Crossroads: Social Reformism and Dispute for Hegemony, Political Processes and Popular Movements in Current Ecuador

Abstract

This text proposes to analyze the political processes experienced in Ecuador from 1990 to the present day, assuming the perspective of a left tendency anchored in popular movements. For this analysis, the concept of hegemony dispute is taken as a theoretical framework. The starting point is its recognition as a single process with several political moments, which begins with the indigenous uprising of Inty Raymi and continues until the electoral triumph of Alianza País. A specific interpretation is given to the indigenous movement, as the integral protagonist of a cultural reform, which lays the foundations for a new social project, and another to the urban classes and middle layers, which synthesize the demands of citizenship. In the text, the new situation is characterized as a duality, the intersection of a state modernization project with that of democratic reform. This creates a situation of crossroads, which begins with the period 2006-2009, which pressures the traditional left and popular movements to envisage a strategic shift. Provides that the synthesis of this process is found in the constituent process and in the key contents of the New Constitution, which largely accepts the fundamental demands of popular and social movements and places them in a common project “forward”.