"El Ecuador en Chiquito": The Infrastructures of Politics in an Urban Market in Quito's Historic Center

• In Event: The Citizens’ Revolution in the City: Governing Subaltern Subjects in Quito’s Historic Center

Abstract

This paper explores an urban retail market in Quito, Ecuador as a site for struggles over the infrastructures of politics and citizenship. It tracks a conflict among merchants as they (1) draw on the conceptual and discursive resources of Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution to make sense of and explain their efforts to transform the infrastructure of the market and (2) turn strategically to officials at multiple levels of national and municipal government to situate themselves as the rightful leaders of their vendors’ association. After a cave-in in Quito’s historic center displaced hundreds of vendors, a lengthy confrontation among merchants laid bare deep-rooted conflicts about ideals of progress and “modernization,” the intersection of individual interest and collective solidarity, and the purpose of government and the form of political participation. The metaphoric connotations of the cave-in came easy to the merchants: The very foundations of the market—not only as popular construction, but also as institution and community—were shaky, hollowed out. The disagreement between the merchants was not only about the logistics of renovation, that is, but also about how to organize collective life in the center of Quito and the country generally. Many merchants compared the conflict to those surrounding the sweeping project of state transformation and social reform introduced by Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa known as the “Citizens’ Revolution.” The market, some said, was “el Ecuador en chiquito.” This paper thus investigates how urban subjects seek recourse across scales of government and law—from national ministries to municipal officials, the country’s constitution to the constitution of their own vendors’ association—at a time when the meanings of government, law, and citizenship were up for interpretation.

Author

• Taylor C Nelms, University of California, Irvine