Conflicts, Territories, and the Institutionalization of Post-Agrarian Economies on an Expanding Tourist Frontier in Quilotoa, Ecuador. (January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Colloredo-Mansfeld, Rudi; Ordoñez, Angélica; Paltán López, Homero; Quick, Joe; Quiroga, Diego; Williams, Julie
• Is Part Of: World development. Volume 101(2018)
• Page Start: 441
• Page End: 452
• Publication Date: 2018-01
• Subjects: andes -- tourism -- commons -- territorialization; Economic history -- 1990- -- Periodicals; Economic assistance -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; 330.9
• DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.001
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-750X

Abstract

Highlights: From 2000 to 2015, visitors grew from 10, 000 to more than 90, 000 in Quilotoa. The state tried to militarily relocate residents in the 1990s and still challenges them. They formed trade organizations that use peasant politics to defend economic zones. These organizations delivered material benefits and a model of postagrarian economy. Summary: World Heritage and associated conservation-based tourism can generate significant national income, yet the top-down efforts to open up new tourist destinations can displace communities that are meant to benefit. In Ecuador, the administration of Rafael Correa has invested substantially in both new infrastructure and community level training in order to steer world heritage visitors into a more diversified tourist sector. Our research examined the attempt of one community at the crater lake Quilotoa (Cotopaxi province) to maintain control of their economy in the face of increased state investments. We asked, under what circumstances is a community able to both define and defend a zone of locally managed economic development? To answer the question, we carried out a participatory GIS mapping project focused on sites of conflict and community assemblies and supplemented the mapping with an economic survey and detailed career histories. Our research finds that, since 1988, cycles of conflicts within the community of Quilotoa and between Quilotoa and its neighbors came to define an effective, yet informal, territorial boundary within which residents were highly committed to mobilize to defend their work and investments. Interviews show the importance of territory as political resources used by the community to escalate commercial conflicts into matters of wide public concern and ultimately establish the institutional basis of non-agricultural work.