Los procesos políticos de las organizaciones campesinas de Santa Isabel (Azuay). ¿Actores políticos en la actualidad?

Abstract

This investigation seeks to define the political-organizational processes of the peasants from Santa Isabel (Azuay) and understand its defining characteristics from an historical approach that takes into account the varying economic models that shaped rural areas in Ecuador since 1964, thus shaping the first Agricultural reform. Due to a series of economic reforms and structural changes that have affected rural agriculture areas, there has been a strong tendency towards the modernization based on advances towards a modernization in favor of large food industries, causing changes in the lives of the peasants and their forms of social and political organization. By applying a sociological perspective with specific terminology that identifies the forms of organization, analyzes the political strategies, and understands the political ideologies, one can better understand the perspective of the peasant community. This qualitative investigation utilizes an ethnographic approach of combining structural data with observation and interviews of the entities that influence and conform the political organizational process of the peasants. In conclusion, there exists a strong presence of the state, both federally and locally (municipal) that limits the peasants political action, creating a dependent-cliental relationship of the peasants with the state. There levels of organization are based upon solving daily necessities because of their complex subaltern class conditions, generating a political potential that allows them to resist in front of determined conflicts like the presents of mining activity in their terroir’s. All though, as a limit, it does not allow them to question de political model they live in or the forms of capital exploitation present in the rural areas.