Indigenous Peasant Struggles and the Capitalist Modernization of Agriculture

In the 1980s and early 1990s Ecuador witnessed the rise of a powerful indigenous movement. At the national level this movement came to be represented by Confederacion de Nacionalidades Indigenas (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities-CONAIE), which included Andean, largely Quichua-speaking, peasant communities along with native communities of the Amazon and coastal region. In 1990 CONAIE organized a nationwide indigenous uprising that proved especially strong in the Andean provinces. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous peasants blocked local highways and took over government offices in provincial capitals and towns. Their demands were focused mostly on land but also on the improvement of rural infrastructure and the recognition of Indian cultural rights. These events raise questions about the nature of indigenous peasant struggles in Latin America. The early studies saw peasant resistance to the expansion of commercial haciendas with their oppressive semifeudal relations as a major cause of rural political mobilization. Agrarian conflicts in this view were generally identified with land conflicts (Wolf, 1968; Landsberger, 1969). In recent decades, however, the Latin American countryside has experienced rapid state-sponsored capitalist modernization that has changed the nature of peasant struggles. The sprawling semifeudal haciendas have