We are Q

Nope, this is not an obituary in memory of "Q" who passed away in the last James Bond movie. "We are Q" is the new slogan that the city of Quito has launched a few months ago, and now features many billboards, bus stops and several big public events. For some weird reason, it just occurred to me recently how this slogan contrasts with the well-known city-phrase of Amsterdam: I amsterdam. At first sight, it clearly epitomises the contrast between the 'traditional' individualism of modern, Western society, and the socially-oriented, inclusive society the Ecuadorian government is constructing with its vision of the Good Living.

With all the benefits of the new Quito, why would you loose your sense of humour when they rob you on the bus?

Of course, this Good Living society is work in progress. As recent as 2008 the Ecuadorians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, embracing the foundations of a new society that is to include all cultures and nations, as well as grant rights to nature (the first and only constitution in the world to do so). This implies a whole new change in the lives of the Ecuadorians, contrasting firmly with decades of political chaos and social instability. Hence the need to accompany all these changes towards the good living with big campaigns nudging people into a different kind of behaviour. No more encouraging street children to beg by giving them money, no more hopping on and off buses wherever you feel like, no more speeding (or you risk a hefty fine and three days in jail).

In a similar vein, the municipality of Quito is accompanying its city revival projects with a campaign to promote ownership of the revamped Quito. As the billboards go, being "quiteño" equals humour, respect, public spaces, culture, courtesy and living together. After all, we all are Quito! Are we really? All of us? Benign though the rationale for this campaign may be, it can also have very far-reaching unintended consequences, ending up excluding the very people who are most in need of inclusion.

The goal of the "We are Q"-campaign is clearly to create a new collective imaginary, that unites all the citizens of the city and encourages them to embrace their renewed urban environment, treat it and its citizens with respect, and elevate their urban life to a new, more cultured level. After all, the municipality has been investing a lot to make this new life possible. However, this kind of campaign smells a lot like the "Asian values" debates, where a created vision of united and harmonious society is imposed onto an ethnically mixed constituency, aspiring to undo diversity for the benefit of social order. The people identifying themselves with Quito, will be the middle class and those segments of the lower class that have access to the new services offered by the city. They will make the new collective imaginary their own, moving up to a new level of urban experience facilitated by the city's mayor and his crew.

In fact, the auto-identification with this new life-style will strongly induce them not to pay attention to all that goes wrong and all those excluded from this new society, for whatever reason that may be. The same goes of course to the national societal project, which deliberately uses the we-tense on its billboards ("Avanzamos patria" - We are moving forward, motherland) over a general declaration of the country's progress. In so doing, it adds to the creation of a new collective imaginary that makes citizens associate the governmental efforts with a better, more harmonious and prosperous life. At the same time, it helps the government to justify the exclusion of groups and individuals that do not fit the new Ecuadorian dream and model society, be it for wanting to express critical opinions or for living atop of vast oil and mineral reserves. The majority, however, will not take notice of these political inconsistencies, enjoying the Good Living at the deliberately marginalised cost of those 'dissidents' and 'outcasts'. Ecuadorian public opinion, shaken not stirred.

You can't drink gold, so just swallow bullets

Last week, Ollanta Humala's government has marked another black page in the history of Peru. In a country that has been marred by social conflict as a result of mismanaged extractive industries - a sad continuum across governments of the past two decades - five people have been killed during a peaceful protest march in the town of Celendín, Cajamarca province. One day later, some 20 combat-armed policemen threw Marco Arana, one of the figureheads of an indefinite strike against a huge mining project planned in the province, brutally off a bench in a park of Cajamarca city. He was forcefully grabbed by the head (a jaw was broken), pushed to the ground, hit several times in the kidneys (having passed a severe kidney operation earlier this year) and then abducted to prison [see video below, in Spanish], where he was held without charge and further beaten. His lawyer was refused due access to her client by police officers who could not present any credentials, upon which the officers maltreated Arana's lawyer as well. Apparently, Arana's only crime was to have worn a cardboard sign around his neck saying "Yes to life, No to gold" in a public space during a state of emergency.

Once again, peaceful protest has shown how powerful it can be, considering that the regrettable answer of a seemingly powerless government has been to resort to lethal violence. To be honest, it really takes my breath away to see how far governments are willing to go to safeguard investment commitments made by extractive industries in a region that has patently objected such environmentally damaging investments in its livelihoods. Even more so, when the current president was elected by promising Cajamarca's electorate to respect their decision not to support mining projects in their region, for "you cannot drink gold, so it is of utmost importance to protect natural water sources such as your beautiful lakes and prevent their contamination".

All these lofty promises have been mysteriously forgotten, as President Humala is fully committed to have the infamous Conga mining project started, a Newmont Mining Corporation investment that will affect four precious lakes - essential sources of clean water for the nearby communities - by converting them into depositories for toxic mining waste. Of course, promises have been made to treat the water and turn it into Peru's purest drinking water, but evidence of such practices are scant, not to say inexistent, in the country. Even one of Peru's star projects in terms of social and environmental responsibility turned out to be a fraud, deforming newborn lamas and contaminating nearby rivers.

What strikes me most is how the government has unequivocally sided with private industry, instead of being the gatekeeper that veils over the balance between the public's and the private sector's interests. How else to explain that national police officers are being transported by buses from the Yanacocha mine company (daughter holding of Newmont Mining)? Human rights violations as the ones described above, committed in plain daylight, in front of twenty cameras, while the region's provincial and local authorities have been drawn away from the scene to the capital, do not occur unless they are sanctioned from the highest level downwards.

I cannot even figure how these policies go down, from top government figures into the heads of the national police. It sure is no bed-time story material, judging from the police man's reaction to a Cajamarca inhabitant asking him why the police is treating citizens in such a horrible, irrespectful way: "Because you are a bunch of dogs, you son of a bitch!" And then to figure that this has been happening at a far wider scale over the past year in Syria, under the all-seeing eye of the international community, as world leaders are belt-tightening their way through domestic crises and smother their electorate with election-proof foreign policies...

For those interested, here is more information on the criminalisation of social protest and Marco Arana, and the social conflict as a result of the planned Conga Mining project. There is also a petition running on Avaaz, in case you would like to support the communities of Cajamarca in their struggle.

Juan Montalvo's good ruler

Ok, I promise, I will stop writing about this subject for some time now, but it was just too much of a coincidence yesterday night, when I was reading a chapter in The Ecuador Reader by Juan Montalvo, a 19th century writer from Ecuador, and one of Latin America's greatest literary minds. In his essay On the Spirit of Association, he writes the following two passages which struck me in the light of recent events:

The good ruler has a clear conscience and does not lift his head in fear when he hears that a certain number of people have gathered together.

The government that sees only danger in whatever occurs in the Republic is a Polyphemus, having only one eye: a cruel and villainous giant, he seizes his guests and devours them; a formidable son of the earth, he makes all tremble. But no one lets pass the opportunity to throw a stone at him and, when the moment comes, to deprive him of his sight.

Juan Montalvo, detractor and wise insulter (source)