During my last two weeks in Ecuador I was feeling somewhat lost with all the new information I had gathered. One of my initial hypothesis as I prepared for my trip was that the proliferation of rights under the new constitution was based in individual rights, and a careful avoidance of collective rights. I was trying to make an argument that because the Ecuadorian economy is dependent on oil extraction and the mining of heavy metals, it purposely undermines the establishment collective rights that might challenge the extractivist economy. I was aware that amidst all the flourishing of social rights there was also a strong government campaign against several environmental groups and that President Correa had gone as far as labeling them “developmental terrorists.”
As I began my research I came to understand that this argument did not translate well because the terms “collective rights” were very explicitly written into the constitution as the rights of indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian citizens. These collective rights include reparations, land rights, anti-discrimination legislation, affirmative action in education and employment, and some degree of political autonomy for small ethnic enclaves. Furthermore, the rights of nature and the indigenous concept of “Living Well” are also written into the constitution. Following the establishment of the new constitution in 2008 many state funded research groups known as “observatorios” are working to track the how well these new laws and social rights are being implemented. The re-drafting of the constitution in 2007 was extraordinary political moment for its inclusion of a diverse array of social activists and intellectuals who wrote, debated, and approved the constitutional articles and amendments through a democratic process. This accounts for why the Ecuadorian constitution is so expansive in the realm of social rights. After careful consideration I was able to discern that to frame my investigation as a comparison between collective and individual rights was not going to be particularly useful in examining the relationship between social rights and political economy.