Ecuador’s indigenous political project. Convergences and divergences with its political environment

This paper addresses the contradictions between the indigenous political project in Ecuador and of those projects of both the central government and the external actors. The promotion of collective rights has arisen as a central claim of the indigenous groups who aim to participate in the definition of the national economic and politic development model facing ambiguous opponents. This complex interaction is analyzed in order to reveal how an apparent convergence of discourses around the promotion of decentralization and participative democracy hides a huge diversity of social and political change projects.