Transforming Ethnicity: Youth and Migration in the Southern Ecuadorian Andes 3031300963, 9783031300967

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MIGRATION, DIASPORAS AND CITIZENSHIP

Transforming Ethnicity Youth and Migration in the southern Ecuadorian Andes Jorge Daniel Vásquez

Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship

Series Editors

Olga Jubany Department of Social Anthropology Universitat de Barcelona Barcelona, Spain Saskia Sassen Department of Sociology and Committee on Global Thought Columbia University New York, NY, USA

For over twenty years, the Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship series has contributed to cross-disciplinary empirical and theoretical debates on migration processes, serving as a critical forum for and problematising the main issues around the global movement and circulation of people. Grounded in both local and global accounts, the Series firstly focuses on the conceptualisation and dynamics of complex contemporary national and transnational drivers behind movements and forced displacements. Secondly, it explores the nexus of migration, diversity and identity, incorporating considerations of intersectionality, super-diversity, social polarization and identification processes to examine migration through the various intersections of racialized identities, ethnicity, class, gender, age, disability and other oppressions. Thirdly, the Series critically engages the emerging challenges presented by reconfigured borders and boundaries: state politicization of migration, sovereignty, security, transborder regulations, human trade and ecology, and other imperatives that transgress geopolitical territorial borders to raise dilemmas about contemporary movements and social drivers. Editorial Board: Brenda Yeoh Saw Ai (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Fabio Perocco (Università Ca’Foscari Venezia, Italy) Rita Segato (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil) Carlos Vargas (University of Oxford, UK) Ajmal Hussain (University of Warwick, UK)

Jorge Daniel Vásquez

Transforming Ethnicity Youth and Migration in the Southern Ecuadorian Andes

Jorge Daniel Vásquez School of International Service, American University Washington, DC, USA

ISSN 2662-2602     ISSN 2662-2610 (electronic) Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship ISBN 978-3-031-30096-7    ISBN 978-3-031-30097-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30097-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Lily, with immense hope in our future To Edita, my mother To the people of Cañar, in the Andes and the diaspora

Acknowledgements

I came to the United States in 2016 with a Fulbright Fellowship to do a PhD in Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. At that time, I had already completed the research fieldwork that sustains this book. I will always thank Joya Misra and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey for their Writing Sociology Graduate Seminar, which inspired me to write this book. I am grateful to Agustín Laó-Montes, Millie Thayer, Moon-Kie Jung, and Carlos Valderrama Rentería for their advice and support when I began navigating an academic environment that was new to me. The Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO-Ecuador), the Catholic University of Leuven, the University of Liège, and the Academie de Recherche et d’Enseignement Superieur/ARES Wallonie-­ Bruxelles supported my research in Cañar when I was a graduate student and later a Visiting Professor at FLACSO-Ecuador. The first result of this research was my MA thesis (2011–2014) which was published in Spanish by FLACSO with the title Identidades en Transformación. From 2015 to 2018, I followed the sociological analysis of Ecuadorian migration to the United States, and in 2019, I lived in Ecuador and kept in touch with people from Cañar while writing this book. I am grateful to Gioconda Herrera and Cristina Cielo for the valuable opportunities they afforded me during my training and teaching at the Sociology and Gender Studies Department at FLACSO-Ecuador. At FLACSO, Carmen Gómez, Carlos Haynes, and I shared many conversations about migration between Spain and Ecuador. They all invited me to present my work at national and international events. Valeria Coronel and vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Agustín Laó-Montes (then a Visiting Professor at FLACSO) motivated me during the entire research process. Thank you all. I would also like to thank Janeth Pino and Manuel Naula for their solidarity during my fieldwork in Cañar and my friend Ñuga Rodríguez and his family for their warm welcome at their home in Cuenca. Thanks to all the youths who showed me the beautiful areas in Cañar while sharing their stories. Thanks also to Germán Chiriboga for offering his friendship and sharing with me his ground-based knowledge about the Ecuadorian migration in Massachusetts. A note of acknowledgment to Pedro Andrés Bravo, a friend with whom I have been discussing, since 2007, adultcentrism, a critical concept in this book. Mabel Moraña’s invitation to present at the conference “Liquid Borders” held at Washington University in St. Louis in 2019 was critical for writing this book. Thank you, Mabel, for encouraging me to submit the book proposal to Palgrave. I owe a debt of gratitude to Carlos Minchala, Diego Guerrero, Nico McEnteer, Cristina Cielo, José Andrés Vergara, Rosalía Castillo, Lino Pichisaca, and Marianne Jakus. This book would have never seen the light of day without any of you. Cristina and Marianna, you are angels, and I do not have enough words to thank you both. Thanks go as well to the editorial and production team at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Elizabeth Graber and Sujatha Mani. Thanks as well to the anonymous reviewers whose comments made this work better. Thanks to Renier Estevez, Anamary Maqueira, Maricela Linares, Aaron Yates, Tammy Kazazi, Thomas Corcoran, Anthony Huaki, Debadatta Chakraborty, Veda Kim, Juliana Góes, Swati Birla, Esther Moraes, Kathryn Reynolds, Mabrouka M’Barek, and Marianne Jakus for their friendship. Thanks to the families from the Cañari Kichwa Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, for making me feel welcome in their homes and sharing our transnational stories. Finally, thanks to Lily, my love, and to our child, Jorge Andrés, for their constant support and the joy we share.

Praise for Transforming Ethnicity “Jorge Daniel Vásquez carefully examines how the transnational experience is deeply ingrained in the construction of youth subjectivity in the Southern Ecuadorian Andes. His fieldwork is filled with profound knowledge of Cañar, an indigenous territory in the Ecuadorian Sierra shaped by a history of trans-local and transnational migration. Through a critique of adultcentrism, the book offers a grounded interpretation of the indigenous youths’ heterogeneous aspirations and desires for autonomy, and the extent to which the experience of leaving their communities and migrating is central to their life journeys, both actual and imagined. Challenging commonsense ideas about the relationship between youth and migration in indigenous communities, this book becomes an essential reference for readers interested in migration, the Andes, ethnicity, and generational change.” —Mercedes Eguiguren, Co-chair of the Ecuadorian Studies Section 2022–2024, Latin American Studies Association

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Contents

1 Indigenous  Identities, Migration, and Youth in Southern Ecuador  1 Introduction   1 The Historical Struggle for Indigenous Identities in Ecuador   4 Cañar and Its History of Migration   9 Researching Indigenous Youth in Latin America and Ecuador  15 Exploring Cañar’s Indigenous Communities: Theory and Questions  18 Youth and Adultcentrism  19 Identity and Ethnicity  21 Transnationalism and Experience  22 Questions  24 Fieldwork and Methodology  24 Organization of the Book  26 References  27 2 Leaving  Cañar: Transnational Experience and the Production of a Migrant Subjectivity 35 Individualization and Gender  42 Establishing Generational Differences: Education and Imagination  54 References  59

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3 Guarantee,  Reinvention, and Disconnections of Ethnic Identities 61 “But they cannot remove the blood they carry”  62 “All of us musicians here are migrants’ children”  71 “They have even called the police without knowing what we are doing”  77 References  83 4 Adultcentrism  and the Dispute about Representation 85 The Local Construction of Adultcentrism  89 Why Dispute Representations?  95 References  97 5 A Recapitulation 99 A Final Thought from the Field 101 Index103

About the Author

Jorge  Daniel  Vásquez is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of International Service at American University. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

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List of Abbreviations

CNIMH CNIPN CONAIE ECLAC FLACSO GADIC INEC MSP PDOT UNFPA

National Council for Equality of Human Mobility National Council for the equality of peoples and nationalities Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government National Institute for Census in Ecuador Ministry of Public Health-Ecuador Development and Land Use Plan United Nations Population Fund

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3

Rural Cañar. (Photo by Lucía Pérez) Pan-American Highway connecting urban Cañar with other districts. (Photo by the author) Traditional house (left) and house built with remittances (right). (Photo by Rosalía Castillo) A family walking on the dirt road in a rural parish. (Photo by the author) Sale of Cañari traditional dress. (Photo by Lino Pichisaca) Sculpture of musician and peasant wearing traditional dress. (Photo by Rosalía Castillo) Lino Pichisaca, Cañari artist. (Photo courtesy by Lino Pichisaca) Kanari. (Photo courtesy by Lino Pichisaca) Urban Cañar. (Photo by Rosalía Castillo) Central square. (Source: GADIC (2012)) Neighborhood in urban Cañar. (Photo by the author)

5 10 41 45 64 66 72 76 86 87 91

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List of Graphs

Graph 1.1 Ecuadorian population in the U.S., 2000–2017. (Source: Pew Research Center tabulations of 2000 census (5% IPUMS) and 2010, 2015 and 2017 American Community Surveys (1% IPUMS)) Graph 2.1 (a). Urban-rural population structure of the Cañar district 1974–2010. (b). Migrant population in the Cañar district in 2010 Graph 2.2 (a). Illiteracy rate in the Cañar district 1990–2010. (b). Evolution of the average years of education in the Cañar district 1900–2010. (c). Evolution of education levels in the Cañar district 1990–2010

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CHAPTER 1

Indigenous Identities, Migration, and Youth in Southern Ecuador

Abstract  This chapter presents a historical construction of Ecuadorian indigenous identities in their relationship with the State, the hacienda regime, and the cycles of indigenous political struggles. It then develops how migration within Ecuador and to the United States has been part of indigenous communities in the southern Ecuadorian Andes throughout the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, particularly in the Cañar, a district marked by more than seven decades of migratory flows to the United States. The third part focuses on how the sociological analysis of indigenous identities, youth, and migration in Latin America and Ecuador are connected and the limitations of such analyses. Finally, it introduces the concepts, questions, and methodology used for this book. Keywords  Indigenous communities • Ecuadorian migration • Youth • Identity • Cañar

Introduction This book started with a question. How does transnational migration transform youth identities within indigenous communities? Cañar, a district in Southern Ecuador, combines two critical elements that make it relevant for exploring this question. On the one hand, it is a district with

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. D. Vásquez, Transforming Ethnicity, Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30097-4_1

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a high indigenous population, and, on the other, it has had a historically high migration rate, particularly to the United States. Migration has introduced structural changes, manifested in the diversification of political and community organizations, family life, housing infrastructure, and new commercial networks. As such, in Cañar, global economic, social, and cultural transformational processes are intertwined with a series of cultural practices that constitute the foundation of ethnic identity.

COLOMBIA

Quito

ECUADOR Guayaquil

Cañar Cuenca

United States

Mexico

PERU

Ecuador

Map 1.1  Ecuador, with research area emphasized. (Map by the author)

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During my time in Cañar, I noticed that both youth and adults referred to migration as the cause of a youth crisis. One of the places I observed during my fieldwork in Cañar was a school in the urban area. Young people from rural indigenous communities attend this school. When I told several teachers I was investigating youth identities, they quickly attributed behaviors ranging from alcohol consumption and disinterest in studying to using tattoos, a taste for rock or punk music, or their activity on social networks to migration. In a certain way, the teachers considered migration a determining phenomenon in the lives of many young people. One teacher, in particular, told me that he identified the children of migrants in the town by their arrogant way of treating others. The origin of the young people’s haughtiness was due to the access to remittances, Smartphones, and sports brand clothes they received from their parents in the United States. I identified in these discourses not only generalizations in the attitudes of youth but it also felt as if the generalization prevented adults from discussing how migration reconfigures the intergenerational relationships. In this narrative, adults placed themselves outside what they called the “negative consequences” of migration. When I commented to a teacher that in Cañar, problems with alcohol were much more significant among male adults than among youth,1 he responded that the problem was really that “the youth now are not like the youth before.” He told me, “here, young people separated from parents who have migrated, living with relatives, really have no one to control them.” Transforming Ethnicity analyses the changing constructions of indigenous identities among youth in a scenario marked by more than seven decades of migratory flows to the United States. I analyze how migration transforms ethnic identities and intergenerational relationships and how migration experiences modify local dynamics around communal organization, as well as the expectations of young indigenous people. I refer to “adultcentrism” as an analytical perspective on power and gender dynamics between adults and youth in indigenous communities. This book is based on the transnational experience of young people in Cañar whose lives evolve around migration, discourses of ethnic identities, and community practices. Youth acquire this experience through the ties they sustain with their relatives living abroad. In this book, I explore the relationships between the dynamics of globalization, young people’s 1  See: Indicators of Nutrition and Environments of Healthy Life, Cañar. http://indicadores.igualdad.gob.ec/index.php.

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identities, ethnicity, and migration, to outline a framework that shows the complexity of their relations. In contexts where the possibility of migration permanently reconfigures socialization, the socio-economic fabric, and emotional ties, it fundamentally restates youth’s subjective responses to the family and community. I consider cultural dimensions of migration as constituting an entry point for analyzing young people’s subjectivities in contemporary societies. Socio-cultural transformations in indigenous communities’ way of life are understood as manifestations of a complex phenomenon that impacts ethnic identities and activates patterns of domination that assign the young the responsibility for the erosion of community ideals. While adult indigenous generations consider the transnational experience typical of today’s youth crisis, youth develop diverse ways of experiencing and assuming the transnational experience. In this introduction chapter, I present the historical construction of Ecuadorian indigenous identities in their relationship with the State, the hacienda regime, and the cycles of indigenous political struggles. I then consider how migration within Ecuador and to the United States has been part of Cañar indigenous communities. The third part focuses on how indigenous identities and youth have been analyzed in sociology, particularly in Latin America and Ecuador. Finally, I introduce the concepts, questions, and methodology I used for this book.

The Historical Struggle for Indigenous Identities in Ecuador In Ecuador’s most recent census (INEC 2010), 7.03% of the total population self-identified as indigenous. Around 86% of indigenous people belong to the indigenous Kichwa nationality, mostly living in the Highland region.2 The Kichwa people from Cañar (i.e., the Cañari people), mainly located in the Southern Andes (Fig. 1.1), are 7% of the Ecuadorian indigenous population (CNIPN 2019). Nonetheless, in a country where interethnic relations have historically been conflicted, built around an idea of white-mestizo supremacy, and linked to racism in which indigenous identity appears as negative, indigenous self-identification is unstable and subjected to political struggles.  The Kichwa nationality includes the following indigenous peoples: Cañari, Pasto, Natabuela, Otavalo, Karanki, Kayambi, Kitucara, Panzaleo, Chibuleo, Salasaca, Kisapincha, Tomabela, Waranka, Puruha, Saraguro, Paltas. 2

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Fig. 1.1  Rural Cañar. (Photo by Lucía Pérez)

During Spanish colonial rule (1563–1822), what today is Ecuador, was part of the Real Audiencia de Quito. The colonial administration divided this territory into a republic of Indians and a republic of Spaniards. The model of ‘dual republics’ was a colonial strategy of government based on political-legal segregation aimed at creating institutional spaces of negotiation between the indigenous population and the political authorities (Thurner 1997). Since the seventeenth century, most of the indigenous peoples from the Andean region were subjected to the hacienda economic system. The hacienda system was a private landed state destined for agricultural production where owners relied upon the forced labor of indigenous personal servants named mitayos. Mitayos were mostly men over the age of 18 living in indigenous communities. The hacienda system incorporated indigenous and non-indigenous servants to work under the huasipungo, a form of selling labor force in exchange for the right to use a parcel of the hacienda land (Pallares 2002; Larson 2004). The situation of the huasipungo was described in a direct language in 1934 by Ecuadorian writer Jorge Icaza. Icaza’s novel Huasipungo narrates the exploitation of the collective and free labor of the indigenous people by landowners and members of the clergy, the use of the whip and weapons to stop the indigenous mobilization against the dispossession of their

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plots, the destruction of homes as a form of repression of protest, and the precarious conditions of survival of the indigenous people.3 The hacienda regime, ethnic segregation, and labor racialization did not disappear after the Ecuadorian independence in 1830 (Lyons 2006). As a semi-feudal institution rooted in the servitude of indigenous peasants, the haciendas were “colonial spaces of exception” (Radcliffe 2015, 41) in which landlords, with the support of Church power, exploited and controlled indigenous populations (Guerrero 1997). During the early Republic, the racialization of populations was reinforced through the use of terms such as Indians, Blacks, cholos (urbanized indigenous groups), montubios (people of mixed race with black heritage based on the coastal and subtropical areas), and mestizos (Spanish-­ indigenous populations) all whom were excluded from national life (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996). However, the model of ‘Indian republics’ left a memory of controlled autonomies, where the indigenous populations kept their social, legal, economic, and political practices. Liberal elites in the Andes invested in the idea that genuine nationality and economic progress could be achieved only through abolishing Hispanic colonial despotism and decolonizing the ‘republic of Indians’ to allow indigenous peoples to gradually become ‘enlightened’ and ‘civilized’ (Larson 2004; Thurner 1997). Certainly, ordinary citizenship was extended to indigenous peoples through the abolition of the so-called Indian tribute in 1857; however, the colonial logic of the early Republic years, when the ‘Indians’ were subjected to the special category of ‘miserable’ had split the political field of the nation into the free citizens and the undefined sector of indigenous people (Guerrero 1997). Hence, in postcolonial Ecuador, national elites tried to unify the nation by creating a central State but transferring the administration of the population to private actors, particularly the hacienda landowners who controlled Ecuador from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century (Maiguashca 1994). Beyond a system of economic exploitation, the hacienda was “a symbolic universe of power” that transcends its historical reference “through the internalization of patterns of violence, where physical violence plays a central role in the definition of social hierarchies […] and the persistence of dehumanizing practices in everyday life” (Cervone and Cucurí 2017, 122). Indigenous women were oppressed at the intersection  The English translation of the novel Huasipungo was published in 1964 with the title The Villagers. See Icaza (1964). 3

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of the patriarchal institutions and practices of the Ecuadorian State, the hacienda landlords, and the indigenous systems (O’Connor 2007). Although a small part of the highland communities was free from the hacienda regime, such communities had other forms of dependency and dominance since “most Indians were small landholders dominated by local merchants and caciques, or chieftains, with more dispersed but nonetheless significant political and economic control” (Pallares 2002, 12). The first Agrarian Reform in 1964 abolished the huasipungo and the precapitalist labor relations. The second Agrarian Reform in 1973 allowed indigenous communities to demand the expropriation of haciendas. As a result of these reforms and related rural development projects eliminating hacienda landlords, the State became more present in free indigenous communities and former hacienda fields. The State became more direct and constant, “expanding its previous role as police authority and occasional regulator of disputes between landowners and indigenous peasants” (Pallares 2002, 16). The crisis of the hacienda system and the Agrarian Reform modified the scenario for the political mobilization of indigenous communities for their right to own land. Along with political discourses on class differences, indigenous organizations articulated discourses on political-ethnic identities, pointing out the difference from white-mestizo political projects and setting the terrain for demanding rights to self-determination in the following decades (Becker 2008a, 2008b, 2011a; Coronel 2010). Local and national level organizations, such as Ecuador Runacunapac Richarimui-ECUARUNARI (kichwa language name that means “the Ecuadorian Indian Awakens”) founded in 1972, set a political agenda for indigenous communities, combining cultural, political, and economic demands. In the 1980s, voting rights included the illiterate population, which granted the indigenous population, especially in the rural areas, the right to vote. Regional and national indigenous organization building was consolidated in the 1980s and grouped into one of three major regional federations: Confederación Nacional de Indígenas Amazónicos-CONFENAI (National Confederation of Amazonian Indigenous), Coordinadora de Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana-COICE (Coordination of Indigenous from the Ecuadorian Coast), and ECUARUNARI. By 1986, these indigenous organizations had coalesced with lowland provincial organizations to form one national organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which generated an unprecedented uprising in 1990 and subsequent mobilizations in 1992 and 1994.

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While the indigenous uprisings in the 1990s emphasized the demand for self-determination, ethnic autonomy, and cultural rights, the Ecuadorian government pushed a neoliberal agenda. Multiculturalism and neoliberalism converged in a new constitution enacted in 1998 (Fiallo 2014). The appearance of multiculturalism in Latin America took place in conditions that were different from countries in the Global North. In Ecuador, multiculturalism developed when neoliberalism was already the hegemonic model and resulted from the State’s response to indigenous movements (Svampa 2016, 97). Although Ecuadorian constitutionalism of 1998 recognized the collective rights of indigenous peoples through discourses of ethnic diversity, this recognition was focused on the insertion of these groups in globalization. During the neoliberal period, knowledge about indigenous populations has been framed as ethnographic and ‘folkloric’ rather than as a central political concern (Radcliffe 2015, 159). One primary effect of multiculturalism is building an obsolete notion of identity, emphasizing thick cultural borders among peoples and, therefore, “pure” images of indigenous cultures (Zapata 2019) rather than addressing ethnic identities as the result of historical struggles. Under multiculturalism, the State “promised substantive citizenship via development,” but, in practice, it delivered “irregular, highly conditional development, in which a small coterie of elite families has dominated political, economic activities in export agriculture, resource extraction, politics, and statecraft, against which small tenuous middle class and large numbers of diverse low-income subjects struggle to maintain dignity and livelihood” (Radcliffe 2015, 24). Further, the multicultural paradigm in Ecuador deepened gender inequality, promoting the concept of indigenous women as agents of development over women’s rights, displacing the regulation and control of gender-related issues to non-state actors and communities, and strengthening the role of women as ‘guardians of culture,’ which had been granted to them since the colonial period (Fiallo 2022). This dynamic has not been overcome, although the indigenous movement and left-wing political actors recognized the Ecuadorian Plurinational State in the 2008 Constitution. The 2008 Constitution (Art. 1) recognized Ecuador as “a constitutional State of rights and justice, social, democratic, sovereign, independent, unitary, intercultural, plurinational, and secular.” For the CONAIE, one of the main actors arguing for declaring Ecuador as a Plurinational State, plurinationality did not intend to create separate States for the

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different ethnic groups, but rather it was about reflecting the reality of the country (Becker 2012). In a Plurinational State, indigenous organizations share their interest with non-indigenous popular movements in building a state model that, rather than multicultural, will pursue an intercultural process. However, critiques on the 2007–2008 Constitutional process point out how the term “plurinational” was manipulated in debates to be vaguely recognized. This ensured that the “plurinational” remained rhetorically without any substantial impact or concrete implications. Beyond its recognition in the first article and a chapter dedicated to “Derechos del Buen Vivir” (i.e., Good Living Rights), the plurinational principle was not pivotal for the articles about State power (Becker 2011b, see also Martínez Dalmau 2016). Finally, while ‘interculturality’ is a concept that affirms the plural nature of society and implies a dialogue for mutual and collective enrichment among the different cultures and nationalities in Ecuador, indigenous peoples’ rights continue to be violated (Rodríguez Cruz 2018), and authoritarian governments since 2017 have reached high levels of violence against indigenous mobilization protesting neoliberal measures (Ramírez 2020; Vásquez 2021; Iza et al. 2021).

Cañar and Its History of Migration Throughout the history of post-colonial Ecuador (1830), migration from the highland region to the coast and from the country to the cities have been the two main historical forms of human mobility in the nation (Eguiguren 2019, 6–7). Throughout the twentieth century, people originally from the Sierra (the highland region), historically the country’s most populated area, migrated to the coast due to greater opportunities in export-oriented agricultural production (Fig. 1.2). Cañar (see Map 1.1.) has historically relied on the migrant youth labor force to sustain life between the rural Sierra and industrial urban spaces of the country. This immigration was influenced by unemployment, following what is called “the toquilla straw hat crisis.”4 Until the 1950s, Cañar was a leading 4  Torres (2009, 95) poses it as follows: “The difficulties in the artisan sector stem from competition from China, Japan, and the Philippines for the Ecuadorian product, as well as the decrease in demand due to the suppressed usage of the hat. In Cañar, this crisis is evidenced by the decrease in the number of people dedicated to this trade: in 1950, there were 20,645 weavers while in 1954 this number had dropped to 12,543, causing those who abandoned the sector to look for employment elsewhere, with agriculture being where they turned in order to refresh their survival strategies.”

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Fig. 1.2  Pan-American Highway connecting urban Cañar with other districts. (Photo by the author)

production center of the hand-made toquilla straw hat (also known as Panama hat), which represented 12.3% of the country’s total exports in 1949, but fell to 6.9% in 1950 and continued to fall to 1.6% by 1954 (Torres 2009, 95). The crisis in the export of straw hats led to unemployment of more than 40,000 weavers from the Cañar area, which increased migration to Guayaquil on the coast and Cuenca in the Andes. The work of migrants from Cañar contributed to the process of industrialization that, in the 1970s, made Guayaquil move from an exporting center to an importing and commercial, while Cuenca became the urban center of the southern Ecuadorian Andes (Balarezo 1980; Villavicencio 1986). Until the 1930s, most of what now makes up the rural area of the Cañar district was a hacienda belonging to a single aristocratic family (Torres 2009). The Agrarian Reform in 1964, allowing for state intervention of such swathes of land, did not lead to land redistribution and development for the peasantry. On the contrary, its lack of consideration of

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specific indigenous family sizes or needs generated an unequal land distribution, forcing male migration from these communities to the Ecuadorian coast and the Cañar lowlands. This linked migration to the development and expansion of agriculture and seasonal agricultural migration in these decades (Balarezo 1980, 41–48; Villavicencio 1986; Carpio 1992). Furthermore, the decomposition of the hacienda regime through Agrarian reforms produced a migration from the Highland to the coast that, relieving the pressure on the land market, ultimately opened the way for the capitalist modernization of preexisting peasant productive units (Bretón 1997). Migration from the Ecuadorian Andes to the coastal region was encouraged by agricultural production, especially banana, rice, and sugar, oriented toward the international market (Silverman 1987). Migrations to the city of Cuenca were temporary, while those to Guayaquil were more permanent. During the sixties and seventies, international migration began to the United States, Canada, and Venezuela (Kyle 2000; Herrera and Vásquez 2012). The government of the progressive leader Jaime Roldós (1980–1981) characterized the Ecuadorian nation as “pluricultural,” “referring to the respect for and support of indigenous peoples and cultures as a key component of national development” (Pallares 2007). Ecuadorian pluriculturalism was inspired by the regional scope of neo-indigenism, which called for a new conception of national societies as plurilingual, pluri-ethnic, and pluricultural. The Roldós regime (whose presidency ended due to his death in May 1981) gave indigenous activists political opportunities and institutional mechanisms to channel their demands, especially those related to bilingual education in Spanish and Kichwa languages. However, during the 1980s, Ecuador faced subordination to transnational capital and the international bureaucracy. Implementing a neoliberal agenda combined the local power of dominant elites from private banking and the agro-export sector (León 2005). The deep roots of agrarian activity and dairy production in the Cañar region countered the neoliberal adjustments of the 1980s, partly due to the partial compensation by cooperation development programs (Vaillant 2008). However, the financial crisis of 1999 and the dollarization of the economy in 2000 profoundly transformed the Cañar rural population. A drastic drop in purchasing power and the loss of competitiveness with neighboring countries left peasant families with few local economic alternatives to maintain their standard of living. For peasant families, “it became more pertinent to sell

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their labor on the international market than to continue migrating to the coast or the cities to receive wages judged to be insufficient.” (Vaillant 2008, 238). Cañar waves of migration are associated with changes in labor markets related to the diversification of labor. Though international migration from Cañar began in the sixties and seventies, 99% of the migrants between 1950 and 2012 were living in rural areas in 1958 (FLACSO-SIMA 2012). Migration from Cañar to Guayaquil and Cuenca, where employment was concentrated in construction and capitalist agricultural sectors as part of both cities’ industrialization and technification, changed since 1999. The 2000–2010 decade was the decade of the most remarkable international migration in the history of Cañar, representing 69.4% of the total migration over 62 years (FLACSO 2012). In this decade, the migratory destination largely shifted to the United States and Spain, where migrants are still employed in construction, the capitalist agricultural sector, and the service economy (Vaillant 2008). Migration to the United States was initiated primarily by those people who had previously migrated to the Ecuadorian coast (FLACSO 2012). Before 1950, there were 371 Ecuadorians in New York, a figure that quadrupled in the following decade: between 1950 and 1959, 1261 Ecuadorians arrived in the city. During 1960–1969, 10,228 people from Ecuador arrived, and, between 1970 and 1979, the number rose to 14,897. From 1990 through 1999, Ecuadorians arriving in New  York were 36,644, and from 2000 to 2010, they were 49,410. In 2010, Ecuadorian population in NYC was 210,532 from which 60.66% arrived in this city from 1990 onward (Bergad 2011). Since 2000, the Ecuadorian-origin population has increased 174%, growing from 270,000 to 738,000  in 2017 (Graph 1.1). At the same time, Ecuadorian foreign-born population in the U.S. grew by 109%, from 205,000 in 2000 to 427,000. The Ecuadorian population is concentrated in New York (39%), New Jersey (18%), and Florida (11%), and it accounts for 1% of the U.S. Hispanic population. (Bustamente et al. 2019).5 The boom of international migration matches Ecuador’s political destabilization and organized resistance of the indigenous political movement. The nineties and early 2000s were a period of weak credibility in state institutions and the discredit of the political party system 5  Ecuadorian population, in this table, means people who self-identified as Hispanics of Ecuadorian origin. This includes immigrants from Ecuador and those who trace their family ancestry to Ecuador. This number increased from 269,699 in 2000, to 664,781 in 2010. In continued increasing to 707,428 in 2015 and to 738,156 in 2017.

Thousands

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800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 2000

2010

Year

2015

13

2017

Graph 1.1  Ecuadorian population in the U.S., 2000–2017. (Source: Pew Research Center tabulations of 2000 census (5% IPUMS) and 2010, 2015 and 2017 American Community Surveys (1% IPUMS))

scenario (Andrade 2005; Leon 2005). The indigenous uprising of the 1990s represented the reactivation of the indigenous struggle in the configuration of Ecuadorian politics. Indigenous organizations played a decisive role and resorted to protest and social action. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Indigenous Movement “Pachakutik,” both with relevant support from the Cañar population, contested neoliberal governing and led a popular protest that ended up in the overthrow of right-wing president Abdalá Bucaram in 1997, Jamil Mahuad in 2000 and Lucio Gutiérrez in 2005 (Lucero 2008; Becker 2010). The 2008 global economic crisis transformed the opportunities for labor insertion of Ecuadorian migrants in New York City. Women moved from steady employment, especially in garment workshops, to street-­ vending and hourly paid domestic work. The construction sector crisis led men to seek jobs in upstate New  York, New Jersey, and Milford, Massachusetts (Herrera 2019). Deportation and the intensification of violence on the Mexican border has increased the trip’s vulnerable conditions for Ecuadorian migrants but have not eliminated migration journeys (Swanson 2018; Hiemstra 2019; Minchala 2020). Indeed, “between 2000 and 2010, most Ecuadorian migrants traveling to the United States followed a route which began with a seven- to eight-day journey by sea and later -for two to three

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months - over land by car, truck, train, motorcycles, and foot […] It is a route marked with danger, precariousness, and fear” (Stone-Cadena 2016, 348).6 Ecuadorian migrants’ significant participation in the illegal industry of undocumented migration is connected with the mediation of local, community-­based “pasadores” (human smugglers) (Hiemstra 2019). In the case of indigenous migration from southern Ecuador, the smugglers share a common indigenous identity and create migration routes from the rural areas (Stone-Cadena 2016). Research shows that by 2018 “an estimated fifty Ecuadorians on average have been deported by Mexico every month since 2009 [while] 7,500 Ecuadorians have been deported from the United States between January 2012 and June 2016” (Stone-Cadena and Álvarez 2018, 198–199). Border securitization in Mexico and the United States has increased the criminalization of Ecuadorian migrants. Herrera (2019, 9) shows how, for migrants from Cañar, “each person who leaves their community knows that their arrival, as well as their return, are no longer certain.” Though Ecuadorian emigration declined during the past decade, migration from Cañar to the United States maintained a “steady pace” (Berg and Herrera 2021). Today, Cañar is the district with the second-highest incidence of migration in Ecuador and an area with one of the country’s largest indigenous populations. In the last four decades, at least 1.645.000 Ecuadorians have left the country. This number would reach two million if estimations about undocumented emigrants were added. This figure represents around 11.5% of the Ecuadorian population (CNIMH 2019, 40). According to Ecuador’s most recent Census (INEC 2010), 39% of the population in Cañar self-identifies as indigenous, and 48% of indigenous households report having a family member abroad. Cañar district comprises the urban parish of Cañar, 11 primary rural parishes, 194 communities, and 19 urban neighborhoods (GADIC 2021). The population is 59,323 of which 77.4% live in rural areas, and 6.4% live in extreme poverty. A significant population in Cañar (65.9%) lives in housing with inadequate essential services, another 13.8% live in households with high economic dependence on remittances, and 26.5% live in critically overcrowded housing (INEC 2010). 6  Stone-Cadena (2016, 348) notes that “since 2010, many migrants are able to fly to Central America, primarily to Honduras, and begin the journey over land.”

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Ecuadorian emigration is higher among people between 20 and 29 years of age. By 2018, young people between 20 and 29 represented 46.5% of the migrants, followed by children and youth between 10 and 19 years (27.2%). The adult migrant population between 30 and 49 years equals 22.5% (CNIMH 2019, 40–41). Youth migration in the Cañar district, out of the country, has been durable in time. By 2007, four out of every five migrants in Cañar were between 18 and 49 years of age, and 60% were married. Many migrants were fathers and mothers who had left behind their children: 64% of migrants had children living in their community of origin, 57% of whom were under 18 years old (FLACSO et al. 2007). The ways in which transnational links nourish people’s daily lives in Cañar speak of a transnational experience, even in migrants’ place of origin. Not only are profound economic, social, and cultural changes taking place in Cañar but it is also a space in which its inhabitants who have not migrated still construct subjectivities in reference to the destination countries of family and friends who have left.

Researching Indigenous Youth in Latin America and Ecuador Transnationalism has a fundamental role in transforming indigenous subjectivities in Latin America (Heidbring 2020; Derr and Corona 2021; Velasco-Ortiz and Pombo 2014; Cruz et al. 2020; Menjívar 2002; Pérez Ruiz 2008). In this vein, the issue of indigenous youth requires considering the interactions between both categories (i.e., youth and indigenous). The relationship between ‘youth’ and ‘indigenous’ is a theoretical construct that requires determining the scope of the intersecting links between generational and ethnic categories. This has not been a central task in the research on youth in Latin American scholarship. In Ecuador, indigenous youth identity is marked by historical features of almost all indigenous communities: the legacy of colonization, complex relationships with the land, and strategies of territorial mobility (Unda and Muñoz 2011). Within the Western tradition, the category of youth includes perspectives inherited from Darwinism (Feixa Pampols and Cangas 2006) and structural-functionalist theories whose primary interpretation of youth identifies it as a problem that arises from the opposition between youth and adult roles (Parsons 1942). Individual psychological perspectives see

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youth in terms of physiological transitions (Erikson 1968). Latin American studies adopted the Darwinian perspective in the 1930s and 1940s, especially through the influence of Argentine psychologist and politician Aníbal Ponce (1936, 1939). Founded in 1948, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC), one of the most influential research centers in the region, did not consider the generational dimension in sociocultural studies of indigenous peoples until 1985. ECLAC’s “studies on indigenous communities, as well as those focused on peasant and urban societies, viewed their subjects of study as Indians, peasants, settlers, men, women, bourgeoisie, or workers, but not as children and even less so as a youth” (Feixa Pampols and Cnagas 2006, 177). Thus, ECLACS’s shared the common conception that most indigenous people experience early labor and sexual incorporation into adult life without considering the specificity of indigenous youth. Since the mid-1980s, high migratory flows to cities prompted sociological and anthropological research on urban-rural youth, seeking to account for the identity processes of young people. The following two decades focused on communicative, aesthetic, and political practices congruent with transformations in contemporary societies (Martín Barbero 1998; Reguillo 2000; Margulis and Urresti 2008; Urteaga 2008; Valenzuela 2009). Transnational migration’s central role in shaping youth subjectivities, especially when young people establish transnational networks and rethink the cultural dimension of national identities overcoming the delimitation of identity to a State discourse, resulted in cultural conflicts. For instance, the organization “Almighty Latin Kings and Queens Nation” (ALKQN),7 started in Ecuador in 1992, incorporated young people deported from the United States. From Ecuador, these migrant children established links with Ecuadorian migrant youth in the United States, Spain, and Italy consolidating a transnational youth community (Queirolo Palmas 2007; Brotherton 2008). A youth community that calls itself ‘a Nation’ shows how concepts are re-politicized and how transnational experience subverts the normative notions of social hierarchies (Cerbino and Rodríguez 2008). 7  Originally, the ALKQN was founded in the United States in 1986. ALKQN is the result of the process of hybridization between the youth expressions that several South American, Central American, and Caribbean migrants formed to identify themselves in the cities of the United States in the 1940s or 1950s against discrimination.

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Transnational migration is crucial in forming young people’s subjectivities and understanding of indigenous youth. In Ecuadorian indigenous communities, consumption, access to education, political participation, and socioeconomic changes through global trade suggest generational ruptures (Rodríguez Cruz 2020; Célleri 2020; Pribilsky 2007; Rivas 2008; Unda and Muñoz 2011). Thus, indigenous youth cannot be understood outside the dynamics that migration generates in the reconfiguring of subjectivities. The relationship between migration and the production of indigenous youth identities contributes to understanding transformations in social roles and the collective imagination of indigenous communities and families. Thus, a focus on the indigenous identity-migration relationship in Ecuador demonstrates that identity is a social relationship, and culture is a relationship of differences (Grimson 2010). In Ecuadorian policy, youth is considered a generational state, so men and women between 15 and 25 years of age are considered young. However, due to the great cultural variations among Andean, coastal, and Amazonian indigenous peoples, the monolithic idea of a state of youth is more a demographic measurement than a social reality. For instance, in the Andean indigenous world, youth tend to be in a generational state strongly associated with civil status. A young indigenous person (man or woman) is considered an adult as soon as he or she gets married and assumes responsibilities toward his offspring and his family. (Rivas 2008, 115–116) Despite diverse terminology in different indigenous languages, the concept of indigenous youth refers to a particularly vital moment. Indigenous communities do not use the term ‘adolescent.’ The absence of this term is commonly associated with the typical marriage age in indigenous Ecuador between 16 and 24 years of age (MSP, UNPFA, and FLACSO 2010). Furthermore, indigenous peoples in Ecuador have different ways of naming the vital moment of being youth. The Cofanes, for example, use the term desenga, which in the Aingae language is the age range between 12 and 20 years old. For the term young, the Ëpera use the words küntraa (boy) and aweëra (girl), and the Chachis use musu and panna, although more than age, these terms refer to “states of social commitment.” Youth ends in these communities with marriage and the acquisition of responsibilities, regardless of age in years […] in Chachi communities, when young people marry, they are called ruku (in the case of men) and shimbu (in the case of women). The literal translation of the Kichwa concept of guambra is “like man” or “like woman”: only with marriage do guambra become kari [man] and huarmi [woman] and obtain that status within the family and the community. (MSP, UNPFA, and FLACSO 2010, 26)

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The diverse nuances for naming youth in indigenous languages manifest the contextual character of the concept of youth. Beyond those linguistic differences, social processes demarcate the beginning of the life stage of youth in indigenous communities. Also, the emergence category of indigenous youth involves the process of the dissolution of urban and rural cultural boundaries. Research conducted in the Antioquia region (Colombia) shows that 20 years ago, “the condition of youth, as understood in the West, did not exist for many indigenous communities […] reflections on the question of youth began with intercultural practices more common to consumer societies that have now permeated the social fabric” (Zapata and Hoyos 2005, 30–31). Indeed, youth identities can be recognized from the second half of the twentieth century onward as a result of cultural transformations that transgress institutional orders and provoke identification with the youth of previous generations (Bourdieu 1993; Sarlo 2001). In the case of indigenous youth, migration is critical in how they participate in the cultural transformations of contemporary capitalism and globalization. Though rituals of passage have marked generational differentiation in communal societies, I argue that the emergence of the youth category arises with indigenous communities’ insertion into processes of a global transformation. Thus, the category of youth—as a specific group with characteristics that separate it from adults—emerges from the intensification of transnational life in communities. In my fieldwork, I saw how indigenous families used less the Kichwa term guambras and more the term youth. Thus, migration represents a framework for locating the emergence of a specific subject whose transnational experience reflects differences that may result in conflict within indigenous communities. The identity of youth in indigenous communities thus cannot be analyzed without understanding how migration produces subjectivities.

Exploring Cañar’s Indigenous Communities: Theory and Questions To examine the questions posed in the book’s introduction, I discuss the following analytical categories: youth as a category is appropriate insofar as it can name a particular and contextually situated historical experience; identity and ethnicity as ways of naming relational processes of differentiation; and adultcentrism as the identification of processes by which representations of youth as inferior are produced.

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Youth and Adultcentrism In the sociology of youth, several concepts classify, describe, and inscribe youth as a research object: youth cultures, youth subjectivities, urban tribes, and juvenile identities. Beyond the differences between these terms, my interest lies in the principles that underlie the production of youth as a concept which contributes to research that links culture to political questions on indigenous youth in migratory contexts. If, as Bourdieu said in 1978, “Youth is nothing but a word,” it is essential to address how such a word works as a concept condensing historical experiences of a human collective (Koselleck 1993). The concept of youth is necessarily linked to its analytical value for addressing generational relations and how “in the logical division between young and old there exists the question of power, of the division (in the sense of distribution) of power” (Bourdieu 1993, 94). In this vein, it is crucial to critique essentialist approaches that consider youth as a particular “state of the soul” circumscribed to a certain age. Bourdieu considers that youth and old age are not given; rather, the difference between young and old is socially constructed. Age is a manipulated and manipulable datum. To speak of young people as a social unit, as a constituted group, possessing common interests, and linking these interests to a biologically defined age, constitutes in itself an obvious manipulation. (Bourdieu 1993, 95)

The point is that age, as a condition, refers not only to biological differences, as suggested by evolutionist approaches but also to the diverse cultural phenomena surrounding it. Thus, youth, or being young, refers to a “range of cultural modalities that unfold with the interaction of partial probabilities arranged by class, gender, age, embodied memory, institutions” (Margulis and Urresti 2008, 29). Also, considering youth as a stage of life is the most common way we establish representations of young people and can be seen in two ways: an understanding of youth in terms of its place in the life cycle of human development, distinguishable from other stages such as childhood, adulthood or old age; and a conception of youth as a preparatory stage for insertion of young people into the so-called adult world. For instance, in Erik Erikson’s psychological work on youth (1968), it is universalized as a “stage of transition” toward adulthood, categorizing it via the concept of

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“social moratorium.” Erikson attributes universal, decontextualized characteristics to young people and seeks to explain identity beyond the sociohistorical and cultural conditions in which it was produced. Hence, the condition of youth is defined with a universal profile, independent of structural constraints and agency in producing subjectivity. If youth is a transit stage of life that acquires value only in reference to the adult world, its value is reduced to an uncertain event in the future. Several statements express the most common representations of youth. These statements ratify value systems that reinforce the inferiorizing of young people and placing the adult as a defined subject. Statements like “youth is a stage of crisis,” “youth is a stage of transition between childhood and adulthood,” “young people are immature,” or “youth are the future of the country” either assume that crises—as life experiences—are proper to a period circumscribed to a certain range of years or implies that youth constitute a bridge, a liminal non-place. They also assume maturity to be a natural and essential characteristic of adults and comprise the parameter of what it means to be human. These common statements place young people in an as-of-yet-inexistent future, in which the possibilities of their self-realization are postponed indefinitely. From a critical standpoint, I incorporate the analysis of adultcentrism (Duarte 2006; Vásquez 2014; Vásquez and Bravo 2021).8 Adultcentrism is “a system of effective statements that relegate young people to the condition of ‘not-yet-subjects,’ of beings in default, lack or deficit” (Vásquez and Bravo 2021, 8). Adultcentrism refers to the series of mechanisms and practices that subordinate young people, defining youth from the lack of reason (substantial deficit), maturity (cognitive-evolutionary deficit), and responsibility (moral deficit). Adultcentrism is a particular form of power exercise based on a paradoxical combination of discrimination and worship since “discrimination suffered as a result of age, as a key to social labeling, has a defining force, as much as gender, racial, economic discrimination. In the same process, there is a sort of valuation of youth as the beautiful, the romantic, the time of ideals (Duarte 2006, 127). Critique of adultcentrism intends to signal the difficulty of valuing youth according to parameters that youths themselves construct, and not only in terms of their adaptation, or integration, in a world supposedly 8  My approach to adultcentrism focuses on sociological work about youth, which has received more attention in Latin America, and it is different from the literature in psychology that work on adultcentrism for the analysis of childhood (e.g., Petr 1992; Florio et al. 2020).

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fully constituted from adult knowledge and power and reproduced in a wide range of social practices, from the family to political, educational and health care systems. In my fieldwork, I found stereotypical representations of young people (e.g., youth as idealistic, rebellious, and unstable) correspond to an adultcentric view that can be found in indigenous communities’ socialization spaces. Identity and Ethnicity Given that this book is about indigenous youth and migration and the scope that the transnational experience has on the cultural configurations of the Cañar district, I discuss how the connection between ethnicity and youth encompasses diverse articulations of social heterogeneity shared by opposing or distinct actors (Grimson 2011, 172). Indigenous youth inhabit a multiplicity of cultural dimensions: their community of origin, the groups in which they participate, and their experiences of belonging or uprooting. Thus, assuming indigenous youth identity as determined, complete, or substantive entails limitations in understanding the relationship between migration, ethnicity, and youth. Critiques of “identity” point to it as ambiguous, vague, and thus a term with limited analytical value, failing primarily in its specificity. For instance, Brubaker and Cooper “[i]f one wants to examine the meaning and significance people give to constructs such as race, ethnicity, and nationality, one already has to thread through conceptual thickets, and it is not clear what one gains by aggregating them under the flattening rubric of identity” (Brubaker and Cooper 2000, 9). I follow Brubaker and Cooper (2000) since the identity must be defined by its usage, as a practical category, as it appears in the political struggle; as a collective phenomenon, articulated via the similarities between members of a group; as a central aspect of individuality, which is distinguished from superficial aspects of the self; as a product of political action that develops a sort of collective self-­ understanding; and as the unstable, dynamic, and fluctuating character of the self. However, I use the term identity in my analysis to open subjects up to describe the intersection of social, economic, and historical processes, with the subjective anchors to their territory and sense of being part of the Cañari people. Detaching from an adultcentric view that assumes all young people to be in ‘search’ of their identity (displacing the subjective operation to a metaphysical plane: the ultimate truth of being, the identity, the condition

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that allows integration with oneself), I consider identity is formed through the intersection of contextual factors appropriated in personal experience. In this regard, I refer to identity as “a production, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall 1990, 222). Ethnicity consists of ways of perceiving, interpreting, and representing social words, and can be derived from political projects, everyday encounters, languages, or shared knowledge (Brubaker 2004). Also, if ethnicity is a specific facet of identity (de Cardoso 2007), ethnic identity “implies the affirmation of the self in relation to others” and “a self-perception of the situated self” among the others (p. 55). In this vein, identifying the transformation of ethnicity in Cañar communities requires addressing the diversification produced by the transnational experience. I also address how processes of generational differentiation are traversed by adultcentric representations based on discourses on ethnic identity. Transnationalism and Experience Transnationalism, as a theoretical perspective, offers elements that allow for the study of the social, economic, political, and cultural ties maintained by immigrants in different places. Transnationalism focuses on the constitution of a new global society and the possible subversions of state political monopolies through the experience of people who move beyond the borders of the nation-state. The experience of transnational migrants then constitutes a third space, a transnational social field, that emerges from the intersection of places of origin and destination and the circulation of goods and experiences (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). The concept of transnational social field “takes us beyond the direct experience of migration into domains of interaction where individuals who do not move themselves maintain social relations across borders through various forms of communication.” In this vein, considering migrants shape a third space made of their transnational interactions calls into question “neat divisions of connection into local, national, transnational, and global” since as Levitt and Glick Schiller (2008, 286–287) argue, in some sense, “all [migrant networks] are local in that near and distant connections penetrate the daily lives of individuals lived within a locale. But within this locale, a person may participate in personal networks or receive ideas and information that connect then to others in a nation-state, across the borders of a nation-state, or globally, without ever

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having migrated.” In short, transnational experience does not refer only to those who physically move from one place to another but to all whose subjectivities are shaped by migration by participating in transnational markets, communications, and cultural dissemination, through interpersonal ties (family, friends). Although, in many cases, indigenous youth from Cañar aim to remain in their community of origin, links with migrants are key reference points for their lives. Migrants in the United States and Europe play an active role in the community’s experience of globality, being part of the transnational experience for those who remain in Ecuador. Thus, I use the transnational perspective as part of a “socio-cultural process through which young people ascribe themselves in person or symbolically to certain social identities and assume certain discourses, aesthetics, and practices” (Reguillo 2000, 55). This socio-cultural process is framed by how indigenous communities incorporate transnational migration in narratives and discourses about youth. These narratives about youth are not only traversed by intergenerational conflicts but also by racial, educational, and conflicts in communication between people and institutions. I consider that the production of the transnational experience is reinforced by what Appadurai (1996, 54) calls the work of the imagination meaning “the fabrication of social lives tied up with images, ideas, and opportunities that come from elsewhere, often moved around by the vehicles of mass media.” Thus, the work of imagination contributes to transnational experience as both a virtual territory for the series of expectations about migration and an actual account of the new meanings of the local and the global in the core of identity production. The expression of these two factors in the subjectivities of those who live the transnational experience transcends identity discourses based on ethnicity. Cañar, in southern Ecuador, is a transnational space. Here, indigenous youth re-signify cultural elements that generations of adults consider to be safeguards of (ethnic) identity. This requires overcoming futile accusations of a common and natural disinterest of young people in their culture, to instead examine the ways in which migration carries intergenerational negotiations and conflicts. In my fieldwork, many Cañari adults and youths referred to how global dynamics have significantly affected how they think about their traditions, ancestral practices, or town celebrations. I explored how youth and adults interpret the declining use of traditional dress and indigenous language, changes in authority roles, and transformation of

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rites of passage, among other elements usually considered identity traits of Cañari culture. Much of these changes are also part of a re-politicization of the ethnic identity among youth.

Questions This book was born to answer the following questions: How do indigenous youth recreate ethnic identities in indigenous communities with a long migration tradition? How does migration reconfigure generational differences in the communities of Cañar? How do Cañari youth incorporate their transnational experience to resignify their identity as part of indigenous peoples and nationalities? How, then, do the transnational experiences of indigenous youth feed their expectations and redefine family dynamics, rites of passage, and the role attributed to education? This book analyzes the transformations of discourses that anchor the identity in the use of indigenous language, dress, or living in particular territories, based on the persistence and contradictions of young Cañari’s identities. Focusing on groups of students, activists, and artists, with transnational families, I address three dimensions: (1) migration and the transnational experience as generative of indigenous youth identities; (2) migration and the transnational experience contributing to the individualization of indigenous youth; (3) migration and the transnational experience transforming how young people incorporate ethnicity into the production of their identity. I also examine the tension between adultcentric representations of youths and the production of subjectivities based on transnational experiences.

Fieldwork and Methodology Though this is a sociology book, qualitative research for this book draws meaningfully from radical pedagogical methodologies. As part of my method, I design ‘research workshops’ where I bring preliminary findings into a discussion with research subjects. These workshops are set as learning experiences and spaces for collectively registering in diverse formats of cultural production (images, performances) how research subjects react vis-à-vis the data I am providing. As research-oriented spaces, these workshops generate new data from reflection and suggest supplementary or alternative interpretative patterns.

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Data was collected from in-depth interviews, group interviews, and research workshops with Cañari indigenous people. Additional qualitative information was generated through participant observation in youth socialization scenarios such as urban Cañar central square, high schools, corner stores, soccer fields, clubs, parks, and family homes. The programs of the Municipality of Cañar and an Intercultural Pedagogy Institute, where young people are active in the cultural scene, were observed. Interviews were conducted with 28 young people: over 18 years old (17), educators (4), authorities (4), and academics (2). All interviewees’ names are replaced by pseudonyms. Nine research workshops were held with 65 young people between 14 and 28 years old from the rural communities of Chontamarca, Chorocopte, San Rafael, Caguana, La Posta, La Capilla, Cayorumi, Ducur, and Suya in the Cañar district. School officials, community organizers, and families facilitated conditions for the workshops held in the community room (“i.e., salón communal”) of Zhud Parish, in a classroom of an institute in the Quilloac parish, a classroom in urban Cañar, and at the rooms of the Cañar Municipality Network. No individual statements of the workshop participants are included in this book. I analyzed anonymously the materials participants produced as a group. The purpose of the research with Cañari youth was to dialogue with them about their contexts. I considered my involvement and my position as an outsider to their community, thinking critically about the agreements and contradictions in the theoretical, political, and cultural referents that construct the migratory experience. I began with encounters between the researcher and youth, and among the youth themselves as well, considering everyone as interlocutors capable of recognizing their transnational experience itself. Research with indigenous youth must begin with a search for ways to allow them to speak without defaulting to adultcentric representation. I sought to think along with young people about the elements of identification, their forms of subjectivation, and the dynamics of intergenerational socialization in which they are inscribed. Thus, my analysis combines the young people’s descriptions of their migration and transnational experiences, their readings of referents traditionally associated with ethnic identity, and their valuations of their present life and expectations. This methodology was crucial for making sense of how transnational experiences diversify a series the communal and family life, rites of passage, and politics in the Cañar district.

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For demographic data, I use different sources. First, I use the FLACSO-­ SIMA Survey (2012). I worked at FLACSO-SIMA from 2011 to 2013. The FLACSO-SIMA Survey collects specific first-hand information from 510 families (2610 people) on migration-related issues in the urban parish and the rural indigenous area.9 My second source is the most recent Census data available from 2010. The National Institute for Census in Ecuador (INEC) carries a Census every ten years; however, the 2020 Census was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic.10 The most updated data on Ecuadorian migration I use in this book come from the National Council for Equality of Human Mobility report (CNIMH 2019). My third source is the Development and Land Use Plan (PDOT) prepared by the Cañar Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC) in 2021. I also use the PDOT 2012–2020. Extra sources are reports from academic and public institutions from 2000 to 2020.

Organization of the Book Transforming Ethnicity consists of five chapters, including this introduction. The chapters are intended to capture the narrative-like structure that transnational migration often follows. At the same time, the narrative does not depart from addressing how migration transforms youth identities in Cañar’s indigenous communities in the southern Ecuadorian Highlands. Chapter 2 analyses the relationship between Cañar’s socio-cultural transformations and life trajectories of youth who are prospective transnational migrants and children of migrants. It discusses how indigenous youth identities result from the diversification of the transnational experience reconfiguring family life and gender relationships. Chapter 3 examines the heterogeneity of youth identities in Cañar and the conflicts around ethnicity and gender. I identify youth as guarantee, youth as reinvention, and youth as disconnection as the three predominant ways of representing indigenous youth and how they recreate forms of belonging to the  This survey was conducted to study the impact of international migration on local development in the district of Cañar and the parish of Calderón (Quito). 10  The Ecuadorian government announced that a new Census would start in 2022. Up to June 2022, it has not started yet. 9

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community. Chapter 4 discusses the tensions around youth identities and migration in urban Cañar. It shows how local institutions framed youths’ transnational experience within an adultcentric perspective that blocs intergenerational dialogue. Intergenerational dialogue is critical for understanding youths’ transformations of ethnicity and the political horizon of indigenous communities. Finally, Chap. 5 summarizes my general analysis of migration and youth in Cañar and includes a final thought about global migrations.

References Andrade, Pablo. 2005. Democracia liberal e inestabilidad política en Ecuador. Apuntes para una interpretación política. Oasis 11: 165–190. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Balarezo, Susana. 1980. Vías de desarrollo y economía campesina. El caso de Cañar. Quito: FLACSO. Becker, Marc. 2008a. Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Becker, Marc. 2008b. Pachakutik and Indigenous Political Party Politics in Ecuador. In Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power, and Democracy, Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E.  Vanden, and Glen Kuecker (Eds) 165–180. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Becker, Marc. 2010. The Children of 1990, Alternatives 35, 3: 291–316. Becker, Marc. 2011a. Indigenous Movements from Oppressed Nationalities to an Ethno-Nationalist Discourse. In Ethnicity From Various Angles and Through Varied Lenses: Yesterday’s Today in Latin America, Christine Hunefeldt and León Zamosc (Eds.) 192–208. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press. Becker M. 2011b. Correa, Indigenous movements, and the writing of a new constitution. Latin American Perspectives 38(1): 47–62. Becker, Marc. 2012. Pachakutik. Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Berg, Ulla and Gioconda Herrera. 2021. Transnational families and return in the age of deportation: The case of indigenous Ecuadorian migrants, Global networks, 1–15 [Online first]. Bergad, Laird (2011) The Latino Population of New  York City, 1990—2010. New  York, Center for Latin American, Caribbean & Latino Studies  - The Graduate Center, CUNY.

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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. Sociology in Question. London: Sage. Bretón, Víctor. 1997. Capitalismo, Reforma Agraria y Organización Comunal en los Andes. Una introducción al caso ecuatoriano. Lleida: Universidad de Lleida. Brotherton, David. 2008. La Globalización de los Latin Kings: Criminologia Cultural y Los Latin Kings. In Otras Naciones: Transnacionalismo, Jovenes y Exclusion, Barrios, Luis and Mauro Cerbino (Eds.): 27–40 Quito: FLACSO. Brubaker, Roger y Frederick Cooper (2000). Beyond Identity, Theory and Society 29: 1–47. Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bustamente, Luis, Antonio Flores and Sono Shah. 2019. Facts on Hispanics of Ecuadorian origin in the United States, 2017 Pew Research Center. Cardoso de Oliveira, Roberto. 2007. Etnicidad y estructura social. Mexico city: CIESAS. Carpio, Patricio. 1992. Entre pueblos y metrópolis. La migración internacional en comunidades austroandinas del Ecuador. Cuenca: ILDIS. Célleri, Daniela. 2020. Jóvenes viajeros y la construcción de la etnicidad en una comunidad rural de Otavalo, Ecuador. In La etnicidad recreada, Bastos Amigo, S. (coord): 257–281. Mexico city: CIESAS. Cerbino, Mauro and Ana Rodríguez. 2008. La nación imaginada de los Latin King: mimetismo, colonialidad y transnacionalismo. In Otras Naciones: Transnacionalismo, Jóvenes y Exclusión. Barrios, Luis and Mauro Cerbino (Eds.): 41–74. Quito: FLACSO. Cervone, Emma and Cristina Cucurí. 2017. Gender Inequality, Indigenous Justice and the Intercultural State: The Case of Chimborazo, Ecuador. In Demanding Justice and Security. Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America, Rachel Sieder (ed.), 120–149. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Coronel, Valeria. 2010. A Revolution in Stages: Subaltern Politics, Nation-State Formation, and the Origins of Social Rights in Ecuador 1834–1943. [Ph.D. Diss.] New York University. Cruz, Tania, Maritza Urteaga Castro Pozo, Martín de la Cruz López (coords.) (2020). Juventudes indígenas en México. Estudios y escenarios socioculturales. San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas: Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur. Derr, Victoria and Yolanda Corona. 2021. Latin American Transnational Children and Youth: Experiences of Nature and Place, Culture and Care Across the Americas. London: Taylor & Francis. Duarte, Klaudio. 2006. Sociedades adultocéntricas: sobre sus orígenes y reproducción. Última Década (36): 99–125. Eguiguren, María Mercedes. 2019. Movilidades y poder en el sur del Ecuador, 1950-1990. Quito: FLACSO. Erikson, Erik. 1968. Identity, Youth, and Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton Company.

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Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Agencia de Cooperación Española, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Observatorio de los Derechos de la Niñez y Adolescencia (ODNA). 2007. Encuesta de hogares en la provincia del Cañar sobre condiciones de vida de la población y su relación con la práctica migratoria. Quito, Ecuador. Feixa Pàmpols, Carles and Yanko González Cangas. 2006. Territorios baldíos: identidades juveniles indígenas y rurales en América Latina. Papers (79): 171–193. Fiallo, Liliam. 2014. El tránsito hacia el multiculturalismo en Ecuador desde la perspectiva de los derechos de los pueblos y nacionalidades indígenas. Un estudio constitucional. Cálamo 1: 123–136. Fiallo, Liliam. 2022. Violencia de género contra mujeres indígenas en Ecuador. Un análisis desde la garantía del derecho humano a una vida libre de violencia en el marco del pluralismo jurídico emancipatorio [Ph.D. Diss.] Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. Florio, Eleonora, Letizia Caso and Ilaria Castelli. 2020. The Adultcentrism Scale in the educational relationship: Instrument development and preliminary validation. New Ideas in Psychology 57: 1–10. Grimson, Alejandro. 2011. Los límites de la cultura. Crítica de las teorías de la identidad. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Grimson, Alejandro (2010) Culture and identity: two different notions, Social Identities 16:1, 61–77. Guerrero, Andrés. 1997. The construction of a ventriloquist’s image: liberal discourse and the ‘miserable Indian race’ in late 19th-century Ecuador. Journal of Latin American Studies 29(3): 555–590. Hall, Stuart. 1990. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. Jonathan Rutherford (Ed.): 222–237. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Heidbring, Lauren (2020). Migranthood. Youth in a New Era of Deportation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Herrera, Gioconda, and Jorge Daniel Vásquez. 2012. Cuatro décadas haciendo ‘el Camino’. Migración ecuatoriana a Estados Unidos, 1970-2010. Research Report, FLACSO Academic Development Fund, Quito, Ecuador. Herrera, Gioconda. 2019. Precarious Labor and the Social Construction of “Illegality”: Ecuadorian Indigenous Families in New York City,” Migraciones Internacionales 10 (19), 1–22. Hiemstra, Nancy. 2019. Detain and deport: The chaotic US immigration enforcement regime. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Icaza, Jorge. 1964. The Villagers (Huasipungo). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC). 2021. Development and Land Use Plan, PDOT 2021, Cañar, Ecuador.

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Iza, Leonidas, Andrés Tapia, and Andrés Madrid. 2021. Estallido. La Rebelión de Octubre en Ecuador. Quito: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Koselleck, Reinhart. 1993. Futuro pasado. Para una semántica de los tiempos históricos. Barcelona: Paidós. Kyle, David. 2000. Transnational Peasants. Migrations, Networks and Ethnicity in Andean Ecuador. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Larson, Brooke. 2004. Trials of Nation Making. Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes. 1810–1910. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). 2012. FLACSO-SIMA Survey 2012. Quito, Ecuador. León, Natalia. 2005. Ecuador: La cara oculta de la crisis. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Levitt, Peggy and Glick-Schiller, Nina. 2004. Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society’, International Migration Review, 38(3): 1002–1039. Levitt, Peggy and Nina Glick Schiller. 2008. Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society. In The transnational studies reader. Intersections & Innovations, Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt (Eds.): 284–294. New York and London: Routledge. Lucero, José Antonio. 2008. Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press. Lyons, Barry. 2006. Remembering the Hacienda. Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador. Austin: University of Texas Press. Maiguashca, Juan. 1994. El proceso de integración regional en el Ecuador: el rol del poder central: 1830-1895. In Historia y región en el Ecuador: 1830–1930, Maiguashca, Juan (Comp.). Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional. Margulis, Mario and Marcelo Urresti. 2008. “La juventud es más que una palabra.” In La juventud es más que una palabra. Ensayos sobre cultura y juventud, Mario Margulis (Ed.): 13–30. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Martín Barbero, Jesús. 1998. Jóvenes: des-orden cultural y palimpsestos de identidad. In Viviendo a toda. Jóvenes, territorios culturales y nuevas sensibilidades, Humberto Cubides, María Cristina Laverde and Carlos Eduardo Valderrama (Eds.): 22–36. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores. Martínez Dalmau, R. 2016. Democratic Constitutionalism and Constitutional Innovation in Ecuador: The 2008 Constitution. Latin American Perspectives 43(1): 158–174. Menjívar, Cecilia. 2002. Living in two worlds? Guatemalan-origin children in the United States and emerging transnationalism, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 28:3, 531–552. Minchala, Carlos. 2020. Migraciones irregulares en la era del capitalismo global. Causas, ilegalidad y deportabilidad en el éxodo de la población de Azogues (Ecuador), RevIISE - Revista De Ciencias Sociales Y Humanas 16(16): 85–98.

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Ministry of Public Health United Nations Population Fund-MSP, UNPFA, and FLACSO. 2010. Situación de salud de los y las jóvenes indígenas en Ecuador. VIH y sida y embarazo en adolescentes. Quito: Ministerio de Salud Pública. National Council for Equality of Human Mobility (CNIMH). 2019. Agenda Nacional para la Igualdad de Movilidad Humana 2017–2021. Quito: CNIMH. National Council for the Equality of Peoples and Nationalities (CNIPN) 2019. Agenda para la igualdad de derechos de las nacionalidades y pueblos indígenas, pueblo afroecuatoriano y pueblo montubio 2019–2021. Quito, Ecuador. National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). 2010. Population and Housing Census 2010. Quito, Ecuador. O’Connor, Erin. 2007. Gender, Indian, Nation: The Contradictions of Making Ecuador, 1830–1925. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Pallares, Amalia. 2002. From peasant struggles to Indian resistance: the Ecuadorian Andes in the late twentieth century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Pallares, Amalia. 2007. Contesting Membership. Citizenship, Pluriculturalism(s), and the Contemporary Indigenous Movement. In Clark, K. and M.  Becker (Eds.), Highland Indians and the State in modern Ecuador. (pp.  139–154). Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press. Parsons, Talcott (1942). Age and sex in the social structure of the Unite States, American Sociological Review 7 (5): 604–616. Pérez Ruiz, Maya 2008. Jóvenes indígenas y globalización en América Latina. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Petr, Christopher. 1992. Adultcentrism in practice with children, Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services 73 (7): 408–416. Ponce, Aníbal (1936). Ambición y angustia en los adolescentes. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Argentinos L.J. Rosso. Ponce, Aníbal (1939). Sicología de la adolescencia. Buenos Aires: El Ateneo. Pribilsky, Jason. 2007. La Chulla Vida. Gender, Migration, and the Family in Andean Ecuador and New York City. New York: Syracuse University Press. Queirolo Palmas, Luca (2007). Guayaquil en las callejuelas genovesas. Jóvenes y familias migrantes entre discriminación y ciudadanía. In El éxodo ecuatoriano a Europa, Francesca Lagomarsino y Andrea Torre (Eds.): 131–171. Quito: Abya Yala. Radcliffe, Sarah, and Sallie Westwood. 1996. Remaking the Nation. Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America. Routledge: London and New York. Radcliffe, Sarah. 2015. Dilemmas of Difference. Indigenous Women and the Limits of Postcolonial Development Policy Durham: Duke University Press. Ramírez, Franklin. 2020. Octubre y el derecho a la resistencia: revuelta popular y neoliberalismo autoritario en Ecuador. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Reguillo, Rossana. 2000. Emergencia de las culturas juveniles. Bogotá: Norma.

