| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this article I briefly discuss the process that led in 1998 to the first Ecuadorian Constitution to adopt multiculturalism as a fundamental principle in its description of the nation and that for the first time gave special collective rights to Indigenous peoples and, in a less obvious way, to Afro-Ecuadorians. I then discuss some of the processes by which the second multicultural Constitution was adopted in 2008 in Ciudad Alfaro by a Constituent Assembly dominated by the party Alianza País, founded by the current President, Rafael Correa, a proponent of "21st century socialism." My discussions are done with the objective of commenting on the Afro-Ecuadorian activism and political organizing that took place since the late 1970s and also right before or, for the 2008 Constitution, during the actual processes of constitutional writing. I discuss Afro-Ecuadorian participation in corporatism, which mostly developed since the end of the 1990s along with the corporatist integration of other sectors of Ecuadorian society, including Indigenous groups and workers' unions. I show that Afro-Ecuadorian influences on, and participation in, the process that led to the adoption of the 2008 Constitution was in fact corporatist. I conclude that if it is true that current corporatist practices and the existence of the CODAE make it more difficult to represent and theorize Afro-Ecuadorians as the country's "ultimate Others," particularly when considering the rather successful Afro-Ecuadorian participation in the 2008 Constitutional processes, it is not less true that Ecuadorian civil society still has a long way to go to end its long history of anti-black racism.
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