Rural Territorial Dynamics. a Latin American Perspective Insights from Ecuador

A left-of-centre government wrestles with the question of what it means to build a more socialist economy and society, while accepting that private enterprise will carry out the bulk of economic activity, co-ordinated in relatively free markets and an open economy — Ecuador uses the US dollar as its currency. There is an intense sense of having emerged from either the ‘long night’ or the ‘short twilight’ — depending on interpretation — of neo-liberalism. In an intriguing exchange in the seminar, the failure of the neo-liberal model was seen as having interfered with an Ecuadorian tradition of pragmatic negotiation in favour of rigid rules that simply did not fit the context and offended local norms: a good example of ‘institutional monocropping’. While a fascinating hypothesis, it does raise questions as to how well the previous pragmatism led to economic efficiency or political stability, let alone to social equity.