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Rivas, Alexis. 2008. Los jóvenes indígenas en Ecuador. Un ensayo de análisis demográfico, de representación y etnicidad. In Pérez Ruiz, Maya (coord.). Jóvenes indígenas y globalización en América Latina. (pp.  125–140) México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Rodríguez Cruz, Marta. 2018. Construir la interculturalidad. Políticas educativas, diversidad cultural y desigualdad en Ecuador, Iconos 60: 217–236. Rodríguez Cruz, Marta. 2020. Migrant Family, School, and Community in the Equatorial Andes: Permanence and Change of Cultural Identity. Iconos 68: 191–210. Sarlo, Beatriz. 2001. Scenes from Postmodern Life. Minneapolis: Minnesota Press. Silverman, M. (1987), Agrarian processes within ‘plantation economies’: cases from Guyana and coastal Ecuador. Canadian Review of Sociology 24: 550–570. Stone-Cadena, Victoria and Soledad Álvarez. 2018. Historicizing Mobility: Coyoterismo in the Indigenous Ecuadorian Migration Industry, ANNALS, AAPSS 676, 194–211. Stone-Cadena, Victoria. 2016. Indigenous Ecuadorian Mobility Strategies in the Clandestine Migration Journey, Geopolitics 21 (2), 345–365. Svampa, Maristella. 2016. Debates latinoamericanos. Indianismo, desarrollo, dependencia y populismo. Buenos Aires: Edhasa. Swanson, Kate. 2018. “From New York to Ecuador and Back Again: Transnational Journeys of Policies and People.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2), 390–398. Thurner, Mark. 1997. From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nation Making in Andean Peru. Durham: Duke University Press. Torres, Alicia. 2009. Quilloac: memoria, etnicidad y migración entre los kañaris, Ecuador. Quito: FLACSO. Unda, René and Germán Muñoz. 2011. La condición juvenil indígena: Elementos iniciales para su construcción conceptual. Última década (34): 33–50. Urteaga, Maritza. 2008. Lo juvenil en lo étnico. Migración juvenil indígena en la sociedad contemporánea mexicana. Ponto-e-vírgula. 4: 261–275. Vaillant, Michel. 2008. Más allá del campo: migración internacional y metamorfosis campesinas en la era globalizada. Reflexiones desde el caso rural de Hatun Cañar (Andes ecuatorianos). In Territorios en mutación: Repensando el desarrollo desde lo local, Luciano Martínez (Ed.) 229–252. Quito: FLACSO. Valenzuela, José. 2009. El futuro ya fue. Socioantropología de los jóvenes en la modernidad. Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Vásquez, Jorge Daniel 2014. Máquinas identitarias en disputa. San José: EUNA. Vásquez, Jorge Daniel. 2021. Bordering the crisis. Race, migration, and political strategies in anti-populist Ecuador. In Liquid Borders. Migration as Resistance, Mabel Moraña. (Ed). 199–211. New York: Routledge.

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Vásquez, Jorge Daniel and Pedro A.  Bravo. 2021. Crítica de la Sociedad Adultocéntrica. Bogotá: Unisalle. Velasco Ortiz, Laura and, Dolores París Pombo. 2014. Indigenous Migration in Mexico and Central America. Interethnic Relations and Identity Transformations. Latin American perspectives 196, 41 (3): 5–25. Villavicencio, Gaitán. 1986. Las relaciones campo-ciudad, proceso de urbanización y migraciones. El caso de Cañar. In D. Carrión, Ciudades en Conflicto. Poder local, participación popular y planificación en las ciudades intermedias de América Latina (pp. 127–146). Quito: El Conejo. Zapata, Carlos and Mauricio Hoyos. 2005 ¿Existe una condición de juventud indígena? Nómadas (23), 28–37. Zapata, Claudia. 2019. Crisis del multiculturalismo. Conflictividad social y respuestas críticas desde el pensamiento político indígena. Guadalajara: CALAS.

CHAPTER 2

Leaving Cañar: Transnational Experience and the Production of a Migrant Subjectivity

Abstract  This chapter addresses how migration transforms youth identities in Cañar’s indigenous communities. It analyses the relationship between Cañar’s socio-cultural transformations and life trajectories of youth who are prospective transnational migrants and children of migrants. It shows how in southern Ecuadorian Andes, generational differences expressed in education and “the work of imagination” transform ethnic identity and “the sense of the communal.” Finally, this chapter shows how indigenous youth identities result from the different ways of living a transnational experience reconfiguring family life and gender relationships. Keywords  Indigenous youth • Transnational experience • Gender • Family • Generational difference In a classroom of a rural parish in Cañar, after the school day, there are 26 indigenous and mestizo youths that attend my invitation to discuss youth identities. I introduced my research to young men and women between fourteen and eighteen years of age and told them about a workshop to share the expectations of young people in Cañar for the coming years. Some youths said it was not the first time a researcher came to the school, but they had never seen one who wanted to do a workshop with young

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. D. Vásquez, Transforming Ethnicity, Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30097-4_2

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people. These workshops allowed me to identify the scope of migration in shaping the youths’ imagination. For Cañari youth, being young means “being single,” “helping the elderly,” “escaping parents,” “being of a suitable age to take on responsibilities,” and “doing what I decide to do.” Analyzing their responses together, I found two clusters among youth independence and autonomy. In the following section, I explore how indigenous youth refer to their experience with notions within these two clusters. At the same time, these notions are connected to their transnational experience, marking a reconfiguration of the conditions of socialization in family and school. Independence is a term that appears in many ways in youth responses: “doing things our own way,”; “not depending on other people to make our decisions,”; “being free to decide.” Autonomy is a term whichcaptures the purpose of statements that express an exertion of will over one’s own life. When young people claim “to dress as I like” and “to decide how to use my time,” they use the term independence. One group also expressed, “to be independent is to take care of oneself.” Such representations place independence on a par with autonomy. This representation does not simply respond to the stereotyped discourse of a certain natural rebelliousness in youths but instead connects to indigenous youth’s transnational experience. The expression of rebelliousness has a very particular meaning when examined through the transnational experience that traverses borders of identity and culture. Intense migratory processes and strong transnational ties ripple through the production of identities in new generations. Transnational experience is directly related to the ongoing development of the Cañari transnational social fields as “a set of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed” (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2008, 286). This social field is made of durable social relations between people who migrate and those who remain in their places of origin. The fact that both the subjects who move and those who do not are involved in this dynamic of relationships and networks transcending borders (national or other forms of territorial demarcation) provides youth with a transnational experience. Many youths in Cañar have decided to migrate to the United States and wait to have the money for paying a “pasador” (literally “the one who assists you to pass”) or “coyote” (a facilitator for human smuggling). These youth have been raised hearing stories about immigrants who have cars or houses in the United States. Many of

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those who don’t migrate have been supported by their relative’s remittances. When they were kids, they used to play a role game, “el juego de la migra” (i.e., the migration game).1 When I interviewed long-time Ecuadorian anthropologists, one of them told me, “[w]hen I came to work in the Andean world […] there was no adolescence and, in my first field experiences [in the 1980s], the transition from childhood to adolescence was the result of a migratory experience. A young man would travel with his father to Quito, stay for a few years, get a little money, and return to the community to get married and buy some land.” Additionally, marriage has traditionally been a way of settling down and achieving autonomy from parents, although life in the community always includes caring for one’s elders. For youth males in the southern Ecuadorian Andes, “becoming a man” is still a process mediated by the challenge of migrating to the United States and the imperative of contributing economically to support the household. Life is changing in the village. Everyone in my family for generations had been a farmer. I would be a farmer too, but I can’t wait […] Here is an example: my cousin, he is older than me [the cousin was twenty-six] has been working his parent’s land ever since he left school. And what does he have to show for it? He and his wife live with her parents. He makes nothing… fifty or sixty dollars [monthly]. He cannot afford to send his children to school, to buy new things. How will he ever buy land? No, young people now want something else. (Pribilsky 2007, 139)

An indigenous youth becomes an adult when his work allows him to generate resources to contribute to his parents. In many cases, this condition of autonomy is accompanied by getting married (see Pribilsky 2007, 142–147); however, in my fieldwork, youths emphasized their decision to migrate as an autonomous plan that implies preparing in advance for “irse por el camino” (“taking the road” -meaning to migrate by irregular ways). 1  “El juego de la migra” is a common children’s game in cities in southern Ecuador. Three locations are identified: the border, the United States, and the jail; and three roles are distributed: the migrants, the coyotes, and the police. The children collect leaves from trees that represent the money to pay the coyotes and the police in case they get to jail. The game culminates when the children cross the corn plants and arrive at a soccer field representing the United States. The game is played at dusk and always between children from the same neighborhood or family (see Minchala 2016).

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For instance, Monta, who lives in a rural parish, has his siblings in the United States. He decided to enroll in the army to prepare for “a change in life,” which means he plans to depart from Cañar to the United States. I: M: I: M:

What do your brothers do in the United States? They work, ’they’re doing well. They tell me to go. And you would like to go? My barracks training helped me realize that I’d like to leave and have a better life, a better future. The problem is just the money. If I had the money, I’d leave in two or three days, because it’s easy with the coyotes always around. If I could get the money, I’d leave. My brothers have told me that when they’re better off they’ll help me out, because it’s not easy. I think that for minors it costs thirteen or fourteen thousand and for adults ten or eleven thousand. I: What do your parents think? M: I’ve talked to them. They say it’s my decision. Monta was not the only one that talked to me about enrolling in the army since some youth saw the barracks as a chance to acquire physical and psychological resistance to walking through the Mexican-US dessert area until reaching the border. Among some youth, military uniforms and marches were also seductive. However, barracks’ rituals of physical punishment, especially to the newcomers, are common knowledge among people in Cañar; nonetheless for some youth, enrolling in the army had a little of both migration and learning physical endurance. This does not mean that youth ignore risks to their lives or the forces they would be exposed to when migrating in irregular ways to the US. Sentiments of fear are present; however, they also have in mind the experience of their siblings. Ralo, who was also enrolled in the army, said: “I do have some fear of the camino [the crossing through Mexico to the northern border], but my brothers made it. They say that there are people that died, but they made it, so I am not that afraid.” While Monta trusts what others had told him: “They have told me that you go to Guayaquil and from there to Guatemala by plane and from there they arrive in Mexico. It is easy to get to Mexico but from there, it is difficult.” Undertaking such a hazardous migratory trip as an individual decision, transforms previous identifications of migration with one’s parents to a step toward autonomy. Migration has been present in Cañar since the 1950s, but after 2000, the transnational experience involves multiple

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people in local and international areas as a result of high migratory flows between the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. Economic crisis since the late 1990s carried the frustration of difficulties in gaining autonomy that was once guaranteed through property inheritance. A generational conflict is then a subjective form of rupture from traditional agricultural work, especially in families where only the eldest son is the heir to the land (and who works the land from an early age). At the same time, the others must seek “other futures” (Pribilsky 2007, 138). The subjectivity of young men who migrate to the United States has to do with the search for autonomy through work, allowing them to help economically to sustain the household. The transformation of migration throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries (from internal migration to the Ecuadorian coast to transnational migration to the United States), makes migration something symbolically more than a rite of passage to adulthood. What used to be just a rite of passage marking the border between youth and adulthood now presents itself in new ways. The transnational experience of indigenous youth contributes to transforming ethnic identities. While the 1950s–1990s stationary migration to Ecuadorian cities was a rite of passage to later incorporate into the family and the community, the transnational experience of younger generations has transformed both family and community. Indeed, the return of immigrant youth to their community of origin was a way to preserve traditional structures within the community avoiding significant changes in terms of cultural identity and economic organization (Sanchez Parga 2016, 195). Furthermore, racism and precarization of immigrant labor make it difficult for indigenous people to find jobs in Ecuadorian cities such as Guayaquil, Cuenca, or Quito (Swanson 2018). Youth would rather wait for the chance to migrate directly to the United States. Also, transnational families’ desire for their own land drives prices up, making access to land depend on immigrants’ extended stays abroad, making returning to Cañar increasingly unlikely. Gradually, a ‘successful’ emigration implies regular employment of the spouse abroad and regular money transfers for at least five years giving their families a chance to purchase their own land (Vaillant 2018, 109–112). Since 1974, rural areas centered on agricultural production have retained most of the population in Cañar. However, the number of inhabitants in rural areas decreased during the eighties and nineties due to migration (Graph 2.1a). The outward migration in recent years is

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Graph 2.1  (a). Urban-rural population structure of the Cañar district 1974–2010. (b). Migrant population in the Cañar district in 2010

concentrated in rural areas, with 89% of the total migrant population (4006 people). In comparison, in the urban area migrant population is 11% of the total migrant population (487 people) (Graph 2.1b). In Cañar, the flow of remittances is one of the primary sources of income (Fig. 2.1) Communities in the rural areas are particularly economically dependent on remittances. From 2005 to 2018, Cañar received 895 million dollars in remittances (GADIC 2021, 232). While migration in Ecuador slowed down between 2009 and 2014, in Cañar, high levels of outward migration were maintained (Herrera 2013). Forty-six percent of the rural population self-identifies as indigenous compared to 14% of the urban population (INEC 2010). Although both urban and rural areas have now been transformed by migration, indigenous communities in the rural areas have undergone more significant changes. According to Ecuador’s most recent census, migrants from Cañar are mostly male youths from rural areas going to the United States. Male

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Fig. 2.1  Traditional house (left) and house built with remittances (right). (Photo by Rosalía Castillo)

migration is 69% (GADIC 2021, 233). Between 2001 and 2010, 89% of Cañar migrants left for the United States, while 9% went to Spain. Further, 32% of Cañari migrants are between 10 and 19 years of age, and 46% are between 20 and 29 years of age. In communities where the indigenous population is higher, such as Zhud or Socarte, around 48% of migrants are between 10 and 19 years of age (GADIC 2021, 238). These migration patterns are ingrained in the communities’ processes of reproduction. Families, and communities in general, face processes of youth individualization that transform traditional forms of internal cohesion, authority, and role distribution. The communities, while not facing the disappearance of the community as a form of government, see a decline in the sustainability of traditional forms that reproduce the sense of “the communal.” The decline of “the communal” manifests itself in the relegation of local development projects and in the fact that migration has ceased to be a phase of resource capitalization to improve their rural and communal reintegration (Sánchez Parga 2016). While the process of personal individualization in the communities usually refers to the increase of marital exogamy, the more frequent use of Spanish instead of the indigenous language (i.e., kiwcha), and lesser use of traditional dress. Although these characteristics are common to several

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indigenous populations in Ecuador, I argue that the factor that significantly marks the processes of individualization is the transnational experience. Indigenous communities are as connected to global spaces as are urban centers, even more so in areas such as the Cañar district. The symbolic frontier between the urban and the rural remains; both spaces are traversed by migration and global dynamics rapidly transforming them. At the same time, the transnational experience of twenty-first-century youth does not imply that migration is limited to those who physically mobilize away from their communities. Indeed, youth’s sense of independence and autonomy is tied to this individualization and transnational experience.

Individualization and Gender For indigenous youth, migration is not only a favorable scenario for “a better life” attached to the connotation of economic mobility, but the scenario is shaped by imagining the opportunity to realize oneself in the arts, education, and technical learning. Youths around 14 years of age have different feelings about migration than those just a little older. Choosing between three specific moments (the present), short-term future (three years from now), and long-term future (ten years from now), youth that participated in research workshops2 alluded to “travel to other countries” as an unmistakable mark of a promising future. In most cases, this possible future is associated with a sort of maturity that would replace transitory joy. Joy is here, and now, maturity is there. In the short-term range, their expectations range from “being at university” to “staying in the community,” while a promising future is “reuniting with family” or “achieving dreams in other places.” Youth between sixteen and eighteen see migration as an imminent experience, cutting across their expectations on with whom they will share their lives, occupations, and places they will be. The United States is the most common scenario for transforming aspirations into the realities of a trade or a profession. For youth close to finishing high school, the migratory experience occupies a central place in the discernment of their own individualization, family plans, and educational goals. 2  In the workshop, the responses were classified into two groups: one made up of 15 youth between 14 and 15 years of age; the other of 11 individuals between 16 and 18. The responses of each group were analyzed separately and discussed with the workshop participants.

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The United States and Spain are considered “larger countries”3 where migration is more likely in the near future. For women, migration to the US means a chance for entrepreneurial initiatives, while men look forward to being involved with trades related to industrial tasks. To “get back together with family” who migrated when they were young or “get to know them” is part of their migration plans. All these factors constitute the field of production of migrant subjectivities, in which social organization, meanings, and actions in everyday life, manifest themselves. When I interviewed Yance, a woman in her early twenties, it had been ten years since her father left for Massachusetts. She was living with her mother and four siblings. Her younger brother migrated to the United States. Her story reflects a history of migrant families in Cañar and how youth see their decision to migrate as an act of self-affirmation: I: How did your brother decide to go to the United States? Y: He was unsure about leaving but made up his mind in about three days and left. That was just like my dad. My dad worked with my uncle, who had said he was going, so my dad made up his mind and left before my uncle. That’s the way it happened with my brother too. I: Did you say anything to your brother when he decided to leave? Y: We couldn’t say anything because he’s already married, he has a daughter. We didn’t say anything because we couldn’t hold him back or tell him not to leave, he had to be the one to figure out how to support his wife and daughter. I: Did your father talk to him? Y: He calls every evening, every day, around nine o’clock or so. He always calls my mom. I rarely talk to him because he works and I study and do my homework. He calls my mom to talk, and we also communicate through Facebook. He would tell my brother to go so he could work with him, but even before that, my brother was already thinking of leaving. My dad knew about [the trip], how to get through, so he told my brother. I: Do you know how your brother’s trip went? Y: It took him a month and two weeks to arrive. He had savings because he was working, and my dad also lent him some so he could go. 3  Expressions such as “larger countries” (United States and European countries) and “the place where I live” (which refers to communities), as well as others that appear in quotation marks, are taken verbatim from youths in the workshops.

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[…] I’ve thought about going, but my father doesn’t support me; he asks me why I think I should go, that there’s not much work for women there. Before my brother left, I told him I wanted to go, and my dad said I was better off finishing my studies. I: Why did you want to go? Y: It was my last year of high school and my grades were really bad. I almost dropped out of high school and wanted to leave, but my dad didn’t think it was a good idea, so I didn’t go. But I’m almost graduating, and I want to go, but not to work, to continue studying. Yance’s story shows firsthand how, for women, the relationship between migration and individualization is subjected to gender inequalities. Yance’s parents support her brother’s migration, which in turn legitimizes him as an individual (capable of working for the family’s sustenance), her experience, in comparison, is a telling sample of that of other young women: she must negotiate and strive to be able to migrate. Though Monta says he would migrate in just a few days if he had the economic resources to pay for coyotes (human smugglers), his decision required a previous process of subjective preparation that he pursued while enrolling in the army. Differently, Yance’s preparation requires anticipating how she would need to navigate gender roles in her family when leaving. Monta and Yance show how migration projects in Cañar are never really an entirely individual matter, as it has important and immediate subjective implications for those closely related to the individual, such as parents and other family members. However, a subject’s initiative and responsibility for a migratory project represents, beyond migrating, a decision to position oneself for one’s own future life. Young people objectify recent transformations in the roles played by institutions such as the family and the school. For those who maintain expectations of self-fulfillment through transnational migration, the family continues to be fundamental support in the process of individualization. However, the role of the family has changed. Instead of being the institution in which migration is carried out through parental accompaniment (the child who migrates to the city with his parents to later return to the community), it has become the space in which an individual option is legitimized. This will transform the very nature of families, as transnational experiences are inserted into households (Fig. 2.2)

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Fig. 2.2  A family walking on the dirt road in a rural parish. (Photo by the author)

Even youth who maintain long-distance relationships consider their families “the most important thing.” Aspirations for autonomy show that the option to migrate requires the support of families that guarantee the permanence of the transnational link and not its rupture. Beyond individual conceptions of migration, the process becomes the radicalization of the transnational experience previously nourished by the experience of immediate friends and family. Care about family does not imply renouncing the possibility of migration. New family bonds express the reconsiderations of young migrants based on gender differences. Testimonies of several participants in my research workshops show how migration modifies the gender dimensions of the young migrant subject. Given that the destination scenario is imagined as the space of “the best life,” migration is considered a valid option for both young men and women. However, as we will see below, experiences of paternity or maternity establish significant differences in transnational care networks.

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While indigenous men and women share desires for migration as a projection into the future and capacity for self-determination, new forms of care relationships are directly related to gender differences in the process of individualization. In indigenous communities, marital separations are more frequent than divorces. In fact, divorces are avoided as a way ‘to guarantee’ fathers’ responsibilities with children (Sánchez Parga 2016, 197). In Cañar, about 28% of births between 2014 and 2018 were birthed to mothers between 10 and 19 years old. 95% of adolescent mothers are between 15 and 19 years of age (GADIC 2021, 188–189). Usually, the migratory processes of young women are related to previous experiences of motherhood and the consequent relationship between young women and their families. Mina, a young mother of 21, has had family members in the United States for 12 years and is considering migrating. I: M: I: M: I: M: I: M: I: M: I: M:

What did your aunt and uncle say when you told them you wanted to go to the United States? They didn’t support me. They said that life there was very hard. Some have even told me that it’s awful, that if you don’t work, you don’t have anything to eat. They say it’s very difficult. What does your mother say? She’s worse. Why do you want to go? Partly because my son’s father is there. But then we had a fight and he got married over there and I got discouraged. How long ago did he leave? When my son was ten months old. Did you know he was going to leave? Yes, but he didn’t say anything to me before going. He just called me one day to tell me he was working, and suddenly I found out that he’d already gone. I already suspected that he wanted to leave. Were you planning to take your son with you? No, I was going to leave him with my mother and I would bring him when I was already there.

