Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil And Neoliberalism In Ecuador - Book Report/Review Example

Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil And Neoliberalism In Ecuador Book review The book was written by Sawyer Suzana and was first published in 2004 by Duke University Press. She is passionate about the indigenous people exploited in politics and production of crude. Her study tries to relate human kinds’ past and present thus building and drawing upon information from the social sciences and the humanities plus the natural sciences. Suzana Sawyer says that her research examines struggle over the Ecuadorian Amazon resources. It specifically focuses on conflicts over the land and petroleum resources development among the forest people, the state and multinational oil companies. The book explores how lowland people have challenged economic policies to own their lands ant at the same time increase petroleum production, within indigenously claimed territory. Struggles over the control of land and oil operations are simultaneous struggles over identity and ownership i.e. practices that disrupted one liberal state agenda and multinational petroleum business also hindered elite notions of the nation and a sense of belonging. In a country like Ecuador hit by inequalities of race, gender and class struggles over available resources use represent problems to the legitimacy of a historically exclusive state, and also occasions for redefining the language of citizenship, a country, and sovereignty in a developing world. Her research project examines an on ongoing transnational lawsuit in Ecuador at odds with the Chevron Corporation for industrial-negligence and environmental pollution/contamination. Originally, the lawsuit was classified in November 1993 on behalf of 30000 Ecuadorians against Texaco Inc. in the New York City District Court. Ecuador is the third largest supplier of oil into the western United States. This has seen it give birth to the far reaching social and environmental aftermath of a growing United States demand for petroleum, and the dynamics of economic development it necessitates. Crude chronicles trace the emergence of highly organized indigenous movements and its struggles against a US oil company and Ecuadorian neo-liberal policies. Against the backdrop of planting government attempts to take ownership and liberalize the national economy, Sawyer highlights how neo-liberal reforms based in Ecuador led to the governance, accountability and representation crisis that spurred one of the twentieth century Latin American’s strongest indigenous developments. Through her marches, demonstrations, professions, and discussions, Sawyer tracks the growing experience of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, redeployed, and at times submit to the commands and desires of transnational neo-liberal logic. At the same time, she follows the many movement and discourses the multinational inequality i.e. rupturing the silence round racial injustice, and rewriting narratives of national belonging as they were about the material use and extraction of rain forest resources. Susana based her book on the field research done in the 1990s, on the Ecuadorian Amazon. She recounts how a grass roots organization, the organization of indigenous peoples of Pastaza (OPIP), opposed multinational corporations that wanted to drill for oil in their basement/territory. OPIP arranged for a successful march in 1992 to reject publicly petroleum policies, created alliances with peasants to oppose changes in the 1994 reform law, and entered themselves into discussions on local constructions of the national identity in the 1998 constituent assembly. Suzane Sawyer provides rich information on how subalterns arrange for social developments/movements, and the inevitable wars that result from of these efforts. The 2nd chapter scrutinizes a conflict over oil giants ARCOs attempts to drill for oil at Villano, and their efforts to regular indigenous organization to reject the more radical doings of OPIP. In the process, she scrutinizes conflicts between regional communities, the hardness of building unity in development, queries of representation, and OPIPs relations with ARCO. She finalizes in stating that nothing is unavoidable about making of political opposition to neoliberal policies that it had to be made, and that primate identity was nothing but stable (page 87). A subsequent chapter digs deeply into queries of representation, including differential states over who gets the rights to represents whose desires as identities are shifting (page 133). Chapter five presents a detailed day by day description and analysis of the 1994 ten day ‘mobilization for life,’ one of the biggest and most effective indigenous movements in recent Ecuadorian history. In the uprising, indigenous activists in Ecuador went as far as across deep regional divides to plan on an international level in a unique way that is uncommon in Ecuador’s fragment society. Suzane Sawyer provides a brilliant analysis of how indigenous matters with neoliberal economic laws extended across the nation. Through her narrative, Sawyer presents a damning critique of neoliberal policies as played it in a third world dependent economy. Ecuadorian country has become one of the leaders in exporting crude oil to US, and this reliance on petroleum oil has wrecked massive social and environmental damage in the Amazon. She explains the harmful results of privatization and other neoliberal improvements on already marginalized populations. Also, she examines how the rising indigenous protests underscore the disadvantages of state structures and limits of their hegemonic influence (page 209). This study provides a perfect example of politically titled research in which Suzane does not present herself as neutral, but as an activist who is deeply committed to the rights of the indigenous peoples. Implicitly, this book underscores the certainty that social movements only materialize when they successfully build alliances with outside supporters. One methodological quibble that someone would have with the book’s structure is that it does not examine either the earlier happenings that caused the politicization of ethnic identities in Ecuador, or does it bring into consideration of the subsequent development. A final section shortly touches on the ongoing negotiations over plurinationalism, and the divisions and difficulties with corruption in OPIP resulting from the presidency of buckram (Sawyer, 2004). There is much more that could, and maybe needs to be said concerning the roots and present-day state of indigenous companies in Ecuador. The consequence is a rather narrow slice of a saga that is mainly lifted out of a border historical context. Fortunately, Suzane was in the field at the time of exciting and critically crucial/important period of political mobilization when OPIP was still at its height. The book is chronologically well written and is easy to read and not to forget, free of jargon. It is a seminal work to any person desiring a better understanding of how indigenous developments/movements in ancient Ecuador, in the 1990's, became a role model for social movement organizations. It can be termed as a solid contribution to human's understandings of present-day historical developments. (Joseph, n, d) References Crude chronicles. Books.google.co.ke,(n.d) retrieved 15th march from http://books.google.co.ke/books/about/Crude_Chronicles.html?id=r-O1JHTNMyEC&redir_esc=y Gilbert M Joseph. Dukeupress.edu. Duke University Press, (n.d) retrieved 15th March from http://www.dukeupress.edu/Crude-Chronicles/ Sawyer, S. (2004). Crude Chronicles: Indigenous politics, multinational oil and neoliberalism in Ecuador. Durham: Duke University Press. Print. Read More