Ecuador: racial injustices wrought by neoliberal urban policies

Revanchist Urbanism Heads South:
The Regulation of Indigenous Beggars
and Street Vendors in Ecuador
Kate Swanson
Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow, UK;
kate.swanson@ges.gla.ac.uk
——-
Abstract:
Much of the discussion surrounding neoliberal urbanism has been empirically
grounded in the North. This paper shifts the discussion south to focus on the regulation of indigenous street vendors and beggars in the Andean nation of Ecuador. Inspired by zero tol-erance policies from the North, the cities of Quito and Guayaquil have recently initiated urban
regeneration projects to cleanse the streets of informal workers, beggars, and street children. In
this paper, I explore the particular and pernicious ways in which these neoliberal urban policies
affect indigenous peoples in the urban informal sector. Grounded in the literature on space, race
and ethnicity in the Andes, I argue that Ecuador’s particular twist on revanchism is through
its more transparent engagement with the project of blanqueamiento or “whitening”. I further argue that Ecuador’s “refinement” of revanchist urban policies only works to displace already marginalised individuals and push them into more difficult circumstances. Read Full Paper – pdf

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