Mina’s story is echoed in the stories of other young women I interviewed. It is salient how, in processes of individualization, there are at least two significant differences between young men and women considering migrating. While such a process of individualization marks a form of autonomy, it requires basic support from the family. In the case of young

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women, individualization is defined by how transnational parenting is exercised, as well as by the expanded responsibility that comes with delegating motherhood to other family members. It is possible to gather more elements from the experience of Dui, a 23 years old indigenous woman leader from her community, who had decided to migrate to the United States within the next two years, where her aunts, uncles, and cousins are: I: D: I: D:

How long ago did your uncles and cousins leave? About ten years ago. Have they come back? None of them, only my aunt comes back sometimes because she has a visa. I: In what order did they start leaving? D: Well, my aunt who came back was already married, and my other uncles went over single and married Ecuadorians there. My uncle married someone there from the same community. I: What about you? D: Well, I have thought about going, but my parents told me I must study. I’m still thinking of going, mainly because I want to help my parents because we don’t have that much. My uncle who came back wants to help me go, but my parents don’t want me to. I: How do you feel? D: I want to finish high school and teach. But if there’s no job I want to go. Migration is not an escape from home but an initiative that expresses trust in young people’s decisions. The community itself, through the support of the family, learns, understands, and accepts that youth migration occurs within a dynamic that is neither alien to adults nor children. Further, most families in Cañar maintain ties with their migrant relatives. For instance, out of a population of 510 families in urban and rural Cañar, 92% of women and 80% of men living in rural Cañar say they are in constant communication with relatives abroad. Most of their relatives reside in the United States. There is an intense connection between migrants and their families, who communicate frequently and exchange clothes and food transnationally. In 2012, 66% of the population received shipments, primarily clothing (89%), mainly once a year (48%), but often more than twice a year (42%). It is not just one-way shipments. 62% of families in

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rural areas make such shipments of food and clothes. Though contact between the communities of origin and destination is constant, families in Cañar receive fewer in-person visits. In 2012, only 11% of families in urban Cañar and 5% in rural Cañar had been visited by their migrant relatives (FLACSO-SIMA 2012; Herrera 2013). There are at least two differences between male and female migration within families. In the case of young men, family support is expected. Memories about the historical migration to agricultural work in coastal areas are present. In the case of young women, family support requires internal negotiations about care responsibilities. In most cases, older women would become caregivers to their grandchildren. The case of Mina and others brings home the fact that many young people have grown up in the care of their grandparents. Mari, an indigenous woman in her early twenties, is the daughter of a migrant who returned two years ago after living eight years in the United States. Her experience includes several elements present in the stories of other young mothers: I: How did you communicate with your father? M: By cell phone. He would call an aunt of ours about once a month because, at that time, we didn’t have a cell phone. It made me very happy even though I didn’t remember him very well. I: How is your relationship with him now? M: OK. I feel it’s not as with my mom. I trust her more because he was away for a long time, working in construction and then in a restaurant. I: What about your plans? M: I hope to get there [the US] someday when I finish studying. But I’ll have to think about it because I have a baby. I don’t plan to leave him but don’t know how to take him. My baby’s father is over there. I don’t know where he is because we broke up. He was already there when he found out I was pregnant, but he’d already left. I: Why did he leave? M: He went to work. We haven’t spoken for three months. I’d like to go, but not for him, just for my son and myself. I: What would you like to do there? M: To work in a salon. I know something about work in salons, though not that much. I: Would you stay with some family?

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M: I have a friend there who told me to join him, and I told him next year. It’s been four years since he left, and I haven’t seen him. He has told me he’s not coming back, but I communicate with him every day online. I: Would your son come with you? M: Yes, he’s now eleven months old. For many women, the decision to migrate becomes a matter that involves a series of relationships with migrants already in the United States with whom they have solid affective ties. This is because, though young women do migrate on their own initiative, the difference between being single or married (which, in most cases, implies maternity) is a determining factor regarding the migration plans. In the case of Cañari young women I met, migration occurs when young mothers have managed to ensure the care of their children. Most young people said they were between five and ten years of age when their mothers left. For men, paternity does not seem to impede starting a migration plan. Young men assume that migrating is part of their responsibility to guarantee the sustainability of their growing family. Hence, migration is not mainly a masculinity ritual among young men (“becoming a man”) but also a reaction to particular forms of communities’ organization of labor and land use. It seems that migration transforms “community life” not only insofar as young migrants can purchase property and get married (Pribilsky 2007, 142–145). Instead, migration for young indigenous men combines the aspirations of individualization with the process of becoming responsible fathers. I regularly heard that having children between one and two years old is the right time to migrate. Ralo is one of the few returned immigrants I met in Cañar. I first met him in a school where he works as an English teacher. The five years he spent in the United States is considered an informal credential for teaching English. During the 1999s economic crisis, Ralo, a 28-year-old education major, departed from Cañar and his family to look for a job in the United States. After some years of working in cleaning and electricity, he became a cooker in a Chicago restaurant. I: Who made up your family when you went to the United States? R: My wife, my parents, and my siblings stayed here. My wife stayed with a one-and-a-half-year-old child. It really hurt my kid didn’t live with me during his childhood. Now he’s a bit distant, but my

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s­ix-­year-­old daughter is very attached to me. So, sometimes you don’t think much about the separation of family, but it’s very hard, even though it’s done for their own good. That is the only reason I left. Like Ralo, Tono returned to Cañar more than ten years ago. He worked as a harvester in agriculture in Spain for seven years and later traveled to the United States, where he worked in construction, landscaping, and house maintenance for seven more years. I left when I was 18. I got married at 18, before leaving. Since my first son was already born, I had no choice but to leave so that my wife could continue studying and get by economically with my son. After two years, I took my wife there, and my son stayed here with my in-laws. I have residency. I can come back whenever I want, but my wife couldn’t get used to it there [in Spain], so I had to return. In 2001, I went to the United States.

Ralo and Tono narrate their migration as a personal survival strategy during the economic crisis at the end of the 1990s. Recent experiences of migration present novel elements concerning that moment. In this context, a combination of two factors appears. On the one hand, individualization is fed by a conception of youth as an opportune moment to migrate. On the other hand, family sustains such an individualization process when young people experience parenthood as the desire to ensure the sustainability of their family. Migrating to one of the “big countries” means a “better life” for family members who remain in the community. This social world’s reorganization is part of a complex way of living the transnational experience. Those who migrate leaving children seek a subjective settlement beyond their incursion in the economic flows of capital based on immigrant labor. Punyo was 26 years when he told me his story of migration to Spain and the United States when I met him at a self-run recording studio of electro-Cañari music. He is a musician and plays the electric keyboard in a band that holds concerts and festivals that especially capture the interest of young people in Cañar. I: How long were you in Spain? P: Nine years. I.: Did you return to Ecuador during those years?

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P: Yes, I came back every three years. I: How was your experience in Spain? P: I was studying here, but after turning sixteen, I couldn’t finish my studies because my father passed away. I had to start working because I saw my mother working really hard and, because I was here, I got married before I left. When I came the third time, I did everything possible to take my wife, but I couldn’t get the papers.4 That was because the economic crisis in Spain had already started, and they were no longer letting people in. So I stayed here. I: Have you thought about going back there? P: Yes, but not to work anymore. I want to go back because my dream is to take my wife and daughters to show them the place where I spent my adolescence. I want them to know the reality, what life as a migrant is, to see that it’s not what they think that migration is a good thing, so they know that you have to work and humiliate yourself and all. I: What was your job? P: I worked according to the seasons: in the winter, I worked planting lemon trees, and in the summer, building pools. I.: Are you settling here or somewhere else? P: One of my goals is to go to the United States to raise money, more than in the nine years I was in Spain. I didn’t save anything then because it was for my mother, and my mother had bought land and built a house. But since she made that, I don’t see it as my own, but as hers. So, I want something of my own, from my own sweat. That’s why one that’s of my goals [to go to work in the United States] because, unfortunately, most people are losing their jobs here. If I can’t find something here, I’ll go there. I: Do you have relatives in the United States? P: Yes, my in-laws are over there, my cousins too. Punyo also considers popularizing Cañari music in the United States; however, his experience encompasses several aspects beyond art. First, he thinks about the United States as a place where economic opportunities would be favorable. His transnational experience has allowed him to consider migration a process that does not close. For young people like Punyo, the return is temporary, and the possibility of migrating is always present 4

 “To get the papers” means obtaining legal residency documents.

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as far as the sustainability of the family remains on the horizon. His wife’s transnational experience, as with other young mothers in the Cañar district, also allow her to be open to the continual possibility of migration. Finally, Punyo’s daughters’ experience goes back to the beginning of their first years of life. In Ralo, Tono, and Puyo’s stories, the complexity of the transnational experience of young people in the Cañar district is manifested. Transnational experience encompasses different aspects of the person’s subjectivity: the historicity of their own lives, the becoming responsible for a transnational family, and the production of oneself as a subject capable of migrating. Their working experience in different jobs abroad helps young migrants, along with other subjective resources, cope with their families’ transnational lives. A comparison of the experience of young men and women also helps us to analyze gender inequality. Family negotiation, indispensable for young women, also shows the limits of their individualization compared to young men who, in many cases, attribute paternity as the factor that leads to their migration projects. Young men’s migration projects extend to their families through the sustenance they aspire to bring to their families and communities. In the case of young women, the personal migration project involves restructuring their own youth status in interaction with older generations within the family and the community. Young men’s migration is a socially legitimized form of individualization. Such individualization does not work the same for young women, who see themselves discouraged from migrating. Of course, this does not prevent the persistence of the desire for individualization through a migratory project, expressed as a discourse of couple integration, as in Mari’s case. The “work of imagination” mediates youth appropriation of the impact of migration as that alters how memory and desire are produced among youths. Such work of the imagination allows for the objectification of new forms of subjectivity production which reach across generational differences. I have argued that transnational experience is critical for understanding situations and experiences in which young people’s expectations about their own future include the possibilities of migration, as well as migration’s renegotiation of family roles. Family relatives’ migration experiences take youth to connect transnational migration with a broad path of possibilities. For instance, Zhico’s transnational experience relies significantly on his siblings’ migration to the United States when he was twelve:

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I: Who was the first in your family to migrate? Z: My parents never left. The first to go was my sister. I: How long ago did she leave? Z: Six years ago, when she was eighteen. Then my brothers left. […] Every year they say they’re coming back, but they never do. Sometimes, I’ve also said that I want to go, but I haven’t finally done it. I know I can count on their support if I want to go. They tell me, “come on, you won’t regret it.” I: Do you know if they have had any regrets? Z: No, never. But I really am thinking of going now. I: Why? Z: To have a better life, a future. I want to be able to work and study. I’d work operating some heavy machinery but learn to become a physical education teacher. I’d also like to make music. I play the zampoña and the quena.5 I: Do you want to do all that there? Z: Well, at the beginning it’ll be hard because of the climate, the language. But then I think it would get easier. That’s how it was when I was in the military. It was hard to adapt at the beginning, but then I was fine. I: What would your parents say if you decided to go? Z: When I went into the military, they supported me in my decision. I think it would be the same now. Zhicos’ siblings have constructed a narrative where migrating is an arduous ordeal with a successful outcome, a narrative that transforms youth aspirations. But Zhico’s expectations are generative and encouraging in producing a sense of self-perception, a subjective terrain where he imagines himself as an immigrant. This production is ‘the work of imagination’ that traversed not only Zhico’s but Monta, Yance, Ralo, and many indigenous youths in Cañar. Imagination is a collective fact that both transcend and reframe ordinary social life. I see indigenous youth’s expectations as imagination and not as fantasies. While “the idea of fantasy carries with it the inescapable connotation of thought divorces from projects and actions” (Appadurai 1996, 5–11), imagination is a collective fuel for action, and a way societies bring together memories and future projects. 5

 Zampoña and quena are two traditional wind instruments in Andean music.

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For Cañari youth, the work of imagination transforms everyday life, sustains their transnational experience, and is part of the socio-cultural configuration that transnational migration produces. But migration also produces generational differences in Andean communities based on the expressions of individualization through migration projects. Motivations for youth migration cannot be interpreted solely as a part of a greater flow “migratory stampede” (Ramírez and Ramírez 2005) as a reaction to economic crises. While migration was the basis for survival strategies, especially during periods of economic crisis, youths’ motivations to migrate also express a proactive character that leads to thinking about migration as an expression of agency. Unlike stereotypes about rebellious youth as a transitory stage of development, the indigenous migrant youth perform certain acts that transform discourses about migration only as an economic-minded project. Thus, youth migration exemplifies not only the subjectivation of adverse social conditions but the objectification of the self-production of subjects. Youths find in migration the possibility of intensifying a transnational experience that is part of their individualization. This is a strategy assumed with risks and suffering, but also with the willingness of context transgression and exert power over one’s own fate. Thus, migration becomes a strategy of individualization.

Establishing Generational Differences: Education and Imagination During my fieldwork in Cañar, I developed a close relationship with some youth. We had informal conversations about soccer, music, or the series on television. Some invited me to watch the rehearsals of popular music groups in the area and joined me in taking pictures of places they considered the most interesting around. When I visited rural communities, I spent time with them chatting in a corner store or at a food place serving soda and fries. More than once, youth from rural areas told me that Ralo was a mentor to young people, especially those who wanted to travel to the United States. Now, working as an English teacher, he provides general advice, not about the travel through “el camino,” but on how is adapting to life in cities like New York or Chicago.

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I: What do you tell youth that come to you for advice? R: The first thing is to study. Studying gives you a goal, some perspective. I migrated, I lived for five years in the United States, but thank God before I left, I’d studied. I was a teacher working [in Cañar] in a rural school. So when I left, my goal was to learn English, and that’s why, from the day I arrived, I worked six days a week, and the day I didn’t work, I went to classes. I devoted myself to that, and now I work as an English teacher [in Cañar] […] I think parents should not expect their children to migrate to a developed country like the United States at a young age. If they don’t study it is more likely for them to join a gang. In gangs, they kill for no reason. It’s much better for them to study, even if it’s only high school. Ralo speaks Kichwa, Spanish, and English. As a young migrant to the U.S, his relatives placed him in a job as a cook, but when he returned to Ecuador, he knew that he would be able to get a job due to his professional degree. One of the main generational differences in the Cañar district is the evolution of literacy and the education rates (Graph 2.2a). In Cañar, the number of people under 15 years old who cannot read or write has gone from 8538 in 1990 to 6742 in 2010 (Graph 2.2b). Illiteracy reveals gender inequality in accessing education. 67% of the illiterate population are women (GADIC 2021, 169). Though there has been a decrease in the illiteracy rate,6 it remains almost triple the national rate, 6.8%, according to the last Census (GADIC 2021, 168). From 1990 to 2010, the average years of education in the district increased (Graph 2.2b). In rural areas, where most indigenous people live, the average (6.9 years) remains below the national average (7.7 in rural areas). The illiteracy rate in Cañar shows a significant difference between the urban sector (5.3%) and the rural (21.3%) (GADIC 2021; INEC 2010). Additionally, the illiteracy rate among the indigenous population reaches 30.3%. This contrasts with the Mestizo and other ethnic populations (i.e., Montubio, Afro-descendant), whose average is around 9%. In urban Cañar, the years of education are above the national average, while in rural Cañar, years of education have more than doubled in 20 years (Graph 2.2b). 6  The illiteracy rate is calculated by dividing the number of people who 15-years-old who cannot read or write by the total population over 15 years of age multiplied by 100.

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Graph 2.2  (a). Illiteracy rate in the Cañar district 1990–2010. (b). Evolution of the average years of education in the Cañar district 1900–2010. (c). Evolution of education levels in the Cañar district 1990–2010

The increase in years and levels of education (Graph 2.2c) constitute the two primary markers for identifying the greatest generational change. There is a young population that attends university in relatively high percentages, compared to previous generations that mostly only completed elementary school. I found that generational differences resulting from levels of schooling also implies a cultural transformation that, for many youths, is connected to expectations regarding migration and processes of individualization. Adults with symbolic authority in the community have similar criteria as Ralo. Such is the case of Koan, who works as a promoter of Cañari culture in a rural parish: Young people decide to leave, and that’s fine. You can’t tell them what to do. But at least they should finish their studies so that they will have some basis for help them once they get there. Look, the other day, two children left, they weren’t even ten years old, but their parents who are there found a coyote to take them. Can you believe that they’d send for them that way? Before they even finished school?

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Koan acknowledges the conditions of vulnerability to which all migrant children who undertake the journey to the United States are subjected to, especially from the networks of coyotes contacted by their parents at their ultimate destinations. However, he also expresses the value placed on education as a formative moment and a vital aspect of migration; its function is not only to contribute to a better labor potential in the country of destination but also to provide subjective resources to take better advantage of a migration experience. Mari’s story, as well as that of Dui, Ralo, and Tono, shows that, for many young people from Cañar, studying is a legitimate aspiration insofar as education is valued for subjective resources (attitudes, abilities) it provides. They do not perceive education as the privileged means of generating opportunities for social advancement but as an experience that contributes to the formation of the subjects’ capacities for self-determination. Although most migrants from Cañar to the United States are inserted in trades where formal education is not a necessary requirement, carrying out formal education before the migratory experience was salient for interviewees and research workshops. Both young people and adults insisted on the need to finish some stage of schooling, whether migration is imminent or contemplated for the long term. Indigenous communities increasingly demand educational institutions in their territories. In addition, there are political debates about intercultural bilingual education in Spanish and Kiwcha. Education leads to prominent rewards like asking for loans as well as returns of a practical nature that result in prestige for both men and women. The demands for formal schooling at the elementary, middle, and higher levels, including bilingual education from the 1980s and 1990s (Sánchez Parga 1993), continue with a demand for college education, certifications in Spanish, and opportunities for specialization abroad, increases among indigenous peoples from all over the country. Within this framework of demands and expectations, the issue of “who are the youth” is being raised with particular clarity. When I interviewed a senior sociologist working with education and indigenous youth, he shared how surprised he was not to hear the Kichwa word “guambras”7 when talking with the indigenous population from the central Ecuadorian Andes. He said, “The word simply did not appear. I 7  Guambra is a Kichwa word that in Spanish means boy or young man and works for indigenous people or mestizos.

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remember that at some point, a research assistant asked: What do the guambras do here? and they answered: Here, young people are studying […] When adults referred to their own youth, they referred to themselves as guambras, while today’s young people are referred to as a youth.” Studying is a way of defining youth in provinces where definitions in previous decades depended on marriage, paternity, and migration to cities. In the case of Cañar, education for younger generations signals the diversification of the border between generations. While marriage, paternity, and migration to cities still preserve demarcations of the passage from youth to adulthood, migration affects the forms marriage and parenthood acquire as an experience. Such factors are conceived through migration based on the transnational experience, which is common to both young people and adults. Since transnational experience is a way of naming the effects of migration on the processes of developing subjectivities, among those who migrate and those who do not, it also affects youth perspectives on schooling. The declining use of the Kichwa term guambra is a symptom of generational changes in indigenous identities. In addition to a generational break between the guambras of the past and the youth of today, education represents a process that acquires value within the framework of a transnational experience. The main importance of studying relies on the possibility of migration within short-term horizons (Duri, Mina, Mari, Punyo, Monta). Thus, in Cañar the socio-cultural capital conferred by the school (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990) is also justified because this institution operates as a space for sharing diverse transnational experiences, generating expectations, and strengthening transnational networks. While the formal schooling system operates with the concept of youth as a transition (Vásquez and Bravo 2021), for indigenous youth in Cañar, it is not a transition to an abstract “adult life” by virtue of age but rather to autonomy in the context of transnational experience and, in many cases, means international migration and the formation of transnational social fields. Generational differences express the production of a new type of subject whose ethnic identity or community roots are intertwined with transnational experience. In Cañar, attending the school system appears as a process of subject production that finds meaning as it contributes to the affirmation of a self whose horizon might be migration. Indeed, the purpose of education is not migration; rather, education is valued in terms of its contribution to “the work of the imagination” (Appadurai 1996).

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Indigenous youth identities are the result of the diversification of the transnational experience. As I have shown in this chapter, transnational experience is vital in youth configuring subjectivities and producing new dynamics in social relations. Further, the transnational experience plays a central role in several aspects of transformation: in the forms of individualization, in the configuration of expectations, in the negotiation around care work in families, in the interests concerning education, in recognition of the emergence of youth subjectivities in indigenous communities. Analyzing transnational experience unravels the interweaving underlying transformation of Cañar. Above all, addressing cultural transformations is critical to moving beyond reductionist views that focus on youth migration only from a socio-economic perspective. The cultural character of generational conflicts is accentuated by the relationship between cultural transformations in the area (due to the intense transnational connections between Cañar and migrants’ places of destination) and the life trajectories of youth who are prospective migrants and children of migrants. For youth in the context of the historical migration of the Cañar district, the model of migration as a rite of passage gives way to migration as an expression of individualization. This is the case even though such displacement is mediated by institutions, especially the family (which appears as the primary scenario of socialization yet also remains the expression of the strongest link with the place of origin) when considering the possibilities of transnational life. Individualization is also expressed in how young people face the migratory density surrounding them. Under such conditions, the family appears as the main scenario and motive for integrating migration plans into the processes of self-production. However, these migration plans affect men and women differently. While young men can count on support in their process of individualization, young women have to arrange the household so that everyone is cared for in their absence.

References Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude. 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage. Herrera, Gioconda. 2013. Analysis of the FLACSO-PIC survey. Quito.

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Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC). 2021. Development and Land Use Plan, PDOT 2021, Cañar, Ecuador. Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). 2012. FLACSO-SIMA Survey 2012. Quito, Ecuador. Levitt, Peggy and Nina Glick Schiller. 2008. Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society. In The transnational studies reader. Intersections & Innovations. Khagram, Sanjeev and Peggy Levitt (Eds.): 284–294. New York: Routledge. Minchala, Carlos 2016. El juego de la migra. ¿Un juego de wambras no más?, Cálamo 5: 41–50 National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). 2010. Population and Housing Census 2010. Quito, Ecuador. Pribilsky, Jason. 2007. La Chulla Vida. Gender, Migration, and the Family in Andean Ecuador and New York City. New York: Syracuse University Press. Ramírez, Franklin and Jacques Ramírez. 2005. La estampida migratoria ecuatoriana. Crisis, redes transnacionales y repertorios de acción migratoria. Quito: Centro de Investigaciones Ciudad. Sánchez Parga, José. 1993. Transformaciones socioculturales y educación indígena. Quito: CAAP. Sánchez Parga, José. 2016. Crónicas de los Andes. Memorias del “Otro.” Quito: CAAP. Swanson, Kate. 2018. From New York to Ecuador and Back Again: Transnational Journeys of Policies and People. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2), 390–398. Vaillant, Michel. 2018. The iony Moment: Migration, Livelihoods and Family Farming in the Upper Cañar Valley (Southern Ecuadorian Andes). In Diversity of Family Farming Around the World, Bosc, P.-M., Sourisseau, J.-M., Bonnal, P., Gasselin, P., Valette, E., Bélières, J.-F. (Eds.): 99–113. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Vásquez, Jorge Daniel and Pedro A.  Bravo. 2021. Crítica de la Sociedad Adultocéntrica. Bogotá: Unisalle.

