In the Shadow of Tungurahua: Disaster Politics in Highland Ecuador 9781978831605

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In the Shadow of Tungurahua

Map of the region around Tungurahua. Credit: Ryan Tokarz.

In the Shadow of Tungurahua Disaster Politics in Highland Ec­ua­dor

A.J. FAAS

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Faas, A. J., author. Title: In the shadow of Tungurahua : disaster politics in Highland Ecuador / A.J. Faas. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022007387 | ISBN 9781978831575 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978831568 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978831582 (epub) | ISBN 9781978831605 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Emergency management—Social aspects—Ecuador—Chimborazo. | Disasters—Social aspects—Ecuador—Chimborazo. | Environmental refugees— Ecuador—Chimborazo—Social conditions. | Human beings—Effect of volcanic eruptions on—Ecuador—Chimborazo. | Nature and civilization. | Tungurahua Volcano (Ecuador)—Eruptions. Classification: LCC HV551.5.E2 F33 2023 | DDC 363.3409866/17—dc23/eng/20220603 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022007387 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2023 by A.J. Faas All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. All photos by the author An e­ arlier version of chapter 5 was previously published as A.J. Faas, 2017, “Enduring Cooperation: Time, Discipline, and Minga Practice in Disaster-­Induced Displacement and Resettlement in the Ec­ua­dor­ian Andes,” ­Human Organ­ization 76 (2): 99–108. Material from that publication is included in this chapter with permission from the publisher. References to internet websites (URLs) w ­ ere accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­r utgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 Por Doña Martha, por Don Silvio, y por toda la buena gente del Cantón Penipe

Contents Preface ix

Prologue: Fire on the Mountain



Introduction: Reframing Disaster

10

Part I  Mobility and Legibility

25

1

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements

29

2

Archipelagos and Bare Life

47

3

The Production of Space

64

4

The Four Walls of Bare Life

84

5

1

Part II  The Palimpsest of Minga

101

Enduring Cooperation

105

6 Institutions

126

7

El Indigno, el Truco, el Chisme, y el Adelanto

145

Part III  Recoveries

161

8

“But We Did It”

167



Epilogue: Convivir

187

Acknowl­edgments 201 Notes 205 References 211 Index 225 vii

Preface This is meant to be messy, but I d­ on’t mean to make a mess of it. I felt compelled to color outside the lines a bit ­because my primary motivation for writing this book was to tell my friends’ stories more completely than I ever had before. In article-­length publications, finding the space for ­people to live as ­people on the page and not merely serve as illustrations of some narrow theoretical claim has often proved beyond my abilities. ­Here I have simply tried to tell their stories and to draw on them somewhat selectively to speak to impor­tant m ­ atters in anthropology, disasters, and politics. However, some stories along the way are meant simply to relate the experiences of ­people living in the shadow of Tungurahua. Th ­ ere is surely more to theorize ­here than I have attempted. Sometimes this is the result of exercising restraint and not wanting to get in the way. At other times, maybe t­ hings simply have not occurred to me. At any rate, I find t­ hese stories worth telling and have tried in my own way to do them justice. In 2006, I was working ­under Linda Whiteford and Graham Tobin as a gradu­ate student at the University of South Florida, studying social support and social networks in Nahua villages around the stratovolcano Popocatepetl in Mexico. When Tungurahua erupted in August of that year, Linda and Graham traveled to observe the eruptions and evacuations. I followed the ensuing response and recovery efforts closely through the press and through Linda and Graham’s work for more than two years before setting off to Penipe myself in January 2009. My idea was to continue our work studying social support and social networks in what I then mistook for “post-­disaster resettlements.” As a White American who grew up in the 1980s, at first I thought of “social support” along the lines of the Mr. Rogers’s question: Who are the helpers? Good question. But pursuing it seriously in dif­fer­ent contexts required me to expand my ideas of help. Some ­things help even when they are not meant to. All kinds of “helping” can do real damage or at least set ­things up to do so. And what about social networks? Well, ix

x • Preface

with all due re­spect to my friends who pursue social network research agendas, in e­ very attempt I made to understand p­ eople’s lives through this lens, I found that what mattered was always just out of frame. ­A fter creating elaborate maps of ­people’s networks, I would sit with them and look them over, hoping to have a meaningful conversation about their structures, pathways, and contents, but not even my closest friends w ­ ere in the slightest bit interested. I was talking to myself again. However, when I cast the networks aside and earnestly listened to ­people and followed them through their daily lives, pursuing the everyday as much as the exceptional, ­things like mobility, legibility, minga, and convivir—­the structuring meta­phors of this book—­came into view. So too did the fact that the “post” of the disaster, much like the “post” of “postcolonial,” only signified the period a­ fter its beginning, and certainly not its end. They w ­ ere all hooked in together, and I had to find new ways of understanding and representing them. When I came to Penipe in 2009, I remained a doctoral student working ­under Linda and Graham and Art Murphy and Eric Jones, who ­were then at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. We w ­ ere expanding the Mexico study of social support in disaster contexts to a cross-­cultural comparison with sites around Tungurahua in Ec­ua­dor, with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation. I lived in the heart of Penipe Township, renting rooms in the sprawling compound of the Barragan-­Pilco ­family, who ­really took me into so much more than their h ­ ouse. In that first year of fieldwork, Fabiola Juárez Guevara and I worked together to map and make a census of each of the resettlements, conduct dozens of focus group interviews, and administer hundreds of semi-­ structured interviews on well-­being and social networks, while living and working alongside resettlers in Penipe Nuevo and Pusuca and villa­gers who returned to live and work in their home village of Manzano. T ­ oward the end of part I, ­these three communities come increasingly into view as focal sites of my research. ­ After leaving Penipe in early 2010, I returned for another year in 2011 with my own funding from NSF and the Natu­ral ­Hazard Center and Public Entity Risk Institute’s (PERI) Dissertation Fellowship in ­Hazards, Risk, and Disasters. By then, I was squarely focused on minga cooperative l­abor parties and the humanitarian politics of disaster and resettlement. I conducted roughly eighty interviews about minga practice and dozens of oral histories and “key informant”–­type interviews with local leaders, government officials, and nongovernmental organ­ization (NGO) staffers. It was during this time that I also labored in mingas in both Pusuca and Manzano, often several times a week. I returned for a short fieldwork visit for several weeks in 2013 and then again for several months in 2018, the ten-­ year anniversary of the resettlements, when I conducted dozens of oral and life-­ history interviews, worked on a few mingas, and generally went visiting. Over the years, I also conducted archival work, including making extensive media analyses of press coverage of the eruptions, evacuations, and resettlements and studying minga and assembly attendance rec­ords for Manzano and Pusuca; a village ledger

Preface • xi

(Libreta de Actas) of Pusuca; the archives of the Diocese of Riobamba; resettlement agency reports; volcano situation reports; and development plans and policy documents of the Municipio of Penipe. And of course, I keep in regular touch with many of my friends in Penipe (that is one reason why I remained on social media longer than I might have other­wise), and I have even had the plea­sure of hosting some friends i­ n the United States. ­People often ask what language my interlocutors and I spoke and won­der at the meaning of some key terms. Though I am a native En­glish speaker, I arrived in Penipe fluent in Spanish a­ fter living and working for several years in Mexico. This did me very ­little good with the Chimboracense dialect of Spanish spoken in Penipe and throughout Chimborazo Province. Chimboracense has much in common grammatically with inland Spanish dialects in Latin Amer­i­ca but for leísmo, which is the substitution of the indirect object (le) for the direct object (lo, la), which caused me a good deal of confusion for a while. And in addition to a rich variety of locally specific idioms (e.g., dios le pague, sigue no más, no me enseña) the regional dialect includes countless Kichwa terms (e.g., minga, achachay, ñaño/a, randimpa). Suffice it to say that I was very clumsy for a ­couple of months before I got a h ­ andle on it, sadly learning far too late that the local expression áh-­áh does not in fact signal an affirmative like the En­glish uh huh, which meant I had to toss a few early censuses and start over. In the end, however, all the interviews I conducted ­were in Chimboracense Spanish, which is the language I used for daily life and for making friends in the shadow of Tungurahua. All En­glish language translations that appear in the book are my own. It is also worth explaining my use of two terms throughout the book, campesino and mestizo. Campesino often translates as “peasant,” a term frequently used in En­glish to denote tenant farmers in a feudal system and which scholars sometimes feel uncomfortable applying to con­temporary ­peoples. While some ­people in Penipe are tenant farmers or sharecroppers, most are smallholding, subsistence agriculturalists who take small surpluses to marker and refer to themselves as ­either campesinos or agricultores, and this is all I intend the term to denote. Mestizo is a term conventionally used to refer to ­people of mixed Eu­ro­ pean and Indigenous descent in Latin Amer­i­ca, and for a million reasons, above all an unwillingness to reify racialized categories, I use the term as sparingly as I can and to refer only to mixed Eu­ro­pean and Indigenous heritage and in contrast to t­ hose who individually and collectively identify as Indigenous. Many ­people living in Penipe do come from Indigenous parents and communities, which is often reflected in their practices and speech, and many o­ thers do not, but the communities in Penipe do not collectively identify as Indigenous, even if some p­ eople personally do. Local life consists of a diverse mix of Eu­ro­pean and Indigenous cultural practices, expressions, and institutions—­and it is this mix and nothing more that I mean to signify with the term mestizo. And what of the ­people and how I name them? The characters who feature most prominently in t­ hese pages are some, but not all, of my closest friends in

xii • Preface

Canton Penipe: Bernardo Huerta, Angel Turushina, Martina Barriga, Rosa Barriga, Judith Guamushi, Mateo Barragan, Julia Granizo, and Washington Sánchez. Some good friends, like Marco Murillo and the late Klever Andrade, make only minor appearances, and a number of them do not appear at all. I feel truly fortunate to call ­these ­people my friends, and I ­will be forever grateful for their friendship and willingness to invite me into their lives, their strug­g les, and their joys. Even in the most backbreaking mingas or most contentious village meetings, I was always moved to be welcomed into ­these spaces. It would not be honest to call every­one a friend ­because many ­people are better described as acquaintances and some I knew only in the research context, so I use the term only when appropriate and not simply to refer to every­one I met or interviewed. At times, it may be true that our friendships developed ­because, in my endeavor to be a good ethnographer, I gravitated t­ oward certain ­people who appeared ­either to be at the center or the margins of “the action” in Penipe. I suppose this is only natu­ral, but especially in ­those early days in 2009 and 2011, my interview and observation strategies ­were still guided by ethnographic sampling conventions; this work is by no means a product of con­ve­nience. And though some ­people might be happy to be named in this book, I elected to use pseudonyms for every­one but po­liti­cal leaders from the mayoralty and up b­ ecause ­those ­were the terms of participation in 2009 and 2011, I am not in regular contact with ­those who are not my friends, and I prefer to err on the side of caution in protecting ­people’s identity, if only from mild embarrassment. Of course, ­there is the related messy ­matter of ­people’s and nonhumans’ dogged refusal to conform to even our most well-­reasoned and empathic expectations. Is disaster a social phenomenon? It is. Is it a purely social phenomenon? Of course not. Is it natu­ral? Well, yes and no. Do ­those categories even work? It depends. Their utility as generalizable categories seems decidedly on the wane in disaster contexts. And d­ on’t disasters reveal incredible altruism, p­ eople putting aside old divisions and helping one another? They do, but in t­ hese stories, romantic ideals of what this looks like ­will not survive a close examination unscathed. And once the optimistic faith in collective action takes a real drubbing in the contest with cooperation as a colonialist institution, it marshals one heck of a comeback. Minga is, or can be, a utopian proj­ect—­but also an awfully messy, smudgy business. I took a long time to read through the many layers of the minga palimpsest in my efforts to do ­these dynamics justice. I hope I have at least approximated that. Some ­things simply are messy. The state at its margins, be it in the colonies or the rural periphery, is a tangle of endless complications, which have real consequences that can mean the difference between bare life and living well. Naturecultures—­co-­living of ­humans, nonhumans, hills, and volcanoes—­are not rational systems. Th ­ ings get covered in mud and rain and shit and gossip and ash and pyroclastic material and tellings told. It is hard to get ­people on the same page from day to day. Try organ­izing even the most committed group to dig, to

Preface • xiii

r­ eally dig, an irrigation canal across nearly ten kilo­meters of rocky and uneven mountainous terrain at 3,000 meters above sea level. Feed the pigs, trek up the slopes to tend the cows, plant the corn, make it to the meeting (even if the bus is late), work the minga, greet the ministers, get the vaccines. Work hard on the mountain but get back to your government-­granted h ­ ouse before they visit to threaten you with eviction. Todo eso para el sueño de salir adelante. ­There w ­ ere fine messes too. My friends in Manzano and Pusuca found a g­ reat deal of humor in seeing me get dirty, and I loved working alongside them. Never have I been happier and more willing to play the gringo loco. In my years spent ­there, Penipeños welcomed me in the broadest and most generous spirit of co-­ living for which I am forever grateful.

In the Shadow of Tungurahua

 Prologue Fire on the Mountain ­ eople recall the eruptions of Tungurahua in 1999 with a mixture of fascination P and terror. On October 11, Teresa Caicedo was at home with her sixteen-­year-­old son, Angel Turushina, in El Tingo, a small unincorporated village in Puela Parish of Canton Penipe, on the southwestern flank of the volcano. Teresa recalled: I was watching, I believe, up u­ ntil 12 a.m., I was watching with my son. . . . ​You might say I’m crazy, but, how can I say, the volcano was scary how it erupted. We at the foot of the volcano, we w ­ ere scared, but we went to sit out front with some blankets. All covered up, we watched how it spewed. It was spectacular, frightening, but it was marvelous. I’ve said this to many ­people. . . . ​We say that it spewed . . . ​the la­va came down, but then a fog seemed to obscure it, so my son said, “Let’s go to sleep.”

­A fter Teresa took stock of her first aid supplies, she and Angel went to bed. As they slept, she kept the emergency radio on, and she recalled that at around two or three in the morning she heard Hipólito Nogales, then village council (cabildo) president of nearby Palictahua, who was pleading for help. “Please come and get us out! Please come and get us out ­because it’s already erupting. The situation is grave. The cascajo is already falling,” he said. “It’s ­those burning stones.” She says her thinking must have been clouded by sleep, as she thought, “Ah, but that’s in Palictahua.” Yet Palictahua is just as close to the volcano as El Tingo and just a l­ ittle over three kilo­meters away to the east. “I d­ idn’t even consider how close Palictahua is to Puela—­it’s close. But, half asleep, I thought, ‘No, it’s far away.’ ” 1

2 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

Just as the sun r­ ose, she went to open the door and survey the situation outside but was unable to do so ­because such a large amount of ash and lithic projectiles, referred to locally as cascajo, had piled up outside.1 She pushed and pushed ­until she fi­nally pried her way out. Angel was asleep on the second floor, but she was unable to scale the uncovered outside steps, as they too ­were covered in ash and cascajo. “I said, ‘Let’s go!’ to Angel. ‘Open the door, my son,’ I said; ‘Get up, ­because this t­ hing has already exploded. Get up!’ And my son got up, but he was just in slippers b­ ecause he was sleeping. And like that, falling cascajo can burn his feet. . . . ​It was very frightening. They say young men are strong. But that’s a lie. My son Angel was very frightened.” They heard on the radio that they w ­ ere sending trucks to evacuate p­ eople in Palictahua, but getting ­there from El Tingo would entail a harrowing trek along the southern flank of the volcano. Instead, they ran to a neighbor’s h ­ ouse and ­later hopped on a bus that carried them to Penipe, where they found shelter in the high school for several days. Penipe is the eponymous central township of Canton Penipe in Chimborazo Province, whose southern and northern extremes are marked by a dormant volcano, El Altar, and an active stratovolcano, Tungurahua, respectively. Tungurahua sits astraddle the border between the Chimborazo and Tungurahua Provinces, and three of Penipe’s six rural parishes—­Bilbao, Puela, and El Altar—­form the western and southern flanks of Tungurahua in the zone designated as “high risk” for ashfall, lahars, pyroclastic flows, la­va, and seismic tremors. Tungurahua is one of many volcanoes in mainland Ec­ua­dor, which, along with the greater Andean cordillera, are products of the subduction of the oceanic Nazca plate by the South American plate. The forty-­four volcanoes of Ecuador—­twenty-­nine on the mainland, another fifteen on the Galapagos Islands—­and nineteen of Colombia constitute the Northern Volcanic Zone of the Andean volcanic ­belt, which is part of the larger Pacific Ring of Fire, a series of oceanic trenches and volcanoes around the Pacific Ocean. The gradual subduction of Pacific Ocean tectonic plates against the South American continental plate accounts for the prevalence of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which have significantly influenced South American and Ec­ua­dor­ian history. This is a land of eruptions and tremors but also a land p­ eople call home—­have made their home—­for generations, crafting full lives together in more-­than-­ human collectives that made more of their scarce land and ­limited resources than they could individually. Before that, no one told us anything. Absolutely no one. —­R afael Ocaña

Around Canton Penipe, p­ eople’s experiences and memories of the eruptions vary, but nearly every­one agrees that prior to 1999 they never thought Tungurahua presented any risk. Before it came roaring back to life in that year,

Prologue • 3

Tungurahua was last active from 1916 to 1918, when the volcano generated ashfalls and intense pyroclastic flows and then returned to slumber for roughly eighty years. Occasionally, someone ­will recall hearing stories of ­those past eruptions from their parents or grandparents, who remembered unnerving days of darkness as clouds of ash blackened the sky and tremors shook the earth while pyroclastic flows ran down the mountain. Santos Amancha’s grandparents relayed a story of cutting branches and tying them to their bare feet so they could walk to safety without getting burned by fallen cascajo. Santos wanted to share his own stories of how they survived with his c­ hildren and grandchildren so that they would have knowledge to draw on should the volcano erupt again. Although Tungurahua has been scientifically monitored by the Ec­ua­dor­ian Instituto Geofísico since 1989, no official information on risks posed by the volcano was actively disseminated to the public prior to the 1999 eruptions. Several volcanic tremors caught the attention of monitoring agencies in 1994, but nothing provoked a declaration of emergency. Yet from July to August 1999, Tungurahua registered roughly twenty earthquakes and generated numerous hybrid eruptions, large ash plumes, and sulfur dioxide gas emissions. Authorities raised a yellow (nonemergency) alert on September 15, indicating that a major eruption was expected within weeks. On October 11, the volcano spewed incandescent material, registered several more explosions, and emitted columns of ash and steam that stretched two kilo­meters high and reached as far as seven kilo­meters from the crater. Two days ­later, smoke curled from the crater as ash fell heavi­ly on surrounding villages. Word spread from village to village that a greater eruption was imminent, and many villa­gers began evacuating of their own accord. Explosions, tremors, gas emissions, and incandescent flows continued, and on October 15 the Instituto Geofísico convinced authorities to raise the alert level to orange, indicating an impending major eruption. This prompted the temporary evacuation of villa­gers around the volcano, including Penipe’s three northernmost parishes of Bilbao, Puela, and El Altar. This was soon followed by the mandatory evacuation of the northern rim of the volcano—­the popu­lar tourist town of Baños and surrounding areas in Tungurahua Province—­and civil defense forces evacuated an estimated 26,000 residents in combined operations around the volcano (Global Volcanism Program 2011). Throughout the chaotic evacuations, the state scrambled to discern and act upon populations around the volcano, while locals strug­gled to make sense of the state. The pro­cess was problematic b­ ecause t­ here was no clear and effective system in place to communicate emergency warnings to the rural populations living around the volcano. Many ­people found themselves suddenly pivoting from their initial reluctance to evacuate to fleeing in haste as cascajo rained down on their villages and colossal ash clouds turned the sky black. Many recall that ­either the civil defense, the police, or the military—­they ­were often unsure which was which—­arrived only once the eruptive pro­cess was well underway, when many ­people had already begun to flee aboard local busses responding to the

4 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

emergency as the ash fell ever more heavi­ly. Once the evacuation o­ rders w ­ ere given, military personnel took to forcibly extracting ­those who refused to leave. The combination of surprise and lack of information and preparedness is one reason why disasters are so often mistaken for unforeseeable events visited on socie­ties as external shocks. Bernardo Huerta, the long-­serving cabildo president in the village of Manzano in the Puela Parish of Penipe, explained, “It caused ­great fear ­because, in the first place, we ­didn’t know what was ­going to happen to us. . . . ​Had we been informed and prepared, we would have had the knowledge, and all of this would not have happened. If it h ­ adn’t happened this way, no one would have died or anything like that.” He felt that they lacked the necessary knowledge to understand and respond effectively to the volcano and was anxious to collect this knowledge for the ­future. “But,” Bernardo continued, “lamentably, the authorities did not inform us, and, b­ ecause we lacked the knowledge, we lost.” He said they had always convivido con el volcán (co-­lived with the volcano), invoking an idiom that would grow in importance for ­people living in the shadow of Tungurahua in the de­cade a­ fter the eruptions. Over the years since I first arrived in Penipe in 2009, I have collected countless narratives of loss and trauma. What is remarkable is that mentions of material loss—of property, crops, animals—­regularly give way to a broader account of lost livelihood, community, culture, and capacity for making their own lives. This too would often give way to a more abstract sense of lostness that many ­people felt for periods ranging from months to years. Celia was in her early twenties when she evacuated. She hailed from the village of Yuibug in Bilbao Parish, very near the gorges that channel pyroclastic and lahar flows. “They came on Saturday at two in the morning, the [civil] defense.” But narratives often revealed difficulty in distinguishing the civil defense from police and military. She continued, ­ ose from the army obliged us to leave but we ­didn’t want to. They came Th and they brought us ­here to Penipe. They put us ­here. . . . ​We did not leave voluntarily; rather, they made us. It was fast; they d­ idn’t tell us how we should leave, as a ­family, nor w ­ ere we able to think about what to do, where to go. . . . ​ The military came and took us out by force. And we had no idea where; they just said, “­You’re getting out of ­here,” period. They ­didn’t say where we ­were ­going, nothing. They w ­ ere heading out and they told us we had five minutes, but it was like they just took us and every­thing of ours remained ­behind; our belongings, animals, produce that we all had, crops, every­thing. And all was lost.

Ec­ua­dor­ian authorities ­were in many ways unprepared for such an emergency, and ­there ­were no formal shelters in place to ­house the thousands who ­were evacuated. Many p­ eople w ­ ere shuttled in buses and military vehicles to Penipe Township or the nearby cities of Riobamba in the south or Pelileo in the north,

Prologue • 5

where they had nowhere to stay. In the ensuing melee, several families w ­ ere separated for days or weeks as some found refuge in homes with ­family or friends or e­lse in vari­ous improvised shelters. Patricia, a w ­ oman then in her mid-­ twenties from Puela Parish, shared her story of being left to her own devices on the streets of Riobamba. And the worst of it was that they took us out and they d­ idn’t permit us to return. This meant that we lost our produce, we lost every­thing t­ here. . . . ​I remember that they left us in a park in Riobamba with my ­mother and my two nephews, who ­were much younger; yet I d­ idn’t have any friends with me, and I was pregnant. So, we stayed t­ here in the park at first. We did what we could, with just, just a suitcase that we had . . . ​and we had no one, and my ­mother had only the sandals on her feet. So, imagine, it was like five-­thirty in the after­noon and we ­were in Riobamba. And now where do we go? That was the question.

Don Mateo and his wife, Sara, both nearing sixty years old, fled Manzano during the eruptions. Mateo was a smallholding, subsistence agriculturalist (campesino) who grew corn, potatoes, and small plots of other crops, while also raising chickens, cuyes (guinea pigs), pigs, and ­cattle. He and Sara lived in a three-­ room ­house with an earthen floor. When he shared his evacuation story with me, he emphasized how they had previously lived a tranquil life in Manzano without ever imagining leaving. He watched as the sky grew dark from the ash. He had his animals, some ten cows, further up the hill, near a neighbor’s ­house. Mateo remembers the military coming to evacuate them, saying, “ ‘You have to go, get g­ oing!’ It’s not easy to leave all in a moment. How are we g­ oing to leave and abandon our ­things? Every­thing was covered in ash and t­ here was nothing we could do.” Mateo and Sara stayed b­ ehind. Two days passed, and conditions became worse; on the third day, worse still, as ash continued to rain down and the rumbling of the volcano intensified. Like so many of their neighbors, they ­were concerned about the animals. Where could they take them? “­A fter three days, the police and military returned, saying ­there ­were trucks to take us out of ­here. But how can we go and jettison every­thing? No one should have to go, stay who wants to stay.” But ­after fifteen days of increasing explosions, the authorities said Tungurahua was ­going to explode and the military trucks came through. “They yelled, ‘Get in! Get in!’ ” They grabbed a few of their most impor­tant belongings. “By a kick from the devil, I went. . . . ​We went, all the families loaded into trucks for Riobamba.” What followed for Mateo was an anxiety-­ridden pro­cess of navigating familiar places that had been transformed by the state of emergency to do what ­little he could to secure his animals. All the animals remained abandoned—­chickens, cuyes, dogs, pigs, all of them. When I arrived in Riobamba, I saw one truck, another truck, another truck.

6 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

And the trucks from the army h ­ ere, ­there, over ­there, and one s­ topped with a jefe from the police—no, the army. I asked him, “The animals, what ­will happen with them, jefe?” “They ­will stay t­ here,” he said. “But what can we do? The animals just stay t­ here, abandoned?” “What animals do you have?” he asked. “Up t­ here I left pigs, chickens, dogs, every­thing.” He called to the driver of a truck, and I ran. He said, “Come ­here and go back with this señor, he’s ­going back. H ­ e’ll say where ­you’re g­ oing to bring pigs, all the pigs.”

But almost as soon as Mateo hopped in the truck, the driver, a frontline state actor (police? military? civil defense?), was seemingly deactivated in this capacity and appealed to Mateo to pool their resources for the journey. The driver complained that he had no gas, so how would he make the trip? The jefe ordered him to go. “Then, on the way, the driver says, ‘Listen, sir, do me a f­ avor, I d­ on’t have money for the gas.’ I said I ­didn’t have it ­either, but let’s split it. From ­there, we split it, got gas, came back ­here, loaded up the pigs, the chickens. We loaded them up and headed out. Then, once we had them, we d­ idn’t know where we would bring them. We had to find out. Where would I put them, on the sidewalk?” Mateo came back the next day for the rest of his animals, but emergency operations ­were then being coordinated by Padre Tomás Puerres, parish priest of Penipe. “He made the prob­lem worse. ‘Let’s see your ID,’ he said. But I d­ idn’t have my ID. ‘To enter h ­ ere, if you have no ID you cannot pass.’ ” Padre Tomás had by this point effectively been activated as a state agent, which, at least to his mind (as with o­ thers similarly activated), compelled him to ignore personal relationships with parishioners he had known for de­cades and subject them to a standardized set of regulations for their conduct in his sphere of authority. “I said, ‘Sir, now we have our abandoned animals, let’s not leave them abandoned. ­Can’t we go and see to our own ­things?’ ‘No. . . . ​If you bring me your IDs, you get two hours, strictly counted, and if you d­ on’t return in time, the army w ­ ill come and get you.’ So, for two hours they let us enter.” Mateo returned several times over the next weeks, and each time they w ­ ere asked for their IDs. He says they went without food in all the back and forth. “OK, the police, the army, they d­ on’t know us, so it’s normal. But the priest does, and he enforced this?” Many ­people mentioned that Padre Tomás blocked access to animals and caused them to die unnecessarily. Most p­ eople attribute his shortcomings to lack of experience and preparation, not malfeasance. On another occasion, Bernardo Huerta shared that local crops and donated food rations had been tossed in the Rio Chambo. “With Padre Tomás, who is my g­ reat friend, every­thing was lost.” By October 16, a total of 562 ­house­holds (3,140 individuals) had been evacuated from Canton Penipe and many o­ thers had evacuated on their own.2 In the days that followed, radio broadcasts and word-­of-­mouth reports announced the establishment of makeshift shelters in schools and convents in Penipe, thanks in part to substantial assistance from Padre Tomás, who was also often cited as a source of both formal and informal support. Beds, blankets, food,

Prologue • 7

­ ater, and first aid supplies ­were scarce at first, but donations quickly rolled in. w Some ­people avoided the shelters or ­else left them a­ fter a few nights and sought refuge in ­houses rented or borrowed from ­family and friends in Penipe or nearby cities including Riobamba, Pelileo, and Ambato. In some cases, p­ eople took up in abandoned ­houses. The shelters w ­ ere places of despondency for many p­ eople, not only for the trauma of upheaval and the initial scarcity of food and ­water, but also for the loss of dignity, as for many ­people the very pro­cess of obtaining a plate of food was experienced as humiliating ­because depending on strangers and organ­izations for basic support made them feel like beggars. Th ­ ere w ­ ere complaints of social prob­lems and many p­ eople described practices of exclusion. Audelia told of how an initial sense of togetherness in the shelters gave way to the unraveling of their communities. “Every­one was t­ here in the high school. ­There they stayed for a good while. Some left from ­there who wanted to, and from ­there . . . ​every­one began to divide their communities. Some stayed t­here, o­ thers returned. ­Others went further since then. This is how the communities have been since then. One over ­here and another over ­there.” Klever Andrade, an el­derly campesino from Anabá, contrasted his ­family’s previous self-­reliance with the indignity of receiving aid and being excluded. “We had lived and worked, not only on our own accord, but God provided grains and animals ­until then. No one was given anything. . . . ​But then when t­ here was the eruption, then they came to give aid, but not to every­one. They did not give to every­one, ­because we know that they gave only to ­those who w ­ ere known.” From October through December, towering ash columns and low-­level eruptive events kept ­people from returning to their lands and homes and lahars destroyed the bridges and roads along the western slopes of the volcano, which connected to the villages in the north. ­People w ­ ere growing stir-­crazy, idling away the days while the conditions of their homes and animals remained unknown and their ­futures uncertain. ­A fter spending weeks in the shelters and experiencing the unbearable discomfort of receiving charity, they w ­ ere anxious to tend to their own affairs. P ­ eople wanted to get to work, but they could not return to work their land as the military had cordoned off the area in­def­initely. Some found work ­doing odd jobs in Riobamba, a nearby city reached by a cramped forty-­minute bus r­ ide, and a few gained access to small parcels of land around Penipe. In January 2020, authorities gradually opened the northern parishes for daytime access and ­people began to leave the shelters each day to salvage or other­ wise tend to their crops, animals, and belongings. Some families spent years in shelters or moving between shelters, rentals, and the homes of friends and ­family, all while continuing to return daily to their villages to tend to land and animals. Assessing the impacts of the 1999 eruptions is rather challenging. ­There w ­ ere no ­human casualties, although t­ here ­were numerous reported cases of upper respiratory illnesses associated with ashfall (Luque 2007; Tobin and Whiteford

8 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

2002). In Penipe’s northern parishes and in the neighboring cantons of Pelileo and Baños in Tungurahua Province, homes w ­ ere demolished, crops and productive land destroyed, and animals lost, killed, or rendered ill. The roofs of an estimated 430 homes ­were also destroyed entirely or partially by falling incandescent rock or the weight of accumulated ash.3 According to the municipal government of Penipe, by October  2000, a total of 52,000 hectares of land had been destroyed by ash, including 18,800 hectares of cultivars and 24,000 hectares of pasture, with an estimated value of US$6,891,520.4 At this time, it was also estimated that $2,652 was being lost in milk production per day, which amounted to a total of $967,980 at the end of one year. During the same period, 42,500 head of ­cattle, 2,300 pigs, 45,000 guinea pigs, 13,000 rabbits, and 220,000 fowl w ­ ere lost, totaling $2,862,400 in estimated worth.5 Total damage to infrastructure was estimated at nearly 12 million dollars, as five bridges, approximately 30 kilo­meters of primary, secondary, and tertiary roads, and nearly 15 kilo­meters of the primary irrigation canal, Batan-­Puela, w ­ ere destroyed, and the potable ­water systems sustained about $50,000 of damage. But the consequences of the eruptions and evacuations transcended t­ hese impor­tant physical and material impacts. In all, roughly 6,500 ­people ­were unable or unwilling to return home, an upheaval that resulted in physical displacement and a profound sense of uncertainty. Many found themselves residing in­def­initely in improvised shelters or migrating to rural and urban communities near and far for years to come (Whiteford and Tobin 2009; Whiteford et al. 2005).

Points of Departure The eruptions and evacuations of 1999 triggered a prolonged period of disaster, displacement, and resettlement. For most ­people, it would take years—­roughly a de­cade for many—to return to Penipe, during which they endured privations and indignities while adapting to often radically dif­fer­ent livelihoods and relations, the loss of community, and a profound sense of alienation and homesickness. They w ­ ere far from recovering any sense of w ­ holeness or control over their lives. Most would return to their home villages just in time for massive eruptions and evacuations in 2006 that ­were even more devastating than the first and ­provoke another period of displacement. It might seem that volcanic activity prevented them from returning to their homes and villages to remake their lives, but theirs was a complex social, economic, and po­liti­cal milieu that offered virtually no v­ iable alternatives. We have, in this prologue, entered the story of the Tungurahua disaster not at the beginning but rather in the m ­ iddle, yet t­ hese brief narrative accounts index multiple intersecting themes that are fundamental to disaster in Penipe. My interlocutors relayed deep and multifaceted attachments to their communities, lands, animals, and Tungurahua herself. In each instance of evacuation, ­people acknowledged that they had been saved and attended to in extraordinary

Prologue • 9

mobilizations of often indecipherable state assemblages, but only in the narrow sense of bare biological life. ­People discussed the sense of being rescued only to be abandoned with nothing, e­ ither in shelters or simply on the streets of Penipe or Riobamba. They ­were ware­housed in shelters with no means to begin providing for themselves, or they would find themselves in tierra ajena (foreign land), where they would “continue looking . . . ​continue surviving” as they cobbled together livelihoods while coping with a marked anxiety and a sense of interminable liminality. Despite their alienating experiences in the cities, mobilities of many sorts—­urban-­rural, altitudinal, occupational, economic—­were central to ­people’s livelihoods, affective connections to place, and adaptations to h ­ azards and disaster. It was 2008 before government agencies and several nongovernmental organ­izations built resettlement communities, which resulted in new and seemingly inverted tensions between mobility and space while canalizing traditional institutions—­village councils and minga cooperative work parties—­ for the construction of h ­ ouses, common resources, hydraulic infrastructure, and governance. But the disasters and resettlements, while presenting some novel conditions and relationalities, can nevertheless be seen as continuations of colonial and postcolonial politics and human-­environment relations. Th ­ ese relationalities are often captured in the tensions between mobility and state legibility or the structured and disciplinary organ­ization of populations according to government identification, residency and settlement, and numerous markers of deservingness. This book is, above all, about ­peoples’ means of survival and the search for good lives, how t­ hese objectives w ­ ere i­magined and operationalized by dif­fer­ent actors, groups, and organ­izations, and the mangles of interactions between them. It’s a story of how disasters and politics ­were made in the shadow of Tungurahua and what ­people came to make of it all.

Introduction Reframing Disaster Disaster stories, so it seems, always begin with ­hazard events. This is an intuitive and arguably logical place to start and likely helps explain why disasters and ­hazards are often treated as effectively synonymous. So often we speak of “the eruption,” “the hurricane,” or “the flood,” and not the weeks, months, and years of loss and hardship as ­people attempt to recover their lives afterward. In this perspective, disasters are the result of natu­ral phenomena outside society that cross over into the social world of ­humans, especially ­those who live in “dangerous” places. ­People are accustomed to thinking of disasters as ahistorical, unpredictable, and unavoidable events. This perspective is abetted by official and media accounts that sensationalize spectacular events, and in so d­ oing reinforce the notion that they are unforeseeable, isolated in time, and external to the pro­ cesses, relations, institutions, materialities, and discourses of everyday life. The complex story of disaster unfolding over time and for differently situated ­people can help us move away from seeing t­ hings in the singular, as it w ­ ere. Disaster is too frequently regarded as one moment in time, and doubtless this is an impor­tant moment that transforms ­people’s lives, something that should not be discounted in critical anthropological work. But ethnographic analyses do have an obligation to place t­ hese events in conversation with multiple pro­cesses operating at vari­ous levels of scale. When ­people seek help, they envision one state, often (like Mateo in the prologue) despite variegated and incongruous experiences with state agencies and actors. And they frequently see humanitarianism as one g­ rand form of helping, as d­ oing good even when it is done badly or what may constitute “good” is far from clear. This is often true ­whether we are speaking of the large-­ scale operations of governments and nongovernmental 10

Introduction • 11

organ­izations (NGOs) or cooperation and support among neighbors or strangers. I want to facilitate an understanding of t­ hese practices, events, pro­ cesses, and relations in new ways and to account for their complexity. I am interested in learning to see t­ hings other­wise—to examine disaster, nature, culture, the state, and humanitarianism big and small and understand how they are entangled in complex and not-­so-­obvious ways. What if we think of the disaster in terms of the relations, materialities, narratives, emotions, institutions, and organ­izations that come together (or not) for ­people attempting to recover their lives ­after a given ­hazard event has subsided? What if we look beyond the h ­ azard to interrogate t­ hose relations, materialities, narratives, emotions, institutions, and organ­izations (we need a shorthand for all that) to understand where disasters come from? In my reading, the narrative accounts featured in the prologue and throughout much of the following chapters take place in the ­middle of a continuum of pro­cesses coproducing disaster that w ­ ere set in motion long before 1999 (quite long, in fact). This is a story of how t­ hese pro­cesses ­were set in motion and how they would continue, though in ways frequently contested and modified by ­people adapting to disastrous contingencies, as proj­ects and relationalities initiated during the eruptions would endure for de­cades, transforming the lives of the p­ eople in Penipe in ways that are generally resonant with the past though also at times quite divergent.

Thinking about (the Anthropology of) Disasters One Friday morning in December 2011, at the insistence of my friend Bernardo Huerta, then-­president of the Manzano village council (cabildo), I attended a sort of focus group at the Manzano village meeting­house, or casa comunal. The Workshop on Ancestral Risk Management Knowledge was or­ga­nized by representatives of the newly formed Secretariat of ­Peoples, Social Movements, and Citizen Participation and the Secretariat of Social Dialog. During the conversation, two Indigenous ­women moderators asked participants to explain “natu­ral disasters.” As discussion went around the room of about twenty participants, most gave examples of volcanic eruptions, landslides, and earthquakes. At the encouragement of my friends, I dutifully took my turn as they looked to me to respond. Consistent with my own training in disaster studies and po­liti­cal ecol­ogy, I responded that disasters w ­ ere not properly considered “natu­ral,” but rather the result of social f­ actors. Somewhat to my surprise, I was met with what I can only describe as looks of bewilderment. I had suspected that the facilitators w ­ ere working ­toward something like this themselves, but they too met me with similar gazes. I was stating a core claim of disaster studies—­that disasters cannot be considered “natu­ral” or inevitable outcomes of forces outside ­human control. This claim rests heavi­ly on two arguments generally associated with po­liti­cal ecol­ogy (Oliver-­Smith 1996).1 The first entails distinguishing between the concepts of

12 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

h­ azards, or phenomena in our environments and technologies that pre­sent risks to life, well-­being, property, and broader domains of society, economy, and the environment; disasters, or the catastrophic consequences of the collision of ­hazard with society; and risk, or the probability of harm to a given person, group, organ­ ization, or place. The second and more consequential argument is that we ­mistake history and ­human actions for nature in making sense of disasters; that is, by explaining disasters as “natu­ral” and solely the result of h ­ azards—­what has been called a “hazard-­centric” and, by implication, reductive model of disaster (Marino 2015)— we absolve society (and par­tic­u­lar actors) of responsibility, thereby misdiagnosing a disaster’s root c­ auses and undermining our capacity to prevent, respond to, and recover from disasters and advance social and environmental justice. The evidence for locating the root ­causes of disaster in society is indeed compelling. Since the 1970s, scholars have found that the frequency and devastation of disasters is far greater in poorer nations (Wijkman and Timberlake 1984), and the worst disasters are regularly associated with extreme socioeconomic polarization in their impact across all nations (O’Keefe, Westgate, and Wisner 1976). In fact, poorer and marginalized (subaltern) p­ eoples are highly associated with ­hazard exposure, a correlation whose causation can run in ­either direction; that is, sometimes ­hazards are produced in proximity to poorer, marginalized, and colonized populations (e.g., Checker 2007, 2016; Button and Eldridge 2016; Sawyer 2004), while other times ­people have no other option but to ­settle near ­hazards or live in precarious structures (Barrios 2017, 206–219; Bankoff 2001, 2004; Haque and Zaman 1993). Thus, while ­hazard exposure might be a useful variable for understanding risk as the probability of harm via h ­ azard, I find it woefully insufficient in understanding the root ­causes of disaster in Penipe.2 The concept of “vulnerability” places in­equality and environmental (in)justice at the center of analy­sis and guides investigations of the all-­too-­human ­causes of disaster. Vulnerability indexes the multiple variables contributing to the sociohistorical production of disasters and the unequal distributions of h ­ azards, risk, impacts (material, social, affective, symbolic), and capacities to prevent, respond to, and recover from a catastrophe (Marino and Faas 2020; García-­Acosta 2005, 2018; Faas 2016; Wisner et al. 2004). I happily join ­others in arguing that disasters originate in conditions that may be spatially and temporally far removed from ­hazards; that understanding them requires us to move beyond ­hazard inventories to recognize the vulnerabilities that inhere in our socie­ties—­not in affected groups or places—­and how they are historically produced, socially constructed, and internalized and contested in everyday practice (Marino and Faas 2020; García-­Acosta 2005). However, I fear that with this line of thought, we take for granted several problematic assumptions about “nature.” Five minutes a­ fter I confounded my friends in the Manzano workshop, we arrived at the question of what natu­ral disasters had most affected them. The obvious initial response of the eruptions quickly gave way to an elaboration of

Introduction • 13

the disastrous pro­cesses that ensued—­displacement from lands, animals, communities; the politics of aid deservingness; the draconian governance of everyday life and basic resources. Julia Granizo emphatically stated, “The authorities have taken advantage instead of helping.” Seeking to clarify my ­earlier remarks (and perhaps find some vindication), I pointed out that they w ­ ere discussing the nonnatural aspects of disasters. Again, blank stares. This minor drama with my friends in Manzano taught me two impor­tant lessons. The first was that, while we did not articulate disaster conceptually in the same way, when they described their disaster experiences, they spoke primarily of economic, po­liti­cal, and sociocultural f­ actors. Local narratives frequently began with a fascination with the spectacle that gave way to often brief tales of encounters with ash, cascajo, and la­va and the damage they caused to p­ eople, animals, and property. However, they described above all e­ lse the actions of power­ ful actors and institutions, basic access to resources, displacement, and the politics of deservingness. Therefore, when I speak of the social and historical production of disaster, I do not feel I am ventriloquizing when I quote my friends in Penipe. Rather, I see the engagement with narratives as a pro­cess of attending to multiple ways of knowing and mapping the contours of local experiences to reveal how ­people interpret and act in emerging contexts. The second lesson concerns how dif­f er­ent ­people distinguish between nature and culture. The critique of the “natu­ral” disaster construct is tremendously impor­tant—­this helps draw disasters into society based on solid empirical grounds and calls attention to inequalities in distributions of wealth, prestige, and safety in society. It is meant to hold the power­ful—­say, governments and corporations—­accountable for social and environmental injustice. Yet, while the value of this argument for bringing disasters into society can hardly be overstated, it has in recent years suffered from a reification that has undermined its empirical vitality, its usefulness, and, to be honest, its kindness. That is, the induction of disaster into society has been mired in the decidedly less nuanced claim that “­There’s no such t­ hing as natu­ral disasters!” (And I confess to having contributed to this.) In recent years, this has manifested in a rather zealous policing of the nature-­culture boundary in which disaster’s place on the sociocultural side is defended against t­ hose who would breach this boundary and consider disasters as in any sense “natu­ral” (cf. Olson 2018; Chmutena and von Meding 2019; and the popu­lar Twitter hashtag #NoNaturalDisasters). At least some of the bafflement I provoked in Manzano that Friday morning resulted from the fact that I was speaking of nature and society in ways unfamiliar to my friends. Over the years, I have come to appreciate that my interlocutors and I have in our lives learned radically dif­fer­ent ways of envisioning nature, society, and the super­natural. To my audience in Manzano, ­these domains simply ­were not bounded in the way I had learned. ­People saw their animals as part of nature, much as they envisioned themselves in this way, and animals ­were very pre­sent and consequential in their society as well.

14 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

Society and land, landscape, tierra and patrimonio (heritage), ­were all deeply entwined. The volcano, Tungurahua, was kin—­mamá since just about forever, though ­we’ll ­later see how she aged with her ­children and grandchildren. But she was combustible, mercurial kin—in society, yes, but no anthropomorphic character. Other hills around Tungurahua w ­ ere consequential social actors, some of which offered aid in life-­or-­death situations. The bound­aries w ­ ere not only ambiguous and contingent, they simply meant very ­little. ­Humans and nonhumans might be spoken of as nature or culture depending on how and when ­people spoke of them, not b­ ecause of enduring and immutable characteristics of what they ­were speaking about. My dilatory appreciation this found me looking for new ways of thinking about nature, culture, society, and the hybrids that cut across arguably artificial and porous divisions of nature and society-­culture (Escobar 1996; Latour 1993, 2004). Such distinctions constitute the “­g reat divide” in what Bruno Latour famously called “the modern constitution” (1993), and unquestioning fealty to this claim results in locking “nature” outside society at the very instant when we bring disaster in. ­There is ­every reason to demand that disaster be admitted into society, but ­there is ­little reason to pretend that Western modernity has indisputably divided up an objective world by its constituent parts and therefore to insist that all ­others follow suit. The diversity of ontological commitments and matrices of material-­semiotic entanglement in the world means that the relationship between domains that ­people who have learned to think of themselves as modern often distinguish as society, nature, and super­natural are simply unfamiliar (or untenable) to many ­people. To insist on this binary and prohibit all ­others is not speaking truth to power but rather promoting an exclusionary reification of White Western subjectivity—an elitist maneuver that would silence the subaltern at the very moment when they ­were supposedly invited to speak (Spivak [1988] 1994). My suggestion is that we need to learn from constructs, ontological claims, and the worldings of which they are part—­indeed, this is a foundational and abiding objective of anthropology—­while recognizing our own theories as historically contingent constructs inviting interrogation. Plainly, our task is to examine what the sociocultural phenomena that underwrite and motivate relations and actions are, not what we think they ­ought to be. As I see it, the task before disaster studies no longer entails denaturalizing disasters so much as exploring alternative worldings and examining how disasters are produced by vari­ous historical pro­cesses and experienced by beholding subjects who are party to natu­ral, sociocultural, and po­liti­cal dramas and negotiations (even if ­these terms are rather limiting). I am likewise interested in how ­people integrate the extraordinary into quotidian practice and signification—­ configuring what are often considered “natu­ral” forces and everyday social life according to local ways of knowing that are not confined to closed systems, but rather are open, curious, and recursive (Hastrup 2014). That is, I remain willing

Introduction • 15

to provincialize my own theoretical commitments, to place them at risk in conversations with collaborators, and to practice reframing in order to appreciate multiple situated perspectives (Sun and Faas 2018).

Natureculture and Assemblages My methodology in this proj­ect could best be summarized as ethnographically mapping assemblages. In the most basic sense, by assemblages I mean simply that which we find assembled (Tsing 2014, 31), a collection of h ­ umans, nonhumans, pro­cesses, relations, organ­izations, institutions, materialities, and discourses (at times including the affective sensibilities that enfold them as an experiential set), and it is simply too much to say that over and over again.3 This reflects an inductive approach to ethnographic research, not taking for granted any g­ rand framework or set of variables. It is about mapping who and what are involved in producing phenomena and arrangements that have consequence for the prob­ lem we are investigating and working our way up from t­ here. Anna Tsing (2015) envisions assemblages as open-­ended collectives whose coordination may or may not be intended and finds that thinking with them does not require us to ­settle in any fixed way how the vari­ous components (­human and nonhuman) influence one another. “Some thwart (or eat) each other; o­ thers work together to make life pos­si­ble; still o­ thers just happen to find themselves in the same place” (Tsing 2015, 22–23). The assemblages I describe shift and gather components as o­ thers break (or are broken) off. This line of thinking helps avoid the prob­lem of bounding community, nature, culture, or politics, while leaving room for ­things to cross over and jump scale. Beyond my general framing, I speak of assemblages in two ways that are par­ tic­u­lar to the prob­lems I address. I speak of open-­ended naturecultural assemblages and state assemblages, the latter of which is a subset of the former that is demarcated for its outsized influence in the making and remaking of disaster in Penipe. ­Because of my concern with reifying nature/culture binaries that are par­ tic­u­lar to Western modernity, I prefer the “natureculture” conceptual portmanteau as introduced by Donna Haraway ([2003] 2016a). I employ natureculture as neither taking for granted nor precluding serious considerations of any given boundary (or none at all) between nature and culture while facilitating critical engagements with production (historical pro­cesses), construction (discourse), and ontological claims about disasters and the world around us. Natureculture is populated by beings—­human and nonhuman—­that are not ontologically prior to the historically specific, contingent, and mutable relations in which they are entangled (98, 104). It is the remnant of the “implosion of nature and culture”—­their fusion, or what was ­there all along in the joint lives of ­humans and nonhumans (108). In the Andes, mountains and volcanoes do not merely loom large in the physical sense. Ritual relationships with mountain spirits have long been central to cosmopolitics (De la Cadena 2015; Corr 2010). The mountains and volcanoes of

16 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

the region are alive and act with consequence in the world, and for their incredible power to do so they are to be revered and heeded. Though it would seem that such reverence was more significant in Penipe’s Indigenous pasts, it endures in impor­tant ways in con­temporary campesino communities through reference to Tungurahua with ­human pronouns and names, reverence for the protective powers of its surrounding hills, the invitation of the volcano into community through the idiom of convivir, and (re)making kin with a quaking and explosive mountain. Naturecultural assemblages of relations around Tungurahua entangle ­humans, institutions, organ­izations, land, landscape, and animals. Natureculture is kin, ­human and nonhuman; the assemblages are, at times, violent. They underwrite p­ eople’s connections to place and their sensibilities of consequential everydayness—­home, work, play, love, loss, memory; and they also help us see where t­ hings are disastrous, broken, fragmented, or messy. I examine both the histories of t­ hese assemblages and how they are displaced, dissected, and rearranged in disaster response, recovery, and resettlement proj­ects. In general, I try to keep my use of the term assemblage to a minimum when referring to ­these collectives in f­ avor of describing them. I also use assemblage as a way of theorizing and describing the state, not as a singular and centralized entity but rather as an ensemble of actors, organ­izations, agencies, institutions, and discourses that assem­ble or activate and disassemble or deactivate as articulations of the state at its margins (see also Krupa and Nugent 2015). They govern h ­ uman affairs, but they also structure the land and the dirt through enclosures, property bound­aries, and institutional practices such as cooperative work parties (minga). They coproduce and affect materiality and trans-­species relations. This is the context in which I use the term more frequently. The distinctions I make between state assemblages and natureculture are arbitrary but considered, as I find it impor­tant to mark the shifting domains of the state within the broader assemblages of which it is a part. Moreover, thinking of the state as a shifting assemblage helps us understand how other­ wise marginal actors can be remarkably consequential in their actions.

The Politics of (Re)Producing Disaster One of my central objectives is to examine the historical (re)production of disaster; that is, both how disaster is produced historically and how t­ hese pro­cesses and relationalities are reproduced in operations designated as response and recovery. This aspect of my work is largely informed and inspired by the work of ­Virginia García-­Acosta (1993, 1996, 2018), who pioneered the study of disaster as an engagement with the Braudelian longue durée of historical pro­cesses operating at varying levels of scale (e.g., capitalism, development), and Anthony Oliver-­Smith (1986, 2020), whose ethnography of Yungay following the 1970 Ancash earthquake and avalanche in Peru situated the ensuing disaster in

Introduction • 17

historical pro­cesses set in motion by the Spanish conquest 500  years ­earlier. Such an approach orients our gaze ­toward the distal ­causes of disasters and provides a critical framework for interpreting naturecultural relations and politics more broadly. I see this as an opportunity to also consider par­tic­u­lar relations, institutions, and discourses that endure from previous arrangements and, thinking with Irene Silverblatt (2015), what has changed but remains “haunted” by past arrangements. The conditions for disaster in Penipe ­were historically produced through very par­tic­u­lar naturecultural assemblages that ­were alternatively forged and co-­opted in the Spanish colonization of the Andes and reproduced in the formation and shifting assemblages of the postcolonial state. I am particularly concerned with the development of land-­poor Indigenous and campesino communities and permanent h ­ uman settlements on the volcano; the formation of specific institutions, village councils and minga cooperative work parties; the po­liti­cal marginalization of the rural periphery; and the tensions between adaptive practices of mobility and the (re)settlement proj­ects of the state. Taken collectively, ­these pro­cesses ­were co-­constitutive of assemblages that narrowed certain par­ ameters of possibility for the livelihoods, agency, and adaptability of the p­ eople living on or around Tungurahua. The eruptions and ensuing evacuations thrust ­people into inhospitable worlds where they experienced alienation and bare life and w ­ ere subjected to new politics of deservingness. They initiated major operations of the state for evacuation, aid, and shelter in the interest of saving lives, but in the pro­cess they uprooted and displaced every­one and every­thing that made ­people’s lives both livable and worth living. Of course, in the passage of history, p­ eople formed deep and abiding attachments to place—­their landscapes, animals, communities, mobility practices, and institutions—­and mobilized t­ hese assemblages to realize their own versions of the good and, when necessary, to engage in politics to defend or advance their own interests.

Humanitarian Politics: Procedural Vulnerability, Deservingness, and Bare Life Disasters, roughly since the emergence of modern nation-­states, lead us to think of the state ­because they compel state action, reveal state vulnerabilities, and provoke clarion calls for exemplary heroism. Disasters can become indexical of state assemblages insomuch as they initiate expectations of who must act heroically and the outcomes of who among t­ hose expected to perform such heroic acts do (or do not) do so or do so inadequately. ­There are three crosscutting themes—­procedural vulnerability, the politics of deservingness, and bare life—­ that surface throughout the book and help us think about the reproduction of disaster. The humanitarian politics of disaster are enacted at succeeding levels of scale and are predicated on “inequalities of lives and hierarchies of humanity” (Fassin 2008, 239). That is, the relationalities and pro­cesses that coproduce

18 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

disaster are frequently reified in (often well-­meaning) response, recovery, and reconstruction efforts, what Siri Veland and colleagues (2013) refer to as “procedural vulnerability” (see also Hsu, Howitt, and Miller 2015). Procedural vulnerability is an effective concept for theorizing the asymmetrical relationalities of humanitarianism as an extension of the soft power and civilizing mission of colonial governance and transnational imperialism (Grewal 2014). In so many disaster narratives, and most especially in the design and administration of resettlements following the 2006 eruptions of Tungurahua, displaced campesinos recounted being subjected to new pressures of enumeration and occupancy that arrested their mobilities and claimed their bodies and ­labor while providing conditions that could scarcely be considered much more than the barest biological life. Key to this is a pro­cess I refer to as the politics of deservingness, or the contending distinctions between t­hose deemed deserving of state assistance and ­those deemed undeserving. The politics of deservingness is something anthropologists frequently describe, but rarely articulate as a set of related practices, discourses, and signs. Markers of the politics of deservingness include, among other t­ hings, productivity (a core neoliberal marker; Maskovsky 2001), community organ­ization (Faas 2015), citizenship or po­liti­cal status (Henry 2002), and suffering subjects’ “capacity to exhibit their misfortune and merit” (Fassin 2008, 335; see also Oliver-­Smith 1986, 101–104, 149). The state, however assembled, is arguably the ultimate arbiter of deservingness, and though princi­ples of deservingness are at least partially internalized and reinforced by state subjects, so too are they argued and contested through everyday po­liti­cal practices, such as gossip—­a most elementary po­liti­cal practice—­and accusations and confrontations in the dramas of village councils and meetings with interlocutors from outside organ­izations. Aihwa Ong argued for an approach to the state that would shift t­ oward examining multiple forms of governance in practice, focusing in par­tic­u­lar on the “micro-­mechanisms of power” to examine “regimes for producing and managing par­tic­u­lar kinds of society” (2000, 57). I see this revealed as the politics of deservingness in disasters plays out in assemblages at multiple levels of scale—­global humanitarian networks (Gamburd 2013; Schuller 2012; Fassin and Pandolfi 2010), bureaucratic procedures (Marino and Faas 2020; Browne 2015; James 2012), and NGO programs (Faas 2018). Micropo­liti­cal dramas emerge throughout the book as villa­gers and local leaders frequently contested the deservingness of ­others in strug­gles for fairness, often due to anx­i­eties about their own access to scarce resources during periods of prolonged deprivation. In t­hese cases, even well-­meaning actors w ­ ere often complicit in the reproduction of global networks of gifting and reciprocity that reproduce unequal distributions of power, risk, and vulnerability (Parreñas 2012). Moreover, ­these orga­nizational relationships can have the effect of reifying the subaltern positions of aid recipients (Gamburd 2013; Schuller 2012). The politics of deservingness is exercised omnidirectionally. It may be top-­ down, as frontline actors of state assemblages sort the deserving from the

Introduction • 19

undeserving, or even bottom-up, with local community members deciding on the legitimacy of a given organ­ization, institution, or plan. More in­ter­est­ing and troubling for romanticized ideals of the rural subaltern are the very local and personal disputes of deservingness. Neighbors questioning and contesting each other’s deservingness can be unsettling in practice and in reflection. But, as I gradually argue throughout the book, locally contested politics of deservingness and accusations of opportunism are part of “diagnostic social pro­cesses” (James 2012) that operate indirectly on the state, especially where and when ­these assemblages register as esoteric. Policing the deservingness of one’s neighbors is a way of ensuring accountability and transparency from state assemblages administering relief, recovery, and (re)construction aid (see also Gamburd 2013). Deservingness also points us to the domains on which the humanitarian state operates. Humanitarianism is ostensibly about saving lives during states of emergency above all, but the saving is frequently only in the barest biological sense of life, what Giorgio Agamben (1998) calls simply “bare life.” To the extent that the fuller familial, social, economic, po­liti­cal, and cultural aspects of the lives of ­those being saved are part of the design of recovery programs, this is often according to the prerogatives of humanitarian agencies, not the ­people whose lives hang in the balance (Barrios 2017; Maldonado 2016; Marchezini 2015; Browne 2015). Akhil Gupta (2012, 5–8) deploys the concept of bare life to theorize the lives of the poor in India. In an analy­sis that is in many ways resonant with themes in the pre­sent work, Gupta found structural vio­lence—­the emergent systemic reduction of capacities for full lives—­sustaining only bare biological life. He innovates with bare life as it was conceived by Agamben, who traced its emergence to forms of state exclusion (specifically, Nazi concentration camps), by citing the production of bare life for the Indian poor even as they w ­ ere included in state-­run antipoverty programs. I too find the production of bare life as a consequence of inclusion in the civilizing mission of the Spanish Empire, the formation of a land-­poor campesino class in the Ec­ua­dor­ian highlands, and ultimately in post-­disaster recovery and resettlement initiatives of the state.

Cooperation: Minga as Institution and Palimpsest But d­ on’t ­people help each other in disasters? Beyond the highly mediated hype of state and international humanitarian actors coming to save the day, is it not also true that neighbors and community groups—­just ordinary ­people, if such a ­thing exists—­come together to help with the rescue, tending to wounds, sharing resources, and even rebuilding? Indeed, this is a perennial topic in the news media as well as in disaster studies. Anthropologists have documented some general trends in grassroots social support and mutual aid be­hav­iors in disaster (Hoffman 2020; Oliver-­Smith 1979, 1986; Wallace 1956). ­These studies point to short-­lived waves of egalitarian altruism following the physical shocks of an eruption, earthquake, or flood. Divisions of race, class, gender, and ethnicity may

20 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

even momentarily subside. Once national and international aid appears, however, old divisions can reemerge and conflicts over access to resources may begin again. I entered the field in Ec­ua­dor at once intrigued by and generally skeptical of the generalizability of ­these claims about mutual aid be­hav­ior, arriving as I did with rather fresh memories of racialized and racist conflict during Hurricane Katrina just a few years prior. While ­there ­were many cases of ­people coming together to help one another during and immediately following the hurricane, racialized and class-­based vio­lence was front and center as the Katrina disaster unfolded. Moreover, my reading of the wealth of anthropological studies of reciprocity and cooperation since Marcel Mauss’s ([1925] 1990) landmark essay on the gift, as well as my reading of studies of specifically Andean traditions of reciprocity and cooperation, called my attention to complex power relations commonly (re)produced and contested in seemingly altruistic practices. I wanted to take seriously the possibility that in­equality, conflict, and social support might be rather entangled with one another, perhaps even working together in unexpected and nonobvious ways. I was also quite concerned with agency and investigating how ­people make choices in contexts where prevailing forces—­material, structural, relational, discursive—of power might exert pressures to tend to alternatively private, institutional, collective, or generally altruistic interests. How and why did ­people conform to or deviate from expected patterns of cooperation and conflict? That is, unlike many studies of cooperation and reciprocity that employ economic (e.g., Ortiz 1979; W. Mitchell 1991; Orlove 1977; Mayer 1974a, 1974b) or evolutionary (e.g., Cronk and Leech 2013) frameworks, I am concerned with mapping the contours of po­liti­cal pro­cesses and relationalities of social support and cooperative practices. Fi­nally, instead of asking w ­ hether p­ eople reverted to selfish interests in competition over access to outside aid, I am interested in exploring the possibilities that ­there might be something special about the interventions of state assemblages that affect cooperation. The observation that national and international humanitarian efforts frequently transform local cooperative practices or undermine them outright is a common theme in studies of displacement and resettlement (Barrios 2017; Faas et al. 2015; Cernea 1997; De Wet 1996) and to a somewhat lesser extent in disaster studies (Faas et  al. 2018; Gamburd 2013; Schuller 2012, 2016). My attention was therefore trained on the interaction and interdigitation of local and supralocal assemblages and strategies in disaster, displacement, and resettlement in Penipe. My interest in social support and cooperation led me to pay special attention to mingas and the par­tic­u­lar assemblages that or­ga­nize them and are or­ga­nized by them. Minga comes from the Quichua word mit’a, meaning “turn.” A minga is a communal ­labor group—­which is common throughout the Andes—­that organizes community members into regular and ad-­hoc work parties for proj­ ects ranging from community infrastructure and agriculture to social ser­vices

Introduction • 21

and po­liti­cal action. Typically, a member of each f­ amily participates in work parties or­ga­nized by village leaders. I first learned about minga in 2006 while reading an Ec­ua­dor­ian newspaper report on campesinos from the village of Bilbao clearing their homes of ash and then another on displaced villa­gers organ­izing mingas to distribute scarce food resources and clear debris from ­people’s homes (“Bilbao se libera de la ceniza” 2006). Two weeks ­later, as ash continued to rain on the tourist town of Baños to the north, police acad­emy cadets or­ga­nized a minga to convert the acad­emy into a temporary shelter for ­people displaced by the eruptions (“La limpieza de los albergues” 2006). While eruptions ­were ongoing in 2006 and in response to just about ­every notable eruption event and early recovery activities in 2007 and 2008, t­ here ­were continued reports of villa­gers and organ­izations forming mingas to clear debris, repair structures, and administer vari­ous forms of aid and to construct the resettlements in 2008 and 2009. That the term minga was invoked in each of t­ hese diverse institutional contexts and assemblages was an indicator that the practice was not a spontaneous one but rather a named institution with rules and cultural and discursive resonance. Throughout part II, I trace the assemblages with which minga articulated, from pre-­Columbian times through Spanish colonialism and into the twenty-­first ­century. Like other forms of cooperation, minga is spoken of in the singular as a practice emblematic of the solidarity, egalitarian, and industrious values of the rural subaltern. But minga has many entangled and storied pasts. It is quite literally inscribed on the Andean landscape in the form of infrastructure—­roads, bridges, potable w ­ ater and irrigation canals, railroads, telegraph and telephone poles—­built u­ nder the aegis of Incan rulers, Spanish colonists, Ec­ua­dor­ian elites, the state, NGOs, and yes, often as a community-­based practice of the rural subaltern. In the latter cases, we witness subaltern values at work, but t­ hese same values w ­ ere often invoked in colonial and state-­driven minga practice as well. The disparate practices, rules, values, and resources of minga ­were enfolded in a singular discourse, but the power to set the rules and access and control the resources was often highly unequal (at times, nearly genocidal). I therefore come to read minga as a palimpsest, a manuscript whose prior text is wiped (but never quite clean), only to be written over time and again. My palimpsestic reading of minga as an institution allows me to uncover the ways in which it is invoked in the singular though practiced in a plurality of ways. I spend considerable time on its long legacy as a means of domination and exploitation, a pro­cess that not only brings into the view the unequal and often neo­co­lo­nial deployments of minga in the twenty-­first ­century, but also uncovers from the smeary palimpsest vital and v­ iable utopian proj­ects or­ga­nized by my friends in Penipe.

