Revolt and Resistance: Indigenous People, Mestizo Citizens and the State in the Social Mobilization of October 2019 in Ecuador

Abstract

In October 2019, the rejection of economic policy in Ecuador prompted the mobilization of the indigenous population, and other population segments. The government launched legal proceedings against indigenous people, students, and workers; they were arrested and criminally prosecuted, accused of setting fire to the Comptroller’s Office building. The defendants’ defense requested the intercultural considerations that the case warranted, through a cultural anthropology expertise, which would allow understanding the implicit elements in the facts related to the criminal proceedings for sabotage and terrorism. The article contributes with an anthropological analysis, in the context of the judicial process, for the understanding of the context of indigenous resistance, mobilization and revolt, from an intercultural perspective; where the ethnographic and historical approach provides information on the cultural and social reasons identified in the social mobilization and participation of both the indigenous movement and the population of the city.