Community Organizing During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ecuador

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, informal workers in Ecuador made 56.7% of the country’s labour economy¹, and women made 40.2 % of all informal work². Up to 2018, only 55,5% of the population had access to sewage services, percentage which dropped to 36,4% in rural areas³. In a context where the government has failed to provide solutions to long-lasting concerns in terms of labour, education, basic services and healthcare, different communities rapidly organized through local solidarity chains, in a political exercise that allowed not only for the re-significance of education, health, and well-being, but enabled other forms of community-based political economies.

Timbiré, a rural parish located in the province of Esmeraldas, situated at the northern border of the country, like most rural communities, has historically been deprived in terms of education, healthcare, and basic services. Before the pandemic, community organizers from the parish council were demanding access to clean water, as nearby rivers had been contaminated due to mining actives. When the state of emergency was declared, the parish of Timbiré, mainly inhabited by Black single mothers who work in agriculture, were not only in an extremely vulnerable position as they already had precarious access to clean water, but also because they couldn’t get their products out.⁴

The importance of trueque (barter) was key in order to implement alternative modes of solidarity economies, not only in Timbiré but in different communities across the country. Likewise, the creation of local urban gardens and seed banks, the organization of common pots, the creation of a trans shelter house⁵, and the return to ancestral medicine through boticas campesinas across the country⁶, are some examples of the initiatives pushed forward by different communities in order to survive heightened inequalities during confinement.

Odalys Cayambe, Trans activist, preparing food for the entire barrio in Guayaquil.

Preparation of chucuhuaso, a  traditional Medicine from the Amazon, in Shushufindi.

Far from wishing to romanticize these strategies, these crudely illustrate historical responses from the state to marginalized communities in terms of education, healthcare, the improvement of roads, and general access to basic services (clean water, sewerage and electricity). For poor, rural, Black and Indigenous and trans communities, grassroots organization has always been the response, and this pandemic has been no exception. However, this has also intensified the work of many women organizers, whom have had to take on leading roles regarding preventing contagion and providing health care, child care, and schooling, this time not only for their homes, but for entire communities.

One of the most important elements of feminist and solidarity-based economies is the recognition of care work⁷. Before the health emergency, Latin America women spent an average of 22 to 42 hours a week on care work⁸. During confinement, women have borne an even heavier burden regarding care activities. Beyond this, many women have had to stay in confinement with their abuser. This in turn, has led to a world-wide increase in emotional, physical, sexual and economic violence against women. As gender-based violence cannot be put in quarantine, the UN has referred to a “shadow pandemic”⁹, to display how different forms of violence against women, do not only continue but have exacerbated during the health emergency.

Additionally, in various countries in Latin America, the pandemic has further legitimized the use of military and police force against impoverished, racialized communities and rural areas. Maricruz Sánchez, a domestic worker from Isla Trinitaria (Guayaquil) shares the story of one of the barrios most affected by the coronavirus outbreaks:

Abuse of power has been exercised against trans women, migrant workers, Black and Indigenous women, and many street/informal workers, who already were in a vulnerable position regarding their rights. It is clear that this pandemic has not had an equal impact on different groups of society. Thus, gender-based violence needs to be understood in a context of criminalization of poverty and ethnic-racial discrimination. As María Quispe, and indigenous women from Lagunas Chuqui de Laulillaca puts it:

It is clear that rules regarding confinement do not operate the same in all bodies, and that some lives are regarded as disposable at the sake of others¹⁰. This pandemic has unmistakably shed light on long-lasting inequalities against black and indigenous women, trans women, migrant, informal workers, and groups at the margins of society. Governmental responses and recommendations have kept intact laissez-faire logics, and worked largely to benefit the country’s main financial groups. The ongoing colonial apparatus, which has deprived black, indigenous and rural communities from basic services, such as clean water, access to health care, and decent housing, now in state-form, has dared to tell the communities to stay at home, and constantly wash their hands.

As historical inequalities exacerbate and gain legitimization, it is urgent to understand the validity of settler colonialism’s biopolitics¹¹, which under a continuous logic of elimination, perpetuate crude violence against historically marginalized communities. Although an incredible resilience and capacity of organization has been shown from the part of women and their communities, these should not be glamorized, as there are historical material demands awaiting to be met.

Ilustrations by Natalia Zavala

Disclaimer

This is an adapted, shorter version of a larger booklet, which collected the demands from different communities in Ecuador before, during, and after state of emergency, due to COVID-19, was declared in the country. The booklet was made in collaboration with the organizations: Amandla, Mujeres de Asfalto and FES-ILDIS. To see full work in Spanish, please visit: https://amandlamedio.com/relatos-de-resistencias-un-analisis-de-la-respuesta-comunitaria-ante-la-pandemia/. You can listen to the interviews in Spanish at Amandla’s podcast here

1. INEC (2020), in: https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/economia/persons-empleo-informalidad-ecuador/
2. UN Women (2014), “Mujeres y mercado laboral informal: vulnerabilidad y pobreza” , in: https://ecuador.unwomen.org/es/noticias-y-eventos/articulos/2014/7/mujeres-y-mercado-laboral-informal-vulnerabilidad-y-pobreza
3. INEC and UNICEF (2018), in https://www.expreso.ec/actualidad/deuda-sanidad-rural-6452.html
4. Lorena Valdez (2020), in https://amandlamedio.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/cartilla-de-respuesta-covid19.pdf
5. To see news in Spanish, visit: https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/sociedad/6/mujeres-transexuales-derecho-constitucional
6. Boticas campesinas was an initiative pushed by Movimiento Nacional Campesino FECAOL. To see news in Spanish, visit https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/economia/4/botica-campesina-ecuador
7. See Quiroga Díaz Natalia (2020), “Coronavirus y economía: Cuando el cuidado está en crisis”. Available at: https://www.clacso.org/coronavirus-y-economia-cuando-el-cuidado-esta-en-crisis/
8. CEPAL, (2020). “La pandemia del COVID-19 profundiza la crisis de los cuidados en América Latina y el Caribe”
9. ONU Mujeres, (2020). “The Shadow Pandemic: Violence against women during COVID-19” Available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/in-focus-gender-equality-in-covid-19-response/violence-against-women-during-covid-19
10. The above mentioned term mestizo was used to identify a person of European and Indigenous descent during the Spanish colonization. During the republican era, it became synonym with national identity, leaving out Black and Indigenous population from the national imaginary. To read more on Ecuadorian mestizaje, see Karem Roitman, (2008), “Hybridity, Mestizaje and Montubios in Ecuador”, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford
11. See Patrick Wolfe, (2001) “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native”, Journal of Genocide Research 8: 4, and Scott Lauria Morgensen, (2011) “The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now”, Settler Colonial Studies, 1:1, 52-76, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648801