The Construction of a Ventriloquist's Image: Liberal Discourse and the ‘Miserable Indian Race’ in Late 19th-Century Ecuador

Abstract

In the image, the body loses its corporeal reality; in the rite, the non-corporeal becomes flesh.

Octavio Paz (1969: 120)

How are images constructed from one of Ecuador's political discourses? This article analyses: (1) the transition in 1857 from a state-centred form of administration of indigenous populations (the tribute system) to a decentralised form in the hands of private and local powers which effectively rendered these populations invisible; (2) the ensuing power-game between Conservatives and Liberals which aimed to forge a symbolic analogue of the indian and create a political field; (3) the manner in which the Liberal Revolution (1895) implanted a ‘ventriloquist's’ political representation which became a channel for indian resistance; (4) the research problems which ‘invisibility’ of the indians and the ‘ventriloquist's’ voice pose for historians.