Biopoder y leyes de seguridad y soberanía alimentaria: Ecuador y Venezuela

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Organic Law on Food Sovereignty Regime of Ecuador and the Organic Law on Food Security and Sovereignty of Venezuela. The theoretical framework is based on Michel Foucault’s lectures in 1976 and published under the title: Society Must Be Defended, where the well-known inversion of the statement “Right to Kill” to the “Right to Make Live and Let Die” is found. The first statement expresses that, before the eighteenth century , the sovereign power possesed the capacity of taking people`s life or allowing them to live. Meanwhile, the second statement indicates that since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the State applies its power by means of enhancing people`s life, in order to make it more productive. Thus, biopower is inagurated. In the case of the two aforementioned utterances, the desire to overcome the contingencies of human life and ensuring food safety, can warn that the state actually aims to ratify its power. This contitutes the contribution of this paper.