Plan of the Book I continue to recursively develop my framework for studying disaster, displacement, and resettlement in Penipe throughout the book, which I have divided into

22 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

three parts—­three iterating timelines or bundles of intersecting stories. Part I, “Mobility and Legibility” (chapters 1–4), is primarily about the historical (re)production of disaster. H ­ ere I introduce my approach to theorizing Andean mobility practices and the state, which informs my analy­sis of the historical (re) production of disaster. The crosscutting theme of the four chapters is mobility and the highly mobile lives of the ­people of Penipe throughout history and how ­these mobilities w ­ ere arrested by succeeding waves of colonization and the formation of shifting assemblages of the state in the pro­cess of rendering legible the rural peripheries and the rural subaltern themselves. Beginning with colonization and continuing through dif­fer­ent assemblages of the state well into the twenty-­first c­ entury, I document the reproduction of relations, institutions, settlements, and practices that produced the conditions for disaster, via exposure not merely to an active volcano, but also to a shifting state assemblage that would reproduce colonial relationalities and bare life through humanitarian operations. This culminates in a humanitarian politics of disaster response and reconstruction that itself reproduces the conditions of disaster while saving conditions of bare biological life and producing new relations and settlements that ­were hostile to campesino livelihoods and the fuller social, cultural, and po­liti­cal lives of displaced communities. Part II, “The Palimpsest of Minga” (chapters 5–7), problematizes the practice of minga cooperative work parties in disaster and throughout the history of Penipe. I engage with an abiding concern in disaster studies with l­imited periods of cooperation (communitas) in disaster by identifying the f­ actors that facilitate the continuation of cooperation over time and developing a critical institutional analy­sis. My palimpsestic approach reveals the minga cooperative ­labor party as a multilayered institution that is constituted and contested by power­ful elites, campesinos, and shifting assemblages of the state. I see in minga how practices, meanings, and memories are embodied and marked by shifting and contingent relations of power. Attention to the layered and contested inscriptions of minga practice can help defetishize notions of culture and cultural practice. This sets up my survey of minga as practiced throughout history to reveal how it has been instituted and reinscribed (but never wiped quite clean) by dif­fer­ent institutions and actors over time, thus (re)producing minga as an instrument of colonialization, domination, extraction, and a veritable grammar for claiming the bodies of the rural subaltern; an institution that facilitates the formation of vari­ous shifting assemblages of the state; and an institution that underwrites subaltern agency, local governance, and the realization of subaltern utopian proj­ects and aspirations. Along the way, I document how differently situated actors can and do read minga practice differently—­its pasts, presences, and f­ utures—­and draw on dif­fer­ent scripts, rules, and visions of the practice. Part III, “Recoveries” (chapter 8 and the epilogue), is a description of life in the resettlements and previously evacuated villages ten years ­after resettlement. I find surprising developments in each community that unsettle how recovery

Introduction • 23

is ­imagined, while demonstrating how ­people recovered their livelihoods and fuller lives even as they continued to strug­gle. Following a critique of recovery, I offer in its stead new disaster politics that Penipeños crafted out of naturecultural assemblages capable of speaking back, quite forcefully, to the po­l iti­cal relationalities that coproduced disaster. Convivir, “co-­living,” became a structuring meta­phor for movements to return to live, cultivate, raise animals, and rebuild community in ­people’s home villages on Tungurahua. It is the explicit local invocation of naturecultural assemblages that emerges in quotidian care for lands and animals, but also in the sense of what was broken and lost in disaster. Convivir emerged from the hardships of displacement, affective and material bonds with ­people’s land and heritage, and the often-­harsh disciplines of state assemblages governing ­people’s lives following the eruptions. It came into view as ­people worked to reassemble t­ hings in the return to their home villages, accumulated l­ittle by l­ittle in the often-­mundane details of iterations in Penipeños’ everyday lives, and then came together seemingly all at once as recovery proj­ects gave way to envisioning pos­si­ble ­f utures. It entails enacting a series of proj­ects and partnerships to rebuild life on the volcano while planning and preparing for pos­si­ble emergencies, but in ways driven by local values and cultural logics of the good. Convivir does not appear by name ­until part III ­because it was not articulated ­until years ­after the eruptions and resettlements as ­people developed new vocabularies, often evocative of the past, to communicate refashioned aspirations for the f­ uture, for the good; but my sense on completing this book is that it can be read backward, with convivir as a hidden protagonist in the assemblages that ­were recursively formed throughout parts I and II. Much as the assemblages and institutions of parts I and II began forming and emerging over generations, so too we see ele­ments of convivir well before it found a name. The seeds of convivir are scattered just about everywhere, inviting new types of encounters and a re-­signification of disaster according to ontological commitments that enroll more-­than-­human collectives with the potential to upset and rearrange the politics of disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery. Convivir is an argument that building agentive relations and co-­living with complex naturecultural assemblages (and they are all complex) in which an active volcano plays a lead role is not only pos­si­ble, but far preferable to the bare life of displacement and resettlement. What is exciting about convivir is that it puts what you might call “nature” front and center as an agentive being that must be reckoned with and in the language of kinship facilitating a reor­ga­ni­za­tion of naturecultural assemblages and a moral world that any action must heed; thus it is a means for the cultivation of “response-­ability,” or the capacity to move and be moved by o­ thers (Haraway 2016c). Taken together, the chapters that comprise each section of the book trou­ble our sense of when disaster begins and ends; even though, in the first chapters of part I, I problematize when and where disaster began, finding its roots in the

24 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

longue durée of historical relationalities, ­toward the end of part I and through parts II and III the fact that disaster endures well beyond h ­ azard events comes increasingly into view. This is what Mark Schuller has poignantly referred to as “the disaster a­ fter the disaster” (2008); our collective gaze turns from the destruction shortly ­after ­people begin sorting through the rubble, but recovery efforts endure for some time and reproduce the inequalities that are co-­constitutive of disaster root ­causes in the name of “helping.”

Part I

Mobility and Legibility Minding the (post)coloniality of naturecultures in and around Penipe helps focus our attention on assemblages that produce disasters. Once enframed by Eu­ro­ pe­ans as nature ungoverned, the Andes ­were discursively readied for po­liti­cal and economic calculation and subsequently the creation of legibility for governance, property for accumulation, and the commodification of “nature’s” yields. This facilitated the subjugation of “nature” to colonial “culture” and the alienation of the former from local relationalities and institutions. Spanish colonialism in Ec­ua­dor established very specific naturecultural assemblages, racial-­ethnic hierarchies, institutions, quotidian practices, economies, and symbols that have iterated with transformations in global systems and Ec­ua­dor­ian po­liti­cal economy, governance, and social movements. However, colonial technologies for enclosing and managing colonial landscapes (settlements, village councils, hydraulic infrastructure) could also be reclaimed by the rural subaltern, reactivating Indigenous knowledge, cooperating with modern institutions, and redirecting colonial assemblages for campesinos’ own objectives. So too could marginalized ­peoples in postcolonial states mobilize to hold accountable and reform ­those governing bodies that exercised power over their lives. In the narratives and texts of Penipe’s history, I find evidence for a per­sis­tent tension between mobility and po­liti­cal placemaking as central to the production and reproduction of disaster in Penipe, where mobility, space, and place are in many ways co-­constitutive of naturecultural assemblages. Places become inscribed with meanings over time as activities and narratives are imprinted on the landscapes with which p­ eople come to share identities, making “place” of space and

25

26 • Mobility and Legibility

co-­living with a volcano, the hills surrounding it, community, and all sorts of nonhumans. Mobility too can e­ tch and activate the meanings of places and contribute to affective connections to place and home (Hirsch 2018, 197; Leinaweaver 2008; Low and Lawrence-­Zúñiga 2003, 10). Owing both to the ­limited carry­ing capacity of the many microclimates of the region and spatial, subsistence, social, and sacred practices, pre-­Columbian Andean society was constituted by networks of population movement and exchange across a vast territory between the coast, highlands, and Amazonian regions, which John Murra (1968) famously described as the “vertical archipelago.” I find that p­ eople in Penipe have historically maintained an especially mobile relationship with the landscape that is thoroughly bound up with the social production of space and attachments to place. Over centuries, p­ eoples’ mobile itineraries between highland and lowland areas have remained central to how they constitute their livelihoods and affective connections to place. Con­temporary mobility practices in the Andean highlands reflect enduring, however transformed, archipelagoes, which are now both vertical and horizontal, largely as a result of rural-­urban migration as an adaptation to economic precarity at the turn of the twenty-­first c­ entury (Hirsch 2018; Kingman Garcés and Bretón Solo de Zaldívar 2017).

Legibility and the State at Its Margins The first prob­lem I am concerned with is the tension between mobility and forms of legibility imposed by successive, contingent, and shifting assemblages of the state. The quotidian mobility practices of Indigenous and ­later campesino ­peoples of Penipe w ­ ere, throughout history and following the eruptions at the turn of the twenty-­first ­century, perpetually subjected to vio­lence and legibilizing (forgive the monstrous term) agendas of the state, a pro­cess I see as central to the formation of naturecultural assemblages in the shadow of Tungurahua, and hence core ele­ments in disaster’s production, but also in its reproduction in response operations and recovery programs. I examine the development and transformation of governance from colonial exercises in claiming, dominating, and insuring—­rendering legible—­sovereign property to new arts of government built around the state alongside the formation of the sprawling bureaucracies of colonial administration. ­These bureaucracies emerged from the canalization of pre-­Columbian institutions and the imposition of new Western ones, which began in the late sixteenth ­century and matured, in the modern sense, starting in the late nineteenth ­century and throughout the twentieth. This protean state assemblage pressed colonized subjects into fixed settlements, which exacerbated their susceptibility to h ­ azards and undermined their capacity to adapt to chronic ­hazards and also to resist colonial domination and the thrall of state power. The legibilizing proj­ect began prior to the modern state as we understand it and was built of premodern institutions—(re)settlement proj­ects (discussed in

Mobility and Legibility • 27

part I) and village councils and minga work parties (parts II and III)—­that ­were canalized first by colonial power and then adapted in the gradual formation of the modern state. James Scott defined the legibilizing proj­ect as I employ it, as the “state’s attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion” (1998, 2). The sedentarization (permanent settlements and dwelling structures) that accompanied colonization meant that volcanic eruptions became potentially more disastrous, while they had certainly been less so previously. Yet it also became a technique of governance that acted on the possibilities for action of colonial subjects (Foucault 1982). In successive waves of colonization, rulers used combinations of settlement and mobility as tools both for governance and resource exploitation. It was the spread of t­ hese proj­ects or their adaptation that distinguished the modern period, as they informed the new organ­ization of the state alongside a d­ ying colonialism at the turn of the nineteenth ­century and continued in numerous modernizing proj­ects of the Ec­ua­ dor­ian state well into the twenty-­first. Legibilizing proj­ects are not merely repressive nor simply imposed from above, and examining how they are contrived, executed, and contested requires attention to the state and how it operate through organ­izations, institutions, and discourses. While we commonly think of “the state” as a singular and unified institutional apparatus, I take an approach that recognizes the state as a plurality of orga­nizational, institutional, and discursive assemblages that are often obscured by the idea of a unitary system (Abrams 1988), not a distinct and coherent institutional apparatus in­de­pen­dent of society, class, and economy. State assemblages and legibilizing proj­ects are in many ways historically co-­constitutive, as the state emerges through methodologies that meticulously dissect, rearrange, and order p­ eople in relations with nonhumans, practices, and spaces, not simply to make them more governable but rather to foster the development of subjects and institutions that internalize and reproduce ­these ­orders (Foucault [1975] 1995, 1982, 2007, 87–114). Understanding the state through disciplines—­ mechanisms of power that regulate the be­hav­ior of social actors through subtle means that become internalized over time such that subjects become at least partially self-­regulating (Foucault [1975] 1995, 1982; Prieto 2015)—­helps dissolve the analytical distinctions between state, civil society, and society at large, which many have found difficult to sustain (Gramsci [1971] 2014, 206–270; Rose and Miller 2010; T. Mitchell 1999; Abrams 1988; Althusser 1971). Ethnographically, my gaze is focused almost exclusively on the formation and practices of assemblages at the rural margins. However shifting and at times elusive it may be, state power nevertheless produces and inheres in par­tic­u­lar institutional and orga­nizational forms (T. Mitchell 1999, 87), which can and often do jump scale (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009; see also Tsing 2005). ­These assemblages shift insomuch as they are often obscure, contingent, and fleeting—­but of course, some assemblages are more enduring. Throughout this book, we find par­tic­u­lar

28 • Mobility and Legibility

arrangements—of, for example, the proto-­state colonial networks for extracting tribute and legibilizing colonized p­ eoples and places and the active roles of nongovernmental organ­izations in the late liberal state—­lasting for extended periods of time. Sometimes institutions forged in state assemblages detach themselves, as it ­were, at least periodically—­positioning themselves as outside or even against the state—­only to be activated as integral to a given assemblage in consequential moments. In disasters especially, shifting assemblages of the state, activating and deactivating nodes in the assemblage, are everywhere vis­i­ble and never clean. ­Human, orga­nizational, institutional, and (importantly) material components of assemblages at the margins may alternatively become activated and deactivated in par­tic­u ­lar contexts. A deconstructed approach to the state enables us to examine movements between the official and the unofficial (Taussig 1997) via pro­cesses of activation and deactivation, or how actors and organ­izations can be triggered—­via command, usurpation, or circumstance—to participate in or enact the functions of state powers or ­else to resist, contest, or simply work around them from the margins (see also Das and Poole 2004). Significant transformations in the Ec­ua­dor­ian state at the turn of the twenty-­first ­century (Faas 2017b, 2020), coupled with the disaster-­induced state of emergency that enabled extraordinary actions of state assemblages, at times resulted in extraordinary activations of citizens and organ­izations as frontline state actors. And, if actors and organ­ izations can be activated, it follows also that they can be deactivated. Actors and organ­izations can revert from their roles and rule-­bound standardized forms of recognition and legitimacy to relate on personal terms, often appealing to va­ri­e­ties of identity. Keeping an eye t­ oward activation and deactivation enables us to see frontline state actors (especially in village councils and minga practice) as more consequential than we other­wise might. While arguably constrained by rules and ethics governing the conduct of conduct, frontline state actors, perhaps especially t­ hose who are only temporarily activated, may even modify state programs in response to challenges and encounters with ­others (see Clark 2015, 138). While t­ here are contested politics of deservingness that play out in local dramas, village leaders could and did adapt programs to suit local contingencies (explic­itly or implicitly) and engaged in creative boundary work in negotiating the intersecting limits of local and state power and legitimacy.

1

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements

­ fter being evacuated from the village of Palictahua in El Altar Parish, Isabel A Yepes, who was just twenty years old at the time, found herself left in the Parque Maldonado in downtown Riobamba, pregnant, along with her ­mother and two young nieces. Stunned by the rapidity of their extraction and incredibly anxious about what the next hours and days had in store for them, they asked for help at a high school just across from the park. “They said t­ here was a f­ amily who could help us. The h ­ ouses w ­ ere ­really from the hacienda, ­houses with neither electricity nor w ­ ater. So we waited, staying t­ here for a week.” What was for them initially a refuge soon changed in character when their hosts informed them that they would be required to work if they wanted to continue staying t­ here. “­A fter that, they wanted us to work on their land in exchange for living t­here. . . . ​They wanted us to plant crops, but we ­didn’t work beyond the first planting, b­ ecause by then we had found work away from t­ here.” Isabel and the ­family found themselves confronted by the insidious lure of hacienda indebtedness, a specter of the region’s not-­so-­distant colonial past that sent them packing once again. In all, they passed roughly nine or ten months before they found rooms to rent and alternative employment. “But forever, when I remember how they left us . . . ​that was an anecdote of how not to treat a ­family.” Don Victor Ramírez—­known affectionately as Don Vico—­was a lanky man in his late sixties. Though ordinarily quiet, he was perhaps the most animated storyteller in the village of Manzano in Canton Penipe. On more than one occasion he told me of selling off his twenty-­five c­ attle a­ fter the 1999 eruptions for 29

30 • Mobility and Legibility

much less than they w ­ ere worth, since many of the displaced villa­gers had flooded the local market with livestock that they had to sell off quickly. But though he says he sold at rock-­bottom prices, when telling the story he frequently mimed the large bundle of the 15 million Ec­ua­dor­ian sucres he acquired in the sale with outstretched arms, only to deliver the punchline that ­these w ­ ere quickly exchanged for dollars as the national currency was abandoned; that left him with only a tiny stack of bills equaling US$400, which he mimed with squinted eyes staring at a quarter-­inch gap he made between his thumb and forefinger. With that tiny stack he had to pay rent in Riobamba and purchase food and all kinds of ­things for years ­after they ­were evacuated. Like his neighbors, he was on the move, but precious ­little of his life and livelihood was transferable. Moreover, to be eligible for aid, he would have to be pre­sent in Penipe, where the only option for housing was the shelter. Between a precarious evacuation and a home to which he could not yet return, Don Vico found his disaster manifest more than anything in a protean and unstable state assemblage and hostile and unfamiliar urban environments with which he now had to contend almost daily. What follows is a bundle of stories about the historical production of disaster in Penipe that encourages the reimagination of disaster as a consequence of entangled historical patterns. In one sense, this chapter is about how ­people and ­things are set in place; the pro­cesses that not only produced ­human settlements on the volcano, but par­tic­u­lar types of settlements. In another sense, it is about pro­cesses setting p­ eople in motion—­how a combination, first of ecol­ogy and networks of exchange and then of re­sis­tance to forced (re)settlements, kept ­people moving across the landscape. It’s about the historical production of natureculture and state assemblages that would send ­people like Isabel and Don Vico into direct confrontations with the disastrous relationalities of colonialism and late-­ stage capitalism. It also concerns the formation and assemblage of institutions, especially cabildos (village councils) and minga ­labor parties, that governed conduct in ­these settlements around Tungurahua. Beyond that, I focus on the po­liti­cal economic pro­cesses and relationalities within which (re)settlement, mobility, and institutions are embedded. Taken together, my argument is about how ­people came to live with an active volcano, the production and reproduction of institutions, patterns of settlement and mobility, and the development of abiding po­liti­cal tensions between them at multiple levels of scale. This is the first phase of my argument for situating the disaster in the development of par­ tic­u­lar state and naturecultural assemblages in Penipe.

The Pre-­Columbian Vertical Archipelago: Mobility, (Re)Settlement, and Tribute On the 4th of October, 1563, Don Lorenzo de Cepeda y Avila arrived at the fortified plateau of the Pinipis at the helm of a large and valiant troop and took possession of the territory of the Pinipis, ­a fter chasing them away, ­because even

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 31

though they w ­ ere defeated, they did not submit, nor did they accept the conqueror’s yoke. According to tradition, they preferred to flee to the eastern jungle rather than lose their trea­sured freedom. —­Samuel Haro

Penipeños ­today remember their ancient Puruhá ancestors, whose historical territory included this region since roughly the dawn of the common era, as the Pinipis. The Puruhá, like other Indigenous populations of the northern Andes, lived highly mobile lives, moving and developing settlements across vast territories with no administrative centers (Freire Heredia 2005; Velasco 1841). The early development of Puruhá society was likely aided by their occupation of territories between the Chimborazo and Tungurahua stratovolcanoes on a mantle of soils and sediments that ­were rich in volcanic ash (Haro Alvear 1977, 15). Living with a volcano (several, in fact) was not significantly hazardous given the how the Puruhá lived with Tungurahua. The Puruhá lived spread out, not in concentrated settlements, and their occupation of the region is understood to have developed through four historical phases (Jijón y Caamaño 1929, 1940–1947, 1997; Carretero Poblete and Samaniego Erazo 2017). The earliest phase, Tuncahuán, covers roughly the first 750 years of the Common Era. Among the excavated plates, two-­handed dishes, bowls, copper rings, and ceramics, some materials bear resemblance to Cañari styles from territories just to the south and from ­those of other groups to the north, which suggests significant interregional mobility and interaction. The subsequent San Sebastian de Guano site includes buildings forming a settlement that appears to have been periodically occupied from 750 to 850. Residences w ­ ere constructed in the hive-­house style, and statues reflect creative use of volcanic ash and rock in combination with other stone materials. Th ­ ere is evidence of extensive corn production and public granaries, and some ceramic arts suggest contact with Tiwanaku, a pre-­Incan city near Lake Titicaca on what is ­today the Peru-­Bolivia border. The site appears to have been abandoned around 850, possibly due to a volcanic eruption, and the absence of ­human remains suggests that ­people moved in response to Tungurahua’s rumbling. The third period, Elén-­Pata, lasted from roughly 850 to 1300, and the sites included copper works, ceramics with engravings of llamas and p­ eople in fringed ponchos, and other ceramics such as bowls and handled plates without decoration. The fourth period of occupation, Huavalac, dates to 1300–1450, and some have considered this a period of decline owing to a dearth of ceramics and arts, though an oral account collected by Fray Joan de Paz Maldonado in 1584 (1897, 149– 154) relates that the Puruhá had irrigation infrastructure during this period. The Puruhá made kin with the volcanoes in the region. Nearby stratovolcano mamá Tungurahua (see figure 1) is commonly recognized as the female counterpart to the masculine taita Chimborazo. The Puruhá have long spoken of their ancestors as emerging from the snowcapped Chimborazo stratovolcano

32 • Mobility and Legibility

FIGURE 1  ​Southern view of Tungurahua from the hills above Penipe.

(González Suárez 1891, 107), and t­ here is evidence in the form of offering sites of Puruhá reverence for Chimborazo and Tungurahua, the female and male huacas, respectively (Haro Alvear 1977, 103–104; 1980). Huacas (or wak’a) are beings that inhabit (or simply are) what in the West are commonly thought of as environmental features—­especially mountains and volcanoes—­thus defying the neat divide between domains elsewhere constructed as “nature,” “super­natural,” and “social.” The periodic occupation of settlements calls our attention to the mobility that was key to pre-­Incan socie­ties. This not only enabled p­ eople to take advantage of varied microclimates and resource niches, it also allowed them to adapt to ­hazards—­volcanic, tectonic, and climatic—by moving into and out of areas affected by them, taking advantage of mineral-­rich soils of volcanic regions and moving to other microclimatic zones as ­hazards arose. Largely owing to the ­limited carry­ing capacity of the many distinct productive regions and microclimates found from the coast, up through the highlands, and down again into the Amazon rainforest, settlements w ­ ere relatively small and material needs and desires ­were met by networks of mobility and exchange between settlements that have long been regarded as the Andean “vertical archipelago” (Murra 1968). This is our first glimpse of the “other­wise” in Penipe’s past, of what might have been w ­ ere it not for the conquests of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This is not to romanticize, but rather to acknowledge that permanent settlements, to say nothing of the vio­lence and inequalities that ­were ­later visited on the p­ eoples

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 33

of the Andes, ­were most certainly not inevitable; that ­people built and sustained communities and complex socie­ties that ­were highly mobile and therefore less susceptible to volcanic ­hazards and did so in a way that recognized the volcanoes themselves as part of society and as power­ful kin.

Late Inca Conquest Inca colonization of the northern Andes was one of the ­later developments of the empire, occurring effectively on the eve of the Spanish conquest, but the Incas nevertheless left an impor­tant mark on the region in terms of mobility, settlement, and cooperative ­labor arrangements. The Puruhá and Chimbo ­peoples who occupied the Chambo River valley around con­temporary Penipe and the region around Riobamba w ­ ere conquered by the Inca in the final years of the fifteenth c­ entury (Haro Alvear 1977, 31). Penipeño historian Samuel Haro related to me a tale of the Pinipi resisting Incan colonization only to be driven away by the Spanish in 1563. Other accounts point to a period of re­sis­tance from the Puruhá ­under the leadership of Muntana, a­ fter which they w ­ ere conquered by the Inca Huayna Capac, ­father of Atahualpa, in 1450 (Pérez Tamayo 1947; Paz Maldonado 1897). The Inca, however, did not eliminate the mobility of the vertical archipelago; in fact, it remained integral to the empire. While they w ­ ere famously scrupulous in systematically incorporating conquered chiefdoms into the empire while maintaining local hierarchies and productive arrangements, mobility and resettlement w ­ ere complementary strategies employed in the administration of the empire. The Inca expanded their infrastructure of roads and grain storage h ­ ouses (tambos) throughout the empire (called Tawintinsuyu, the Realm of Four Parts) and as far north as Quito, thereby facilitating imperial control, trade, and protection against hunger for conquered populations. The Inca governed by incorporating local leaders to facilitate the extraction of wealth through a combination of taxation and l­abor tribute known as mit’a, which rulers “reciprocated” by granting the protection of the empire.1 They imposed a system of mitimae (Quechua, “man moved”), a pro­cess that entailed resettling ­peoples from newly conquered—­and potentially rebellious—­territories to areas already within the imperial fold, which ­were populated by loyal subjects (Mumford 2012, 27–39). This neutralized potentially rebellious populations, comingled and rearranged property rights, confused identities, and, ultimately, helped or­ga­nize mit’a corvée ­labor (Boelens 2015, 142; Mumford 2012, 13–39; see also part II of this volume). Shortly ­after the Incan conquest, many Puruhá ­were relocated to southern Peru, while the Inca imported loyalists from other ethnic groups into the region (Haro Alvear 1977, 31). Mobility and the navigation of the vertical archipelago remained impor­tant throughout the Incaic period. When subsequent Spanish colonists found ­people settled throughout the Incan Empire far from their native lands, they often mistook them for having been forcibly resettled. This is partly b­ ecause the term

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used for voluntary mi­grant colonists and ­those resettled by the Incas for po­liti­ cal or productive purposes was the same, mitimae (also mitmayos, mitmaqkuna; Spalding 1984, 36–37).2 However, some mitimae had moved voluntarily, prior to Incan domination, to l­abor and access resources on behalf of their kin groups elsewhere. Taken collectively, ­these pre-­and post-­Incan practices are evidence of the centrality of mobility, exchange ­labor, and mit’a work parties in Andean society in the central and northern highlands. The Incaic period lasted roughly eighty years in this region, governing through local traditional arrangements that left l­ ittle in the way of obvious cultural influence.

Spanish Colonization: Legibility and Tribute Extraction The Spanish conquest of the Central Andes lasted from 1532 to 1537. Spanish colonists forcibly settled Indigenous ­peoples into the areas around the volcano in the late sixteenth ­century, and this population took shape over the next three centuries into Indigenous and l­ater mestizo campesino communities tied to encomiendas, debt peonage, and forced ­labor tribute. From this t­ here emerged a perennial tension between Indigenous and campesino mobilities and state legibilizing proj­ects that remains a core theme throughout this book and serves as a structuring meta­phor for the organ­ization and style of the remainder of part I. Colonial arts of governance and domination would undergo vari­ous transformations over the next 300 years, but the system generally took shape in ways fashioned ­after a synthesis of Eu­ro­pean feudal and Incan practices. ­A fter the feudal fashion, the Spanish Crown granted encomiendas, consisting of large tracts of land as well as the Indigenous inhabitants, to the Spaniards. The first encomenderos ­were the conquistadors themselves, but t­ hese initial grants w ­ ere not permanent, and they often changed hands in exchanges or via royal reallocation. However, throughout the Andes the Spanish also preferred to co-­opt Incan and other Indigenous elites to administer the colonies and extract wealth. They imported the term cacique from Taino p­ eoples of the Ca­rib­bean to denote chiefs who ­were tasked with collecting tribute via the mit’a system (adapted to Spanish speech and orthography as mita), whereby collectives u­ nder caciques fulfilled ­labor obligations in agricultural fields, textile manufactories (obrajes), and mines. At the behest of the Crown and the Catholic Church, encomenderos w ­ ere also tasked with the Christian conversion and indoctrination of their Indigenous subjects. Spanish colonial efforts would increasingly work to ­settle Indigenous ­peoples in structured settlements, imposing a form of legibility on their conquered subjects to facilitate domination and the extraction of l­ abor and tribute. Historical accounts date Spanish incursions into the region known t­ oday as Penipe to the 1530s and 1540s with the first encomiendas and the establishment of a doctrina, or outpost for catechizing Indigenous p­ eoples (Haro Alvear 1948; Pontón Barreto 2012, 58). The first encomienda in Guano—­which was soon to become a settlement that would include Penipe as a parish ­until 1984—­was

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 35

granted to the conquistador Martin de Mondragón in 1535 (Ortiz Arrellano 1996, 33). The Franciscan Order soon ­after began their 200-­year ascendancy in Guano with the construction of a church, La Asunción, and convent in 1560. Guano began developing as a town shortly thereafter, in 1572, and the first obraje was established about ten years ­later (Ortiz Arrellano 1996, 36–37). Shortly following Philip II of Spain’s creation of the Real Audiencia de Quito in 1563, Don Lorenzo de Cepeda y Ahumada (1519–1580), the younger b­ rother of Saint Teresa of Ávila, was granted the encomienda of Penipe by Viceroy Diego López de Zúñiga (González Suárez 1891, 166–170). Like the Incas before them, administrators of the Real Audiencia de Quito, a court that was technically subordinate to yet somewhat autonomous from the Viceroyalty of Peru, ­were careful to incorporate local leaders into colonial practice. They maintained a semblance of the Puruhá-­Inca hierarchy with appointed local caciques who ensured that members of each encomienda ­under their command complied with Real Audiencia prerogatives regarding religious conversion, mita tribute ­labor, and ultimately the colonially mandated formation of towns in the late sixteenth ­century. Multiple visitas (inspections by colonial deputies) and numeraciones (censuses of tribute-­paying subjects) of this period reveal attempts to count and stabilize the population so as to more effectively exact tribute. But many Indigenous p­ eople fled, and Guano began to develop a reputation as a rebellious place that would endure well into the twentieth ­century. The colonizers found Andean mobility frustrating and so endeavored to render them more legible by creating fixed settlements that w ­ ere amenable to colonial administration. Though efforts to resettle Indigenous populations in administrable towns in the Spanish fashion (blocks constructed around a central plaza) ­were already in motion in Ec­ua­dor and elsewhere in the Viceroyalty, the pro­cess was famously systematized and imposed on a g­ rand scale by the fifth Viceroy of Peru, Francisco Alvarez de Toledo, in the 1570s (Mumford 2012). Toledo’s reforms called for resettling Indigenous groups into fixed settlements (reducciones)—­“The G ­ reat Resettlement,” in Jeremy Mumford’s (2012) terms— to facilitate the extraction of tribute and the “civilizing” mission of the Crown. The civilizing mission was, in many ways, fashioned in the legendary debates between Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas and priest Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda at Valladolid in 1550–1551. Sepúlveda contended that the Indigenous ­peoples of the Amer­i­cas w ­ ere natu­ral slaves, whereas las Casas argued for their common humanity and the need for the Crown to treat them accordingly. King Charles V was, in the end, persuaded by las Casas and therefore sought to fuse the missions of conquest, colonization, and extraction with a civilizing mission to improve the lot of Indigenous p­ eoples by means of Christian conversion, while reconstructing the New World via the formation of legible towns and populations. The debate at Valladolid in many ways prefigured the development of modern humanitarian thought (Calhoun 2010), just as Toledan reforms catalyzed the formation of state bureaucracies for colonizing new lands and ­peoples while

36 • Mobility and Legibility

reining in the conquistadors and encomenderos who increasingly presented threats to Crown power. Toledo’s reforms had ­limited direct impact in the semiautonomous Real Audiencia de Quito, but the settlement agenda articulated with a range of colonial priorities at the time and the pro­cess of creating reducciones began t­ here prior to the Viceroy’s efforts and continued long ­after (Mumford 2012, 6). Monsignor Pedro de la Peña was perhaps the most vocal advocate for reducciones in the Real Audiencia, arguing in the 1570s for a royal commission to establish towns throughout Chimborazo, Tungurahua, and Cotopaxi. In 1595, Don Juan Clavijo was commissioned to form reducciones in the provinces of Chimborazo and Tungurahua and proceeded to spend the next five years establishing multiple settlements, including Guano, with Penipe as a subordinate parish, and several o­ thers in Tungurahua (González Suárez 1892, 365). In a letter to King Phillip II dated February 20, 1595, Bishop López de Solís reported on the establishment of doctrinas and indicated that in the Archdiocese of Riobamba they ministered to 800 “Indios” in Guano and 300 in Penipe (Moreno Egas 2001, 429–430). Reports at the time noted that the region between the Tungurahua and Chimborazo volcanoes was especially verdant and hospitable for producing a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and lumber. ­There w ­ ere also radical and tremendously consequential changes in productive arrangements and corvée ­labor and tribute extraction during this period, which I take up in detail in chapter 6. During the seventeenth c­entury, colonial administrators accelerated the development of fixed settlements of Indigenous (and, over time, mestizo) populations around Tungurahua (and other volcanoes), even as the ­hazards of the region presented themselves loud and clear. Two major earthquakes, one in 1645 and another in 1687, disrupted the region and damaged La Asunción. Aside from the clergy, the Spanish did not initially occupy this region except to the ­limited extent necessary to administer the colony. They introduced new techniques for textile production and established several obrajes and haciendas in Guano, Penipe, and other neighboring settlements.3 The obrajes generated an impressive output by con­temporary standards, producing cloth, coats, felts, socks, ponchos, and rugs using the ­great volume of wool from the large haciendas nearby (Ortiz Arrellano 1996, 41–44). The main obraje of the Duque de Uceda in Guano was like a small town unto itself. Though the duque never occupied his home ­there, by the early eigh­teenth ­century Guano began to grow as a town, with homes and libraries built by elites of Riobamba. ­Little by ­little, Spaniards came to occupy the urban centers—­a safe distance from the most perilous volcanic h ­ azards—­and displace Indigenous p­ eople to the periphery, often to the very slopes of the volcano.

Colonial Abuses, Local Re­sis­tance, and Upheavals Despite the denunciations of the clergy and per­sis­tent local re­sis­tance, colonial administrators continued to expand fixed ­human settlements around the

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 37

volcanoes—­with populations now in the tens of thousands—­and increase both production and tribute extraction in the region.4 Re­sis­tance against mita ­labor tribute and reducciones continued to mount throughout the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century and into the nineteenth. Indigenous and mestizo ­peoples began to abandon reducciones in f­ avor of becoming conciertos on haciendas in the emerging concertaje system (often referred to as huasipungo in Ec­ua­dor). The reducciones required ­people to maintain a residence both in the town and in their fields and to commute between the two. On the haciendas, however, ­people ­were lent land (huasipungo) to cultivate in exchange for ­labor for the hacendado. Moreover, unlike the mita l­abor tribute, conciertos could negotiate l­abor exchange and avoid having to abandon their homes, crops, and animals (Lyons 2006, 43). However, concertaje was a precarious relation, a form of debt peonage wherein debts w ­ ere impossible to cancel and l­abor obligations w ­ ere therefore perpetual. T ­ oward the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, the textile industry of Guano and Riobamba was in decline (as was colonial reign) due to changes in the global market, which served to increase Crown dependence on Indigenous tribute in the shrinking reducciones; on the eve of in­de­pen­dence, tribute accounted for one-­third of the tax revenues of the Audiencia (Larson 2008, 596–597). In Guano, tensions between Indigenous communities and colonial authorities grew more pronounced by the mid-­eighteenth c­ entury. Th ­ ere is a poorly attested mention of an attempted revolt in 1744, but the g­ reat uprising that shook the ­whole Audiencia of Quito began on September 1, 1778, in Guano. Insurgents burned h ­ ouses and buildings and attacked Spaniards in Guano, San Andres, and the surrounding region (González Suárez 1891, 517–519). The 1778 uprising stands out as the first instance of coordinated re­sis­tance by Indigenous ­people together with mestizos, since the mestizos ­were to be numerados, or censused for tribute (Moreno Yánez 1985). Repression was swift and harsh. Leaders and followers alike ­were imprisoned and sentenced to forced l­ abor, some following commuted death sentences (Ortiz Arrellano 1996, 60). It was not only social fault lines that ­were disquieted. Tungurahua and the South American tectonic plate rumbled fiercely as well. The region sustained significant damage and was evacuated ­because of eruptions of Tungurahua in 1773 (Hall et al. 1999). On December 30, 1778, between 10 and 11 p.m., a tremendous earthquake shook the earth so violently around Riobamba and Guano that the church bells ­were said to have rung by themselves; the tremors principally affected Penipe but ­were felt along the entire eastern mountain range (González Suárez 1891, 392). Nevertheless, leaders insisted on continuing with local festivals ­after the earthquake (Ortiz Arrellano 1996, 59). The famous 1797 earthquake in Riobamba (just twenty-­two kilo­meters from Penipe) resulted in nearly 40,000 fatalities and the complete destruction of the city and several surrounding towns (Latrubesse 2010).

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In­de­pen­dence and the Republican Era: New Iterations of Legibility and Tribute In­de­pen­dence from Spain in 1822 changed ­little of the industry, culture, or class relations in rural Chimborazo. While the populations in fixed settlements around Tungurahua continued to grow even ­after the devastation of the earthquakes and eruptions a generation prior, the long nineteenth ­century was marked by instability and a rapid succession of largely authoritarian leaders. Haciendas in Chimborazo controlled by the church and lay hacendados remained both numerous and quite power­ful throughout the nineteenth ­century (Saint-­Geours 1994, 147; Lyons 2006). In the highlands, tribute was still or­ga­nized by caciques and provincial governors, while wealthy hacendados frequently leased their property and entrusted the extraction of ­labor obligations to renters (Saint-­Geours 1994, 147). Just over twenty years ­after in­de­pen­dence, in 1845, Guano was officially elevated to a canton of Chimborazo Province, and Penipe was designated a subordinate parish of Guano on May 29, 1861. State finances at this time continued to rely heavi­ly on tribute (Larson 2008, 596–598). Though officially abolished by the president, General Francisco Robles, in 1857, an act that garnered support for his Liberal Party among rural populations, mita tribute would endure. A period of civil conflict and disputed claims to power characterized the late 1850s and early 1860s. Known as “the terrible year,” 1859 was marked by a series of ­battles between rival caudillos vying for power throughout the country. At the conclusion of this period, conservative president Gabriel García Moreno came into power. He was anxious to modernize the country, and to this end he revived the colonial mita. Beginning in 1862, this entailed deploying military personnel to press Indigenous men into ser­vice as ditch diggers. They ultimately mobilized roughly 1,700 ­people to build a wagon road from Quito, through the sierra, and down to the coastal town of Guayaquil, forcing them to l­ abor in conditions that observers found ghastly (Hassaurek 1868). A small uprising in Guano in 1868 presaged a much larger uprising against the forced ­labor mitas across Chimborazo in 1871 (Saint-­Geours 1994, 159). Though the region was again affected by eruptions of Tungurahua in 1886 (Hall et al. 1999), tensions remained unresolved and further uprisings continued in 1893.

Twentieth ­Century The twentieth ­century brought significant transformation to Penipe and throughout Ec­ua­dor. Economic change came slowly at first but, along with several po­liti­cal reforms, it further solidified and expanded ­human settlements around the volcano, continuing apace even in the aftermath of major eruptions. The first de­cades of the twentieth ­century ­were transformational and tumultuous in many ways. Indigenous ­peoples of Chimborazo supported the Liberal

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 39

revolution, which, among other t­ hings, advocated for secular society, f­ ree ­labor, and an export economy but produced l­ ittle change in local affairs. Penipe grew as a satellite market center for the haciendas in the region, but this was disturbed when Tungurahua entered a period of significant eruptions from 1916 to 1918, which devastated Penipe and its northern neighbors Pelileo and Baños and disrupted production in the region for years to come (Hall et al. 1999). Between and ­after a series of uprisings in Chimborazo in 1921, 1923, and 1928; military coups in 1925 and 1931; and a brief civil war in 1932, short-­lived periods of demo­cratic rule in Ecuador—­known as the Julian Revolution—­produced reforms and a professionalization that facilitated the growth and development of a centralized state apparatus that, for the first time since the Spanish conquest, was not governed by a coherent class bloc, though racialized hierarchies persisted (Prieto 2015; Striffler 2001; Ayala Mora 1999). It was also a period of growth of po­liti­ cal jurisdictions and institutions in Penipe and other rural regions. Ec­ua­dor’s economy was somewhat stabilized by the establishment of a central bank in 1926, which issued the national currency (the sucre), increased state revenue, and ushered in a period of growth in transportation and communications infrastructure, while staving off the worst impacts of the G ­ reat Depression (Naranjo Navas 2018; Ayala Mora 1999). The most noteworthy reform following the Julian Revolution in Penipe was the 1937 Ley de Organización y Régimen de Comunas, which was designed to dismantle the hacienda economy while incorporating the rural peripheries into a modernizing Ec­ua­dor­ian state. This new legislation granted members of any community with at least fifty ­house­holds rights to plots of land they had worked for more than ten years, so long as they formally incorporated into comunas (villages), which ­were to be governed by cabildos (village councils). Cabildos ­were established as local governing bodies but also as village representatives to the state; they ­were institutions of governance with impor­tant roles in legibility but also in subaltern agency. Although many campesino and Indigenous groups incorporated as comunas in the 1930s and 1940s, plenty chose not to, as the Ley de Comunas was recognized by many as an extension of state power (Becker 1999, 535). And yet, on one level this constituted a transfer of power—­the governance of Indigenous and campesino bodies and spaces was no longer directly administered by outside elites and functionaries, but instead by villa­gers elected by their neighbors. Villa­gers, then, became at least partial state subjects (Prieto 2015) who would take over the maintenance of community bound­aries, physical and h ­ uman, in ways that could be disciplinary extensions of state power but also institutional vehicles for scaling up subaltern agency, alternatively hooking into and disengaging from shifting assemblages of the state (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009). A ­ fter the law was passed, Penipe—­then still a parish of Canton Guano—­incorporated its first two villages in 1938, followed by another ten between 1946 and 1960, as it grew as a satellite market for a growing number of smallholders and large haciendas in the region.

40 • Mobility and Legibility

­There was an expansion of ­human settlements in the region throughout the twentieth ­century, largely b­ ecause of the dual f­ actors of land reform and the scarcity of land available to poorer campesinos. Ec­ua­dor initiated import substitution in the 1950s to promote production for domestic markets in an effort to minimize the economic volatility associated with export economies (Bulmer-­ Thomas 2003; Moncada 1980; Ayala Mora 1999). This was part of a general transition to capitalism as the dominant mode of production in Ec­ua­dor, one that transformed the landholding elites of the hacienda system into an agricultural bourgeoisie (Ayala Mora 1999, 703–709; Bretón 2008). The development of local po­liti­cal jurisdictions and economies was significantly influenced by the economic policies and agrarian reforms that transferred land from haciendas and terratenientes (large landowners) to campesinos. As import substitution accelerated in the 1960s, so too did campesino protest movements to confront land concentration. U ­ nder pressure from rising populist movements throughout Ec­ua­dor, the military juntas that governed from 1964 ­until civilian rule was reestablished in 1979 passed decidedly l­ imited agrarian reforms in 1964 and again in 1974. The military regimes of this period w ­ ere concerned with agrarian and other reforms to hasten the demise of the hacienda system and modernize the Ec­ua­dor­ian economy without upsetting prevailing class and racial hierarchies (Ayala Mora 1999; Becker 1999). The 1964 reforms had contradictory effects, effectively undermining the hacienda system and catalyzing the transition to cap­i­tal­ist agrarian production, while having almost no effect on land concentration (Bretón 2008). Advocates for land reform ­were concerned with resolving considerable disparities in land distribution, as several studies in the 1950s found that a small minority (just over 2 ­percent) of large landowners controlled more than 64 ­percent of arable land, while only 7 ­percent of the land was owned by individuals or ­house­holds with five or fewer hectares (Bretón 2008, 591). Though ­these reforms by no means resolved systemic disparities in land distribution, they did foster a renewed interest in comuna incorporation in Ec­ua­dor that endured well into the 1990s. ­There was a brief burst of incorporation in Penipe, with one incorporation in 1965 and four more in 1973.5 Among ­those incorporated in 1973 was Manzano, a comuna in Puela Parish that was displaced by the 1999 and 2006 eruptions and is a subject of the l­ ater chapters. Campesino gains w ­ ere decidedly pyrrhic, as the agrarian reforms intended to support smallholder production (minifundio) granted only small plots of land (sardonically called microfundios) and included neither a credit finance system nor extension support (Ayala Mora 1999). This contributed to a reduction in agricultural production, a near crisis-­level increase in prices, and increased proletarianization of erstwhile campesinos; that is, an exponential growth in landlessness and rural-­urban migration for wage ­labor. The cap­i­tal­ist class remained po­liti­cally marginal during military rule in the 1960s and early 1970s but gained power in the late 1970s as the military junta was reconfigured ­under

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 41

po­liti­cal and economic pressure and began several regressive policies and practices, including passing laws that guaranteed the property of rural entrepreneurs and the violent suppression of worker movements (Ayala Mora 1999, 716). The Ec­ua­dor­ian economy grew rapidly during this time due to the ­limited gains of the import substitution period, growth in banana exports, and a boom in oil exports brought on by a combination of new discoveries and the oil embargo of the Organ­ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The country returned to civilian rule in 1979 but faced severe economic crises by the mid1980s, largely ­because of a bust in the petroleum market and severe floods and droughts in dif­fer­ent parts of the country caused by climate change and particularly intense impacts of El Niño.

Cantonization and Decentralization: Producing Jurisdictions and Institutions Two of the most significant developments in Ec­ua­dor in the 1980s w ­ ere administrative decentralization, including the accelerated growth of municipal incorporations, and the proliferation of Indigenous and campesino po­ liti­ cal movements nationwide. Although the pro­cess of comuna incorporation slowed in Penipe in the 1980s, it broke away from Canton Guano and incorporated as the seventh canton of Chimborazo Province in 1984, becoming one of the smallest cantons in the country.6 Penipe Township formed the “urban” administrative center for the canton’s six rural parishes—­Bilbao, Puela, El Altar, Matus, Bayushig, and La Candelaria—­the first three of which extend from the western to the southern flanks of Tungurahua. The cantonización of Penipe was part of a national wave—­“cantonization fever”—of new municipal incorporations.7 Since the time of its cantonization, Penipe has strug­gled to establish po­liti­ cal, economic, and demographic legitimacy. As local efforts for cantonization gained traction in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the pro­cess was undermined by local re­sis­tance and the challenges of meeting constitutional standards. Local re­sis­tance principally came from leaders in Canton Guano, who in addition to raising l­ egal questions w ­ ere also likely concerned with threats to their own po­liti­ cal economic power. However, ­there was also some re­sis­tance within the rural parishes, where campesinos denounced the movement as motivated by terratenientes and “caciques” of Penipe who w ­ ere interested in aggrandizing their own power at the expense of the ­people (Pontón Barreto 2012). Beyond local re­sis­ tance, the challenge was not only to demonstrate the governability and economic viability of Penipe as a stand-­alone canton; they also had to comply with constitutional law. Of ­these, perhaps the most challenging was Article 4 of La Ley de Régimen Municipal, which states that a canton should have a minimum population of 50,000 and its urban center should have at least 10,000 p­ eople. Penipe has never come close to this—at the time of cantonization, the total population was 8,042 and the urban center held ­under 2,000 (Pontón Barreto 2012). In 1983, the cantonization committee insisted that they ­were on track to meet the minimum population requirements within the de­cade. ­W hether this was a ­viable

42 • Mobility and Legibility

assertion was rendered irrelevant as the extreme po­liti­cal instability and economic precarity of the 1990s resulted in drastic increases of outmigration in Penipe and nationwide. Rural municipal governments like that of Penipe have historically focused on small, ad hoc public works that largely exclude the rural periphery, and the proliferation of t­ hese rural municipalities has been associated with weak institutions dominated by elites and clientelist politics (Cameron 2010). Governance has typically been ineffectual and dominated by clientelism and paternalism (Cameron 2010; Ojeda Segovia 1998; Rosales 1989). Many observers recognize the growth of Ec­ua­dor­ian cantons as a spurious urbanization generating administrative bodies of reduced scope and viability (see Larrea 1999). Like Penipe, most of t­ hese municipalities w ­ ere, in fact, ­limited administrative centers for rural regions with ­little in the way of urban economy, development potential, or even sufficient bud­ gets for their own administrative activities. Indigenous social movements and organ­izations increasingly gained power in Chimborazo and throughout Ec­ua­dor in the 1980s, culminating in one of the largest and most power­ful Indigenous po­liti­cal movements in the world. The demonstrations resulted in the abandonment of controversial initiatives, such as the Agrarian Reform Law of 1994, which was crafted in coordination with agroindustrial elites to re-­entrench their po­liti­cal and economic power (Sawyer 2004, 152), as well as other neoliberal reforms supported by loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Beginning in 1996, Indigenous Pachakutik Party candidates began winning elections to several local and congressional seats and, in collaboration with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ec­ua­dor (CONAIE), w ­ ere instrumental in the drafting of a new constitution that explic­itly recognizes Indigenous identity and rights (Becker 2011). When a financial crisis brought on by external shocks to export economies hit Ec­ua­dor in the late 1990s, rapid inflation triggered a po­liti­ cal decision to abandon the national currency, the sucre, and adopt the U.S. dollar in 1999. CONAIE and its allies w ­ ere highly opposed to dollarization, and when then-­president Jamal Mahuad made the plan public in January  2000, a massive protest of Indigenous groups and mestizo campesinos from the highlands arrived in Quito, where they ­were joined by students, military personnel, and other local residents in disrupting commerce and city traffic (Colloredo-­ Mansfeld 2009; Sawyer 2004). Although the sucre was ultimately abandoned for the dollar, the sustained protests led to the ouster of President Mahuad. Decentralization, economic crisis, and the rise of Indigenous movements and leaders in Chimborazo resulted in a significant transformation of state assemblages via the acceleration of participatory governance reforms, a proliferation of nongovernmental organ­izations (NGOs), and the re-­emergence of cooperative work parties (mingas) as instruments of development (Cameron 2010; Martínez 2003; Bretón 2001). Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, the federal government elected to facilitate the decentralization of

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 43

governance, bud­geting, and resource management and exploitation through a series of reforms to stabilize the national economy, boost gross domestic product (GDP), and stimulate global investment (de Mattos 1989). While the po­liti­cal and ecological impacts of t­ hese reforms are well known (Sawyer 2004), decentralization also created spaces for new actors and organ­izations to occupy. Since the 1990s, Ec­ua­dor­ian development initiatives have focused on locally derived, need-­ based development proj­ects; collective action of the poor; and state interventions, often in coordination with NGOs (de Janvry and Sadoulet 2000, 13; Martínez 2003, 167). In Penipe, initiatives are generally focused on transportation (roads, bridges) and hydraulic (potable, irrigation) infrastructure. In the late 1990s, and accelerating ­under the Rafael Correa administration ­a fter 2007, the federal government attempted to extend federal power to the periphery with the expressed objective of resolving per­sis­tent issues with weak and corrupt municipal governments by instituting programs to facilitate modernization and administrative decentralization (Cameron 2010). A landmark development was the creation of juntas parroquiales (rural parish councils nested between cabildos and municipal governments) in the constitution of 1998 and the 2000 Ley Organica de Juntas Parroquiales (Martínez 2003, 162), which w ­ ere established to grant more demo­cratic decision-­making power to rural parishes and villages. ­These bodies established a federation of cabildos in each of Penipe’s six rural parishes, with the intention of better coordinating funding, proj­ ects, and administration between them. Following decentralization, rural cantons like Penipe focused on the creation of local development plans with NGOs and the establishment of participatory plans with the provincial councils, juntas parroquiales, and cabildos (Cameron 2010; Martínez 2003; Bretón 2001). Th ­ ese programs relied heavi­ly on ostensibly voluntary minga work parties as a means of expanding ­limited bud­getary capacities for the completion of roads, irrigation canals, and potable ­water systems in Penipe and throughout Chimborazo (see part II). While development plans have expressly participatory values, they have been largely s­ ilent on local ties to global pro­cesses and institutions while generally failing to develop concrete microregional strategies, and they have elided issues of land and wealth concentration (Martínez 2003, 168). Some authors have claimed that the state was attempting to convert cantons into “mini welfare states” but with no plan for developing production (Iturralde 2000). In Penipe, accusations of favoritism and clientelism in government have been common. Succeeding mayors, municipal council members, and juntas parroquiales w ­ ere commonly accused of steering funds and other resources to their client bases, while excluding ­others. Following the 1999 and 2006 eruptions in Penipe, accusations of corruption and embezzlement ­were common as aid flowed from the state and both domestic and multinational NGOs. Yet clientelism is itself somewhat contested in Ec­ua­dor. Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler (2008) found that while some Ec­ua­dor­ians decry the practice as reproducing

44 • Mobility and Legibility

racial and class hierarchies, o­ thers support a subaltern clientelism that could promote the interests of the poor through nested networks of brokerage.

The Twenty-­First C ­ entury: Land Scarcity and Community Development At the time of the 1999 eruptions of Tungurahua, national attention was largely trained on the capital city of Quito. The capital was on preventative alert in anticipation of an eruption from Guagua Pichincha, which looms over the center of the city. The 1997–1998 “mega” El Niño resulted in catastrophic landslides in which hundreds perished and thousands more w ­ ere wounded; property damages exceeded US$2.8 billion (Salgado Peñaherrera 1999). Another earthquake struck the coastal province of Manabí in August 1998. The country’s transportation infrastructure was crippled, and production was devastated at a time when a ­great deal was riding on the export economy. ­These economic impacts dovetailed with a drop in global oil prices and general market instability, resulting in an inflation crisis in 1999 that contributed to the adoption of the U.S. dollar. At the turn of the twenty-­first c­ entury, Penipeños in the rural parishes continued to focus primarily on agropastoral production, although many found land unavailable or ­else strug­gled to produce on low-­productivity land. As occurred throughout much of the Andean region, and despite renewed import substitution industrialization, Ec­ua­dor’s economy continued to be primarily driven by natu­ral resource extraction and export (oil above all e­ lse), making it particularly vulnerable to global market fluctuations and disasters within its borders. Campesino access to land and housing remained marginal (Bretón 2008), and in the highland region landownership was highly concentrated; ­because of failed agrarian development programs and land reform in the 1990s, less than 3 ­percent of ­owners still held 50 ­percent of all land while more than 90 ­percent of rural farmers continued to work without owner­ship deeds for their lands. Unequal land distribution is frequently cited as a root cause of the popu­lar and largely Indigenous social movements that emerged in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s (Cameron 2010; Bretón 2008). Ec­ua­dor did, however, outpace its Andean neighbors in the provision of both improved drinking ­water and sanitation to its rural populations, ensuring access to an estimated 91 ­percent of the rural population for the former and 72 ­percent for the latter (PAHO 2008, 10). By 2010, the total population of Canton Penipe was not only far less than what cantonization advocates projected, but at a mere 6,739, it was far below even what it had been in the early 1980s (INEC 2011). Two-­thirds of the population (69%) was concentrated in the rural parishes and a ­little over a third (35%) was in the three parishes—­Bilbao, Puela, and El Altar—­directly on the slopes of Tungurahua. Most residents of Canton Penipe ­were smallholding agricultural producers. Nearly all h ­ ouse­holds from the rural parishes (86%) raised some combination of crops and animals.8 Less than half of all ­house­holds (40%)

Mobilities and (Re)Settlements • 45

reported any engagement in wage ­labor, though this was up from a rough estimate of about 25 ­percent prior to the first eruptions, much of which was episodic. Local cultivars—­which ­were heavi­ly dependent on irrigation—­were primarily corn, beans, potatoes, and, to a lesser extent, peas, tree tomatoes (tamarillos), blackberries, and fruit trees (apple, pear, peach, and plum). Locals also raised c­ attle, pigs, guinea pigs (cuyes), chickens, and rabbits. Landholdings in the low (2,280–2,500 meters above sea level) and ­middle (2,500–2,800  m) ranges are typically much smaller (1–3 hectares) than high-­range landholdings (2,800–3,200 m; 3–10 hectares), which require more territory for grazing, but large landholdings are usually the property of outside investors in ­cattle, not local villa­gers.9 The general scarcity of available land is evinced by the fact that nearly half (47%) of all residents of Bilbao, El Altar, and Puela reported owning 1 hectare or less and more than two-­thirds (71%) reported owning 2 hectares or less. A small cadre of sixteen h ­ ouse­holds reported landholdings larger than 2 hectares, the largest of which was 5 hectares. One-­fifth (20%) of the population of the northern parishes (20%) consisted of landless h ­ ouse­holds who w ­ ere dependent on local landlords for access to productive land. In 2009, I found that nearly half (47%) of h ­ ouse­holds sent some share of their crop yields to market. While I speculated that resettlement might have prompted increased market production, most ­house­holds (79%) reported at least some crop sales prior to resettlement and, at any rate, soil degradation from volcanic ash had by that time reduced production to meager fractions of prior levels (see also Whiteford and Tobin 2009).

Conclusions: Cumulative Pro­cesses of Disaster Production What I have attempted to do in this chapter is sketch the protean assemblages that are co-­constitutive of disasters around Tungurahua. Taking the long view, I argue that the disasters associated with the 1999 and 2006 eruptions of Tungurahua ­were borne not merely of the intersections of h ­ uman settlements and ­hazards, but also of the perennial tensions between state (re)settlement legibility and the mobility practices of the rural subaltern accumulating into a highly precarious situation around volcanic and tectonic ­hazards, which rumbled and roared even as t­ hese conditions ­were being produced. The cofigurative assemblages—­human-­environmental relations (not merely settled on the volcano, but land-­poor subsistence agropastoralism), connection to the landscape, mobility, the formation of institutions and shifting apparatuses of the state—­were such that volcanic eruptions could trigger upheaval, loss, prolonged displacement, and, as w ­ ill be clear in the following chapters, humanitarian politics that, in ­people’s experience, are at least as much a part of the disaster as the volcano. I highlight ­these perennial tensions between (re)settlement legibilty and mobility ­because they prefigure the humanitarian politics of response, recovery, and resettlement in Penipe. The tensions between mobility and the

46 • Mobility and Legibility

legibilizing proj­ects of shifting assemblages of the humanitarian state endured well ­after the 1999 and 2006 eruptions and, in fact, ­were key to humanitarian aid, recovery, and resettlement efforts; they not only prolonged the disaster for many ­people but ­were, in effect, co-­constituting pro­cesses of disaster itself. Moreover, amid ­these many systematic vulnerabilities, we witness a decidedly sticky agency exercised by the rural subaltern, never entirely determined by nor fully in­de­pen­dent of the state and the institutions facilitating the po­liti­cal production of space, as they build lives, adaptive capacities, and practical and meaning-­laden relations with their landscapes and communities.

2

Archipelagos and Bare Life

­ fter their initial ordeal evacuating and Don Mateo’s subsequent adventure in A returning during the eruptions and evacuations to secure and evacuate his animals, he and his wife, Gladys, found themselves in the center of Riobamba, wondering what the ensuing days and weeks had in store for them. Fortunately, Doña Gladys had f­ amily in Riobamba; her s­ ister put them up in her home. “We arrived at my sister-­in-­law’s ­house at once and they did us the f­ avor of taking us in.” But they strug­gled to come to terms with city life. “Life is not easy living like that . . . ​R iobamba was difficult. We ­didn’t have any money back then.” At first, they went hungry ­because they ­were unaccustomed to buying food—­they had produced all they needed back in Manzano—­and they had no money to buy it anyway. Mateo hauled out sacks of potatoes when he was evacuating the animals and they lived largely on t­ hese alone for a while. Not long a­ fter arriving in Riobamba, another of Gladys’s relatives lent them some land on the outskirts of the city, about three hectares, where they had access to irrigation. By the end of the year, Mateo was selling potatoes and corn in the markets of Riobamba and coming to terms with the fact that their displacement would last far longer than even their worst fears. In all, they remained in Riobamba for nine years, eventually renting a h ­ ouse of their own. Bernardo Huerta was just twenty-­nine years old at the time of the eruptions, but he had recently been elected cabildo president in Manzano, a position he would hold for an unpre­ce­dented twenty years. A towering figure at six-­foot-­two, he is the tallest person I’ve ever met in Penipe, and his presence can be at once 47

48 • Mobility and Legibility

dominating and avuncular. He is a passionate leader who in the ten years I have known him regularly pivots suddenly from lighthearted conversation to impassioned po­liti­cal monologue in an instant. He rarely made himself vulnerable, but he showed hints of vulnerability when speaking of the prolonged displacement in the wake of the 1999 eruptions. In addition to farming, he worked for a local nonprofit, CEBYCAM, providing technical assistance to fruit producers throughout Puela Parish—­“all of the fruit production, peaches, green plums, apples, ­because that’s what we live on.” He and his m ­ other, Doña Clara, lived in a two-­story brick ­house on six hectares of land, one of the largest properties in Manzano. Following the evacuations, Bernardo and Doña Clara also went to live in Riobamba, where relatives lent them a small apartment. Like o­ thers who found themselves displaced in the city, they lamented having to purchase all their needs. They purchased a large sack of rice, another of sugar, and a few other basic necessities in bulk with the ­little cash they had on hand. Doña Clara kept ­house while he went out to work. “My m ­ other was a g­ reat cook, you know that.” They ­didn’t have to pay rent but, as they ­were in the city, “every­thing has a cost.” They remained ­there two years, while Bernardo was able to maintain his job at CEBYCAM, taking the bus approximately 45 minutes each way daily. ­They’d regularly visit their lands in Manzano—­Doña Clara could not bear to be away for too long. She wept on both occasions when she shared ­these stories with me years ­later, in 2011 and 2013. What is more, they went into debt from purchasing all their necessities and transporting their animals out of the risk zone, even a­ fter selling some for a pittance. If in the previous chapter I worked to unsettle conventional disaster temporalities by connecting disaster to historical pro­cesses, in this chapter I continue to trou­ble t­ hese temporalities by tracing the experience of disaster over seven years following the 1999 eruptions. My concern now shifts to ­people who ­were adrift in the modern vertical and horizontal archipelagos ­after the 1999 eruptions and how they gradually made their way back home only to face new eruptions, from which they would again flee. Displacement generally does not entail one movement (say, from point A to B), but rather a series of movements. I therefore chronicle va­ri­e­ties of movement that endured for years following the 1999 eruptions and situate them in the broader suite of mobility practices that have characterized life in this region of the highlands for some time, a theme that w ­ ill grow more pronounced in the following chapters. Importantly, t­ hese movements are not only reflective of long-­term adaptations and short-­term coping but, owing to state-­driven pressures for settlement legibility, are also made complicit in the (re)production of disaster—or procedural vulnerability (­after Veland et al. 2013)—­ and the politics of deservingness. I continue with my attention to the shifting assemblages of the state in disaster response, ­here in ways largely reflective of abandonment, or the pre­sent

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 49

absence of the state in p­ eople’s lives during displacement, but also in their initial returns. That is, following state intrusions into Penipe during the evacuations, ­people w ­ ere abandoned to their own recourse. With indebtedness to Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) concept of “bare life,” I describe how ­people’s narrow biological lives ­were saved, while they w ­ ere then left with ­little or no other options for their fuller livelihoods. In contrast to the legibility demanded of ­those who ­were displaced, I highlight the illegibility of the state. How did p­ eople move to make t­ hings work? How did they make their way home? P ­ eople’s narratives of displacement surface themes of place attachment, embodied forms of identity that contribute to motivations for action (Faas, Barrios, Marino et al. 2020), and the more-­than-­human assemblages that villa­gers would l­ ater invoke u­ nder the local idiom of convivir. ­Here, I am listening to how ­people story place, places, and all sorts of entanglements as they moved, coped, and found ways to adapt to disastrous contingencies while aspiring to the good life (Faas and Marino 2020). I therefore do not intend to represent t­ hese villages as mere exercises in legibility—­they are home to so many ­people. Many ­people identified their attachments to place, both in their unwillingness to leave and in their distress while being separated from their homes and communities. Th ­ ese places in Penipe are sites of relations and also of more-­than-­human kinship, as when ­people seek the protection of the hill, El Montirón, rush headlong into danger to care for animals, or aspire to co-­live with Tungurahua. Yet to speak of place attachment is not to reduce ­people to some sort of primordial relationship with land or a vulgar material de­pen­dency, but rather to be mindful of the fact that the historically produced sets of relations sustained in a given place not only facilitate livelihoods but also accumulate nontrivial, shared (though by no means uniform) meanings for ­people; and neither the relationalities, the livelihoods, nor the meanings are readily translated to other locations.

