proposal to modify the laws on presidential succession so that Vice President Arteaga would not become president, (3) Bucaram’s appropriation of legal reform proposals submitted by feminist organizations, including the Coordinadora, (4) the decoration of Lorena Bobbitt as a national hero, (5) the new rape legislation, including chemical castration for rapists, which was passed without public debate, and (6) Minister Adoum’s declaration that he wanted to be a “caveman for eating women alive” and his aggressive behavior toward women at state-owned Petroecuador (Vega, 1997). Most feminist professionals and local women’s organizations protested Bucaram’s simultaneous rejection and appropriation of feminist interests. By appointing the feminist Guadalupe León labor minister, Bucaram was attempting to gain feminist support, but he did so to achieve his own nationalist agenda. León’s appointment led to some of the conflicts among the various strands of feminist action; some feminists viewed her acceptance of the position as selling out to Bucaram populism. Following Bucaram’s ousting, as national committees were formed to redraft the constitution, there was increasing national debate about the role of social movements in formal party politics. In this context, feminists addressed corruption and misogyny in the Bucaram administration as a way of advancing their own goals of engendered and democratized political participation, formal democracy, and national development. In this way, gender served to catalyze feminist action against the neoliberal state. For years feminists have been critical of political corruption and opportunism as well as of neoliberal reform (see Lind, 2000a). Many of them have chosen to challenge the state from within it and, as in other countries undergoing neoliberal reform, while they claim to oppose neoliberalism, their discourse does not always coincide with their practice.15 In particular, feminists who struggle from within the state may be critical of neoliberal reform but contribute, however unwittingly, to the state’s neoliberal project. The question therefore arises to what extent feminists can work creatively and critically from within the neoliberal state. Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 189

WITHIN/AGAINST/FOR THE STATE: CONAMU

CONAMU is one example of feminists’ working within/against/for the neoliberal state. In many ways, its history is similar to that of other women’s state agencies in Latin America (Placencia and Caro, 1998; Alvarez, 1998b; Valenzuela, 1998). Historically, some CONAMU directors have been self- defined feminist leaders from the NGO sector, but most have come from traditional, nonfeminist political sectors. A state agency focusing on women’s issues was first proposed on paper in 1970 but did not receive institutional support until 1980, when the Oficina Nacional de la Mujer (National Women’s Office—OFNAMU) was created.16 This action was not isolated; it represented the changing national context in which “women’s issues” had entered public discourse, particularly in discussions of women’s political representation in electoral politics (see Menéndez-Carrión, 1989). The United Nations Decade for the Advancement for Women had begun five years earlier, international and local autonomous women’s groups were pushing for institutional reform, and Jaime Roldós was leading the country through a democratic transition. A visible women’s movement emerged as women activists in leftist political parties, student and peasant movements, and human rights organizations became increasingly frustrated with their marginalized roles in male-dominated struggles and fought to create their own spaces and as international funding became increasingly available for state-led and NGO-led projects on women. In this context, a series of proposals was put forth by feminist consultants for DINAMU and by DINAMU staff to the team responsible for designing the National Development Plan. Throughout the 1980s these proposals largely reflected the liberal approach to “integrating women into development” (see Rathgeber, 1988; Placencia and Caro, 1998). The impetus for the state women’s agency came from international sources such as the United Nations and solidarity organizations as well as from local women’s organizations. In this sense, the state responded to feminist local and international demands and to the reality that they could receive additional funding for projects that addressed women’s roles in development. In late 1997 DINAMU was given higher institutional status and renamed CONAMU. At an institutional level, CONAMU has gained power in the neoliberal context. State women’s agencies in other Latin American countries have experienced similar trends (see Barrig, 1998; Alvarez, 1998a). Pro- vided with a staff of approximately 34 employees (interview with Rocío Rosero, April 1998), its primary objective is “to serve as the interlocutor of gender and development projects on a national level” (interview with Martha 190 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Ordoñez, April 1998). It designs policy frameworks and delegates project management and implementation to local women’s organizations, municipalities, and others. Funding for projects is received from the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and other international organizations and complemented by a minimal amount of state funding. Like that of other hegemonic state practices, its role as interlocutor of gender and development policy serves to normalize a certain set of ideas about women’s roles in development while rendering others invisible or less important. Some groups of women are marked as needing aid while others are not. Some activities are considered useful or productive and others are not. This reflects the more general desire implicit in the development field to name the problem and/or target group: through this process of naming, some groups become visible while others remain “invisible” (see Escobar, 1995). While CONAMU has control over who gets funding and why, it is also restricted by the conditions of development funders. It designs gender-and- development policies and therefore contributes to defining the discursive and institutional boundaries within which knowledge is produced about women and development, but it must frame its agenda within a context that is accept- able to international funding institutions. In this sense, CONAMU itself must operate within the discursive and institutional boundaries of development.

