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THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN AN ECUADORIAN TERRITORY. THE RIOBAMBA-ECUADOR CASE OF RACISM

Abstract:

This research seeks to analyze the relationship between the natives and ordinary justice officials; the research is specifically focused on the city of Riobamba-Ecuador. Regardless the great struggles of the indigenous movements, it has been recog-nized as Intercultural since the constitution of 2008; both the racial formation of justice officials and the consequences of the “end of the racial dictatorship” in the country have allowed the adaptation and continuity of racist representations and practices towards the indigenous people. This work is carried out from an ethnographic perspective that seeks, on the one hand, to account for the contradictions and paradoxes that the coexistence of a specific racial formation (functional to racism) and the validity of the intercultural paradigm in Ecuador imply. And on the other hand, to make visible the ordinary justice system of the State and the exercise of the laws it promulgates, as institutions and instruments, whose practices are not necessarily governed by a neutrality or juridical rationality, but rather there are informal routines and ideologies that influence the deci-sions of these officials and impede thinking about the justice system.