Displacement Sketches: Place and Mobility ­ eople’s narratives of displacement following the 1999 eruptions reflect several P themes that not only orient us to salient aspects of their experience but also foreshadow several f­actors that would affect their lives for years to come. In the coproduction of space among ­house­hold members and other relations, ­people assumed roles in their new environments that ­were alternatively familiar and strange. Some made singular moves that lasted ­until they returned to their home villages or their lives ­were uprooted again by further eruptions seven years ­later. ­Others made multiple moves and adaptations to loss and displacement. Th ­ ese affective sensibilities are as significant as livelihood needs in inspiring what came to be called the retorno in Puela, the movement to return collectively to rebuild their home communities. Just as new urban relations w ­ ere as material as they ­were symbolic, so too was the retorno.

50 • Mobility and Legibility

Kindness at a Short Distance: Julia’s Story However improbably, some ­people found joy and community in their movements. Julia Granizo is a fair-­haired ­woman with bright blue eyes and an even brighter demeanor. She exudes a certain magnetism that makes her well liked by just about every­one around the canton. Julia was thirty-­seven years old at the time of the eruptions, a single ­mother of a six-­year-­old son. She knew a few ­people in Penipe Township who helped her out. It began with ­simple greetings and asking a­ fter her and her ­family. “God bless them. . . . ​This helped me, it filled me up. It gave me the bravery to survive all this.” This soon turned into material support that would make all the difference to her. “God bless them, they gave me a home where I could live. They lent it to me, they ­didn’t charge me rent or anything. I only paid—­sometimes when they let me, if I had the money, I paid the telephone, w ­ ater, and light bills. So, for me, God bless them, this gratitude ­will never end . . . ​­because the ­whole time they lent me a hand. The owner gave me a ­little h ­ ouse down by what is now the municipal building. I lived t­ here almost ten years, ­until they gave me the ­house in the resettlement.” She lived ­there with her el­derly parents, her b­ rother, and her son. She found work in Riobamba, which for her was tierra ajena (foreign land). I asked Julia why she did not migrate further, as many o­ thers had at this time. Why come back to Penipe at such a time when it seemed every­one was moving out? For her, it was her attachment to kin, to home. Mobility and place w ­ ere, for her, inextricably bound. “It’s b­ ecause my f­ amily ­didn’t want to leave and go far. I’ll remain with them u­ ntil the end b­ ecause they d­ on’t want to go.” T ­ oward 2006, ­little by ­little, her ­brother and parents began returning to Manzano, “but ­because I had my son, I remained [in Penipe Nuevo] ­because back then he was young and had to go to school and all that, so I remained.” Fragmenting Families and the Malaise of the City: Blanca’s Story Though many families and kin networks coped with displacement together, just as many w ­ ere broken up in the pro­cess. Doña Blanca was fifty-­one years old at the time of the eruptions. Though only a few inches over five feet, most ­people who have ever known her would describe her as spirited and possessing a mercurial personality much larger than her diminutive figure might suggest. At the time of the eruptions, she had a food stall with a few ­tables on the road through Puela Parish. Mutual support among kin and community was central to her life. She was very close to her son and one of his close friends, and the two of them helped her run the stand for a few years. She also helped care for her el­derly parents and, especially, her b­ rother, who lived with severe neurodevelopmental disability. B ­ ecause Blanca and her son had saved earnings from their work, they ­were able to rent an apartment in Riobamba for the f­ amily ­after the eruptions, with some help from her siblings who lived nearby. But their tight-­k nit unit soon began to unravel. Her son, who had met a Swiss ­woman while working in the city prior to the eruptions, de­cided to marry and move to Switzerland in 2000.

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 51

Soon, Blanca would suffer further losses and f­ amily trauma. “About two, three months a­ fter my son left, my ­brother died.” The move was especially traumatic for him, “­because a disabled person suffers a g­ reat deal and so do t­ hose around them.” The ­family all strug­g led to adapt to city living in Riobamba, as their neighbors from Manzano had, but the strug­gle was more acute for her ­brother. “Well, my parents, however el­derly, w ­ ere much easier b­ ecause you could tell them, ‘Look ­after this, take care of that,’ and they understood and ­there was no prob­ lem. In contrast, my ­brother did not adjust to the city, and it was a prob­lem ­because they ­couldn’t even rent a ­house. It was terrible, terrible, terrible the situation. He begged for hours at a time to go back home. I told him no. Even on the night he died, he had come to find me to tell me he was ­going back to the ­house.” Her f­ ather died a year ­later, and shortly thereafter they had to bring her ­mother to live in a nursing home in Penipe. This left Blanca alone. But she was resourceful and per­sis­tent, and her story reveals not only the fragmentation of kin networks in urban displacement but also her efforts to return and work for the ­future. Years ­later, she would be a key figure in the organ­ization of the Pusuca resettlement. She proved to be a forceful community leader and regularly engaged outside organ­izations for entrepreneurial proj­ects and community development.

Judith’s Suite of Movements Some ­people found themselves building new families while adrift in the archipelago, making iterative movements as opportunities presented themselves and all the while working to make their way back home. Judith gave birth just before the 1999 eruptions, though she and David, her neighbor and the f­ ather of her child, w ­ ere not yet married. In August, the volcano began to smoke and smoke and smoke. I gave birth to Maria in July. Then in October, the volcano r­ eally erupted. We—­David and I—­lived apart. He lived in his parents’ ­house and I in mine, with my parents. ­A fter September, I d­ idn’t see David anymore. In October, the volcano erupted, and he was h ­ ere, but then he was gone, and I knew nothing of him. We all evacuated a­ fter October. Every­one. I stayed with my f­ ather. . . . ​I had stayed ­here with my baby ­daughter—­sleeping alone in a tiny room—­two nights during the eruptions in October, but then they came and brought me with them . . . ​my f­ ather, my m ­ other, and my ­brothers and ­sisters. My other b­ rothers went to Quito. My other s­ ister was already in Quito. I was the only one h ­ ere with my ­daughter. The volcano had been shooting ash, but I ­hadn’t left.

In late December, while visiting the Government Health Subcenter in Penipe for her ­daughter’s checkup, she ran into David and, a­ fter spending some time discussing their lives, they de­cided they would be together and create a f­ amily. She credits then-­mayor of Penipe Francisco Santiago with connecting evacuees

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with employment opportunities outside the designated “high-­risk zone.” They called together a meeting of “every­one who wanted to work and was fleeing the volcano.” Judith recalls that ­people came from just about ­every evacuated village. “We had gone to check it out ­because I wanted to be included for work. So, carry­ ing my baby ­daughter alone, we went to the meeting, and David wanted to sign up for work too. So, we had just ­really gotten together and now we ­were off to work together.” They spent almost a year working for a florist just outside the capital city of Quito, roughly 120 km to the north. Judith and David w ­ ere anxious to return home. By the end of 2000, Judith was pregnant with their second ­daughter and could no longer work since they ­were using strong fungicides in the flower fields. Th ­ ere was as yet no way to return to Manzano, but with the help of David’s ­sister they managed to find a room to rent in Calpi, a village in neighboring El Altar Parish, where they would remain for just over two years. Judith stayed at home, tending to her pregnancy and her toddler while David found work with a lumber com­pany. ­A fter a year away, during which he sent money for Judith and the girls, he returned, and they de­cided to relocate to Riobamba. “In Riobamba, he worked as a driver at a gas depot. We ­were ­there four years, so my ­daughter entered kindergarten t­ here. We saw that life ­there was complicated ­because we had to buy every­thing in Riobamba. We bought so many ­things and the girls ­were starting to grow, so we de­cided to return h ­ ere.” Unlike the fragmentation Blanca experienced, ­here is a case where ­family and kin grew in displacement, where Judith and David shared their attachment to their home village and found ways to succeed by moving and working in many places. They returned to Manzano to stay with Judith’s parents and David went off to work with the lumber com­pany for a while. David’s ­father, Don Luis Ramírez, said they should build their lives ­there in Manzano and he would facilitate that by granting them and his d­ aughter subdivisions of his lands. “This is all official now. But ­after so much sacrifice, we ­were able to erect this ­house. ­There was nothing h ­ ere. . . . ​So, we worked on building the h ­ ouse. . . . ​But, to live, it was impossible anywhere ­else, so I said it would just be better if we went to sleep ­there, and so we did. We came h ­ ere.” But alas, their return would be rather short-­lived.

Interlude: The Perduring Archipelago and Legacies of Mobility and Dislocation If patterns of mobility in twenty-­first-­century Ec­ua­dor can be characterized as late-­modern vertical and horizontal archipelagos—as I would argue—­then Juan Ortiz, Julia Granizo, Martina Barriga, and Judith Guamushi are master Argonauts. Martina and Judith especially, but also Julia and the many young men like Juan who hired themselves out as day laborers, helped me understand that some degree of mobility has remained a part of social and economic life in Penipe g­ oing

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 53

back generations. Rural cabildos strug­gled to maintain the h ­ uman and physical bound­aries of villages constituted by patterns of mobility and social networks that extended well beyond their borders. ­People migrated to work prior to and following the eruptions to places including Guayaquil, Riobamba, Quito, Baños, vari­ous locations in the Amazon, and other smaller cities and communities. Owing primarily to the scarcity of land and economic resources in the rural peripheries of small highland cantons like Penipe, plenty of ­people in the rural parishes lived lives divided for varying periods of time between their home villages and communities a distance away. Juan Ortiz and his older b­ rother, Javier, had always worked as peones (agricultural day laborers) prior to the eruptions. ­They’d hire themselves out in their home village of Pungal de Puela or wherever they could find work, w ­ hether near or far. Before the eruptions, Julia worked in a restaurant in Baños, cooking or attending to customers in a cafeteria that served local foods. She had been working t­here for nearly fifteen years prior to the eruptions. She would come to Manzano regularly to visit her parents and b­ rother and to help on the lands, but she said she was never cut out for farming. She had a bad back and she had never been any good at swinging an azadón (hoe). In 1999, Martina was living between her home village of Manzano and the nearby city, Riobamba. She worked in the kitchen of a restaurant to earn a meager living during the week and returned to Manzano on weekends to help her ­mother and s­ isters tend the land. When I asked which was her primary residence or livelihood, she responded with mild puzzlement before patiently explaining that she and her ­family depended on both. When Tungurahua erupted, she found herself displaced along with her other ­family members. She could not subsist on her restaurant earnings alone, so she found herself in the shelters in Penipe along with her four-­year-­old ­daughter. Displacement, however, was an old story for Martina. She and her four ­sisters had been raised in poverty by their single m ­ other. When she was twelve years old, her m ­ other did what many land-­poor families with multiple c­ hildren had done in the villages in Puela Parish for generations—­she sent her to the city as a live-in domestic worker for a ­family in the capital city of Quito. “That ­family treated me very badly. They would just beat me and every­thing. . . . ​So, since I was very young t­ hese t­ hings have happened to me. I came home a year l­ater ­because my ­mother came to find me; if it ­weren’t for that I ­wouldn’t have ever returned. I ­didn’t know how to get back home.” She no longer fought back the tears she had been choking back ­until uttering this last sentence. Though her ­mother took her home, her return was short-­lived. Her m ­ other was unable to provide for them, even with their help farming. She soon returned to work in the city—­for a time in Baños, then in Riobamba—­using her meager earnings to support herself and contribute to the f­ amily, while returning to help with farmwork on weekends. She spent a few years in the coastal city of Guayaquil, where she gave birth to her son in the early 1980s. By the late 1990s, she had gone back

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to working jobs in ­either Baños or Riobamba so she could be nearer her ­family and their land. Judith too had been sent out as a domestic laborer as a young girl. One morning in July 2018, I visited her at the clapboard ­house she and David had built for their f­ amily in Manzano. Her sixteen-­year-­old ­daughter, Karen, was also ­there, wearing her trademark wool beanie as she had since we first met ten years ­earlier. Karen sat closer to us as Judith’s older ­daughter, Maria, worked on a metal-­shop proj­ect for one of her classes at the Escuela Politecnica, a university in Riobamba. Judith invited me inside and told me several stories about her childhood and her f­ather. They ­were very poor and t­here w ­ ere eleven of them in the ­house­hold. Her ­father admonished her to study diligently up ­until she was nearly ten years old and had completed second grade; then her parents pulled her out of school, saying that she needed to work. Though she was born in 1977, twelve years ­a fter her neighbor Martina, families would still send out their ­children to work in the city as recently as the late 1980s. Her parents sent Judith to work for a f­ amily in Riobamba when she was merely twelve years old. She cooked and cleaned and performed all the h ­ ouse­hold chores. The f­ amily only fed her their leftovers. She began breakfast at 4 a.m. and did not sleep ­until at least 10 p.m. At first, she simply did not eat. She was unable to return home again for three months, but then her patron took her to see her parents, where he paid her ­father, not her, “ni un sucre,” she said.1 ­A fter a short visit with her ­family, they returned to Riobamba. This continued for nearly two years, ­after which she returned home, but her f­ather said t­ here was nothing for her and she would have to find work. Her ­brother taught her how to ­handle an azadón and she worked ­until her hands bled. If they had breakfast, they had no lunch. If they had lunch, ­there was no breakfast. She worked while hungry and more than once broke down in desperation. Her eyes welled up as she said this. Her d­ aughter Karen, sitting with us as she shared her story, looked silently at the floor. I was not sure that she had ever heard ­these stories before. She mentioned emotional distress more than once. Her f­ather counted on less than one hectare of land, so Judith did not inherit any land from her f­amily. Her ­father too lent himself out as a peon on other ­people’s lands and planted a medias (sharecropped on other ­peoples’ lands). Every­thing they had ­today—­the ­house and small plot of land in Manzano—­came mostly from David. Though less common now, the practice of sending out young ­women from poor families to l­ abor for wealthier urban families was common throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This reveals not only a legacy of pain for many who endured this but also historical f­ actors of land scarcity, impoverishment, and mobilities that would make it difficult for p­ eople to make a full life in an urban setting, ­either temporarily or in the more permanent resettlements to come.

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 55

To the Care of the Hills, and to the War Zone: The 2006 Eruptions In the first few years following the 1999 eruptions and evacuation, the villages alongside the volcano remained virtually abandoned. Thousands of ­people remained displaced and, though some frequently returned to their lands, chronic ashfall continued to degrade the soil and destroy the l­ imited crop yields, while periodic la­va, pyroclastic, and lahar flows created a significant public safety issue in the area. But with the relative calm of Tungurahua in 2005, about 300 families returned home and sought to re-­establish their livelihoods on their traditional lands. Bernardo and Doña Clara longed to return home to Manzano. ­A fter a ­little over two years in Riobamba, they returned to Manzano, but it would not be home ­until the community returned, the ­water was flowing, and the animals w ­ ere thriving. Bernardo remained estranged from his place so long as he was alone or one of a few. “We ­were the first to return,” he said, and they remained alone for a ­little over a month before anyone ­else returned. Don Vico and his wife ­were the next to come back. It was a good month before they ­were able to get tanks of ­water delivered for drinking, cooking, and bathing. We r­ eally suffered ­until Don Vico arrived. Once he was ­there, we ­were able to see about the ­water, ­because that’s what interested us the most then, and then we obtained it. . . . ​A nd w ­ e’ve continued struggling since then. . . . ​­There have been some p­ eople who ask me, “Why do you continue to live in Puela?” I say ­because I love Puela. It’s my life and I was born t­ here. . . . ​I love it ­because I was born t­ here, I love my land. I find . . . ​what it takes to fill the emptiness of life. . . . ​Nature has struck us many, many times . . . ​but we keep struggling on.

Teresa Caicedo left El Tingo and, ­after spending a few days in the shelters, she and her husband moved to Penipe for three years. Through an acquaintance, she made a sharecropping arrangement where she could live in the h ­ ouse rent-­ free and work the lands, sharing harvests with the ­owners. Her eldest son, Angel Turushina, had been in high school in Baños and then went to Ambato to continue his studies. Her other two sons and one d­ aughter w ­ ere in school in Riobamba, where she rented a room for them. “But it was hard, you see. We ­didn’t have any money; we d­ idn’t have anything. Then the volcano was supposedly calm. The civil defense said it was more or less calm. We returned. We went back up ­there and started working again with a few animals, but not much. . . . ​With some abandoned cages. But what happened then was worse. I think we committed an error returning.” Tungurahua came roaring back to life in 2006 far more powerfully than in 1999. The eruptive pro­cesses began in May with a surge in seismic activity that was attributed to increased pressure inside the volcano. On July 14 the volcano

56 • Mobility and Legibility

erupted, generating la­va, pyroclastic flows, and large volumes of ashfall. Large explosions rang out from the crater and shook the earth starting at 6 p.m. and continuing throughout the night. For several days, at least twenty pyroclastic flows descended the gorges along the volcano’s southwestern flank—­k nown locally as Achupashal, Mandur, and La Hacienda—­reaching several villages below, where cascajo and ash rained down heavi­ly, resulting in the destruction of crops and the death of numerous large and small livestock. The Penipe-­Baños road was destroyed in four places and several bridges w ­ ere partially or totally demolished. By late July, the eruptive pro­cess appeared to subside, but the Instituto Geofísico warned that it was far from over. On August 16, Tungurahua erupted more fiercely than any eruption in recent memory, with heavy ashfall, gas emissions, lahars, and la­va and pyroclastic flows, leading to the evacuation of residents of three surrounding provinces. A large pyroclastic flow came down the Achupashal gorge, destroying several villages and damming the Rio Chambo. The government issued a decree renewing the state of emergency throughout Cantons Baños and Cotaló in Tungurahua Province and Penipe in Chimborazo Province. As many as 1,600 ­people who preventatively evacuated in July had returned to tend to their animals and belongings (Ec­ua­dor Red Cross 2007). But while many initially resisted evacuation, by August 17 t­ here w ­ ere another roughly 15,000 ­people in the shelters. At least 700 families (3,200 ­people) ­were permanently displaced, and authorities estimated that more than 650,000 p­ eople w ­ ere affected by the eruptions (PAHO 2006). The eruption resulted in the death of six ­people and more than fifty ­others ­were treated for burns sustained from la­va flows, incandescent rock, and vapor (UNOCHA 2006). The evacuations, although in many ways chaotic and frightening, ran much more smoothly and safely than in 1999 b­ ecause residents had prior experience, new evacuation procedures had helped prepare the agencies, and shelters had been constructed in Penipe and Pelileo in 2004. Though ­there ­were formal warnings and evacuations this time, operations ­were again handled by the civil defense and a task force from the Ministry of Defense, whose paramilitary extraction techniques added to ­people’s trauma and distrust during multiple, prolonged evacuations in July and August. In the end, the civil defense declared that at least twelve villages on the western slope of Tungurahua had been destroyed (AP-­CNN 2006).

Recursive Evacuation and Minga Mutual Aid: Judith’s Story We might think of evacuation as one movement, or one burst of movements: a quick dash to safety, perhaps followed by a careful return, but for many p­ eople living around Tungurahua it was more recursive and protracted. Th ­ ese pro­cesses also reveal the tight-­k nit web of relations between ­humans, animals, and the landscape and how this coexistence was realized through cooperative institutions such as minga. Judith Guamushi was then twenty-­nine years old, the ­mother of two d­ aughters, six and seven years old, and her f­ amily of four was fi­nally living

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 57

back in Manzano. She remembers the earliest days of the 2006 eruptions, when the earth began to “shake and shake and shake and shake.” Like many ­others, Judith, David, and their kin and neighbors ­were reluctant to leave, having just recently returned from their prolonged sojourns. “I said to David, ‘Should we leave?’ ‘No’ he said. That’s how it was. But, I say, that’s when it was shaking and this all moved,” she said as she gestured broadly around to the ­house; “But it ­didn’t fall,” she added with a chortle. “The volcano began to spew smoke from the morning.” At 6 p.m., her brother-­in-­law, Pablo, and another neighbor came by and called out to David, saying, “ ‘Look the volcano is coming down!’ But the man just d­ idn’t believe it. So, we went out back and saw that it was starting. It was exploding and coming down, all of it, all of the embers I suppose.” She pointed up the hill to Tungurahua: “It came down the gorge just up t­ here.” Like a g­ reat many of their neighbors, they w ­ ere concerned about their animals. They had hens and about fifteen pigs, and they had recently acquired some cows. “I said, ‘My ­mother has the cows, let’s go help bring them down.’ ” In the after­noon on the day following the initial evacuations, the eruptions increased in intensity. ­ ater in the night, we c­ ouldn’t sleep. We w L ­ ere watching the volcano. . . . ​A nd so we ­were outside ­until midnight. And my d­ aughters ­were sleeping. And it began to worsen. . . . ​My brother-­in-­law had a truck. . . . ​He came by and said, “Let’s go!” This was about two months before the r­ eally big eruption, but it was erupting just the same, with ­these rocks coming down from the sky. And my brother-­in-­law said, “Let’s go!” So, we jumped in the car and headed down. He said, “We only have to go down as far as Puela.”

She remembers the cascajo falling hard. “And we saw that ­there ­were ­these flows that began on the volcano, t­ hese fiery flows.” They remained in Puela as the civil defense (and possibly the military) began evacuations throughout the region. In Puela, they formed a ­little camp. They heard reports of la­va flowing, but they took comfort in the fact that the high hill between Puela and the volcano—­El Montirón, long regarded as a guardian that facilitated climactic patterns favorable to local agriculture—­would protect them. “That was our salvation,” Judith told me. They went to sleep in the gymnasium in Puela but falling cascajo pelted the roof and disturbed their sleep. “And this was the small eruption, compared to what happened a­ fter,” she reminded me. In the morning, they had difficulty returning to Manzano, as the civil defense had restricted access, but they worried about the animals, with their feed and pasture covered in ash. Where could they take them? “So, a­ fter 15 days of this, we or­ga­nized a minga.” P ­ eople had returned from their initial flights from the eruption. ­There was an air of uncertainty. “We came together as a community.” They distributed the aid that arrived among t­ hose who gathered in Puela. “We distributed so many ­things they brought, like rice, sugar,

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tuna, every­thing—­rations. And we distributed every­thing ­there to every­one pre­sent. . . . ​Every­one had to work to feed themselves. The ash had fallen on all of us . . . ​on all the crops. But ­there ­were parts that could be saved. So, we formed a group, every­one from Manzano, to cook in the casa comunal. We w ­ ere cooking for all who came.” Judith described a spirit of communitas, with every­one looking out for one another. She remembered reciprocal exchanges of ­favors—­randimpa and cambia manos: “One goes, then another, then another, like that. And at that time that’s how we ate.” Though I detail this spirit in part II, it is worth mentioning ­here that, unlike common anthropological attention to spontaneous cooperation and communitas in disasters, the practices of minga and reciprocity w ­ ere institutions and signs that not only had names, but also had attendant sets of princi­ples, rules, and obligations. This was therefore not a spontaneous form of cooperation so much as an unplanned practice of an other­wise storied institution and idiom for organ­izing collective action. Then came the power­ful August 16 eruptions prompting the evacuation of residents of three surrounding provinces. Sometime around 11 p.m., Judith and her ­family de­cided to evacuate. They had been at home in Manzano, but they walked down to Puela with her brother-­in-­law, now without the car, as it had been severely damaged by falling cascajo. The ash was so thick they could barely see. They walked, carry­ing their ­daughters, each wearing particulate filtering masks and protective goggles. She called her ­father from Puela. He and her ­mother had remained in Manzano. He said to keep in touch if they heard anything and she asked him to do the same. ­ ere was always a bus driver that slept ­here, and that night he was up h Th ­ ere sleeping. That was just the night that the volcano erupted. We had just walked down at 11 at night when we came down to Puela. But this road down to Puela was getting worse and worse and worse. The electric cables ­were shaking on the poles. Someone ran to the bus and said, “Let’s go! Let’s not stay h ­ ere. Let’s go down on the bus.” A short while ­later another bus arrived to carry more ­people out. We got on that one. On the bus, my brother-­in-­law said the bus had come just in time. My f­ ather had called out from the bus win­dow to come. Th ­ ere was nothing more. But we d­ idn’t know where we ­were g­ oing on this bus. My parents ­were t­ here now—­I ­wouldn’t separate from them—so I got on with David [and] my ­children, and my brother-­in-­law, Leo, was in the other. The bus went straight from Puela to Penipe, passing the bridge in El Altar. The other bus ­stopped in Pungal b­ ecause ours was full of ­people from ­here. By the time we got to Penipe, ­there w ­ ere already ­others t­ here. They gave us a ­couple beds. . . . ​A nd we looked for Leo. We c­ ouldn’t find him, and that bus ­didn’t arrive. ­There ­were shelters. We went to the shelters in Penipe. We arrived at the coliseum, which was part of the old high school. But my brother-­in-­law ­didn’t arrive. The bus ­didn’t arrive.

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 59

And, being t­ here like that, the animals ­here—­pigs, hens—­but that one ­ asn’t like the other eruption before. That was just some small cascajos and no w more. Now ­there w ­ ere t­ hese much thicker ones falling, which is why we went so quickly this time. And the bus carried us out. Then, at nearly three in the morning, the other bus arrived with Leo and full of p­ eople choking and terrified. And out of desperation that the volcano was coming down on top of them, they crossed the bridge at Palictahua. They told us that it had been so dark and ­there had been a barrier that blocked their way. They could not cross the bridge and so had to come back up the other way, Leo explained. He arrived shaking with fear. We ran into each other in Penipe and stayed t­ here. We woke up sitting on the mattresses. They had given us mattresses, but it was uncomfortable. We woke up at four in the morning b­ ecause it was so uncomfortable, and we wanted to see who had arrived and if all was OK. Of course, we ­were all uncomfortable, although we w ­ ere among the ­people we know . . . ​ but the real­ity was that, at bottom, it is ugly to live like this in a shelter.

The War Zone: Angel’s Story Just a few months prior, Angel Turushina, who had experienced the 1999 eruptions as a teenager with his ­mother, Teresa Caicedo, had returned with his wife, Monica Martínez, to the community of El Tingo in Puela ­after spending three years working as h ­ otel caretakers in Baños. They w ­ ere building a h ­ ouse on Angel’s parents’ land and stayed in his parents’ h ­ ouse while they worked. On the night of the eruptions in 2006, Angel returned from work, and “It was already a war zone . . . ​the p­ eople ­were already evacuating, but I said not me ­because we have to care for the animals.” He ran to see to his goats and rabbits and to check in on his ­mother’s cuyes and rabbits. The volcano ­really erupted around nine at night and t­ here w ­ ere so many cars, dump trucks, and the military, every­one to evacuate the ­people. . . . ​Obviously, many of us said we would not leave. The first eruptions passed, and I went to sleep b­ ecause we w ­ ere so tired of ­running around to see what was happening, watching the volcano, seeing the electric storms on the mountain, every­thing. It was a war zone in Puela. It was erupting, exploding all the time. We went to bring the mare in ­under a roof that would protect her from cascajo, and the goats too. . . . ​It was pure ash everywhere, pure ash and falling cascajo . . . ​so much and so fast, like we’d never seen before. We went out b­ ecause we wanted to get out, but it was frightening. ­People w ­ ere lined up along the road looking to evacuate but t­ here w ­ ere no vehicles to evacuate them at the time of this big eruption.

They walked up to Puela center from El Tingo below and boarded a car from the municipality.

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Angel remembered the harrowing tale of the bus that had set off to Pungal de Puela. “It was on its way to Pungal passing through Palictahua when the first wheel was overcome by a pyroclastic flow, so they had to pull back and it was a miracle they saved themselves. . . . ​In Penipe . . . ​the vehicles arrived with p­ eople evacuating and the c­ hildren cried, looking around, ‘Where is my f­ ather? Where is my m ­ other?’ And even down in Penipe ash fell, it was terrible.”

Humanitarian Legibility: Aid and Deservingness By 2006 t­ here ­were dedicated shelters in place, although p­ eople reported that conditions w ­ ere l­ ittle better than they had been in prior shelters. The civil defense focused on acquiring, transporting, and distributing food rations and donations to the evacuees while coordinating and supporting responding agencies, including vari­ous government ministries, the Red Cross, the fire department, the police, and the army, as well as a sizable retinue of volunteers. Nonetheless, ­people reported that conditions in the shelters ­were ­little better than in 1999. Though they received food, ­water, medicines, and clothing, ­these items ­were often scarce. Shelters w ­ ere crowded and felt even more so when the many c­ hildren w ­ ere rowdy and disruptive. ­People felt that they had no control over their own lives. As time went on, a pervasive sense of indignity sunk in as p­ eople w ­ ere once again without their means of livelihood, their homes, and their privacy. Many ­were anxious to return to their lives and provide for themselves and their families. Most ­were thankful for the aid they received, but many perceived inequities in aid distribution. ­There w ­ ere accusations of favoritism and greed, with some claiming that certain individuals ­were given choice items ahead of o­ thers or that aid was distributed to t­ hose who did not truly need it. Th ­ ere was tension and several disputes arose between neighbors. The distribution of humanitarian aid often demanded legibility to which ­people could not conform. Martina Barriga, who had been navigating between wage ­labor in Riobamba during the week and farm ­labor with her ­family on weekends, found herself displaced along with her other f­ amily members. She could not subsist on her earnings alone in Riobamba, so she found herself in the shelters with her three-­year-­old ­daughter in Penipe. But when she lined up for aid such as meals and food rations—an indignity she still recalled with shame and sadness years ­later—­she found herself excluded by her friends and neighbors. They lined up, but they ­didn’t let me enter the line. . . . ​The same ­people from my land said that I d­ on’t have the right to claim anything, ­because I’m not evacuated . . . ​­because I have not lived t­ here; that for this reason I d­ on’t have the right to claim anything. They said [aid] was arriving and I went . . . ​where the director was, the one who or­ga­nized the delivery of food rations, and said please help me, please see me too. And he said, “Do you know this w ­ oman? Do

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 61

you know if she is from t­ here?” and no one said, “We know her, she’s from ­there.” No one said anything.

Some of Martina’s erstwhile neighbors in Manzano told her she had no right to aid in the shelters b­ ecause she did not live in Manzano. One neighbor she had grown up with, Rosa Barriga, was particularly vocal. She told Martina that she had no right to aid—­she was an opportunist who had come to get something for nothing. O ­ thers ­were more deserving. In the precarious times following the evacuations, many evacuees w ­ ere anxious about their own claims to recovery aid and hypervigilant about the deservingness of ­others. This hypervigilance often worked indirectly on the state, as ­people pressed the humanitarian assemblage into greater alignment with local values of fairness and equity by calling out ­every pos­si­ble infraction. Such is the politics of deservingness. Yet, while she ultimately fought for inclusion and won, as recently as 2018 Martina shared this story with me once again, no longer fighting back the tears that now streamed down her face. Kati came from Anabá, one of the smaller villages in Puela Parish. She had been in Riobamba at the time of the eruptions ­because her husband was ill, and they rented a room t­ here to be near the hospital. She regularly returned home on weekends to tend to their crops. Kati told me that at the time of the eruptions, her corn was shoulder high. She also tended to their peaches and apples, as she feared both rot and theft in their absence during the week. “We ­were missing this and unaccustomed [to the back and forth], when the ash and cascajo fell, and felled trees on the land. It completely damaged the land.” She said it was well known that the city was no place for poor p­ eople like them to live; ­there was so much t­ here and e­ very kind and class of p­ eople, but every­thing costs money, and what did they have? “What we had in the country, we knew to work, to make our food, our l­ ittle ovens. . . . ​Thanks to God we had the necessities and a l­ ittle left over, so we could eat. We have taken care of our corn to make sure we had enough for the next year, but now, nothing. B ­ ecause of so much ash, we have suffered im­mensely, and become poorer.” Kati said that, along with the many material losses came disunity and the fracturing of community, which began in the shelters and continued in resettlements in the coming years. And the disunion. For example, in Puela we w ­ ere united. . . . ​We w ­ ere one ­family, but with the eruptions, some went one way, o­ thers the other way, aid came, and no one communicated. Every­thing became divided and all became enemies of the o­ thers. No one cared for us. No m ­ atter what l­ ittle ­matter, no one was conversing. . . . ​Now ­there is a l­ ittle assistance in Puela, but we are denied. The president of the Junta Parroquial denies it, he d­ oesn’t want to give it out; he only gives to t­ hose whose ­faces he knows from his circle, or his f­ amily, to them he gives all. But we who are not ­family, no, he has a g­ reat hate. When

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we go to Puela . . . ​we feel less inclined to return to our own lands. We ­were part of [the community] and it’s sad, but we continue on our land.

Kati had lands with a ­house but said she was unable to repair her home as o­ thers had ­because she had been left out of the distribution of roofing materials that came shortly ­after the eruptions. “I had lands with a ­house, and I ­didn’t have the energy to claim roofing to repair my h ­ ouse b­ ecause they d­ idn’t give it to me, they denied me. So, this is a life without life.” Like many, she had survived in the barest biological sense, but ­there was l­ ittle more to life ­a fter the eruptions. ­Those who tried to make do with what they could recover from their homes and land had to contend with the fact that mobility in the area designated “high risk” had to be monitored, regulated, and made legible. Unlike in 1999, authorities allowed daily access to homes and lands in the high-­risk zone but required ­people to evacuate before sundown. Many ­people slept in shelters and returned daily to the hillsides to tend crops and animals, often leaving their c­ hildren in the shelters during the day. In an attempt to monitor and control access to villages in the high-­risk zone, supposedly to prevent theft, malfeasance, and the return of villa­gers before the eruptions had subsided, the civil defense issued identification cards to heads of ­house­holds and frequently accompanied locals as they visited their property. In most villages, residents’ initial efforts to return home full time ­were not successful—­too much was damaged and the risks remained too g­ reat. This left several thousand p­ eople displaced, unable to return to live, cultivate crops, raise animals, and make their livelihoods in more than a dozen villages along the flanks of the volcano. Over the next c­ ouple of years, as roughly 6,000 ­people remained displaced, the Ec­ua­dor­ian government and several NGOs—­both domestic and international—­turned over a variety of plans for long-­term recovery and resettlement. During this time, chronic low-­level eruptions and ashfall continued, frequently blanketing the surrounding area with ash, and ­people confronted profound uncertainty each day as vari­ous individuals, groups, and organ­izations began planning their ­futures for them.

Conclusion: Mobilities and the State As in past eruptions and evacuations, ­people ­were often uncertain of what agencies they ­were dealing with, where they ­were meant to go, and how they could find the resources they needed to put their lives back together. Along the way, they exercised creative agency in enacting strategies and adaptations to radical changes in their lives, their access to resources, and their relationship to space and place. What also becomes obvious in ­these narratives is that villages in Penipe are not merely sites of (post)colonial power constraining subaltern agency and mobility, they are homes with generations of deeply meaningful attachments to community, kin, livelihoods, animals, and landscapes. ­ People’s narratives

Archipelagoes and Bare Life • 63

illustrate how they ­were contending with bare life to craft something much fuller, attempting to make themselves and their communities ­whole. I detect new dynamics of mobility at work h ­ ere. While it is an enduring livelihood strategy in rural Ec­ua­dor, mobility also has a legacy of pain for p­ eople contending with poverty and displacement. And while mobility can be a strategy for adapting to chronic or acute hazards and sociopolitical upheavals, it can also contribute to physical risk (i.e., returning to a hazard in the absence of alternatives) and brush up against resettlement deservingness standards based on principles of settlement legibility. In the following chapter, we see how many of the movements coupled with o­ thers following the 2006 eruptions to culminate in the coproduction of space with larger and more heterogeneous collectives and urban spatial ecologies. And, somewhat paradoxically, both ­those whose lives ­were most characterized by mobility and ­those who ­were more successful in adapting to displacement ­were at greater risk of being excluded from resettlements that would help them find a way that was at least closer to home.

3

The Production of Space Following the 2006 eruptions, Bernardo Huerta, Doña Clara, and Bernardo’s new wife, Rosario, went to Santa Teresita, a satellite village of neighboring Canton Guano, where a friend of Rosario’s f­ ather lent them a h ­ ouse and some land. “I had no work, so I had to go out and look for it and a school friend of mine told me about an opportunity to work making aluminum win­dows. . . . ​They paid me $50 per week . . . ​I helped out.” He could then contribute to paying the bills and ­house­hold expenses. As she had during their previous displacement, Doña Clara cooked for every­one. ­A fter a few months, Bernardo was making $70 per week. They would travel back and forth between Santa Teresita and Manzano regularly to tend to their animals, especially their pigs. They de­cided ­after a ­couple of months that they would have to sell them off, as some of the pigs became sick, perhaps from the ash-­contaminated air and feed, and ­others succumbed to injuries sustained from falling cascajo during the eruptions. Bernardo wondered if they would have to go on living like this forever, in an urban township where they worked for wages and purchased every­thing. Th ­ ere was a rumor of buyouts for their land and a program through which the government would assume owner­ship of p­ eople’s lands on the volcano in exchange for equal areas of arable land elsewhere. But for Bernardo, his kin, and his neighbors, it was about more than land. It was about their community, their patrimony; it was about the land of Manzano, not just any land. A ­ fter a year spent mostly away in nearby Santa Teresita, they returned to Manzano and begin rebuilding not only their own home and land, but the community. “The few of us who had returned by then had a meeting to try and or­ga­nize ourselves as we had in the past. Again I was president.” 64

The Production of Space • 65

Most of ­those who ­were displaced following the 2006 eruptions and evacuations found themselves choosing between the city and shelter living, both of which they found alienating and dehumanizing. Movements into and through ­these spaces w ­ ere bricolage strategies, an iterative cobbling together of scarce resources that might become available or dis­appear at any moment. The precariousness of all this patching together of means, relations, and mobilities was exacerbated by the loss of community, of collective capacities and familiarities. It was how p­ eople secured bare life and ­little more. No sooner had they evacuated than they began planning their return, endeavors that would ­later accumulate to form the retorno movement to rebuild the villages of Puela Parish. Very par­tic­u­lar patterns and strategies of mobility are perennial features of rural life in Penipe. In mobility, we can find some of the clearest signals of an other­wise before all but fixed settlement was rendered unthinkable. Successive state demands for legibility facilitated the administrative ordering of populations at the expense of the fuller lives of real p­ eople. In this chapter, following a brief foray into narratives of mobility, I describe the formation of very par­tic­u­lar and protean state assemblages created through and by pro­cesses of (re)settlement that would trou­ble, and be troubled by, mobility. The plans for and pro­cesses of resettlement activated the politics of deservingness, not merely in the sorting but also in the recursive production of the spaces and subjects alternatively deemed deserving and undeserving of aid. Some p­ eople who moved with a mea­sure of success found themselves rendered unrecognizable by their mobilities in the eyes of the state. Moreover, villa­gers and village councils found themselves sometimes momentarily activated as frontline state actors in the politics of deservingness, activations that came at times when they w ­ ere most anxious about their own access to scarce aid resources. Alas, the politics of deservingness is never disinterested at any level of scale. And in this pro­cess we get a glimpse of how tensions between mobility and the legibilizing proj­ect of (re)settlement become a form of procedural vulnerability, recapitulating structural inequalities forged in colonial relations (Veland et al. 2013). We find in resettlement construction the embodiment of the state assemblage, its inscription on the built environment, and the articulation of po­liti­cal pro­cesses of placemaking in the spatial ecol­ogy of bare life (­after Faas, Barrios, Marino, et al. 2020). The very notion of disaster “recovery” is “loaded with semisubmerged values” (De Waal 2008, xi) that guide the management of p­ eoples while minimizing po­liti­cal threats to the state. Planning and construction pro­cesses spanned years, largely ­because of bureaucratic bottlenecks, but also ­because of multiple nodes in state assemblages working at cross-­purposes. P ­ eople w ­ ere left uncertain, working to secure shelter and necessities to sustain bare life in the hope of returning to something approximating the familiar. But even when construction was complete, the resettlements offered ­little more than shelter and bare life. As if the specter of colonial relationalities was not already clear enough, key resettlement proj­ects ­were enacted via minga practice, an institution and

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structuring idiom of Andean culture appropriated by NGOs in the realization of plans they had drafted. ­These appropriations ­were met with mild re­sis­ tance and disillusionment at times but culminated in collective action to advance resettlements. And we see ­here how minga practice was, in the pro­cess, bound up with the formation of assemblages and the politics of deservingness for which campesinos ­were not themselves the arbiters. Minga was practiced in the name of unity and solidarity, but we ­will see in ­later chapters how the appropriation of the politics of minga deservingness by the state undermined local solidarity in impor­tant ways.

Displacements and Returns While Bernardo endured factory work and living in the city, Teresa Caicedo and Mariana Ochoa took to organ­izing their communities, working to rebuild u­ ntil they w ­ ere let down one time too many and Teresa became fatalistic. Her disillusionment lasted u­ ntil a chance encounter with an engineer from the Provincial Council of Chimborazo and further encouragement from Mariana, a­ fter which she recommitted to working for (re)settlement. Judith and her f­ amily bounced around, following scarce opportunities for shelter and work. Like Bernardo and o­ thers, they did not take to urban living, where every­thing must be purchased and sold. They longed to return to Penipe, even as new opportunities elsewhere beckoned to them.

Mutual Aid and Solitary Disillusionment: Teresa’s Story Teresa Caicedo spent two months in the shelters with her husband and their teenage sons and ­daughter. ­A fter two months, a community leader from Puela arranged for the ­family to move into a room at the Soccer League building in Penipe Township. They would still go to the shelters to eat—­“That was the hardest part.” But Teresa and o­ thers from Puela ­were already working on figuring out what would come next. Mariana Ochoa of Anabá reached out through a neighbor and invited Teresa to a meeting in Penipe. They ­were forming a collective to find land and build a resettlement. The ­whole group began the search for land, with Teresa searching on behalf of El Tingo, Zandro Villacis representing Manzano, and Mariana standing for Anabá. They searched as far as Guayllabamba, a community northeast of Quito, about 230 kilo­meters from Penipe. “We walked hard with Señora Mariana. We went everywhere. But they asked too much—­they wanted to take advantage.” Teresa was effusive in her praise of Doña Mariana’s leadership. “I have so much gratitude for her b­ ecause . . . ​we never had the goal of finding land. She had that goal.” They first got involved in a resettlement planned for the grounds of the Plaza de Toros (a bullfighting ring) in Penipe Township. Roughly sixty aspiring resettlers or­ga­nized minga work parties to start construction. “I worked with my ­children, I worked on the mingas, carry­ing stones from the river, so much. . . . ​

The Production of Space • 67

The mayor, Señor Salazar, went so far as to give us the deed. On that we spent about $200, that’s what I think we spent then.” She had even been assigned a lot number in the new resettlement. “I had number 37. But they ­didn’t deliver.” When the proj­ect was scuttled by the municipality, Teresa felt unutterably demoralized. She lost interest in searching for other sites and resigned herself to her temporary living arrangement and eating her meals in the shelters. “I ­didn’t want anything more to do with the ­house. . . . ​I ­didn’t want to do anything ­because they deceived me so much, so much—so many mingas, so many ­things—­and we ­were left with nothing. But it w ­ asn’t only the fault of the mayor. It was our fault too. Sometimes members of the group would disagree on one ­thing or another. So, ­because t­ here was no unity—­you know that when ­there is no unity, you lose.” In this milieu, the protean state assemblage could be embodied by an engineer walking down the street. One day, Teresa was walking through Penipe Township and saw her friend, the engineer Pedro Carrasco of the Provincial Council of Chimborazo, who, unbeknown to her, was working on a proj­ect “with Fundación Esquel, an NGO from Quito. And he greeted me attentively and he said, ‘Doña Teresa, ­we’re looking for ­people for . . .’ ‘For what?’ I said. ‘To see if we can build some ­houses. ­We’re thinking . . .’ ” She cut him off, “ ‘I’m sorry, engineer. Forgive me, but I’ve already been through the embarrassment. So, forgive me, but I ­don’t want to know anything about ­houses. I ­don’t want to know, thank you.’ ” She felt a power­ful mix of anger, resentment, and humiliation. She pivoted on her heel and walked on, but with the lingering sense that someone was following her, so she turned around to find Carrasco walking fast to catch up. “ ‘Doña Teresa, I h ­ aven’t done anything to you—­why are you angry with me?’ ” She laughed as she recalled this. “So, I told him all that had happened, saying, ‘Engineer, I d­ on’t want to know any more b­ ecause this is what t­ hey’ve done to us.’ ” But Carrasco was determined to get Teresa and her f­ amily involved.

Negotiating Return and Migration and Co-­Creating Resettlement: Judith’s Story Less than a week ­after the eruption subsided, Judith pressed David to return to Manzano and survey the damage. She was especially concerned for the animals, for whom she, like o­ thers, conveyed an emotional attachment; they w ­ ere part of whom they w ­ ere returning for, not merely what. She disliked life in the shelters, where they spent just five days, especially in terms of the lack of privacy for her and the girls. Judith, David, their two girls, and her parents therefore headed north to see. “But the police or the military, they ­didn’t want to let us enter.” Having heard from o­ thers that they would be barred from entry, they set out walking before dawn, ­under the cover of darkness. ­A fter dodging police (military?) along the way, they arrived around 6:30 a.m. They found the pigs had been burned along the loins by falling cascajo. “I had a ­little roof for the pigs. I always took care of them to produce the fertilizer for our plants and crops. But the

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cascajo had fallen and broke through the roof and burned the . . . ​pigs.” She looked in on the hens—­“they had always slept ­under the apple tree”—­and discovered that only four of twenty survived. “It’s b­ ecause t­here was this much bigger cascajo and that’s what killed them.” They then trod through the heavi­ly ash covered roads and paths up to the hill where they and Judith’s parents kept their c­ attle. “The poor cows. . . . ​We could barely make it through all the ash, and we tied them beneath a tree. The cascajo had fallen ­there, but we w ­ ere able to save them. The c­ attle had always lived up ­there, but ­after this, ­there could be nothing. ­There was so much ash.” Returning to the ­house, they saw that ash had nearly filled in the back of the ­house. “Now, to clean that was terrible. . . . ​A nd, so ­after a while, we said ‘And now? What do we do ­here?’ ” David had a job cleaning gutters at a villa on the outskirts of Riobamba as a member of a workers’ association and they ­were able to survive on his wages. They tried staying in Manzano for a few days. David worked during the day and returned in the eve­ning, while Judith took care of the girls and tried to clean the ­house. “But ­there was so much ash and dust.” Nevertheless, they did not want to return to the shelters, where ­there was scarcely room to lie down. At least they could lie down in private at the h ­ ouse. “Down ­there, what? To change and bathe my girls, young w ­ omen, oof.” They found a ­house for rent in Penicucho, a small community at the southern end of Penipe Township. With the help of Judith’s brother-­in-­law, they w ­ ere able to transport about a hundred animals from Manzano—­chickens, cuyes, rabbits, ­cattle, and pigs. But ­there was nowhere to keep the large animals and they lacked the feed they would need to maintain them anyway. “So, we’d have to sell them, cheap, but they ­were paying so ­little it was like a robbery.” It was prohibitively expensive to purchase feed, so Judith foraged along the roads and paths for ­viable herbs. “I had all ­these small animals too, the cuyes, some so small ­because they had just been born. We ­didn’t know what to do. . . . ​I went onto the street to cut herbs, you see. I went to find herbs for the cuyes. And they ­were giving out plantains too, for ­cattle, and I claimed some of that and brought it back for the ­cattle, the pigs, and the cuyes.” They remained in the h ­ ouse in Penicucho for three months while David worked and Judith collected emergency aid granted by the Ec­ua­dor­ian state. To do so, they had to conform to categorical standards of deservingness—­staying sheltered, and thus making legible their suffering. That’s how we survived. The girls and I no longer returned to the shelters. My husband continued to sleep t­ here so as not to lose the opportunities ­there, like the rations. The authorities had said, “Whoever wants to sleep ­here can claim rations.” But we d­ idn’t go back t­ here, knowing the circumstances; we had to rent a room to have privacy. It ­wasn’t for me, but for the c­ hildren. I was ashamed that my d­ aughters ­didn’t have food. Well, we had a few ­things, but all

The Production of Space • 69

our cooking utensils, that was all back in Manzano. So, back in 2006, my husband would go and sleep in the shelters. God bless the nuns, the priest, who provided coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and honey. In the cafeteria [of the convent in Penipe], God bless them . . . ​we would eat and go, eat and go. . . . ​ They gave us rice, but just to t­ hose who ­were in the shelter. For ­those who ­weren’t t­ here, lamentably, they did not give anything. So, that’s how t­ hings ­were for us.

­A fter a month or so, they caught wind of an opportunity. ­There was an announcement at the shelters that some foundation or other would come to build a resettlement. David had work and they could pay their rent, but they w ­ ere anxious to move on to a new normal, to have something of their own again. David happily reported, “ ‘Listen, a foundation came and offered us a h ­ ouse. We have to form a group and buy the land to build the ­houses.’ ‘That sounds good,’ I said, ‘now let’s get together.’ ” They would need to pre­sent birth certificates and other paperwork, a ­matter that troubled some of their neighbors, who had ­either lost documents in the eruptions or ­else lacked them in the first place, but fortunately Judith had every­thing in order. They would have to decide if they would sign up for a h ­ ouse as part of a planned resettlement in Penipe or another location yet to be determined. ­There ­were visits from ministries and other NGOs, “and they ­were also talking of building homes, and then this one, then another. That’s how it was.” It was hard to tell which offers, if any, w ­ ere v­ iable. What mattered was that they find something where they could return to cultivate and raise animals. “So, we de­cided, for better or worse, to try for a ­house with land. Whoever comes with ­houses with land, that would be good. ­Because, more than anything, we had ­these animals. They wanted to grant h ­ ouses to all who needed them in Penipe. But we made one decision. Penipe is fine, or anywhere, but ­whether it be sooner or l­ater, what we needed was with land. So, if we need to work for it, we work. No m ­ atter. Well, that’s what happened.” It turned out that ­there was only one planned resettlement that included land, the one Mariana and Teresa had been working on with Fundación Esquel, a Quito-­based NGO. Esquel was committed to a participatory approach and they wanted resettlers to join in the search for land. Doña Mariana of Anabá had already assumed a leadership role among the resettlers, helping to or­ga­nize the ­others and leading the search for ­viable land. They went as far as Chambo, the neighboring canton to the south, and to La Candelaria, the southernmost parish of Penipe, about twenty kilo­meters southeast of Penipe Township. By early the following year, they had settled on a plot of land just outside the community of Nabuzo, a l­ ittle over three kilo­meters south of Penipe Township, on a windy and forested hilltop high above the intersection of the Chambo and Blanco River valleys. Many p­ eople had effectively coped with displacement for many years, even if it tried their ­every capacity and emotional well-­being, by activating kin and friend

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networks, working however they could to get by, and taking advantage of ­limited aid when their own means fell short. But this was all meant to be temporary; be it six months or six years, it was a m ­ atter of getting by u­ ntil they could return home. And, even in the event of good fortune beckoning from far away, ­people ­were primarily concerned to return to their lands, animals, communities, mountains, and kin. While they ­were still in the pro­cess of searching for land, Judith’s comadre called one day to report that she had found jobs for Judith and David working as janitor-­caretakers for a private school in Quito. They would each earn salaries and social security and the girls could study for f­ ree, even En­glish. “And my animals?” Well, they would have to be sold off. Though the offer was compelling, it was too much of a break from the lives they had always aspired to in Penipe. “That’s how we came to stay ­here and sign up for the land. That’s how we stayed ­behind to live in Pusuca.”

(Re)Settlement Pro­cesses and the Politics of Deservingness More than a third of the nearly 16,000 ­people sheltered in Chimborazo and Tungurahua between July and August 2006 remained displaced or living in shelters one year ­later (“Los afectados por el volcán” 2007). Promises of resettlement, better shelters, and resources for works proj­ects remained unfulfilled and many ­people returned to clear ash from their crops each morning to salvage what l­ ittle they could. To qualify for resettlement, villa­gers had to submit identification and deeds to their property to prove their owner­ship of land in the “high-­risk zone.” ­Because many villa­gers had held land in good faith for generations without any formal deed, the Municipality of Penipe in many cases provided post hoc certifications for them as o­ wners of their property. Most p­ eople learned of their eligibility and the plan to build resettlements in late 2006, but almost no one believed that they would ever come to fruition. Fernando Barreno, rural housing coordinator for the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MIDUVI) in Chimborazo, remembers telling p­ eople of the plans to build the resettlement and being met with incredulity, with p­ eople saying, “Impossible—­ there is no ­free lunch in this country.” As we see in this chapter, the state made resettlement promises and p­ eople of Penipe and other communities in Tungurahua Province voiced doubts, protests, and accusations of failures to deliver, malfeasance, and providing only for the barest life. Christopher Krupa and David Nugent (2015, 3) pointedly asked about where p­ eople locate the state and their relation to it when they demand the extraordinary and protest the state’s failures to deliver. The narratives in this chapter pre­sent object lessons in reading the state as a shifting assemblage; it could be embodied by an engineer walking down the street, as with the experience of Teresa and Pedro, or in the president, the mayor, or representatives of government agencies. Yet the bound­aries of the state remained blurred. It was not always obvious where the state ended and other assemblages and institutions

The Production of Space • 71

began. In the interim between the eruptions of 1999 and 2006, which was filled with lesser, chronic eruptive activity, several state agencies and NGOs explored resettlement proj­ects for displaced villa­gers as part of a dual relief and prevention strategy. By the end of 2007, several governmental and nongovernmental organ­izations would commit to resettlement plans. In the next section I trace the development of several resettlement communities constructed by MIDUVI and two NGOs for ­people displaced by the 1999 and 2006 disasters, with par­ tic­u­lar attention to the two resettlements where I spent most of my time in the past de­cade, Penipe Nuevo and Pusuca.

The Politics of Resettlement Deservingness and Place The politics of deservingness ­were articulated as part of the planning pro­cess, as the number of h ­ ouse­holds deemed deserving would inform the siting and scope of the resettlements themselves. Beginning in September 2006, one month ­after the eruptions, MIDUVI and the Provincial Council of Chimborazo began to study resettlement options for displaced villa­gers. Delegates from MIDUVI, the civil defense, the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES), and the municipal governments of Penipe, Baños, Guano, and Pelileo conducted a study of villages in the high-­risk zone that included on-­site observations and surveys recording h ­ ouse­hold occupancy, property owner­ship, and current housing status as primary criteria for resettlement eligibility.1 Officials also administered surveys to families living in shelters. The study ran from September to October and the final report was delivered in December, when it was determined that a total of 553 ­house­holds ­were eligible for relocation outside the high-­risk area. Deservingness was primarily calculated in proportion to residency and perceived suffering. The stated objective of the survey was to document the conditions of the homes and property and determine w ­ hether ­house­hold members had already found alternate housing by their own means. For instance, if a f­ amily was found to be residing in one of the nearby cities by their own means, they ­were deemed ineligible. But this meant that ­people who had achieved even moderate success in living and working away in the city w ­ ere at risk of being excluded from the opportunity to return home. That is, very practical and professedly temporary coping strategies, like finding employment in Riobamba and taking up residence with kin, however discordant with affective and culturally derived sensibilities of the good, would put ­people in jeopardy when it came to demonstrating eligibility for housing in the new resettlements in 2007. P ­ eople with h ­ ouses or apartments in Riobamba and elsewhere ­were often denied on t­ hose grounds. ­Those who did not sufficiently meet the mea­sure of suffering could find their deservingness in jeopardy. Th ­ ere are two resettlement survey entries for Don Mateo and Doña Gladys, who counted themselves fortunate to have made arrangements in the city even as they w ­ ere decidedly unhappy ­there. One entry read simply, “Lives in Riobamba, returns seasonally.” However, thanks to the

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interventions of village leaders like Bernardo Huerta, villa­gers in good standing might see their status revised in the survey. Thus, a second entry for Mateo placed greater emphasis on their local residence, stating “Lives in the sector,” yet another critical distinction for eligibility, and “has land in El Troje—­R iobamba.” Thus, though they worked lands outside Manzano, b­ ecause they w ­ ere recognized as technically living in the village, they demonstrated deservingness. It was Bernardo who aided Don Mateo and other displaced villa­gers from Manzano in brokering, legibilizing the contingent, and being selected for a MIDUVI h ­ ouse in the Penipe Nuevo resettlement. B ­ ecause Julia had moved between the city and her parents’ home, she was not initially selected; only her ­father’s name came up. “But,” said Julia, “he was never g­ oing to come and live ­here.” He had waived off the suggestion, while Julia knew it was impor­tant for them to have a refuge outside Manzano in the event the mountain rained down on them again. Bernardo’s opportunity to intervene in the politics of resettlement deservingness by speaking directly with newly elected president Rafael Correa came as a ­great surprise. Correa came to Penipe to preside over the opening of some ­houses in Penipe Nuevo in 2008, but Bernardo did not expect to find him mixing with Penipeños eating in the church cafeteria where the displaced still took their meals. “He walked up to me and at first, I moved to let him go by. I felt embarrassed as he sat down and asked me how I was ­doing.” They w ­ ere joined by Padre Tomás, the mayor, and several municipal councilors as Bernardo, feeling uncharacteristically ner­vous, explained that he “had a dossier, thanks to you, Mr. President.” To “have a dossier,” a cult object of deservingness in this emergent assemblage, signaled that he had been selected for a ­house in the resettlement— as did o­ thers from his home village, but not every­one. “They have not taken us all into account. I am the president of the cabildo, and ­these ­people have not been taken into account for the h ­ ouses.” He then pointedly asked if it would be pos­ si­ble to add them, since not all h ­ ouses had been granted yet. Three days l­ ater the councilors called him to say they had added the excluded ­house­holds from Manzano to the list. “Then we came,” he said with a broad smile. Elsewhere the politics of resettlement deservingness ­were still being negotiated. Fundación Esquel submitted their formal resettlement plan to the civil defense and the Municipal Government of Penipe a mere thirty days ­after the 2006 eruptions, suggesting that their plans had been ­under development for some time. But they also revealed further criteria of deservingness. Eligibility would not be extended to: families that have land properties in the city of Penipe or in any other locality in the country, families that have not set their permanent residence in the area of the catastrophe and families that have mi­grant relatives or residents in foreign countries who send them economic resources regularly ­will not be considered for the Program. Families whose members are 65 years or older and

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live alone ­will not be considered to form part of the new settlement. . . . ​In this case, the inactive elders w ­ ill be recommended for residence in the urban settlement built in Penipe. (Esquel Foundation 2006, 9)

The el­derly and t­ hose who counted on remittances would not be considered ­because the Esquel Foundation wished to “preferably include eco­nom­ically active residents” (2006, 9). Their vision was to foster the development of new subjects, what I have elsewhere described as encouraging “the sensibilities of in­de­pen­dent, entrepreneurial subjects who maximize the productive potential of the rural landscape once inducted into the special knowledge and crafts of neoliberal subjectivity” (Faas 2018, 40). Fortunately, they soon changed their plan to include el­derly households—­when I asked Carrasco about this in 2009, he said, “Humanely, we cannot be selective in the face of necessity”—­but they remained committed to the reeducation of their beneficiaries. One objective resonates loudly with the civilizing mission language of Ec­ua­dor’s colonial and early Republican periods: “Through this component the training to promote personal growth, social responsibility and productive undertakings ­will take place. This training seeks to transform an impor­tant group of citizens into contributing actors of society, generators of their own socially responsible l­abor opportunities” (Esquel Foundation 2006, 15). This objective was explic­itly disciplinary, with plans for series of workshops and trainings with the aim of fostering the internalization of t­ hese princi­ples. They would “deliver know-­how and coach them in the development of actions of civil responsibility that ­favors basic education and local pro­gress. The purpose is that the community internalizes this knowledge for the transformation of its life and environment” (2006, 14; italics added for emphasis). The formation of resettlement plans is a case study in the incoherence of the state, the cross-­purposes of agencies, and the formation of assemblages, but also in the politics of placemaking and legibility. The vari­ous agencies involved debated several approaches to resettlement. In my June 2009 interview with Fernando Barreno, he explained that he and o­ thers at MIDUVI had advocated constructing new homes in p­ eople’s home villages but building them out of reinforced concrete, which would be resistant to ashfall and cascajo. The idea was driven in large part by the lack of locally available land, which would make it difficult to reestablish agricultural production in a resettlement and ­because at least some authorities w ­ ere rightly concerned that resettlers would be unwilling or unable to forego their lands, agricultural livelihoods, and patrimony in f­ avor of a landless resettlement. The prob­lem of economic resources and livelihoods—­ whole naturecultural assemblages—­would be pronounced in an urban resettlement. The plan lost ­favor, however, as other parties to the planning pro­cess rejected a sizable public investment in housing in the risk zone; space and place, it would seem, are likewise subject to politics of deservingness. The civil defense favored risk reduction and management, which brushed up against the idea of

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reconstruction within the risk zone. The Penipe Municipal Government, according to Barreno, was interested in reviving the urban center of Penipe, whose declining population undermined its ever-­precarious juridico-­political legitimacy as a canton (see chapter 1). The notion of adding hundreds of ­house­holds to a town center that had gone from approximately 600 occupied ­house­holds to a mere 240 over two de­cades was seen as a potential benefit to the municipality. Reflecting on the 287 resettlement ­houses ­later added to Penipe’s urban center, Barreno said simply, “They built another Penipe.” In late February and early March 2007, MIDUVI minister Maria de los Angeles Duarte toured the affected areas and announced plans to build 553 ­houses in dif­fer­ent sites to permanently resettle villa­gers from the high-­risk zones. In Penipe, they planned to build 185 homes for ­people displaced from the parishes of Bilbao, Puela, and El Altar.2 In the meantime, MIDUVI distributed 36 square meters of roofing materials to each of nearly 3,000 families in the high-­ risk zone so that they could repair their homes u­ ntil resettlement construction was complete (“Las autoridades entregan techos” 2007; “Volcán” 2007). Although some ­were calling for resettlement and the roofing was supposed to be a temporary mea­sure to cover ­people ­until the resettlements ­were constructed, villa­gers in Bilbao used some of the donated roofing sheets to repair the roofs of the local church and school, an early indication that resettlement would not mean abandoning p­ eoples’ home villages. As vari­ous organ­izations progressed with rebuilding, many p­ eople reported not knowing which organ­ization they ­were supposed to sign up with—­the municipal government, MIDUVI, or one of the several NGOs ­either rumored or confirmed to be involved. Many thought the NGO proj­ects would move faster than government-­run ones. ­People reported signing up for two, three, or more, never certain if any would come to fruition as lots remained virtually abandoned through 2007. ­People who had been living in tents and shelters or ­else renting or borrowing apartments and ­houses ­were anxious to see pro­gress. Fany Tite, who slept with her f­ amily in a small tent provided by the civil defense, lost faith in the government and assumed that MIDUVI would not deliver on its promises. Throughout 2007 and 2008, MIDUVI’s resettlement operations w ­ ere frequently held up by bureaucratic encumbrances. In April 2008, they inaugurated two proj­ ects and realized the delivery of some h ­ ouses. Although some h ­ ouses w ­ ere built, ­there ­were papers in the doorways indicating the names of the beneficiaries for each h ­ ouse, but the h ­ ouses remained uninhabited u­ ntil the paperwork was completed. ­Things ­were moving slowly elsewhere too—in Penipe, only forty-­five families had been resettled (“La entrega de las casas” 2008). Penipe mayor Juan Salazar was anxious to move resettlement plans along and vented his frustration publicly. The out­going government of President Alfredo Palacio had not followed through with prior proposals for resettlement and disaster prevention plans and ­there was hope that incoming President Rafael Correa, who had pledged his administration’s support for the construction of

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resettlement communities for ­people who had been displaced in the disaster—­ especially the many who had remained in shelters since 1999—­would make good on ­these promises. It is also pos­si­ble that Salazar was motivated by his own po­liti­ cal ambitions, as he was looking forward to an expected mayoral run in Riobamba. But the frustration was expressed elsewhere as well. Angelica Morocho of Bilbao complained to the press, “We have nowhere to go. . . . ​We want to be relocated somewhere e­lse” (“Las autoridades entregan techos” 2007). In March 2007, the mayor of Cevallos in Tungurahua Province called for an investigation into the appropriations of emergency funds by vari­ous agencies (“Volcán” 2007). Although no malfeasance was uncovered, public outcry appears to have helped move proj­ects along; such accusations are often in­ter­est­ing regardless of their veracity ­because they are capable of mobilizing action (Barrios 2017, 213) and increased accountability and transparency on behalf of humanitarian agencies and actors (Gamburd 2013, 60). This is part of the drama of the reciprocity of humanitarian aid: grateful beneficiaries lend legitimacy to their benefactors, while exclusion or deception are reciprocated with rumors, accusations, and re­sis­tance. Thus, in late March, on the heels of ­these accusations, Mayor Salazar announced that the construction of resettlement communities would begin in May.

