Repensar la ‚Revolución del Poncho‘: Activismo católico y políticas de representación en el espacio andino del Ecuador (1955 – 1988)

The research project analyzes the influence of liberation theology on the emergence and transformation of social movements in Ecuador from a comparative and transnational perspective. Based on the interdisciplinary approach, the project focuses on the role of the ecclesiastical discourses at a local and regional level, taking into account both the debates during the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent episcopal conferences in Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1974). While there have been historical and anthropological studies on the emergence of liberation theology as well as its spread throughout Latin America, few academics have analyzed the concrete influence of liberationist discourses on the creation and transformation of social movements. Studies on indigenous movement, on the other hand, have often focused on their heydays in the 1990s, thus ignoring their origins in the peasant struggles for land reform starting in the early 1960s. This doctoral dissertation is based on the hypothesis that the liberationist clergy had a crucial influence on the emergence of social movements as well as the transformation of their claimed identities in terms of class and ethnicity from the 1960s up until the 1980s. The outcome of this case study dealing with Ecuador will be particularly revelatory in comparison to the second case study conducted within this SNF project, dealing with the Peruvian Andes.