Brainstorm Week 8 - Emily Eckey

The article “Ecuador Constitution Grants Rights to Nature" discusses how Ecuador was the first Constitution to grant inalienable rights to the environment. One passage of the Constitution states that “nature ’has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution’”(Revkin). From the article, I learned that the Constitution was written with input from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a group providing legal assistance to governments and communities trying to mesh human affairs and the environment. This connects to the practices of resilience that reside in La Pachamama because we must fight the exploitation of the environment in order to coexist with Mother Earth and live in harmony, as demonstrated with the concept of convivencia. This resilience practice of fighting the mistreatment of the environment also mirrors the resilience of Chicanxfuturism. In “Afro And Indigenous Life-Visions In/And Politics. (De)Colonial Perspectives In Bolivia And Ecuador,” Catherine Walsh states that “In both indigenous and Afrodescendant cosmovisions, Mother Earth is central” (Walsh 56). These groups acknowledge the importance of the environment and Mother Earth in our world and seek to promote this practice. Walsh also writes, “Indigenous and Afro ‘cosmo’ or life–visions are holistic in that they conceive life and living with regard to the totality, unite the material and spiritual and promote a practice of co–existence and “living with” across difference” (Walsh 56). The concept of convivencia is observed in this article because Ecuador is reaching toward a better future where communities can thrive and live with differences.