Penipe Nuevo: MIDUVI and Samaritan’s Purse MIDUVI and the Municipio of Penipe presented housing plans in late March 2007 that called for the construction of an increased total of 285 homes in an urban plan in Penipe, a resettlement I call Penipe Nuevo simply to distinguish it from the old township and the canton. MIDUVI announced that they had settled on housing designs and resettlement sites and w ­ ere accepting bids from contractors for construction of the new communities (“Las casas para los afectados” 2007). Planning and land acquisition lagged well into May 2007, which delayed groundbreaking on their proj­ects. At this time, Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian Evangelical disaster relief organ­ization based in North Carolina, joined the pro­cess and committed to build ­houses in Penipe Nuevo. They had previously only worked on short-­term aid packages and sent representatives to Penipe in early spring 2007. According to the Ec­ua­dor country director for Samaritan’s Purse, Ben Foster, shortly ­after the 2006 eruptions, Samaritan’s Purse president Franklin Graham was in Penipe for an event where he met Mayor Juan Salazar, who asked him if Samaritan’s Purse could build ­houses for a resettlement community in Penipe. Graham agreed and they soon began coordinating with the municipality to construct 100 homes in Penipe alongside the 185 MIDUVI was slated to build. The agreement was that the local government would provide land and basic ser­vices and MIDUVI and Samaritan’s Purse would provide planning, material, supervision, and construction, while all parties would collaborate on beneficiary se­lection. Houses in Penipe would be constructed by MIDUVI and

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Samaritan’s Purse based on similar designs—­concrete, with cement plaster and fiberglass roofs. Each h ­ ouse would be a duplex and each unit would have three bedrooms and a living room, dining area, kitchen, and bathroom. They would also all have ­running ­water, sewer ser­v ice, and electricity and be expected to last between thirty and forty years. By early May, the contractors had all been selected. The municipality invoked eminent domain to purchase private land on the southern edge of Penipe Township to make way for 285 ­houses, which would more than double the 240 occupied ­house­holds already in the township.3 In addition to the ­houses, they would also construct a small park in the center of the resettlement. However, as public impatience grew with MIDUVI, the municipality gave Samaritan’s Purse access to land originally allocated for MIDUVI’s construction. Samaritan’s Purse was the first organ­ ization to break ground, beginning construction in March 2007 (“Los afectados por la erupción” 2007).

Pusuca and Fundación Esquel Fundación Esquel is an Ec­ua­dor­ian NGO founded in 1990 by a group of economists and sociologists that funds and administers economic development proj­ects, poverty relief, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility. The foundation had been looking for ways to become involved in resettlement in Penipe since September  2006, just ­after the eruptions.4 Their initiative was strongly advocated by Mariana Ochoa of Anabá, whom many ­people credited for making the resettlement, which would eventually be named Pusuca, come to be. Pedro Carrasco from the provincial council recalled Doña Mariana’s role with me in an interview in 2009, emphasizing her push for land and the inclusion of t­hose left out of other proj­ects. “We worked with Doña Mariana Ochoa ­because she was the most knowledgeable person in the sense of the ­human groups that ­really needed a resettlement pro­ cess. She put together a list, or­ga­nized working group meetings with affected families, which they did h ­ ere in Penipe, right in the school where they ­were sheltered. I looked for her ­because she was the only person that I ­really knew in that area. . . . ​Besides, she was the leader of the community of Anabá, so we went straight to her to talk.” Carrasco also met with ­people from Palictahua, but they informed him that they w ­ ere already signed up for the MIDUVI proj­ect in Penipe. “But we knew that t­ here ­were p­ eople not being considered for t­hose programs who needed help and evidently that was true.” Doña Mariana brought Doña Teresa around to the proj­ect and, by organ­izing so many of the displaced and working directly with the provincial council and Esquel to find the lands, Doña Mariana restored hope for many. Esquel partnered with the Provincial Council of Chimborazo and several other small NGOs for their proj­ect. The settlement plan initially called for fifty ­houses but was scaled back to forty-­five, and in the end it included a community center, a resource center with health and educational resources, a park, and

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private agricultural plots and green­house proj­ects. Houses in the Esquel resettlement would stand alone as single units and have only two bedrooms, but residents could also count on ­running ­water, sewage, and electricity. In late spring 2007, while MIDUVI was still reviewing bids from contractors, Esquel was in the pro­cess of purchasing the land for their resettlement and resettlers began setting up camp on the land where they would soon begin clearing forest and building the new h ­ ouses.

Reciprocal Pacts: Minga ­Labor in Resettlement MIDUVI h ­ ouses w ­ ere constructed by companies who bid on each contract, and contractors on all sites employed some local laborers in addition to their regular crews (“Los contratos para las casas” 2007). Samaritan’s Purse and the Esquel Foundation, however, took a very dif­fer­ent approach. Drawing on the pan-­ Andean tradition of minga work parties, they or­ga­nized p­ eople who signed up for ­houses in their proj­ects to play central roles in construction and, ultimately, in the demonstration of deservingness. In ­doing so, they effectively invoked locally resonant forms of participation (minga) while si­mul­ta­neously conjuring the tropes of “beneficiary ­labor” and participatory development that are especially resonant in global humanitarian networks (Faas et al. 2018). That is, both organ­izations explic­itly sought to harness the perceived development potential of the beneficiary communities and to work with local units of social organ­ ization to construct the resettlements. One adult member of each beneficiary ­house­hold in the Samaritan’s Purse community was required to work each day during the construction pro­cess without knowing which ­house would be theirs. According to Ben Foster of Samaritan’s Purse, p­ eople continued volunteering well beyond their required contribution. In addition to housing, the sidewalks, community bathrooms, park, and playgrounds w ­ ere built with minga l­abor directed by Samaritan’s Purse. The Esquel Foundation expressed special concern for “empowerment” and cultural sensitivity. Community participation and minga practice formed cornerstones of their implementation strategy and their published plan—­a Spanish version was circulated to local leaders and an En­glish translation was provided to their donors—­emphasized “community participation in all phases in order to ensure an effective contribution and subsequent empowerment” of resettlers (2006, 13). One key objective was to or­ga­nize minga cooperative ­labor parties to foster a sense of owner­ship and commitment among beneficiaries. Over the course of one year, potential beneficiaries in the Esquel-­sponsored resettlement participated in more than a dozen mingas for the proj­ect at Pusuca. Houses ­were constructed by hired contractors, but beneficiaries continued to provide ­labor throughout construction, helping to build temporary structures and dig trenches. As with Samaritan’s Purse, Esquel beneficiaries ­were also or­ga­nized into mingas to build the central park of the new resettlement.

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By referring to their beneficiary l­ abor obligations as mingas, Samaritan’s Purse and Esquel conjured the semiotic field of minga practice. This was, to all appearances, a good-­faith attempt to mobilize local ­labor so as to facilitate shared owner­ship among resettlers in lieu of financial contributions from cash-­poor ­house­holds. But it was also a signifying pro­cess by which they sought to invoke local idioms and practices in the interest of the sort of culturally relevant development strategies long advocated by activists and anthropologists alike (see Zhang 2016b; Barrios 2017; Maldonado 2016; Browne 2015). Yet throughout the life of the resettlements, most especially in Pusuca, minga practice would find both NGO personnel and resettlers drawing on discourses, disciplines, and relations that facilitated the exercise of control by power­ful actors and assemblages as well as the agency of subalterns, revealing at once the nested nature of subalternity (i.e., power and assemblages thereof operate at—­and often jump—­ scale) and, insomuch as ­labor contributions determined eligibility, the contested nature of the politics of deservingness.

Opening the Resettlements ­ fter a wait of almost nine years since the first eruptions, a new resettlement comA munity opened just about ­every month from February to August 2008. In the end, MIDUVI built a total of 503 of the 553 ­houses planned in their initial assessment, for a total investment of approximately $6 million (“200 casa se entregan” 2008). In February, 82 of the initial 185 ­houses proposed by MIDUVI for Penipe ­were granted to beneficiaries in a ceremony presided over by President Correa. The remaining h ­ ouses w ­ ere almost ready, simply awaiting paint and other cosmetic treatments (“Correa entregó 82 casas”2008). While they handed over the keys to the h ­ ouses, MIDUVI opted to retain the deeds for an indeterminate period in order to ensure compliance with full-­time residency requirements for beneficiaries. Esquel and the provincial council granted h ­ ouses and half-­hectare lots for agropastoral production to forty-­five beneficiaries on April  27, though like MIDUVI they withheld the deeds pending completion of community obligations. The h ­ ouses and community buildings w ­ ere built over the course of a mere sixty days for a total cost of $800,000.5 Prior to the opening ceremony, resettlers met to elect a village council (directiva), which would administer the affairs of the community. In their first official capacity, they named the new hilltop resettlement La Victoria de Pusuca (hereafter Pusuca) in the first formal act of the community, on April 27, 2008 (“La ayuda a los afectados” 2008). On August 9, Samaritan’s Purse contributed to the completion of the Penipe Nuevo resettlement by granting the first 56 of 102 h ­ ouses to beneficiaries from the rural villages (“101 casas se construyeron” 2008). The remaining 46 ­houses ­were granted three months ­later, and beneficiaries received the deeds. Total construction costs amounted to nearly $2 million.6 In addition to the h ­ ouses in the

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Penipe resettlement, t­ here was also a sports field and playground, which included two adjacent volleyball courts, c­ hildren’s gymnasium equipment, public rest­ rooms, and open spaces for vendors and public assemblies.

Spatial Ecologies of Penipe Nuevo and Pusuca In the resettlements we can observe the politics of the production of space in state assemblages inscribed on the landscape and the built environment. Penipe Nuevo and Pusuca can be distinguished in terms of their spatial ecol­ogy, including economic resources and the structure of the peri-­urban grids (Faas, Barrios, Marino, et al. 2020). It must be said that the h ­ ouses in the resettlements, especially in Penipe, w ­ ere better constructed than many h ­ ouses in the rural parishes, and they provided electricity, indoor plumbing, and potable ­water to many ­people who had not previously counted on ­these amenities. ­There are also impor­tant distinguishing design features between MIDUVI and Samaritan’s Purse ­houses within Penipe Nuevo, but I am more concerned h ­ ere and in the following chapters with the aggregate effects of ­these design features and the urban plan. And fi­nally, resettlers in each organ­ization’s housing had dif­fer­ent ­legal and resource features, which affected ­people’s agency and adaptation to resettlement.

Economic Resources The very geography of Penipe Nuevo was hostile to campesino livelihoods and provoked impor­tant confrontations with what ­people could live with and without. The 185 h ­ ouses built by MIDUVI and the 102 built by Samaritan’s Purse formed a single resettlement community arranged on an urban grid at the southern edge of Penipe Township (see figure 2). While each h ­ ouse had a small yard in which resettlers could plant and tend small gardens, the resettlement did not include any land for agricultural production or the tending of animals. Moreover, ­because Penipe Township is considered an urban parish, a municipal ordinance prohibits the keeping of livestock or minor species within the township. Alternative economic opportunities in Penipe ­were negligible at best. The old town center was home to the municipal government, utilities offices, CEBYCAM (a nonprofit medical and community development center), and several family-­owned businesses; most of t­hese w ­ ere restaurants and small stores, but ­there w ­ ere also tailors, shoe­makers, a feed supply store, and school-­ supply shops. Between 2008 and 2015, several internet cafes sprang up throughout Penipe Nuevo and the old town center. Less than a dozen of the roughly 1,000 resettlers would find employment in ­these businesses in the first years of the resettlement. In contrast, ­house­holds in Pusuca w ­ ere granted a half hectare for agricultural production and several plots of land held in common by the community. Pusuca was built on the site of a formerly private seventy-­hectare estate, of which approximately thirty hectares are flat and the rest are slopes. Most of the agricultural

80 • Mobility and Legibility

FIGURE 2  ​MIDUVI housing in Penipe Nuevo in 2009.

plots that ­were granted ­were forested and highly uneven, so the pro­cess of colonization took a ­great deal of time and ­labor (see figure 3). Furthermore, highland agriculture is highly dependent on irrigation, and this is a proj­ect that would take five years to complete as it involved digging an irrigation trench extending roughly eight kilo­meters across the mountains. Subsequently, although resettlers in Pusuca technically had access to productive resources, the land was not in a productive state, so like the resettlers in Penipe, they had to look elsewhere to produce or earn their livelihoods, which no doubt contributed to further delays in their pioneer colonization. In terms of commuting for work or agropastoral activities elsewhere, Pusuca resettlers ­were worse off than their peers in centrally located Penipe Nuevo. Though Pusuca is located on a road included in interparish bus routes, while buses from Penipe Township to the northern parishes or Riobamba passed e­ very thirty minutes, buses only climbed to Pusuca and La Candelaria to the south once ­every three hours. Moreover, while the trip to Pusuca took just ­under ten minutes by vehicle in ideal conditions, the cliffside road was prone to landslides, which could slow traffic and occasionally blocked vehicle passage entirely for hours. Thus, for nearly three years, Pusuca and Penipe resettlers w ­ ere in similar conditions in that they lacked productive resources and local economy. The resettlement of such a sizable population in Penipe Nuevo without any strategy for economic productivity was a conscious oversight on behalf of all the agencies involved, all of which did their part to provide homes but did ­little or nothing

The Production of Space • 81

FIGURE 3  ​Pusuca in the early days.

to tackle a prob­lem of which they ­were all well aware. I read this more as an incoherence of the state than as a deliberate effort at proletarianization, yet this was the effect. That is, while the h ­ azard threat was neutralized, procedural vulnerabilities reproduced subalternity, scarcity, and bare life in acts meant to facilitate recovery and risk reduction.

Community Infrastructure and the Grid MIDUVI Coordinator Barreno’s remark to me that “they built another Penipe” was a tacit recognition of the fact that Cantón Penipe has always strug­gled with po­liti­cal legitimacy that ties the precarity of twenty-­first-­century post-­disaster resettlement to a much longer legacy of po­liti­cal space-­making. Penipe Nuevo was a doubly po­liti­cal proj­ect that served to create a newly concentrated and legible population and a revitalization of a declining urban center. A census I conducted in 2009 found only 189 occupied ­houses out of a total of 240 in the old town center. The resettlement, however, was plainly an attempt to build an increasingly threatened legitimacy by expanding the urban center by more than 150 ­percent. While the resettlement was only publicly discussed as a new life for ­people who ­were displaced by the disaster, the evidence that this was an urbanization proj­ect hides in plain sight: the tiles on Samaritan’s Purse h ­ ouses w ­ ere painted with lot and h ­ ouse numbers and bore the label urbanización (see figure 4).

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FIGURE 4  ​Samaritan’s Purse housing as urbanization.

Though dif­fer­ent in impor­tant ways, Penipe and Pusuca ­were both built on urban grids, with h ­ ouses laid out in rows just a few meters apart. Urban grids are not merely functional necessities for the provision of basic ser­vices (e.g., sewage and utilities), they also impose a legibility on the population. Grids enable the enumeration and administration of the population in ways that are often frustrated by mobility and dispersed settlements of rural villages. Resettlements could therefore arguably be seen as analogous to the reducciones of the late sixteenth ­century. Numbering and monitoring each ­house like never before enabled practices of statecraft forged in colonial relations (Appadurai 1996, 115–120; Scott 1998), such as the enumeration, structuring, and administration of bodies and collectives (Foucault 2007; Ferguson 1994). Resettlement grids stood in stark contrast to the spatial ecologies of villages in the northern parishes. In Manzano, for instance, in 2009 ­there ­were three consecutive ­houses roughly ten meters apart on the central road and another three separated by similar distances on the lower road, but ­there was rarely a line of sight from one ­house to another in the village; most ­houses ­were located within their lands and isolated from view. ­A fter more than a de­cade of visiting homes in Bilbao, Puela, and El Altar Parishes, I still regularly lose my way g­ oing to ­houses I have visited countless times. While some h ­ ouse­holds w ­ ere multigenerational prior to the eruptions, this was rarely the case ­after the ensuing displacements. Moreover, I know of no instance of two unrelated families occupying the same structures in any of the northern parishes, as they came to

The Production of Space • 83

do in the duplexes of Penipe Nuevo. In the villages, with the occasional exception of a chainsaw buzzing away in the distance during the day, t­ here is rarely any sound but the wind, the rain, or the occasional barking of dogs or braying of donkeys. While Pusuca was generally as quiet as ­people’s home villages, Penipe was notoriously noisy with the rumbles and clangs of urban life. Both Pusuca and Penipe Nuevo had communal infrastructure in addition to the homes. In Penipe, Samaritan’s Purse designed and used minga ­labor to construct a park that included two volleyball courts, a playground, rest­rooms, and space for vendors and was surrounded by concrete bleachers. In the roughly half hectare of open space at the center of the Pusuca grid, residents and volunteers from several charities built fences, benches, and small pieces of playground equipment from eucalyptus cleared for construction; for years thereafter, resettlers spoke of the park with pride. Esquel also constructed three community buildings—­a community meeting center, an educational and computer fa­cil­i­ty (which ­housed six desktop computers in 2011), and a health center. In Pusuca t­ here ­were designated buildings to meet and or­ga­nize community functions, whereas no such enclosed structure existed in the Penipe resettlement.

Conclusion: This Is a Place for What? In this chapter, I have shared the messiness of mobility, the (re)production of state assemblages and (re)settlements, the fraught dramas of the politics of deservingness, and the multiple operations of procedural vulnerability. ­These are tales of the assemblage made material. Taking stock of how resettlements w ­ ere constructed, I think, begs the question of whom or what they ­were constructed for. Based on the multiple plans that ­were submitted and implemented, Penipe Nuevo seems as much a plan for buttressing juridico-­political legitimacy, which had been precarious at best since the very formation of Penipe as a canton. But the very design of Penipe Nuevo was inhospitable to campesino livelihoods. Roofs, walls, and (initially unreliable) basic utilities could scarcely even provide bare life. Even though Pusuca included productive resources, they ­were a long way from viability when Esquel and state dignitaries handed over the keys and initiated the affairs of the community. Moreover, the community plans ­were more for the subjects they aimed to produce through discipline than for ­those they met on the road and invited into their proj­ect. What type of living—in both the broadest and the narrowest sense—­could be made in the resettlements is a question that hangs heavi­ly over the following chapter and, indeed, the remainder of this book. We should also ask what displaced campesinos hoped to obtain or produce ­there. Could they live ­there? Make a life? Discover and forge new identities and collectives?

4

The Four Walls of Bare Life Es por un momento dado, no más, por emergencia ya. Si nos vamos a adaptar a seguir estando, estando, estando, buscando solo los albergues, todavía no va a ver. Entonces hay que seguir buscando, seguir sobreviviendo. Hay que seguir saliendo a ver dónde poder reducar, donde poder vivir. [It’s for the given moment, no more, in case of emergency. If we are ­going to adapt to continue being t­ here, being ­there, being ­there, seeking only shelters, nothing w ­ ill come of this. So, we have to continue seeking, continue surviving. We have to continue moving forward to find how to recover, where we can live.] —­Kati Zurita

In the early days of the landless, urban resettlement in Penipe Nuevo, Kati shared with me the desolation of the place where she and other campesinos now found themselves, estando, estando, estando, or just being ­there, but not living (vivir). I share the quotation in both Spanish and En­glish ­because it

84

The Four Walls of Bare Life • 85

simply does not translate well. Unlike En­g lish, where t­ here is just one word for “to be,” the Spanish language uses the verb ser to indicate what something is and estar to indicate how or where it is. Kati’s verb choice is instructive and resonates with Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) notion of “bare life,” which he likewise derived from the juxtaposition of the two terms for “life” in Ancient Greek. The first, zoē, refers to the narrow biological facticity of life, whereas bios refers to the fuller realized livelihood, politics, plea­sure, and contemplative aspects of life. Emergency operations entailed the state operating on zoē, or bare life, in biopo­liti­cal operations on populations, only to subject bios to malign neglect a­fter evacuation. But ­there is an impor­tant distinction to be made between the pro­cess by which Agamben traces the production of bare life and how it came to pass in Penipe. Agamben (1998, 85, 171–180) locates the production of bare life in exclusion from the juridico-­political order, whereas I locate it where p­ eople are expressly included in state proj­ects; moreover, it is the imposition of this order (legibilizing) that is expressly complicit in the production of bare life. Thus, in Penipe Nuevo, ­people sensed that their ­whole lives ­were reduced in post-­disaster resettlement to merely existing in the narrow biological sense. Carlos Criollo contrasted the bare life of Penipe Nuevo with pastoral recollections of village life prior to displacement. We are beginning from zero, l­ ittle by l­ ittle. ­These ­houses, it is true, have helped us, may God repay them. But . . . ​it is not like our own that we have. In our home, we have somewhere to run, somewhere to go out and work [the land]. What do you do h ­ ere, enclosed in t­ hese four walls? What are you ­going to do . . . ​for work ­here in canton Penipe? We ­don’t have it. So, what we want, we want [an economic development] proj­ect, to build a factory h ­ ere that gives us a source of work. W ­ e’re from the farmlands. We want to work, we continue working.

In the first few years, resettlers frequently expressed the distress of “just being,” but without life. They spoke too of the pain of being so close—­just a few kilo­ meters—­from their home villages yet feeling so far away, so removed from their past lives and from the familiar. The refrain of living with nothing but “four walls” was extremely common and remained so for years. Four walls are the barest shelter for the barest life. It was not as if ­people ­were ungrateful or unappreciative of the h ­ ouses they received (and in many cases co-­constructed). But they ­were acutely aware that the four walls themselves—­and even the w ­ ater, electric, and sewage systems that w ­ ere ultimately vast improvements over what they had counted on in their home villages—­were insufficient to making a life; they w ­ ere, for them, ­little more than shelters. Kati expressed gratitude for all they had received in the resettlement, but she contrasted her recollections of their lives prior to displacement with what

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she saw as the degradation of their community, generosity, and mutual aid since resettlement. Thank God, h ­ ere Mr. Correa [the president] has given us ­houses. We have the ­house now and we live as if in the city, and clean, neat, beautiful, and every­ thing, but we have nothing to eat. We ­don’t have anything to eat and no way to go and seek a living elsewhere. We are wanting, we are ­dying of hunger. ­Because ­there is assistance in Puela, but we d­ on’t receive them; we go, but they send us away with words. So it’s the same as nothing. . . . ​The prob­lem we have is that, once we ­were united, it was better to be united . . . ​we ­were as one ­family. If someone had food to eat, and another no, it was all for one. But this is no more—­disunion—­there’s an antagonism we unload on each other.

­People recognized that this new urbanized space was influencing them eco­ nom­ically, socially, and in ways that ­were deeply personal. The affective sensibility was regularly surfaced in personal narratives of resettlement life in the first years and contrasted with a pastoral nostalgia for village life. Moreover, given their similar circumstances in 2009, I often heard very similar refrains in Pusuca, including the invocation of “living off the walls.” Klever Andrade shared his thoughts with me: We have lived on agriculture. We . . . ​have always been workers. . . . ​If we d­ on’t work, what w ­ ill we live on? They gave us beautiful ­houses, but it is not sufficient. ­We’re not ­going to live by eating the walls. How nice that we live like lords, but h ­ ere, I tell you my friends, this ship waits for nothing.

“­Here we have to continue working to deposit,” he stated this while patting his belly and grinning slightly. ­ ecause if we cannot feed ourselves, bad life. If on the one hand the volcano B has been the cause of many cases, for me grave, and the gravest is the individuality, the “whatdoesitmattertome-­ism” [quemeimportismo], the selfishness that has been planted in our hearts. It has been destroyed for lack of this. For lack of consciousness. So, we have to go out and look for work away from ­here. . . . ​But, on [the government’s] part, what they want is that we stay the night h ­ ere. The day we have ­free to go out and search for work.

“­Because if we do not,” Klever went on while patting his belly once again and striking a more somber tone, “­we’ll no longer deposit in the bank and we die of hunger.” In this chapter, I discuss the intersection of the politics of urbanization, the social production of space, and the long legacies of Andean mobility. I find p­ eople contending with the tremendous adversity of being at once displaced and at

The Four Walls of Bare Life • 87

home, and how they endeavored to craft new lives from the bare life of resettlement, l­ abor migration in new urban spaces, and the rubble of their home villages. As in previous chapters, my concern shifts midway to consider the countervailing forces of state legibility proj­ects that remain hostile to the mobility practices of the rural subaltern. ­These are humanitarian politics predicated on fundamental inequalities (Fassin 2008, 239), which I interpret as yet another repetition (with differences) of postcolonial hierarchical relations, with impor­tant changes in the va­ri­e­ties of re­sis­tance, power, and governance strategies available to rural campesinos. The state imposed fixed residency on subjects who could scarcely survive and certainly could not build fuller lives and livelihoods if they w ­ ere to conform, while local po­liti­cal dramas revealed the negotiation of power and agency in resettlement.

“It D ­ oesn’t Teach Me”: Resettler Livelihoods and Mobility You know that it d­ idn’t teach me. What do I do in the four walls? I should return to Puela, and that’s what I did. —­Julia Granizo

­ ere is a turn of phrase in Julia’s statement that is par­tic­u­lar to Chimboracense Th dialect—­no me enseña (literally, it ­doesn’t teach me). The expression is used to convey adjustment, comfort, or an affective sense of belonging or connection to place. She did not feel she belonged in the urban space and was concerned for her life and livelihood ­there. But Julia felt that if she simply waited for a new livelihood “to fall from heaven, it never comes. ­Because, if one does not do something, ­there are no oranges ­here” (now invoking citrus as the meta­phor for nourishment and satisfaction). She recalled time spent living in a borrowed ­house in Penipe Township during her de­cade of displacement, “I said, looking myself in the face . . . ​it ­will not fall from heaven, looking at the four walls . . . ​no, all the time I have gone out to work ­because it ­wasn’t teaching me down t­ here.” Although she was alone, she had begun to make a life in Penipe Nuevo years a­ fter moving into the ­house t­here. “I’ve been getting around . . . ​thinking about what I’m ­going to do. ­Because . . . ​I’m not ­going to close myself in. I look at the four walls and the oranges I d­ on’t have.” In his work in resettlements following Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, Roberto Barrios (2017, 16) seized on the common invocation of the expression hallarse, which broadly translates as “to find oneself,” but which he interprets as “the sense of finding oneself at ease” (italics mine). Interlocutors invoking hallarse referred to an affective sensibility underwritten “by the presence of trusted neighbors, the proximity of relatives, and the spatial conditions that sustained such a social and affective landscape—­that is, ample land parcels that allowed ­future home expansions as families grew from one generation to the next and the distribution of disaster survivors that permitted trusted neighbors

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and relatives to live close to each other” (Barrios 2017, 16). And so I find “it ­doesn’t teach me” conveying similar meanings but also being put to work with estando and “the four walls” to illustrate new urban spaces as both inhospitable and providing only for the barest life. It was the w ­ hole assemblage, the more-­ than-­human collective, that failed to teach my friends in Penipe. Tungurahua was calm for most of 2009, although it occasionally registered small volcanic explosions. Ashfall was minor and ­there ­were neither lahars nor pyroclastic flows. What struck me the most at the time was that both resettlement communities w ­ ere virtual ghost towns in the daytime and many homes appeared unoccupied. Of course, I soon came to appreciate that this was due to the absence of any productive resources, which meant that ­people had to travel elsewhere to make a living. Poverty and the lack of economic resources ­were consistently the primary preoccupation of p­ eople in both resettlements. To adapt, resettlers primarily engaged in one or more of three economic strategies, each of which I address in this chapter. The first and least common strategy was the establishment of small, informal businesses in the resettlements. The second was to seek wage employment, which frequently entailed seasonal or semi-­permanent migration. The third strategy, a movement for a time known as el retorno (the return), involved resettlers returning to their home villages to plant crops and raise animals.

Small Business: Martina’s Story A few resettlers started small businesses in Penipe in 2009, such that one could then find two ­houses with rooms converted into con­ve­nience stores that sold basic h ­ ouse­hold items, staples, snack foods, beer, and cigarettes; three with small restaurants, including a pizzeria that opened in 2009 and grew into a popu­lar business by the following year; and a billiard hall that served beer in a covered garage, which was shut down by local authorities within a year due to a prevalence of underage drinking and vio­lence associated with the establishment. Most cases of small business development w ­ ere very part time, as some individuals set up roadside grills on the weekend to sell food (e.g., fried potatoes, fried chicken, or French fries with cut pieces of hot dog known as salchipapas), and this strategy was rarely pursued to the exclusion of ­others. Resettlers in Pusuca did not have much in the way of small business in the early years. Mariana Ochoa and Blanca Sánchez did set up a stall at the entrance to Pusuca along the road connecting Penipe to its southernmost parish, La Candelaria. They sold Chimboracense-­style tortillas to passersby on Sundays throughout much of 2009 but abandoned their efforts a­ fter several confrontations with other Pusuca resettlers who accused them of profiting from a community resource, the stall built for Pusuca by a charity organ­ ization.1 In 2011, Angel Turushina and his wife, Monica Martínez, converted the front room of their h ­ ouse into a con­ve­nience store, which was in business for a ­couple of years.

The Four Walls of Bare Life • 89

Martina Barriga’s story reveals a lot about the contested production of space and mobility and is exemplary of the at once destructive and creative roles, not just of the volcano, but also of the multiple entangled histories that produced the disaster, and of the sticky yet per­sis­tent agency of survivors like her. Our conversations always began with life just ­after the eruptions. ­A fter regularly ­going hungry for months as she avoided the indignities of food aid and gossip, Martina’s story of rebuilding understandably began quite humbly. A ­ fter moving into a ­house built by Samaritan’s Purse in 2008, she initiated a series of several small business endeavors before r­ eally committing to her store near the end of 2009. “First, I had a l­ittle cart of salchipapas. I set myself up in the park just up h ­ ere selling salchipapas and, ­little by ­little, well, a man lent me $20. With $20, I began selling stuffed rice, and what e­ lse did I sell? Salchipapas in the park when ­there was a parade, and during Carnival, I recall. What happened was that I ­didn’t sell anything. Nothing, nothing. The stuffed rice was untouched. The salchipapas filled up with dirt and ash falling from the volcano.” She laughed heartily as she continued to share the experiences she remembered as at once trying and farcical. “It filled with ash, dirt, ­water, every­thing and I ­couldn’t sell anything. I lost the $20.” She giggled and continued: ­ ater I had to go to work with men in the fields so I could pay back the $20, L ­because I had nothing more. L ­ ater, I worked again and invested again to begin selling, to continue selling salchipapas, or rather to try and start again. That’s the first time I began to sell salchipapas. L ­ ater, I was selling in the park and at the soccer fields. I started to sell. And then, yes, thanks to God it went well for me. I sold plenty and I began then to buy t­ hings, to buy ­things like cookies in small quantities of 25 [packets]. Then chewing gum, candies, ­every day I went to buy one bag, one bag, one bag, and that’s how I began to grow my ­little kiosk. B ­ ecause at that point I had a kiosk . . . ​I purchased with a loan from the government. It cost me $350. . . . ​With that I bought the kiosk and . . . ​it ended up that they collected a total of $800 from me in repayment . . . ​and they cut off my government aid. I never returned to collect any aid. . . . ​With this, I bought the kiosk and the fryer and now I had what I needed to sell salchipapas.

She laughed again as she remembered the misadventures of her earliest days building a new life in Penipe Nuevo. But since . . . ​it got very hot in the kiosk, I had to bring every­thing t­ here back home each day. And then I set a t­ able ­here and p­ eople came . . . ​to buy ­things like candies, chewing gum, lollipops, and so on. They came to buy colas and soft drinks. So soon they started saying, “Why not sell soap and other t­ hings?” I said sure, I can buy that. I went and bought some, I bought six shampoos, ten soaps, and I went on like this buying just a ­little. When I had a ­little more, I

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started buying phone cards, cigarettes, and t­ hose sorts of t­ hings, just increasing what I had a ­little more. ­Because no one then wanted to loan me anything. Or rather, I d­ idn’t have any collateral to go and request a loan from the bank. So, ­little by l­ ittle I went to work, leaving my ­daughter ­here. I went to work in the fields too, as a peon. Then, with that I bought food for the two of us, ­because then we ­were only two. My son lived in Riobamba; he slept and ate ­there. So, it was just the two of us eating h ­ ere and we ate l­ ittle, so we ­didn’t spend much. So, I put a ­little into the store and a l­ ittle for our food. And I persisted, improving a l­ ittle more.

Although she made a more stable place and a business in Penipe Nuevo, she still had to tend to her ­family and lands in Manzano, tend to her son in the nearby city of Riobamba, and trek up into the hills to Utuñag for work as a peon. I went to harvest beans and tomatoes, to carry potatoes. With t­ hose earnings I had enough to eat. And l­ ater, when I more or less had the store set up, at least a ­little, so now it started to seem like a store, they came in and robbed me. They came in through the back win­dow. . . . ​They took cigarettes, phone cards . . . ​ they robbed me. I had $200 in ­here. In total, they took me for $400. . . . ​Now, from ­there and once again, I ­didn’t recover from that. I felt despondent. I ­didn’t even see who came to my store.

Wage Employment: Juan’s Story Employment opportunities in Penipe w ­ ere very scarce, but some p­ eople found employment in the municipal offices, at one of the few private enterprises in Penipe Township, or as day laborers for local families and businesses. It was, however, more common to migrate in search of employment, a strategy carried over from the evacuation and displacement period from 1999 to 2008, but also part of a broader Ec­ua­dor­ian trend of rural-­to-­urban ­labor migration that accelerated in the 1990s. Most ­house­holds in both communities had one or more members who ­either commuted daily to work in one of the nearby cities of Riobamba, Baños, or Ambato or ­else migrated further, ­either seasonally or semi-­permanently to Quito, to the coastal cities of Guayaquil or Esmeraldas, or into the small cities and oil fields of the Amazon. A survey I conducted in 2009 found that nearly half of the adults in Penipe Nuevo (41%) ­were employed as wage laborers, while only a fifth of ­those in Pusuca (20%) ­were so employed.2 The jobs p­ eople worked varied, but most of the work entailed manual l­abor such as masonry, construction, staffing stalls in urban marketplaces, and domestic work, and a few worked in industrial plants. Though he and his b­ rother worked as agricultural peons prior to the eruptions, Juan Ortiz began working in a factory producing ceramic tiles in Riobamba around 2001. He continued working at the factory for several years, due to the

The Four Walls of Bare Life • 91

lack of options in ­either Pusuca or Penipe Nuevo, where his parents relocated, and at the scarcity of jobs for day laborers in the northern parishes. Juan worked in twelve-­hour shifts, usually for six days straight. “It was bad. . . . ​From seven in the morning to seven at night. That was the day shift. Then I’d do three night shifts, from seven at night ­until seven in the morning. So, on the third night, I’d be ­really tired. And, and that time, I was able to buy a vehicle. And I would always leave t­ hose bad nights and come h ­ ere [to Pusuca]. And the exhaustion, driving with sleep coming over me, this was fatal.” ­A fter the third of three consecutive night shifts, while Juan was driving back to Pusuca, “I fell asleep for a moment, it was a few seconds. And I went off the road. Even now you can still see the scrape left by the car—it ­hasn’t vanished.” In the end, Juan spent seven years working in this factory. He’d come home at 7 a.m. and go directly to sleep for most of the day, then wake up, get ready, and leave again at 6 p.m. ­A fter the accident and a string of night shifts, he found himself often in a bad mood and cranky with his f­ amily and began to suffer from headaches. He said ­there ­were periods when he was able to make it work, but ­after several years of this, he was done. He ­didn’t want to quit, so he waited to be fired, which happened before long.

El Retorno Agriculture and raising animals remained the primary means by which resettlers secured their livelihoods. In the first three years of resettlement, nearly ­every resettler ­house­hold continued to rely heavi­ly on what ­little they could produce on their lands in their home villages.3 Some residents began returning to plant crops in the northern parishes in late 2007, but ­there ­were only a few pioneers at first, as planting remained a precarious endeavor due to per­sis­tent ashfall. By 2009, however, volcanic activity was declining and t­ here was a renewed movement to return to the abandoned northern parishes. Although volcanic ash had resulted in severe soil degradation, which reduced the harvests, as well as desiccation of the fruit trees and contamination of the animals’ pasture, resettlers retained owner­ship of the land, homes, and animals that survived the eruptions and they remained their most ­viable productive resources. Villa­gers ­were also unable to plant and harvest on the same scale as before, as work hours ­were reduced by the travel time required to go between resettlements and their fields and the reduced pool of available l­ abor in the community. Moreover, the reduced presence of community members also meant a reduced ­labor supply and left local residents vulnerable to theft of animals, crops, and ­house­hold assets when they ­were absent from their homes. Other ­factors influenced the return to the parishes, including several initiatives by village and parish leaders, especially in Puela. In 2009, for the first time since the 1999 eruptions, many previously evacuated villages in northern Chimborazo and southern Tungurahua Provinces celebrated their saints’ day festivals ­after planting in September and October. In Puela, local leaders advertised the

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local Fiesta de San Miguel as El Retorno a Puela (the return to Puela) and invested significantly in glossy posters that ­were spread throughout the region, urging Pueleños not only to return for the fiestas, but to return for their livelihoods and their patrimonio (heritage) as well. It was not only a call to come back to the fiestas, but also a call to return to their homes and rebuild their communities. Once again, buses ran hourly from Penipe to the parishes in the north, so resettlers could commute ­there daily. One exception was the northernmost parish of Bilbao, which remained largely inaccessible u­ ntil 2011 b­ ecause the road and several bridges had been destroyed by la­va and pyroclastic flows in 2006 and had yet to be repaired. As a result, resettlers from Bilbao would take the bus as far as Puela and walk as long as three hours to reach their lands in Bilbao. This had impor­tant implications for the development of both resettlements. In the months before the 2009 fiestas, village and parish leaders had begun organ­izing mingas in Puela to repair buildings and infrastructure (described further in chapter 5). Leaders throughout Puela Parish made numerous impassioned pleas to the p­ eople of the area to return and took many steps to or­ga­nize the villages to begin rebuilding. Villa­gers, for their part, seemed inspired by the rhe­toric and the possibility of returning to their homelands and perhaps regaining what they had lost.

Po­liti­cal Episodes of Mobility and Legibility In 2009 the dueling livelihood strategies of urban commuting or migrating for wage ­labor and returning to the northern parishes to grow food and tend animals soon began to brush up against the preferences and policies of the resettlement agencies. This strategy of commuting, more than the ­others, helps to explain why the resettlement communities w ­ ere largely abandoned during the day, but absence from the resettlements also frequently extended for multiple days, part of a somewhat complex phenomenon that soon became a source of tension. MIDUVI, Samaritan’s Purse, and Esquel each had some basic requirements of their beneficiaries, chief among them the requirement to demonstrate residence by regularly occupying their h ­ ouses. It is not clear how explicit residency requirements w ­ ere at the outset, nor is it clear that resettlers could have foreseen the potential complications and consequences when MIDUVI was still in the pro­ cess of drafting their regulatory pro­cess in 2009. However, many h ­ ouse­holds had difficulty satisfying their residency requirements right from the beginning. The prob­lem was that it was often not feasible or reasonable to return to the resettlements ­because of the burden of the commute (especially from Bilbao). ­People frequently remained in their villages for several days to work their land. Moreover, resettlers neglected their home villages at their own peril, as the theft of animals, productive resources and ­house­hold goods that began during the initial evacuations continued in the abandoned villages for years to come. Thieves

The Four Walls of Bare Life • 93

regularly entered the darkened villages by night and loaded trucks and cars with any livestock and goods that had been left ­behind. Policy enforcement, especially full-­time residency, did not begin immediately and certain aspects changed over time. Samaritan’s Purse granted deeds to beneficiaries shortly ­after they turned over the ­houses, while MIDUVI retained all deeds in the resettlement and required beneficiaries to demonstrate residency to receive titles at some unspecified f­ uture date. Esquel initiated a post hoc pro­cess of land surveying in late 2009 and began granting deeds in mid-2010 to select beneficiaries who regularly met Esquel’s standards of deservingness—­regular residence, attendance at monthly general assembly meetings, minga participation, and payment of monthly dues and utilities. Esquel representatives regularly visited Pusuca and attended nearly all village meetings and mingas. In contrast, except for two ceremonial visits in 2009, Samaritan’s Purse was no longer involved in the resettlement community and did not engage in any regulation of residency. MIDUVI, however, began conducting random visits to resettlement h ­ ouses to confirm occupancy beginning in May 2009. MIDUVI representatives informed resettlers that they would be evicted if they did not occupy their h ­ ouses. Residents frequently expressed fears that they would lose their ­houses if they ­were not pre­sent in Penipe Nuevo and also feared that they would lose their animals and property if they w ­ ere not pre­sent in their home villages. Some of the larger ­house­holds and extended families w ­ ere able to manage this situation by having some f­ amily members stay in Penipe Nuevo for certain days while o­ thers stayed in the home village or in the city for work. Smaller h ­ ouse­holds, however, ­were frequently unable to manage this sort of dual residency, and this was even more difficult for the dozens of ­house­holds with members who ­were disabled or ill. ­Because agropastoralism in ­people’s home villages—­however precarious—­ remained the most common and reliable economic strategy, the fear of theft became endemic among resettlers, as they felt vulnerable to losing all they had once (or more) again. In early September 2011, I visited Claudia Andrade, her parents, Klever Andrade and Sandra Hernandez, and her aunt Martha Sánchez in Anabá, a small village in Puela Parish where Claudia served as cabildo president. They w ­ ere planting corn and beans, as always, and pointed to their avocado and plum trees, all teeming with fruit. They all had ­houses in the Penipe Nuevo resettlement—­Claudia with Samaritan’s Purse and the ­others with MIDUVI. Sandra explained that MIDUVI had threatened her with eviction for not demonstrating full-­time occupancy. She appreciated and valued the ­house and did not want to lose it as it was an impor­tant refuge for her and her ­family, but they ­were unable to occupy it full time ­because they had to look ­after their land, animals, ­house, and possessions in Puela, where they had been robbed on several occasions while sleeping in Penipe Nuevo. She showed me where part of her front door had been kicked in by thieves and averred that they likely came from within the community or perhaps a neighboring one b­ ecause they w ­ ere

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most likely to know when folks ­were absent from their homes and when it was safe to attempt a robbery.

An Episode in the Politics of Risk and Retorno One day in November 2011, I rode with Bernardo Huerta to the municipal government building in Penipe, where about a dozen other villa­gers from Manzano ­were assembled outside. We entered and w ­ ere shown to a large meeting room and an audience with the mayor, municipal council, members of the Provincial Council of Chimborazo, and delegates from the Secretariat of Risk Management. The mayor greeted us and spoke of his esteem for the resettlers and his hope for their f­ uture. Bernardo replied that although the mayor “spoke very beautifully” during his campaign, now, two years into his administration, he had done virtually nothing for Puela, the parish of Bernardo’s home village, Manzano. The mayor tersely but politely retorted that he had spoken to the provincial council just that day on behalf of Puela. Bernardo had come with several grievances, but the top priority for him and the villa­gers was that the government lift the designation of their village as a “high-­risk” area, which prohibited the reconstruction of roads and bridges to the village and prevented villa­gers from accessing credit and aid to return to farming. Second, Bernardo demanded property deeds to the ­houses in Penipe Nuevo and an end to the threat of eviction in the resettlements so they could spend nights in their home villages and not fall victim to the thieves who preyed on their empty h ­ ouses in the night. When Bernardo finished making his demands, the officials looked positively perplexed. Both the mayor and the Ministry of Risk Management delegate barely contained condescending smirks as they calmly explained that it would be preposterous to ignore volcanic eruptions to suit ­human wishes. This was not a ­matter of a po­liti­cal designation, but a fact. The mayor pulled a paper from a pile on his desk, saying, “It’s written right h ­ ere that investment in the high-­risk zone is prohibited.” A provincial council member added that not fully occupying the resettlement h ­ ouses was tantamount to defrauding the state, which had been so generous in providing for them. ­A fter a generally disappointing meeting, Bernardo was at least able to get the attention of TV news cameras outside and plead his case to all of Ec­ua­dor. I ­didn’t know it at the time, perhaps ­because I had not picked up on certain cues or simply b­ ecause local strategies and language for the issues they faced remained rather protean, but this was my first encounter with the proj­ect that would increasingly rise above the retorno movement and come to be or­ga­nized u­ nder the structuring meta­phor of convivir, an articulation of a more-­than-­human assemblage asserting that villa­gers saw themselves as more capable of managing than outsiders would acknowledge. Resettlement Governance and Re­sis­tance How did resettlers and local leaders contend with and resist governance by outside agencies? They resisted the legibilizing pressures of full-­time occupancy with

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a combination of continuing mobility practices, subterfuge, and confrontation. Some h ­ ouse­holds hung curtains or bedsheets over their win­dows and kept lights on overnight while they w ­ ere away, hoping to trick MIDUVI agents into passing right by. W ­ hether this ever worked I cannot say, but they soon caught on, as I heard MIDUVI leaders announce as much on more than one occasion. The power of local leaders to support re­sis­tance was negligible. As with p­ eople’s lives and livelihoods, local leaders’ power was reduced to the barest semblance and, in Penipe Nuevo especially, it seemed to exist in name only. The resettlement communities in Penipe and Pusuca established village councils that resembled cabildos shortly a­ fter the resettlements w ­ ere built. Known as directivas, ­these organ­izations also managed community affairs, or­ga­nized mingas, and sought to attract support from outside organ­izations, much like traditional cabildos. However, ­these organ­izations worked somewhat differently. The directiva is nearly identical to cabildos in roles, responsibilities, and activities, but it is not referred to as a cabildo b­ ecause neither Penipe Nuevo nor Pusuca w ­ ere legally incorporated as comunas; instead, they are considered communities of the central parish of Penipe. In fact, ­there ­were rather stark differences between the powers and practices of village cabildos and the directivas. In both, officeholders (president, vice president, secretary, trea­surer) are elected via popu­lar vote e­ very two years. But cabildos command modest bud­gets (in the tens of thousands) allocated by the provincial and municipal governments for public works. Cabildos hold monthly and ad hoc meetings to administer community affairs, which principally involve organ­izing mingas that produce both the material (e.g., roads, bridges, canals, buildings) and h ­ uman bound­aries of the community, including conflict resolution (Cadena and Mayorga 1988). They have long occupied an interstitial space between the state and the grassroots—­their power established by constitutional law and subordinate to parish councils ( juntas parroquiales) and the municipal government, yet they w ­ ere as likely to or­ga­nize their communities to confront and resist state intrusions. Though they are subject to state law, cabildos decide on the distribution of public resources (including outside aid and w ­ ater) within their communities. Minga organ­ization was also a key f­actor in cabildo power and legitimacy—­leaders ­were often able to attract outside resources from the government and NGOs by demonstrating community organ­ization through minga practice, and their capacity to or­ga­nize mingas was often underwritten by their ability to attract outside resources. Cabildos therefore constitute a critical nexus of state proj­ects in the region. In Penipe Nuevo, however, all resources ­were channeled by the state-­supported grid, obviating the need for mingas while undermining local leaders’ capacity to attract outside resources, or­ga­nize their constituents, and set the terms for the resolution of conflicts and the distribution of resources (described in chapter 5). ­There w ­ ere impor­tant differences between the directivas in Penipe and Pusuca that, as presented in the following contradistinction, illustrate the practice of governance in the resettlements and their capacities to negotiate with or resist the enforcement of resettlement agency policies.

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Po­liti­cal Episodes in Penipe Nuevo In the Penipe resettlement, resettlers formed two dif­fer­ent directivas, a Samaritan’s Purse beneficiary directiva and a MIDUVI beneficiary directiva. They did not hold regular meetings—­having neither a fa­cil­i­ty in which to host them nor bud­gets to build alternatives—­and neither directiva successfully or­ga­nized mingas in the resettlement a­ fter its founding in 2008. Leaders called several ad hoc meetings of resettlers with MIDUVI ­houses to inform them of MIDUVI policies, hear grievances, and, when tensions reached a boiling point in 2011, to or­ga­ nize re­sis­tance. In the final week of August 2011, MIDUVI agents visited Penipe Nuevo and announced that resettlers had ninety days to establish residency and become eligible for deeds to their homes; failing this, they would be evicted. This pro­cess brought assemblages into high relief, like an explosion of an entirely dif­fer­ent variety compelling ­people to move. Directiva leaders scrambled to respond and called an emergency meeting ­later that week. At 6 p.m. on September 1, Bernardo, Don Mateo, and I walked together to where directiva president Washington Sánchez had convened an open-­air meeting in a cul-­de-­sac in front of several MIDUVI h ­ ouses at the southern end of Penipe Nuevo (see figure 5). A few minutes ­after we arrived, Washington called the meeting to order and asked for the attention of the roughly sixty-­five ­people sitting on curbs and doorsteps or leaning against ­houses on both sides of the street. Shouting to reach every­one, Washington lamented their lack of a casa comunal in which to convene. He then came to the main agenda item and reframed the anx­i­eties about MIDUVI’s recent announcement by saying that the good news was that MIDUVI had established a policy and pro­cess for granting deeds to their h ­ ouses and properties. The main points ­were full-­time occupancy of the ­houses; a twenty-­five-­year prohibition on sales, renting, or giving away ­houses; and MIDUVI’s retention of the right to reclaim h ­ ouses that went unoccupied for ninety days. Washington decried the politics of deservingness being realized through gossip and petty accusations that he said served other powers, not the community, and concluded that they “should be united.” MIDUVI agents returned to Penipe Nuevo on December 1 and posted eviction notices on more than a dozen ­houses, notifying residents that they had fifteen days to establish residency or face eviction. Washington called an emergency meeting of all beneficiaries to or­ga­nize a response. Nearly 100 resettlers—­more than attended the September meeting but considerably less than the total inhabitants of the 185 MIDUVI households—­huddled u­ nder the awning of a h ­ ouse cum pizzeria to escape the pouring rain as Washington and vice president Hipolito Nogales read an eviction letter to the group. The two then voiced their indignation at the fact that MIDUVI was preying on the most vulnerable p­ eople, who w ­ ere off tending to their crops and animals or working hard in the city. ­There was a general uproar. Washington said they had ­every right to be outraged.

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FIGURE 5  ​September 2011 meeting of MIDUVI resettlers.

He and Hipolito exhorted the crowd to share their outrage and stand up for their neighbors, saying they would all be vulnerable if they allowed this to go on and calling for a meeting the following week where they would “rise up” and confront MIDUVI, demanding that they cease evictions and random visits. If MIDUVI representatives wanted to meet with resettlers, he said, they should do so in a public meeting. The following week, residents and MIDUVI leaders met in the government shelters at the edge of the resettlement. Somewhat surprisingly, the turnout was no greater than at the previous meeting outside the pizzeria. ­There was ­little re­sis­ tance on display, least of all from Washington and Hipolito. Instead, as at prior MIDUVI meetings, Fernando Barreno, the rural housing coordinator for Chimborazo, stood and addressed the group, telling them that t­here was no way around the residency requirements and that failure to comply would result in eviction. Although the representatives took questions, t­ hese w ­ ere primarily one-­ way discussions, with MIDUVI personnel informing beneficiaries of policy and enforcement issues. While some beneficiaries—­and ­those from distant and isolated Bilbao w ­ ere particularly concerned—­verbally protested threats of eviction, explaining the difficulty of living with no economic means in the resettlements, Barreno and his colleagues responded by likening some beneficiary be­hav­iors to defrauding the state. Directiva members did l­ ittle more than call the meeting to order, take attendance, and introduce the MIDUVI representatives.

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It is worth noting that MIDUVI directiva leaders ­were far from inexperienced. Washington was a wealthy dairy farmer from Pungal de Puela who was also the president of the Junta Parroquial de Puela. Likewise, Hipolito was an influential leader in Palictahua, where he served as cabildo president for several years. However, for all the re­spect they commanded throughout the canton and all the influence they wielded in their respective communities, they w ­ ere neutralized by the absence of resources—­productive and political—in the resettlements.

Po­liti­cal Episodes in Pusuca In Pusuca, Esquel facilitated the creation of a directiva whose officers w ­ ere elected ­every two years, and constructed a casa comunal. The directiva was principally responsible for holding monthly general assemblies, for which community attendance was mandatory; organ­izing minga l­ abor parties; enforcing community standards (e.g., residence, dues); serving as a liaison between the community and outside organ­izations; managing community resources (e.g., ­water, parks, roads); and engaging in community conflict resolution. The obligations for ­house­holds to remain in good standing would fluctuate over time, but the mainstays w ­ ere mandatory attendance at monthly general assemblies, minga participation, one-­dollar monthly dues for community administrative costs, five-­dollar monthly dues to the caja comunitaria (community savings and loan), and payment of ­house­hold utility bills.4 Owing to the collection of dues as well as outside donations, the Pusuca Directiva, unlike its Penipe Nuevo counter­parts, did command a bud­get, which was usually around a few thousand dollars. A representative from Esquel, Martha Santiago, served as an adviser to the directiva and the other committees. She attended all meetings and mingas and guided leaders through decision-­making pro­cesses. Martha worked with Esquel to secure outside resources and support for the community, which could range from brokering meetings with neighboring communities for w ­ ater access and securing funds and in-­k ind contributions from government ministries and NGOs to negotiating with the provincial council and the World Bank to fund and coordinate the construction of an eight-­kilometer irrigation canal. In community meetings, Martha would generally advise ­people of their rights (per Esquel-­drafted community bylaws) and ­viable options in making decisions. With her exceedingly kind demeanor, nearly permanent smile, demonstrated competence, and clear dedication to the community, Martha was a steady and nonthreatening ally when it came to conflict resolution. She helped manage the tension between the utopian and egalitarian community ideals and the unequal power relations that came to bear in the village. While both Martha and Pedro Carrasco of the provincial council worked hard with the community and demonstrated unflagging commitment to the success of the resettlement, their roles in the community made it difficult to discern where the state began and ended. Mariana Ochoa was the local driving force who helped or­ga­nize evacuees for the many meetings and mingas it took to build the resettlement. She was elected

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directiva president in October 2007, before the ­houses ­were even built, and was succeeded by Manuel Reyes, a large landowner from Pungal de Puela, in an election on December  6, 2009. Her words following the election ­were decidedly ambivalent: “Hopefully the new directiva w ­ ill work as I have done with both funds and ­people, though some ­people are not appreciative.” ­There had been tensions over meeting community responsibilities during Mariana’s time as president and conflicts between resettlers, but both would grow much more pronounced once Manuel assumed the presidency. While generally popu­lar, throughout his presidency Manuel was the subject of accusations of impropriety, especially by Mariana and Blanca Sánchez, who ­were occasionally joined by ­others. As was common at all levels of scale in the region, the most frequent accusation was claiming undue shares of community benefits for himself and his close allies while excluding o­ thers; the most notorious accusation during his tenure involved exclusion in two large green­houses that produced tomatoes for market. Some of the conflict could be chalked up to personal style—­though Manuel began each meeting with the type of utopian affirmations that Mariana had made into a convention and was known for his generosity, he was generally dour in demeanor and not given to excessive talk. Also, unlike many of his neighbors in Pusuca, he had sizable landholdings and a concrete home in Pungal de Puela, so, while he was not unique in spending much of his time outside the community, he was among the very few who could afford to live comfortably without Pusuca. But more than any of ­these ­factors, conflict in the community during Manuel’s time could be understood as a consequence of increased resource anxiety and changes in community obligations. Esquel, like MIDUVI, wanted to ensure that ­people made their residence in Pusuca, and in a general assembly meeting on September 23, 2008, the community voted on and approved a resolution on “definitive residence” for community resettlers. Like their counter­parts in Penipe Nuevo down the hill, Pusuca resettlers would find this requirement challenging to navigate and it would be challenged often. Ultimately it was relaxed to 50 ­percent residency, though it was never clear precisely how that would be determined. In January 2009, Martha informed the general assembly that they would “take into account community participation and minga ­labor and give property deeds to the ­people who demonstrated residency.” On June 6, 2009, the directiva reported on their census of ­house­hold residency, conducted over the previous month, during which they found that three ­people—­Walter Guerrero, Franklin Andrade, and Marcelo Pérez—­had not complied with residency requirements. The community Libro de Actas (book of ratified minutes) rec­ords that they then approved a decision “to exclude said persons from the organ­ization in compliance with the promissory act” and evict them from their ­houses. But all three individuals, as well as ­others in similar circumstances, would come to contest their eviction and tentatively retain rights to their h ­ ouses, pending the fulfillment of residency and community obligations.

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In a general assembly a l­ ittle over a year l­ater, in September 2010, Sara Morales complained that she had paid all the fines for missed assemblies and mingas but still had not received her deed. Martha’s response was that she would be eligible for her deed once she demonstrated residency.

Conclusions: Humanitarian Bare Life In discussions about rural life in Penipe between 1999 and 2017, I often find myself driving home a core issue by asking ­people to imagine what a bind someone must be in when farming on an actively erupting volcano is the best option available. Akhil Gupta (2012, 4) expected the public to consider the acute production of bare life in a g­ reat disaster as a “dire national crisis requiring massive state intervention to aid in relief and rehabilitation” (4). While I agree that this is more likely to provoke humanitarian sensibilities than the poverty and quotidian structural vio­lence Gupta describes, it does so only in the immediate sense. What we find in this chapter is that following the short-­term mobilizations of the state to save biological life in a disaster, ­people ­were abandoned to bare life shortly afterward (see also Marchezini 2015; Schuller 2016, 2008). We have also seen ­here and in previous chapters how urban living was in many ways anathema to ­people raised in the northern parishes of Penipe; and I do not mean this in some vulgar primordial sense, but rather in the terms conveyed by my friends from Manzano, who found the life without community, in which every­thing must be bought and sold, simply distasteful and out of keeping with their values—it simply did not enseñar them. Still, they turned to the exploding mountain or the hostile city, not only ­because t­ hese ­were the possibilities available, but also b­ ecause they w ­ ere strategies for finding a way back. P ­ eople endeavored to meet their needs and ­those of their kin by braving dangerous and undesirable places so that they could return to make their lives in old, familiar places. Yet they w ­ ere strictly curtailed in their ability to do so by state mandates for deservingness and legibility and by their own diminished po­liti­cal power in resettlement. The legibilizing proj­ects of resettlement ­were decidedly intolerant of mobility and therefore constituted a type of procedural vulnerability that reified the relations and conditions that themselves prefigured the historical production of disaster and subalternity. I would note also that both directivas found themselves activated as extensions of the state—in Penipe Nuevo to articulate the rules of residency and in Pusuca to advance the deservingness criteria of Esquel; moreover, in the case of Penipe Nuevo, ­there ­were moments, at least, in which the directiva deactivated and sought, however briefly, to challenge agents of the state. Observing all this transpire prompted me to pay ever greater attention to minga as a practice that might facilitate local agency and the production of fuller lives. This is my primary concern in the following chapters, in which I search for utopian possibilities via decidedly unromantic critiques of colonialist practices that ­were branded as subaltern solidarity.

Part II

The Palimpsest of Minga From the earliest days of conceiving and carry­ing out this study, minga has been a structuring idiom of my work as I gradually came to regard it as an institution— or set of related practices—in which power relations are central, but which is pregnant with meaning for t­ hose who invoke and practice it. Minga is often conjured as emblematic of cultural values of solidarity, equality, and what I might call collective industriousness; it is a source of pride that is frequently mentioned in contrast to the perceived selfishness and greed of urbanites, elites, Americans, and Eu­ro­pe­ans. And yet, several authors have studied the patterned, asymmetrical reciprocity bound up in minga exchanges and relations, including the expression, concealment, exercise, and disputes of class, power, and identity (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009; Mayer 1974a, 1974b, 2009; W. Mitchell 1991; Orlove 1977; Whitten 1969). As w ­ ill become clear throughout part II, minga is at times a vehicle for domination and at times a practice of local solidarity and re­sis­tance; it can be a means by which villa­gers govern their communities, but it may also be a means for state assemblages to realize development goals, imposing their own logics and disciplines in the pro­cess. My attempt to examine local support apart from the state frequently led me right back to the state again. In fact, the tensions between mobility and legibility surfaced in part I w ­ ere certainly not the sole field in which the politics of deservingness w ­ ere enacted. Participation and cooperation are not only significant agentive maneuvers in disaster, at once elusive and celebrated, but also common markers of deservingness. Indeed, the dynamics and relationalities of minga practice get to the heart of multiple intersecting concerns in disaster studies, postcolonial theory, the anthropology of the state, and Andean anthropology. 101

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In Penipe, however (as elsewhere in the Andes), minga crosscuts society and the state and is indexical of the politics of deservingness. And it is an institution whose practices enroll ­human and nonhuman species and the landscape into the naturecultural assemblage that in the de­cade following resettlement came to be articulated locally as convivir. Appreciating minga as an institution meant that it could not quite be considered on the same terms as spontaneous communitas (though minga works in ­those spacetimes as well) and that I would therefore need a new conceptual approach to investigating minga practice. Studying minga as an institution requires more careful attention to the correlative institution of the village council (both cabildos and resettlement directivas)—­and how power works in and through them. B ­ ecause minga, like the village councils that typically or­ga­nize them, is an institution, I can situate the study of minga practice in my assemblage framework and the anthropology of the state covered in part I, with attention to how t­hese institutions are alternatively activated and deactivated as components in shifting state assemblages, while appending to this a critical institutional framework to understand the micropolitics of minga practice. Village councils practice va­ri­e­ties of vernacular statecraft, which is a shorthand term for facilitating the administrative ordering of society at the village level by simplifying and standardizing information about populations, resources, and the environment (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009). Such standardized orga­ nizational forms enabled cabildos to “administer, persuade, and at times coerce residents to move t­ oward a common purpose” (7). By standardization, Rudi Colloredo-­Mansfeld means that vernacular statecraft practices can neutralize local status inequalities and patron-­clientalism with leveling mechanisms—­equal standards for participation, equal credit for equal work—­that hold all ­house­holds equally accountable for meeting community obligations. The primary tools of cabildo vernacular statecraft are organ­izing minga cooperative l­ abor parties, list making, council formation, boundary drawing, and interregional contacts (6; see also Faas 2017b; Cadena and Mayorga 1988). In discussing vernacular statecraft, Colloredo-­Mansfeld is especially attentive to how Indigenous cabildos in Otavalo warded off the Ec­ua­dor­ian state to create a domain for the administration of justice based on local standards and values. Additionally, though this is accomplished with uneven results, he draws the very impor­tant conclusion that the cabildo can at times, in effect, stand apart from state assemblages, exercising at least some degree of autonomy. And yet, my fieldwork in Penipe revealed that the cabildos, and especially the unincorporated and significantly less power­ful resettlement directivas, ­were also often activated as extensions of dominant state power. The conventional approach to studying institutions points to “a set of enforceable rules that constrain and guide ­human action” and enable participants to make rational choices about their own be­hav­iors and reliably anticipate the be­hav­iors of ­others (Acheson 2002, 30; and see especially Ostrom 1990). Often heralded as “new institutional economics,” this approach emphasizes the central

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importance of local knowledge and practices in the transparent and good governance of natu­ral resources. The standardization of belongingness and the accounting of minga participation would seem to lend itself rather nicely to the study of minga practice but for the fact that minga is rooted in pre-­ Columbian and colonial relationalities, which, in addition to collective values of solidarity and equality, likewise underwrite the practice. Instead, I take an approach to village councils and minga institutions that is roughly aligned with what Frances Cleaver (2012) has called “critical institutionalism.” This entails identifying the historical production and social lives of institutions and how they alternatively facilitate and limit agency, power, and social justice outcomes; rather than treating them as simply rational and instrumental, studying institutions in this vein attends to positionality and the emotional and moral aspects of institutional practice (xii–19). I read minga through the meta­phor of palimpsest, which on one level conjures the aspect of minga not just as an institution, but also as a field for institutional blending, where differently situated actors might draw on dif­fer­ent institutional rules and resources. Minga practice can be read as a smeary palimpsest, inscribed and reinscribed over time in the interests, severally, of adaptation, local agency, domination, and re­sis­tance. As a means for storying repetition with difference, the palimpsest meta­phor has par­tic­u­lar resonance in postcolonial thinking. It has proven useful for interpreting the relexification of West African languages in novels written by African authors in Eu­ro­pean languages as palimpsests that retain “imperfectly erased remnants of the source language” (Zabus 1991, 3) and similarly helps me think about how historical relationalities and cultural values of minga practice are available to differently situated actors, who then adapt them to their own purposes even as t­ hese adaptations are constantly met with re­sis­tance. Peter Hulme (1986) invoked the palimpsest meta­ phor in his reading of Columbus’s journals of his voyage to the Amer­i­cas, a text that alternates between ethnographic field notes, personal memoir, and a trove of Orientalist fantasies. This deployment of the meta­phor encourages my own approach to reading minga as a discourse that is alternatively deployed for instrumental ends, the claiming of the bodies of the rural subaltern, and the crafting of utopian proj­ects. For José Rabasa (1993, 181), space and place are akin to palimpsests, and he sees the pro­cess of mapmaking as a fundamental technology of the colonization of the Amer­i­cas that erased and wrote over pre-­Columbian renderings of the world and its landscapes; the smudginess and only partial erasures of past inscriptions of space, place, practice, and meaning encourage a mea­sure of hope that the rural subaltern might recover, reconstitute, or reinvent the world according to their own visions. I find that palimpsest thinking helps me recognize how differently situated actors can read minga practice so differently—­its pasts, presences, and ­futures—­and draw on dif­fer­ent scripts, rules, and visions of the practice. I do not invoke the palimpsest as a purely discursive analy­sis but also to surface the

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embodiments, practices, social memory, quotidian vio­lences, and utopian proj­ ects of (post)colonial relations. In minga I perceive practices, meanings, and memories embodied and marked by shifting and contingent relations of power. Attention to the layered and contested inscriptions of minga practice can help defetishize notions of culture and cultural practice with attention to the semiotic, material, embodied, and historically contingent means by which it is “deployed in social action,” not by Andean culture, but by Andean ­people, who share historical relations with power, nature, livelihoods, and memory (Abercrombie 1998, 19).

