University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses July 2017 Extractivism and Resistance: Media, Protest and Power in Ecuador Diana M. Coryat University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Coryat, Diana M., "Extractivism and Resistance: Media, Protest and Power in Ecuador" (2017). Doctoral Dissertations. 955. https://doi.org/10.7275/10009245.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/955 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EXTRACTIVISM AND RESISTANCE: MEDIA, PROTEST AND POWER IN ECUADOR A Dissertation Presented by DIANA CORYAT Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2017 Communication © Copyright by Diana Coryat 2017 All Rights Reserved EXTRACTIVISM AND RESISTANCE: MEDIA, PROTEST AND POWER IN ECUADOR A Dissertation Presented By DIANA CORYAT Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Sonia E. Alvarez, Co-Chair _________________________________________________ Martha Fuentes-Bautista, Co-Chair _________________________________________________ Mari Castañeda, Member _________________________________________________ Millie Thayer, Member _____________________________________________ Mari Castañeda, Department Chair Department of Communication DEDICATION Every step I take in life is dedicated to my mother, Ellen J. Coryat This project is dedicated to all the brave, brilliant, visionary defensors of Nature, Nuestra Pachamamita! AKNOWLEDGEMENTS As I wrap up this dissertation project, and look back over the past several years, I realize how much I have to be grateful for, and how many individuals, collectives and organizations I would like to thank for supporting me, sustaining my espíritu during this long journey, and contributing in some way to this project. Apologies in advance if I have omitted any person or organization! The University of Massachusetts Amherst has been one of my intellectual homes since I began a Masters Degree in 2000. Returning a decade later to pursue a doctoral degree served to deepen relationships that had been seeded, and to begin new ones. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation committee. I have been extraordinarily fortunate to work with four gifted scholars. I took classes with each of them, and three of them guided me through my comprehensive exams. It has been an honor and pleasure to work closely with the co-Chairs of my committee: Martha Fuentes- Bautista, I am so appreciative of her deep knowledge of Latin American media and social movements. She has been a wonderful mentor since the day we met and chatted in the hallway for hours, always guiding and inspiring me to improve my work. Sonia Alvarez, my other co-Chair, has been a wise teacher and exciting interlocutor, helping me to think critically about Latin America´s left turn, and contemporary global dynamics of protest. During the comps process, Mari Castañeda worked with me on the publication of a paper in an academic journal. Millie Thayer, my fourth committee member, helped me navigate the critical development studies and always has given me incisive feedback. Other scholars who have helped me advance my thinking in areas related to my thesis at UMass v Amherst include: Angelica Bernal, Paula Chakravartty (now at NYU), Leda Cooks, and Henry Geddes. The Department of Communication has generously provided me with financial support, starting with an attractive funding package for my doctoral studies, several travel grants to attend national and international conferences, and the Anca Romantan Scholarship. The administrative personnel in the Department are all top notch, and Kathy Ready, Graduate Program Secretary, deserves special thanks for warm support and keeping me on track. The Graduate School awarded me with two Dissertation Reserch Grants, which helped fund my field work, interview transcriptions and research assistance. My assistant, Maristher Guevara, now a graduate student at Yale University, has been an invaluable part of the research and writing process. She assisted me even as she transitioned to her own graduate work, vowing to see the project through. She also made me laugh in some of the most difficult moments of research! Living in Quito, Ecuador, has not only provided fertile terrain for research, it has been a site for deepening my intellectual, artistic, political, personal, spiritual, and sensorial capacities. Entering into the world of ecological, indigenous and media activism has changed the way I see and live life, period. I especially am grateful to Yasunidos and Acción Ecológica. I learned so much from them during an incredibly intense, tumultuous few years. I thank them for allowing me to be present in more private meetings spaces. They have been generous, brilliant interlocutors, engaging in long interviews and conversations about that year. I am in awe of the work they do, and their commitment to a post-extractive future. I can only hope that this study is useful to them. Special thanks to Manu Bayón, Beto Bonilla, Omar Bonilla, Antonella Calle, Pato Chávez, Elena vi Gálvez, Esperanza Martínez, Eduardo Pichilingue, Gabriela Ruales, David Suárez, Angie Vanessita, Eva Vázquez, and so many others. The other collective that I am indebted to is El Churo Comunicación. This is the group that became my family in Ecuador, and with whom I have continued to do the popular communication and media training work that is my passion, and that energizes and sustains me. Much gratitude to Anita Acosta, Veronica Calvopiña, Jorge Cano, Beto Chávez, Juan Carlos, Gaby Gómez, and from remote locations Andrea Fajardo (Mexico/Colombia) and Julio Gonzales (Peru). May we continue to work together for years to come! Other amazing communication activists and friends I have had the pleasure of sharing experiences with are Jose Ignacio Vigil and Tachi Arriola of Radialistas Apasionadas y Apasionados. Another group of friends and colleagues that cheered me on while offering intellectual and ludic spaces was the Grupo de Lunes (which never meets on Monday despite the name) including Maria Fernanda Cartagena, Santiago Castellanos, Christian León, Maria Amelia Viteri and others. Another person who has been immensely important for me here in Quito has been my dear friend, scholar and political analyst Jorge León Trujillo. During my first two years in Quito, I was affiliated with FLACSO-Ecuador as a visiting researcher in the Facultad de Comunicación y Relaciones Internacionales. I thank Agustin Lao-Montes for introducing me to Ecuador and FLACSO. Both FLACSO and the Universidad Andina Simon Bolívar, excellent have been rich sites of intellectual engagement for me, given their high-caliber faculty and constant stream of international scholars and activists, conferences, book presentations, and particularly the spaces that vii have been provided to ecologist, feminist and indigenous movements and scholars, that I have been so privileged to learn so much from. In 2014, I began to work with the Universidad de las Américas in the Facultad de Comunicación, which has provided me with work that has allowed me to remain in Quito. Thanks to José Velásquez (former dean) and Cheryl Martens for helping me to shape my work here, Ana Chavez for our friendship and lunches, and Alvaro Muriel and La Escuela de Cine’s professors and students for making this work creative and fun. There have also been the friends and with whom I have shared and created spaces that have nurtured me spiritually: Amanda Colcha-Holmes, Monica Maher, Manuela Picq, Dulce Pérez, Chris Rials-Seitz, Marisol Cárdenas, and the yoga center Siri Prem. Last but not least, is my incredibile family and most intimate bests with whom I travel this path of life, and that have been there for me in uncountable ways: my mother Ellen Coryat, siblings David, Brian, Annie and Ellen, my daughters Aiyana and Emma, nieces and nephews David, Lauren, Lisanne, Lucy, Erin, and Monet. Kelley Crittenden, Ashok Khosla, Liz Miller, Sabrina Parker, Susan Siegel, Saundra Thomas (and her mom Marianne deVargas for a serendipitous conversation that helped me make my decision to go back for the Ph.D.). viii ABSTRACT EXTRACTIVISM AND RESISTANCE: MEDIA, PROTEST AND POWER IN ECUADOR MAY 2017 DIANA CORYAT, B.F.A. NEW YORK UNIVERISTY M.A. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Sonia E. Alvarez Martha Fuente-Bautista This dissertation examines the symbolic and material dimensions of media power and social movement cultural production in a Latin American post-neoliberal context, through the case study of Yasunidos –an anti-extractivist, youth social movement– and its fight to stop the Ecuadorian government’s plans to drill for oil in the Yasuní region of the Amazon. The project is located within two bodies of literature: cultural analysis of social movement media and cultural production within new waves of global protest, and studies of extractivism and post-development in Latin America. It advances the