Communities Deprived of Essentials: Enduring Effects of Coloniality and Clientelism in Guayaquil, Ecuador
Wendy Chávez-Páez & Harry Haro
2024
These settlements offer few votes, which makes them unattractive for clientelism, and they are ancestral, which makes them unattractive to the hegemonial colonial mindset.
Abstract
This research illustrates how the administration of Guayaquil city in Ecuador followed a path of colonialism and clientelism. We start by describing how its first informal human settlements were formed, El Suburbio (1950) and El Guasmo (1970), and the clientelist practices they used to request services and infrastructure in exchange for votes. We highlight that the rapid increase in the size of these settlements was attractive for those in political power at the time since the settlers guaranteed them numerous votes. By contrast, the Gulf of Guayaquil, a rural site of considerable ecological importance, hosts small ancestral settlements that have been part of the city since 1837 and have never received essential services such as water, electricity, and waste collection. We argue that while clientelism has been a tool for huge settlements to request their rights and for politicians to get to power, it has led to the absence of citizens’ rights in ancestral communities. These settlements offer few votes, which makes them unattractive for clientelism, and they are ancestral, which makes them unattractive to the hegemonial colonial mindset. The results of this reality are translated into a comprehensive map showing levels of multidimensional poverty in Guayaquil’s urban and rural areas, building upon the pioneering work of Molina-Vera (2011), who first mapped urban poverty, and extending the analysis to include rural areas. Finally, our legal analysis concludes that not providing these services is in violation of the law.
Keywords: coloniality, clientelism, inequality, Ecuador, Guayaquil, Gulf of Guayaquil
Read the article and see the map here: https://wendychavez.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Chavez-Paez-Wendy-Haro-Harry-Communities-Deprived-of-Essentials-Enduring-the-Effects-of-Coloniality-and-Clientelism-in-Guayaquil-Ecuador.pdf