POLITICAL REPRESENTATION & SOCIAL INCLUSION

Abstract:

The integration of Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations into Latin American systems of political representation is a recent development; the political gains have come gradually over nearly a quarter-century, in a space where economic ones often have not. The new era of democratic freedoms has helped facilitate the formation of race and identity-based civil society groups, spurred in part by recognition and support from international organizations and donors. As self-awareness and the popular and political strength of Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups have grown, various Latin American countries became signatories to international treaties to protect minority rights—and some codified those rights in new constitutions, furthering formal ethnic-based or racial representation in local and national politics. This numerical increase, though, gives rise to the question: to what extent are these representatives effective at successfully advocating the demands of their constituents? Does their participation in elected office contribute to the adoption of policies that serve the interests of those populations? Americas Society, with support from the Ford Foundation, attempted to answer these questions in a comparative study of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guatemala. What follows is a description of the study undertaken in Ecuador. For the purposes of this study, Indigenous legislators were identified in one of three ways: a) through membership in the ethnic political movements Pachakutik and Amauta Yuyay; b) through the political agenda of various legislators from Alianza Pais who, in the course of the 2007 Constituent Assembly identified …

Año de publicación:

2012

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Fuente:

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