5

Enduring Cooperation One sunny and especially warm after­noon in late March 2009, a large crowd gathered in the park in the center of Penipe Nuevo. Resettlers lined the three-­ tiered concrete bleachers that ran three-­quarters of the way around the volleyball courts. At the center of the court was a twenty-­something Ec­ua­dor­ian man with an acoustic guitar standing with a ­little over a dozen White men and ­women in conventional tourist dress (sneakers or hiking shoes, blue jeans or hiking pants). The young man strummed his guitar, which was amplified by a small speaker, as the group on the court sang along to Christian songs in En­g lish and Spanish. I soon caught on that ­these ­were American church volunteers from the Samaritan’s Purse resettlement construction efforts in 2007 and 2008. Many of them had come and worked alongside displaced Penipeños who had been required to work mingas to construct the 102 ­houses that Samaritan’s Purse contributed to the resettlement. They had returned to visit the resettlement for the first time since it opened late in the previous year. With the aid of a translator, several volunteers addressed the assembled crowd in turns from a microphone connected to the guitar amplifier. They called on the nearly 200 resettlers assembled in the park in the midday sun to hold hands, and many complied. They then took turns praising ­those assembled for their incredible solidarity and several times cheered, “You built this!” Ben Foster, Ec­ua­dor country director for Samaritan’s Purse, took the mic and addressed every­one in Spanish, thanking them for attending and once again sharing his and his compatriots’ joy in visiting them, seeing them all together in the spirit of solidarity, and surveying all they had accomplished together to build the community that surrounded the park. 105

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The following month, I sat down with Ben, a retired American contractor, in Samaritan’s Purse’s rented offices in Quito, near the cluster of embassies on the north end of Parque La Carolina. He recalled the construction pro­cess: One of the ­things Samaritan’s Purse does is use beneficiary l­ abor to build the homes . . . ​­because the community does, I’m sure ­you’ve noticed, they do ­ things together. . . . ​It’s pretty tight knit. . . . ​[T]he park is built on mingas. The chain-­linked fence was put up on a minga. The bleachers are a minga. The basketball court’s a minga. The . . . ​community bathrooms in the park ­there is minga. The sidewalks through the rest of the community, even . . . ​the border sidewalks and stuff . . . ​­were done by mingas.

Moments l­ ater, his eyes welling up with an emotion that conveyed his sincerity, he continued, “I d­ on’t know if y­ ou’re a man of faith or if you even have to be, but sometimes you have to just stand in awe of it.” The enthusiasm of well-­ meaning ­people like Ben and the other Samaritan’s Purse volunteers for working with what they perceived as “tight-­knit” communities seemed tied in part to their faith, but also to an enduring imaginary of Indigenous and campesino bodies as claimable for public works. Staff and American volunteers w ­ ere thoroughly and understandably pleased that once the first fifty ­houses w ­ ere constructed and ­those beneficiaries relieved of work obligations, many ­people continued to volunteer to work on the second phase of fifty-­two ­houses. This was, for Ben and Samaritan’s Purse, a confirmation of local solidarity and proof that their strategy of working through local customs would foster community development. But would this perceived solidarity endure in the new assemblages taking shape in the resettlements? In this chapter, I explore the role of cooperation in disaster by first investigating what appeared to be the end of minga practice following disaster, displacement, and resettlement, and then the happy surprise of finding it very much alive in a movement of resettlers to return to their lands and rebuild their communities and livelihoods. I begin to explore minga as an institution that weaves the naturecultural assemblage of life in the shadow of Tungurahua; an institution with complex historical roots, unequal power relations, and sets of rules and resources refracted through multiple positionalities. The chapter follows an investigation of minga continuity in disaster over four cases. I first pursue the question of minga survival in resettlement and next investigate the rules of minga as an institution. I then conduct two further investigations of the spacetime of minga—­pursuing first a question about the temporal regimes of wage ­labor and then another about the interventions of protean state assemblages. I conclude by thinking of the metafunctions and aggregate effects of minga practice and minga as a utopian proj­ect, but one with deep colonial legacies that need to be understood in order to better interpret t­ hese practices in the pre­sent.

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Cooperation ­Matters: Minga Survival in Resettlement Cooperation m ­ atters in disaster. This is the rare statement about which scholars, journalists, politicians, and the public all tend to agree. Disasters involve varying degrees of material, emotional, and psychological loss and damage, and informal relations of social support that accompany disaster and displacement are often vital to meeting a range of needs (Faas and Jones 2017). Yet on the question of how cooperation works and how it ­matters, it can be rather challenging to discern a pattern. One prob­lem in studies of disaster cooperation comes in understanding what it reveals about society and how, why, and w ­ hether it endures. Thus far the most compelling explanation has been provided in dif­fer­ent ways by Anthony Oliver-­Smith (2020) and Susanna Hoffman (2020): disaster cooperation emerges as a spontaneous form of communitas, borrowing Victor Turner’s ([1969] 2017) concept for a special sense of togetherness in uncertain times, and is ultimately disrupted by the arrival of outside organ­izations and the delivery of aid. Oliver-­Smith (1979, 1986), when writing about immediate and short-­term responses to the 1970 Ancash earthquake and avalanche in Yungay, Peru, observed that previously existing stratifications such as class and ethnicity temporarily dis­appeared in short-­lived waves of altruism. Once national and international aid appeared, however, old divisions reemerged, and conflicts over access to resources began anew.1 The conclusion that outside aid and organ­ izations undermine cooperation is an impor­tant one and points to significant ­factors affecting minga practice following resettlement. In Penipe Nuevo, minga practice effectively came to an end shortly a­ fter construction ended. A popu­lar local explanation for its decline in Penipe was that outside organ­izations providing handouts in exchange for minga participation destroyed minga culture. Many township residents saw the campesino resettlers as rustic, uncouth, and lazy, all with their hands out wanting to receive aid while not wanting to work for themselves. That town residents—­mostly professionals, small business ­owners, or wage or day laborers—­would see campesino resettlers as ungrateful and indolent is in no way surprising. It articulates quite well with the highly racialized discourse that Ec­ua­dor­ian urbanites have used to distinguish themselves from rural Indigenous and campesino p­ eoples (indeed, at times some used the pejorative term indio). Yet resettlers themselves w ­ ere also concerned that they w ­ ere growing more cynical, self-­absorbed, and dependent. When I visited Pedro Cordova and Karen Muñoz, then president and vice president, respectively, of the Samaritan’s Purse Directiva in September 2011, they ­were discussing a plan to or­ga­nize a minga to clean and repair the park when Karen lamented, “­People just want handouts and d­ on’t want to do anything.” Was minga practice, which had been for so long a vital aspect of rural life in Penipe and so central to response, recovery, and reconstruction, now a casualty of post-­displacement de­pen­dency or anomie?

108 • The Palimpsest of Minga

­There is l­ittle new in state-­led minga organ­izing, which dates at least to the Inca Empire, and NGOs have worked with mingas since the 1960s.2 The then newly established U.S. Peace Corps or­ga­nized mingas in Penipe from the early 1960s through the 1980s for potable ­water and irrigation proj­ects, and incentivized participants with food rations of canned meat, powdered milk, and grains. Though some still recall the enlatadas (canned goods) with a mixture of humor (“They call that food?”) and fondness, leaders from this era whom I interviewed claimed that ­these proj­ects destroyed the culture of minga, as they could no longer recruit participants without promising personal compensation. I raised this topic when discussing minga history with local historian Samuel Haro in November 2011. In the fifties, we did mingas h ­ ere in Penipe to carry out public works without cost to the p­ eople, works like the Baños road. In the sixties, the Peace Corps came from the United States, and they gave us rations of milk and canned meat for participating in the mingas. So, it was no longer a ­matter of personal volition, but for personal interest. P ­ eople came for the rations, not for their own volition nor for obligation, but for selfishness. ­There was no longer the solidarity like t­ here was before. Before, p­ eople frequently worked for seven or eight days in a row for the benefit of all. ­A fter all that with the rations from the Peace Corps, no one wanted to work mingas without rations. That went on in Penipe u­ ntil the eighties.

I asked Samuel to explain the difference between working mingas to build ­ ouses for every­one and working mingas to build an irrigation canal for every­one. h Since every­one benefits in both cases, how was one selfishly motivated while the other was based on values and social obligations? He explained, “­Because when Samaritan’s Purse mingas are over, you have your own ­house. When the irrigation mingas are over, you do not have your own irrigation canal. It remains a commonly held necessity and a common obligation that must be regularly renewed.” Samuel’s distinction between ­house­hold and collective resources would inform my interpretations of tensions in minga practice, especially in Pusuca. Yet, importantly, as Samuel emphasizes, mingas w ­ ere traditionally or­ga­nized around work on the commons and on infrastructure such as roads, irrigation, and potable ­water. Irrigation canals, of course, are only necessary where ­there is agricultural production, and work on potable w ­ ater systems is not necessary where it is handled by an urban grid—­the spatial ecol­ogy of bare life—as in the Penipe resettlement. Minga cannot be reduced to a s­ imple m ­ atter of material relations, but it is the practice that weaves together the co-­living arrangements of the naturecultural assemblage—­people, w ­ ater, hills, crops, animals, and Tungurahua—­and the shifting assemblage of the state at its margins. The practice is clearly underwritten by collective reliance on the commons; absent such relationalities, minga practice, as with local leadership, was significantly abated.

Enduring Cooperation • 109

Minga Lives in El Retorno Despite Samuel’s and numerous local opinions to the contrary, minga practice was not undone by displacement, resettlement, or de­pen­dency. Indeed. it continued as a centerpiece of local culture, livelihoods, mutual aid, and governance. Following ­those resettlers who, beginning in mid-2009, took advantage of the diminished (but hardly concluded) volcanic activity to begin cultivating their lands in their home villages led me to spend increasing amounts of time in Manzano, the second largest village (comuna) in Puela Parish. The return to agropastoral activities accumulated into a movement to return and rebuild, what p­ eople came to call El Retorno a Puela. ­Here the claim that minga culture had declined among resettlers was belied by the fact that mingas resumed in earnest in Puela, as ­people sought to repair infrastructure and commons including irrigation and potable w ­ ater systems. Manzano Cabildo President Bernardo Huerta invited me to my first minga in July 2009, telling me to meet him and the Manzano villa­gers in central Puela one Saturday morning. I arrived to find approximately fifty ­people from villages throughout Puela Parish all working in lines to tear up the paving stones from the main road through Puela. Washington Sánchez, then president of the Junta Parroquial de Puela, was coordinating the work. I asked him about the purpose of the proj­ect, as it seemed impractical to remove the well-­laid paving stones from the main artery of traffic (especially interparish buses), but he informed me that it was necessary b­ ecause the state was g­ oing to pave the road with asphalt. This too seemed odd, since the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works had thus far been opposed to investing in further infrastructure in the risk zone, declining to repair the road and bridges that connected Penipe to its northernmost parish of Bilbao and its urban neighbor to the north, Baños. But I dropped my questioning and joined in the work effort, lining up with men and ­women of all ages to pull up the concrete paving stones with our hands and stack them in neat towers roughly a meter high along the roadside. As we worked, other ­people greeted me, and many went out of their way to tell me that I was witnessing in this minga the solidarity and unity of the ­people and culture of Puela. Blanca Sánchez explained, “Minga is the organ­ization of ­people who live in the community . . . ​to carry out works that benefit the community. It’s an obligation of the ­people who are in the community for the pro­ gress of the community and oneself.” Though I was enjoying the work and happy to find minga alive and well, as time went by, I grew increasingly concerned that I did not see Bernardo and could not recognize anyone from Manzano except Blanca, who told me she was “working for Puela” that day. I worried that I would offend my friends by not showing up for the minga I had been invited to, but I was as dubious that ­there could be multiple simultaneous mingas in the center of Puela as I had been about the claim that the state would pave the road we ­were collectively breaking apart with our hands. A ­ fter about an hour of work, I asked Washington where my friends w ­ ere

110 • The Palimpsest of Minga

working and he pointed to the school­house just off the road ahead of us. Excusing myself as politely as I could, I hurried off to join Bernardo and the o­ thers. I arrived to cheers of “Gringo loco [Bernardo’s favorite epithet for me]! ­You’re late! We’ve been working ­here without you all morning!” I tried to explain, but it was lost in the clamor of work, and, at any rate, he was plainly clowning. Bernardo was on the roof with Vico, Miguel, Pedro, Mateo, and Federico, working to repair holes in the tin caused by falling cascajo in 2006 and subsequent weathering by wind, rain, and ash. He said they w ­ ere pressuring the state to reopen the school ­because p­ eople wanted their ­children to study ­there, in their home community, not in Penipe, where, he and the ­others claimed, the schools ­were substandard and fostered delinquency. Again I was skeptical, and said as much, but Bernardo was insistent that they would prevail. As I had done ­earlier on the road, I abandoned my questioning and sought instead to contribute. Each man moved with care across the unstable tin roof, while Bernardo perched on a ladder at the roof ’s edge and used a small reciprocating saw to cut the jagged metal. Just below us, ten w ­ omen, including Julia, Judith, Rosa, and Mayra, each with wool scarves tied across their f­ aces to cover their nose and mouth, ambled amid swirling clouds of dust as they swept up accumulated ash and earth that soiled the floor and e­ very surface in the school. Unlike on the road out front, t­ here was a gendered division of l­ abor in this minga. No men swept in the classroom and no ­women assisted on the roof. On the roof, Bernardo alone operated the machinery, while o­ thers worked with hand tools to hammer down roofing, cut and place wood supports, and alternately retrieve items for Bernardo or haul away materials he cut apart. I strug­gled to find a way to be useful on the roof, helping with some materials ­here and ­there, but I lacked any tools of my own. A ­ fter an hour, I quietly betrayed the gendered division of ­labor (not for the last time) and joined the w ­ omen in the classroom, helping to sweep ash and cart away the accumulated debris. This one day participating in some of the largest-­scale mingas I would ever witness in Canton Penipe demonstrated that minga practice was far from over in the lives of resettlers. Thus, neither the local notion that minga culture met its demise ­because of indolence, selfishness, or de­pen­dency nor the theoretical notion that cooperation would come to an end with the arrival of outside aid contribute to understanding the endurance of minga cooperation ­here. On one level, some confusion in our perception is due to the very common m ­ istake of conflating reciprocity and cooperation with altruism. If we train our gaze on altruism alone, we are surely more likely to miss cooperation that persists despite—or even b­ ecause of—­competition over scarce resources. Indeed, the ­people of Puela and Manzano ­were organ­izing precisely to attract resources from the state assemblages taking shape around them. The absence of minga practice in Penipe Nuevo, perennial tensions between settlement and mobility, and the diversification of ­house­hold economic strategies throughout the villages in Puela and the resettlements only further

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compelled my attention to the continuity of minga practice in disaster. Moreover, I found myself concerned that studies of disaster cooperation almost all restrict their consideration to the immediate theater of disaster. However, as I discussed throughout part I, disaster finds ­people and socie­ties in motion and may cause, catalyze, or impede a g­ reat many movements and practices central to their livelihoods. Minga keeps ­things—­water, community, work, animals, crops—in motion, entwining the multiple, contingent components in the protean assemblages of co-­living around Tungurahua.

Minga Practice qua Institution Ultimately, studies of disaster cooperation do not tell us much about when cooperation is itself an institution, as with minga. Minga was already a central structuring meta­phor for naturecultural assemblages in Penipe, where it was reproduced through multiplex relational networks of everyday life, with par­tic­ u­lar rules that could be invoked by dif­fer­ent actors in dif­fer­ent ways. How then do we study and interpret continuity and change in minga practice as an institution? My approach allies me with scholars working in the still emerging domain of critical institutionalism (Cleaver 2012). I recognize minga as an institution that is open to a diversity of actors, groups, and organ­izations, with varying recourse to rules, resources, maneuvers, and sanctions distributed unequally among them. Minga discourse has deep roots that are par­tic­u­lar to Ec­ua­dor­ian (and broader Andean) histories in ways that lend the practice to both subaltern agency and domination, to “insiders” and “outsiders,” all while providing an ostensibly common semiotic field of reference. And it is a mutable and often contested practice. It is common for studies to interpret minga from an economic perspective, but while I attend to economic f­ actors in this chapter and o­ thers, I am presently far more interested in the politics of minga as an institution and, along with César Fonseca Martel (1974), I recognize a range of modalities of minga practice. At the village level, mingas w ­ ere or­ga­nized by village councils, cabildos in incorporated villages like Manzano and directivas in unincorporated villages like Pusuca, or occasionally by the junta parroquial, which would or­ga­nize multiple villages on collective proj­ects. Cabildos are councils that administer the affairs of villages incorporated ­under the terms of the Ley de Comunas (chapter 1). In many ways, their decision-­making and practical capacities are facilitated by mingas, and they are the principal connective nodes of relations between villages and outside actors and organ­izations (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009, 93–94; Bretón 2001; Korovkin 1993). Primary cabildo activities entail organ­izing mingas and village assemblies, facilitating external orga­nizational support and funding (government or NGO), and implementing community proj­ects (Cadena and Mayorga 1988). Minga establishes physical bound­aries, such as the roads and canals by which it is literally inscribed on the landscape, and bound­aries of

112 • The Palimpsest of Minga

­ uman inclusion, which are largely determined via participation. Typically, a h leader would recognize a need for minga ­labor through personal observation, by having their attention called to a ­matter by community members, or, occasionally, by an invitation from outsiders like the Esquel Foundation or the Peace Corps. They would then announce the date, time, and location at a village assembly. ­People would notify any absent neighbors and leaders would occasionally visit h ­ ouse­holds to issue reminders, which became increasingly necessary as ­people’s lives w ­ ere divided between Penipe Nuevo and the rural villages. ­People who meet their obligations for participation and assembly attendance can count on access to w ­ ater (irrigation and potable), community development proj­ects (e.g., agricultural extension, tourism initiatives), and a generally favorable community reputation. Thus, minga practice is historically integral to the politics of deservingness in the villages of Penipe. Minga practice in Manzano and Pusuca exhibited several impor­tant similarities and contrasts. Beginning in mid-2009, Manzano cabildo leaders, led by Bernardo, began anew to or­ga­nize mingas for proj­ects including building repair, irrigation, potable ­water, and village road maintenance as part of village revival efforts. In Pusuca, as they w ­ ere just breaking ground on the resettlement in 2007, Fundación Esquel facilitated the creation of a directiva. Once p­ eople moved in, the directiva continued organ­izing weekly mingas for irrigation, potable w ­ ater, and other public works (see figure 6). Directiva work, however, was for years also co-­facilitated by Martha, a representative from Esquel who served as an adviser to the council and other subcommittees. She attended all meetings and mingas and guided leaders through decision-­making pro­cesses, which by 2011 primarily entailed the organ­ization of irrigation mingas and village meetings. The primary rule of minga is participation, though ­there ­were dif­fer­ent ways of accounting for this. When a minga was called, each h ­ ouse­hold was expected to send an adult to work on the appointed day and time. If no adult member of a ­house­hold was available or capable of attending, they could send a peon, someone who was paid approximately $10 and provided with two meals for the day.3 While peones w ­ ere often friends or neighbors, occasionally p­ eople would work for kin or friends as a ­favor. This was my approach—­volunteering to work on behalf of ­people who w ­ ere sick or struggling to keep up with minga obligations. On the day of the minga, village leaders (the president, the secretary, or a surrogate) took attendance, reading off the names of each head of ­house­hold and assigning rayas (check marks) to account for attendance. The keeping of lists of rayas for minga participation is very common and well documented (Colloredo-­ Mansfeld 2009, 93–94). Conventionally, rayas ­were contingent on the participation of one adult member of each h ­ ouse­hold for the duration of a given minga. Mingas, like agricultural ­labor, ­were task-­oriented: they began in the morning (usually 8 a.m.) and continued ­until the task was completed. In my experience, this could be anywhere from noon to 4 p.m.

Enduring Cooperation • 113

FIGURE 6  ​A minga to create a rain catchment system in Pusuca, 2009.

­There w ­ ere two kinds of mingas or­ga­nized in Pusuca, irrigation mingas and community mingas, whereas Manzano only or­ga­nized community mingas (irrigation mingas w ­ ere or­ga­nized by the Puela Parish Irrigation Committee; see chapter 7). Both villages maintained a system of rayas to keep track of participation, although raya accounting was decidedly stricter in Pusuca, especially in irrigation mingas. Community mingas w ­ ere generally more informal in both sites; they were ad hoc in Manzano (approximately ­every six to eight weeks) and weekly in Pusuca. Community minga rayas ­were assigned for working ­until the entire work party completed a task, and not for individual tasks assigned to each ­house­hold. Though in 2011 community mingas in Pusuca worked exclusively on the irrigation canal, they ­were generally all-­purpose; for example, in 2009, I observed community mingas building a community park and rain catchment systems. A community minga working on the irrigation canal in Pusuca would usually run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and typically worked to clear debris from newly dug trenches along the canal or transport vinyl pipes from roadside deposits to work sites deeper in the hills. In Manzano, the workday for community mingas was generally shorter than in Pusuca. In 2011, rayas ­were granted based on attendance for a defined period (usually 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.). Common tasks included clearing ash, soil, overgrowth, and other debris from irrigation canals, potable w ­ ater systems, and roads, with mixed-­gender groups leapfrogging one another as they cleared each section. During the same period, mingas in Pusuca ­were considerably more regimented and

114 • The Palimpsest of Minga

FIGURE 7  ​Digging the irrigation trench to Pusuca, 2011.

regulated by what to my knowledge at the time was a new rule in accounting for participation: to earn a raya, h ­ ouse­holds had to complete an assigned tarea (task) determined by engineers hired by the irrigation proj­ect’s funders—­the Provincial Council of Chimborazo (with support from the World Bank) and Esquel. One tarea I participated in involved each h ­ ouse­hold digging a length of trench ten meters in length, one meter deep, and a half meter wide (see figure 7). Another tarea was for each of us to carry one hundred shovelfuls of sand and fifty shovelfuls of gravel in grain sacks from roadside deposits to work sites 100 to 200 meters away. Though minga rules mandated the participation of just one ­house­hold member, in some cases multiple members of the same ­house­hold had to work just to complete one tarea. For the ten-­meter trench, for instance, some younger men ­were able to complete this tarea in half a day, while it took ­others several days and/or multiple laborers. Likewise, if a given ­house­hold w ­ ere ­behind in rayas, they might send multiple laborers to earn multiple rayas on one day or one laborer might endeavor to complete more than one tarea in one day. ­There ­were generally three types of sanction a person or ­house­hold might face for failure to attend or complete a tarea. The first was exclusion, which could happen in dif­fer­ent ways. Failure to complete irrigation rayas could result in for­ feiture of rights to irrigation. Missing community rayas in Manzano would gradually, though not immediately, result in exclusion from community affairs. If a government agency or NGO ­were visiting to promote a development proj­ ect or to disperse aid (e.g., animal feed, construction materials, rations), leaders

Enduring Cooperation • 115

might elect not to notify someone and, in extreme cases, might publicly deny their right should they show up anyway. In Pusuca, Esquel and the directiva might cut off the power or potable w ­ ater. Missed rayas ­were also sanctioned with a multa (fine). ­There w ­ ere no multas for community mingas in Manzano. In Pusuca, community minga multas w ­ ere $10 while irrigation multas w ­ ere $20, but a h ­ ouse­hold could avoid a multa by making up missed rayas and tareas. However, this by no means meant that one could pay their way out of minga obligations in ­either community. One telling exchange in a Manzano assembly in 2018 succinctly captures the institutional concern with cooperative ­labor obligations over cash payment. A w ­ oman born in Manzano returned ­after some years away to build a new ­house on her deceased ­father’s land and expected irrigation rights based on her f­ ather’s minga participation in the past. Bernardo explained that they would not tell her no, but that “she has to work in the mingas” up on the hill, to which she responded “that she had worked [in] mingas since she was young.” At this, Bernardo let out a high-­ pitched, sardonic howl, “Ooo!” in response to what he perceived as audacity. Don Mateo spoke up, saying, “I request a word. I agree that we cannot deny her, but we have to confirm that she is a collaborator ­because every­one has to work.” Bernardo replied, “I recall—­and I ­don’t know if I’m right or wrong; for example, Neptali is my f­ ather”—­every­one laughed, as Neptali was a young man in his late twenties—­“Neptali is my f­ ather and I want to start another f­ amily” on the land—­ “my right is to half,” just as someone ­else hollered out “Half!” to finish his statement of the rule. The “half” they ­were referring to was half of the rayas for rights to irrigation.4 The rest would have to be worked off. A clear majority of the roughly thirty p­ eople in attendance expressed their agreement. No one expressed dissent. Fi­nally, gossip and denunciation, arguably universal reputational sanctions for noncooperation, w ­ ere key enforcement mechanisms in minga practice. This is a low-­cost and often highly effective practice to which every­one has access. Only elected leaders (village, parish, municipal) or Esquel could turn off the ­water, levy multas, or exclude someone from community affairs or resources, but every­one could monitor, criticize, and defame their neighbors. This too worked differently in Pusuca and Manzano. Gossip in Pusuca was internal and relentless. In e­ very minga and village meeting I attended and in so many social interactions, p­ eople called out their neighbors for nonparticipation or cheating on tareas. In contrast, in Manzano, gossip was outward facing. Villa­gers frequently touted the unity of Manzano in contrast to the laziness of other communities in Puela. The ­people of Manzano, they claimed, ­were the most united and or­ga­nized, while their neighbors shirked responsibility and left all the work to Manzano. Thus, we find a core set of rules—­raya, tarea, multa, and gossip, the command of which is asymmetrically distributed among dif­f er­ent actors in a given community—­that constitutes the basic politico-­semiotic field for organ­izing minga practice. With ­these rules accounted for, I set out to investigate how they ­were invoked and

116 • The Palimpsest of Minga

contested in practice and what this revealed about how minga has been adapted to contingent assemblages in Manzano and Pusuca.

Wage ­Labor and Cooperation Time I soon began witnessing tensions (which w ­ ere most pronounced in Pusuca) between h ­ ouse­hold and community obligations, as Samuel Haro had noted, which led me to won­der if the transition to wage employment was displacing minga practice. Almost without fail, monthly assemblies in Pusuca devolved into numerous heated quarrels about who was atrasado (­behind) or al dia (up-­ to-­date) in their rayas and who therefore merited inclusion in or exclusion from irrigation, potable ­water, or any of several ongoing microdevelopment proj­ects. Often ­people ­were unable to attend b­ ecause they w ­ ere away at work. Zoila Guanoloisa explained, “I’m single and I work outside the community, and if I go [to the minga], then t­ here is no one who can work for my f­ amily.” Jaime Guanolema, a resettler from Pungal de Puela, explained that it was hard for him to leave his job in Riobamba to meet his obligations in Pusuca. “Now t­ here is no [irrigation] ­water and nothing to irrigate. It’s dry, dead earth and nothing more.” Once t­here was w ­ ater, he could devote himself fully to agriculture, though he worried he might be so far ­behind in rayas at that point that he would never catch up. All of this meant that, although most p­ eople w ­ ere interested in transitioning back to agropastoralism, at the time many ­were unable to forego wage employment, as they had yet to achieve subsistence-­level productivity on their lands and production for market was still a long way off. Meanwhile in Manzano, ­there was no such haggling over minga participation, but ­people did sometimes explain that work made it hard to participate. For example, Carlos told me, “Lamentably, my work situation does not permit me to be pre­sent in many mingas.” Disaster and displacement often necessitate a diversification of h ­ ouse­hold economic strategies (Marino and Lazrus 2015; Nayak 2000) and displacement and wage ­labor are both historically associated with the dissolution of Andean traditional practices such as reciprocity, cooperation, and community organ­ization (Mayer 2002; W. Mitchell 1991; Deere 1990; Chiriboga 1988; Farga and Almeida 1981; Martínez 1984). In Ec­ua­dor­ian villages at the turn of the c­ entury, the transition to wage l­abor was associated with more highly class-­homogeneous social networks owing to constraints on laborers’ ability to meet community obligations (Jones 2003). ­These constraints could well be explained by the practical and theoretical tension between contending relationships with time; between a laborer’s own time and that which is owed to employer and collective obligations. E. P. Thompson (1967) argued that harnessing the clock and claiming laborers’ time was as essential to the success of capitalism in Eu­rope as harnessing mechanical power in the Industrial Revolution. Time management for subsistence agriculture is generally a m ­ atter of task orientation, with work periods

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expanding and contracting according to a given task. The task-­oriented work of smallholding campesinos in Penipe is usually managed at the h ­ ouse­hold level and only periodically requires the flexible coordination of inter­house­hold cooperation in mingas (Salz [1955] 1984); time-­sensitive ­house­hold agricultural tasks are rare, making it pos­si­ble to fulfill neighbors’ ­labor requests. Wage employment can encroach on this flexibility b­ ecause it generally requires the coordination of efforts using the abstract management of time, and, importantly, it employers rather than laborers who are its arbiters. However, cap­i­tal­ist and subsistence agropastoral temporal regimes are not necessarily mutually exclusive, tensions between them are hardly immitigable, and adaptations are well documented (e.g., Nash [1958] 1967). What I found, however, was that, while wage employment presented challenges for minga participation, the prob­lem was far more pronounced in Pusuca than in Manzano, where it was negligible (Faas 2017a). In the discussion that follows, I pre­sent two exemplary cases of minga practice in Manzano and Pusuca that help unpack the politics and shifting assemblages underwriting the tensions in both sites and explain why wage l­ abor appeared to trou­ble minga in one place but not the other. What I found was that wage ­labor and agricultural orientations to time are not discretely bounded entities but rather that specific relations and practices can produce and augment subacute tensions between them. In resettlement settings, we not only encounter contending spheres of economic strategy and social organ­ization but also contending systems of policy and practice among communities and the state. Some observers expect such tensions ­will be resolved as a natu­ral course of events and that displacement and resettlement temporarily reorder time, space, and relationships before emerging into new cultural routines. However, disasters and disaster-­induced resettlements frequently transform spatiotemporal regimes in more lasting ways, often wresting control of the construction of space and the management of time from local actors (Barrios 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017).

Chamisa Minga in Manzano One after­noon in September 2011, Bernardo invited me to a Saturday minga to cut chamisa—­leafy branches of eucalyptus trees used to adorn cows, mules, ­horses, and occasionally vehicles as part of a parade or formal procession—­for the parish-­wide San Miguel fiestas in Puela. The long chamisa branches are strapped to the side of the animals and fan out like long feathered tails, kicking up dust ­behind the animals as they pro­cess along dusty dirt roads. In the saints’ festivals of each parish, the chamisa adornment is part of each community’s entrada (entrance) pro­cession into the center of the parish for the larger cele­ bration. It is an im­mense source of pride (see figure 8). That eve­ning, I accompanied Bernardo as he drove his wife, Rosario, and ­mother, Doña Clara, back to Penipe Nuevo for the night. Once in Penipe Nuevo, he drove past the h ­ ouses of Manzano villa­gers, announcing (or reminding them

118 • The Palimpsest of Minga

FIGURE 8  ​Villagers preparing Manzano’s entrada with chamisa at the 2011 Fiestas de San Miguel.

of) the minga scheduled for Saturday, which would be followed by a short cabildo meeting. I pointed out that he passed Martina Barriga’s ­house without stopping and asked him why. He explained that he had had conflicts with her and she had not met her community responsibilities for years. As we then drove by Martina’s ­sister without stopping, I continued to ask why he would not try to invite ­people, especially since he was concerned with unity and the retorno. Some ­people w ­ ere simply too divisive and did not meet their obligations, he explained. I pressed this a moment longer but ultimately abandoned my line of questioning when Bernardo grew visibly irritated (though he may have simply been tired). Come Saturday morning, I was ­running late and hopped on an 8:45 a.m. bus from Penipe Nuevo to Manzano to join the chamisa minga, which got me t­ here at 9:15, roughly an hour late. A ­ fter nearly a half-­hour search in the hills, I found the group resting on a hillside overlooking the village a­ fter hauling dozens of eucalyptus branches down the slope. I sat and joked and visited with every­one for about fifteen minutes before work resumed and the group returned to cutting chamisa and hauling it down the hill to the roadside. Th ­ ere w ­ ere seven men and seven w ­ omen working the minga, with about five ­children from ten to sixteen years old milling about and pitching in with tasks h ­ ere and ­there. Minga tasks w ­ ere s­ imple and t­ here was again a gendered division of l­ abor. The men worked with machetes, cutting the branches from fallen eucalyptus trees, while the ­women and ­children collected the branches into piles and wrapped

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them with a length of rope at their base to drag them down the hill to the roadside. While it appeared that the job of pulling the branches down the hill was less intensive than cutting the branches, the men ­were largely stationary on the hill, moving mostly laterally from one cluster of fallen trees to another, while the ­women and ­children constantly descended and scaled the hillside; I found this to be quite a workout, as I once again betrayed the implicit division of l­ abor by joining the w ­ omen’s group thanks to my lack of machete. T ­ oward the end of the minga, three men and two teenage boys put down their machetes to haul branches down the hill, as many had accumulated and t­ here was l­ittle left to cut. For the duration of the work party, p­ eople joked and laughed, teasing each other and telling stories. Some of the c­ hildren and w ­ omen took time to pass around cups of soda to every­one working. I found that in Manzano, villa­gers who ­were not considered reliable participants might find themselves simply not being invited to mingas, cabildo meetings, and other opportunities. Martina explained, “They excluded my m ­ other and ­sisters and I ­because we ­were too poor to always be ­there when ordered. They kept us from receiving roofing from MIDUVI ­a fter the eruptions, and now they do not even invite me to mingas.” Though Martina’s story was the most extreme claim of exclusion that I encountered in Manzano, several h ­ ouse­holds ­were routinely ignored and simply not invited to mingas and sessions. Tomás Samaniego complained that “in the mingas they do a sort of census of ­people for the foundations and institutions, and they do not take certain ­people into account.” Norberto Reyes, who was close to the village leaders, said simply, “­Those of us who do not go, do not know.” However, it is impor­tant to note that exclusion (or the promise thereof) is frequently a means of producing ­human commons in minga practice and other civil and religious cargo systems in rural communities throughout Latin Amer­i­ca.5 It is a common tactic for enforcing conformity with community norms and not necessarily evidence of malice or malfeasance.

A Pusuca Irrigation Minga For all the formalization of rules in Pusuca, I found it remarkable how much was seemingly improvised and negotiated in the quotidian administration of minga practice. Nonetheless, the unequal power dynamics—­Esquel’s capacity to structure the spacetime of minga practice and the constrained agency of villa­gers to resist and assert their own control—­was palpable in the daily dramas of minga practice. Though Martha Santiago of Esquel played an active role in the almost constant arbitration of minga rules and schedules, so too did proj­ect engineers contracted by Esquel, elected leaders in Pusuca, and the vocal chorus of all community members. While tension among resettlers was common, t­ hese m ­ atters ­were often debated rather casually as part of everyday dramas. However, beyond the negotiation of rules and schedules, it is worth noting which actors had recourse to invoking certain rules.

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On a rainy Tuesday morning in September 2011, I boarded a bus in Penipe Nuevo at 7 a.m. to head to Parroquia La Candelaria, where Pusuca villa­gers w ­ ere to work a minga on the irrigation canal. My friends Javier and Juan Ortiz, accompanied by Irma Pomasqui and her two s­ isters, all of whom ­were in their early twenties, along with ­Irma’s toddler son, boarded the bus from Penipe as well. They had all been staying with ­family in Penipe Nuevo. Minutes ­later, we ­stopped in front of the Pusuca resettlement, where the remainder of the minga laborers crowded on the bus. We rode well past the center of La Candelaria to a bend in the road where a small stream passed. It was raining quite heavi­ly, but as we disembarked, every­one guarded their belongings in plastic bags and placed them ­under trees and bushes. Irma and her ­sisters wrapped her toddler son in a large, adult-­sized yellow raincoat (“a gift from Samaritan’s Purse,” Irma remarked) and sat him beneath an overhanging tree. Judith Guamushi took attendance and announced that, per the engineer’s instructions, each person’s assigned tarea was to carry a total of fifty shovelfuls of sand or gravel that had ­earlier been dumped by trucks in large piles by the roadside to a worksite roughly 100 meters away, where a trio of paid laborers was mixing ­these materials into cement for the irrigation canal. Each laborer produced their own grain sack into which they shoveled the materials, taking varying loads with each trip. The men hauled between ten and fifteen shovelfuls at a time, while the w ­ omen carried between five and eight shovelfuls. W ­ omen and men, old and young, performed the same tasks and the same amount of work ­unless, like Javier, they ­were completing a double tarea to make up for missing a day. Though t­ here ­were accusations of cheating, Blanca Sánchez kept a watchful eye on each person’s sackload, noting when t­ hey’d met their tarea quota. The work, however grueling, was over rather quickly, with just about every­ one done by 9 a.m. Judith said that the proj­ect engineer was supposed to arrive with more materials—­sand, stone, and PVC tubing—­but by 9, no one had showed up and we began walking to La Candelaria to take refuge from the rain and ­either wait for the engineers to arrive or find a truck to carry us back to Pusuca (the bus would not pass by again u­ ntil 1 p.m.). As we walked, Martha arrived in a small green pickup truck driven by a hired driver. She told us to expect the proj­ect engineer to arrive in a half-­hour with more materials and that she believed the tubing had already been delivered further up the road in La Candelaria. Two el­derly ­women and Irma and her son hopped into the cab of the truck, while the remaining sixteen of us piled into the small truck bed—it was standing room only—as the truck moved slowly about a mile up the road. Once in La Candelaria, we ­stopped to examine a pile of about forty heavy vinyl tubes, about three meters long and weighing about forty pounds each. Martha explained that more ­were supposed to arrive and that the tarea would be for each person to carry four tubes from the roadside to the trench, about 150 meters across muddy farmland. However, by this point it was raining harder and several p­ eople commented that t­here was an insufficient quantity of tubes for

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every­one to complete the tarea. The group collectively de­cided to wait for a while in La Candelaria for the other materials to arrive and perhaps for the rain to die down. We proceeded to the center of La Candelaria and the w ­ omen, apart from Judith, all entered the junta parroquial building, while the men and Judith crowded into a small store next door. What ensued revealed the contested yet friendly social dramas that characterized the everyday politics of minga practice in Pusuca. Directiva president Angel Turushina, his younger b­ rother Pablo, Jhon, and Judith’s f­ ather Miguel sat down at the t­ able to play cuarenta, a popu­lar card game, which usually involves a fair amount of drinking. The rest of us crowded around the ­table talking as small ­children periodically came and went, buying sweets from the store owner. The men ordered a b­ ottle of puro (homemade cane liquor) from the store owner. They poured a mixture of puro and Sprite into a twenty-­ounce ­water ­bottle and Paco assumed the job of server. As is customary, ­after each round of the game, Paco poured one shot at a time in the same cup, offering shots first to each of the players and then to anyone e­ lse near the t­ able. I stood shivering and quiet for a while, observing the game and wondering what would come next. Martha soon entered and let out a sigh as she took in the sight, but she maintained a smile and joked with every­one while Judith took her ­father’s seat at the ­table a­ fter he lost the first game. Martha began discussing when they would schedule the next minga, since further work on this day was increasingly unlikely and ­because the next shipment of materials would be arriving that day or the next and they would not be able to leave it all sitting on the roadside u­ ntil next week’s minga. The conversation kept turning back to the game and joking about drinking and not wanting to work. Martha seemed to enjoy the banter, though she politely declined when offered a drink. By just a­ fter 10 a.m. it was raining harder outside and the men in the cramped, smoke-­fi lled store all began to say that they should call it a day—­the sand would be even heavier now that it was soaked, they explained—­while Martha politely insisted that we wait for the proj­ect engineer to arrive so he could at least provide updates about material deliveries. I should note that, outside of fiestas and the occasional round of shots on special occasions, I rarely observed drinking like this anywhere in Penipe or in mingas. I include this story, therefore, not to signal that vice undermined collective practice, which would certainly articulate with racialized narratives of campesino life that circulate in urban centers. Instead, my sense at the time was that this largely began as a lark abetted by the cold and rain—­someone said “cuarenta” and then “trago” (booze) in jest, then one wink and a nudge l­ ater and the game was on. However, I had the inescapable sense that this was turning into a moment of passive re­sis­tance. Over a de­cade of fieldwork in Penipe, I never knew anyone to speak ill of Esquel or confront any representative for the roles they played in the community, but ­here and ­there I witnessed emergent moments like this when ­people signaled (always kindly and politely) that they would

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simply go no further—­they ­were done for now, despite the contrary wishes of Martha or the engineers. We w ­ ere now five months into the irrigation mingas and, whereas elsewhere in Penipe mingas ­were monthly and far less arduous work, ­here ­people w ­ ere working one or two mingas a week—­sometimes more to make up a tarea—­and performing often backbreaking work to earn the raya. On that day, they had worked, been soaked and cold, and waited long enough. Just ­after 11 a.m., the engineer, Cazco, arrived. A chubby, cherub-­faced man about thirty years old, Cazco explained that the sand and stones ­were on their way and asked when the group would complete the remaining work. Some of the men said they would get to it in the scheduled minga next Monday, but this did not satisfy Cazco or Martha. Cazco accepted a drink from the men as Zandro Villacis, president of the Pusuca Irrigation Committee, and Gilberto Villagomez, directiva trea­surer, arrived, having missed the e­arlier minga work. Zandro leaned against the wall while Gilberto took a place at the card ­table and began dealing out another round. Martha said they should or­ga­nize another minga for Friday. Judith countered with Saturday, but Martha and Cazco insisted on Friday. Martha asked Zandro for his opinion in his capacity as irrigation committee president, clearly wishing to nudge him into exercising leadership, but in his characteristically subdued style, and perhaps expecting the final say to be Martha’s or Cazco’s anyway, he merely shrugged and said what­ever happened was fine with him. Angel said they would have to decide on tareas for the Friday minga, as a few in the room mentioned they would not be able to attend that day. Zandro responded that ­those who could not make it on Friday should be able to make up their tarea another day. It is worth noting that ­these decisions ­were being worked out almost exclusively among the men; except for Judith, who voiced her opinions throughout the conversation, all the ­women ­were still in the junta parroquial next door. At this point, every­one began talking over one another, unselfconsciously and in fun, not contention, while Martha tried in vain to call the group to order to have a focused discussion about plans for Friday. Just before noon, the men finished the last round of cuarenta and the last of the puro and then we all crowded into the Esquel pickup truck. The rain and wind blasted our f­ aces as we bounced around while the truck descended the road t­ oward Pusuca, where we all went our separate ways.

Cooperation Time: The Discipline of Minga Practice When minga practice is or­ga­nized by the state, which operates according to the clock and for whom time management is as much a f­ actor of synchronization as it is productivity, tensions between the temporal regimes of wage ­labor and subsistence agriculture can be exacerbated; state practices and policies can calcify contending domains of practice and constrain local capacities for coping and adaptation. Moreover, in addition to facilitating task coordination, temporal regimes can serve as a form of discipline to regulate bodies and populations by

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imposing systematic work habits (Salz [1955] 1984; Nash [1958] 1967) that become central to the politics of deservingness. The temporal regime of minga practice in Pusuca underwent a significant change in 2011 and, unlike in Manzano, Esquel leaders actively managed minga organ­ization. In 2009, when I initially conducted fieldwork in the area, mingas ­were primarily held on weekends. Rayas ­were then simply accorded based on working for a defined period, and minga attendance was established as a prerequisite for inclusion in any development proj­ect, per the Esquel-­drafted community bylaws. Mingas ­were challenging to attend for ­those who ­were working outside Pusuca, but not impossible. Many ­people ­were able to return for a day or an entire weekend to participate. However, when the long-­awaited irrigation proj­ect began in 2011, Esquel brought in engineers to design and manage work and the directiva ­adopted tareas. As in the rainy irrigation minga in La Candelaria, Esquel’s coordinator, Martha, and the irrigation engineers set work schedules and locations on the canal based on the iterative delivery of materials and the pro­gress of construction. It is impor­tant that while in Manzano, the chamisa minga and most ­others ­were reliably or­ga­nized on weekends to accommodate a range of economic activities, in Pusuca mingas w ­ ere shifted to weekdays to accommodate the work schedules of the engineers leading the proj­ects; this exacerbated the wage laborers’ difficulties in fulfilling minga duties, as weekday mingas ­were virtually impossible to attend for almost all of them. Some still sent ­family members but ­were unable to afford to pay peones or the fines for missed mingas with their paltry earnings. The result was that many ­people had fallen increasingly ­behind in their obligations and ­were facing sanctions. Some returned periodically for a week or two and attempted to catch up by working almost daily on minga responsibilities, but this rarely resulted in catching up on all tareas in arrears. In many ways, Esquel was myopically focused on agricultural development and largely intolerant of nonagricultural economic strategies. Herein lies a consequential irony—­marginalizing wage laborers in the spatiotemporal management of minga created practically insurmountable barriers to returning to agricultural production. What is more, the external locus of decision-­making power fostered a projection of this bias in village politics in f­ avor of h ­ ouse­holds that ­were engaged in primarily agricultural economic activities over ­those that ­were not. This agrocentric politics meant that ­house­holds who did not meet their minga obligations would be excluded from irrigation, the resource that was most critical for returning to agricultural production.

Metafunctions of Minga and Humanitarian Action A minga is community work; that is, work by all of us for the good of the community. It’s an effort on behalf of the community, for society, the common good of all. —­Mariana Ochoa

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Pusuca’s founding president, Mariana, proudly described the minga tradition to me, echoing the popu­lar regard for mingas as voluntary solidarity practices. Thus, we can say that one metafunction of minga practice is that it is invoked as part of a utopian proj­ect of solidarity, generosity, and collective capacity and obligation. Disaster and displacement in many ways place ­these abiding cultural values in high relief. But we might also contrast the revelatory aspects of disaster with the idea that cooperative be­hav­ior in disaster can become prescriptive (Albris 2017, 117–152). The ­people of Pusuca and Manzano found inspiration in catastrophe for how to rebuild and reform society in the spirit of solidarity. To some extent, we must admit that this was also true for Samaritan’s Purse and Esquel. However, one implicit theme throughout this chapter is that solidarity practices like minga entail certain (perhaps latent) tensions between discourse and practice. It is constantly negotiated, and it is often a strug­gle. Utopia building is hard work. On another level, po­liti­cally charged “metafunctions of humanitarian action” serve as puissant conduits of dominant priorities and practices (Donini 2008); the state imposes institutional rules, manages populations, and distinguishes the deserving from the undeserving. The appropriation of local practices to realize orga­nizational goals can facilitate the internalization of dominant discourses; ­people may come to invoke institutional rules—­rayas, tareas—in the spirit of local values (minga solidarity) in ways that nonetheless articulate with dominant interests and thereby police themselves based on state-­derived disciplines and rules for conduct (Foucault [1975] 1995; Boelens 2015). Judith Guamushi served as secretary of the Puela Parish Irrigation Committee in 2011 and, though she came from one of the poorest families in Manzano, in her capacity as secretary she served as a monitor of work, recording rayas for ­those who completed their tareas. Though she was small of stature (just above five feet), her stout frame matched her bold and unflagging personality—­she was vocally adamant that ­people complete their responsibilities and strict in assigning or withholding rayas. She was, however, not alone in monitoring her neighbors, as virtually all residents engaged in relentless gossip about participation and the completion of community responsibilities. While designated folks like Judith kept meticulous accounts of rayas and tareas, gossip and denunciation in public meetings proved to be critical techniques for enforcing conformity, even though, it must be noted, Esquel retained the ultimate authority over formal sanctions and Martha frequently intervened to resolve conflicts. Thus, the agency exercised by resettlers like Judith in leadership roles and the ­others who enforced conformity via gossip and denunciation was riddled with contradictions and tensions, revealing an internalization of rules established by Esquel as part of the ethics and obligations of minga practice that ­people identified as a significant part of their cultural heritage. In Pusuca, minga practice was co-­opted by well-­intentioned individuals who amplified and rigidified the formalization of minga rules by imposing tareas while si­mul­ta­neously imposing the temporal regime of the nine-­to-­five weekday

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work schedule.6 ­These imposed techniques of minga administration marginalized ­people who engaged in wage ­labor as a temporary means for coping with the scarcity caused by disaster and displacement. It is significant that the temporal regime was not questioned, though p­ eople w ­ ere often vocal about enduring hardships and occasionally advocated for weekend mingas, as in La Candelaria. ­There emerged a power­ful metafunction of minga practice whereby tensions of discipline, solidarity, and agency ­were further entangled with increasingly internalized logics of outside experts. Though their use of time was oppressive, Esquel did not impose the nine-­to-­five regime with oppressive intent. It was merely business as usual for them. It did not appear to have ideological content or value and it was not questioned or contested. For all the haggling over each individual minga, missed rayas, and incomplete tareas, no one ever called out the temporal regime itself. It was simply taken for granted.

Conclusions: Enduring, Endurance Resettlement came wrapped in the operational logic of capitalism. This was not a clash of discrete systems but rather the outcome of very specific power relations at succeeding levels of scale in the shifting assemblage; not a linear transition from antecedent cultural practices and livelihoods to a new normal but rather an enduring tension that is part of new institutional relations seemingly born in the disaster context, but actually quite deeply rooted in the past. Minga practice is realized at a critical intersection of local, adaptive practices and the imperatives of supralocal humanitarian organ­izations, and it has a long history of bothcooperation and domination, which remain features of the practice both when guided by local leaders and when guided by outside organ­izations. In Manzano, this was a key ele­ment of local governance and the reproduction of local power relations. In Pusuca, minga practice was formalized according to rules imposed by outside organ­izations and experts, which shared much in common with colonial-­and hacienda-­era practices of extracting ­labor taxes. The rigidity of the time imposed not only undermined the continuity of minga practice but also stood squarely in the way of ­house­holds’ capacities to recover their livelihoods in the wake of the disaster and adapt to resettlement. In ­these contexts, minga practice endured while becoming itself a trial of endurance for resettlers. The dueling metafunctions of solidarity and co-­optation reflect dueling histories of mutual aid and colonization, which I explore in the following chapter.

6

Institutions Minga has been around since the republic, since the Indigenous p­ eoples, and also the mestizos. They dis­appeared in the fifties and sixties with the expectation that the government and the municipio would do every­thing. But it turned out that the government could not complete public works as the p­ eople wanted. The same old community leaders realized that they would have to contribute their share, which would be the minga. That was in the sixties and seventies. In the last five or six years it has deepened b­ ecause l­ abor is a community resource. Sometimes the politicians take advantage. They accumulate power by managing the p­ eople and for securing resources from outside while the p­ eople produce every­thing. —­Marco Murillo

Raymond Williams identified the earliest uses of the term institution in the En­glish language as having a “strong sense of an act of origin—­something instituted at a par­tic­u­lar point in time” ([1976] 2015, 120). In this chapter, I trace how 126

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minga has been instituted—­fashioned and refashioned—­over centuries by vari­ ous actors and organ­izations at multiple levels of scale. If historical pro­cesses of colonialism, global capitalism, and disaster response and recovery have routinely reduced campesinos of Penipe to the barest biological life, minga as an institution of mutual aid has been an impor­tant collective means by which they have fashioned vibrant personal, ­house­hold, and community lives and livelihoods out of scarcity. Yet, as Marco Murillo, poet and the comisario nacional of Penipe, explained to me, minga has a storied history that begins prior to the emergence of the Incan Empire in the Andes and has since taken many forms and served varied purposes.1 Minga is often regarded as a community-­based egalitarian practice, as in Doña Clara’s explanation of how the practice was born of the spirit of the gift. “In the old days . . . ​­people worked together in large groups—­larger than ­today—on dif­ fer­ent proj­ects and ­people would cook for every­one and they would move from farm to farm ­doing dif­f er­ent proj­ects each week.” But it is just as likely to be recognized as an institution of colonization and domination, a perception captured in Cristobal’s complaint in a Pusuca General Assembly, where he characterized minga as “a type of slavery.” I argue that t­ hese aspects of minga are neither mutually exclusive nor by themselves particularly edifying descriptors. Rather, I envision minga as a palimpsest inscribed with par­tic­u­lar meanings, relationalities, and rules, then wiped (not quite clean) and reinscribed from a shifting center, and then wiped and reinscribed again in a smudgy layering of more-­than-­human relationalities entwined by the institution. As I am treating this as a variety of institutional analy­sis, I note the rules and resources at play and the differently positioned actors and organ­izations with varying means to enforce and resist them, so I do not treat this as a slate that can ever fully be wiped clean, but rather one that is smudged in a way that reminds us of the stickiness of both power and agency. To understand minga practice in disaster and resettlement—­how dominant power and subaltern po­liti­cal agency are in many ways co-­creative—­I want to explore how t­ hese multiple modalities of minga are put to work and understand how they hook into dif­fer­ent components of state assemblages.

Pre-­Incaic Communal ­Labor Minga has its roots in a pre-­Colombian practice once known as mit’a (from Quechua and Aymara, meaning “turn”), one of a variety of practices of communal ­labor pooling for communal purposes known among Indigenous p­ eoples throughout the Amer­i­cas, including faena (Peru), tequio (Mixtec), cuatequitl (Nahua), fagina (Ma­ya), and zhinloawe (Zapotec). Some of my friends averred that the Pinipis practiced minga in the same voluntary and mutually beneficial spirit as they did in the rural parishes of Penipe in the twenty-­first ­century. “The minga has always been a strength,” said local historian Samuel, who insisted that

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the culture had declined from its proud heights in the past. “With the Pinipis and afterward with the Inca it was so.” Highland ecol­ogy certainly suggests that agricultural production would depend at least somewhat on collective ­labor pooling, as ­there ­were no draft animals in the Amer­i­cas prior to Eu­ro­pean contact and therefore plowing was entirely reliant on ­human hands. Highland cultivation, of course, is also highly dependent on irrigation, and the construction and maintenance of irrigation canals relies heavi­ly on the coordinated work of rather large groups of individuals. By pooling their ­labor, kin groups could rotate from plot to plot and build and maintain hydraulic infrastructure, accomplishing the work of cultivation and irrigation far better than they could in­de­pen­dently. As it happens, archaeological evidence suggests that reciprocal exchange networks and cooperative ­labor parties ­were intimately related with the emergence of in­equality prior to the development of larger kingdoms and empire. Especially following mega El Niño years, exclusive exchange relations and wealth accumulation reduced livelihood vulnerability for an emergent elite, while increasing the vulnerability of p­ eople who w ­ ere excluded from t­ hese selective exchange relations (Taylor 2015). Such findings provide clues as to how emergent inequalities fostered the development of in­de­pen­dent chiefdoms and confederations in the northern Andes. While mit’a as l­ abor tribute was long believed to be an invention of larger kingdoms such as Tiwanaku and the l­ater Inca Empire, archaeological evidence suggests that local chiefs exacted ­labor tribute prior to the formation of t­ hese larger po­liti­cal assemblages. Mit’a is thought to have been practiced by local chiefs who or­ga­nized l­ abor parties to levy tribute and sustain religious cults (Garrido and Salazar 2017; Salomon 1986). Moreover, some early colonial observations of Indigenous cooperative l­ abor noted that work was not coerced and that chiefs worked alongside commoners and used their larger gardens and provision stores to provide food and drink to laborers (MacCormack 2008, 141). ­These findings undermine romanticized notions of ideal egalitarian pasts, but they also indicate a moral economy, a perduring tension between power and agency in maintaining the bound­aries of asymmetry; the minga palimpsest, as Jacques Derrida would have it, has no “first text, not even a virgin surface for its inscription” ([1979] 1990, 72).

Incan Mit’a: Reciprocity, Re­distribution, and Brokerage The late-­fi fteenth-­century Incan expansion into the northern Andes entailed aggregating extant chiefdoms and federations into larger units as part of a nested imperial hierarchy. At each hierarchical level, leaders ­were responsible for recruiting laborers for defined periods of time in a rotation, or mit’a. The Inca co-­opted cooperative l­ abor parties and the tribute-­exacting arrangements of local chiefs, which they imposed as mit’a on colonized ­peoples as a form of collective conscription to construct the infrastructure of the empire, support warfare, extract

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tribute, and, often, to provide ­labor in agriculture, mining, and textile production. The l­ abor tax burden was evenly distributed across local administrative divisions and sufficient ­labor was always left ­behind to sustain local production, with the men remaining in settlements tasked with tending to the lands and crops of t­ hose who w ­ ere off performing mit’a. Mit’a was underwritten by a discourse of reciprocity, with Inca rulers “reciprocating” with tools and materials for state proj­ects, and the practice facilitated some social mobility for mit’a workers, who could be rewarded for outstanding deeds. The Inca extended reciprocal relations between h ­ ouse­holds and ayllu (extended kin groups) and kuraka (Quechua, “communal authority”) to form reciprocal pacts between the empire and each new group that it incorporated. They developed a bureaucratic apparatus that paid careful attention to marriages—­which ­were previously community rituals—to keep track of the additional ­labor power produced in such ­unions (Murra 2002, 1982). The reciprocal pacts with the empire w ­ ere at once coercive and redistributive: the empire provided food stuffs, military protection, and a system of food storage h ­ ouses (tambo and qollqa) that eradicated hunger within the empire (Boelens 2015, 141– 142; Mumford 2012, 25; McEwan 2006). This also meant submission to a centralized imperial authority and a vast expropriation of local l­ abor, but it must be noted that this was not for rulers’ vanity proj­ects, but rather to build the productive and civil infrastructure of roads, irrigation, and terraces that fostered local productive capacities, while also uniting t­ hese territories into the empire. Regional Incan governors frequently a­ dopted festive ritual reciprocation, including public feasting, to inaugurate initiatives (MacCormack 2008, 141–142; Abercrombie 1998). Mit’a also had impor­tant redistributive functions in that it facilitated the flow of goods accumulated at the imperial center to the periphery, as well as the construction of imperial infrastructure, including irrigation, roads, and granaries, that facilitated trade, production, and protection against drought and famine. Much like local Andean chiefs, Incas redistributed wealth accumulated via mit’a ­labor, sharing fine cloth and other products from throughout the empire (Lyons 2006, 38; Murra 1982). Michael Taussig characterized this re­distribution as reciprocity as “a finely balanced system of exchange” that “determined the efficiency and stability” of the Incan imperial economy ([1980] 2006, 193). Subalterns provided tribute as a gift to local chiefs, who then sent a share to the Incan king and redistributed wealth produced in the exchange back to the populace. This was carefully regulated by the imperial bureaucracy established by the nobility, for whom the ritualization of exchange was of central importance. Local kuracas brokered the allocation of land to commoners on an annual basis, according to shifting ­house­hold and community compositions, while designating some to the Incan king and the cult of the sun (Taussig 2006, 194). The decidedly precarious power of the kuraca was si­mul­ta­neously derived from his ability to deliver tribute to regional governors and Incan rulers and the ability

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to see such gifts reciprocated to subalterns (Mumford 2012, 29). One feat alone was insufficient; this had to be reliably replicated. Taussig highlights “the contradiction between the continued existence of the community and the negation of the community by the state” (2006, 195–196). This role required a delicate balance of meeting superordinate and subaltern demands by both ritualized and personalized means. Imperial granaries and store­houses meant to prevent hunger in the event of crop shortages and famine w ­ ere stocked in the pro­cess, but the careful balance of tribute and local autonomy underwrote the maintenance of local subsistence. Such beneficence was essential to the spirit of the gift, which buttressed the relational dynamics that w ­ ere central to the maintenance of the moral economy of Incan-­era mit’a. This helped minimize the subaltern sense of exploitation by establishing a moral economy, thereby bringing the w ­ hole assemblage into harmony with nature and the cosmic order (194; see also Murra 1968, 135). The semiotics of value in a system of reciprocal exchanges with a variety of use values imbued the active (re)negotiations of the social relationships in the nested hierarchy, not so much with certainty, but rather with hope and the expectation (though no guarantee) that good-­faith contributions would culminate in feasting rather than bloodshed.

Minga as Tribute and Discipline: Spanish Colonization of Incan Mit’a Spanish colonial administrators made systematic use of the mit’a system to claim and or­ga­nize Indigenous l­ abor to satisfy colonial desires, including mining, textile production, public works, and agriculture and herding operations in Ec­ua­dor, as they did throughout the Andes. Indeed, the very products of Incan mit’a—­the road system and store­houses of food provisions—­were instrumental in the Spanish conquest and subsequent civil wars (Mumford 2012, 14–15; Abercrombie 1998, 146). The practice would undergo several transformations during the colonial period, including even the very term, which became simply mita.2 As with the Inca, mita, mobility, and settlement-­legibility remained at once deeply entwined and in high tension. U ­ nder the Spanish, mita ­labor expanded the road system, built civic and religious buildings, and, above all, toiled in the mines. Mita ­labor became nearly genocidal ­under the Spanish, whose insatiable pursuit of precious metals hurled countless Indigenous bodies into the mines. Taussig (2006, 196) identifies three f­ actors that put mita ­labor exploitation in greater relief ­under the Spanish. One was the destruction of the sacred center of the Incan empire, Cuzco, which resulted in the balkanization of religious practice, with worship and ritual then devolved to local sacred sites and often practiced in secret, due to the watchful presence of the Catholic colonizers. The second was the confiscation of Indigenous territory, which disrupted the previous coordinated resource management, destroying the self-­sufficient Incan

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economy and replacing it with Spanish mercantilism. And third, while Inca mit’a was sustained by a moral economy of mutual obligation—­tolerating asymmetrical relations so long as they remained mutually beneficial (­after Scott 1976)—­the ­labor demands of colonial mita tribute became increasingly onerous—­“a terrible parody of its former self” (Taussig 2006, 196)—­provoking re­sis­tance and flight among laborers and severe economic and physical consequences for local chiefs who failed to meet their laborer quotas (Lyons 2006, 41). Over time, mita practice would go from nearly genocidal tribute that was subject almost exclusively to the whims of power­ful landlord encomenderos to an incipient form of state discipline that leveled and standardized tribute as a head tax while reducing Spanish and Indigenous elites alike to functionaries in the protean assemblages of a sprawling state bureaucracy. This bureaucracy relied heavi­ly on the legibilization of Indigenous populations in fixed settlements, which they increasingly resisted and fled to evade the burdens of tribute (see also chapter 1). By the seventeenth c­ entury, new systems of managing l­abor and economy—­concertaje and hacienda—­emerged as alternatives to the mita head tax. However, t­ hese systems too appropriated and formalized rules for the conduct of mita l­ abor. Indigenous p­ eoples worked to increasingly improve l­ abor conditions and convert minga practice into a type of wage relation (Stern 1988), but this ultimately amounted to debt peonage in perpetuity. With the emergence of the hacienda, bosses and overseers assigned ­labor quotas (tareas) for collective work party ­labor, the completion of which was recorded as a raya (Salz [1955] 1984); t­ hese ­were twin cult objects in the bureaucracy and regulation of minga practice that endured into the twenty-­first ­century.