ENGENDERING THE STATE: THE COORDINADORA POLÍTICA DE MUJERES ECUATORIANAS

The Coordinadora Política de Mujeres Ecuatorianas was established in 1996 to address state reform and the growing political crisis surrounding the Bucaram administration. It is made up of feminists from the NGO sector, political parties, and the popular women’s movement, most of them having experience in the state and/or private sector and some having previous experience in feminist organizations. A primary goal of the Coordinadora is to engender the state and political system. At the state level, this includes introducing gender into all state ministries in terms of personnel, policy frameworks, and project implementation. While CONAMU has worked to add a chapter on gender and development to each government’s national development plan, the Coordinadora argues that this is not enough; rather, every sec- tion of each plan should include a gender dimension. From the Coordinadora’s perspective, CONAMU’s efforts thus far have remained largely ghettoized, and it seeks to overcome this ghettoization. Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 191

To achieve this goal, the Coordinadora has set up vertical relations among Coordinadora-appointed expert committees and ministries with the aim of providing expertise on gender issues to policy makers within each ministry. For example, its committee on women and housing has established a relationship with the Ministry of Housing in the hope of adding a gender component to housing policy. Likewise, committees have been set up for the Ministries of Social Welfare, Labor, Finance, and Education and other state agencies. With regard to the political system, the Coordinadora’s goal is to promote the election of feminist (and in general, female) politicians and to give political party status to the women’s movement. It is pushing for an established quota system of female politicians like those of other Latin American countries (see Vega, 1998; Zabala, 1999). This strategy is partly a response to some feminists’ frustration with CONAMU’s perceived power over the women’s movement and its perceived lack of power within the state. The contradictory role of CONAMU is expressed explicitly both by its employees and by its critics. Indeed, it is this perceived contradiction that has contributed to disagreement among feminists over action within the state. Of course, this type of disagreement also stems from personal divisions and depends to some degree upon who builds alliances with whom. Political alliances are constructed, maintained, dismantled, and/or transformed over time not solely on the basis of ideological alliances but on the basis of personal alliances as well. The Coordinadora’s strategy reflects growing discontent among some Latin American feminists about the effectiveness of state women’s agencies in promoting gender-sensitive policies, laws, and practices. Women’s interests are often compartmentalized in one state agency; states such as Chile, Mexico, Argentina, and Peru have agencies that address only women’s issues. Some countries combine gender with other identity-based issues; Bolivia, for example, has a vice-ministry of gender, generational, and family affairs.17 In effect, the Coordinadora is attempting to overcome this compartmentalization of gender issues by adding a gender component to a wide range of state institutions. The Coordinadora’s political approach perhaps represents the most traditional political strategy among the four strands. Its most visible leader, Silvia Vega, advocates the “partyization” of the women’s movement, that is, the incorporation of the women’s movement into the party system with rights similar to those of parties with regard to acquiring congressional seats and so on. Currently it is recognized by the Ministry of Government as a political movement (which grants it powers similar to those of a political party), although at times it also acts as a voice for the NGO-based and community- 192 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES based women’s movement. Thus it has been criticized by other strands for “confusing its political roles” (Rocío Rosero, personal communication, July 25, 2000).

FORO PERMANENTE DE LA MUJER: A CIVIL-SOCIETY-BASED COALITION WITH A PLACE IN THE STATE

The Foro Permanente de la Mujer was established in 1994, during the regional preparatory meetings for the United Nations conference in Beijing. It represents organizations from a wide range of political sectors and includes women of middle-class, professional, and/or NGO sectors, among others. It was founded by Guadalupe León, then the director of CEIME, and originally relied upon institutional support from CEIME even though it was designed as an umbrella organization committed to incorporating women into community-based and other development initiatives and informal political networks. In general, the Foro does not advocate women’s participation in the formal political process. Rather, it operates more from within a development framework than from within a traditional political framework and advocates the incorporation of women into public decision making and planning. During the Bucaram period, the Foro advocated an approach to politics focusing on civil-society institutions rather than the state or political parties. The engendering of these institutions was to take place both through women’s participation in community-based and national initiatives and by promoting awareness of the gender dimensions of organizational structures, policies, project design and implementation, and so forth, in local organizations. While it focused on strengthening civil-society institutions, its leader held a position in the government, and the issue for feminists became her willingness to work with an unpredictable government that was labeled misogynist. Furthermore, her appointment had further fragmented feminist politics in the state.

FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION: THE AUTONOMOUS FEMINISTS

Frustrated by the limitations of working within the state and/or under the guidelines of international development organizations, disillusioned with party and other ideological and personal divisions among CONAMU, Foro, Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 193 and Coordinadora feminists, and desiring a new form of politics, a small group of feminists gathered informally to discuss and reflect upon the political crisis stemming from the Bucaram administration.18 Self-defined as autonomous feminists, they offered a strong critique of the bureaucratized structures within which they often had to work if they wanted to earn an income and/or receive institutional funding. Similar to other groups of autonomous feminists that emerged in the region during the 1990s, this group is made up of feminists who have worked in NGOs or in the state and are now disillusioned with the “gender technocracy” (a term originally coined by Mujeres Creando, a small group of autonomous feminists in Bolivia).19 The group is small and grassroots in nature but has made its presence known through public protests in Quito. One symbolic protest that received national attention occurred on Interna- tional Women’s Day, March 8, 1998.20 The autonomous feminists dressed up as Manuela Sáenz, the lover of Simón Bolívar and a recently revived heroine of Ecuadorian postcolonial history, and rode on horseback to the Plaza de Independencia in the central historic district of Quito. While this protest was relatively small, the symbolic move to reappropriate Sáenz’s image was significant on more than one level. Known as la libertadora del libertador (the liberator of the liberator) for having once saved Bolívar from being captured by the Spaniards, Sáenz’s image has been revived in the imaginations of Ecuadorians at a time of heightened public debate and sometimes conflict over national identity. The autonomous feminists who portrayed Sáenz in public did so to reappropriate her as a modern national hero. In this sense, they helped to remake the nation by tapping into the collective memory of Ecuadorians—memories of resistance to Spanish rule—and by engendering that collective memory. This protest is also significant because feminists invoked a collective, historical notion of national identity but also critiqued the boundaries within which nation building and development have occurred within Ecuador. Their performance as Manuela Sáenz was intended to reclaim the project of nation building with which she is associated. In this sense, they drew from her historical representation to engender and critique the modern practice of nation building, for example, political corruption and the nation’s debt burden and advocated economic redistribution and the democratization of the political system. Inherent in their protest was the idea that women are affected in gender-specific ways by the current economic and political reforms. Through their public performance a historically “invisible” heroine of the colonial independence movement became a modern icon for feminists remaking the nation in the context of neoliberalism. 194 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