CHAPTER 3

Guarantee, Reinvention, and Disconnections of Ethnic Identities

Abstract  This chapter examines the heterogeneity of youth identities in Cañar indigenous communities and the conflicts around ethnicity and gender. This chapter analyzes three predominant ways of representing youth, particularly in the rural areas of the district: youth as a guarantee, youth as reinvention, and youth as disconnection. These three ways of representation incorporate elements of patriarchy and adult-centric discourses. At the same time, this chapter addresses how youth recreate forms of belonging to the community from their transnational experience. Keywords  Indigenous youth • Ethnicity • Community • Patriarchy • Adultcentrism “The things of the elders,” “the culture of our parents,” or “the way life used to be” are different forms in which some youths describe what Cañari identity is. This is salient, especially because for many decades, younger generations were supposed to preserve the cultural and political traditions of Ecuadorian indigenous communities (Sánchez Parga 2002, 2009). However, transnational life in Cañar allowed youth to emerge as a differentiated subject in the indigenous communities. Demarcations of generational differences are now established through the intensity of transnational networks.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. D. Vásquez, Transforming Ethnicity, Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30097-4_3

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Cañar is nowadays a scenario in which a global process of economic and cultural transformation is intertwined with a series of practices and symbols linked to Andean community life. In my fieldwork, I also focused on the symbols and practices associated with Cañari ethnic identity and on the socio-cultural deconstruction of traditional forms of intergenerational relationships. Certainly, the transnational experience transforms the ways of belonging, reconfiguring relationships between people, institutions, and social groups. Therefore, I found that studying the transnational experience of Cañari youth requires understanding the heterogeneity of their ways of belonging to the community. Based on personal narratives and group discussions, I show how heterogeneity of youth identity includes conflicts and disputes around representation. I identified three predominant ways of representing youth. I will also show how these ways of representing youth vary according to gender. The first, youth as guarantee, refers to young people for whom migration (and globalization) is a phenomenon that threatens the authentic culture they consider their own. The second, youth as reinvention, refers to young people involved with arts and other aesthetic expressions through which they want to “recover” culture. This second form of representation shows how transnational experiences are lived as connections with local and global symbols. Finally, youth as disconnection is a form of representation that befalls mestizo and Indigenous youth, who think about their identities as detached from the Cañari ethnicity.

“But they cannot remove the blood they carry” Youth as guarantee is a form of representation of indigenous youth as they shoulder the responsibilities of communal organization, relay, and leadership. At the same time, discourses on youth as a guarantee emphasizes the evils of “that other part of youth,” which has been “affected by migration” (or “globalization,” “capitalism,” “fashion,” “technology,” “social media.”) Also, many indigenous leaders, appeal to this discourse when aimed to engage the young in community participation. I found it significant how youth who support this discourse interpret the transnational context as adverse to the “preservation of identity.” This is how Kayo, a 23-year-old young man who is a leader in his community, said:

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[…]we have often allowed ourselves to be convinced by the educational system, which has little interest in the survival of our culture and vision. Many of the cultures of the indigenous people of Ecuador are being lost. That is why, by my own conviction, I have appropriated my culture and it has been one of my most important achievements that I am not afraid, nor ashamed of wearing [an indigenous] hat or of having long hair, because many people, young people, are now ashamed of that. This is very different from what the Ecuadorian State thinks when it wants to put us all in one box. We have our own language, our own culture and that is why it is good to understand our elders’ ways, in relation to other communities, in relation to settlers. Even so, we maintain our customs and the clear vision of who we are as Cañaris and of the Pachamama [Mother Earth], not as owners of Pachamama but as part of it.

Kayo’s statements contain elements that show how, for a sector of the youth, the appropriation of the Cañari culture goes beyond maintaining its traditional costume and language. For Kayo himself, it is a worldview that is in dispute with another worldview represented by the State and related to the issue of migration. […] the most difficult thing has been trying to fight against migration in our communities because migration to America and Europe has caused so much destruction to our communities, in our spaces, because of economic visions rather than traditional visions. For us, it is not money that is important: it is the Pachamama, our land. With migration, the economy and money have appeared; if someone has a house, the other wants to have two, and in this way, the process of defending our territory is destroyed, and we see that individualism, working for oneself and not for the community. This is also because the Ecuadorian State gives priority to money and not to the community.

For Kayo, migration appears as an external threat that produces a relatively new (individualistic) ethos that also affects the sense of the communal. The spirit of the community is key in defending indigenous territories, especially vis-à-vis the privatization of land. When I interviewed Duni, a young women leader in a rural community, she explained to me how migration produces a sentiment of shame toward indigenous identity. For her, “Cañari culture is being lost, partly because the parents from the beginning have not made us wear traditional clothes, and now we are ashamed of them.” For women, Cañari traditional

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costume consists of a cloth hat, skirt washka, and embroidered blouses. Men use a poncho and pants embroidered with sheep’s wool (Fig. 3.1).1 Similar to Duni, Edil, a 20-year-old woman musician, refers to the traditional dress as a sign of her identity: I: Does everyone in your music group wear traditional dress like you? E: Yes, although what I’m wearing is already mixed, but when we go to perform somewhere, I wear the traditional dress. In fact, I have been working throughout this year, contributing to the development of cultural values here in Cañar. I: Do you always wear your dress? E: Yes, I don’t agree very much with the acculturation of pants. I: What about your friends? E: My friends, family, and sisters wear pants a lot. But I said that I don’t agree with what they do, because they don’t value our clothes.

Fig. 3.1  Sale of Cañari traditional dress. (Photo by Lino Pichisaca)

 The description of the Cañari people at the CONAIE website says that only 40% of the population of Cañari people wears traditional clothes. See https://conaie.org/2014/07/19/ kanari/. 1

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I: Why do you think they don’t continue to wear the traditional dress? E: It might be because of vanity, especially in young people; because there are young people who go to other cities and have mestizo peers. Then they become acculturated, embarrassed, and just imitate them. I asked Edil about acculturation since I noticed many other indigenous leaders also used it as part of their common language. For Edil, and Duni, acculturation means renouncing wearing traditional dress and not learning kichwa. Among Cañari leaders, acculturation named the process of “losing the Cañari identity.” Generally, they see this acculturation as a consequence of migration and an individualistic ethos. Of course, cultural change is inherent to the culture itself; there is no loss of culture but a constant reconfiguration of culture. However, youth leaders connect migration with an individualistic ethos that affect communal practices of exchange and reciprocity like the minga, a pre-colonial practice of volunteer collaboration for the community benefit. The spirit of the minga is to have people support each other and reinforce their ties within the community. Further, for youths like Duni and Edil, being ashamed of indigenous identity has to do with the weakness of generational links that sustained “the transmission” of identity. Hence, “one’s proper identity” or “one’s own culture” is debated in the tension between pride and shame, leaving little room for intermediate points or cultural negotiations. The use of Cañari traditional costumes and identifying oneself as a defender of the Pachamama in spaces of socialization like the school or parks demonstrates their sense of belonging and their political position of youth as guarantee. At the same time, they expect their stand to appeal to other youth taking a position of resistance to the “acculturation.” Kayo expects young indigenous leaders “to make communities feel better without losing our essence or losing who we are so that our youth have more space for wisdom that it is not a space from the universities […] Rather than educating, they are destroying the essence of students and turning them into simple employees.” Among all the indigenous leaders I met, Kayo was the one with the strongest leadership and impact on other youth. He thinks about himself, and indigenous youth, as representing the heritage of a people “who were never ashamed of what they were, of what they felt, what they talked about, of what they did, their jokes, their way of life.” And, at the same, he expresses some disappointment with his contemporaries when saying,

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“I don’t understand the young people who go to the central park on weekends and are more into fashion, into conformism […] instead of acting like where they come from, to demonstrate where they are from, to characterize and defend our way of living, of feeling. They return from the city to the communities with changed mentalities.” Municipal political authorities proclaim Cañar an intercultural district (Fig. 3.2), in addition to being recognized as Ecuador’s most important archeological area because of the pre-Columbian ruins of the original

Fig. 3.2  Sculpture of musician and peasant wearing traditional dress. (Photo by Rosalía Castillo)

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Cañari settlement.2 These official narratives are incorporated by young indigenous leaders who want to “build an Ecuador from interculturality,” “without entering into consumerism.” Among these youths, I found these statements to be part of a narrative from where to confront the accelerated transformations of Cañar and youth lives. Thus, although an anti-­ globalization discourse manifests in the diverse ways that they point to consumerism or acculturation, it is also true that their identity, ultimately, refers to their hope of contributing to the political and cultural future life of their Cañari communities. Nonetheless, in their description of migration, other young people, those who “have gone elsewhere,” appear as subjects who actively seek to introduce “new ways of life” (consumerism, individualism, globalization, etc.) in the communities. Some young people who seek to be the youth as guarantee engage in organizations or assume traditional adult roles in their community, often leave aside their own condition of youth to question other young people who “lose their identity.” To some extent, many young leaders share some adultcentric representations where “shame” is expressed in two ways. On the one hand, shame is an attitude that explains why other indigenous youths abandon their dress and the use of the language. On the other hand, it is the feeling that those who abandon their indigenous identity should be ashamed. Again, Edil’s perspective on other youth is telling I: Do you identify as indigenous? E: Yes, wherever I go I have always shown it: I dress as I am, and I have no problem identifying myself as indigenous. I: Are there other indigenous youths who do not identify themselves as such? E: Many young people do not want to. But they cannot remove the blood they carry! Much worse when it comes to language: they do not want to speak Kichwa, but their families, their roots, are indigenous. They have a problem with not accepting their identity. I: How do you notice when a young indigenous person does not identify themselves? E: Because they have directly denied it. I have heard others say, “I am not indigenous because I don’t identify myself that way.” But once I had an experience. We were taking out the identification cards, and I 2  These ruins are located in the rural parish Ingapirca, which means “Inca wall” and were built before the sixteenth century.

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was wearing a hat. In fact, I said, “I am indigenous, you have to take mine [the picture] while I am wearing my hat.” Also, there was this young man I knew; they asked him for identification: “Mestizo,” he replied. While Edil affirms her decision to continue using the traditional dress, at the same time, there is skepticism of those young people who deny their identity. Other youths who share Edil’s perspective value their costume as a way of belonging to the common history of their peoples and nationalities and, as a form of self-affirmation in the face of the changing community. For those young people who constitute “the guarantee” of identity, the use of traditional dress is assumed as a countercultural emblem vis-a-­ vis what they see as threatening their communities. E: I think that, regarding indigenous people, one reason why they are ashamed of wearing it [traditional dress] is because of emigration. People here like our dress. But they go to other countries and dress differently. Although, lately, I have seen that our dress has also been used more and more. I: In adults too? E: Everything indigenous adults wear has a meaning in how they dress, and sometimes we wear it because it suits us even if we don’t know the meaning. They don’t tell us everything. It’s as if they have something hidden […]. I would say that because of the scourge that used to exist, they were afraid to identify themselves as indigenous. They were not considered as much, but now we young people have been making progress. I consider that appeals to the ‘true identity,’ that “being what we are,” does not represent a kind of essentialism or fundamentalism in the face of the onslaught of globalization. Rather, it seems to be a countercultural bet, like other reactions that can be traced in some political groups for the validity of historical memory. Although there is a recurrent call to essence in the testimonies introduced, it is clear that young people consider that they are not representatives of the passive conservation of identity discourse but of the guarantee of an identity that is shaped by the sense of historical belonging (“that they show where they come from”) and that manifests itself as a point of generational difference concerning adults. At the end, like Kayo says, “being Runa or Cañari we do not need to be

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dressed as such, although it is a fundamental element, and it is also an element to have braids and other things. But the most important is to propose to develop the lifestyle, the organizational form.” However, it is difficult to detach the conflict over this identity issue from the inequality that may be produced based on cultural differences. Sometimes, such a guarantee of identity produces a representation that falls on other youth sectors with all the force of an adultcentric prejudice. This prejudice falls on those who are “ashamed” of who they are. The stigmatizing adultcentric discourse is reinforced. The relationship between prejudice and stigmatization finds in migration an explanation for such shame around identity. A reductionist discourse about migration is reproduced, even by those who share with other young people the experience of having migrant relatives. When I discussed these issues with mestizo and indigenous youths with political experience, they applied the analysis of generational power dynamics to communities and to the local government. –– For me, the idea that young people cannot do many things because we are young is a dominant strategy, and we must develop a strategy so that young people, who are the strategy of the future, can do something for the people. In other words, when many young people want to participate in the community, they are not allowed to because they are young. –– For us, before, we had neither a ball or field, we played with an orange or anything else, and we were happier. Now they even give us the stadium, and with that they buy us, they use us only for what they need us for. Also, in the Municipality, when we young people want to do music or cultural project, I know that they will not let us; they will only let the young people from big cities come here and perform. –– -I do not believe that we young people are the future of the nation […] we should be the present because we may not make it to the future. Zharu, a young from the Shuar indigenous nationality, has 15 years of participation in youth movements. Zharu lives in Cañar, and has been a member of the Governing Council of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) since the 2010s. His experience includes his involvement in the national assemblies as the son of an indigenous leader. He tells of generational conflicts in the relationship between

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these young leaders and the adults who have generationally transferred the elements considered to be part of the Cañari identity: Sports and culture were complementary to the support we gave to what the organization was doing. We young people needed space within the organization. Now, the main problem is that young people are not political actors within society; they only fulfill designated roles. This is similar in all countries where, in the indigenous peoples, there is already a strong attraction for capitalist thinking […] Young people in society have been designated to do sports or culture but only when it is about folklore, like music and dance. This role was given to young people. The other role that has been given is to study. And the last one is to be a labor force, to be a brute force of work […] In the history of our [indigenous] nationalities, the youth was part of the whole social process, there was no such separation of the youth. Here in Ecuador, you can see how several people, like Mama Dolores and Mama Tránsito,3 got involved in political activity […] Now, there is a structural and deep-rooted problem in society where young people are not political actors […]. The other problems have to do with migration. Migration to the cities occurs because there are no conditions for study in the countryside. Since young people are non-political and non-creative, they only look for a place to work.

While different from Kayo and Edil, Zharu’s experience connects migration with his knowledge of youth participation in CONAIE and points out the political marginalization of indigenous youth within organizations. In Zharu’s experience, indigenous political organizations reproduce adultcentrism. The assignation of roles limited to folklore and sports are a sign of adultcentric power. If young people are “non-political” and “non-­ creative,” it is because of a form of domination, not because there is natural disinterest among youth. Youths engaged in their communities often use the expression “capitalist thinking” referring to a worldview constantly threatening the communities from the outside. This view reinforces their sense of indigenous identity as a way of thinking and a particular worldview. Echoing some of the leaders’ words, these youths not only preserve their traditional dress but defend a political view that combines ecological convictions with their 3  Refers to Dolores Cacuango (1881–1971) and Tránsito Amaguaña (1909–2009), two indigenous women who lead indigenous peoples’ struggles in Ecuador since they were young. Both were founders of left-wing political organization Ecuadorian Federation of Indians (Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios-FEI).

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value of communal practices. At the same time, they regret that this capitalist thinking has “entered” the life of the indigenous nationalities, particularly affecting young people. Based on their life experience, youths integrate ideas that appear in popular discourses about the effects of migration in Cañar. However, indigenous youths are heterogeneous, and migration spans diverse modes of production of subjectivities. In the following section, I refer to how Cañari youths reinvent discourses of self-identity as another way of representation that tells of the proactive character of indigenous people.

“All of us musicians here are migrants’ children” How are youths who say they want to “recover” understanding of their identities? Under youth as reinvention, I group the meanings that youths working with arts give to their self-identification as indigenous Cañari. Both in the urban and rural parishes of Cañar, youths engage in music and hold festivals throughout the year. They “want to rescue Cañari music” by stimulating young people to make fusions with other rhythms. Kichwa music in fusion with Celtic or rock music is among the ones I heard the most. This cultural movement is also embedded in youth’s transnational experience. Transnational experience blurs the line between the inside/outside cultures. I see youths implicitly assume this idea in practice when their references to “valuing our own cultural expressions” frequently connect with bringing their culture “outward.” Also, the youths are “protagonists of the globalization of Cañari culture” (Fig. 3.3). There are some young musicians who plan to migrate to rejoin their parents, as well as young returnees who have participated in cultural events organized by Cañari people abroad. Other musicians have performed internationally. When I met Nilo, he was a 26-year-old musician living in one of the rural parishes. He told me the story of one of the first young musical groups in Cañar: N: All of us musicians here are migrants’ children. Just yesterday, my father was going to Spain and from there to France, to work in a company that took him there two years ago. I’ve always had the vision of leaving but for work as a musician. I: What kind of music do you play?

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Fig. 3.3  Lino Pichisaca, Cañari artist. (Photo courtesy by Lino Pichisaca)

N: Andean, Cañari, native music, and a little bit of fusion now, because we have some knowledge of contemporary music: a little bit of rock, contemporary rhythms, jazz, cumbia. We are also fusing new instruments. I: How do people in the communities receive your fusions? N: Five years ago, I was in another group from the same community, and we recorded an album with which we also experimented with a bit of rock. Since the migration boom,4 people started to change, and people are now listening to more contemporary music. But instead of spreading our own music, young people only listened to techno and rock. Our group learned from people that first left [migrated] and came back, and then we were born. We were the first, but we have to thank a few other groups of Cañari musicians that helped us out. A few years ago, we released our first album. People were just beginning to listen to us, it was still all rock music, techno-cumbia5 […] So we formed the Cañari group, and we organized cultural events. We 4  When youths in Cañar mention “the migration boom” they refer to 2002–2005, some of the years with higher levels of migration in Cañar. 5  Was very popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s throughout Ecuador. Its lyrics made constant allusions to Ecuadorian migration to Spain (Troya 2008).

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organized concerts of Andean groups from Otavalo6 and other places in Spain. That is our vision as musicians and managers: unity, sharing music among people and making our own music known because before, nothing was known about Cañar. Older people have asked why we do music this way. I told them that it is for young people, that youths do listen to Cañari music but fused is a way of moving forward. At cultural events, we have more young people than older people. Nilo played in international festivals, including places like Germany and South Korea. His story is a process of reinvention of the way of assuming music as a resource of identity. In stories like his, I see how Cañari identity is reinvented through the migration experience, not only because they self-identify as migrants’ children but also because youths position themselves as subjects of a transnational experience that will shape their forms of appropriation of the Cañari culture. Through the fusion of different musical genres, they seek to reach out to the younger generation who shares their transnational experience. Nilo, like other young artists, does not disdain youths who do not fully identify with the Cañari culture, but rather acknowledges that youths in Cañar communities are diverse. Further, interest in fusing Cañari music with other genres cannot be separated from the transnational experience of these youths considering “music as a device of cultural production and reproduction […] it is presented as a vehicle carrying a generational memory that influences the interpretation of reality, contributing to the social identities” (Zarzuri and Ganter 2002, 71). The boom of youth musical groups in Cañar parallels the greatest migratory flow to the United States. Facing discourses of Cañari culture being lost or abandoned because of migration, youth reinvented their “native music” and produced a cultural record of the transnational experience. A generational memory is revived in the production, circulation, and consumption of fused Cañari music, since it is not about rock or jazz per se but about how this is considered their own, incorporating the Kichwa language and Cañari rhythms. Nilo’s mother was a singer in a native group, his uncles are Cañari singers, and his great-grandmother was the

6  A district in the northern Ecuadorian Andes. The largest population in Otavalo district is the Otavalo indigenous people.

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one who knew many traditional songs. However, like other musicians, he was never taught Cañari music at school. Punyo, a musician and DJ in a rural parish in Cañar, learned music when he was an immigrant in Spain. He says, “I loved music, and I didn’t know anything. I made friends with some Bolivians, and they taught me Bolivian music. Over there, I no longer valued my own music. I had even forgotten about it. I realized that I had a different type of taste because of migration, and now I am just getting used to recovering my Cañari music.” Punyo plays the keyboard. He does not have a band but occasionally joins some groups with monthly presentations. As a DJ, he does folklore and fusion of Cañari music with reggaeton and other music from the Andes. He does not see his engagement with music as simply a hobby but as “one of the alternatives for spreading the culture. I think it is the most efficient […] Older people don’t see it; they think the music is bad or that we don’t play well. But young people do see it, they see we do the music they like, they like our folk music.” For some youths, transnational experience produces a new interest in Cañari culture. It is their transnational experience that drives them to reinvent their identity. It is their particular way of being transnational and, simultaneously, belonging to Cañar. It is about sharing with young people that the very experience of youth is in the possibility of reinventing itself. Women musicians I met share the idea that music is a way “to make the Cañari culture known.” Like Punyo, Edil took “the camino” to the United States when she was a kid. Now, besides being a leader in her community, she is the vocalist of a band. Like other young women in rural Cañar, she dedicates herself to crafts and “all kinds of things” (i.e., care work, domestic work). She also does music and study. She is one of the young political leaders who speak about “acculturation” but sees folk music and fusions as a way “to express themes of my culture, my feelings about nature, to make people think about taking care of nature.” For her, music is not only for youth but for all Cañari people. A lot of adult people like music that makes sense […] There are many people who have very nice songs, but adults don’t like how they express themselves. They [indigenous adults] do not like groups that are leaving what was originally ours. […]

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Youths like our music more. I have music that is mine, from my own reality; so when a musician sings about what he really likes, it always touches the heart because it is similar to what they went through.