Encomienda: Mita ­Labor, Tribute, and Displacements The twin institutions of the early Spanish colonial period in the Andes w ­ ere encomienda and the mita, which served both the Spanish Crown and Spanish settlers by granting territories and Indigenous ­labor to the authority of a Spanish landlord, or encomendero, according to their po­liti­cal status and relationships. As with the Inca, the Spanish practiced a sort of elite capture by working through local chiefs—­with the Quechua and Aymara terms kuraka and mallku increasingly replaced by the Spanish-­imported Taino term cacique—­to broker local l­ abor commitments (Taussig [1980] 2006, 196; Lyons 2006, 40–41; Abercrombie 1998, 147). Caciques paid tribute to the encomendero, who “retained a portion, and passed the rest up the administrative hierarchy on its way to Spain” (Lyons 2006, 41). Mita ­labor tribute was collected in annual rotations of (roughly) one-­fifth of adult men designated as laborers (mitayos) by local caciques u­ ntil they ­were replaced by the next contingent in the rotation at year’s end (40–41). The globe-­spanning hierarchy of plunder meant that tribute demands placed on Indigenous populations far exceeded t­ hose previously levied by the Inca and ultimately triggered the destabilization of Indigenous communities. The Crown ordered surveys of productive capacities and existing tribute extraction from the

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earliest days of the conquest. It is impor­tant that, unlike the Inca, who assessed tribute at the community level, Spanish encomenderos exacted tribute from ­every male head of h ­ ouse­hold. Whereas Inca tribute demands w ­ ere adjusted to account for uneven weather and harvests (an inchoate state humanitarianism), Spanish demands w ­ ere fixed and constant, leading to g­ reat burdens for communities sustaining acute crises or even normal deviations in productivity. Moreover, yet another ­factor undermining Indigenous capacity to meet tribute demands was the fact that epidemics of Eu­ro­pean disease drastically reduced their populations during this period. Minga was hardly the vehicle of relief or recovery from ­these disasters. As with the Inca, mita for the Spanish was also an instrument of resettling and rendering legible ­whole Indigenous populations, removing groups from their territories to send them to work in mines serving the rapacious Spanish quest for gold and silver and to build the infrastructure of the Spanish Empire. A mining ordinance issued on June 7, 1549, called for the displacement of Puruhá to southern Ec­ua­dor to mine gold (Haro Alvear 1977, 30), while a relación from Chimborazo in 1549 called for the “Pornaes [sic]” of Penipe to “throw up to a hundred Indians to the mines” (Ortiz Arrellano 1996, 35). In addition to planned displacements and resettlements of Indigenous populations u­ nder the Spanish, increased and often violent l­abor demands and harsh working conditions for Indigenous populations led to increased mortality and the flight of male laborers to territories with less exacting control. By the late sixteenth c­ entury, Guano (then including Penipe) increasingly developed a reputation as a refuge for Indigenous p­ eoples fleeing mita tribute demands. The increased flight did not escape colonial detection: in 1538 the cabildo of Quito appointed an official to track and capture fugitive mitayos in exchange for a bounty for each man (Pérez Tamayo 1947, 335). Nonetheless, the increased tribute burden on the diminished population of the chiefdoms further provoked flight (Lyons 2006, 42; Powers 1995).

Viceroy Todelo’s Reducciones In 1569, Francisco de Toledo arrived in Peru as King Phillip II’s newly appointed viceroy. This appointment would result in a systematic restructuring of the colonial order, which was meant to recalibrate the genocidal tribute system while si­mul­ta­neously asserting the Spanish Crown’s control over the increasingly power­ful and unruly settler population. Toledo’s new colonial bureaucracy would entail a smearing of the old order of mita practice and a reinscription of a new one that would impose new standards for the legibility of settlements and a formalized structure for tribute extraction that entailed a leveling, standardization, and depersonalization of statecraft, both within the Spanish system and in their administration of their Indigenous subjects. Toledo worked to transform the Andean colonies into a bifurcated society of Indigenous and Spaniards (Mumford 2012). To do so, he presided over the

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massive resettlement of Indigenous into reducciones, thus rendering their settlements and practices more legible for colonial administration, and all within supposedly tolerable par­ameters of exploitation. In the pro­cess, h ­ ouse­hold productive resources w ­ ere reduced to the minimum necessary for subsistence to afford greater availability for tribute (Mayer 2002, 268). Encomienda tribute was transformed into a head tax, which was meant to ease pressures on dwindling collectives by assessing tribute at the ­house­hold level, but this remained a burden, as taxes ­were collected by the community cacique, the encomendero, the Church, and the Crown. Thus, t­ here was a pronounced tension between community and ­house­hold l­ abor obligations, which for colonial administrators became a biopo­ liti­cal prob­lem of reproducing the tribute-­paying population (see Mayer 1974b, 2002). Toledo codified and structured the system, significantly reinscribing mita practice as standardized and depersonalized tribute by converting it to a head tax payable in silver—­which could be earned as a wage for mita labor—­ rather than direct l­ abor ser­vices or payment in local goods (Mumford 2012, 93–97). Toledo then installed provincial administrators, corregidores, as intermediaries between encomenderos and tributes, who would collect tribute and pay encomenderos from royal banks. Thus, erstwhile noblemen (many of whom harbored plans to usurp Crown rule in the colonies) ­were reduced to salaried bureaucrats and their nascent usurpation was effectively neutralized (Abercrombie 1998, 224). Caciques too ­were reduced by Toledan reforms. Like encomenderos, they ­were paid by the Crown to collect tribute and mobilize ­labor, but they enjoyed ­little power beyond this role b­ ecause they w ­ ere subjected to supervision by priests and corregidores. This also significantly undermined the ­limited Indigenous autonomy that had thus far been maintained and undercut caciques’ ability to “use traditional reciprocities to cushion their subjects from the impact of Spanish demands” (Abercrombie 1998, 224–225), making them increasingly complicit in their own ­people’s exploitation (see Spalding 1984). The emergent po­liti­cal economy might be characterized as proto-­capitalist insomuch as colonial administration sought to transform purportedly indolent Indigenous p­ eoples into wage earners as part of the “high moral concerns” and civilizing mission of the Crown (Abercrombie 1998, 225). Toledo’s reforms helped forge a new class of entrepreneurs to whom Indigenous l­ abor would now be allocated by the Crown based on their most profitable use, thus giving rise to new economies of textile production, milling, and mining. Concertaje mita laborers ­were motivated to work to earn silver coins to meet their tribute obligations. The monetization of the economy neutralized old powers and extended the civilizing missions of the Church and the Crown through forced ­labor and token wages (Mumford 2012, 93–97). A relación recorded by Oidor Juan Romulado Navarro between 1761 and 1764 noted the annual salary for mita ­labor as 15 to 20 pesos, of which they would owe 3 to 6 pesos to the Crown, depending on the

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reducción in which they ­were registered (“Relación titulada ‘Idea del Reino de Quito’ ” (2018).

Huasipungo and Debt Peonage Though the Real Audiencia relied on Indigenous tribute for one-­third of all tax revenues right up to in­de­pen­dence in 1822 (Larson 2008, 580), encomienda was increasingly phased out in the seventeenth ­century in ­favor of huasipungo (known elsewhere in New Spain as concertaje). Huasipungo became a widespread system of debt peonage and a site in which new forms of regulation and discipline of Indigenous collective ­labor obligations ­were developed. Hacienda laborers (conciertos) accumulated debts to the employer through goods they ­were compelled to purchase at inflated prices, fines for lost or injured animals, and all manner of frivolous charges. Between mita tax obligations, relentless hacienda charges, and negligible earnings, huasipungo ser­vice often continued in perpetuity (Lyons 2006, 43). However, Barry Lyons (43) has argued that hacienda huasipungo was increasingly seen as the preferred alternative to forced resettlement into reducción towns. ­People could return to their ancestral territories and work the land on the hacienda granted for their own subsistence (huasipungos). They had some degree of agency in negotiating ­labor and debts owed to the hacendado, while mita ser­ vice was standard and nonnegotiable. A late-­eighteenth-­century survey found that hacienda laborer ­house­holds incurred more debt when they w ­ ere young families with ­children to feed but ­were better able to catch up near ­middle age as the ­children grew up and w ­ ere able to earn rayas for hacienda l­abor (134–135). Thus, ­these agentive debt relations could be considered a form of risk management on behalf of the laborer ­family. While ­there may have been some agency in hacienda negotiation, Lyons (2006, 79) has also documented impor­tant details of the rules and regulation of collective l­ abor in Chimborazo haciendas in the Pangor Valley, west of Penipe. Conciertos worked mostly as field hands, plowing, weeding, and harvesting. They ­were assigned rayas in the hacienda ledger for each tarea and, though rayas technically merited wage payment, this was often merely assessed against the perpetual debts recorded in the same ledgers.

Minga as “Voluntary” Contribution: In­de­pen­dence and the Republican Nineteenth ­Century In­de­pen­dence proved that the colonial period established a deep sociocultural grammar for claiming and regulating the ­labor of the rural subaltern that would be reinscribed in the postcolonial context. Following in­de­pen­dence in 1822, Indigenous l­abor tribute remained “the symbolic and material mainstay of the dual-­republic regime already partially restored a­ fter in­de­pen­dence” (Larson 2008, 580, 596–597). The newly in­de­pen­dent nation continued to rely heavi­ly on tribute (reinscribed in Republican terms as contribución personal de indígenas), not

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only for revenue but also to mitigate potential retaliations for the imposition of taxation and military conscription, thereby maintaining the caste-­like system of the colonial period. The Republican restoration of tribute came without the Indigenous rights to hereditary chiefdoms or collective landholdings, but the ambiguity and po­liti­cal fragmentation of this period allowed some room for maneuver to advocate for territory, autonomy, and protection. State tribute revenues diminished throughout the 1840s and the practice was officially abolished in 1857 by Liberal president General Francisco Robles, a­ fter which Indigenous and highland campesinos w ­ ere recognized in civil law as citizens with rights to property and obligations to pay taxes and obey the same laws as the rest of the citizenry. Robles’s policy was part of an early wave of Liberal reforms advocating the development of export economies, domestic markets, state revenue, and, in par­tic­u­lar, a mobile l­ abor force. And yet, shortly a­ fter the enactment of t­ hese reforms, in “the terrible year” of 1859, violent ­battles between rival caudillos in dif­fer­ent regions spelled a rapid demise of Liberal po­liti­cal control. Conservative president Gabriel García Moreno (1861–1865, 1869–1875) advanced proj­ects to modernize the young nation on the backs of Indigenous ­labor by reinventing the colonial mita to build the nation’s infrastructure (Larson 2008, 604; Clark 1998). He conscripted Indigenous laborers by invoking a Bolivarian law that required “voluntary contributions” of four days of ­labor (or equivalent payment) per year of each citizen on public works initiatives (Mumford 2012, 168). In the absence of a robust state apparatus, the ­labor tax canalized local customs—­which ­were rooted in racialized colonial discourses and hierarchies—of coercing unpaid Indigenous l­abor (Larson 2008, 604). Indigenous communities and smallholders bore the largest share of the l­ abor costs, while ­people who ­were bound to estates ­were often protected by their landlords. Observing village life in Ec­ua­dor in the 1860s, Austro-­American journalist-­cum-­diplomat Friedrich Hassaurek wrote of the then-­common practice of referring to and treating Indigenous people as bagages menores (small beasts of burden), which was meant to convey that “the Indian is considered below the ­horse and the mule, and on a level with the donkey” (1868, 186). By the mid-1860s, Indigenous mita ­labor dug hundreds of miles of roadway from the mountains of Otavalo to the coastal port of Esmeraldas (Larson 2008, 605). Moreover, according to Brooke Larson, this became an abiding feature of the Ec­ua­dor­ian imaginary; “That the Indian’s station in life was to dig the roads and sink the telegraph poles seemed as inevitable and immutable as the earth and the sky” (605–606). “Voluntary” Indigenous ­labor was, of course, hardly that; laborers ­were subjected to violent coercion by a combination of the centralized state bureaucracy that García Moreno established throughout the 1860s (which extended into local villages), the court system, and the debtors’ prison, which “continued to criminalize Indian ‘laziness’ and debt” (606). During this period, Indigenous and campesino communities or­ga­nized sizable protests against l­abor conscription, among the most notable of which was

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the infamous Naranjal road proj­ect, which was meant to connect the southern highland province of Cuenca to the burgeoning port city of Guayaquil.3 The proj­ ect benefited highland hacienda o­ wners while offering l­ ittle to rural communities, and it subjected laborers ­either to the extreme cold of the highlands or the malarial coastal regions (Pribilsky 2007, 55). A small uprising in Guano in 1868 fed into the momentum for a much larger uprising in 1871 across Chimborazo against the forced ­labor mitas, culminating in the uprising’s leader, Fernando Daquilema, threatening to take the city of Riobamba (Saint-­Geours 1994, 159). On the haciendas of Chimborazo, one of the abiding rules of the minga institution in the late-­nineteenth c­ entury was the tarea, which was revived from the colonial huasipungo regime of minga discipline (Rivet 1903). While this rule seems to displace time as the basic unit of mea­sure­ment for minga l­ abor, as a man-­ day’s work (i.e., 8 a.m. to late after­noon) would ordinarily count for a raya, tareas merely displaced time for the hacendado (or overseer); in practice, tareas often cost laborers far more time, and with impor­tant consequences. Laborers regularly resisted the imposition of excessive tareas that would take more than one day to complete ­because they intruded on the time needed to attend to their own crops and animals, which was another variety of tension (Lyons 2006, 54). The Liberal government accomplished the conversion of Indigenous and campesino communities into mobile and landless ­labor pools by gradually transforming the state and juridical apparatuses that had maintained their immobility and obligations to highland landlords. The Liberal Revolution of 1895 initiated a transformation of the Ec­ua­dor­ian state, weakening the power and landholdings of the Church and the highland Conservatives. Soon ­after, the Liberal provisional government, led by General Eloy Alfaro in Guayaquil, issued a decree again abolishing Indigenous l­ abor tribute, while expressly retaining the civilizing mission of the state to protect “the Indigenous race,” as they had demonstrated “that they are ready to adopt the practices of modern civilization” (Guerrero 1997, 585). Of course, t­ hese reforms ­were not passed absent Indigenous and campesino ­legal claims about their own rights as codified in constitutional articles, which often resulted in cases about local po­liti­cal authorities pressing them into ­labor on private properties u­ nder the pretext of contributing to public works. Provincial authorities would respond by sending o­ rders to local officials ordering them to desist in abusing Indigenous ­people’s rights and specifying fines to be levied for such abuses. In Alausí, Penipe’s neighbor to the south, Indigenous ­people brought a series of ­labor abuse petitions to supralocal authorities while engaging in work evasions and thereby brought an end to public works l­ abor recruitment by the close of the first de­cade of the twentieth ­century (Clark 1998, 131). During this period, many p­ eople also pressed claims to “protect their dwindling communal lands from the expansion of would-be hacendados” (Pribilsky 2007, 54–55; italics in the original).

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Institutional Modernization: Minga Practice from the Twentieth ­Century into the Twenty-­First Alongside the slow demise of the hacienda system in the m ­ iddle of the twentieth ­century, minga became an abiding feature of local governance, while a colonial imaginary nevertheless endured whereby elites simply presumed the right to Indigenous ­labor without any obligation to reciprocate or maintain relationships. The twentieth-­century modernization of the Ec­ua­dor­ian state included a proj­ect of refashioning minga as a vehicle for public participation rather than elite power. Minga was now voluntary rather than mandatory and coercive—­a new pact of reciprocity between the state and its subjects, which for Rutgerd Boelens “rings familiar old Inca bells” (2015, 146). Over the course of the twentieth ­century, during which it was ushered along by a series of l­ egal reforms and shifts in domestic and global economies, the hacienda system gradually gave way to the formation of rural villages of smallholding Indigenous p­ eoples and campesinos (chapter 1). Minga ­labor parties ­were still or­ga­nized on haciendas through mid-­ century but w ­ ere increasingly or­ga­nized by village cabildos for public infrastructure and the maintenance of communal lands. Villages ­were or­ga­nized around parishes, administrative units that ­were unified in municipal cantons. ­These nested administrative units w ­ ere also vehicles for scaling up local forms of organ­ ization, including minga, providing the structural apparatus for massive social movements—­often or­ga­nized as mingas—­that would mark the transition from the twentieth c­ entury to the twenty-­first and profoundly change Ec­ua­dor­ian politics and society (Lyons 2006, 15; Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009; Becker 2011; Sawyer 2004). I hear the va­ri­e­ties of minga practice in the twentieth c­ entury sounding several old bells, as vari­ous rules and values of colonial and early Republican minga ­were conjured and applied in the pre­sent. It is also clear that diverse actors and organ­izations have dif­fer­ent types of recourse to vari­ous rules that might be invoked—­tareas are imposed almost exclusively by hacendados and outside organ­izations—­and the resources to enforce any given rule. But alongside ­these colonial resonances, minga practice was si­mul­ta­neously adapted as a vehicle for local governance, mutual aid, hydropolitics, and subaltern po­liti­cal agency.

Hacienda Tareas It was decidedly challenging to distinguish the voluntary from the coerced aspects of mingas on haciendas ­because at a harvesting minga the festive distribution of chicha (maize beer) was as likely a feature as the overseer’s whip (Salz [1955] 1984, 217n19). ­There was some degree of reciprocal relationship maintenance, to the extent that the laborers and hacendados still negotiated debts and land allocation, but the tarea and the threat of the lash remained the structuring rule of minga practice on the hacienda. In Chimborazo, tareas assigned daily to full-­time laborers ­were estimated as equal to a day’s work for an adult male but often required assistance from additional h ­ ouse­hold members to complete

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in one day (Lyons 2006, 79–80). Tension between ­house­hold and hacienda ­labor demands, the latter of which could at times command four or even six days per week, constituted one of the primary threats to laborer subsistence (143). Laborers, however, developed collective strategies for negotiation and re­sis­tance. Lyons interprets minga as an institution beyond mere exchange, referring to the “rules of the game” on which ­people drew when mobilizing ­labor for vari­ous interests (90–91). P ­ eople had a keen sense of the often-­implicit rules of what counted as acceptable demands for ­labor (tareas or days of work) and reciprocation, such as material gifts or loans, and they intentionally maneuvered for their advantage in negotiations with hacendados while endeavoring to maintain good, reciprocal relations with kin, neighbors, and trading partners.

Reciprocity and Mutual Aid Mingas w ­ ere also or­ga­nized by Indigenous and campesino smallholders as means of pooling l­ abor during the harvest and to construct and maintain community infrastructure, including schools, casas comunales, bridges, roads, and w ­ ater systems (Korovkin 1992, 14). In Chimborazo, ­people practiced festive reciprocity and re­distribution, recognizing minga’s exploitive history while also seeing it as a revival of a tradition that had been long suppressed by colonization and domination (Lyons 2006, 287). Kin and neighbors could be called on for harvesting and planting, and their ­labors would be reciprocated with shares of the harvest and a meal for laborers (87; see also Erasmus 1956, 449).4 ­Those who called on laborers to work during their harvests would usually work alongside them and set the pace, which might be challenging but had to be kept within the bounds of acceptable pressure if the relation was to be maintained and ­labor recruited again in the f­ uture (Lyons 2006, 142). However asymmetrical, minga practice in patron-­client relations was maintained by a moral economy of mutual (albeit unequal) benefit that was kept within allowable limits of exploitation. Working with Afro-­Ecuadorians on the coast in the 1960s, Norman Whitten (1969) documented a variety of patron-­ client reciprocity sustaining minga practice. Local elites repeatedly recruited volunteer laborers by making con­spic­u­ous gifts to their ­house­holds. Locals referred to minga leadership as rotating—­anyone could lead a minga—­but it was consistently the same few elites with unique access to resources, capital, and markets who did so, and for their sole profit. The ability to maintain leadership was underwritten by repeated loans and gifts that converted economic resources into symbolic capital and prestige. In other words, we find in many of t­ hese relations the same grammar for claiming the bodies of the rural subaltern, but within moral economic bounds. Cabildo Governance and Minga Practice While cabildos have their origins in Spanish colonial institutions, they emerged as significant orga­nizational forms following the Julian Revolution of the late

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1920s. They further grew in significance following land reforms in the 1960s and 1970s, which diminished the power of the teniente politico (parish civil authority), the Church, and the hacendados. Cabildos, helmed by local Indigenous and campesino leaders, continued as the primary orga­nizational bodies governing local affairs and organ­izing mingas in Penipe into the twenty-­first ­century (Simon Thomas 2016, 49). With the formation of comunas and cabildos came greater autonomy for village leaders, which included the organ­ization of minga ­labor and infrastructure but also advocating and defending community interests and negotiating with external organ­izations and actors, including parish, municipal, provincial, and national officials, as well as nongovernmental organ­izations and foreign development agencies (Korovkin 1992, 14). In his ethnography of Kichwa civil society in the northern highlands of Ec­ua­dor, Rudi Colloredo-­Mansfeld (2009, 7, 17) interpreted cabildo politics as a “vernacular statecraft,” by which he meant both a semi-­autonomous domain for governing villages and administering justice but also the standardization of orga­nizational forms and practices of governance. However, as Colloredo-­ Mansfeld demonstrates, what­ever degree of autonomy cabildos accomplished, it was frequently threatened by the larger state apparatus and fiercely defended with varying success (109–120). ­There is good reason to remain wary of romanticizing cabildos or treating them as stable, rational systems for leveling status and predicting be­hav­ior, as in conventional institutional approaches (e.g., Ostrom 1990). Mingas or­ga­nized by cabildos w ­ ere ostensibly “emblematic of community cooperation, development, and self-­management” and ­were often mobilized for po­liti­cal action (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009, 97). But the widespread perception of Indigenous and campesino communities as “united and strong” obscures internal strug­gles with organ­izing and unity; many villa­gers themselves are likely to draw comparisons between their community politics and the hacienda, as with any Indigenous ideal (Lyons 2006, 289–290). The standardization of minga practice and community bound­aries (physical and h ­ uman) is central to understanding minga as an institution in the twenty-­ first ­century. Cabildos achieved their objectives by simplifying and standardizing information about their populations, resources, and environment, and mingas especially ­were standardized and regulated by list-­making practices that leveled status differences by compelling every­one to participate on the same terms (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009, 17). L ­ abor obligations in incorporated villages (comunas) are tied to land rights—­people who own land and access communal pastures are recognized as socios (community members) with obligations to contribute to minga l­ abor, while ­others who occasionally access community resources may be periodically called on to contribute l­abor (Lyons 2006, 272). List making is a leveling mechanism that neutralizes differences in wealth, prestige, and conflicting interests by creating “a special domain of value” (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009, 99; Salomon 1997), known in Penipe as the raya for attendance credit, which all h ­ ouse­holds ­were expected to earn through participation and which

140 • The Palimpsest of Minga

holds every­one equally accountable for equal contributions of l­abor. The list is the primary arbiter of good standing and deservingness in the community. Nonparticipation may be sanctioned by exclusion from community affairs, development proj­ects, and common resources, such as irrigation (Faas 2017a), and in some cases by leveling a multa (fine) that can range from $10 to $12 per raya (see also Corr 2010, 11–12). Fines ­were most common when cabildos ­were cooperating with superordinate entities, such as parish-­level irrigation committees, government agencies, and NGOs.

Migration, NGOs, and the Monetization of Minga International migration, which accelerated during po­liti­cal and economic crises of the 1990s, resulted in new l­abor shortages at the village level along with an influx of cash remittances that exacerbated village-­level inequalities (Pribilsky 2007). With the increased presence of NGOs beginning with the po­liti­cal and economic crises and neoliberal restructuring that characterized the last fifteen years of the twentieth ­century in Ec­ua­dor, cabildo leaders and village elites by then had learned to use minga practice to attract NGO investment in community development proj­ects, such as sewage systems, potable w ­ ater, irrigation, and agricultural extension. In ways that are resonant with the brokerage roles exercised by local chieftains ­under the Inca and the Spanish, t­ hese initiatives frequently relied heavi­ly on minga (or “beneficiary”) l­abor contributions. Yet while the wealthy could ­either pay for ser­vices or surrogate laborers (peones), the poorer villa­gers and, especially, wage laborers strug­gled to keep up with the minga ­labor obligations expected for access to new resources. Wage laborers could meet their monthly expectation of two days of minga l­ abor for the comuna, but development proj­ects might call on them to work four or five days, well beyond what they could afford (Pribilsky 2007, 80–93). Despite ever-­present challenges, minga practice in partnerships with NGOs often accomplished works serving collective interests. For example, villa­gers could work arduously for several consecutive days but in the end restore a central road washed out by heavy rains (Pribilsky 2007, 90). Yet if the benefit of t­ hese works was not equally distributed (e.g., neglecting auxiliary roads connecting to more modest h ­ ouse­holds), ­those who w ­ ere excluded practiced a form of minga po­liti­cal action—­withdrawing their ­labor in protest ­until their needs ­were addressed (90–91).

Minga Hydropolitics In the first de­cades of the twenty-­first c­ entury, minga practice in Penipe—­still buttressed by the discourse of reciprocal obligation and solidarity—­frequently entailed mandatory ­house­hold contributions to government and NGO proj­ects as a condition of inclusion and good standing. This has often been, as Marco

Institutions • 141

Murillo notes in the epigraph, a means by which the state has made up for a lack of funding for public works, much like the NGOs in the Penipe resettlements, by calling on minga l­ abor to close the distance between bud­gets and highly politicized works ambitions. All the while, minga has remained a source of pride that is invoked as an example of local values and solidarity. Boelens’s (2015, 146) insightful take on minga practice in Ec­ua­dor since the 1990s is that it has entailed a reinscription of the old mita regimes and discourses of state reciprocity by replacing the state with the market in the equation, which is meant to rally village ­labor around the development and maintenance of hydraulic infrastructure. This has been abetted by NGOs filling in breaches in state assemblages and the rhe­toric of inclusive participation in place of top-­down imposition and the notion that collective ­labor can facilitate entrepreneurial success (Faas 2018). The importance of minga practice in Andean hydropolitics can hardly be overstated, and it is an especially verdant research topic (e.g., Boelens 2015; Armijos 2013; Armijos and Walnycki 2014; Hoogesteger 2013; W. Mitchell 1976). As with highland campesino economies more broadly, mingas are the principal means by which water-­user communities enable collective survival by building shared property rights and managing collective systems and infrastructures (Boelens 2015, 140). In Píllaro, just north of Penipe, member communities realized a total of 90,000 mingas between 1995 and 2000 to dig the Píllaro Ramal Norte canal (Hoogesteger 2013, 350). Boelens calls this “hydraulic property creation,” by which he means collective investments of water-­user minga l­ abor and orga­nizational inputs in the production of irrigation infrastructure (2015, 42). Eligibility for w ­ ater rights was often determined by compliance with norms of use and operation, dues payment, and participation in mingas to construct or maintain hydraulic infrastructure (53). It is impor­tant that ­these rights include decision making, which is chiefly derived through minga participation, though other communal activities, such as assembly attendance and dues payment, may ­factor in as well (Armijos and Walnycki 2014, 44; Boelens and Gelles 2005). In fact, mingas coordinated by cabildos, parish authorities, and NGOs are predominantly focused on hydraulic infrastructure; this was also the case in Penipe following the eruptions and resettlements. Once created, ­water rights ­were retained by maintaining the system through periodic investments of minga ­labor; thus, individual and collective ­water rights ­were created and reproduced via minga l­ abor (Boelens 2015, 65–66). As evinced in the previous chapter, for all the standardization noted in cabildo minga practice, village mingas have often been more flexible (i.e., more likely to take h ­ ouse­hold contingencies into account) than t­ hose or­ga­nized by supralocal government entities and NGOs, the latter of which retained a particularly colonial resonance and civilizing mission (Boelens 2015, 119–120, 273). Debates over whose ­labor (men, w ­ omen, adolescents, peones) and what kinds of contributions (­labor, multas) could earn rayas and how one could catch up on rayas in arrears ­were nearly constant in minga accounting. Sometimes villa­gers could pay money

142 • The Palimpsest of Minga

for rayas, but this was nonetheless frowned on as unequal and thus had less sociocultural currency than ­actual l­abor contributions. Laborers monitored each other’s minga contributions and w ­ ater use, yet this was not simply a panoptic internalization of dominant control, but rather a system of techniques of local ­water management that enabled ­people to practice collective control and integrate newcomers while managing the prob­lems that might come with more heterogeneity (272). Con­temporary hydropo­liti­cal list making was not a surrender to dominant bureaucratic discipline but rather a part of local debates and norms of accountability that underwrite strong local w ­ ater associations (291). The public reading of lists by cabildos or irrigation committees is an occasion of public scrutiny, gossip, and even outright protest, and not simply a standardized rendering of accounts. As tools of vernacular statecraft, raya lists make ­people mutually interchangeable (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009, 104), yet they are not merely addressing ­house­hold preoccupations with fairness and deservingness but rather central devices for “the creation and maintenance of the comunidad’s physical and symbolic bound­aries” (Armijos and Walnycki 2014, 48).

Minga Politics and Protest Indigenous and campesino communities have also resisted the extraction of local ­labor and resources by outside organ­izations and elites for centuries, and over time minga practice has been reclaimed as a vehicle for subaltern politics and grassroots mobilization. It has become a means of scalable mobilization, sometimes local and at other times regional or national in scale (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009; Sawyer 2004). By the 1990s, minga was employed in mass Indigenous and campesino protest movements and invoked as a communal virtue in contrast to the perceived greed and vio­lence of capitalism. The uprisings in Ec­ua­dor in the 1990s are far too storied and complex to cover in this chapter beyond a brief discussion of the impor­tant ways in which minga and cabildo w ­ ere instrumental as both structuring meta­phors of Indigenous power and values and institutions through which the uprisings w ­ ere or­ga­nized. The first ­great levantamiento (uprising) was in June of 1990. Indigenous ­peoples from around Ec­ua­dor blockaded the transport system, and by extension the entire economy, for a week by blocking roads with large rocks and trees, a pro­ cess coordinated by ­people working in rounds like minga (Becker 2011; Colloredo-­ Mansfeld 2009). The uprising was prompted by breakdowns in negotiations with the Ec­ua­dor­ian government for agrarian reform and bilingual education and demands for a declaration of Ec­ua­dor as a plurinational state. One rallying cry for the 1990 levantamiento was “pachakutik,” a Kichwa term for return in time or rebirth, which is often translated simply as “revolution.” Subsequent levantamientos in 1992, 1995, and 2000 united Shuar, Achuar, Kichwa, and campesino activists and communities in marches on Quito to protect rural communities from the impacts of oil extraction, commemorate 500  years since Columbus’s voyage set the forces of colonial domination in motion, overturn a

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controversial agrarian reform law, and the abandonment of the national currency for the U.S. dollar (Sawyer 2004; Becker 2011). ­A fter the turn of the twenty-­first c­ entury, t­ here ­were several fragmentations in Indigenous po­liti­cal parties and social movements, and President Rafael Correa would increasingly undermine ­these social movements even as he campaigned as an ally (Becker 2011). Though Pachakutik emerged as an influential Indigenous po­liti­cal party in 1997, in 2006 the popu­lar mayor Mario Conejo of Otavalo lead a breakaway movement to form a new party, Minga Intercultural. By adopting “minga” as a political-­cultural brand, Conejo invoked “a concept deeply imbued with Indigenous symbolism” which he would deploy to foster the development of interethnic po­liti­cal mobilizations (108). In June 2010, hundreds of Indigenous activists marched for eleven days from the Amazonian city of Puyo to Quito, calling their march a “ ‘minga’ for a plurinational state” and advocating for the implementation of changes codified in the 2008 constitution (215; see also Whitten and Whitten 2011, 140). B ­ ecause this minga took place on the thirtieth anniversary of the 1990 uprisings, the new demonstrators referred to themselves as “the ­children of 1990” and invoked minga to or­ga­nize and make their voices heard. By 2011, the provincial council of Chimborazo rebranded their public works for development programs, “minga por la vida,” which became a regularly invoked trope for participation in the public sphere.

Conclusion: Reinscriptions A palimpsestic reading of minga surfaces two principal institutional grammars, one for the state and elites to claim the bodies and l­abor of the rural subaltern and the other a human-­made commons, a shared base of l­ abor that can be activated for collective social, economic, and po­liti­cal objectives. However, ­these grammars are neither mutually exclusive nor internally coherent. Minga rules, positionalities, means of enforcement, and relationalities ­were inscribed, smeared, and written over in dif­fer­ent eras and contexts. While not all parties to minga enjoy the same access to the vari­ous rules and resources, all are party to the discourse. Pre-­conquest kurakas and emperors set the rules of minga, but it was a moral economy of asymmetry within acceptable bounds. The Spanish colonial system (re)instituted minga, first as collective tribute and then as a head tax, and it established a bureaucracy to govern the colonies, an assemblage that would take dif­fer­ent forms over time, while codifying subsequent sets of rules for governing minga ­labor and the power to enforce ­those rules, which was invested almost entirely in p­ eople directly authorized by the Crown. Haciendas made the raya, once the credit for a man-­day’s work, conditional on the tarea, a specific task to be completed that might, and frequently did, exceed a day’s work. Reading minga as a human-­made commons is not to imply that all interests ­will be aligned (Colloredo-­Mansfeld 2009, 98). Indigenous ­peoples and campesinos have practiced reciprocal ­labor pooling whereby hosts and laborers work

144 • The Palimpsest of Minga

alongside one another to set the pace of work within acceptable bounds. Villa­ gers have practiced festive reciprocity and re­distribution, cognizant of the colonial history while intentionally engaging in a revival of suppressed Indigenous practices. Cabildos developed the institution as a form of boundary maintenance to establish deservingness of inclusion in community affairs and key development, aid, and ­water resources. Cabildo leaders set work within acceptable bounds and worked alongside the villa­gers, and the raya remained the primary rule of the game. Laborers too played active roles in enforcement through gossip and accusations, thereby signaling the internalization of disciplinary values and rules. With the formation of cabildos, however, the state discipline and mutual aid traditions of minga practice effectively became fused and the historical inequities in the rules of minga practice gradually became more concealed. The subaltern ­were increasingly included in society and decision making, but only insomuch as they, now self-­identifying as socios, internalized, materialized, and enforced norms of control that they had no role in defining, thereby often invoking and enforcing dominant beliefs, desires, and practices as if they ­were their own. In Penipe, tareas and multas ­were rarely applied except when cabildos ­were activated as nodes in the shifting state assemblage in collaboration with supralocal government agencies and NGOs. The tarea was increasingly internalized as a rule for guiding l­abor while also becoming, at least to some degree, a vehicle for subaltern agency—­should tareas exceed acceptable bounds, laborers could collectively withdraw in protest. Thus, dominant power interests w ­ ere imposed and internalized by local groups who nonetheless frequently resisted and opposed both outside intrusion and the excesses of local elites.

7

El Indigno, el Truco, el Chisme, y el Adelanto

My questions for this chapter are about the formation of par­tic­u­lar state assemblages in Penipe following the eruptions, displacements, and resettlements and the possibilities of minga as an institution of subaltern po­liti­cal power and utopian proj­ects. What weird assemblages of the state ­were made pos­si­ble or realized by means of minga practice? And what connections and apertures emerged in t­ hese assemblages for the realization of subaltern agency via minga? Do the utopian and egalitarian discourses associated with minga point to utopian and egalitarian possibilities? And can we be sure that this is not merely a discursive cloak for discipline and domination? To answer ­these questions, I once again describe minga cases in Manzano and Pusuca with attention to the rules—­ reciprocity, rayas, tareas, multas—­and cult objects of statecraft—­water rights, vaccinations, and housing deeds. W ­ hether continuing a traditional practice or reclaiming a colonial one, over the course of the twentieth c­ entury, Penipeños realized through the smudginess of the minga palimpsest that it was an institution through which they could exercise power and autonomy. Reading the transformations of minga as a means for subaltern power at the turn of the twenty-­first ­century draws our attention once again to the shifting assemblage of the state and the activations and deactivations of organ­izations, institutions, and actors as components in shifting state assemblages that articulate with broader naturecultural assemblages of life in Penipe. A palimpsestic reading is dif­fer­ent from an institutional reading in the conventional sense b­ ecause I read the institution as not only historically produced, 145

146 • The Palimpsest of Minga

but also produced of unequal power relations whereby not all players working for common resources have the same recourse to the rules—an argument further developed in this chapter. Reading minga as a palimpsest likewise makes it difficult to consider power and agency, colonization and mutual aid, as mutually exclusive. They are all rather smudgy. But rather than offering merely a smudgy muddle, I hope to offer a way of reading minga practice that helps point to alternative possibilities, to show that colonialism did not simply overwrite Indigenous and campesino pasts, but rather that the rules and semiotics of minga as a utopian proj­ect remain legible and v­ iable. In very impor­tant ways, minga is a colonial institution and a state discipline used to claim the ­labor of the rural subaltern while rendering legible rural spaces and populations. Rudi Colloredo-­Mansfeld’s (2009, 6–7) argument about vernacular statecraft was that it was a means by which rural Indigenous communities w ­ ere rendered legible for the state but also an orga­nizational form that could be scaled up and mobilized against the state, and that it accomplished both functions by standardizing rules and leveling difference. To understand how this worked in Penipe, I follow the rules invoked and enforced by dif­fer­ent actors and organ­izations in vari­ous modalities of minga practice, which brings into view how state assemblages form, rearrange, and disassemble. In this chapter, I provide examples of this pro­cess in the story of el indigno (the indignant), a case of the Manzano cabildo working with and against parish irrigation committees and the federal government to access scarce resources. My second argument, relayed through the story of el truco (the trick), is that dif­fer­ent actors and organ­ izations in a given assemblage—­cabildo or directiva, NGO, government, neighbors—­contend to read or (re)inscribe the palimpsest of minga at dif­fer­ent levels of scale. The more supralocal the scale, the stricter the leveling, legibility, and accounting become; conversely, the more local they are, the more contingent and negotiated minga and statecraft become. Moreover, dif­fer­ent actors in the assemblage command dif­fer­ent rules, resources, and cult objects of statecraft. That is, while Colloredo-­Mansfeld (2009) develops a rich framework for examining minga and the state, my sense is that leveling and depersonalization are but two among multiple modalities of statecraft, especially at the margins. El chisme (the gossip) is a case of villa­gers exercising power in everyday gossip and accusations. My argument, however, is that while seemingly embodying the panoptic gaze of state power, gossip and accusations compelled supralocal organ­ izations to act with greater transparency and fairness. At times at least, this reveals the uses of patron-­clientelism, of subaltern agency in keeping the state assemblage within acceptable bound­aries of fairness, accountability, and transparency. In the story of el adelanto (the advancement), minga practice comes into view as an institution of subaltern mutual aid and utopian proj­ects. The fact that mutual aid and utopian values and rules still compel action indicates that minga is indeed ­viable as a utopian proj­ect, but this sits in uneasy relation to vernacular statecraft b­ ecause it is not a uniform system generating uniform action.

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El Indigno: Where the State Ends and Cabildo Begins For cabildos, minga is a m ­ atter of relational and physical boundary maintenance, not merely among villa­gers, but also between cabildos and the state. Recall from chapter 5 the story of a ­woman born in Manzano who returned to claim ­water rights on her deceased f­ ather’s land. During the debate, Don Vico spoke up, saying, “I told the w ­ oman that she should submit an application [to the cabildo]. She says her ­father worked in the past and that the ­water is now owned by the state.” In saying this, she was claiming that only the state could assign ­water rights, which w ­ ere guaranteed u­ nder the new constitution. But Don Vico and ­others asserted the rights of the cabildo and, by extension, the community to adjudicate w ­ ater rights. Characteristically explaining his argument while provoking laughter, he continued, “I said yes, the ­water belongs to the state, but only down t­ here in the river”—he gestured in the direction of steep, 100-­meter slopes leading down to the Rio Chambo. “It only comes h ­ ere by our work.” The w ­ oman had offered to pay a sum of money to the community, but cabildo president Bernardo Huerta clarified that locally established rules assigned half of the rights to ­water if you build on the lands of f­ amily members in good standing. She (or a surrogate) would still need to work the other half of mingas required for ­water access. This is in­ter­est­ing b­ ecause it reveals boundary maintenance between cabildos and the state, even as cabildos themselves are often activated as state agents. ­Here, and in similar cases I observed in Pusuca, village leaders clearly articulated bound­aries between minga, cabildo, and the state, but ­there are plenty of cases where this is also difficult to distinguish, where deactivations of nodes and mobilizations against the state assemblage exemplify the trou­ble of discerning where the state begins and ends in the micropolitics at its margins.

Deactivation ­There was a palpable tension between cabildo roles in shifting state assemblages in certain conflicts. Bernardo had been asked to or­ga­nize the p­ eople of Manzano for two dif­f er­ent state proj­ects by two dif­f er­ent government agencies on the morning of November 14, 2011. The first was for the Ministry of Agriculture (MAGAP), whose personnel w ­ ere scheduled to arrive to vaccinate c­ attle at 8 a.m. Following this, villa­gers ­were or­ga­nized to participate in the “Ancestral Risk Management Knowledge” workshop or­ga­nized by representatives of the newly formed Secretariat of ­Peoples, Social Movements, and Citizen Participation (SPMPC) and the Secretariat of Social Dialog (SDS). For two weeks, Bernardo had been as concerned as I’d ever seen him to or­ga­nize as many participants as he could for ­these two visits. Indeed, while this was on one level an activation of the cabildo by the state, cabildo leaders derived a good deal of their po­liti­cal power from brokerage—­the extent to which they could deliver their ­people increased the extent to which they could secure outside resources, which itself was predicated on being able to deliver villa­gers.

148 • The Palimpsest of Minga

Something was clearly off that morning. I arrived at the Manzano casa comunal at 8:45 expecting to observe the workshop, but I found Serafin Barriga, the teniente politico (parish-­level civil authority) of Puela, sitting quietly at the head of the room at the desk usually reserved for the cabildo president, while nearly thirty villa­gers sat around talking among themselves. Rosa Amaji, SPMPC coordinator for Chimborazo, entered alone just as Bernardo stormed in, looking agitated. Rosa politely addressed the group from the entranceway, explaining that the workshop had to be postponed to another day. His irritation visibly increasing, Bernardo insisted that every­one pre­sent remain for another five minutes. Bernardo turned to Serafin and bellowed, “I am indignant!” Pacing around the desk, he waived a cell phone at Serafin and explained his aggravation that MAGAP had not arrived to conduct the scheduled vaccinations. Serafin and MAGAP, he said, needed to do a better job of organ­izing. Though he apologized twice for raising his voice, he announced that he was indignant several times more. He explained that ­people ­were losing a day of work for MAGAP, another for the Puela irrigation minga the next day, and then another day that week due to a visit from the secretary of Risk Management. Gesturing at the assembled villa­gers, Bernardo exclaimed, “What are they supposed to do if the vaccinators ­don’t come ­today? Are they supposed to miss a raya for the minga tomorrow or another day of work on their lands? It’s not right! The p­ eople are not idle! You need to put this in order! I’m indignant!” Ever inimitably self-­possessed, Serafin coolly addressed the group, apologizing for the prob­lems while explaining that it was not he who made the schedule but MAGAP, and that the responsible party was an engineer named Maria de los Angeles in Riobamba, whom he promptly called on his cell phone. Bernardo complained again that ­people ­were missing so many days of work for the state this week. “How many more days are we supposed to miss? I’m indignant!” Serafin passed Bernardo the phone to speak to Maria de los Angeles, and he repeated the same speech to her for all to hear, his voice still raised and trembling with anger. He told her that he wanted confirmation that MAGAP was ­really coming that day and an explanation for why they had not come when scheduled. Bernardo said that Maria de los Angeles had responded that the vaccinators would arrive shortly, but she would have to call back to confirm. Bernardo hung up and turned to address Rosa Amaji, who remained pre­sent throughout the confrontations. Still visibly trembling with ire but clearly trying to collect himself, he asked Rosa to explain why the workshop had been canceled. She replied that ­there had been a change in ministers at the SDS, which threw their schedules and activities into disarray, and she could not conduct the workshop without the SDS facilitators. She could not say when they would be able to reschedule but promised it would be soon. And she repeated something she had said e­ arlier that morning and in her first visit to Manzano a month prior—­that the village had been selected for this workshop b­ ecause they w ­ ere known to be a very or­ga­nized community, a statement that not only highlighted

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the brokerage role of cabildos and minga practice, but also served to confer some flattery and po­liti­cal legitimacy on the cabildo and the village at a time when they ­were clearly smarting. Bernardo repeated that many villa­gers ­were very upset about missing work for this workshop and the MAGAP vaccinations b­ ecause it was simply not right to call ­people together and not deliver, but he thanked Rosa for coming to deliver the news personally. Rosa and Serafin then poured cups of soft drinks and passed them around to the group.

Mobilization Tension between Manzano and the Puela Parish Irrigation Committee had been intensifying for the second half of 2011 as they or­ga­nized mingas to repair the Batan-­Puela irrigation canal, which spans Puela Parish and had been severely damaged by several eruptions, hobbling agricultural production across the parish. Th ­ ere w ­ ere fierce accusations of errors and inequities in minga accounting and benefits from the work. Gaps in trust between villa­gers and agencies commonly grew with each gradation of hierarchy or supralocality. The way it worked on the Batan-­Puela irrigation mingas was that the Puela Irrigation Committee set the date, time, and sites of work, while cabildo presidents would report rayas for their respective communities to a committee representative. However, committee members would also walk the lengths of the canal work parties, taking names (or, in the case of peones and gringo anthropologists, the ­house­holds for whom they ­were working). Discrepancies between committee and cabildo counts ­were common and to be expected—­although p­ eople from each village usually clustered together, some would arrive at dif­f er­ent times. With laborers from five villages all working on the canal, the work party could span distances of a kilo­ meter or more, with small groups from dif­f er­ent villages leapfrogging one another along the line as work progressed—so ­there ­were plenty of opportunities for ­mistakes in counting. The second point of contention was that Bernardo and the Manzano villa­gers ­were concerned that they worked harder than other villages in Puela, yet mingas all concentrated on the opposite end of the canal, bringing ­limited ­water to the other villages and none to Manzano. This was a ­matter of both fairness and equity. Bernardo raised this issue at a contentious meeting of the Junta Parroquial de Puela in August 2011, addressing parish leaders and criticizing them for not supporting work and funding to extend irrigation to Manzano and complaining that no other community in Puela contributed as much ­labor to mingas as Manzano. Weeks l­ater, Bernardo informed me that t­here would be an irrigation minga on November 15 but that he planned to protest by breaking his group away from the main minga and only working on the Manzano side of El Montirón. He explained that he himself was atrasado with his irrigation minga rayas and no longer wanted to work b­ ecause the p­ eople of Manzano would never yield any return on their participation ­until the work came to their side of the hill. If he could not get the entire parish minga to move, he would withdraw his own

150 • The Palimpsest of Minga

FIGURE 9  ​Minga on the Batan-­Puela Irrigation Canal, November 2011.

community to their side. When the day came, Bernardo and the ­people of Manzano rode in his overcrowded pickup truck and then hiked further up the volcano to the west of El Montirón, away from the parish minga (see figure 9). But within an hour, laborers from elsewhere in Puela began arriving from over the hill, soon followed by reluctant parish leaders. The protest had prevailed, at least for the day.

El Truco: NGO Positions in Shifting Assemblages If t­ hese cabildo minga cases illustrate boundary work—­legibilizing, reputational politics, and resistance—of cabildos and minga practice in state assemblages, what assemblages formed in the resettlements? And how did resettlers themselves figure in ­these assemblages? Humanitarian organ­izations are often given a fair amount of latitude b­ ecause they provide ser­vices the government cannot or w ­ ill not provide. The decentralization that began in the 1980s and accelerated during the 1990s along with po­liti­cal and economic crises ushered in a proliferation of NGOs (Bretón 2001) and the reinscription of mingas as instruments of local development. And, although the situation would change for a time ­under President Correa, Ec­ua­dor generally failed to meet state infrastructure development goals from the 1970s through the turn of the ­century, which contributed to the formation of apertures in state assemblages into which NGOs moved. However, as NGOs often moved into spaces and activities ceded by the government while also increasingly governing conduct and serving as brokers between the state and

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local communities, the bound­aries became increasingly blurry and so-­called nongovernmental organ­ izations often assumed governance roles. NGOs also derived some power from that fact that they provided ­people with ser­vices and resources they could not obtain elsewhere. One cumulative effect of humanitarian NGOs’ positions in state assemblages is a reconfiguration of disaster-­affected ­people and places as extensions of global networks of gifting and reciprocity that reproduce unequal distributions of power, risk, and vulnerability, thereby reifying the subaltern positions of aid recipients (Faas 2018; Gamburd 2013; Schuller 2012; Fassin 2008). The aggregate effect of this pro­cess is a procedural vulnerability, or recapitulation of the relations that produced disaster in the first place (Veland et al. 2013). Oftentimes and in vari­ous contexts throughout Penipe, NGOs performed frontline roles in the politics of deservingness while also claiming beneficiary ­labor through minga requirements and imposing a unique, and colonially pre­ce­dented, set of rules for the conduct of minga. And at each succeeding level of scale in the state apparatus, the rules of minga practice grew stricter and less adaptable, the power to set and enforce the rules became more centralized and asymmetrical, and the machinations of the apparatus became more obscure and esoteric. Pedro Carrasco was a key figure in realizing the Pusuca resettlement (see chapter 3). As a representative from the Provincial Council of Chimborazo, he co-­ facilitated Esquel’s bid to create the resettlement and was active in recruiting resettlers and ultimately in managing community affairs and brokering government and nongovernmental support for community development. Pedro was incredibly affable and usually dressed informally in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. ­Because of the authority he rather casually commanded as a member of the provincial council and the fact that he was so well liked in the community, he often waded easily into community affairs and brokered proj­ects and conflict resolution. In fact, he so frequently relayed the preferences of Esquel to community members that for months I mistook him for a representative of the foundation rather than the provincial council. It was Pedro who, in August 2008, delivered a set of community bylaws (reglamento interno) for community approval in Pusuca. The bylaws spelled out all the rules and structures discussed so far, including the formation and structure of the directiva, voting rules for village assemblies, community dues, rules and fines for minga practice (though tareas ­were not introduced u­ ntil 2011 and w ­ ere never included in the bylaws), and the obligation to reside in the Pusuca h ­ ouses. Pedro not only helped compose the assemblage around Pusuca, he also seemed to alternatively embody and move throughout it at times, in many ways usurping the brokerage roles typically performed by cabildos. In 2009, he continued Esquel’s efforts to facilitate community organ­ization to attract funding and proj­ect support from outside donors. He announced his departure from the provincial council in February and two months ­later he was officially hired by Esquel. In the April village assembly, Pedro welcomed villa­gers to the meeting and introduced Esquel’s

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intention to work with the provincial council and neighboring communities to develop and implement a plan to bring irrigation to lands in Pusuca. He returned on a Friday after­noon in July with a retinue of government and Esquel representatives—­Penipe mayor Manuel Carranza, Penipe vice mayor Mariana Gavidia, an economist from Esquel, and an engineer from the provincial council—­ pointedly underscoring his role and that of Esquel as key brokers in the assemblage around Pusuca. They had come to share strategies for community development and the resources each entity could commit, and ­those who had assembled discussed plans for an irrigation canal. Other visitors took turns promoting proj­ects for agricultural development, new green­houses, and farm-­to-­table programs for small producers, with each speaker emphasizing that the villa­gers would have to cooperate and contribute their part through minga ­labor. As some villa­gers expressed their ire with neighbors whom they felt ­were not ­doing their part in mingas, Pedro, as he often did, said, “Dialog ­will help solve your prob­lems,” and assured them that by working together they could ensure collective benefits of collective efforts. Pedro’s rare ability to at once embody and traverse shifting state assemblages in Pusuca and Penipe was captured ­later in the same meeting. Esquel’s perpetual role in guiding directiva and committee meetings and decisions—be it Pedro, Martha Santiago, or other interlocutors—­meant that ­little power was truly vested in the directiva and committees, despite active leadership and resettler rights to vote on all decisions. They rarely set the agenda for the ­matters on which they voted, and all decisions ­were moderated and monitored by Esquel. However, this pro­cess never had the appearance of coercion. Martha was kind, unassuming, capable, and diminutive, though she spoke with conviction and patiently explained all manner of practicalities, logistics, and implications. The mandatory monthly assemblies at 7 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month in Pusuca ­were usually contentious affairs that could run as late as midnight, despite their modest agendas, each item of which often was met with impassioned debate.1 When debates reached stalemates or villa­gers advocated arguably pyrrhic decisions (such as evicting a man for being far in arears with rayas, though he provided a physician’s note), it was Martha (and occasionally Pedro) who brokered resolutions that w ­ ere always accepted, however begrudgingly at times. Agents and agencies of the state draw on expert knowledge and a unique recourse to rules for conduct and means of enforcement, and they impose their values, politics of deservingness, and orga­nizational practices on local institutions and subaltern p­ eoples. This is perhaps exemplified in the ­matter of granting deeds (escrituras)—­cult objects of the state—to the h ­ ouses and lands in Pusuca. Like MIDUVI in Penipe Nuevo, Esquel withheld housing deeds u­ ntil they w ­ ere satisfied that resettlers had met their obligations to the community according to the bylaws they drafted (dues, rayas, bills, residence, meeting attendance). The pro­cess of granting deeds began in mid-2010 and continued for years a­ fter. One after­noon in November 2011, I interviewed Martha over lunch in nearby Riobamba. I asked about the autonomy of the directiva and the role of Esquel

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in guiding decisions according to specific rules and princi­ples. She explained that the directiva had nearly complete autonomy in decision making but that Esquel had to ensure that decisions involving issues such as exclusion from resources (e.g., ­water) did not result from interpersonal conflicts, atrasados ­were given opportunities to make up rayas and attendance credits, and no one was evicted from their h ­ ouses; eviction, she said, was in fact no longer legally pos­si­ble. I then asked why, if eviction was no longer legally feasible, they continued to withhold deeds to h ­ ouses, to which she replied, “You see, it’s like a trick [truco] that I pulled. I still have the deeds of t­ hose who barely occupy their homes. I told them I ­will give them the deeds when they complete their obligations to the community and when they occupy the ­houses. But . . . ​legally, they already have their deeds, just not the paper. They could go to the Registry [of Property] any day to request their deeds and they would give them to them.” This case does not simply reflect the guileful paternalism of Esquel, but rather illustrates a par­tic­u­lar variety of state assemblage and the institution of minga as its governing discipline. Esquel stood virtually alone in the brokerage position between Pusuca and government agencies and NGOs. They themselves crafted the village bylaws and the rules of minga practice (most notably tareas), and ­because of this arrangement they exercised nearly exclusive command of both the knowledge of and access to the cult objects of the state. Their power and their place in the state assemblage w ­ ere therefore underwritten by their capacity to withhold key resources like deeds, aid, ­water, and other development programs in the governance and enforcement of minga practice.

El Chisme: Subaltern Recourse to the Rules The most common subaltern tactics in village governance and minga practice included gossip, accusation, and sharing meals (la tonga) in minga practice. My argument h ­ ere is that t­ hese three means of enforcing and (re)producing minga practice at once served as panoptic (Foucault [1975] 1995) extensions of state power and also as a means of contesting and correcting it. Unlike Manzano, where gossip (chisme) and accusations w ­ ere directed at other villages, in Pusuca this was directed almost exclusively at the deservingness of other resettlers within the community. Villa­gers would pay very close attention to each ­house­hold’s tally of rayas. They ­were as interested in ­others’ accounts as they ­were in their own, and if someone perceived their raya count as short, they would speak up and recount the rayas they had earned. However, they would also listen closely to their neighbors’ counts to satisfy themselves that o­ thers w ­ ere up to date and not being given credit for incomplete tareas or cheating on rayas (see also Armijos and Walnycki 2014, 46–47). However, I contend that gossip and accusation ­were as much (and perhaps more) about trust in the state as they w ­ ere about trust in their neighbors. As Michele Gamburd found in studying aid administration in Sri Lanka a­ fter the

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2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, accusations of corruption often result from the absence of “a clear, widely understood, precisely executed system,” and regardless of the veracity of any one claim, gossip and accusations compelled greater transparency and consistency by ­those administering aid or, in this case, accounting for minga tareas and rayas (2013, 167–169). Though this can, theoretically, be equally true in cabildos, I have yet to observe it. ­There w ­ ere interpersonal conflicts and mistrust in the villages, to be sure, but the cabildo leaders I spent time with ­were typically consistent on most ­matters of governance and usually accommodating of the constrains and capacities of their community members, more so than the directivas, whose par­ameters of possibility w ­ ere generally proscribed by the resettlement agencies (chapter 5). As an irrigation committee meeting was set to begin on September 21, 2011, every­one sat in the Pusuca casa comunal, chatting and gossiping about the past Monday’s minga. Many had carried six large vinyl tubes, which constituted the full tarea, but t­ here w ­ ere o­ thers who had only carried a few. Judith Guamushi, whose work was not at issue, still declared that she had done her full tarea, while jokingly miming that her right shoulder was aching and now sunk five centimeters below the other. Irrigation committee president Zandro Villacis and secretary Blanca Sánchez discussed the possibility that t­hose who had not completed their tarea would automatically have to pay the multa rather than make up rayas with ­later tareas b­ ecause the next tubes would be smaller (standardization is difficult when your materials are variable). Other ­people argued that they should simply have to carry more tubes next time. Marcos complained that Nayeli would regularly carry twenty shovelfuls of materials in mingas and claim it had been thirty. Blanca and Judith discussed how they could do a better job of keeping track of tareas and loads of materials. By this point, ­there ­were more than a dozen side conversations circulating among the twenty-­odd p­ eople in the room about who had carried what and who had attempted to claim rayas for incomplete tareas. Marcos complained that some ­people used smaller shovels and Blanca responded that from now on they should all use community-­owned shovels for mingas where tareas entailed completing a number of shovel loads since they ­were all the same size. Gossip and accusations w ­ ere not at all l­ imited to contexts of village meetings and official tarea and raya accounting. A few days a­ fter the irrigation committee meeting, I joined an irrigation minga in La Candelaria with twenty-­three ­people from Pusuca. They w ­ ere carefully monitoring each person’s work. In fact, t­ here was some confusion as to what the tarea for the day had been. Martha arrived as the group contemplated a pile of vinyl tubes meant for the canal. She too was unsure. Engineer Cazco arrived nearly an hour l­ ater to say that they should carry all the six-­meter tubes in this and three other piles further down the road to the canal trenches below the muddy farmlands just south of where we stood. The tarea would be an equal division of the total number of tubes for each ­house­hold, but he was unsure of the total. The entire time this decision was being contemplated, ­there was incessant gossip among the resettlers about who

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did and did not perform their share of the work in mingas. Several ­people discussed Jhon Jaya, who was not pre­sent on this day, and argued that he had been awarded a raya for the last minga even though the tarea was to carry ten six-­ meter tubes and he and his b­ rother allegedly had only carried six tubes between them. ­Others brought up Sara Morales, saying she had scarcely ever worked a minga since the housing construction. Instead, her ­father would regularly pay peones to work for her. I should add also that gossip of this sort did not simply reflect preexisting social fault lines; though kin generally defended one another, they ­were not consistently spared from accountability in gossip. Tarea and raya accounting was a constant issue in ­every meeting and frequently in quotidian conversation and gossip. Though few resettlers had been previously wholly unknown to one another, my sense was that much of the conflict that tran­spired in minga practice and village governance was an effort to manage uncertainty and heterogeneity and exercise local control.2 Gossip could be relentless, but when ­people detected an imbalance in fairness, they would vocally protest and, if enough voices joined in, this could and did result in a reassessment of rayas. While often contentious and protracted, such pro­cesses ­were integral to the rights earned by minga participation and community membership, as they w ­ ere essential to ensuring fairness and transparency in the keeping of accounts. In the politics of deservingness in the resettlement, ­people ­were anxious about the precariousness of their own access to resources and therefore willingly policed their neighbors, practicing meticulous social accounting of tareas and rayas and relentless gossip as a first-­order sanction for nonconformity. As Erica Caple James wrote of humanitarian bureaucracies in Haiti, “uncertainty, scarcity, and risk, and the ambiguous relationship between hidden and transparent flows of power” invite discursive and practical re­sis­tance (2012, 51). Resettlers knew how cabildos worked and ­were familiar with the values, ethics, and rules that governed them, but in relations and resources arbitrated by Esquel, they found themselves negotiating with an entity whose operations ­were esoteric, a situation in which “bureaucratic secrecy intermingles with the fear and anxiety” (69). It was Esquel, ­after all, that had the final say in deservingness of w ­ ater, proj­ect inclusion, and the lands and ­houses themselves, so the wary eyes of the communal panopticon w ­ ere ever vigilant about the accounting. As the case of El Truco illustrates, they could and did operate clandestinely in their management of the community and the assemblage within which they ­were embedded. But though t­ here was likely l­ ittle or no motivation to resist Esquel directly, resettlers exercised direct force on their neighbors and, by extension, indirect force on Esquel, the state, the assemblage.

Interlude: La Tonga and Care Lest it be lost in all my discussions of power and agency, minga practice also involves practicing care. Throughout Penipe, announcements of mingas usually not only relayed the date, time, and location, but also the tools that laborers should bring. Villa­gers could be instructed to bring shovels, azadones (hoes), or

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machetes, and very frequently p­ eople w ­ ere expected to bring la tonga, or a shareable lunch. For daylong mingas, especially for irrigation and doubly so when structured by tarea, minga leaders would call a roughly one-­hour break for la tonga around midday. During la tonga, minga laborers collected in circles as small as four and as large as ten p­ eople—­variously kin, friends, and neighbors, or even gringo anthropologists or strangers working as peones—to share the food they had prepared. ­People brought tins and plastic containers of rice with vegetables and meat, a distinctly Chimboracense take on corn tortillas, potatoes, squash and pumpkin cakes, popcorn, and miscellaneous foodstuffs, as well as large ­bottles of soft drinks. All was meant to be shared as communal dishes. La tonga was a period of socializing with kin and friends, and p­ eople often moved between circles to visit o­ thers and share food. I have also observed la tonga as an occasion for repairing relationships that ­were strained in minga and village politics. One day during a break from a particularly arduous irrigation minga with the p­ eople of Pusuca in November 2011, I observed an interaction between Manuel Reyes, who had long been in conflict with Mariana Ochoa (whom he had succeeded as directiva president two years ­earlier in a rather acrimonious transition of leadership), and Luz Ramirez, Mariana’s adult ­daughter. Since concluding his term as president, Manuel had grown disengaged from the community and rarely attended meetings or participated in community affairs, though he almost never missed a minga. On this day, he was sitting by himself a good ten meters away from the nearest circle of p­ eople sharing la tonga. I was surprised, however, to see Mariana and Luz call over to Manuel and invite him to share a beverage, which he politely accepted, walking over to them to chat for a few minutes and smiling broadly for much of the time. Their differences w ­ ere hardly ­behind them, but the gesture of unconditional food sharing revealed that they ­were still capable of rediscovering h ­ uman connections and quelling their acrimony, however briefly. What is in­ter­est­ing about la tonga is that it helps repair relations strained in the incessant gossiping and hurling of accusations in which resettlers engaged in order to influence organ­izations and institutions that are for them decidedly esoteric and to bring them into greater alignment with subaltern values. I see la tonga as part of suite of subaltern gifting and reciprocal exchange practices that complement cabildo statecraft in forming and sustaining the relationalities of belonging.

El Adelanto: Institutional Communitas(?) and Utopian Proj­ects I first learned of minga when reading newspaper reports of seemingly spontaneous acts of mutual aid during and immediately following the eruptions and evacuations in 1999 and 2006. ­These accounts stand in stark contrast with the rather hierarchical structure of minga practice as I portrayed it in the past two chapters. The press examples do, however, reflect what some call communitas, which is a liminal phase of collective action and altruistic be­hav­ior that extends beyond

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preexisting social fault lines as ­people cope with risk, injury, and uncertainty in a disaster (Oliver-­Smith 1979; Turner [1969] 2017; Hoffman 2020). Moreover, this is precisely the type of utopian interpretation of minga that I have thus far argued forcefully against. Minga is best understood as an institution with very specific practices, relationalities, and rules and predicated on unequal power relations (re)produced over the longue durée of Penipe’s colonial history. It is not the type of spontaneous altruism or momentany utopias that emerge in many disaster contexts and that several anthropologists have observed dissipating in competition over aid. But h ­ ere I would like to add that minga is nonetheless a means by which ­people can and do collectively or­ga­nize the administration of care and aid in disaster absent the hierarchical conduct of conduct. That is, much like the pro­ cesses of the colonial production of places with which ­people formed deep and abiding attachments, and much as the cabildo is both an extension of state power and an institution that scales up subaltern politics, the colonial and disciplinary institution of minga is likewise co-­constitutive of a grammar for collective action. Call it institutional communitas. This is obviously a contradiction in terms, but an apt one. Communitas, of course, is par­tic­u­lar to liminality and “institution” signals continuity, but minga is unmistakably an idiom on which Penipeños draw to both respond to crisis and realize alternative visions of the good. However, as I have argued, minga does not dis­appear a­ fter the initial wave of communitas; rather, it endures (and in the cases I have described, it became a challenge of endurance) alternatively as an extension of state disciplinary power, a vehicle for subaltern politics, and a proj­ect that was, however counterintuitive it may seem at this point, decidedly utopian in aspiration. And the utopian aspirations of subaltern minga practice w ­ ere variously expressed in e­ ither pastoral, or nostalgic, terms invoked to compel ­people to recover a lost idyllic past or ­else they ­were prefigurative, or prescriptive, terms imploring ­people to work together ­toward a more perfect f­ uture. Of course, t­ hese invocations did work together, and they w ­ ere often made by the same actors at dif­fer­ent times. At the December 2011 meeting of the Junta Parroquial de Puela where Bernardo declared Manzano’s protest against the irrigation committee, Pablo Cordova of Manzano stood up in the midst of the crosstalk and hurling of accusations and made his way to the front of the room, where he addressed the roughly sixty ­people assembled without asking for permission to speak, as is customary. “I am 80 years old, but I still do not feel old. I remember that in years past more than 150 or 180 ­people would come out to mingas and we ­didn’t have ­these prob­lems back then.” He said they had forgotten their past and their culture and that they needed to remember and unite to work for the f­ uture. This pastoral lament articulates with other laments recounted in narratives of bare life in the resettlements from chapter  4, where ­people decried the turn to self-­interest over community values and solidarity. When Pablo concluded, his neighbor and friend, Abelardo Balseca, spoke from the back of the room that they needed to do this in action, not merely words. ­These ­were values to be put in motion.