CONTRADICTIONS IN FEMINIST POLITICS: ENGENDERING THE NEOLIBERAL STATE

The four strands of feminism have simultaneously struggled for access to institutional spaces such as the state and questioned the terms in which the state and other patriarchal institutions or practices (e.g., the party system, the constitution, national development plans) are constructed. In the process, they have represented the interests and identities of some but not all women. In the neoliberal context, economic and social disparities between, for example, state feminists and the women who are the targets of state policies have become even more apparent. While in theory feminism as a political project challenges the exclusion of women from historical processes of modernization (Olea, 1995), it cannot benefit all women. In practice, some women are included more than others, largely because of the racial, sexual, and class biases that permeate the feminist movement and all of society. It is for this reason that some feminists have argued that modernization will always be an “incomplete project” for women (see Vargas, 1992). In Ecuador, these historical contradictions were particularly evident during the Bucaram administration, as feminists actively discussed whether to participate in the state and, if so, in what capacity and for whom. Some feminists justified working within the state while others were opposed to it. The Bucaram administration lacked a clear ideological agenda, and a wide range of opposing political interests was represented in state agencies.21 Like other states, the Ecuadorian state operated as a set of connected but divergent practices and institutions based on a set of interests that appeared more cohesive at some times than at others (see Rubin, 1997). During the Bucaram administration, the state was rather fragmented and weak despite the president’s nationalist discourse, and there was conflict over Bucaram’s policies and public statements between CONAMU and women’s organizations in civil society. Neoliberal policies have tended to exacerbate tensions between the state and civil society and between women of different social classes and societal locations (Phillips, 1998; Schild, 1998). CONAMU’s symbolic and institutional location serves as an example. CONAMU employees earn state salaries and derive their livelihood and institutional political strategy from the state, but they disagree on how neoliberal policies affect the agency’s institutional structure and the so- called recipients of its policies and programs. One example of this concerns its shift from the role of direct service provider to the role of facilitator of gender-and-development policy—its so-called privatization (Lind, 1997). In this sense and in the sense that CONAMU plays a powerful role in defining Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 195 the symbolic and institutional boundaries within which “poor women” are constructed as recipients of development and as clients of the state, its goals are an extension of and/or converge with the broader project of neoliberal state formation. Its practices therefore contribute to the construction of what VerónicaSchild (1998) has called “new gendered market citizens” as women as constituents are increasingly defined in terms of the market. In that CONAMU defines its recipients in terms of their work and their market value, it is utilizing a market-oriented conception of citizenship. Similar observations have been made about state women’s agencies in Peru (Barrig, 1998), Chile (Schild, 1998; Valenzuela, 1998), and elsewhere (Alvarez, 1998a). Yet, despite this convergence, CONAMU has played an important historical and political role in engendering state development policies, addressing the gender dimensions of neoliberal reform (and, more broadly speaking, making visible women’s roles in the economy and in politics),22 and negotiating the highly contested boundaries of the public and private in the context of neoliberalism.23 CONAMU’s institutional activism and divergent scholarly views on state women’s agencies’ complicity with (see Schild, 1998) versus contradictory relationship with neoliberal state formation reveal some of the contradictions of feminist politics in the context of neoliberalism. CONAMU is caught in a paradox of feminist action in neoliberal contexts relying on an increasingly “undependable” state (Alvarez, 1996) but doing so from within a state agency with more institutional power than ever. Its decisions about how gender-and-development issues are framed in state documents help to shape the institutional environment within which policy making, project design, and political decisions about women’s roles in economic development take place. In this sense, CONAMU as a state institution is an important site of interpretive power (vis-à-vis the women’s movement and civil society) despite its limited power within the male-dominated state. It has also been an important site of resistance to state hegemony. In the neoliberal context, it remains to be seen what CONAMU’s contradictory role will signify for feminist politics and for CONAMU’s recipients. Ecuadorian community-based women’s organizations have received minimal state and international development aid since the initial period of structural adjustment in the early 1980s. Initially they organized out of economic necessity; now they may be “burnt out” and underpaid, but they are viewed as a model for resource distribution.24 Decentralization and popular participation—two strategies that are prevalent in Ecuador (see Arboleda, 1994)— have contributed to institutionalizing the process by which women are incorporated into the new political structures. While this process has had positive effects on particular sectors of women in terms of political visibility or 196 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES economic independence, it nonetheless institutionalizes the “privatization of women’s struggles” (Benería, 1992). Some organizations gain while others lose; some, while they may have economic support, are managed on the assumption that women have endless amounts of time for participation on a volunteer basis and/or for low wages. In addition, cuts in state spending translate into the “intensification of domestic work” as women become responsible for activities such as child care and food distribution that were once funded externally (Benería, 1992). This is one way in which the burden of privatization measures and state budget cuts is transferred “invisibly” to the realm of women’s work—in this case, to community women’s organizations. This observation resonates with research conducted on women’s organizations in Bolivia (Yvonne Farah, personal communication, February 18, 1999; Ochsendorf, 1998), Peru (Maruja Barrig, personal communication, Septem- ber 21, 1999), and elsewhere (Benería and Feldman, 1992). Like CONAMU employees, feminists from the Coordinadora, the Foro, and the autonomous strand also engage actively in these debates on development and neoliberal reform. The Coordinadora served as an observer of the 1998 elections, documenting female candidates’ campaigns as well as citizens’ gender-based attitudes toward voting for or against these candidates (see Vega, 1998). It publishes a newsletter, La otra mitad (The Other Half), which focuses on gender-based reform in the state and the political system. Each newsletter has its own theme: housing, rural development, employ- ment, political participation, and citizenship are some of the topics. The Coordinadora continues to work toward engendering the entire state rather than only one state agency. This raises concerns for feminist action because engendering the state does not automatically produce a feminist state, although it may help to place gender issues on various ministerial agendas. The extent to which such a strategy is sustainable is another question altogether; much will depend upon government willingness to cooperate with the Coordinadora by integrating gender into ministry frameworks and projects. Furthermore, some have argued that the Coordinadora lost its political effectiveness when it began working within established male-dominated institutions, for example, that the Coordinadora’s proposal to back female politicians may increase the number of female politicians without signifying any shift in political perspective. The Foro has acquired legal recognition, is working in 14 provinces, and has its own projects for strengthening the capacity of local women’s organizations (Rosero, personal communication, July 25, 2000). It continues to work primarily within civil society. The autonomous strand questions institutional complicity with the state and international development apparatus. Currently it is represented most visibly by the network Feministas por la Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 197

