One thing scholars of identity politics have learned over the past several decades is just how comfortably multiculturalism and its variants sit with neoliberal capitalism. At an earlier point in our history, support for diverse expressions of race, ethnicity, and gender were associated with the Left. No more. Although conservatives still weaponize these issues in their cultural wars, corporations have learned that these are painless concessions to make—just so long as their workers do not make any material demands of management. In fact, embracing multiculturalism is an effective mechanism for shifting an entire political spectrum rightward.
That, in a nutshell, is the lesson to be learned from anthropologist Carmen Martínez's new book on Indigenous movements in Ecuador. The book explores two intertwined themes during the Rafael Correa administration (2007–2017) in Ecuador. The first is what Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Charlie Hale have called neoliberal multiculturalism: the acceptance of symbolic and cultural recognition in exchange for halting deeper structural changes and the redistribution of resources. The second is what Eduardo Gudynas calls “neo-extractivism” and what Martínez terms nationalist-extractivism: the failure of “pink-tide” governments at the beginning of the twenty-first century to break from the logic of resource dependency. These governments instead relied on the extraction of raw materials to fund social programs, even as those extractive enterprises compromised the environments of marginalized communities the social programs were purportedly intended to benefit.
The failure of new left governments across Latin America to abide by the confines of neoliberal multiculturalism and their willingness to engage in neo-extractivism culminated in significant tension with Indigenous movements, and those on the political right effectively mined that antagonism to their advantage. The right exploited symbolic gestures of multiculturalism—something traditionally associated with progressivism—not to advance the interests of Indigenous peoples, but to attack their opponents on the left.
In the 2017 presidential election in Ecuador, a rightwing of the Indigenous movement—what can properly be termed etnoderecha—openly allied with Guillermo Lasso, a conservative banker and adherent of the reactionary Opus Dei cult of the Catholic Church, against Correa's appointed heir Lenín Moreno. “Better a banker than a dictator,” leaders of that tendency proclaimed. Four years later, they got their wish: the open hostility of the right wing of the Indigenous movement to Correa successfully won Lasso the election.
On taking office in 2021, Lasso immediately took Ecuador in a hard-right direction. He opened up the resource frontier, significantly expanded extraction of petroleum from ecologically delicate areas, and cut spending for impoverished and marginalized communities—all policies that Indigenous movements have spent decades combating and that will hurt them the most. Gone are the days of Correa, whose economic policies significantly improved the lives of the most marginalized sectors of society. But no matter. As long as Lasso says the proper things—as long as he keeps his discourse within the confines of neoliberal multiculturalism—the concrete realities of his policies are not important.
If all that one knew of contemporary Ecuadorian politics were to come from this book, one would not understand that during Correa's tenure poverty, extreme poverty, and—most important—rates of inequality all improved dramatically. Nor would one know, or understand, how and why Correa was elected and reelected with unprecedented high margins, nor why he continues to be the most popular politician in Ecuador. Instead, Martínez repeatedly refers to Correa's administration as a “regime.” This is hardly a neutral indicator. Rather, it is a term that the US State Department deploys when it wishes to cast aspersions on an administration and replace it with a right-wing government friendly to US imperial interests.
Martínez ends the book with the acknowledgment that this turn to the right will result in aggressive extractivism and social movement repression. That is precisely the point to which this work has brought us.
