Brainstorm Week 8 - Clarissa Lunday

Last week, during class, we spoke with two Ecuadorian hip-hop artists about their music and how they use it speak on issues of racism, violence, and colonialism. Our readings this week really relate to this. First, in 2008 the Ecuadorian Constitution granted inalienable rights to nature (Rankin). While this was a move that has never been seen before, there were many contradictions to this in two ways: (1) the struggles that Afro-Ecudorians and Indigenous peoples face and (2) the other laws and policies the state has passed (Walsh). The feminista movement and the Indigenous movement in Ecuador shows how these contradictions are affecting people. Walsh writes that "the real agenda of these institutions [like the World Bank] and polices is a re-colonization of land/territories and their natural resources" (p. 62). Walsh used the Miners Law and Water Law as examples of this re-colonization and noted that since 2009, 189 Indigenous leaders in Ecuador who protested these laws were accused of terrorism.

A quote that stood out to me in Walsh's article was, "The function of women and men then, besides the social, is to mediate between the divine and the inanimate, take care of the natural environment, including the land, rivers, waters, animals, and all visible and no visible beings" (p. 59). When it comes to covivencia and Chicanxfuturism, this function is remembered. The collective community in the movements give voice to Pacha Mama by using music, social media, or art. The feminista movement and the Indigenous movement "mediate between the divine and the inanimate" to show us how important it is that we respect Mother Earth. If the COVID crisis has taught us anything, it should be this.