Autonomía, which has focused on sexual rights, including the right to abor- tion, lesbian rights, and the promotion of anti-incest and pornography laws. Feministas por la Autonomía chooses to concentrate on its own activities “rather than be co-opted by other political sectors” (Rocío Rosero, personal communication, July 25, 2000). In general, autonomous feminist groups operate to disrupt institutionalized feminist practices and to question feminists’ own roles in producing hierarchies and inequalities. In this way, they make explicit the contradictions of feminist actions to remake development and the nation. It is perhaps for this reason that initially the “institutionalized” feminists did not take their activities very seriously. This may be partly due to the fact that some groups such as Mujeres Creando in Bolivia utilize agitation and direct confrontation as a political strategy, thus forcing many feminists to take a position either for or against them, but it is also because they are challenging the comforts that some feminists have benefited from over the years—comforts derived from their own class positions and/or complicity with state and international development interests. This skepticism of autonomous feminism is changing, however, and it must be acknowledged that feminists from all strands have become disillusioned to varying degrees by the bureaucratization, “partyization,” and/or “NGOization” of feminist struggles (see Alvarez, 1998b).

CONCLUSION

A number of professionals and activists from all four strands of feminism in Ecuador have participated in transnational networks and/or international conferences. Some have participated in and/or organized graduate courses in which debates on women’s movements, gender, and neoliberal state policy have been discussed.25 Through this process, new cultural framings of development may appear that call into question the role of feminism within the state, but the extent to which feminist interpretations of development are put into practice is another question altogether. One positive result of the Bucaram political crisis was feminist action for reform, and the success of that action is already evident: in the new constitution, which includes a stron- ger gender focus than ever before; in the structure of political parties, which now calls for a modicum of participation by female candidates; and in numerous publications, meetings, and public events that address the topic of gender and state reform. Yet, despite these advances, it remains to be seen how divergent feminist practices will affect social change in the long run. It is questionable, for 198 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES example, whether the Coordinadora’s agenda will translate into sustainable institutional practices, particularly given the severe financial, political, and environmental crises that Ecuador now faces.26 In March 1999, President Mahuad introduced a series of measures to deal with the growing budget deficit (then at US$1.2 billion), rising inflation rates, and US$16 billion foreign debt.27 His measures, which included drastic price hikes, increases in sales tax, and a partial freeze on the withdrawal of funds deposited in private and institutional checking and savings accounts, led to the closure of major banks and to widespread protest and economic paralysis (North, 1999: 6). This culminated in an indigenous takeover of the National Congress and a military coup on January 21, 2000. Given the continuing economic and political paralysis in the country, including the dollarization of the economy, it remains to be seen what will occur within the government itself and in civil society. At the very least, with regard to gender it is likely that there will be a further “invisible” transfer of responsibilities from the state to the private sector—and thus to the realm of women’s work—along with a further institutionalization of neoliberal policies. Indeed, the new dollarized economy poses strikingly new and dramatic challenges to all activists concerned with structural inequalities and the consequences of neoliberal development policies for economic survival and cultural practices in women’s and men’s everyday lives. In this context, CONAMU will most likely continue to operate as an interlocutor on gender-and-development policy, thus also contributing to the shifting of responsibilities from the state to the private sector (NGOs, community women’s organizations, and individual households). Because poor women are likely targets for neoliberal development policies, this may benefit community organizations, but those who lose out will likely be critical of CONAMU’s (and more generally, of the state’s) policies with regard to the poor sectors. Class inequalities and relations of power may contribute to a further fragmentation of feminist politics, along with the more general fragmentation of state and civil society. If so, this situation would be similar to that of other women’s movements throughout the region, where feminist politics is characterized more by separate strands and struggles than by any uni- fied notion of a social movement (Alvarez, 1998a). Indeed, the notion of a single women’s movement seems to be a remnant of the past, when there was more unification among social movements vis-à-vis military authoritarian states rather than the competitiveness we now witness among civil society organizations that