Currents of dissent: Water, identity and the state in north Ecuador, 1924--1945

From 1924--1945, northern Ecuador was the site of conflict between Otavalo elites and indigenous communities over the hydraulic resources of Lake San Pablo. The disputes consisted of physical confrontations, as well as litigation and appeals to national authorities. Elites viewed these conflicts as a battle between modernization and tradition. Indigenous communities did not reject that interpretation, however, they did make the case that their worldview---one that emphasized their spiritual relationship to Lake San Pablo and its environs---was worth preserving. The historical bond of indigenous peoples to native Andean culture, including the significance of water and water rituals to their religion, along with centuries of struggle against Spaniards' intent to deprive them of land and water, forms a backdrop to this story. It is through indigenous mobilizations to safeguard their religion, customary uses of waters and irrigated lands that one sees the foundations of an indigenous movement that took shape both locally and nationally.; In focusing on water rights and resistance in the province of Imbabura, this dissertation reconsiders three widely held views in the literature on indigenous mobilizations, water rights and Otavalo's presence in the national debate on the indigenous question. First, it challenges the prevailing notion that land tenure is---always the central and dominant factor regarding power relations between hacendados and indigenous peasants. Second, my research strongly contests the assumption held by civil engineers and scholars alike that water rights and legislation only became issues after the 1964 Agrarian Reform project, and more specifically the 1973 Ley de Aguas. Third, this dissertation also calls into question the view that Otavaleflos, by and large, have been absent in the formation of an indigenous discourse on national identity.; Employing contemporary theories of ethnicity to examine insurgent discursive strategies, actions and elite responses that they elicited, this dissertation makes the case that despite minimal references to their ethnicity in official records, their uprisings can definitely be viewed as indigenous. Finally, it maintains that ethnicity in the late 1930s and 1940s was evolving in the sense that groups of individuals that might have been viewed, or even viewed themselves, as non-indigenous in one context were definitely indigenous in another, particularly by virtue of their participation in struggles over water. This dissertation argues that indigenous "identity" as a political force emerged twenty years earlier than most scholars suggest.