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A few days ­later, Manuel Reyes and I sat discussing assorted affairs in Pusuca at his home in Pungal de Puela. When we got to talking about minga, he was adamant that, though he had withdrawn a bit from community affairs in recent months, he had never shirked nor fallen ­behind on his minga tareas and rayas. However, he was troubled by the fact that all mingas in Pusuca had become so routinized and results oriented. He lamented the passing of the minga as a community-­building and revitalizing practice. “When I was president, I made sure to have regular community mingas to or­ga­nize the community and to beautify the village. . . . ​It is not enough to do mingas for proj­ects; we must do weekly mingas to keep the community or­ga­nized and beautiful.” Penipe historian Samuel Haro too was an impor­tant voice of minga as a pastoral utopian proj­ect meant to recover values and unity perceived to be lost, a decidedly nostalgic register. “The minga has always been a strength. It was so with the Pinipis and afterwards with the Inca. . . . ​The Penipe-­La Candelaria Road was made by mingas between 1890 and 1900 with pickaxes and shovels, not with machinery. . . . ​In 1905 they built the Baños road with minga l­abor and ­there was no pay. ­People came from all around to work. Back in t­ hose days p­ eople r­ eally worked, not ­today. ­Today they talk and flirt with the girls.” He remembered the mingas of his youth: “We went to work for the potable w ­ ater system from the Rio Matus by canal in 1960. If ­there was a collapse, we would all go to clear the canal so we could have ­water. The ­people have lost interest in ­doing mingas as in the past ­because they have lost their culture. The minga was like a value, but hardly anymore. Th ­ ere was less selfishness in that time. . . . ​The minga is a strength we had before. It was a value of the good for all. The minga is true solidarity.” Utopian ideals w ­ ere also frequently prescriptive invocations of how they should and could work together to realize more perfect ­futures (­after Albris 2017). No ­matter the president at the time, each meeting of the Pusuca Directiva began with a utopian invocation, a kind encouragement to work together for a more perfect community. As an example, when Manuel Reyes assumed the presidency in January 2010, the entry in the directiva’s book of acts began, “Mr. President welcomes every­one and wishes success this year and that a new environment may reign for the good of the community.” In May, the book of quoted Manuel as stating, “We must unite with greater force and decisiveness for the good of the community!” And as he passed the presidency to Angel Turushina in January 2011, Manuel thanked all the villa­gers who worked on the mingas to benefit the community, welcomed the new directiva, and wished “that this year be a year filled with successes.” The minga, as he told me weeks l­ ater, is for “the advancement [el adelanto] of the community.” The terms el adelanto (advancement) and salir adelante (to get ahead) ­were common refrains in discussions of minga as a future-­oriented proj­ect. Judith’s husband, David, would say, “It is a benefit for the advancement of the community and for the community member.” Her f­ ather, Miguel Guamushi, shared with me his belief that the purpose of minga is “so the community gets ahead

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[que salga adelante], so that we are united. . . . ​So the community gets ahead and can prove to the institutions that we are united and hard working.” Judith’s u­ ncle Pedro likewise explained to me that the purpose of minga was “to have greater unity among the families of the community, in this case to be united in the community, to be aware of every­thing, so the community gets ahead.” Lucho Baldeon of Manzano described minga in an interview with me as “where one participates in working for the advancement of the community.” In Pusuca, Teresa Caicedo saw minga practice as working ­toward an ideal community unity. She spoke of minga as “an occasion we have to work and spend time together, all of the community, to become more integrated, to communicate with each other. This is sometimes hard work, and sometimes smooth.” Her ­daughter, Carmita, added that it was about “improving our lives and the ­future.” The combined pastoral and prefigurative discourses of minga as utopian proj­ect help explain why minga has become such a power­ful symbol for Indigenous and campesino social and po­liti­cal movements in Ec­ua­dor.

Conclusions: Campesino Agency Power and agency in minga practice are impossible to disentangle. We could say that by gossiping about and accusing their neighbors, resettlers in a sense abetted Esquel’s colonization of minga as an extension of state discipline and cap­i­tal­ist spacetime. It is also pos­si­ble to argue that the utopian discourse of minga practice does the social marketing for the state, imposing minga as disciplinary power. Yet what I have attempted to reveal in this chapter is something quite dif­fer­ent: alongside the formation of par­tic­u­lar state assemblages (some clandestine), villa­gers and resettlers exercised a ­great deal of agency in mobilizing their partial state subjectivity (­after Prieto 2015) to resist and make demands of the state. Demands and re­sis­tance are never total, but rather are practices that attempt to bring the work of state assemblages more into conformity with local values and relationalities. And fi­nally, minga is not merely an institution through which campesinos advocate for and realize inclusion within the state (deservingness), but also a partially autonomous institution by means of which they aspire to and realize utopian proj­ects. If in part I we witnessed colonial and state legibilizing programs producing the fixed settlements of smallholders on the slopes of the volcano over centuries only for them to become villa­gers with intimate and abiding personal and collective attachments to place, landscape, and community, so too in part II we can see how the disciplinary power of minga was used to claim campesino bodies to build the infrastructure of the colony and the modern state while also being reclaimed over time in often subtle ways as a prefigurative vehicle of alternative s­ ubaltern futures. Elsewhere, I have written about such seemingly passive acts as raising a hand to volunteer for development programs offered by the state in Manzano and Pusuca (Faas 2018). Doubtless at least a few readers thought my interpretation

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was more than a bit Pollyannaish, but I simply do not see volunteering for proj­ ects or working with “outside” organ­izations (be they explic­itly governmental, NGO, or e­ lse private enterprise) as passive acts. When I watch my friends raise their hands to join an irrigation minga, participate in state-­run workshops, or avail themselves of state livestock vaccination programs, I see acts of creativity and agency, not tacit endorsements of state discipline or neoliberalism. I see ­people adapting to uncertainty, scarcity, and instability as they work to recover from disaster, displacement, and resettlement. Neither do I see ­these acts as passive ac­cep­tance of the proj­ects, programs, or resources being delivered (or withheld). Throughout this book, campesinos initiate—in ways alternatively tacit and explicit—­debates and other forms of re­sis­tance that work to bring programs, proj­ects, and plans into greater alignment with local values and relationalities. ­People actively courted novel opportunities and endeavored to experiment with new possibilities in order to find ways to steer new resources to their h ­ ouse­holds and communities. In many ways, Manzano and Pusuca reflected the Janus-­faced meaning of Colloredo-­Mansfeld’s title for his work on Andean civil society, Fighting Like a Community (2009). Manzano was in many re­spects exemplary of village politics in which villa­gers banded together to fight for their interests against outside intrusions, whereas in Pusuca neighbors ­were often more likely to quarrel among themselves. However, the politics of both strategies had much in common. While in Pusuca villa­gers directly compelled one another, in Manzano ­people held up the myth that they ­were more or­ga­nized and hardworking than other villages, a myth that likely could not be sustained if it was not publicly substantiated to some degree. And t­ hese locally derived practices and relationalities exerted indirect pressures on the state assemblage by embodying and discursively producing, arbitrating, and enacting ethics of fairness, transparency, and accountability. In ­doing so, villa­gers ensured that they ­were coauthors of the politics of deservingness as they negotiated their relationships with outside organ­izations, which ­were always not only power­f ul but also at least a ­little esoteric and uncertain. Thus, if the relationalities and assemblages that facilitated el truco reify the inequalities that are co-­constitutive of disaster, then I see the work performed by el indigno, el chisme, y el adelanto as approaching something like an inverse of this: compelling power­f ul patrons to align their objectives with local values and to keep inequalities within acceptable bounds. That is, minga is also an institution that enables the rural subaltern to scale up their own agency and influence the conduct of the state.

Part III

Recoveries Everywhere I have worked, we just assume it is the period starting immediately following a disaster and recovery programming is the set of activities immediately following the first response to save lives.

The epigraph comes from a friend with more than thirty years of experience in governmental and nongovernmental humanitarian aid, disaster response, and recovery whom I asked how “recovery” was defined in the field. My sense was that ­there would be a ­great deal of normative assumptions bundled up in this, but I was mistaken. That is, recovery is often not an outcome-­oriented proj­ect, but rather the ensemble of operations put in motion following an immediate response. And yet recovery, at least in popu­lar discourse, is something we tend to take for granted, as not only an expected phase of disaster but its presumed conclusion. Perhaps this is part of a common idea of the state as a “them” that ­will take care of t­ hings (Abrams 1988) or e­ lse as a conquering hero (Zhang 2016a). In fact, early anthropological engagements with recovery ­were somewhat dismissive of the notion. I think of William Torry, who in his oft-­cited review of the then-­nascent field of disaster anthropology in the late 1970s claimed that “socie­ ties usually recover anyway, so long-­term impacts are few and inconsequential” (1979, 529). For my part, I find that discussing recovery at the level of “society” is to gloss over the experiences of real p­ eople in par­tic­u­lar contexts.

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Something like “disaster recovery” as a conclusion is by no means guaranteed. And, respectfully contra Torry, as we have seen throughout this book, the long-­ term impacts of disaster ­were many and extremely consequential for the p­ eople of Penipe. Some ­people may take longer to recover their lives and livelihoods than ­others and, sadly, some may simply never recover at all (Browne 2015). And ­people seem only to speak of recovery in the singular, as if it ­were one ­thing or as if it w ­ ere a procedure applied uniformly to one homogeneous group of “disaster victims” (Marino and Faas 2020). This has been the source of a good deal of disaster trou­ble over the years. Intransigent ideas about homogeneous groups of survivors among recovery agencies and experts can prolong the social and material effects of disaster (Barrios 2016, 135). Kate Browne has taken to calling this the “recovery culture” of bureaucracy, arguing that humanitarian organ­izations—­governmental or nongovernmental—­have far more in common with each other than with ­those they serve (2015, 192). The wants and needs of ­people following a disaster are situated—­a bit more rooted and substantive than simply “subjective”—­and they are sometimes characteristic of par­tic­u­ lar individuals and families and at other times common to broader groups or collectives. This is why disaster anthropologists advocate for flexibility in the planning, implementation, and governance of recovery and reconstruction programs, to ensure that they are suited to the p­ eople rather than compelling p­ eople to accommodate the program. In 2009, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction codified a definition of disaster recovery that remains the standard reference in global disaster operations at the time of writing: “The restoring or improving of livelihoods and health, as well as economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets, systems and activities, of a disaster-­affected community or society, aligning with the princi­ples of sustainable development and “build back better,” to avoid or reduce ­future disaster risk” (UNDRR 2009).1 While the attention to improvement and the arguably “holistic” attention to social, cultural, and environmental ­matters suggest a rather progressive agenda, the definition is decidedly s­ ilent on how p­ eople can go about setting their own terms for recovery—as in Penipe Nuevo, where resettlements bore no resemblance to p­ eople’s prior lives, included no resources for their f­utures beyond four walls, and ­were regulated in ways that ­were hostile to their adaptive livelihood strategies. Moreover, the much-­touted value of “building back better” begs the question of whose “better” we are talking about and what to do if dif­fer­ent actors or groups have competing concepts of what that “better” would be. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR 2015), the risk reduction strategy ­adopted by UN member states for 2015–2030, is likewise celebrated for its attention to social, economic, cultural, and po­liti­cal ­factors beyond narrow attention to h ­ azards. The framework includes the following proviso ­under “Priority for Action 1: Understanding Disaster Risk” in Section IV, point

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24 (i): the achievement of this priority ­will require that all parties engaged in DRR efforts “ensure the use of traditional, indigenous [sic] and local knowledge and practices, as appropriate, to complement scientific knowledge in disaster risk assessment and the development and implementation of policies, strategies, plans and programmes of specific sectors, with a cross-­sectoral approach, which should be tailored to localities and to the context.” Attempts to synthesize local and scientific knowledge are certainly laudable, but who, or what metric or rule, determines w ­ hether or to what degree the incorporation of local knowledge and practices is “appropriate”? This standard does not improve ­people’s capacity for self-­determination or envisioning and realizing their ­futures according to their own livelihoods and cultural logics of the good.2

Convivir: The Binary Prob­lem and Postcolonial Natureculture In the epilogue, I reflect on the historical (re)production of disaster as I have treated it throughout this book and then think about how my friends in Penipe are imagining their ­futures, which leads me back to the prob­lem of the “no natu­ ral disasters!” claim, which is rooted in a par­tic­u­lar cultural orientation of Western modernity. The notion of nature as material (say, environmental and bodily) phenomena and pro­cesses in­de­pen­dent of ­human causation or interference (outside culture or society)—­which is often divided into resource, h ­ azard, benign setting, or the essential endowments of beings-­in-­the-­world—­seems an uncontroversial claim. And yet, in recent de­cades it has met with several closely related challenges that render it rather unstable and, I argue, of ­limited enduring analytical purchase, at least according to narrow conventional terms. The first challenge is one of the historical production of phenomena and pro­cesses like disaster that transcend—­some might say betray—­the nature/culture binary. Much has been made of this in science and technology studies, with attention to the production of cyborgs (Haraway (1985) 2016b) and modern hybrids like climate change (Latour 2018) or nuclear power (Beck 1992), but environmental practices and relationalities have arguably forever immitigably entangled ­humans and nonhumans (Hodder 2012; Ingold 1991, 1993; Tsing 2015). Put simply, bodies and environments have social histories (Harraway 2016b; Ingold 1991; Posey 1985; Fairhead and Leach 1995). Climate change is the most obvious example of a “­hazard” that defies emplacement into the “natu­ral,” “environmental,” or “technological.” It is at once all of t­ hese and therefore none of them. It was born of ­human action and yet has articulated with a ­great many pro­cesses and ­hazards that we might other­wise have handily stationed securely in nature and outside society. If hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, pestilence, and drought ever truly lay outside society and culture, ­human hands have now invited them in via climate change. But it seems straightforward to reason that what we might call a h ­ azard only truly becomes hazardous when we ­either approach or stand near it, and this

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is even more the case when we e­ ither s­ ettle permanently in a h ­ azard’s ambit or construct it permanently within ours. Consequently, such ­hazards must be hybrids, belying the modern constitution—­the insistent divide between nature and society, nature and culture. The second challenge to the nature/culture binary is on one level discursive, a question of the construction of knowledge of nature inter alia and, for our purposes, disaster. Even for ­those who are convinced of a mind-­independent and extrasocial material world, t­ here is ­little to inspire confidence in the possibility of a prediscursive encounter with it (Escobar 1996, 1998, 1999). That is, “nature is si­mul­ta­neously real, collective, and discursive—­fact, power, and discourse—­ and needs to be naturalized, sociologized, and deconstructed accordingly” (1999, 2). Since all knowledge claims are mediated by discourses that emerge and accumulate from institutions, social interactions and relations, disciplines, politics, and economics, our encounters with “nature” are products of practices of signification; of knowledge produced, not found (Escobar 1996, 1999; Foucault [1975] 1995, 1982). The argument is not that knowledge is fundamentally textual or verbal, but rather that what we know is born of some reference to speech acts, texts, and habits of practice—­under­lying assumptions operating silently in the construction of categories such as “nature” and “disaster.” Such contingencies trou­ble the fixing of meanings to ­these categories and the regulation of movement of phenomena between them. The third challenge emanates from the first two. Not only is nature a discursively constructed category contingent on sociohistorical context, but the category of “nature” that has become the scourge of disaster studies is an ontological commitment and one par­tic­u ­lar to Western modernity (Latour 1993, 2004). Philippe Descola encourages anthropologists to recognize that “other civilizations have devised dif­fer­ent ways of detecting qualities among existents, resulting in other forms of organ­izing continuity and discontinuity between h ­ umans and nonhumans, of aggregating beings in collectives, of defining who or what is capable of agency and knowledge” (2014, 271). Dif­fer­ent socie­ties not only physically reconstitute environmental and bodily phenomena, they also define and delimit the bound­aries between “nature” and “culture” (or “society”) quite differently, if they regard the distinction as meaningful at all (De La Cadena 2010, 2015; Viveiros de Castro 2004a, 2004b; Escobar 1999, 2007). Discursive interpretations of unstable categories such as nature thus invite another order of theorizing entirely. Descola (2013, 2014) and Latour (2004) examine contending ontological commitments co-­constituted by assemblages of ­humans and nonhumans that encounter, contain, and accommodate re­sis­tance. Divergent discourses can maintain shared ontological commitments: the dominant undersocialized discourse of disasters as natu­ral (i.e., socially extrinsic, unforeseeable) and the critical “no natu­ral disasters” oversocialized discourse of disaster studies share a commitment to the nature/culture binary. The binary is

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left un­perturbed, and nature and culture remain securely on their respective sides of “the G ­ reat Divide” of the modern constitution (Latour 1993, 97–100). However, my work with my friends in Penipe trou­bles this binary in ways that are evocative of more-­than-­human assemblages—­often in the most mundane and ordinary ways, such as in everyday ­labor like minga, which stitches the nodes in the assemblages together—­and thereby pre­sents alternatives to the divide.

8

“But We Did It” I returned to Penipe for several months in 2018, ten years a­ fter the resettlements ­were opened. Though I had visited just a few years prior and maintained consistent contact with many of my friends t­ here, visiting to document what life was like a­ fter ten years seemed a worthy endeavor. Th ­ ere w ­ ere no local events or activities marking this as a meaningful anniversary or milestone, and even when I mentioned that I was t­ here to document what life was like now that ten years had passed, no one registered this as significant and some p­ eople even had to think it over to decide if I was correct that it had been a ­whole de­cade. Nevertheless, it seemed reasonable to visit a­ fter a de­cade to see if p­ eople had been able to establish something beyond the bare life they found at the outset. What va­ri­e­ties of recovery could be expected in Manzano and the resettlements ­a fter ten years, and how would they contrast with one another? My approach was to examine how life had changed ­after a de­cade of trauma and how villa­gers and local leaders had carved out new possibilities for livelihoods and mobility. The opening of the resettlements hardly indicated that the disaster (or disasters) had passed by 2009 and, if it is hard to think of the disaster in the singular, the sheer multiplicity of interventions and po­liti­cal dynamics that followed makes it likewise unfathomable to think of recovery that way. The tendency globally is to treat disaster survivors as somehow homogeneous—as, say, “victims” or “displaced p­ eople”—­but it should be obvious by this point that Penipeños w ­ ere diverse in their positionalities prior to disaster, w ­ ere varied in their experience of disaster and displacement, and found dif­fer­ent pathways to housing, livelihoods, and community through a range of relations with ­people, institutions, and organ­izations. As has surely also become apparent in this book, Pusuca, 167

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Manzano, and Penipe Nuevo have unique entanglements in state and naturecultural assemblages (even institutions that they have in common, such as minga, are par­tic­u­lar to local assemblages). Each site was a study in contrasts and contradictions, each of which leads me to apply lessons from part I about mobility and legibility and lessons from part II about palimpsestic institutions and the reclamation of cooperation for utopian aspirations to think about recovery. This is, in many re­spects, a story of finding healing from tremendous adversity and the discovery of agency despite all the structural conditions and history that stood in the way.

Penipe Nuevo: Prosperity (?), Mobility, and Spatial Ecol­ogy Entering Penipe Nuevo in May 2018, I found the place transformed. Though it was once virtually barren of economic resources and commercial activity, ­there ­were now dozens of new businesses, including ten restaurants, three roadside food stands, nine con­ve­nience stores of varying sizes, a school-­supply shop, two internet cafes, four copy shops, a shoe-­repair and tailor shop, and a small plant seller. In fact, ­there w ­ ere nearly as many businesses in Penipe Nuevo as in the old town of Penipe, which gave the impression, though it was undercut by the near uniformity of resettlement h ­ ouses, of a continuous peri-­urban center. ­There w ­ ere also other signs of increased prosperity and belongingness. A ­ fter noticing so many structural modifications, I counted ­houses with additions and structural modifications and found three with extra stories, seventeen with additional rooms, eight with new outbuildings, five with ornate iron front doors, two instances where p­ eople had built additions to join two adjacent duplexes into one building, and several more proj­ects u­ nder construction. Seventy-­one h ­ ouses ­were ringed with concrete or brick walls, forty-­four of which had iron garage gates, thirteen of them roofed. Six ­houses had robust hedgerows ringing their property and another three had wooden fences. Nearly half (126) had satellite dishes for cable and internet. Then ­there ­were aesthetic modifications, primarily painting and tiling, which I categorized as e­ ither major or minor proj­ects. ­There w ­ ere thirty-­six minor paint jobs where p­ eople e­ ither simply repainted or touched up the original paint or e­ lse made minor aesthetic embellishments, and thirty-­eight ­houses had been repainted in totally new colors with somewhat elaborate designs. Likewise, four h ­ ouses had minor tile designs plastered to their facades while the facades of another ten w ­ ere entirely (or nearly) covered with ceramic tiles. I noticed dozens of ­houses with tiled floors or modern furniture sets, but I could not venture a count since I could not enter each of the 287 homes. As I was mapping t­ hese features, I ran in to Leo Rosero, a young man I had taught to play drums in the church band years ­earlier when he was a teenager, who was working with a friend to tile a ­house. I thought he could help me get a sense of what scale of investment this kind of tiling entailed, based on the cost of materials and ­labor. Leo explained that the tiles he put on this par­tic­u­lar

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­ ouse w h ­ ere of the highest quality and cost about US$11 each; along with the adhesive, the total was about $300. He was getting paid $20 to $25 per day and this job would take six full days, so the total cost was about $450, a substantial expenditure for any h ­ ouse­hold in the region. ­There w ­ ere also many s­ imple personalizations added to h ­ ouses with or without additional modifications. Th ­ ere w ­ ere seventy-­eight ­houses with s­ imple f­ amily nameplates pasted above or next to their front doors. Some simply said t­ hings like, “God Bless the F ­ amily Vargas-­Sánchez,” while ­others had their block and ­house numbers on the plates as well. In­de­pen­dent of other modifications, t­ hese ­were not indicators of prosperity but rather of some degree of owner­ship and belonging in the resettlement; taken together with other modifications, t­ hese ­were signs that ­people ­were indeed making a “­there” ­there. ­There ­were, of course, nearly as many h ­ ouses without modifications as t­ here ­were with them. And t­ here was evidence of abandonment and remnants of past threats of eviction. Some ­houses ­were clearly abandoned. As I walked the alleys, dead ends, and minor streets, I could see that for many ­people, life in the resettlement was far less than prosperous. P ­ eople lacking the resources and location to build a business (and you can only have so many restaurants and con­ve­nience stores among 287 ­houses anyway) continued to live very rural lives with long daily commutes to sleep in their ­houses. And some ­houses ­were wholly unoccupied—­ though I cannot be sure how many (perhaps a dozen, give or take), for how long, or how permanently. In an instance that harkened back to the days when threats of evictions loomed large, I saw a h ­ ouse with a very formal letter taped in the win­ dow, dated August 25, 2012. The letter was written in overwrought, legalistic language, the type that I would often hear campesinos dictating to cybercafe staff in Penipe and in cities around Ec­ua­dor for ­matters ranging from explaining a child’s absence from school to pleading a property boundary dispute. This letter attested to the occupants’ need to be away, and it read in part, “Motivated by the eruptions of the volcano Tungurahua I was considered for a h ­ ouse in my m ­ other’s name in Penipe in which we have been living, and for health reasons I travel constantly ­every end of the month for medical appointments, and I have had to be absent since a year ago.” It went on to detail personal health issues, the national identification numbers of the adult ­house­hold members, and the names of the specific doctors, treatments, and facilities attended. It also mentioned that the letter writer’s m ­ other was likewise absent during ­these times ­because she had a ­mental disability and could not be left alone. I saw l­ ittle indication that anyone had returned since the letter had been posted nearly six years ­earlier. Washington Sánchez, former president of the Junta Parroquial de Puela and long-­serving president of the MIDUVI Directiva in Penipe Nuevo explained that ­because the volcano had calmed, more ­people had been able to feel secure in growing crops and raising animals and that the quality of life had generally improved. Washington, who had opened a popu­lar restaurant himself, told me that while not all businesses ­were successful, conditions ­were generally

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improving. ­People ­were growing accustomed to this life of ­either moving between the villages to cultivate and the resettlement to sleep, creating a small business, or finding employment. He said that you could tell even in the way ­people dressed that life was better: p­ eople could now afford more t­ hings than previously and some had come out with more than they ever had before. As he had done years ­earlier, Washington continued to lament the lack of po­liti­cal organ­ization and power in Penipe Nuevo. ­There was still had no meeting place, and though he remained the de facto president of the MIDUVI Directiva, ­there was l­ ittle in the way of po­liti­cal activity. ­People remained engaged in po­liti­cal life primarily in their home villages and parishes, though it had been a few years since Washington had held or pursued office t­ here. I asked about threats of eviction from MIDUVI and if that was still ongoing; he replied they had ­stopped and p­ eople now had titles to their h ­ ouses. His interpretation was that part of reason for the threats of eviction was a coordinated effort by MIDUVI and o­ thers to keep p­ eople out of the high-­risk zone, but since the volcano had calmed, this was no longer an issue. In other words, mobility—­the movement between the resettlements, villages on the volcano, and cities near and far—­ remained a part of life in Penipe.

Brisk Business: Martina’s Story I honestly do not think I’ve ever seen Martina Barriga of Manzano at rest, but I know well how generous she is with her contagious smile. Her life was fraught with perennial spatial precarities, as w ­ ere the lives of highland campesinos more broadly. Yet she was one of the most successful small business o­ wners in the Penipe resettlement: her con­ve­nience store served hundreds of customers per day and she had developed several side businesses with her son. Her ­daughter, with whom I had played when she was a very young girl, was getting ready to gradu­ ate from high school and enter the university. In the accounts of Martina and her ­family, I found signs of hope. ­A fter enduring significant hardships (as recounted in part I), by 2018 Martina had built the largest and most successful of the nine con­ve­nience stores in Penipe Nuevo. Hers was one of the only businesses thriving on a minor street. It helped a ­little that it was located on a street that connects to the old town of Penipe, and it helped more than anything that it also faced the new high school campus, which was built a few years a­ fter the resettlement. The store was the largest of its kind in all Penipe. Entering from the corner entrance, my eyes w ­ ere usually drawn to the long wall along the left lined with bins of sweet and salty va­ri­e­ties of fresh baked bread and bulk pasta. Then ­there w ­ ere two small booths and an ice-­cream freezer, and in the back half of the store ­there was a papelería selling school supplies mixed with costume jewelry. Along the right, the store appeared much like bodegas in American cities, with a glass ­counter attached to a wall of clear acrylic cubes spilling over with cookies, candy, potato chips, soups, coffees, health and beauty items, and just about e­ very variety of packaged

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good. Martina kept freshly caught fish and fresh chickens on supply ­behind the ­counter, in her kitchen, which occupied one of two passageways connecting her ­house to the addition her son had built for the store. She frequently complemented her earnings by cooking meals for mi­grant workers who ­were in town for construction or mining proj­ects. While business was steady morning, noon, and night, her briskest business came during the post-­lunch recess at the high school across the street, when students ran to the fence and shouted ­orders for sweet and savory snacks that Martina and her son rushed back and forth across the street to fill, passing packages and coins through holes in the fence. On the many days I visited with Martina in June and July 2018 to rec­ord her story, our conversations ­were regularly interrupted by visits from customers and shouts from across the street.

Troubled Sleep: Charo’s Story One day, as I waited to rec­ord an interview with Martina while she and her son hurried back and forth between the store and the schoolyard to fill ­orders, I got to talking with Charo, a neighbor who was patiently waiting to make some purchases and socialize with Martina. Though I did not know her well, we ­were familiar with one another and I knew she had come to live in Penipe Nuevo a­ fter evacuating from Bilbao as a young ex­pec­tant m ­ other so many years ago. I casually asked what she was d­ oing for work, curious to know what commuting to Bilbao was like t­ hese days. Charo explained that she used to work only on her land, but since the eruptions she had worked at all sorts of jobs—­sewing, cooking, laundry, and even construction. A ­ fter work s­ topped on several local construction proj­ects, she got a job guarding construction equipment overnight from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. at a site in Penipe. Since it was 11 a.m. and I caught her ­running errands, I only half-­jokingly asked if she ever slept. She said she would sleep an hour in the morning and an hour in the after­noon, but that it was usually so noisy during the day, with kids, trucks, dogs, cars, horns, m ­ usic, and the ceaseless racket that came with so much tinkering on every­thing in the neighborhood, that it was almost impossible to sleep during the day. Noting the concern on my face, she said she was sometimes able to squeeze in more sleep, often on weekends, but that she knew she ­really never got anything like the recommended amount. Though she was trying to reassure me, she let three tears stream down her face even as she forced a smile. Despite the many signs of newfound prosperity, it was clear that not every­one enjoyed the same success and well-­being as Martina and the o­ thers who had successful businesses.

“But We Did It”: Spatial Ecol­ogy, Community Life, and Politics in Pusuca Walking into Pusuca, I had the distinct impression of entering a ghost town. I ran into Carmita Turushina on the bus up from Penipe and walked with her and

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her seven-­year-­old son into Pusuca from the main road. I took note of a few new fences and hedges separating ­houses, but I quickly noticed that most ­houses appeared abandoned. What stood out the most among my first impressions was the central park—­once a source of community pride and one of the very first community minga proj­ects—­which was now completely overgrown and neglected. Carmita explained that ­there ­were just twelve h ­ ouse­holds living in Pusuca and rattled off a list of p­ eople who had left, trying to remember who had still been ­there on my last visit. I pointed to the park while beaming a quizzical look at her. Yes, she said, t­ hings w ­ ere no longer as they once w ­ ere. ­People had gone their own ways and Esquel and the other foundations that ­were once active in the community no longer participated in local affairs. I was rather saddened to see several broken win­dows on the casa comunal as we passed. Carmita called her ­brother, Angel Turushina, to let him know I had arrived, and as we chatted, I pulled her son around the tile floor in a cardboard box that he and I had decorated to look like a car. As we played, I wondered if ­there might be a small blessing in the park becoming overgrown: it disrupted the panoptic effect of every­one being vis­i­ble to every­one day and night and in many ways restored a semblance of the spatial ecologies of ­people’s home villages, where most ­houses w ­ ere hidden by forested and cultivated lands. Carmita also mentioned that most ­people still actively worked their lands in Pusuca even though they lived elsewhere. Angel arrived and we started catching up. He was excited to take me to the animal pens and the lands down below the village. We walked b­ ehind a few ­houses and I saw that Luis Ramírez was nearly finished building a beautiful and sprawling complex of eucalyptus-­framed pens for cuyes (cuyerias) in his backyard. We visited animal pens situated away from the ­houses at the edge of the steep slopes that descended to the cultivated lands below, and I saw cuyerias, pig pens with dozens of pigs, rabbit pens, and a half dozen goats tethered to sturdy bushes in the surrounding overgrowth. In the fields below, Angel showed me his large mora (blackberry) crops, tangerine trees, and assorted fruit and vegetable plants. As we trudged through the fields, he tore off fruits and tossed them to me, Carmita, and his wife, Monica, and we tasted each one that came our way. He pointed to a half dozen head of ­cattle up the road and showed me around the dif­fer­ent plots of land belonging to his erstwhile neighbors, each of which was teaming with fruits and vegetables of ­every variety.

Community and House­hold Life Speaking about the state of Pusuca in 2018, Angel explained, “At the community level, in regression; at the individual level, with ­every person advancing. So, the state is that ­there are two ­faces of the coin in Pusuca. The community side has been left ­behind, and every­one has become more individual, more individualistic.” “Since when?” I asked.

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It’s been a pro­cess. . . . ​The fact is that ­people have undertaken private ventures so that has taken up much of their time. So, as a consequence ­there is no way to . . . ​reunify the ­people. For example, on Saturdays we used to do mingas, but most p­ eople head out to the market on Wednesdays, and now Saturdays are focused on production, so it’s become quite difficult to participate in the community on Saturdays ­because you ­can’t be t­ here. It’s become very difficult to be in two places at once. So, ­because of the respective interest of e­ very agriculturalist, it’s come about that w ­ e’re avoiding d­ oing communal mingas, more or less.

I asked Angel to explain how ­people grew more individualistic and what might have contributed to the pro­cess. “The w ­ ater,” he said. “The w ­ ater?” I asked. “The plots of land without ­water ­were not apt for traditional cultivation. Maybe some corn or t­ hings that ­don’t demand much investment or l­ abor. . . . ​So, once the ­water was r­ unning and productivity increased on every­one’s land, each of us said let’s give each other some air. . . . ​Let’s look for alternative products with higher demand that could also help with f­amily income. So it started with one then another person began like this with their families. ­There was also help from institutions like the provincial council who provided seedlings and all that.” Indeed, the mora bushes ­were a big part of ­people starting to develop more individually. “Setting to work on their lands and realizing that it took more time to cultivate, I believe that left no more time to participate in forming part of community life. . . . ​The ability to do mingas has been reduced to a minimum, at least a lapse of six months, if not a year.”

Tensions of Minga Practice and Politics in Community Life? Had the tensions of minga practice and village politics had a long-­term negative impact on community affairs? When it came to minga, Angel thought that t­ here could be some truth to that. Pusuca is a peculiar place in which the ­people of e­ very community of Puela who used to be separated by geo­graph­i­cal barriers that defined the bound­aries that always existed between Pungal de Puela, Manzano, El Tingo, or [central Puela] and the p­ eople from t­ here always identify with t­ hese communities. . . . ​I came to know them in Pusuca . . . ​and it was quite difficult in the mingas b­ ecause many p­ eople tried to demonstrate that they worked . . . ​ and that’s how anger emerged, as ­people claimed that they are the ones who love to work like this.1

Angel said he had been put off by the infighting in the early days and was indifferent to the directiva. When he was invited to run for president in 2011 he did not want to accept, but he had a good reputation, which led o­ thers to support

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him. Even as a leader, he went on working as hard as ever, remaining concerned that “­people ­were so l­ imited in their opinions.” He recalled worrying that in their zeal to argue for one way or another of ­doing t­ hings and their constant denouncing of one another, that if they did not do ­things right, they would not receive the ­houses. Their watchful gazes, gossip, and accusations ­were tied to their anx­i­eties and uncertainty about the pro­cess. “And, if we behaved somewhat rebelliously, they w ­ ere g­ oing to simply tell us that if we d­ idn’t like the proj­ect we could get out of the way.” I interjected, “Wait, Esquel said that?” “No,” Angel said, “but that’s what we felt.” Angel, however, thought t­ here was far more than merely negative ­factors that accounted for the decline in community life and practice. His sense was that in the end it was more the pull of new opportunities for h ­ ouse­hold advancement than the push of community rancor. The same ­thing happened with the irrigation canal. No one agreed on the tareas . . . ​but in the end they had to do it. In the end they implemented the tarea to carry X quantity of shovelfuls somewhere. They knew that they had one day or two days or a half day and one or two trips, but in the end, even if they w ­ ere upset, they had to do it. And the stress ­isn’t r­ eally felt by the ­people . . . ​the stress is r­ eally on the directiva b­ ecause the directiva is worrying about how to enforce this, how is it done, the friction between ­people, taking care not to add fuel to the fire, and trying to appease every­one and ensure that ­people in the end work, so that you can report achievements . . . ​But we did it.

Other p­ eople did point to strained relationships in the community. When Blanca Sánchez and I sat down in her ­house to drink coffee, share choco­late bread, and discuss relationships and community life, she was clearly still smarting from past conflicts. Daily interactions between neighbors amounted to l­ ittle more than ­simple greetings—­buenos dias, buenas tardes—­and the occasional ­favor. That was the extent of community life in 2018. Among the mere twelve of the original forty-­two ­house­holds living ­there full time, initiating and sustaining community life and collective proj­ects had become exceptionally challenging and exceedingly rare. She maintained relationships with a few charities and nonprofits, but several recent proj­ects she had attempted to get involved with had provoked conflict. She invited one charity to construct a eucalyptus-­ framed, unwalled structure mea­sur­ing about seven by four meters with a corrugated fiber-­cement roof at the entrance to Pusuca from the main road. Blanca said it was meant to be occupied by multiple vendors from Pusuca, but other villa­gers claimed Blanca had used her relationship with nonprofits to derive a private benefit from collective resources. As a result, one year on, the structure sat empty. Nonetheless, other community relations certainly endured and some folks seemed to be d­ oing quite well. Juan Ortiz, for one, had come a long way since

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the early days of Pusuca, working his way up from disaster, displacement, a failed marriage, and depression, all of which contributed to him falling far b­ ehind in community obligations. I first met Juan, his older ­brother, Javier, and their el­derly parents in May 2009. Juan and Javier had ­houses in Pusuca and their parents lived in Penipe Nuevo. “At that time, I was married and I had my young son, so I qualified to enter.” On our first meeting, Juan was agonizing over the recent breakup of his marriage—­his wife had had an affair with an Esquel employee working on Pusuca construction—as well as the uncertainty about custody of his young son and his housing eligibility in the resettlement. On that first day in 2009, I found Juan crouched in front of his ­house in Pusuca, staring aimlessly at the ground and his surroundings with a profound expression of desolation. “So, I was r­ eally ­behind [in rayas and dues] ­because t­ here was a bit of a conflict ­there. . . . ​ [My wife and I] separated and we d­ idn’t know which of us they would give [the ­house] to.” He spent months feeling depressed and living at his parents’ ­house in Penipe Nuevo while commuting to a factory job in Riobamba. However, Esquel and the directiva de­cided in 2010 that the h ­ ouse would go to Juan “­because I was from ‘the risk zone’ and she was not.” As a result, he began working in 2011 to catch up on rayas and dues. Juan got together with his second wife, Elena, in 2014. They each brought with them a child from a former marriage and they had a son together in 2016. With some guidance from Elena’s ­father and the steady flow of irrigation ­after 2013, they began an ambitious agricultural program, focusing mostly on mora but also taking on a half dozen head of ­cattle. By 2018, Juan was one of the most (and perhaps the most) successful agriculturalists in Pusuca. I visited him one day in July and learned they had just harvested 120 boxes of mora, which ­were then fetching a price of about US$3.50 per box. He and his ­brother partnered to grow tree tomatoes on his b­ rother’s land, and he also rented half of another neighbor’s property to plant a range of crops. Juan had a pickup truck, which he used to ferry his harvests to ­wholesalers in Riobamba several times a week. His neighbors too, like Luis Ramírez, would call on him for help in trucking their own harvests to the city. And Juan and Elena generously exchanged harvests and other ­favors with neighbors including Blanca, Angel, Carmita, Teresa Caicedo, and the other few who remained. Each day when I returned to visit his home or his lands on the hillside in 2018, Juan greeted me with a mixture of amazement that I was so taken with his case and a sly recognition that just a few years prior, neither of us would have predicted that he would become a standout success in the community. Though Juan and Angel Turushina ­were neighbors, ­were the same age (thirty-­ five in 2018), and had become friends over the years, their stories are quite dif­ fer­ent. Nonetheless, the changes they had under­gone in the ten years of resettlement w ­ ere no less transformational. Angel had been a successful leader in the community, known as much for being friendly as for being a visionary working ­toward building Pusuca into a center of tourism and production for

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farm-­to-­table programs. Angel and Monica, with help from Angel’s two younger ­brothers, had even decorated their ­house and yard in Pusuca to look like a rustic Andean posada (inn) with awnings and entranceways framed in eucalyptus posts and festooned with dried pine branches and chamisa. By 2013, they had turned the front room of their h ­ ouse into a small con­ve­nience store, the only one ever opened in Pusuca. To my surprise, by 2017 Angel and the f­ amily had relocated to Penipe Nuevo to stay in Monica’s f­ ather’s h ­ ouse, though they still cultivated intensively in Pusuca and returned daily to work the land. Monica’s f­ ather had been operating a con­ve­nience store out of the front room of his ­house, which was directly across from the newly built elementary school at the foot of the Penipe–­La Candelaria Road, a prime location. Monica’s f­ ather had gone to work in the city for over a year, leaving Angel and Monica to run the store and expand the business and the building for themselves. They built a cybercafe and then an addition for a restaurant and bedrooms for them above the restaurant. By June  2018, they ­were halfway done with the addition and Monica’s ­father was due back in a ­matter of months. He intended to return and reclaim the store, but the rest of the business would be theirs. Angel recalled, I never thought I’d have a store in my life . . . ​and attend to clientele. Sure, I had the dream of having an inn, serving food. . . . ​But what I do ­here is very distinct from what I was thinking. And now it has changed plenty ­because I cannot abandon this business I have b­ ecause it’s an impor­tant source of income to support my f­ amily. . . . ​I’m obviously never g­ oing to abandon Pusuca. I’ve always been connected; I’ve always been developing something in Pusuca. I have my business ­here, but I do not forget Pusuca. I’m t­ here and I’ll always be ­there.

What Remained of the Po­liti­cal Center? It was a pitch-­black night as I approached the casa comunal on July 7, 2018, to attend the monthly general assembly. I saw a motorcycle parked outside and guessed it might belong to directiva president Zandro Villacis. The door was open but it was completely dark inside, a fair enough meta­phor for what remained of the once-­vibrant—­however fractious—­political center. I could vaguely make out the outline of someone sweeping inside. “Who’s ­there?” I asked. “Angel!” “Oh, Angel, what’s up?” I replied. “Well, it appears that ­we’re still without electricity. We did pay, but it appears that they have not reconnected it. [Apparently, it had previously been disconnected due to nonpayment.] Once again, ­we’ll have the meeting in the darkness.” (This was not the first time.) Angel laughed a bit as he said this, airing a sort of self-­deprecation on behalf of the collective. I fished in my backpack for my LED flashlight and hung it from one of the raf­t ers. The light was bright but it had only a narrow beam so it helped very ­little. Angel went on

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to say that they had simply lost track of bill payment a ­couple months back but by now the electricity should have been turned back on. I took a seat in a white plastic deck chair near the door. Gilberto Villagomez came in and joked about the disgracia that they had no lights once again. It was now 7 p.m. but no one ­else had arrived. Ten minutes ­later, Jenny Cabrera and her ten-­year-­old son came in as Angel jokingly yelled out what is conventionally the penultimate agenda item in each assembly: “Fifth, miscellaneous business!” This evoked laughter from the few ­people pre­sent. Within minutes, twenty-­one more socios entered as Angel jokingly called out the final item on the agenda: “Sixth, closure!” Alberto Sánchez was able to connect the electricity, and the lights came on around 7:30. Angel, who was now the secretary, read out the modest agenda, which was threadbare compared to agendas of the past: (1) quorum; (2) president’s welcome; (3) reading of approved decisions of last meeting [acta anterior]; (4) miscellaneous business; and (5) closure. In past years, a meeting agenda would have included between eight and thirteen items, such as this one from August 1, 2009: (1) establishment of quorum; (2) greeting and welcome; (3) reading of approved decisions of last meeting; (4) reading of communications; (5) raya accounting; (6) economic update; (7) activities update; (8) intervention from engineer Pedro Carrasco; and (9) miscellaneous business. All but the miscellaneous business was over in fifteen minutes. Then, u­ nder that item, four m ­ atters w ­ ere discussed over the next hour. First, a man had attempted to swindle ­people by selling land near Pusuca that was not his, so they should be on the lookout. Angel then announced that they had fifty wooden fenceposts available to socios for fifty cents each. Luis Ramírez, who was responsible for daily maintenance of the potable ­water system and dues collection, spoke up about a needed repair, a discussion that went on for fifteen minutes. And fi­nally, Eduardo Morales requested permission to rent the lands of three socios who had never planted. He would pay rent to the socios, but ­these same socios ­were well b­ ehind in irrigation rayas and he wanted to, in effect, rent the irrigation rights and pay monthly dues without having to pay the full bill of fines for the missed rayas, which he claimed would be prohibitively expensive. This provoked a lively discussion, with ­people alternatively supporting or questioning his request. In the end, the socios agreed to deliberate and attempt a vote on the ­matter at the next meeting. At just three minutes before 9, the assembly, which used to carry on u­ ntil well a­ fter 10, was now over. Alberto and his wife still had to drive nearly an hour back to Riobamba and as ­people ambled slowly out the door, he jokingly hurried them on by threatening, “I’ll cut off the electricity!”

Aging and Mobility in Manzano Puela Parish seemed to be aging rapidly, and this was a topic raised by nearly every­one I spoke with in 2018. The p­ eople who still resided in Manzano w ­ ere generally much older than in the recent past. The story many p­ eople shared was

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that the younger ­people had moved away to the cities, which left a shortage of ­labor as the older population strug­g led to do the work. At least a half dozen ­people wondered aloud to me if their village had a ­future. ­There was ­little hope of a new generation in Puela, as the school we had labored to rebuild in my first minga in 2009 was scheduled to close b­ ecause t­ here w ­ ere only ten students in 2018. I had only been back in Penipe for a few days when I saw Federico Castro of Manzano, a once rotund man who now looked gaunt and frail as he made his way through Penipe’s central park with the aid of a cane. I was overjoyed when I saw him smile as he recognized me and asked if I would sit with him on a bench. When I asked how he was, he said, “Very bad. They operated on my spine and now I can barely walk.” He saw me notice his trembling right hand and nodded as he said he had also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He was always such a joyful and kind man, and I admired the many passionate public stances he had taken to stand up for Manzano over the years. He could no longer work, and his wife took over his job selling flowers in Riobamba. They rented their land in Manzano—­though he made it a point to clarify that they would never sell—­and lived off that income and what his wife made from selling flowers. Federico went on to explain that it had become too hard to work the land, not only ­because of his infirmity but ­because, he said, no one wanted to work anymore. When Frederico’s wife arrived, we greeted each other and then I helped her lift him from the bench. We walked across the park and the c­ ouple climbed onto the bus to Riobamba. Moments ­later I caught a bus to Puela, where I spent the after­noon speaking with old friends outside the junta parroquial building. Every­one wanted to impress on me that the populace of Puela was aging. Fredy Borja told me to come to the Puela auditorium on Thursday at 10 a.m. when each week the provincial government now hosted two-­hour programs for se­nior citizens in which they would dance, exercise, and perform mind-­stimulating activities. The programs ­were popu­lar and well attended. On Thursday, I s­ topped by the auditorium where I found the se­niors’ activity group in full swing with about thirty-­five ­people in attendance. I quickly noted many familiar ­faces—­nearly as many men as ­women—­among the participants, who w ­ ere lined up in four straight rows and performing exercises guided by two w ­ omen with microphone headsets at the head of the auditorium. H ­ ere was Mariana Ochoa, the first president of Pusuca; Martha Sánchez of Anabá; and so many other friends. I stood watching as they joyfully performed low-­impact exercises and dance moves that had them bending over, trotting back and forth and left and right, and waving their arms. Many exercises appeared aimed as much at cognitive as at physical exercise—­they w ­ ere just as focused on helping ­people quickly recall up and down, left and right, and forward and backward as they ­were on getting them moving. One of the instructors was very engaging, and the assistant went around helping ­people follow along and in some cases had them sign an attendance sheet.

“But We Did It” • 179

The day before, Angel Turushina had mentioned that the aging of Puela was somewhat overstated. He himself had been elected to the junta parroquial and ­there ­were ­others, also in their thirties, who worked the land up ­there. But when I ran into Bernardo Huerta, who was still Manzano Cabildo president but by 2018 had also become teniente politico of Puela, he asked what I had been observing and concluding in the communities. I replied that I had taken the point that Manzano and most of Puela ­were aging, but on the advice of ­others, I had been looking for evidence that t­ here ­were at least some younger folks (in their twenties and thirties) cultivating the land in Manzano. “But who?” he asked. He began naming all the heads of ­house­hold: “Mateo, Leonardo, Federico, Pablo, Rosa, Mayra, Abelardo, Miguel—­a ll se­nior citizens.” I asked, “What about Judith Guamushi and her ­daughters? And the new landowners, ­didn’t they bring some new resources and life to Manzano?” Bernardo reluctantly agreed that ­there ­were some exceptions, but he insisted that this did not change the trend.

Po­liti­cal Life in Manzano On June 24 ­there was a cabildo meeting in Manzano’s new casa comunal, a salmon-­colored concrete building roughly three times the size of the old one and outfitted with a communal kitchen. Though the meeting was set to begin at 3 p.m., ­people ­were still filing in at a quarter past. The agenda was rather quotidian and did not reveal anything special about Manzano in 2018 but for the fact that I encountered Martina Barriga, who was once shunned by her neighbors and the village leaders, now sitting at the head t­ able as she had been elected cabildo secretary. I saw her and Bernardo laughing together and even high-­fiving just before she turned to address the group of roughly thirty-­five p­ eople and call the meeting to order. She announced that this was a sesión extraordinaria (unscheduled meeting) and read off the agenda: (a) president’s welcome; (b) attendance; (c) bud­get and work; and (d) miscellaneous business. The main issue was the annual bud­get and how they wanted to proceed with work on a new volleyball court in the courtyard of the old casa comunal. This was a young person’s game, said Bernardo, rather than the old men’s bowling game that they had long played in the courtyard.2 Though their available bud­ get fell short of the full cost, thanks to all they had spent to build the new casa comunal, Bernardo wanted to know if they should begin work on the volleyball court with what funding they had, to which every­one agreed. In miscellaneous business, Bernardo raised the issue of some p­ eople contesting w ­ ater rights decisions, discussed other local gossip and accusations, and then asked every­one to recognize that I had returned to the village and invited me to address the group, which I had neither expected nor prepared for. I mustered my best improvised formal address to the community and then found myself hugging and catching up with ­people I had not seen in a few years.

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Minga Practice I worked in a ­couple of light mingas in Manzano in June and July. Bernardo and ­others ­really wanted to clean up and maintain the old casa comunal as an auxiliary community center, perhaps even a library, so just eight of us, all men, swept accumulated dust and ash from around the casa and the courtyard. Don Pablo Cordova started working an azadón in the weeds and, since I had no tools, I started pulling out weeds with my hands. Don Vico asked Miguel Guamushi to fetch some herbicide, and while he was gone, Vico and a new socio, Roberto, shoveled dirt and debris from around the old casa comunal and along the concrete benches. Pedro and Carlos Guamushi began sweeping the courtyard, kicking up dust in e­ very direction. Vico used a machete on the weeds around a large pile of paving stones alongside the old casa. Miguel returned with the herbicide ­after about fifteen minutes and teased me for weeding with my hands. “­They’re the only tools I’ve got t­ oday,” I replied. Miguel proceeded to fumigate the weeded embankment from the far end, while I continued pulling garbage out from ­under and b­ ehind the cans. Roberto and Vico proceeded to use their machetes to cut weeds coming up through the cracks along the benches and shave moss and dirt off the benches. A ­ fter about an hour and a half of activity, Roberto began telling stories, most of which had to do with encounters with the dead or the super­ natural and conveyed the futility of material accumulation. Each story kept the other men in rapt attention. We slowly shifted back to work as the clouds began to recede from Tungurahua above us. She was strikingly vis­i­ble that after­noon, as clear as I had ever seen her from Manzano, where the constant cloud cover could make it easy to forget how close she was (see figure 10). A few weeks l­ ater, t­ here was a Puela irrigation minga on the Batan-­Puela canal. Bernardo was busy with his teniente politico duties, but he made time to drive Rosa and Mayra Barriga, Mayra’s grand­daughter Emilia, a peon working for Bernardo, and me up above El Montirón to the minga site. This was hardly my first minga, but I was impressed with the large turnout—­roughly one hundred p­ eople, with more filing up the hill in small groups from ­every direction (see figure 11). The w ­ ater was by then r­ unning through the entire parish and irrigating the once desiccated lands of Manzano. Though Rosa was working that day, she had fallen ­behind by a few rayas when she was ill a month back, so when the middle-­aged ­woman from the irrigation committee came by to rec­ord rayas on her clipboard, I informed her that I was working for an additional raya for Rosa. The day’s objective was to clear all the debris—­weeds, mud, algae, branches, trunks, rocks—­from the concrete-­lined, open-­pit canal. As usual, only the men carried machetes. They cut the taller bushes and trees lining the canal, causing the branches and leaves to fall in. Men and ­women working with shovels and azadones cleared the branches and tossed them a safe distance to the side of the canal. Th ­ ose of us with azadones would hack into the thick grass and weeds growing along the canal walls, chopping it back to about eight to ten inches from the

“But We Did It” • 181

FIGURE 10  ​Manzano minga in the shadow of Tungurahua, 2018.

canal. Occasionally we would come on a tree stump or a rock and would work together to pull it away. The w ­ ater was now flowing across all the villages in the parish. Minga was as alive as ever and intervillage gossip and accusations w ­ ere flowing as much ever. At one point, Nicolas, a man from Puela whom I had met years prior, briefly made conversation with me in En­glish, but he was quickly cut off by Rosa, whose mood changed dramatically in his presence as she said, “Stop talking and work for a change!” Nicolas was instantly provoked and retorted, “Enough! She who criticizes the most works least!” I noticed Rosa’s ­sister Mayra and Miguel Guamushi laughing in the distance as Rosa bellowed, “You never want to work! You just talk and nothing more!” Imploring us to move a distance down the canal and away from Nicolas, she hollered over her shoulder as we walked away, “When you w ­ ere a leader, you d­ idn’t work! You just supervised and now you ­don’t even know how to work!” Throughout the day, I also noted Rosa and Mayra working to pass on the livelihoods and knowledge of their aging village and landscape to the next generation in the person of Emilia. During la tonga, Rosa and Mayra remarked how ­great the wild herbs w ­ ere this high on the hill—­you could not find this kind of hierba down in Manzano and it was ­great for rabbits and cuyes. They ­were excited also to teach Emilia, who was just sixteen years old, about the names and uses of the trees, the herbs, and the other plants. They took e­ very opportunity they could

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FIGURE 11  ​Hiking up Tungurahua to work on the Batan-­Puela canal, 2018.

to point out something new and explain what they used it for and how. Emilia seemed genuinely fascinated with it all (I got the impression that this was her first minga) and kept taking pictures of the mountains, p­ eople, and plants with her smartphone (much as I was ­doing).

Dreaming Mobility and Hybridity Some of my favorite conversations with my friends around Penipe in 2018 w ­ ere about their dreams for the f­ uture. I had long felt that my explorations of their lives (much like this book) ­were over­burdened by the past, and I wanted to know more about what they hoped to do in the ­future. I felt that this was a critical conversation in which they had never been able to fully participate b­ ecause so many consequential decisions about their lives had been essentially made for them more than ten years ­earlier. At the very least, the par­ameters of possibility ­were made decidedly narrow in ­those spaces and times in which they ­were invited to contribute to planning their own f­ utures. Some dreams ­were understandably ­humble. Julia Granizo, who divided her life between Penipe Nuevo and Manzano, dreamed of a long life and seeing her grandchildren grow up. She had dealt with several illnesses since 2016, so life and mortality loomed large in her thoughts. She explained, “I hope God gives me a longer life, u­ ntil my grand­daughter is grown, at least, nothing more. I d­ on’t want anything more. I only want u­ ntil she’s older, u­ ntil she can take care of herself,

“But We Did It” • 183

that’s my dream. And if God tells me, ‘­You’ve come this far,’ well then that’s as far as it ­will be. It’s all the ­will of God.” However, I found that the dreams p­ eople shared with me often revealed hybrid sensibilities about the f­ uture. That is, even as they labored to make a life for themselves and their families, to create livable places—be it in Penipe Nuevo, Pusuca, or their home villages in the northern parishes—­they envisioned f­ utures for the next generation involving urban and rural living, agriculture, and professionalism. They wanted their homes and communities to remain ­viable and for their ­children to know they always had a home ­there, yet they aspired for them to have greater opportunities and also the freedom to move between t­ hese spaces, a freedom of mobility that had been too often restricted in their own life histories. Juan Ortiz insisted that he did not dream big, but rather only wished for good harvests and income, the health of his ­family, and a bright ­f uture for their ­children. Still, Juan’s dreaming was a long way from where he had been ten years prior, and he did envision a rather mobile and decidedly hybrid f­ uture for his ­family. He first said his dream was to “continue growing at the rate God intends . . . ​ overcoming eco­nom­ically. I want to keep growing my cultural heritage . . . ​ and above all that my f­ amily is always healthy.” He spoke of his ­brother and six ­sisters, who all had their own businesses, and added, “So, in the ­future I want the same.” Moreover, he wanted that f­ uture in Pusuca. “My plans are not to go and live in Riobamba . . . ​­because I d­ on’t like it. I d­ on’t like the city. I much prefer the countryside.” For his ­children, however, he wanted the ability to study, to become professionals, and to work outside agriculture. “I would like to see them studying. But it all also depends on their preference. . . . ​If they like the countryside too, they can also study . . . ​to be agronomists and also work in the fields.” More than anything, just as his parents had taught him, he wanted his ­children to thrive even more than he had. Judith Guamushi and I sat outside her ­house in Manzano when she told me of several dreams, each of which reflected hybrid and mobile aspirations. “Well, one dream is ­really that I want my ­daughters to be professionals.” She did not want them to work in the fields, but rather wanted them to have a salary “­because . . . ​over time ­there ­will be no work [in the fields], nothing.” For now, Judith and David could support their ­children from their chicken and dairy production. “For example, if they gradu­ate and become professionals it is for their good, not ours . . . ​so they get ahead [que salgan adelante]. And if ­there is no work available, ­there is also the chicken coop ­here that ­will provide plenty. . . . ​That’s my dream.” It is also in­ter­est­ing that in sharing two further dreams, Judith revealed hybrid f­ utures for herself and David as well. One plan was to build another coop for egg-­laying hens. They had the land but would have to save for the coop and the fowl. That would be a ­family proj­ect and another source of income. Then she added, “And well . . . ​I have noticed that in Penipe ­there is no car wash. And that is a dream that I would like to buy out alongside the gas station where t­ here is a spot of land and open a car wash.”

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Angel Turushina strug­gled with the question of dreams at first b­ ecause, he explained, “I have had dreams and I’ve put them aside for dif­fer­ent circumstances.” He felt that many of his own community commitments had led him to abandon some personal aspirations. He knew Pusuca would continue to transform and, however precarious ­things might seem at times, that further growth and change ­were in store for the community. He told me, “­Those lands, they can produce much more than they are producing.” However, he had his ­children down in the urban center of Penipe Nuevo, and explained, “I see that they ­will grow up ­here, which is easier in terms of education. So h ­ ere I have a business that allows me to take care of them and so I must stabilize myself h ­ ere and live h ­ ere for the most part.” Angel’s s­ ister Carmita still lived in her h ­ ouse in Pusuca with her two c­ hildren, though she commuted daily to bring the kids to school in Penipe and to work with Angel and Monica in the store. She wanted to see the morality of the rural life of Puela guide their ­futures: “I too dream of the ­future. . . . ​Sometimes you dream many ­things and they d­ on’t come to pass. Life gives you a spin of the roulette wheel and sends you somewhere ­else. . . . ​As a ­mother, I dream to see my ­children become professionals, that they work, and that t­ hey’re good kids and all. That would be my ­future dream . . . ​that my ­children walk a straight path and do not stray, that they earn a profession. . . . ​Well, if they are professionals and can also easily do some agriculture, yes.” Some dreams extended beyond kin to community. Martina Barriga of course wanted to grow her business and provide for her ­children, but she also had ambitions for her community. Though she fully resided in Penipe Nuevo, she had become more active than ever in Manzano, where at the time she served as cabildo secretary. She explained, “I would like to be able to do something, to manage something . . . ​that benefits my community. . . . ​I would like to learn how to lead a community well.” Washington Sánchez likewise spoke of dreams for Penipe Nuevo. Of all the ­people I spoke with in Penipe Nuevo in 2018, he alone had dreams for the resettlement itself. Though I anticipated a personal aspiration, he told me that his dream was to have a meeting fa­cil­i­ty in Penipe Nuevo to facilitate community organ­ization. For years I had seen him and ­others from MIDUVI and Samaritan’s Purse or­ga­nize meetings ­either in a cul-­de-­sac or in the community park, at times with p­ eople huddled u­ nder awnings to avoid the rain. In the contentious meetings about evictions and with MIDUVI in 2011 (chapter 4), he had often lamented that they had no place in which to meet and or­ga­nize the community. That’s what he wanted for the ­future.

Conclusion: They Did It? For more than fifteen years following the 1999 eruptions, displaced Penipeños found themselves subjected to outsiders’ conceptions of the good in the

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construction of resettlements, recovery efforts, and the regulation of conduct and mobilities throughout the region. The urbanized spaces of Penipe and Pusuca demanded a legibility and accountability to which ­people’s lives simply could not conform: permanent residence; permanent occupancy; legibility and discipline. Moreover, for many p­ eople it required so much of their l­ abor and their time—­minga practice—in uncertain negotiations with organ­izations they could neither fully comprehend nor sufficiently control. In response to t­hese organ­ izations, they instead monitored and sanctioned one another, only occasionally directly confronting the organ­izations—­governmental and nongovernmental—­ that envisioned and co-­constructed their lives in the aftermath of the eruptions and displacements. And yet, to paraphrase Angel, they did it. Evaluating resettlement success with a narrow focus on housing occupancy would be legibility thinking, and therefore in a way complicit in procedural vulnerability. Instead, in both the resettlements and Manzano I observed diverse indicators of ­people’s per­sis­tent adaptation and re­sis­tance. In the resource-­barren resettlement of Penipe Nuevo, resettlers created an urban economy. In Pusuca and Manzano, years of hard minga l­ abor and po­liti­cal and community organ­izing produced thriving irrigation systems and bountiful agricultural production. And, in all three places, ­people gradually brought their spatial ecologies, livelihoods, and mobilities into greater alignment with local values, even as they w ­ ere changed in the pro­cess. ­There is ­little doubt that novel production techniques, training provided by the state, and new relationalities drew more ­people into cap­i­tal­ist subjectivities and production for profit (see Faas 2018), but this too was largely kept within acceptable bound­aries: t­ here ­were real checks on accountability for w ­ ater and the accumulation of lands in both Manzano and Pusuca. P ­ eople reconstructed highly mobile lives in which they alternated between the town, the city, and the villages, preferring to or­ga­nize po­liti­cally in the villages even as their livelihoods relied on so many elsewheres. For all the positive signs of growth and development that I noted in the resettlements, they did not reflect the lives of every­one. Th ­ ere w ­ ere p­ eople who continued to strug­gle, including some who had long since abandoned the resettlements and ­others, like Charo, whose sleep was troubled in more ways than one. Collectively, however, the resettlements ­were beginning to salir adelante (get ahead) and to address the needs of t­ hose who w ­ ere less fortunate. Likewise, in Manzano, when ­people returned to make their livelihoods and po­liti­cal lives, they found themselves contending with the precariousness of life in an aging village. In all three locations, ­people dreamed of mobile ­futures and hybrid rural-­ urban lives for their c­ hildren and grandchildren, and they envisioned and sought ways to expand the par­ameters of possibility while contending with the relations and pro­cesses that circumscribed them.

 Epilogue Convivir As Martina Barriga and I w ­ ere wrapping up one of our long conversations about her life history in July 2018, I asked if she was keeping up with the payments on her last loan, if ­things ­were ­going well enough to sustain that, and if she felt that she was saliendo adelante (getting ahead). “Oh, sure,” she said, as if for just a moment the many tribulations she had only just described—­poverty, child domestic ­labor, migration, single parenthood, disaster, exclusion, displacement, robbery, loss—­were features in someone e­ lse’s narrative. As of 2018, and only since the last major setback, she assured me that t­ hings w ­ ere ­going fine. Business was good, so she was punctual with her payments and did not feel ­great pressure. I asked if she felt comfortable or successful—­recovered, even—at this point in her life. “Yes,” she said, as her eyes turned doleful, “but for me the first feeling is about providing an example to my ­children of sacrifice, strug­gle, perseverance, of working to get ahead. But I also feel tired.” She paused in a minor swell of emotion, which she had grown comfortable sharing with me, and then continued, though she displaced her subjectivity with the third person: “I ­don’t know, t­ here are moments when one . . . ​when one won­ders if o­ thers value their sacrifice. I d­ on’t know. I hope I’m wrong.” Ethnographer and playwright Nikki Yeboah (2020) calls for methodologies that reflect ethical commitments when it comes to staging trauma. Awareness, she says, is a woefully inadequate objective, especially in the oversaturated mediascapes of the twenty-­first ­century. It is too easy to be a passive consumer of media, so we must endeavor to foster a sense of responsibility and accountability in our audiences. The idea is not simply to change ­people’s minds about an issue, but to compel them to action. In this epilogue, I want to draw readers’ 187

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attention to prob­lems with recovery thinking and practice and to contemplate the possibilities for change. I do not harbor any naive illusions of dismantling colonialism or capitalism with a book, nor am I interested h ­ ere in proposing a narrow set of policy-­specific applied recommendations that ­will quickly become dated. Instead, I would like to address abiding prob­lems and contribute to expanding our sense of responsibility and also our sense of what is pos­si­ble. In what follows, I consider possibilities for confronting disaster as historically produced while thinking about how to place theoretical commitments at risk in order to contribute to other­wise possibilities. How can thinking about procedural vulnerability unsettle the ways we think about recovery and “participation” in recovery? I explore the possibilities opened up by thinking about agentive relations with a volcano who is living kin, drawing on my friends’ proj­ects of convivir and kinship with nonhumans. I conclude with a story of healing while sharing a meal with Martina and Rosa.

What Should We Make of the Historical Production of Disaster? When scientists and other professionals use the term vulnerability to describe the historical production of disaster, I often won­der what properties or relationalities they envision this attribute attaching to, and I reject the notion that vulnerability adheres to ­people and places (Marino and Faas 2020). I think it is rather unhelpful, to say the least, to think of the p­ eople of Penipe as themselves somehow vulnerable, as if susceptibility to harm w ­ ere a local attribute reflecting something about who they are. On any given day, their livelihood skills and capacities to adapt to ­hazards are far superior to mine and, as a healthy White man living and working as a professional in California, I would never be considered vulnerable by any of the standard mea­sures. I would also reject the notion that vulnerability is somehow an attribute of a place like Penipe or Manzano. As should by now be apparent, volcanic activity directly caused specific (and arguably l­imited) harm in rather narrow points in time; instead, as I have argued, the disaster was the iterative and intersectional outcome of par­tic­u­lar assemblages forged in both material and symbolic ways in Ec­ua­dor’s colonial past and enduring forms of postcolonial institutions and micropolitics at the margins of the state. Colonial and postcolonial attempts to render the rural highlands legible w ­ ere only ever partially successful in creating permanent settlements that constrained the interregional mobility of Indigenous, and l­ ater mestizo, campesino p­ eoples of the Ec­ua­dor­ian highlands. They ­were, however, sufficient to create a class of smallholding campesinos on the volcano and nested layers of subalternity and shifting state assemblages that facilitated the mobilization and discipline of subaltern ­labor in the ser­vice of elite and state interests for centuries. Within this

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relational milieu, Penipeños over time formed deep and abiding attachments to their communities, landscapes, and culture, which they came to govern and defend through the very institutions that ­were instrumental in their colonization, most notably minga and village councils. Together, the intersections of ­these naturecultural and shifting state assemblages made displacement from Penipe even more disastrous than a volcanic eruption. ­People ­were displaced from their lands and animals, and therefore their livelihoods and landscapes; from their kin and neighbors, and by extension their institutions and culture, the care and support of o­ thers; and from their houses—­their homes, their sanctuaries (although ­humble), where they felt at ease. However resourceful they ­were, once they ­were uprooted from ­these relationalities, ­people found themselves with ­little opportunity away from Penipe, in places palpably foreign to them (tierra ajena), that did not teach them, as the local idiom for sense of belonging has it. Counterintuitive as it may sound, in many ways ­people ­were also displaced from their networks of mobility. Displacement following the 1999 and 2006 evacuations and ensuing resettlements seemed to put highland campesinos in newly fluid, contingent, and precarious relationships with space—­divided between resource-­barren resettlements, high-­risk agricultural endeavors on a still-­ active volcano, and urban migration. However, my friends’ stories reveal perennial spatial precarities in the lives of highland campesinos, which I have traced to Ec­ua­dor’s colonial pasts. And, of course, as I have discussed, ­these precarities ­were often as instrumental in p­ eople’s self-­driven recovery as they w ­ ere in their suffering. Nevertheless, the devastation and evacuation of villages like Manzano and Pungal de Puela arrested the mobility of p­ eople like Martina, Julia Granizo, and the Ortíz ­brothers; when the central node—­their home villages—in their networks of places was neutralized, so w ­ ere their entire mobile livelihoods. Mobilities and places are indeed co-­constitutive. The state apparatus mobilized extraordinary operations to extract and regulate the movements of bodies around the exploding volcano, only to simply leave ­people—­and ­here I am thinking with Victor Marchezini (2015) about state abandonment following rescue operations—in improvised shelters and on city street corners. While the state provided aid in shelters over time, t­ hese w ­ ere living conditions that my friends regularly recalled with disgust, invoking memories of scarcity, lost privacy, and general desolation. And this endured for nearly a de­cade following the first eruptions. When Penipeños returned in time for the second eruptions in 2006, l­ ittle had changed beyond the evacuation procedures and sheltering. The state apparatus was mobilized for biopo­liti­cal operations during point-­in-­time emergencies, but not to ensure the restoration or improvement of ­people’s fuller lives. Then came further abandonment—­another two years of displacement—­ followed by legibilities imposed anew. ­A fter being granted ­houses in new resettlements—­yet another extraordinary mobilization of the state—­that

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had no v­ iable resources for livelihoods, p­ eople still had to move around a ­g reat deal to provide for themselves and their families. The most prevalent strategies—­commuting to cities for wage ­labor or returning to farm on a still erupting volcano where the infrastructure (roads, bridges, irrigation) was devastated and had been largely abandoned by the state—­were trying and time-­ consuming, and they took p­ eople away from their h ­ ouses in the resettlement, sometimes overnight. That p­ eople w ­ ere subjected to randomized visits from government agents and threats of eviction for being away only exacerbated and prolonged the disaster. Moreover, the “culturally relevant,” “participatory” strategy for building ­houses and hydraulic infrastructure—­minga ­labor parties—­often reflected colonial relationalities of claiming campesino ­labor for the state and humanitarian politics of deservingness far more so than it did the utopian minga practices of local campesinos. And yet, by making claims on campesino bodies, the state entered into a cultural and semiotic field—­and this is ­really something—­where campesinos themselves exercised power to bring minga proj­ects into greater alignment with their own values and logics of the good. It was often a contentious business, to be sure, but though it strained some local relations, it also provoked the revival of minga utopian proj­ects. Disaster, in the end, is a product of historical pro­cesses and assemblages that are heedless of any arbitrary bounding of nature and culture. Our first responsibility is to learn to read t­ hese pro­cesses and assemblages to understand how they produce disaster (and all manner of structural and systemic vio­lence). I want to point out that the broad framework that I advocate for thinking about ­hazards and the historical production of disasters is not simply a story of what happens in Ec­ua­dor, Latin Amer­i­ca, or the Global South. I could just as well have discussed the production of disasters associated with wildfire h ­ azards in the United States, with attention to unequal development in the wildland-­urban interface, tensions concerning local and federal jurisdictions, climate change, and competing agendas regarding the management, consumption, extraction, and conservation of federal land resources. Nor is this a m ­ atter of translating just so stories of how “global” pro­cesses impose on a local region, but rather how specific assemblages—­figurations of rather par­tic­u­lar connective processes—­are formed and reformed over time. While so much is par­tic­u­lar to Penipe, my sketches of the formation of state assemblages and humanitarian politics of deservingness and procedural vulnerability are relationalities and interactions that anthropologists can identify in ser­vice of both theoretical and practical objectives. And in each of ­these cases, even as Penipeños had generations of experience adapting to ­hazards and other facets of changing politics, economy, and ecol­ogy, they found their par­ameters of possibility hemmed in by the formation of specific assemblages and historical pro­cesses. And yet, Penipeños’ creative agency throughout ­these disasters also reveals other­wise possibilities, most especially in the many modalities of minga practice.

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Procedural Vulnerability and Being Unreasonable I frequently collaborate or consult with disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery prac­ti­tion­ers, policy makers, government agencies, nongovernmental organ­izations, community-­based groups, and multidisciplinary teams. It is fairly common, and at least in some ways understandable, that my collaborators express frustration with all of my talk about the historical production of disaster. It almost goes without saying that a critique of colonialism, capitalism, the state, and humanitarianism itself is simply a nonstarter for many p­ eople. It would be rank hyperbole to say it threatens the interests of power; it is simply well beyond the figures of the thinkable in late liberalism. And for many who earnestly aspire to “do good” and improve h ­ uman lives with a modicum of social justice, the frustration stems from a sense that, in light of such critiques, to truly reduce disaster risk and build better ­futures for p­ eople who are threatened, devastated, or displaced, they would need to build time machines to travel back and undo the sins of the past. This is not reasonable, goes the refrain. Well and good. One way to chart a path forward in this seeming conundrum is to work through what Siri Veland and colleagues (2013) call procedural vulnerability, a concept I have invoked several times now. This surfaces the ways in which racialized, class-­based, colonial, sexist-­gendered, and ableist relations are reproduced in humanitarian practices (see also Maldonado 2016; Schuller 2016; Hsu, Howitt, and Miller 2015; Gamburd 2013; Fassin and Pandolfi 2010). When disaster prevention, response, and recovery operations train their focus exclusively on ­hazards and exposure in their work and take their own ways of ­doing ­things for granted, much like the well-­meaning organ­izations in Penipe and Pusuca, they are likely to reproduce structural vio­lence and systemic in­equality in their efforts. The frequent displacement of local leadership in ­favor of foreign experts (Schuller 2016; Barrios 2017) or domestic elites (Faas 2018) in crafting reconstruction, recovery, and resettlement proj­ects and programs recapitulates global and domestic power relations in highly problematic ways. Julie Maldonado (2016, 52) argues that all such initiatives should put the ­people they are ostensibly meant to serve first in decision making, with the question, “What would you do, and how?” As a friend working in humanitarian aid and recovery has complained, “Far too often recovery is planned without full consultation, participation, partnership, and collaboration with the affected communities.” But inviting disaster survivors to the ­table to determine their own ­futures (a radical notion, I know) is not by itself sufficient to reduce risk, produce a recovery, or yield anything approaching social justice (nor is Maldonado suggesting that it is—­this is but one way to initiate the pro­cess). As has surely been evident throughout this book, working through “local cultural practices” ensures neither equity nor that recovery and resettlement planning ­will be led by “beneficiaries.” People-­first priorities (pace Chambers 1983)

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are frequently neutralized by the cult objects of bureaucracy (Marino and Faas 2020), such as meeting agendas (Marino and Lazrus 2016), bud­gets that must be spent on fixed timelines (Barrios 2017, 64–76), the 9-­to-5 clock (chapter 5), the dossier (chapter 3; see also James 2012), and the incapacity of liberal demo­cratic institutions to administer aid based on any calculus beyond personal property and individual rights (Maldonado 2019; Browne 2015; Sawyer 2004). Fealty to such cult objects and ahistorical po­liti­cal princi­ples creates a path de­pen­dency that delimits the par­ameters of possibility before anyone avers other­wise. “Community participation,” of course, does not preclude selective silencing (Faas and Marino 2020). Frontline state actors regularly reify racial inequalities via disdain for local dialects and language (Browne 2015), or persecuted minorities (e.g., undocumented immigrants) decline participation in aid programs out of fears of exposure at best, or entrapment at worst (Wadsworth and Koehn 2017). And in the end, expressed needs or preferences are often met with re­sis­ tance, as we saw in chapter 4 with the descriptions of re­sis­tance to full-­time occupancy requirements and threats of eviction in Penipe Nuevo (see also Maldonado 2019; Marino 2015). Bureaucratic institutions at the center of state assemblages are, in the end, often decidedly alienating. A ­woman from a rural community devastated by disaster waits—as patiently as one could hope—in a sterile waiting room for her number to be called for her appointment to apply for aid. On meeting with an agency staffer, she must pre­sent numerous documents—­state identification, property deeds or proof of residency, damage or incident reports, medical rec­ ords, death certificates, insurance rec­ords, utility bills, and receipts—­many of which may have been lost or damaged. She ­will then be subjected to a battery of questions regarding her health (and that of her ­house­hold members) and inventories of her assets (­actual and perished) and economic prospects. Th ­ ese data are then computed into dossiers that ­will be weighed against abstruse criteria to determine her eligibility for one or more of several (often vaguely construed) aid packages at a ­later date. Data from her dossier ­will then be extracted and mixed with ­those of countless other dossiers to create bud­get requests and fund­rais­ing campaigns. Such pro­cesses form a part of what Erica Caple James, when writing of USAID programs in Haiti in the 1990s, refers to as “bureaucraft”: how bureaucrats “work on the categories of social existence in much the same way as sorcerers are supposed to work on the hair or nail clippings of their intended victims” (2012, 57). James likens the morally charged conflicts over the distribution of scarce recovery resources to witchcraft discourses in small-­scale socie­ties; the more esoteric the practice, the more likely that “diagnostic social pro­cesses” among survivors w ­ ill give rise to super­ natural suspicions (57). Alas, in Penipe, the diagnostic social pro­cess manifested in a hypervigilance among neighbors in the everyday politics of deservingness. Be reasonable. Savannah Shange implores anthropologists to take stock of what is deemed “reasonable” or not in public forums and negotiations with the

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state as being key to understanding ethical courses of action (2020).1 Roberto Barrios too points to the prob­lem of “bad victims” in post-­disaster and resettlement contexts (2017). Bad victims are ­those who complain, accuse, resist, and argue. They do not want to go along with the program, which, says Barrios, is a prime indication that the program has something decidedly wrong with it. Demanding that ­people “be reasonable” in t­ hese contexts is to demand that they accept the state and global humanitarian hierarchy that was forged in colonial and late-­capitalist relationalities that recapitulate the very grounds on which disaster was produced in the first place. ­There is, in the end, no reasonable way out of the reproduction of disaster and suffering, no way to write against disaster without writing against coloniality, capitalism, and the narrow dictums of late liberalism.

Convivir: Agency and Ontopolitics I found something gathering in somewhat disparate places as I worked through the tales related in each chapter. I encountered it in ­people’s earliest reflections on the gaps in their knowledge at the time of the 1999 eruptions and their expressed concerns to fill ­these gaps, in the collective efforts to rebuild hydraulic infrastructure, in the livelihoods and politics of risk and retorno in the resettlements, and in the sense that, since the time before the Inca, Tungurahua has, by providing rich soils nurtured by ash and hills that draw clouds and rain, extended welcome and protection to her ­human kin. This is, in effect, the story of how my friends around Tungurahua came to cultivate (or recultivate) agentive relationships with the volcano and weave together by minga practice the fullness of the naturecultural assemblages that they recognize as home. When the governance of their lives and livelihoods around the volcano was usurped from their local institutions, the very conditions that produced disaster w ­ ere reproduced in acts of enclosure, exclusion, impoverishment, and forced (re)settlement. With greater power to direct their lives, they felt they could safely manage their livelihoods and communities around Tungurahua. Though I remain unsure of its origins, beginning around 2015, p­ eople living in Tungurahua’s shadow increasingly invoked the idiom of convivir as a structuring idiom for an emergent set of related practices. Convivir might be translated as “coexist,” but I understand its meaning to be more literal and intimate; it is better translated as “co-­living,” not just with the volcano, but with the ­whole cast of neighbors, kin, community, nonhumans, and the landscape. But Tungurahua occupies a special place in the assemblage and ontopolitics of convivir, for no one truly questions any actor in the assemblage but the volcano, and so Tungurahua’s h ­ uman neighbors find themselves organ­izing and advocating for their right to co-­live with the volcano and for the recognition of their special kinship. This is the hope they express. And ­today t­ here is a beautiful mosaic of the volcano and its ­human neighbors in Baños, commissioned by the city council in

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cele­bration of el retorno (the return, or the intimately related movements to reinhabit and revitalize the evacuated villages, beginning in 2005 and again in 2009), which is captioned with the phrase, “Never Away from Our Lands B ­ ecause We Co-­Live with the Volcano!” In other words, ­people living along the slopes of the volcano not only recognize Tungurahua as agentive kin, but ­doing so is very much an explic­itly po­liti­cal proj­ect. By 2018, the volcano was again quieted, though for how long no one could be sure, and ­people began to move about more freely. In the years since that initial meeting with the mayor of Penipe and the government officials in 2011, when Bernardo Huerta pressed the case for lifting the po­liti­cal designations of space (“high risk” in their home villages, mandatory occupation and threats of eviction in resettlements—­see chapter 4) that, for them, exploded on their lives as violently as the volcano ever had, I began to notice h ­ ere and t­ here that Bernardo and ­others referred to Tungurahua as abuela (grand­mother), though she had been known for centuries as mamá, the female consort of taita Chimborazo. I asked Bernardo to explain the change in kin terms and he replied that Tungurahua had aged along with them; that a­ fter erupting on their grandparents in 1918 and again at the turn of the c­ entury, she had become grand­mother to him and his neighbors, the grandchildren of the volcano. Abuela Tungurahua, the protective hill of El Montirón, landscape, crops, and animals w ­ ere consistently pre­sent throughout p­ eople’s experiences of the eruptions and ensuing disasters. And for my friends, though ­these are conventional features of the “nature” of modernity, they exist very much as a part of society, a perspective that invites a confrontation with the question of “nature” in disasters. Disaster scholars working in the broadly po­liti­cal ecological vein treat claims of “natu­ral disasters” or “acts of God” as social constructs or ideological veils, concepts produced in social interaction that conceal unequal power relations and distort our understanding of real­ity; concepts that are alternatively rooted in ignorance, superstition, hazard-­centric reductivism, self-­interest (e.g., the oil industry climate change denial), or po­liti­cal expediency. But b­ ecause my friends in Penipe envision and practice their lives as part of naturecultural assemblages that do not align with the nature/culture binary (at least as it is constructed in disaster studies), I won­der why we need to maintain the rigid bounding. Is ­there some compelling reason why we should assume that this binary should endure at the expense of all o­ thers—­that the category of nature is found, ahem, in nature? I am advocating a provincialization (not the abandonment) of the po­liti­cal ecological vein in disaster studies and the hazard-­centric reductivism against which po­liti­cal ecologists argue along with the development of new conceptual schemes that do not cast nature outside the bounds of society, as do both arguments. That is, I would like to see disaster scholars and prac­ti­tion­ers place their own claims at risk in conversation with ­others. I make this argument on the conceptual grounds outlined previously, but also b­ ecause, while po­liti­cal ecol­ogy

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centered analy­sis on structural and systemic inequalities mistaken for (or willfully obscured as) “nature,” by sustaining a very par­tic­u­lar nature/culture binary, they silence many ­people who might articulate and construct other­wise possibilities (Sun and Faas 2018, 631; Spivak [1988] 1994; Latour 2004, 1993). The more I learn with my friends from Penipe, the more I am encouraged by efforts such as convivir, which would make many of my colleagues uncomfortable (especially t­ hose in disaster risk reduction). To be honest, they make me rather uncomfortable. The point of departure for convivir, a­ fter all, is ­people vowing never to abandon their homes, communities, lands, and animals on the active volcano. Many are more willing to face the volcano than the disasters that would await them in yet another displacement. The pro­cesses of realizing the retorno and convivir ­were challenging, of course, but Bernardo invoked community organ­ization and minga—in the utopian register—as key to the proj­ect. We spoke about convivir again by video chat in September 2020, and he began by emphasizing community organ­ization and minga as central to the proj­ect. In one way or another, w ­ e’ve been able to or­ga­nize ourselves b­ ecause organ­ ization is impor­tant for anyone’s pro­gress. As you have seen, we help each other in weeding, for example, we help one another with the sole interest that we reciprocate. ­You’ve also spent time in our community, and you have seen, you have felt the real­ity of how we work as a community. And for that reason, thanks to F ­ ather God, I continue leading this community ­because we are always ­there for the neediest, lending a hand one way or another. Convivir has been an experience of living with abuela, who is mamá Tungurahua, as we say. And it has given us an opportunity.

He explained that Tungurahua spewed white ash that hurt crops, animals, and ­humans, but “beyond that, the rest of the ash is more like organic fertilizer for our crops and even our animals. . . . ​We love where we have lived all our youth, our childhood, our adolescence. We care for all that has happened in the pro­cess of our lives ­because we have every­thing in our lands, which are very bountiful.” Thus, convivir was as much about agentive relations with their lands, kin, and community as it was about the volcano, although the central figure of convivir is nonetheless Tungurahua. Lest this assertion be mistaken as overly romantic or esoteric, I’d like to emphasize that ­people ­really do get to know the volcano in ways that help them make strategic decisions about her be­hav­ior and their own welfare and in ways consistent with their own values and the good to which they aspire. And though we all have good reasons for critique, neither I nor my friends in Penipe are claiming that they know better than scientists and outside agencies, only that they know t­ hings too and they would like their f­ utures to be crafted out of their own values, their own visions of the good. Convivir is, in fact, a slogan and structuring meta­phor for an emergent array of rather practical and collaborative proj­ects.

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Villa­gers throughout the northern parishes have or­ga­nized to prepare for emergency, often with the support of outside agencies. For instance, since 2001 they have developed a network of thirty-­six vigias, villa­gers who monitor and communicate volcanic activities via radio, in villages all around the volcano. Vigias are trained, equipped, and periodically debriefed by the Instituto Geofisico, to whom they report activity and from whom they relay emergency information. Often, vigias have claims to contextual knowledge that outsiders are unable to match. When they get together, one of their favorite topics of conversation is how easily frightened the military and civil defense personnel are when they are deployed during eruptions. B ­ ecause t­ hese other­wise tough and militarized outsiders w ­ ere not familiar with the quotidian rumblings of the volcano, unlike the vigias and the villa­gers, they startled easily at e­ very volcanic explosion, provoking wild laughter among the vigias in the moment and in e­ very ­eager retelling of t­ hese stories. Locals, by contrast, learned to listen to the volcano and communicate its be­hav­ior, and they continued learning to or­ga­nize their actions around ­these communicative pro­cesses. Convivir is not a mere sensibility, nor does it entail ignoring official emergency protocols. In addition to the vigias, communities all around Tungurahua have engaged in regular evacuation drills and capacity-­building exercises with each other, the Instituto Geofisico, and the Secretariat of Risk Management. They have also worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and with NGO extension programs to learn about and gain resources for planting ash-­resistant crops (Faas 2018). “We have trained for the volcano Tungurahua,” explained Bernardo. “The volcano is not a terror. It is not, we say, the fear that it gives us. The situation ­won’t happen as it did in the first eruption.” That is, from the earliest days of the 1999 eruptions (and the earliest pages of this book), Bernardo and ­others lamented their loss of knowledge about living with Tungurahua. As the mosaic in Baños attested, they had indeed always convivido (co-­lived) with Tungurahua, but generations passed between eruptions and knowledge was lost or forgotten; one key task following the eruptions was therefore to gather and preserve the knowledge, resources, and rights for co-­living. This at least partially explains the willingness to work with scientists and government ministries and the special welcome extended to the Secretariat of ­Peoples, Social Movements, and Citizen Participation and the Casa de la Cultura, both of whom or­ga­nize workshops on ancestral, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge and customs. This knowledge has never been a closed system, nor is it especially stable; it is rather contingent, negotiated, open-­ended, and sustained by a mix of necessity and curiosity. For my friends in Penipe, their own plans for recovery, adaptation, and risk reduction entail direct and directed relations (call it praxis) with a volcano that po­liti­cal ecologists might call a “natu­ral h ­ azard,” but whom my friends know as their abuela and with whom they are (re)learning to co-­live. I also see convivir as a somewhat direct confrontation with state legibility and with the notion that

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t­ here is a singular scientific authority on how to live with h ­ azards. “Now w ­ e’re more certain that we ­will not leave our properties,” said Bernardo. They ­won’t h ­ andle us as they did the first time. The first time, we w ­ eren’t trained. Now that we have our training, we can defend ourselves as w ­ e’ve always said. The youn­gest must help the oldest. We, as the young, should carry the oldest to a safe place but then continue in our places. And thanks to F ­ ather God, ­we’re better trained, ­because it’s not as if the volcano has ended and this is all over. We are always capacity building in one way or another for another eruption in the f­ uture, while we remain h ­ ere as life goes on. Our generations are prepared for the next eruptions that could come—­ahoooo!—in the f­ uture, we say, but we ­don’t know when. So, ­we’re trained, w ­ e’re safe.

Bernardo emphasized the absence of knowledge that might have mitigated their losses. “This would have been impor­tant before what happened in ’99 with the volcano so that no one would have left the places we had then. We w ­ ouldn’t have left to suffer. We would have been more or­ga­nized, more united, but we did not have this capacity to overcome and advance. Now, thanks to God, we are better trained and or­ga­nized, and we can h ­ andle . . . ​anything in life.” I would not want my argument to be misunderstood as some populist rejection of science in f­ avor of some hackneyed notion of freedom. Far from it. Convivir is about local knowledge and values guiding science and politics. The many practical operations of convivir include evacuation drills, agricultural extension, emergency preparedness, and the vigias network. Of course, I cannot pretend that convivir pre­sents a tidy solution. ­There remains much to resolve. Many villa­ gers may be willing to cultivate knowledge and practice, build relationships, and prepare. But, as ­others have documented, preparedness initiatives worldwide are generally predicated on the notion that disasters are inevitable but can be mitigated with the right training and procedures, a claim that remains insufficiently tested (Revet 2020, 159–185). Moreover, following f­ uture eruptions, what ­viable alternatives can be crafted for the po­liti­cal designation of “high-­risk zone” that would prohibit public investment in aid and critical infrastructure and discourage private lending? ­These are but a few of the daunting po­liti­cal economic ­factors with which ­people w ­ ill have to contend. Neither I nor my friends in Penipe care to ignore t­ hese prob­lems, but neither do any of us pretend to offer easy answers. In a sense, convivir entails working together across va­ri­e­ties of difference to operate directly on more-­than-­human assemblages while disrupting the asymmetries of postcolonial, cap­i­tal­ist, and late-­modern relationalities. Displaced villa­gers policed each other’s claims to aid and shelter following the eruptions, evacuations, and the arrival of organ­izations whose modi operandi ­were esoteric at best, but I argue that ­these politics of deservingness w ­ ere themselves part of the diagnostic social pro­cesses that operate indirectly but consequentially on the

198 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

state assemblages administering aid, holding them accountable to local ethics, values, and aspirations. This was also the case with the relentless policing, gossiping, and accusations of dishonesty in minga accounting in Pusuca and Manzano. The politics of deservingness and minga accounting w ­ ere also, in effect, unbidden boundary objects that enabled conversations and negotiations spanning multiple domains of difference, but t­ hese w ­ ere on terms generally set by the state, not by the survivors and laborers themselves. Campesinos could exercise agency and exert pressure, but they could by no means set the agenda. And minga, while idealized as a “local cultural practice” through which outside organ­izations could work, is instead an institution and a grammar for claiming the bodies, ­labor, and time of the rural subaltern that was established over several hundred years. Though it endured—or was reclaimed—as a subaltern utopian proj­ect, it was co-­opted by the state according to legibilizing standards and state politics of deservingness. Convivir, as I see it, can be dif­fer­ent in this regard. It is an agenda set by campesinos themselves according to local values and relationalities, and while the state works with and through this program, exercising power in the pro­cess, the pro­cess is led by villa­gers. Of course, as with minga, co-­optation is pos­si­ble h ­ ere as well, but I see local priorities leading convivir while making demands of the state, not only to let the villa­gers be, but to support village (re) development, risk reduction, and preparedness on local terms. Thus, while I confess that I too was incredulous at the 2011 meeting where Bernardo argued for lifting of the “high-­risk” designation, I join my friends from Manzano in the newfound hope that they can make and sustain kinship and cultivate agentive relationships with Tungurahua that are or­ga­nized through their own institutions and relations. As with minga, the relationalities and aspirations of convivir are at times invoked in a pastoral sense, as when ­people speak of restoring the knowledge and relationalities of a more perfect past, but I find the hope for such other­wise possibilities more often invoked in a prefigurative sense of what ­people should aspire to—­that this is the good life they should collectively work t­ oward. I won­der to what extent t­ hese aspirations to develop other­wise relationalities with an active volcano can help unsettle the generally technocratic thinking about disaster risk reduction. I am, in effect, repeating a question articulated by Helen Verran about how ­people rooted in dif­fer­ent knowledge practices can work together by “cultivating epistemic disconcertment” (2012, 143; see also 2014). I think of this as a pro­ cess by which Penipeños can direct proj­ects of recovery and risk reduction according to their own ontological commitments and cultural logics of the good, and I am also encouraged by the possibility that the volcano Tungurahua, as invoked in the ontopolitics of convivir, can serve as a boundary object (­after Star and Griesemer 1989), a commonly discernible phenomenon entangled in seemingly distinct social, epistemological, or ontological milieux, but which may facilitate the communication and translation of knowledge across such divides. And so, as I write this epilogue in the sixteenth month of the COVID-19 pandemic,

Epilogue • 199

which entailed a global and ultimately inescapable (though hardly inevitable) spread of a pathogen, I join o­ thers in exploring possibilities for realizing locally driven agentive relationships with nonhumans that are typically recognized as ­hazards (Faas, Barrios, García-­Acosta, et al. 2020). I have to won­der about the possibility of “learning to see a common world other­wise” (Pandian 2019,72), at the potential to foster the development of disaster risk reduction activities that do not merely operate on populations and their proximity to h ­ azards but instead build new collaborations that enable ­people to craft agentive relationships with more-­than-­human assemblages on their own terms.

Inconclusions and Tortillas In Pusuca, Javier Ortíz shared a local expression, which was an inversion of a common Anglo-­A merican idiom: while the volcano had taken so much away and changed every­thing, “­Here we have a saying: ‘­after the storm, the calm.’ ” H ­ ere he was with a new wife and ­children, a ­house, and very successful in agriculture, a life circumstance that he was not sure he would have ­were it not for the eruptions. His is a story of finding healing from tremendous adversity and the discovery of agency despite all structural conditions and history standing in the way. I am aware also that my friend and colleague Roberto Barrios (2017) has pointed to the risk that stories of recovery may provide legitimating cover for the state and global humanitarian networks whose policies and practice reproduce vulnerability and harm. That ­people might find a new normal in the end is a vulgar excuse for the failures of humanitarianism. This is why I join my friends in Penipe in critiquing what has come before while exploring and crafting new politics, new assemblages, and other­wise possibilities. I share tales like Martina’s to value her sacrifice, her strug­gle, and her perseverance, not only b­ ecause they speak to her courage and heart, but also ­because they reveal the many social pro­cesses that have borne down on her and her neighbors; that have produced risk and a cascade of disasters. And even a­ fter having labored so tirelessly to build a stable place, she had to continue to navigate through space well beyond her spot in the Penipe Nuevo grid, beyond Manzano and Penipe, to cobble together a living. Ten years a­ fter resettlement, I found Martina and ­others practicing forms of care that opened my eyes to some glimmers of hope that the wounds of displacement and the many pains of place and past might be beginning to heal—­that social fissures might be repaired. While working a minga in Puela in July 2018, Rosa Barriga, who once vocally challenged Martina’s deservingness of aid and resettlement housing, came to me to tell me that Martina had an upcoming surgery she was ner­vous about, so Rosa wanted to do something nice for her. She invited me to come to Martina’s home ­because Rosa was ­going to cook her tortillas and celebrate a despedida de la operada (patient’s send-­off) on Sunday. The Janus-­faced symbolic theme of the mercurial volcano and convivir is perhaps nowhere as salient and embodied

200 • In the Shadow of Tungurahua

FIGURE 12  ​Rosa tending the tortillas for Martina, 2018.

as in the traditional cooking and eating of tortillas prepared of ground corn and cooked on volcanic rock—an agent of both vio­lence and care. That Sunday, the three of us took comfort in the ­simple pleasures of cooking tortillas amid signs that they ­were healing wounds and rebuilding old relationships. Rosa and Martina ­were still working hard to craft full lives a­ fter disaster, but they w ­ ere now living much more than merely estando.

Acknowl­edgments Dios les pague a mis grandes amigos de Penipe: Pablo Sánchez, Irma Veloz Avendaño, Leonardo Quishpi Sislema, Doña Teresa Pilco, Don Hernán Barragán, Ana Veloz Avendaño, Gerardo Veloz Avendaño, Silvia Veloz Avendaño, Paul Avendaño, Margarita Quishpi Sislema, Don Medardo Ramírez, Doña Victora Oñate, Doña Rosario Salas, Jesus Díaz, Rodolfo Díaz, Don Miguel Bolito, Don Camilo Granizo, Don Jhonson Barriga, Diego Uquillas, Jenny Yuqui, Claudia Barragán (“come h ­ ere!”), Yolanda Barragán, Katy Barragán, y Padre Gerardo Miguel Nieves Loja del Diócesis de Riobamba. I would like to express my deepest and warmest gratitude to my very close network of friends, collaborators, and mentors, who have taught, guided, and inspired me over the years; above all, Elizabeth Marino, Roberto Barrios, Linda Whiteford, Eric C. Jones, Julie Maldonado, Anthony Oliver-­Smith, Susanna Hoffman, Kate Browne, Mark Schuller, V ­ irginia García-­Acosta, Fabiola Juárez Guevara, Caela O’Connell, Graham Tobin, Rebecca Zarger, Kevin Yelvington, and Art Murphy. I also want to thank a ­great many other friends, mentors, and colleagues: Teferi Abate, Omer Aijazi, Kristoffer Albris, Rogelio Altez, Stacey Balkan, Mara Benadusi, Maryann Cairns, David Casagrande, Michael Cernea, Rudi Colloredo-­Mansfeld, Michele Companion, Rachael Corr, Hank Delcore, Ted Downing, Carol Ember, the entire FireChasers team at North Carolina State University, Michele Gamburd, Adriana Garriga-­Lopez, Noemíe González Bautista, Susan Greenbaum, Nora Haenn, Corinne Hale, Cindy Isenhour, Nathan Jessee, Barbara Rose Johnston, Dana Ketcher, Jerry Kloby, Adam Koons, Steve Kroll-­Smith, Heather Lazrus, Andrew Littlejohn, Juan Luque, Victor Marchezini, Jeffrey Mantz, Seven Mattes, Keely Maxwell, Chris McCarty, Ryo Morimoto, Ani Murgida, Sasha Newell, Branda Nowell, Laura Olson, Karsten Paaregard, Lori Peek, Ian Skoggard, Jeremy Spoon, Toddi Steelman, Sun Lei, Jennifer Syvertsen, Ryan Tokarz, Jenn Trivedi, Susan Baez Ullberg, Siri Veland, 201

202 • Acknowledgments

Anne-­Lise Velez, Michelle Wibblesman, Deb Winslow, Cassandra Workman, Amber Wutich, Hugo Yepes, Nikki Yeboah, Zhang Yuan, Tang Yun, Diego Zenobi, and Qiaoyun Zhang. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the many student research assistants who have contributed to dif­fer­ent phases of this work: Briza Diaz, Citlali Hernandez, Kristen Constanza, Zaida Aleman, Daniel Maldonado, Abril Pérez Gonzaga, and Edher Zamudio. Thanks also to student collaborators on this and related proj­ects: Brittany Burke, Audrey Schuyler Lancho, Vanessa Castro, Sophie Shan, and Gabbie Fall. I am very fortunate to have brilliant and supportive colleagues in the Department of Anthropology at San JoséState University (SJSU), especially Roberto González, Jan English-­Lueck, Melissa Beresford, Charlotte Sunseri, and John Marlovits. Thanks to student friends who have engaged with my work over the years and who brought special doses of enthusiasm to the work and often helped me see t­ hings I had not; specifically, Jeff Greger, Brieann DeOrnellas, Melanie Maxwell-­Bailey, Jackson Benz, Becca Carmick, Cheryl Cowan, Daniela Flores Paniagua, Simon Jarrar, Jhaid Parreno, and Megan Shaw. I have been fortunate to have a supportive network of colleagues at the Society for Applied Anthropology over the years, especially the late Tom May, Trish Colvin, Melissa Cope, and Jennifer Wies. I would like to thank successive editors at ­Human Organ­ization, Mark Moberg, Sarah Lyon, Nancy Romero-­Daza, and David Himmelgreen; the Journal of Latin American and Ca­rib­bean Anthropology, Andrew Canessa and Linda Seligmann; Annals of Anthropological Practice, John Brett; Economic Anthropology, Brandon Lundy; and Disaster Prevention and Management, J. C. Gaillard and Emanuel Raju. And very special thanks to Kimberly Guinta, Editorial Director at Rutgers University Press, for seeing the potential of this book and patiently guiding me through each step of the pro­cess. I am thankful for the incredible communities of inquiry, support, and action around critical disaster issues who have supported and nurtured me over the years, especially the Risk and Disasters Topical Interest Group at the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Disaster and Crisis Anthropology Network (DICAN) at the Eu­ro­pean Association of Social Anthropologists, LA RED de Estudios Sociales en Pevención de Desastres en Amer­i­ca Latina, the Culture and Disasters Action Network (CADAN), the Natu­ral ­Hazards Center, and the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at SJSU. My work was made pos­si­ble by generous funding from the following sources: U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) grants BCS-­ENG 0751264​ /0751265 and BCS 0620213/0620264 (PIs Linda Whiteford and Art Murphy); an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (1123962); the Public Entity Risk Institute’s (PERI) Dissertation Fellowship in H ­ azards, Risk, and Disasters; several travel and summer research grants from San Jose State University and the San Jose State University College of Social Sciences RSCA

Acknowledgments • 203

programs; and a grant from the Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association at San Jose State University. Warm thanks to my g­ reat friends Joseph Galione, Matt DiLeo, Diego López Camara, Jordi Casanova, David Freeman, Stephen Chopek, Lars Knudsen, Linda and Scott Warnasch, and to Patrick Mannon for literally pushing me over mountains. I am eternally grateful to my ­mother, Sharon Faas, and my loving wife, Laura Fusaro.

Notes Prologue 1 Cascajo translates to “gravel,” but in Penipe I only heard it used to refer to gravel-­ sized (and slightly larger) lithic projectiles. 2 According to the rec­ords kept by the Municipio de Penipe and CEBYCAM, a local nonprofit hospital and community development organ­ization. 3 Rec­ords of the Municipio de Penipe (2000). 4 All monetary values are reported in U.S. dollars, the currency ­adopted by Ec­ua­dor in 1999. 5 Rec­ords of the Municipio de Penipe (2000).

Introduction 1 This basic conceptual scheme is shared by social scientists studying disasters from a range of disciplines, regardless of w ­ hether they identify as po­liti­cal ecologists. 2 In fact, calculations of h ­ azard risk alone often reflect significant social biases—­such as using healthy White males as the standard against which health risks are calculated (Checker 2007, 115). 3 ­Others, notably Manuel DeLanda (2006) and Stephen Collier and Aihwa Ong (2007), have developed “assemblage theory” in ways that are resonant with my approach.

Chapter 1  Mobilities and (Re)Settlements 1 ­There is evidence that, in addition to vari­ous reciprocal exchange practices, ­labor pooling was likely already or­ga­nized by local chiefs prior to Incan incorporation. See Garrido and Salazar (2017) for a case from the southern empire in modern-­day Chile. 2 Related terms with the same root of mit’a (Quechua, “turn”), such as mitmaq, mitayoq, or mit’aruna, all denote someone who is taking their “turn” working an area for their kin group (Spalding 1984, 36–37). 3 ­These included San Andres, Cubijíes, Quimiag, llapo, and Guanando. 205

206 • Notes to Pages 37–76

4 A relación (report) recorded by oidor (regional judge) Juan Romulado Navarro between 1761 and 1764 noted visits to Riobamba and renewed efforts to maintain an accurate count of tributes. He likewise celebrated the growth of haciendas in the region and the abundance of freshwater and game for hunting. A ­ fter listing the eigh­teen towns in the jurisdiction, including Guano, he related, “In t­ hese and in the constructions and haciendas t­ here is something of twenty-­five thousand souls that together with t­ hose of the town make the number of seventy thousand. As regards trade, it is the most considerable place the province has for its many and numerous obrajes” (“Relación titulada ‘Idea del Reino de Quito,’ ” 397). 5 El Altar was incorporated in 1965 and Chontillo, Pungal de Puela, Manzano (Puela Parish), and Yuibug (Bilbao Parish) in 1973. 6 The o­ thers w ­ ere Comunas Ganshi in El Altar Parish and Penicucho Bajo in the Central Parish. 7 From 1985 to 2010, 86 new cantons ­were formed, bringing the national total to 226, an increase of 61 ­percent. 8 Production figures and h ­ ouse­hold economic strategy data are based on a survey I helped conduct in 2009 as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF)–­f unded study of disaster recovery and social support (see the preface). 9 Corn and fruit crop yields are far better at lower altitudes, while potato and pasture yields fare much better at higher altitudes. Thus, the ­middle and low ranges devote far more territory to the production of corn, beans, potatoes, and fruit trees and focus on small livestock production, such as cuyes, chickens, and rabbits. High-­ range production is largely concentrated on pasture and ­cattle raising for dairy and meat, especially in the area around the volcano, and this is also the range where potato production is the highest.

Chapter 2  Archipelagos and Bare Life 1 This might be most effectively translated into En­g lish as “not a dollar,” but note that Judith is ­here referring to the sucre, Ec­ua­dor’s national currency prior to adopting the U.S. dollar in 1999.

Chapter 3  The Production of Space 1 In Penipe, the villages in the high-­risk zone included Bilbao, Choglontus, Capil, Palictahua, Pungal de Puela, Yuibug Grande, Yuibug Chico, Manzano, and the lower part of Guzo de Penipe, near the banks of the River Chambo, where officials feared the river might flood in the event that lahars or la­va flows again dammed the Chambo River. 2 In Rio Blanco, near Baños, they would build 108 h ­ ouses for p­ eople displaced from Juive Grande and Baños. In La Paz, just outside Pelileo, they would build 200 homes for ­people who ­were displaced from Bilbao, Chacauco, and Cusúa. In Guano, they would build 60 ­houses for t­ hose displaced from Cahuaji Bajo, Ilapo, La Palestina, and Guzo. 3 This ­later became 287 h ­ ouses, as two property ­owners who ­were compelled to sell their land for the development insisted on getting ­houses of their own as part of the compensation. Samaritan’s Purse therefore ultimately constructed 102 h ­ ouses rather than the initially planned 100. 4 Unlike Samaritan’s Purse, Esquel had some experience with resettlement in Ec­ua­dor. In 1993, they managed the resettlement of ninety families in Guachim and

Notes to Pages 78–107 • 207

Llaco a­ fter a mining disaster damaged their lands. In 1996, they coordinated and constructed the resettlement of twenty families displaced by mining activities in Cotopaxi. In 1997–1998, they built 180 homes in the coastal city of Guayaquil, ­a fter hundreds of homes w ­ ere destroyed in flooding caused by El Niño. 5 Funding was provided by Fundación Esquel, the Provincial Council of Chimborazo, Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Diario Hoy, Produbanco, Cruz Roja Ecuatoriana, Diners Club International, Pinturas Cóndor, Oleoductos de Crudos Pesados (OCP), Fundación Futuro, Edimca/Acosa, Banco de Guayaquil, Aglomerados Chimborazo, Editorial Santillana, and Fundación Colegio Americano. Benancio Martinez, executive director of Esquel, said that each h ­ ouse cost around $5,100 and the cost for the community center, playground area, and health center building totaled $16,000. 6 The Municipio de Penipe contributed around $200,000 and a portion of the building materials w ­ ere contributed by Holcim Cement.

Chapter 4  The Four Walls of Bare Life 1 Chimboracense tortillas are two-­to three-­inch-­wide discs of ground maiz, lard, and cheese fried on slabs of volcanic rock. They resemble Columbian and Venezuelan arepas more than the flat Mexican tortillas with which many Americans and Eu­ro­pe­ans are familiar. 2 Our 2009 survey (see the preface) included five sites—­Penipe Township, Penipe Nuevo, Pusuca, and two villages in Tungurahua Province (Pillate and San Juan)—­ that ­were rebuilding ­a fter a prolonged evacuation. In the overall sample (831 adults in 294 ­house­holds), less than a third of individuals (232, or 31%) w ­ ere employed as wage laborers. In Penipe Nuevo (a sample of 112 h ­ ouse­holds), less than half of individuals (133, or 41%) ­were employed as wage laborers. In Pusuca, less than a quarter of all individuals (21, or 20%) worked as wage laborers. 3 Our 2009 survey (see the preface) identified the vast majority (257, or 87%) of ­house­holds as primary producers (cultivars and/or animals). A majority of ­house­holds reported crop cultivation (239, or 83%) and animal husbandry (192, or 75%), with nearly half (116 of 246 who cultivate, or 47%) sending some (often negligible) share to market. In Penipe Nuevo, the number of ­house­holds engaged in primary production (cultivars and/or animals) was highest (95, or 84%), with nearly all ­house­holds reporting crop cultivation (95, or 84%) and slightly less in animal husbandry (70, or 62%); a third of cultivating h ­ ouse­holds (39, or 35%) sent some share to market. In Pusuca (103 p­ eople in 40 h ­ ouse­holds), nearly all ­house­holds (37, or 92%) ­were primary producers (cultivars and/or animals), with nearly all involved in crop cultivation (36, or 90%) and over half in animal husbandry (24, or 60%); less than a third (11, or 30%) sent some share to market. 4 Any adult ­house­hold member could attend the general assembly, but only the named head of ­house­hold had voting rights, which could not be delegated to proxies.

Chapter 5  Enduring Cooperation 1 Hoffman (2020) drew on her personal experience in the Oakland firestorm of 1991 and several other ethnographic cases to describe a “highly pervasive” pattern of three phases through which disaster survivors generally proceed. An initial phase of individual experience proceeds to collective aid, the secondary phase of collective

208 • Notes to Pages 108–163





support proceeds to factional competition that accompanies the arrival of outside aid, and a third phase of closure follows, in which p­ eople generally return to ­house­hold affairs. 2 In addition to the case of the Peace Corps, Bretón (2001, 168 and n) mentions the Centro de Estudios y de Acción Social (CEAS), created in 1960 u­ nder the direction of Monsignor Leonidas Proaño, which operated u­ nder the umbrella of the Diocese of Riobamba. CEAS likewise provided materials for proj­ects and required locals to contribute minga ­labor. 3 Peones w ­ ere usually neighbors, kin, or friends, not strangers. 4 Boelens (2015) provides an exceptional survey and analy­sis of the intersections of rights, institutions, and organ­izations adjudicating such rules in Ec­ua­dor and Peru. 5 See especially Ennis-­McMillan (2006) and Boelens (2015). 6 Tareas w ­ ere previously common on hacienda minga work. See chapter 6 and Lyons (2006, 54, 79–80, 143) and Salz ([1955] 1984, 209).

Chapter 6 Institutions 1 A comisario nacional is a position that bears some resemblance to an unelected American sheriff. Though they are unarmed, they do command the police as necessary. They are primarily responsible for ensuring that local businesses and government officials operate in conformity with the law, but they also address intrafamilial issues such as domestic, child, and elder abuse and endangerment. 2 Spaniards strug­g led with the pronunciation of the Quechua/Aymara term mit’a, in which the apostrophe transliterates the glottal stop, so the practice came to be spoken and written as mita (Abercrombie 1998, 230n). 3 See also Pérez Tamayo (1947, 101–109). 4 Erasmus (1956, 149) recalled being told of permanent rotating minga committees.

Chapter 7  El Indigno, el Truco, el Chisme, y el Adelanto 1 Agenda items generally included updates on the status of basic ser­vices (electricity, ­water, sewage), invitations to participate in agricultural extension and craft trainings and microdevelopment proj­ects, announcements about upcoming visits of public officials and representatives of NGOs, and reporting on irrigation canal pro­gress. Debates often emerged around ­house­holds’ deservingness of inclusion in proj­ects or even in the h ­ ouses themselves, but t­ here was nothing so contentious as the accounting of tareas and rayas, opportunities extended (or not) for atrasados (raya debtors) to catch up, and what sort of sanctions should be meted out for noncompliance. 2 See also Boelens (2015) on minga hydropolitics in nearby Licto.

Part III  Recoveries 1 This effort was l­ ater renamed the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). 2 I developed the reflections in this paragraph in conversations with Kate Browne, Adam Koons, Elizabeth Marino, and Laura Olson as part of an ethnography of the 2017 UNDRR Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Cancun, Mexico. All shortcomings in my thinking, however, are entirely my own.

Notes to Pages 173–193 • 209

Chapter 8  “But We Did It” 1 Writing about diasporas, James Clifford observed that “­peoples whose sense of identity is centrally defined by collective histories of displacement and violent loss cannot be ‘cured’ by merging into a new collective identity” (1994, 307), Yet this is what both resettlements set out to do. Penipe Nuevo was decidedly heterogeneous, with resettlers from all the villages from the three northern parishes—­ Bilbao, Puela, and El Altar—­and several h ­ ouse­holds that w ­ ere displaced from Tungurahua Province. Pusuca stands apart several kilo­meters up the hill to the northeast, though it is still a part of the same central parish, and it is both smaller and less heterogeneous than Penipe Nuevo. Resettlers in Pusuca primarily hailed from Puela Parish, though t­ here was also one h ­ ouse­hold from Bilbao and another from El Altar. Among ­those from Puela, more than half w ­ ere from the village Pungal de Puela, five h ­ ouse­holds ­were from Manzano and another four w ­ ere from other villages in Puela. 2 A decidedly Ec­ua­dor­ian version of volleyball, called ecuavoley, with higher nets and some allowance for minor ball-­carrying, is hugely popu­lar as both a professional and a recreational sport.

Epilogue 1 The argument that “being reasonable” operates to silence the subaltern has many roots and antecedents in the American Civil Rights Movement, anticolonial and postcolonial movements, and in social science. In social science, I think especially of Laura Nader’s case for “harmony ideology” as a genre of “controlling pro­cesses” (1997).

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Index Abercrombie, Thomas, 104, 130–133, 208n2 (chap. 6) activation, in state assemblage, 6, 16, 28, 65, 100–102, 145–147. See also deactivation Agamben, Giorgio, 19, 49, 85 agenda, as cult object of the state, 96, 152, 177, 179, 192, 198, 208n1 (chap. 7) altruism, 19–20, 107, 110, 156–157 archipelago, vertical and horizontal, 26, 30–34, 47–54, 217 assemblage, 15–19; naturecultural assemblage, 23, 25–26, 102, 106, 189, 193–194; state assemblage, 17–22, 25–29, 65–83, 101–103, 108 bare life, 17–19, 47–63, 65, 84–100 Barrios, Roberto, 87, 193, 199 Boelens, Rutgerd, 137, 141, 208nn4–5 (chap. 5), 208n2 (chap. 7) Bretón Solo de Zaldívar, Víctor, 40, 42–44, 208n2 (chap. 5) brokerage, 44, 98, 128–131, 140, 147–153 Browne, Kate, 162, 208n2 (part III) bureaucracy, 18, 26, 155, 192; colonial, 26, 35–36, 131–134, 143; cult objects of, 72, 145, 192; humanitarian, 155, 162, 192; Inca, 129; Republican, 135 bureaucraft, 155, 192 cabildo (village council): formation of, 39, 43; functions, 95, 102, 111, 138–144,

146–150; leaders, 47, 93, 98, 112, 154, 179; and minga, 111, 138–144, 146–150, 157. See also brokerage; Ley de (Organización y Régimen de) Comunas; state, theory of: vernacular statecraft cacique, 34–35, 38, 41, 131, 133. See also kuraka cantonization, 41–44 Checker, Melissa, 205n2 (intro.) civilizing mission, 18–19, 35, 73, 133, 136, 141 Cleaver, Frances, 103, 111 Clifford, James, 209n1 (chap. 8) Collier, Stephen, 205n3 (intro.) Colloredo-­Mansfeld, Rudi, 101–102, 111–112, 139, 142–143, 146, 160 communitas, 22, 58, 102, 107, 156–159 concertaje. See huasipungo convivir, 16, 23, 49, 94, 102, 163–165, 193–198 cooperation, 19–22, 58, 101, 105–125, 139. See also minga deactivation, in state assemblage, 6, 16, 28, 100–102, 145, 147–150. See also activation decentralization, 41–44, 150 DeLanda, Manuel, 205n3 (intro.) De la Torre, Carlos, 43 Derrida, Jacques, 128 Descola, Philippe, 164 deservingness. See politics of deservingness directiva, 41, 95–100, 112, 151–158, 173–177; and leaders, 107, 121, 122, 169–170

225

226 • Index

disaster, theory of, 10–24, 25–28, 100, 101, 107, 123–125, 161–165, 167, 187–200; and historical production of disaster, 29–30, 45–46, 188–190. See also humanitarian politics; nature/natural; natureculture discipline (disciplinary power), 27, 39, 73, 78, 83, 122–123, 134, 142, 144. See also minga: as discipline displacement, 8, 13, 47–63, 64–71, 85–87, 116–117, 187–189; Spanish colonial, 132 dollarization, 30, 42, 44, 142–143 dossier, 72, 192 El Niño, 41, 44, 128, 207n4 (chap. 3) encomienda, 34–36, 131–134 Ennis-­McMillan, Michael, 208n5 Erasmus, Charles, 208n4 (chap. 6) eruptions (Tungurahua): pre–­t wentieth ­century, 31, 37, 38; in 1916–1918, 3, 39, 194; in 1999, 1–9, 48, 49, 51, 189, 196; in 2006, 8, 18, 55–60, 64, 189; chronic (post-2006), 62, 94, 100, 190; f­ uture, 197 Esquel, Fundación, 67, 79, 76; and minga organ­izing, 112, 119–123, 124–125; and resettlement construction and planning, 67–69, 72–73, 76–78, 83, 124, 151, 207n5; and resettlement governance, 92–93, 98–100, 112, 115, 151–153, 155, 159, 172, 174 evacuations. See eruptions eviction, 93–94, 96–97, 152–153, 169–170, 190–192 Fassin, Didier, 17–18 Fonseca Martel, César, 111 food: and cooking and eating in displacement, 6, 30, 47, 61, 68; and domestic ­labor, 54; and food aid (rations), 6–7, 21, 60–61, 89, 108; and food ser­v ice, 50, 53, 88, 168–171; and Inca re­d istribution, 129–130; in minga, 128 (see also tonga); in resettlement, 86, 90, 168–171, 175–176, 199; and sharing, 86, 199–200 (see also tonga); in shelters, 6–7, 60, 66–69, 72 Foucault, Michel, 27, 82, 124, 153, 164 Gamburd, Michele, 18–19, 75, 153 García-­Acosta, ­Virginia, 16 Garrido, Francisco, 205n1 (chap. 1)

gossip, and accusation, 18, 89, 96, 115, 124, 142, 144, 146, 153–156, 159, 174, 181, 198 Gupta, Akhil, 19, 100 hacienda: in displacement, 29; and minga rules, 125, 131, 137–138, 139, 143, 208n6; in nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 38–40, 136, 137–138; Spanish colonial, 36–40, 131, 134, 206n4 (chap. 1) Haraway, Donna, 15, 23, 163 Haro Alvear, Silvio, 31–34 Hassaurek, Friedrich, 38, 135 ­hazards, 10–12, 36, 81, 162, 163–164, 190–191, 194; adaptation to, 26, 31–33, 63, 188, 196–199; settlement on/near, 36, 45 Hoffman, Susanna, 19, 107, 157, 207n1 (chap. 5) huasipungo, 37, 133–134, 136, 137 Hulme, Peter, 103 humanitarian politics, 17–19, 22, 45, 87, 190. See also bare life; gossip, and accusation; politics of deservingness; procedural vulnerability Inca, 33–34, 129–130, 137, 158. See also mit’a/ mita infrastructure: and damage, 8, 44, 190; hydraulic (see irrigation); and minga, 20–21, 92, 108–109, 137–142, 159; and mita, 135; pre-­Columbian, 31, 33, 128–130; and resettlement, 9, 81–83, 190; and Spanish colonization, 132; twentieth ­century, 39, 43 institutional rules. See minga institutional theory, 21, 22, 102–103, 111, 127, 139–140, 145–146, 156–160; critical institutionalism, 102–103, 111, 124. See also minga; palimpsest Instituto Geofísico, 3, 56, 196 irrigation, 108, 185; agricultural dependence, 45, 47, 80, 128; Batan-­Puela canal, 8, 115, 149–150, 180; committees, 113, 122, 124, 146, 149, 154, 157, 180; eruption damage, 8; Incan, 129; Pre-­Incaic, 31; Pusuca canal, 98, 113–114, 116, 119–123, 152, 174–175, 208n1 (chap. 7); repair, 112; rights, 177. See also infrastructure: and minga; minga: and accounting; minga: in Puela irrigation; minga: in Pusuca irrigation

Index • 227

James, Erica Caple, 19, 155, 192 Krupa, Christopher, 16, 70 kuraka, 129, 131, 143 Larson, Brooke, 37–38, 134–135 Latour, Bruno, 14, 163–165, 195 legibility, 9, 22, 25–29, 45–46, 85, 146; humanitarian, 60–62; Republican, 38; as resettlement, 65, 72–73, 82, 92–100, 185, 189, 196–197; Spanish colonial, 34–37, 130–132; in twentieth ­century, 38–44. See also state theory Ley de (Organización y Régimen de) Comunas, 39, 95, 111, 139 Lyons, Barry, 37–38, 129, 131–139, 208n6 Maldonado, Julie, 191 Marchezini, Victor, 100, 189 Marino, Elizabeth, 12, 162, 192, 208n2 (part III) Mauss, Marcel, 20 minga, 19–21; and accounting, 103, 112–116, 140–142, 145–160, 198, 208n1 (chap. 7); as discipline, 101, 105–125, 131–144, 145–160, 188; in Manzano, 109-110-119, 124–125, 147–160, 180–182, 195; and multa (fine), 115, 140, 141, 144, 145, 154; and mutual aid, 56–59, 66–67, 109, 127, 137–138, 145–160; in Penipe Nuevo, 77–78, 105–108, 110–111; in Puela, 109–110; in Puela irrigation, 113–115, 122–124, 146, 149–150, 154, 157, 180; in Pusuca community, 113–115, 158, 172; in Pusuca irrigation, 112, 113, 119–125, 153–156, 159–160, 172–177; and raya (attendance credit), 112–125, 131–144, 145–160, 175–180, 208n1 (chap. 7); in resettlement construction, 65–67, 77–83, 105–106; and tarea (task, ­labor quota), 114–125, 131–145, 151–158, 174, 208n6; and time/temporality, 112–114, 116–125; as utopian, 21–22, 98–99, 103, 124, 145–159, 190–198. See also mit’a/mita mining (colonial), 34, 129–130, 132, 206n4 (chap. 3) Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MIDUVI): and directiva, 96–98, 169–170, 184; resettlement construction, 70–76, 77, 78, 79–80; resettlement governance, 78, 92–98, 99, 152, 170; and roofing material, 119

mit’a/mita (tribute), 20; Incan, 33–34, 128–130; pre-­Incaic, 127–128; Republican, 134–136; Spanish Colonial, 130–134 mobility, 9, 22, 25–28, 29–46, 47–63, 64–83, 87–100, 168–171, 177–179. See also archipelago; displacement Montirón, El, 49, 57, 149, 150, 180, 194 moral economy, 128, 130–131, 138, 143 Mumford, Jeremy, 33, 35–36, 129–135 Murra, John, 26, 32, 129–130 mutual aid, 19–20, 56–59, 66–67, 86, 109, 125, 127, 137, 138, 144, 146, 156 Nader, Laura, 209n1 (epilogue) nature/natural, 11–15, 163–165, 190, 194–195. See also natureculture natureculture, 15–17, 23, 25–26, 102, 106, 189, 193–194 nongovernmental organ­izations (NGOs): and humanitarianism, 18, 161–162, 185; and irrigation, 98; and minga, 65–66, 78, 95, 108–115, 140–141, 146–155; and resettlement, 71, 74, 185; and state assemblage, 42–44, 98, 111, 139–141, 146–155. See also Esquel, Fundación; Samaritan’s Purse Nugent, David, 16, 70 Oliver-­Smith, Anthony, 11, 16, 18–19, 107, 157 Ong, Aihwa, 18, 205, 213 Ostrom, Elinor, 118, 139 palimpsest, 19–21, 22, 101–104, 127–128, 143, 145–146 patron-­clientelism, 102, 138, 146 peons: as agricultural day laborers, 53–54, 90; as minga laborers, 112, 123, 140–141, 149, 155–156, 180, 208n3 (chap. 5) place: attachment, 9, 12, 16–17, 25–26, 49–52; production of, 64–83; and spatial ecol­ogy, 65, 79–83, 108, 168–172, 185 politics of deservingness, 17–19, 190–192, 197–198; and aid, 13, 28; in minga, 66, 102, 112, 123, 153–155, 160; in resettlement, 48, 61, 65, 70–75, 96, 150–155. See also gossip Pribilsky, Jason, 136, 140 Prieto, Mercedes, 27, 139, 159 procedural vulnerability, 17–18, 48, 65, 100, 151, 185, 188, 190–193

228 • Index

property deeds: as cult objects of the state, 192; in Penipe Nuevo, 67, 78, 93, 94, 96, 99; in Pusuca, 93, 99–100, 152–153; in villages, 44, 70 Rabasa, José, 103 reciprocity, 20, 110, 116, 128; and food sharing, 155–156, 199–200; hacienda, 137–138; humanitarian, 18, 75, 151; Incan reciprocal pacts, 33, 128–130; minga as reciprocity, 58, 101, 110, 138, 140–144; pre-­Incaic, 128, 205n1 (chap. 1); resettlement reciprocal pacts, 77–78; state reciprocal pacts, 137. See also minga; mit’a/mita recovery, 161–166, 167–186, 187–200 reducciones, 35–37, 132–134; modern resettlement analogy, 82 resettlement: construction and planning, 64–83; governance, 84–100; Incan, 33–34; occupancy, 92–100, 167–186; Spanish (see reducciones); ten years on, 167–186 Retorno, El, 49, 65, 88, 91–92, 94, 109–111, 118 Samaritan’s Purse, 76–83, 92–93, 105–106, 206nn3–4 (chap. 3) Schuller, Mark, 18, 24, 100, 207 Scott, James, 27, 82, 131. See also legibility Shange, Savannah, 192–193 shelters, emergency: in 1999, 2, 4–7, 9, 30, 53; in 2006, 55–56, 58–59, 60–62, 65–70 Silverblatt, Irene, 17 space. See place Spanish colonization, 34–37, 130–134 spatial ecol­ogy. See place state, theory of, 15–19, 25–28, 30, 101–102, 145–146, 159–160; and cabildos (village councils), 95, 138–140, 147–150; and colonial bureaucracy, 34–36; and disaster recovery, 188–193, 197–199; and Julian Revolution, 39; and minga, 122–125; and

mita tribute, 130–136; and nongovernmental organ­izations (NGOs), 140–142, 150–153; and politics of deservingness, 61, 100, 153–156; and (re)settlement, 65–66, 70–73, 79, 83, 84–87; and vernacular statecraft, 101–102, 111–112, 139, 142–143, 146, 160. See also activation; bare life; deactivation; legibility Taussig, Michael, 28, 129–131 Thompson, E. P., 116–117 Toledo, Viceroy Francisco Alvarez de, 35–36, 132–134 tonga, la, 153, 155–156, 181 Torry, William, 177–178 tribute. See mit’a/mita Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, 15, 27, 163 Tungurahua (volcano): as abuela, 194–195; as mamá, 14, 31, 194–195. See also eruptions utopian proj­ects, 98–100, 124, 145–146, 156–160, 190, 195–198 Veland, Siri, 18, 48, 65, 151, 191 Verran, Helen, 198 village councils. See cabildo; directiva vulnerability, 12, 128, 151, 188–190. See also procedural vulnerability wage ­labor: and displacement, 64, 68; and minga, 116–117, 122–123, 125, 140; and mita, 131, 133–134; and mobility, 60; post-­resettlement, 88, 90–91, 92, 190, 207n2; in twentieth ­century, 40, 44–45 Whitten, Norman, 138 Williams, Raymond, 126–127 Yeboah, Nikki, 187 Zabus, Chantal, 103

About the Author A.J. FA AS

is associate professor of anthropology at San José State University.