Popular Aspirations and Speculative Publics: Examining Popular Economies on Resource Frontiers in the Ecuadorian Amazon

• In Event: Making “the Public” in Popular Economies: Latin America’s Changing Shared Economic Spheres

Abstract

In recent decades, left-leaning governments of Latin America framed post-neoliberalism in terms of the political resurgence of the public sector, following years of neoliberal austerity. Popular economies often experienced the expansion of the public sector with a degree of ambivalence, as augmented state support was accompanied with new forms of regulation, and “the public” became a contested sphere of imposition and opportunity. However, the post-neoliberal moment unfolded across variegated political-economic landscapes. On commodity resource frontiers, particularly those located at the margins of state institutions, popular sectors often experienced post-neoliberalism less as a politically-driven expansion of state presence and more as a commodity boom, similar to prior booms and busts.

In this paper, I explore the articulation of popular economic spheres that have formed in relation to broader economic booms and busts in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, from 20th century booms (e.g., rubber, gold, animal skins, tourism) through the post-neoliberal oil boom and into present day frenzies around community eco-tourism. From an historical and ethnographic perspective, I observe how political-economic frontiers lend themselves to the articulation of speculative publics in popular sectors. I highlight the rise and fall of local leaders that demonstrate capacities to negotiate with state and economic elites and to imagine spaces for popular collectives within otherwise abstract, elite-dominated networks of trade and accumulation. Such capacities have historically granted an aspirational capital to emerging leaders around which economic collectives have articulated and continue to articulate in specific ways.

Author

• Angus C Lyall, University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill