Conference Agenda

This paper reflects on the interactions and solidarity networks among Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities to maintain self-sustainability and food sovereignty against capitalist and colonialist policies of cultural homogenization. It highlights the aspects of food sovereignty and forest cultivation that persist in the present, initially following Indigenous practices and, later, African and Afro-descendant practices. It will present a comparative analysis of such practices in food consumption, especially vegetables, among the communities of the Atlantic Forest in São Paulo (Brazil) and the Afro-Ecuadorian ancestral territories of the Chota Valley and Esmeraldas (Ecuador).

The legacy of colonial tensions fueled by resource extraction continues to affect numerous aspects of Indigenous-Nation state relationships in Colombia. Franco (2017) points out these tensions concerning dominant academic interpretations of material heritage in Cauca, a territory impacted by an extensive history of armed violence against Indigenous and rural inhabitants. Between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Nasa Indigenous community in Colombia's Cauca region pioneered the peaceful solidarity movement known as the Guardia Indígena as a “life plan” to secure autonomy and self-determination in their territories (Sandoval Forero, 2008, p. 61). Their struggle for peace-building amidst the backdrop of the Colombian nation-state has prompted a growing solidarity movement, inspiring other Indigenous, Campesino, and Afro-descendant communities to form their own Guardias. This paper delves into the interplay of extractivism, paramilitarism, and material heritage in Cauca to consider how Indigenized historical archaeological investigation (Piñacué Achicué 2009) can contribute to human rights processes.

Sugar mills epitomize a system rooted in oppression through forced labor, revealing dynamics of negotiation and resistance against colonial power (Mintz 1995). Situated in the Ancestral Territory of the Afro-Ecuadorian population of the Chota Valley, this collaborative research examines sugar production in Mascarilla in the early 20th century, seeking to elucidate its history within the exploitative huasipungo (debt-peonage) system. This region, initially shaped by the colonial hacienda formation under the Jesuit order's enterprise, laid the foundations for sugar production in the Andes of Ecuador (Coronel 1991), which the historical context of Ecuadorian industrial development in the 20th century aimed to modernize. Archival and historical research reveals how coercion and resistance shaped life and labor under hacienda rule, while tracing the plantation economy's legacies in communal memory and spatial practices today, shedding light on marginalized narratives and prompting reflection on the past's impact on the present.

Throughout the 20th century the predominant North American economies have developed bureaucratic regulatory systems for reducing and mitigating impacts to landscapes and the environment. These systems are meant to strike a balance between absolute economic development and absolute preservation. While many seemingly progressive policies developed were produced, a deeper examination of them will demonstrate how through these policies our understanding of resources has been apprehended by a dominant economic ideology. This paper will demonstrate how present economic systems constrain human relations with landscapes and resources in the interest of reproducing oppressive economic systems. It will in-turn demonstrate how global markets and extractive enterprises have historically limited the capacities of distinct groups to meaningfully exercise agency. These ideological frameworks produced by an industrial legacy will offer perspectives on how communities are forced to function with both environments and territories in ways which contradict their cultural needs and interests.