are positioned as clients in competition with each other for contracts with the neoliberal state. Autonomous feminism represents a break with early forms of feminist politics, forms that feminists themselves have had to reconsider in order to Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 199 address the increasingly globalized nature of economic and political change. As Ecuadorian and other Latin American feminists have acknowledged for years, women’s movements must construct strategies that are suited to a transnational rather than merely a national arena (see Alvarez, 1998b). Indeed, the history of women’s organizing in Latin America has been “transnational” in the sense that feminists have received international support and funding and have been in constant communication with feminists from other countries in constructing their own local (community, national) struggles. In this sense, feminist discourse and practice in Ecuador (and throughout Latin America) “travel” (see Thayer, 1998); Ecuadorian activists borrow as well as create practices within the transnational arena of feminist politics. While feminists of all four strands may criticize neoliberal reform for pri- vatizing women’s struggles (e.g., by eliminating funding for poor women’s organizations and by cutting social spending) and institutionalizing new gendered market citizens, they nonetheless operate necessarily within this same national, economic framework. Because in feminism, as in other social movements, there is often disjuncture between discourse and practice and between ideology and institutional alignment, it is useful to examine the ways in which feminist politics simultaneously embrace, reproduce, and challenge hegemonic notions of development and nation-building. In the case of Ecuador, two feminist strands, state-based feminism and the Coordinadora, have contributed to reinforcing the process by which neoliberal reforms are institutionalized. To the degree that the Foro leader Guadalupe León administered labor policy under the Bucaram administration, she too falls into this category, although the Foro itself may not. This is so despite the fact that all three strands have contributed in numerous important ways to reforming state laws and policy and to changing societal attitudes and values with respect to gender and women’s lives. My point is that in working to reform the state, these feminist strands (and social movements in general) must be wary of the tensions that exist in working simultaneously within and against it. The end result may be feminist reinforcement of the broader historical process of neoliberal state formation rather than any significant change in the gendered and classed, racialized, and nationalized social order. The autonomous feminists, while critical of the “gender technocracy,” often still work within that institutional context (some out of necessity, some by choice). During the Bucaram period they operated with a sense of nationalist identity that challenged but also reinforced the dominant nationalisms in Ecuador. Just as they reclaimed Manuela Sáenz as a heroine, they have chosen strategically to work within a nationalist script. In this sense they have developed a strategy based on an essential identity of gender and national 200 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES belonging in order to intervene in the very national political arena that they are mocking.28 Their protest, while relatively small and local, was symbolic of social movement attempts to “unmake” the nation in order to “remake” it. They are perhaps the most explicit example of feminists’negotiating the tensions inherent in working from within a dominant political context in order to change it. More broadly speaking, they represent a new “wave” of Latin American feminism that is critical of feminist movements’reliance upon the international development arena and upon traditional political discourses of women, gender, and the family (see Lind, 2000b). Indeed, the emphasis they placed on sexual rights represents a shift in political discourse and practice. Clearly, all four strands have contributed in important ways to transforming national politics. As a visible force in anti-Bucaram protests and in the drafting of the new constitution, feminist activists and policy makers undoubtedly played crucial roles in transforming the political process. Yet whether these feminist demands will translate into policy, law, and/or cultural practice remains to be seen. After three years of major government transi- tions coupled with financial and environmental crisis, it is difficult to assess how feminism will influence state structures and institutional practices. As I have argued, in the neoliberal context a state’s plan to privatize social welfare relies (however implicitly) upon a gendered social order in which women’s identities and roles are defined in terms of the market. One implication of this is that state women’s agencies and the primary recipients of state development policies, poor women, are increasingly divided along the lines of social class. Another implication is that feminists who work within/against the state may be complicit in this process, however unwittingly. What remains unclear, then, is the extent to which feminism as a political project can be critical and creative while also working from within the institutional arrange- ments of neoliberal development.