I: How is it similar? E: Migrating, I already went and returned from Mexico. I was not going because it was my decision but because of obligation. When I returned, I saw that it was not my dream. My songs are made of how I lived before and how in the course of time, I moved towards what I wanted. One of my songs is called “a dream come true,” when you aspire to do something, you do achieve it with time, but you do achieve it. My dream is to sing, mainly going out of our country to perform and show our culture. I made a video with a group from Otavalo, where I went in my traditional dress. From there, my dreams have been to go out, to live, to share, to know what the other towns have. I see Edil’s experience as someone who shares the sense of youth as reinvention with youth as guarantee, where the frontiers between the different modes of representation are permeable. Youth as reinvention is not the opposite of youth as guarantee. It is the way of integrating a process of production of subjectivity with the transnational experience that allows distinguishing between them. Edil integrates her migration experience with future expectations, a work of imagination that manifests her individualization and the transnational experience. Through the reinvention of music, youth reinvent themselves. Like the musical fusion, transnational experience is already a fusion of history, memory, and cultural symbols. It is not the reinvention of music per se, but rather part of the reinvention of Cañari identity, which for others is threatened (Fig. 3.4). This constitutes for them the resource from which meaning is provided to the self. Our first musical album is called Sisay Pacha (flowering time). As I told you, our Cañari music is very similar to the music of Ireland, Galicia, Celtic, Asian music, in general by the similarity of pentaphony, form, rhythm, instruments, and instrumentation, well in short, there are many musical

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Fig. 3.4  Kanari. (Photo courtesy by Lino Pichisaca) things. In this song Uyay Runa7 [Human Face] y Nusta Warmi [Princess]8 you can already notice how we fuse the timbre of the instrument to Cañari music, but in itself, the essence, the swing, the feeling, the rhythm, above all the Cañari essence is always there, it is present, and that is important because ours is the main thing, the rest is just to give the flavor, to give the difference to the style we want.

Nilo’s story refers to identity conceived as a support for a series of innovations. It is a referent in which the transnational experience acquires a historical meaning. In this place, the term “essence” (used by Nilo) does not have a metaphysical but a historical character. It is the historicity of identity that makes it possible to account for its current and particular form of reinvention.

7  Uyay Runa is a song from Kanari Ethnic Music group available at https://soundcloud. com/kanari_music/2-uyay-runa. 8  Nusta Warmi is a song from Kanari Ethnic Music group available at https://soundcloud. com/kanari_music/4-nusta-warmi.

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For Cañari youth, music is an expression of the reinvention of subjectivity. This is a space that young people occupy and give their own political-­ cultural character. It is a matter of enunciating identity from the transnational experience and making explicit the socio-historical condition of young men and women of this generation, who grew up with transnational ties and who have assumed migration as part of their lives. Migration is not only the aggravation of social breakdown or community life but the history of their becoming subjects.

“They have even called the police without knowing what we are doing” Itan: I: Itan: I: Itan:

How come you are around here? Are you from the municipality? o, I am writing a book about youth in Cañar. Uh, we were many here, but many people left. I know. I am interested in those who did not leave. Well, we do not talk about that. But you never know who is leaving.

The fragment above was part of an interaction with a youth, Itan, on a weekday morning, in front of one of the community salons of a rural parish, waiting for Edil. Edil helped me to contact youths from the area that were not engaged in any political organization or artist groups. We decided that if we get some youths to spread the word about “a workshop for young people” among families, there would be some relatives that would encourage more youth to attend. Kayo, Edil and their siblings spread the word and helped me get parents’ or tutor’s permission for the younger ones. Itan, who “welcomed me” did not attend, but helped me to invite some of his friends. After some initial trials, I conducted my research workshops and two group interviews. I learned from the experience of these youths who hear Kichwa at home but understand it as “a language for adults” and do not intensely reflect on indigenous identity as some other youths do. I learned from mestizo and indigenous youths whose practices express an explicit dissociation from the identity elements of Cañari culture. When working in rural parishes, I interacted with young men and women, who felt like external observers of traditional organizations,

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culture, or practices of indigenous identity in their rural communities. I group their practices and expressions under youth as disconnection. Transnational experience, in this case, is in play when youth take a subjective distance from the traditional communal forms or from ways of actively reinventing the Cañari identity. In Cañar, like in other places where I have worked on youth cultures, I heard the expression that “youth is lost here;” however, in rural Cañar, this expression targets youths known in the district because their parents migrated, leaving them with relatives. Of course, this is a way of representation that implies many adultcentric prejudices against young people. My intention was rather, in discussion with them, to contribute generating a space for other ways to engage with youth. One form of adultcentrism was the distrust of young people gathering out the small corner store just. Sometimes they are targeted as gang members. Z: I think sometimes people think badly of us when we get together because they think we are gang members. We get together a lot, we play sports, and then we go out at night to walk, and people think we’re gang members, but we’re not. I: Why do some people think that? Z: They hear about things they are afraid of. But here we young people meet at the soccer field, and then we come here until about eleven o’clock. They have even called the police without knowing what we are doing. When we get home, our parents tell us what we’re up to. They scare our parents. I: Who scares them? Z: The neighbors themselves. I think that this also makes young people migrate. Parents fear of hearing that there is a gang, so they say No! My son better go! I: And you [women] also gather close to the field? Z: No, only men. I: And the adults meet? Z: Not there. If they meet, it is only to drink alcohol. Despite not being as big as gangs in Guayaquil in the eighties and nineties (Argudo 1991; Cerbino 2004) or transnational gangs in other Latin American countries (Nateras 2015; Savenije 2009), there was a transnational gang in southern Ecuador during the 2000s and early 2010s. The so-called Sombra Negra gang was a transnational group whose members

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were active in the state of New York, Spain, and southern Ecuador. The stories about “the Sombra Negra” (i.e., “Black Shadow”) said it was founded in Biblián (17 miles away from the Cañar district) by an Ecuadorian who was eventually deported after many months in a New York prison.9 The members of the Sombra Negra distinguished themselves by wearing basketball jerseys, caps, combining religious images with colors from the Ecuadorian flag, consuming high levels of alcohol, and listening to cumbia. The presence of this gang did not grow to the point of becoming an organization of violent crime or extortion in the communities. The Sombra Negra was known for arriving at music festivals in big groups, demanding cumbia to be played, and sometimes provoking fights. The arrival of the Sombra Negra at a festival usually made people start leaving. Currently, the Sombra Negra is not active, thanks to the “peace negotiation” started by the Ecuadorian government in 2012. Probably, the most durable effects of this demobilized gang have to do with their self-identification as being migrants’ children and having sown the fear about Cañari youth joining the Sombra Negra. This fear feeds of youth as potential criminals, particularly those who live with grandparents or non-first-degree relatives. Thus, what people in Cañar now mention as “the gang phenomenon” does not really refer to actual gangs wandering around the communities but to the mere practice of youths gathering late at night and identifying themselves with juvenile cultures such as hip hop or rock. Not being at school while being a reggaetonero or rapper is easily a reason for distrust and associating youths with being gang members. When I asked in the workshop about gangs, Dui replied, “youth joined the gang because of lack of parental support, the absence of their families. But each person chooses his or her own way of being, and we must respect that.” I found that the phenomenon of gang membership was usually linked to not being in school, having migrant parents, ascribing to certain youth identities, meeting with other young people in public places, going around the community at night, and—it is noteworthy—“having chosen to do that.” In the latter, a certain level of individualization and transnational experience is recognized. During my fieldwork, I asked but never heard of cases of gang violence in the Cañar district. In the Cañar district, during the last decade, most violence has been related to domestic violence 9  For a story of the “Sombra Negra,” see https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/ regional/1/sombra-negra-encuentra-un-espacio-para-dar-paz.

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(GADIC 2012, 2021). However, I did hear from youth about fights and intimidation with guns in Biblián and other districts. My understanding was that the mestizo and indigenous youth in rural Cañar district were more interested in gang stories rather than actually joining a gang. Some of these stories come from the few youths who joined a gang or knew someone who did. My sense is that, for youths in rural Cañar, there are at least two aspects of gangs that are incorporated by the youth as disconnection. First, remarking on the story of gang members being migrants’ children “who were abandoned” creates a sense of identification. Second, since “gangs” imply a sense of belonging, youths affirm themselves by setting borders with others. In rural Cañar, these borders among juvenile cultures are not thick, and they are set through symbolic violence (mocking others’ clothes, music, or logos). In rare cases associated with alcohol consumption, there are fights. Another salient aspect in the series of representations associated with youth as disconnection is that which introduces gender difference. When I explored why “women don’t gather like men” I found different analytical dimensions than those in the youth as guarantee or youth as reinvention. This group discussion was with youths, most of them around 18, in a rural parish: I: Why don’t women get together in groups like men? Man 1: Well, sometimes the ladies do get together. Woman 1: Although more permission is given to men because women are judged by the very fact that they are women. Man 2: But in other places, women go out and drink. Woman 2: This is what happens. Women are more likely to get pregnant, and minors are more at risk. Women run the risk of the belly [pregnancy], and men run the risk of nothing. Woman 3: You feel that men have power over women. Man 1: The power in the house has always been the father and if not the father, the older brother. Man 2: A difference is, for example, how men do alcohol. There are not many women who do alcohol here. Woman 1: We women have many problems. I: Why? Man 1: Because they don’t ask for respect, because if they ask for respect, nothing happens. There are women who were left behind and did not learn to make themselves respected.

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Man 2: There are many single mothers. Woman 3: There are many single mothers, I think, because of a lack of knowledge. Parents don’t talk about it. What happens in my house, they have never talked about the importance of mom and dad or private things. There is not much trust between parents and children. Man 3: In our culture here, marriage was something sacred, sex was sacred; that is why our traditional dance symbolized how important it was. The godfather took the groom, and the godmother took the bride. That was the knowledge of our ancestors. Now what happens is that the man takes the woman, and then they tell the parents that they got married or that she was pregnant. That is why some women want to go to the United States. They are not respected in Cañar. Studying the practices and ideas of those who I group as youth as disconnection allowed me to connect adultcentrism and patriarchy. Men stigmatized women as lacking self-will (“women do not make themselves respected”), as vulnerable subjects (“women run the risk of the belly”), with less information than men (“women have a lack of knowledge in sexual matters”), and weak in comparison to masculine-virile (“there are no women who do alcohol”). The statement of the last man closes the fragment with force: “That is why there are women who want to go to the United States.” As discussed in the previous chapter, youth’s narrative differences show how gender inequality works within mestizo and indigenous youth in communities with large migration. Going to the United States, there would not only be a possibility of individualization vis-à-vis the communal life but also relative to the adultcentric and sexist representations of young women. Exploring youths as guarantee, reinvention, and disconnection, was not only my way of analyzing heterogeneity, but also how, amid identity production, youths can be adultcentric and patriarchal, considering that Strictly speaking, the patriarchal monopoly is exercised by males socially designated as adults. In broad terms, masculinism extends to boys and young men over girls and young women. Because it has an adult character, the patriarchal-masculine empire is also exercised against the elderly of both sexes […]. The patriarchal-masculine empire discriminates in this way against women, the elderly, and children and young people. It contains the

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practice of an adultcentrism, by which the legitimate and unilateral authority rests “naturally” in adults and in the practices of gender discrimination with patriarchal dominance. (Gallardo 2006, 230)10

Young people can reproduce adultcentric stereotypes and men embody the condition of adultcentrism by reproducing sexist discourses against young women. Youth as disconnection is then a way of naming the processes through which adultcentrism incorporates and perpetuates other orders of domination as they are applied to young people with migrant relatives, especially young women. This adultcentric gaze criminalizes juvenile cultures or justifies patriarchal positions. Adultcentric representations get into play when accusing youths of “losing” their identity, resulting in a growing disconnection among generations. For youths, “hardly anyone looks like the parents anymore.” Paradoxically, there were some who claim that adults “have their wisdom, but they do not share it with young people,” “they have the idea of filling us with things, new shoes, branded shoes,” “some of them think that they are inferior to the young who goes to school, but no, we are all equals.” To unveiling the complexity and paradoxes of adultcentrism, it may take thinking about intergenerational dialogues. While there is disconnection from traditional elements of Cañari culture, it does not necessarily imply disconnection from adults. The paradox is this: While adultcentric representations reduce the dialogue on migration to “its negatives effects on youth,” youths acknowledge what adults’ experiences offer. However, the authority resulting from experience is challenged when youths’ identity practices are considered a threat to the community. In the three representations, I have distinguished the heterogeneity of Cañari youth. Learning about these three forms of representation may provide thoughtful elements of intergenerational discussions. The relationship between youth and ethnic identities is fluid. As Zharu’s political position or Edil’s transnational experiences show, there is constant back and forth between the different forms of youth identity in Cañar. Youth as a guarantee speaks of a discourse of recovering their identity; they feel proud of their indigenous heritage and are politically committed to their peoples. At the same time, seeking to prevent youths from “the capitalist 10  For Gallardo, “the adult” is a function within society, characterized by offering an empowering and integrating service to children, youth, and the elderly (Gallardo 2006, 109–110).

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thinking that migration brings to the communities” may reduce the chances to recognize that transnational experiences produce different ways of belonging. Youth as reinvention tells us of strong identification with the Kichwa Cañari culture and how youths connect the intensity of their transnational experience to a new sense of belonging. This should contribute to the dialogue on diverse ways of belonging to the communities. The analysis of youth as disconnection showed how adultcentrism and patriarchy shape the approaches to youth’s social life. Youths are not exempt from using adultcentric statements. Opening intergenerational dialogues imply that youths are critical of the heterogeneity within the young. An intergenerational dialogue requires transgressing adultcentric forms of authority.

References Argudo, Mariana. 1991. Pandillas juveniles en Guayaquil. Quito: ILDIS. Cerbino, Mauro. 2004. Pandillas juveniles. Cultura y Conficto en la calle. Quito: El Conejo. Gallardo, Helio. 2006. Siglo XXI: Producir un mundo. San José: Arlekín. Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC). 2012. Development and Land Use Plan, PDOT 2012-2020, Cañar, Ecuador. Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC). 2021. Development and Land Use Plan, PDOT 2021, Cañar, Ecuador. Nateras, Alfredo. 2015. El aniquilamiento identitario infanto-juvenil en Centroamérica: el caso de La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), y la ‘pandilla’ del Barrio 18 (B-18). In Juvenicidio: Ayotzinapa y las vidas precarias en América Latina, Valenzuela, José Manuel (Coord.): 99–130. México: NED. Sánchez Parga, José. 2002. Crisis en torno al Quilotoa: Mujer, cultura y comunidad. Quito: CAAP. Sánchez Parga, José. 2009. Qué significa ser indígena para el indígena. Más allá de la comunidad y la lengua. Quito: Universidad Politécnica Salesiana. Savenije, Wim. 2009. Maras y barras. Pandillas y violencia juvenil en los barrios marginales de Centroamérica. San Salvador: FLACSO. Troya, David. 2008. Las estéticas lúdicas de la tecnocumbia. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito. Zarzuri, Raúl and Rodrigo Ganter. 2002. Culturas juveniles, narrativas minoritarias, estéticas del descontento. Santiago de Chile: UCSH.

CHAPTER 4

Adultcentrism and the Dispute about Representation

Abstract  This chapter discusses the tensions around youth identities and migration in urban Cañar. It shows how local institutions framed youths’ transnational experience in an adultcentric perspective that blocked intergenerational dialogue. It sustains how intergenerational dialogue is critical for understanding youths’ transformations of ethnicity and the political horizon of indigenous communities, particularly after the 2019 Ecuadorian national strike led by the Indigenous Movement. Keywords  Adultcentrism • Political subjectivities • Intergenerational dialogue • Ethnicity • National strike When I conducted two research workshops in a high school in the urban parish, I discussed how is to be young in Cañar, with 15 youths between 16 and 18 years of age. Most of these young people were mestizos living in the urban parish (Fig. 4.1), with only a few who self-identified as indigenous.1 The workshops sought to collaborate with the students in an

1  High school staff authorized youths who are part of student committees (engaged in planning sports or cultural activities) to participate in these workshops. In the first group, there were seven men and eight women of whom three self-identified as indigenous. In the second group, there were five men and ten women of whom four self-identified as indigenous.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. D. Vásquez, Transforming Ethnicity, Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30097-4_4

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Fig. 4.1  Urban Cañar. (Photo by Rosalía Castillo)

interpretation of their social and cultural context. My purpose was for youths to reflect on their social practices and for me to see how migration, ethnicity, and generational difference appear when talking about youth identities. My strategy consisted of describing social relations among youths and constructing interpretations of actions. As such, the workshops aimed to identify youths’ conceptions about themselves vis-à-vis the social context of urban Cañar. I planned these workshops with García-Canclini’s categories of de-­ territorialization and re-territorialization in mind. García-Canclini influenced youth studies by discussing globalization from “the loss of the ‘natural’ relation of culture to geographical and social territories” and the “certain relative, partial territorial re-localizations of old and new symbolic productions” (2001, 229). Thus, I wondered how Cañari youth and adults’ transnational experience redefined Cañar as a symbolic reference for defining themselves as belonging to a place, but most importantly, what kind of tensions take place. Almost everybody talked about the central square. Surrounded by the Municipality, a catholic church, and a bank, the central square is a public area of 27000 square feet. Like many of the main squares in urban Ecuador, Cañar square holds a monument to Simón Bolívar, the leader of Latin American independence (Fig.  4.2). Youth living in the urban area and those in rural areas “hang around,” “waste time,” “see friends,” “fool around,” and “look to see what comes up” during weekends. It is a space where youth come to the fore to show off fashion, tattoos, and hairstyles. On Saturday afternoons and evenings, we are usually walking around and hanging out in the square. Others, who have money their parents

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Fig. 4.2  Central square. (Source: GADIC (2012))

send from the United States, drive cars around the square like fools. They drive by listening to loud music just to say that they’re there. They go to the square to show off their expensive shoes and phones. Well, they don’t actually say, “Check it out, I have, and you don’t,” but they’re full of attitude and act all rich. But others are just there, talking with friends, sometimes we have a drink, we end up staying until one in the morning. We’re not like those who think they’re so much better because they’ve gone to the United States and come back wanting to live as if they were there. And sometimes, it’s not even that, some have only gone to Cuenca, and they come back all dressed differently. I noticed that not only youths but also adults used youth fashion to recognize “the migrants.” “The migrants” are, in fact, migrants’ children or returned migrants in urban Cañar who are seen as “more superficial,” “more arrogant because of their economic position,” or “less authentic.” Basically, in urban Cañar, “the migrants” is a label that names two concomitant processes of identification: a process of acquiring economic

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status through consumption and a process of aesthetic practices. For instance, during my time in Cañar, I got to know the only three clubs in town. Cañar clubs did not operate regularly but only on weekends. These clubs are far from being what in Cuenca or Guayaquil are considered elite clubs, but rather, I saw people from families I knew with different economic backgrounds; however, youths spoke of clubs not just as places to party but a space where “the migrants,” “fashionable” and with “economic resources,” show off their shipments from the United States. However, there are certain seasons when youth presence in the streets and public places is more dynamic. The Inti Raymi (the Sun fest), every June, is a time when “the city is filled with young people, from many places. They come from Otavalo, from Cuenca, from the United States, from Spain, from everywhere.” No other time of the year is as important as the Inti Raymi festival for youth in Cañar. This traditional festival, which has occurred yearly for thousands of years, is based on the indigenous rite of thanksgiving to the sun for the abundant harvests of the year. It is also considered a festival for young people to express their musical tastes and to make themselves visible as youth cultures. Thus, for youths, the Inti Raymi is a traditional festival but also a transnational event in which youth identities express their belonging to Cañari culture and also demarcates differences between youths and their elders. In this sense, the transnational experience of young people in Cañar tells of a particular way of experiencing de- or re-territorialization (García-Canclini 2001). I gathered youths’ stories on performing and dancing to express juvenile cultures in Cañar’s traditional festivals as a symbolic appropriation that feeds individual and collective memories in their territory. Migration is at the core of symbolic disputes about status and belonging, such as the one around the central square on weekends; however, during ancient traditional festivals, such as the Inty Raymi, the existence of shared territory incorporates the different ways of belonging to the Cañari community. Youths living in urban areas actively engaged in discussing identity. Without me even mentioning it, mestizo youths I interviewed in urban Cañar shared their positive feelings about indigenous peoples wearing traditional dress. For some youths, the use of traditional dress is also an expression of differentiation among youths in the urban area. While mestizo youth think that an “authentic identity” lies in rejecting “superficiality” or in “a change of attitude” as a consequence of receiving remittances

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from the United States or Spain; many of them also think that “authentic indigenous identity” lies in persisting in the use of their traditional dress. For instance, when I talked to Duva and Moni, two female student leaders in an urban high school, they told me that indigenous youth “should wear it [the traditional dress], to show what culture they are from. They should not leave their culture behind. Women do not even wear skirts, they wear other clothes according to fashion,” but “if they come in different clothing how will we know if they are indigenous or mestizos.” For these two young mixed-race women replacing traditional clothing with “fashionable clothes” is also a way of “losing identity,” but most importantly, the traditional dress is also significant for mestizo youth to identify themselves as such. Therefore, there is a double way of identification in play revealed when inverting Moni’s words, like if she were saying, “if indigenous youth do not wear their dresses, how we would know that we are mestizos?” Nevertheless, what I observed in high schools, the central square, the clubs, the soccer field and the corner stores in rural areas, and family houses, is that elements such as the traditional skirt or the poncho are combined with commercially branded jackets that identify young skaters, rockers, or sports fans. So, where does this mestizo sense of the traditional dress as the emblem of indigenous identity come from? On the one hand, it responds to narrow mestizo discourses about ethnicity. I have shown that rather than focusing exclusively on the traditional dress, the indigenous youth, those described as youth as guarantee or youth as reinvention, made sense of their identities in connection with the political sense of the community and the incorporation of transnational experiences in cultural productions. On the other hand, it has to do with the reproduction of an adultcentric discourse about youth identities and indigenous youths in particular, through what I call “the local construction of adultcentrism.” I will discuss how this adultcentric view was embedded in institutional discourses about youth in Cañar and how it has been intrinsically connected with migration.