NOTES

1. Here I am borrowing from the title of Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood’s Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity, and Politics in Latin America (1996), which shows how nations have been “remade” through historical (political, economic, cultural, and social) processes of development, domination, and resistance. I draw from their work to demonstrate how political actors contribute to remaking the nation through activism, policy making, institution building, and discourse. 2. President Bucaram appointed his brother Adolfo as social welfare minister. His brother Santiago held a seat in Congress. His brother-in-law Pablo Concha was finance minister, and his sister Elsa, a well-known populist and former mayor of Guayaquil, continued to play an informal but strong role in political decision making. Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 201

3. Lorena Bobbitt is notorious for having severed the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, after allegedly having been abused by him. She was tried for her crime in 1993 and acquitted on the basis of her testimony that she acted in self-defense. During her controversial trial, her case was widely publicized in the United States. Supporters viewed her as a victim of domestic violence; skeptics viewed her as a “man-hater” and sometimes as psychologically dis- turbed. In Ecuador, men and women alike supported her as a victim of her (white male) husband and of the U.S. welfare system and thus as representing the underdeveloped nation vis-à-vis the imperialist United States. The fact that her husband was named John Wayne, the same as the well-known actor who portrayed cowboys in the U.S. West, only added to interpretations of her as “colonized” or victimized by white male power. 4. Minister Adoum reportedly made derogatory statements about women and allegedly slapped one of his female employees in a public space (see Vega, 1997). 5. Arturo Escobar (1995) argues that the Third World has been “unmade” as a result of international development funding and efforts to “help.” In a similar way, I argue that the Ecuadorian nation has been “unmade” as a result of development policies that create a cycle of debt depen- dency and nationalist politics that, in an attempt to create a sense of national community, often contribute to the further splintering of identity-based groups and the unmaking of a dominant national identity. Bucaram’s populism is an example of the tensions between the national/local and the global that have arisen in contexts of globalization and neoliberalism (Solimano, 1999). 6. “Engendering” here signifies (1) adding a gender dimension to institutional practices, as in ministerial and other state institutional policy frameworks, programs, and projects, and (2) introducing feminist voices and visions into decision-making and planning processes. 7. An indigenous women’s movement has been led most visibly by political leaders such as Nina Pacari and by the Congreso Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas y Negras del Ecuador (CONMIE). CONMIE was established because of CONAIE’s women members’dissatisfaction with its male-based leadership. CONMIE defines itself as an autonomous indigenous women’s organization (Rocío Rosero, personal communication, July 25, 2000). 8. For example, traditionally CONAIE has taken the position that a struggle for women’s rights competes with the general struggle for the rights of indigenous nationalities and communities. In this view, feminism is viewed (most crudely) as a Western import. At the same time, middle-class, urban-based women’s movements often overlook the multiple factors leading to the ethnic/racial/gender oppression of indigenous women, thus isolating indigenous women from their organizations. 9. Currently there are at least six visible strands of women’s activism in Ecuador. A fifth strand is represented by the popular women’s movement, led most visibly by the Movimiento Nacional de Mujeres de Sectores Populares, which works with women from poor urban neighbor- hoods and from peasant and indigenous sectors. A sixth strand is indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian women’s activism, led most visibly by CONMIE. 10. Discourses of gender, women, and feminism cross national boundaries and are inter- preted locally in diverse ways (see Alvarez, 1998a and 1998b). These local interpretations may lead to new forms of political identity and new strategies of resistance. 11. President Mahuad’s economic policies, along with his allegedly corrupt form of gover- nance, were opposed by numerous sectors in Ecuador. Following the 1999 bank crisis (see North, 1999), in which approximately 70 percent of Ecuador’s banks were taken over by the state (DePalma, 2000), protests and strikes continued throughout the year. Many people had entirely lost their bank savings or were unable to access them. In January 2000 tens of thousands of indigenous people marched to the capital city of Quito as part of what the Confederación de Nacion- alidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador— CONAIE) called a “national uprising.” Once in Quito, protesters gained entry to the National 202 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Congress, where the CONAIE leader Antonio Vargas declared it the “People’s Parliament.” This takeover was part of a broader national movement. Significantly, one faction of the military supported the indigenous movement’s demands and even provided the protesters their initial access to the National Congress. Other protests and strikes occurred simultaneously in Quito and throughout the country. For example, the Patriotic Front (Frente Patriótico—FP), a coalition of unions, students and women’s organizations, Afro-Ecuadorians, small-business groups, community activists, and some political parties, launched massive demonstrations. President Mahuad deployed approximately 30,000 troops to repress the protests, and in the end the dominant faction of the military declared a coup. On January 21, Vice President Gustavo Noboa was declared president. 12. CONAMU representatives participate in the discussion leading up to each government’s national development plan. CONAMU does, in fact, invite independent feminist policy makers to participate, typically as consultants, although it has the last word on what is included in their proposal to the Consejo Nacional del Desarrollo (National Development Council—CONADE), which works with each new administration in preparing its national development plan. 13. Other scholars have drawn similar conclusions about the contradictory and increasingly unequal relationship between community-based women’s organizations and the state and between working-class and middle-class feminists in the context of neoliberal reform. In particular, see Schild (1998). 14. Immediately following the February 7, 1997, protest, three people claimed their right to the presidential position: President Bucaram himself, who initially refused to leave office, Vice President Rosalía Arteaga, who according to the Ecuadorian constitution was next in line to become president, and Congressional President Fabián Alarcón. The military played a significant role in facilitating the process by which a new president would be selected. Arteaga was opposed by many, including the military, arguably because she was a woman (Vega, 1997). In the end, Alarcón became transitional president. 15. Here I am not implying that discourse and practice are entirely separate. Rather, I am arguing that an organization’s or movement’s “discourse” (i.e., the language and representations in which it defines itself and its strategies, which is itself a practice) can be quite different from its “practice” (i.e., the deployment of its strategies and actions). In this sense, discourse and practice are interconnected and overlapping, but they can also be distinct and contradictory. Furthermore, the way in which an organization identifies itself and frames a context (e.g., “national development,” “political crisis”) is not always the same as the way in which it develops a strategy to intervene in that context (see Fuss, 1989; Butler, 1990; Thayer, 1998). 16. In 1984 OFNAMU became the Dirección Nacional de la Mujer (National Women’s Department—DINAMU). 17. In placing gender alongside family issues, the state effectively conflated “women” with “the family” despite the fact that feminist policy makers have long argued for a separate analysis of women’s lives (see Montaño, 1996). This is best seen as a product of the ideological battles taking place in many Latin American countries (and elsewhere) about “gender” versus “family values” (Franco, 1996). 18. Several of this group’s members also participate in another strand of feminism. For example, some members of the Foro also participated in the autonomous feminist group. In the present context, this strand has become even more distinguishable from other strands and is led most visibly by the group Feministas por la Autonomía. 19. Mujeres Creando is a group led by two feminists based in the capital city of La Paz. The organizers advocate a nonhierarchical form of organization that maintains institutional auton- omy from the development apparatus and specifically from the “gender technocracy.” Similar groups have appeared in Chile, Peru, and in other countries. The first regional conference of Lind / FEMINISTS REMAKE THE NATION IN ECUADOR 203 autonomous feminism was held in Bolivia in 1998. Thus far little research has been conducted on these struggles despite the fact that (or perhaps because) their political platforms often call into question the foundations of middle-class feminism in the region. 20. For my analysis of this performative protest I rely upon interpretations of the event by protest participants and other observers (through informal conversations—especially with Gioconda Herrera, March 20, 1998) and its media coverage. 21. Bucaram appointed ministers on the basis of clientelistic relations more than of ideological or party position. As a result, both ultraconservative interests and feminist interests were represented in the government of that time. 22. CONAMU is the first organization in Ecuador to employ a study of the relationship between gender, land, and property rights, since the accelerated process of trade liberalization and agricultural restructuring beginning with the Durán Ballén administration in 1992 (see Deere and León, 1997). 23. These contested, rapidly changing boundaries include those separating the state and civil society, the state and the economy, and, generally speaking, public life and the private, often invisible lives of women (Lind, 2000a). 24. Caroline Moser (1989), studying women’s survival strategies and economic crisis in Guayaquil, Ecuador, reports that one group of respondents explained that they were “burnt out” and no longer had the energy to participate in collective survival strategies. Other researchers, such as Maruja Barrig (1996), have argued that women’s organizations are not viable political projects in the long run precisely because women participate out of necessity and may be exhausted as well as at risk because of their participation. Thus women’s organizations should not be romanticized as social movements. 25. The Facultad Latinoamericano de Estudios Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito offered a nine- month master’s program in Gender and Development Studies during 1997–1998 after winning a bid from CONAMU. CONAMU had received funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) to establish such a program, with the goal of providing training to public-sector employees and nonprofit-sector employees. 26. In the past few years, more than 20 major banks have filed for bankruptcy, wiping out the savings of tens of thousands of Ecuadorians (see North, 1999). In particular, seniors have been hard-hit, as they have lost their personal savings and, in many cases, their social security pay- ments. It was this financial crisis that led to President Mahuad’s decision to make the U.S. dollar Ecuador’s official currency, replacing the Ecuadorian sucre. Ultimately, the dollarization plan was carried out under the leadership of President Gustavo Noboa (2000–present) after President Mahuad’s forced resignation in January 2000. This makes Ecuador one of more than two dozen countries that use the dollar as their official currency (see DePalma, 2000). Dollarization has created much uncertainty about Ecuador’s economic future, particularly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon added to the instability of the U.S. dollar in Ecua- dor’s economy. Also during this period, two of Ecuador’s volcanos have become active and threaten to erupt in Quito, Baños, and elsewhere. This has contributed further to economic paralysis and created safety hazards and a high level of displacement among residents in the Baños area and in some (primarily poor) southern sectors of Quito. 27. Ecuador’s debt of US$16 billion is the highest debt per capita in Latin America. 28. Fuss (1989) argues that identity-based movements such as feminist and gay and lesbian (or queer) movements tend to invoke traditional notions of gender and/or sexuality (e.g., “female” or “male,” “heterosexual” or “homosexual”) in order to achieve certain political or social rights. Along with scholars such as Judith Butler (1990), she calls this “strategic essentialism.” In the case of Ecuadorian feminisms, these feminist strands invoke essential 204 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES notions of femininity and citizenship in order to intervene politically in state policy and public political arenas.

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