The Local Construction of Adultcentrism Cañari youth see the emergence of juvenile cultures as something recent. Youths can combine elements from different juvenile cultures within their groups. In the rural areas, these groups are sometimes targeted as gangs (as I discussed in Chap. 3). In general, youths agree that, “a few years ago,

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there weren’t so many groups, now we have hip-hopers, punkers, rastafarians, reggaetoneros.” I proposed to explore how local institutions have framed the relationship between youth and migration in Cañar to see how political authorities and professionals made sense of what youths were saying at the workshops. Youth cultures in Cañar were not apparent before the 2000s transnational migration. Rather than critically analyzing transformations, local institutions focused on “the negative effects of migration on youth” from an adultcentric view. Certainly, the process of migration implies hard changes in individual and family life producing emotional stress, economic debts, and uncertainty about those who take “el camino” (Pribilsky 2001, 2012; Escobar 2008). In this regard, it is not difficult to understand why migrants would refer to migration as something negative. However, it is different when institutional responses to family or educational crises use a set of adultcentric prejudices as a matrix of interpretation of youth’s experiences around migration. Amid the migration boom, adultcentrism was embedded in the institutional analysis of Cañari migration. For instance, the Municipality Development Program for the 2012–2020 period migration is described with negative consequences, primarily on youths’ vulnerability: Migration on a social scale generates family disintegration, the negative impacts of which are suffered mainly by the children of migrants, which can turn into violent, defiant, and disobedient behavior, drug and alcohol consumption, gangs, perceptual difficulties, learning difficulties, immaturity, anxiety, and depression, among others […] Another problem caused by migration is the change in the role of women in the family, assuming the role of head of household and family economy […] forcing women to be the articulating axis of the local economy. (GADIC 2012, Vol. I: 23–24)

Additionally, many institutional documents refer to migration emphasizing the breakdown of structures that it produces, both in terms of traditional family institutions and subjectivities, particularly for youths and women. Certainly, in Cañar communities, families are the main networks for a sense of belonging and support. For instance, the statement included in GADIC (2012) is not so much revelatory of the effects of migration but instead reveals how local authorities refer to migrant children. In the face of the high emigration from Cañar in the mid-2000s, the Governor’s office released a research report aimed at the “mitigation of

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Fig. 4.3  Neighborhood in urban Cañar. (Photo by the author)

the Negative Impacts of Migration on Youths and Families in Cañar.” The report is based on a study conducted by the provincial government with five hundred families in the area (Fig.  4.3). Local organizations, social workers, community leaders, and school principals participated in this report that guided the mental health and social work projects from 2008 to 2018. No youths seemed to have participated in the workshops or interviews; however, the report says: [Youth] have no attachment to anything; some say that their goal is to finish school and go abroad; many youths arrive from the USA, get married, and soon after depart once more, creating new problems for the families; there are gangs of youths; they do not respect customs; they are arrogant because they have money; young children of migrants like music, dancing, and drinking; young people are not interested in working in agriculture […]; values are deteriorating more and more; young people tend to look for affection in other people who are sometimes not good people, especially girls; boys grow up very aggressive; children are left alone and turn to delin-

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quency, they are more selfish; there are pregnancies among teenage girls who are migrants’ children. (Provincial Government of Cañar 2008, 5)

Besides some issues I discussed in previous chapters, I find it relevant to question the adultcentric view inscribed in institutional discourses about youth and migration in areas with around seven decades of migration flows between Ecuador and mainly the United States. Also, the diagnosis of “social problems” affecting youth can reaffirm adultcentric prejudices. Between 2015 and 2020, I did not find other reports focusing especially on youth, but I did notice that most reports suggest “psychological attention” to the young population as the main strategy for “mitigating the negative effects on migration.” “Psychological attention” has been part of every development plan in the Cañar district since 2002; for instance, from 2020 to 2030, the government expects to invest ninety thousand dollars in mental health programs (GADIC 2021). However, adultcentrism was not the only part of institutional discourses. A psychological study in the areas of Azuay and Cañar stated that, “youth does not have the capacity to reflect critically on their own behavior, is incapable of maintaining stable relationships with others, and does not have a clear and defined value system […]. But they may also become bitter against society and become alienated by engaging in attitudes of protest against society itself; along this path, they can easily turn to drugs as an escape from their decisions” (Marcial 2000, 29). The closeness between the deviance discourse and the social analysis in institutional and policy discourses serves as a way for authority to ratify adultcentric representation. Therefore, it makes sense why the young people, instead of attending institutional spaces, shared their migration experience by participating in community organizations, musical bands, or informal groups. When I was acquiring consent from the high school to conduct the workshop, a staff member talked to me about “the migrants” (migrants’ children or young returnees) and said, “it is easy to spot the effects of migration on young people […] they have money sent by their parents, they become arrogant, come with piercings, hairstyles, and other things.” Aesthetic practices such as combining manga hairstyles, tattoos, and piercings generate distrust. When men wear black and pink clothes, the use of black rings or color rings, and when women wear “trucker” caps or thick leather bracelets they are targeted suspicious. Young women told me how what they call a “Boricua style,” wearing sneakers, thick chains, big

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glasses, and earrings in both ears, displeases their parents and teachers and some people that walk through the central square at night. While some teachers acknowledge pedagogical and socio-cultural limitations when dealing with migration, I noticed how adultcentrism was a first-hand commonsense explanation for the “youth crisis” and, therefore, a barrier to critical dialogue. When this happens, institutions end up immersed in making migration the explanatory basis of a generational malaise. Youth identities are constructed based on the consumption of symbolic goods that may or may not have concrete material support. The production of styles and youth aesthetics objectify the emergence of a transnational ‘space’ and ‘field’ that, in subjective terms, account for transnationally reterritorialized youth identities. Far from denying the crisis and conflict within transnational families, it is critical to question the reductionist tactic of analyzing youth’s migration experience from adultcentrism. Such adultcentric discourse points not only to the urban youth (so-­ called migrants) but also to indigenous youth living in rural areas. For instance, instance, during the IV National Conference of Anthropology, organized by Casa de la Cultura,2 the most important cultural institution in the district, included a paper analyzing indigenous youth. The author, a local educator, describes indigenous youth as follows: Currently, young Kichwa people spend time in the city and at social events […] most women are willing to fall in love, which is why, along with television and migration, there are nowadays more single mothers, early marriages, and early divorces […] they are easy prey to acculturation and the absorption of messages distinct from our cultural values, causing identity loss and making it increasingly difficult to distinguish them from mestizo youth. With migration and the influence of television, young people are more rebellious, individualistic, selfish, disobedient, and not, as they were in the past, simple, calm, obedient, responsible, and respectful. […] there are changes in clothing […] due to the migration to the coast and other cities of Ecuador, so they choose to change the typical dress of the mestizos; the first thing was to cut their hair, then they replaced ponchos and kushma [sic] with jackets and coats but just in certain parishes and communities. (Romero Valdez 2007, 61–63)

2

 Casa de la Cultura is a national institution with local branches around the country.

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Romero’s picture of indigenous youth is a sample of how inserted adultcentrism was in negative discourses about migration. As an authorized voice published by a cultural institution, Romero describes youth at the turn of the century as corrupted by the loss of cultural identity and, sadly, different from previous generations. It is an adultcentric view insofar as it encloses all the indigenous youth of Cañar into a homogeneous group, despite its specification of “certain parishes and communities.” Although institutional discourses (from the government or professionals) recognize that transformations of ethnic identities are a phenomenon related to migration, their adultcentrism stems from considering migration as a common intergenerational experience. Although generations coexist and their inevitable interrelations constitute a social fabric, adultcentric positions of power diminish young people, limiting them to a world encapsulated by adult values. Such an operation not only disregards that youths, like adults, are the communities and not external actors to them. Romero also mentions how indigenous youths dress like mestizos. Anthropological analyses from the seventies stated that while mestizo refers to mixed race people who constitute the national ruling class and identify with the values of dominant colonial culture, indigenous Cañaris express their ethnicity through cultural resistance vis-à-vis the dominant culture. While mestizos are more socio-economically connected to urban centers, indigenous are based in rural Cañar (Fock 1981). Turning one’s back on the “traditional indigenous symbol system” was the first step in renouncing being indigenous and pursuing to become a mestizo (Fock 1981, 413). This idea about forms of identification in Cañar prevailed in Romero’s analysis. However, I showed how the interpretation of Cañar’s identification might be even more complex at the turn of the century, especially considering migration and generational differences. Migration from rural Cañar to cities has existed since the 1950s, but in the twenty first century, indigenous identities are more heterogenous in relationship to the elements of the communal and their sense of belonging (Chap. 3). Cañari youth indigenous subjectivities are constituted through global networks and transnational experiences. However, adultcentric symbolic violence may impose classification systems that deny the heterogeneities articulated in indigenous populations, separating the analysis of indigenous identities from the analysis of youth dynamics. Such dual vision must be challenged both in research and in political practice, and the

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connection between identity and ethnicity may be reimagined through the stories and experiences of youths.

Why Dispute Representations? Discourses on migration are also disputes about representations, disputes that respond to the articulation of hierarchies at the global level, the constitution of transnational social networks, and forms of appropriating transnational experiences. Re-examining the relationship between local and global dynamics includes discussion on territorialization, identifications as well as social and racial hierarchies. These forms of inequality establish material and symbolic differences and tensions in the production of subjectivities in indigenous communities. The becoming of indigenous communities into transnational social fields is not free of tensions. They include both the breakdown of the support that the family structure represented for the community organizational forms, as well as the displacement of collaborative work, replaced by the logic of the capitalist economy. Exploring these tensions in Cañar, connecting youth identities and ethnicity, adds to the discussion of globalization and how transnationalism transforms the intergenerational relations in indigenous communities. Thus, thinking from the concrete experience of youths who are in their communities in the global south “brings to light another globalization or, rather, an unconfessed genealogy of contemporary globalization processes” (Mezzadra 2005, 49). An important tension revolves around the heterogeneity of indigenous youth and indigenous political actions. Individualization entails complex dynamics for not solely socio-cultural life but for the political articulation of the communities. Generational transformations in the community require re-thinking the political-cultural capital that the community has historically represented in political debates. This implies that the generational relay of such political articulation is not assured in the same terms as those proposed since the indigenous uprising of the 1990s. At the same time, individualization radically manifests an alternative production of subjectivities. Individualization does not necessarily indicate disinterest in the political. For instance, in October 2019, the government of Ecuador faced 11 days of a national strike as a measure of widespread rejection against President Moreno’s Executive Order, which eliminated fuel subsidies and announced a series of neoliberal labor reforms submitted to the National Assembly. Popular struggle allowed the unification of different political forces. I saw actors in the conflict were situated around two

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opposing blocs. One bloc was formed by the two right-wing political parties of greatest relevance3 while a popular bloc was led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).4 Indigenous youths participated in the protest bloc and were crucial in forcing the President to decline the Executive Order (Iza et al. 2021). The configuration of political subjectivities implies exploring the meanings and sensibilities of democracy through the arguments that young people use to legitimate participation and protest. Young people’s implicit or explicit definitions of democracy (e.g., direct democracy, popular democracy, democracy, and interculturality) demonstrate ways in which the youth as guarantee strengthened organizations in the context of mobilizations against neoliberalism. Certainly, for indigenous youths with transnational experience, political subjectivity does not come from traditional politics. Crossed by gender, class, and generation differences, individualization constitutes a rupture with the naturalized relay line in the administration of power in the organizational spaces of communities. But it is here where eradicating adulcentrism when analyzing the heterogeneity of indigenous youth becomes critical. The adultcentric discourse around youth as disconnection (“young people are against politics,” “they do not have interest in the community”) works as a symbolic attempt to weaken the political capital achieved by the struggles of indigenous peoples and their interracial alliances in the Ecuadorian Highlands. Although ethnic identity is not the exclusive resource of struggles for recognition and redistribution, it has been central in demands for historical reparations and State-building, broadening restricted notions of citizenship. Thus, young people’s motivations and  They are the Social Christian Party (PSC), presided by the former mayor of Guayaquil, Jaime Nebot, and the movement “Creating Opportunities” (CREO), of the banker Guillermo Lasso, the Business Chambers of Quito and Guayaquil, the Chamber of Industries of Ecuador, the large private media, and the Presidency of the Republic in the person of Lenín Moreno. 4  In addition to CONAIE, this protest bloc was made up of the United Workers’ Front (FUT), student organizations grouped in the National Students’ Front and the Feminist Front of Ecuador. Assembly members of the Citizen Revolution (RC), other leftist movements (in different provinces of the country) and middle-class sectors, converged on the side of the social bloc. In the weeks following the culmination of the strike, the FUT has established dialogues of new rapprochement with the government and its separation from the political forces that made up the protest. 3

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justifications for the need and validity of protest allow us to envision youth as reinvention from a political horizon.

References Escobar, Alexandra. 2008. Tras las huellas de las familias migrantes del cantón Cañar. In América Latina migrante: Estado, familia, identidades. Gioconda Herrera and Jacques Ramírez (Eds.): 243–258. Quito: FLACSO. Fock, Niels. 1981. Ethnicity and Alternative Identification: An Example from Cañar. In Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador. Norman E. Whitten (Ed.): 402–419. Urbana, Chicago, and London: University of Illinois Press. García-Canclini, Néstor. 2001. Hybrid Cultures Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC). 2012. Development and Land Use Plan, PDOT 2012-2020, Cañar, Ecuador. Intercultural Autonomous Decentralized Government (GADIC). 2021. Development and Land Use Plan, PDOT 2021, Cañar, Ecuador. Iza, Leonidas, Andrés Tapia, and Andrés Madrid. 2021. Estallido. La Rebelión de Octubre en Ecuador. Quito: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Marcial, Marlene. 2000. Psicología juvenil. El mundo del adolescente y del joven. Cuenca: Universidad Católica de Cuenca. Mezzadra, Sandro. 2005. Derechos de fuga. Migraciones, ciudadanía y globalización. Madrid: Traficantes de sueños. Pribilsky, Jason. 2001. Nervios and ‘modern childhood.’ Migration and shifting contexts of child life in the Ecuadorian Andes, Childhood 8(2), 251–273. Pribilsky, Jason. 2012. Consumption Dilemmas: Tracking Masculinity, Money and Transnational Fatherhood Between the Ecuadorian Andes and New York City, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38(2), 323–343. Provincial Government of Cañar. 2008. Mitigation of the Negative Impacts of Migration on youth and families in the districts of Azogues, Biblián and Déleg in the province of Cañar. Azogues: Secretaría Nacional del Migrante/ Gobernación de Cañar. Romero, Gonzalo. 2007. Juventud indígena, Democracia y Comunicación. In Memorias de los Encuentros Nacionales III de Arqueología y IV de Antropología ‘Nela Martínez Espinosa,’ Volume II (p. 61–71). Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana -Núcleo Cañar.

CHAPTER 5

A Recapitulation

Abstract  This chapter summarizes the analysis of migration and youth identities in the indigenous communities in the southern Ecuadorian Andes and how it contributes to the general analysis of global migrations. Keywords  Ecuadorian migration • Global migrants • Transnationalism Youth in the southern Andes indigenous communities are embedded in processes of generational differentiation, ethnic identity transformations, and transnational migration. Structural and cultural changes in indigenous communities reconfigure how indigenous youth think about their identities. While youth’s transnational experience influences how ethnicity is reinvented, generational differentiation is one of the most salient cultural transformations in the area. Young people are inserted in the global dynamics of migration through living in connection with their relatives in New York, Massachusetts, or Spain. But globalization also provides youth with a series of resources that sustain their “work of the imagination” regarding life expectations. Transnational experience is at the core of producing a migrant subjectivity, a process of individualization vis-à-vis traditional forms of self-production, and heterogeneity within indigenous youth.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. D. Vásquez, Transforming Ethnicity, Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30097-4_5

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Ethnic identities are a social bond between culture, memory, and political capital in Cañar communities. The incorporation of ethnicity in young people’s self-production speaks of an identification that goes beyond the language-community-dress triad. In fact, indigenous youth connect ethnicity and transnational experience by reinventing these three elements. Although migration has transformed intergenerational relations in indigenous communities, youth respond to the transformations of their communities by producing new forms of belonging and reinventing the common past of their families and communities. This process of reinvention is not exempt from power relations. Adultcentrism operates as a form of domination, reconfiguring inequalities based on gender differences that permit the consolidation of pejorative representations of youth. Adultcentric representations of youth conceal the heterogeneity within indigenous communities. However, adultcentric prejudices are not exclusive to adults, but is a way of producing gender inequality and symbolic exclusion among the youths themselves. I hope my analysis of adultcentrism contributes to eliminating the vain accusation that identity is being lost due to a supposed indigenous youth’s disinterest in their culture. Adulcentric conceptions are a part of societies in transformation in general and span social relations beyond their urban or rural locations. The migration of indigenous youth brings to light the close relationship between adultcentrism and patriarchy. Becoming an adult in Cañar is diffuse, but projects of transnational migration seem to be part of generational differences. Gender inequality underlies the conditions that make it possible for young men to migrate once they “become adults” experiencing paternity. For many young men, becoming a father gives them a reason to “leave” for the United States, while women need to delegate care to other women before they can think about leaving. For a generation of indigenous people in Ecuador, how changes in ethnic identity may affect the political commitment to indigenous struggles for rights and recognition is a matter of concern. This concern is because ethnic identity has been important in the struggle for recognition and redistribution of resources and power and central in historical demands. However, the analysis of how ethnicity is transformed may serve as an intergenerational dialogue on political subjectivities, democratic participation, and liberation struggles.

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A Final Thought from the Field Migration is not a particular phenomenon of social life but an experience of humanity as a whole. Studying migration implies understanding the forces that control human mobility but also how migration produces new meanings in people’s lives. In the southern Ecuadorian Andes, migration manifests itself as a series of interconnected processes in transformation. The production of subjectivity, the reconfiguration of local narratives, the representation of subjects in mobility, emotions, and imagination reconfigure human communities. At the global level, migrations have transformed territories into reconfigured communities or necrozones. Territories become necrozones when the erasure of the human takes place in the process of borderization of the world, in the production of “the illegal immigrants” at the global level, and in the inferiorization of non-white populations. Such forms of erasure of the human can be incorporated by migrants, for example, in those who burn their documents when crossing the Mediterranean so that the government of the country in which they arrive cannot return them to their country of origin. In the case of the southern Andes of Ecuador, migration has produced reconfigured communities where subjectivities, as productions of meaning and belonging, are not definitively anchored to specific or delimited territoriality. And yet, these new subjectivities are marked by difference and inequality, as well as by stratifications and forms of domination. Several of these forms of domination, such as racial and gender domination, have been part of the formation of the Ecuadorian state. Migration produces subjectivities whose practices challenge the national authority, and yet it is inscribed in the global biopolitical management that establishes or reinforces the imaginary division of the world into desirable and undesirable migrants. But migration also tells of subjects who develop strategies to pursue new life meanings. I see how communities such as those of Cañar can generate processes that put into practice another kind of power. Not only in terms of migrations but also in the construction of the human community.

Index1

A Acculturation, 64, 65, 67, 74 Adultcentric power, 70 Adultcentrism, 3, 18, 20, 70, 78, 81, 82, 85–97, 100 Anthropology, 93 Autonomy, 36–39, 42, 45, 46, 58 C Cañar, 1–5, 9–15, 9n4, 18–27, 26n9, 35–59, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72n4, 73, 74, 77–82, 85–92, 94, 95 Cañari, 36, 41, 49, 51, 54, 56, 86, 88–90, 94 Cañari identity, 61, 65, 70, 73, 75, 78 Colonization, 15

Community, 61–63, 65–70, 73, 74, 77–79, 81–83 Crisis, 3, 4, 7, 9n4, 10, 11, 13 Cuenca, 10–12 Culture, 86, 88–90, 94 D Deportation, 13 De-territorialization, 86 E Education, 42, 49, 53–59 Ethnic identities, 99, 100 Ethnicity, 3, 4, 18, 21–24, 26, 27, 99, 100 Ethnic politicization, 24 Experience, 3, 4, 15, 16, 18–27

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

F Family, 36, 37, 37n1, 39, 41–50, 52, 53, 59 G Gang violence, 79 Gender, 42–55, 62, 80–82 Gender inequality, 100 Globalization, 42, 62, 67, 68, 71, 86, 95 Guayaquil, 10–12 H Hacienda system, 5, 7 I Identity, 1–27, 35, 36, 39, 58, 59 Indigenous communities, 1, 3–5, 7, 15–24, 26, 27, 99, 100 Indigenous rite, 88 Indigenous women, 46, 70n3 Individualization, 41–54, 56, 59, 95, 96 Institutional discourse, 89, 92, 94 Inti Raymi, 88 J Juvenile cultures, 88, 89 M Maternity, 45, 49 Mestizo, 85, 88, 89, 93, 94 Migrant children, 57, 90 Migrants, 35–59, 87, 88, 90–93

Migration, 1–27, 36–52, 54, 56–59, 62, 63, 65, 67, 69–75, 72n4, 72n5, 77, 81–83, 86, 88–90, 92–95, 99–101 Music, 69–77, 79, 80 N Necrozone, 101 P Pachamama, 63, 65 Paternity, 45, 49, 52, 58 Patriarchy, 81, 83 Political participation, 70 Psychology, 92 R Representation, 85–97 Republic, 5, 6 Re-territorialization, 88 S Self-identification, 71, 85, 85n1 Self-perception, 53 Spain, 12, 16, 41, 43, 50, 51, 72n5, 73, 74, 79, 88, 89 Subjectivity/subjectivities, 4, 15–20, 23, 24, 35–59, 90, 94–96, 99–101 T Territory, 86, 88 Tradition, 61 Traditional dress, 88, 89

 INDEX 

Transnational experience, 3, 4, 15, 16, 18, 21–27, 35–59, 62, 71, 73–79, 82, 83, 86, 88, 89, 94–96 Transnationalism, 15, 22–24, 95 Transnational migration, 1, 16, 17, 23, 26, 39, 52, 54, 77, 90, 99, 100 Transnational social fields, 95 U United States, 2–4, 11–14, 16, 16n7, 23, 36–43, 37n1, 43n3, 46–52, 54, 55, 57, 73, 74, 81, 87–89, 92 Urban Cañar, 86–88, 91

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W Women, 35, 43–49, 52, 55, 57, 59 Work of imagination, 52–54 Y Youth, 1–27, 35–59, 42n2, 43n3 Youth as disconnection, 62, 78, 80–83, 96 Youth as guarantee, 62, 65, 67, 75, 80, 89, 96 Youth as reinvention, 62, 71, 75, 80, 83, 89, 97