Este artículo teoriza las relaciones entre la ciudadanía y el Estado ecuatoriano durante el primer año y medio de la pandemia COVID-19. Basado en una metodología cualitativa de entrevistas, las perspectivas de los participantes revelan relaciones contradictorias con el gobierno características de los estados de seguridad neoliberales, pero también de patrones (pos)coloniales persistentes de exclusión racista y clasista: por un lado, un sentido de abandono del Estado, particularmente en salud pública y educación; y por otro lado, la fuerza represiva del Estado en su uso de medidas militares y policiales y de estados de excepción. Proponemos el término estado disperso para referirnos a estas tendencias opuestas de simultánea ausencia y presencia estatal. Argumentamos que las respuestas ciudadanas a la ausencia estatal incluyen cierta aceptación del retorno de las funciones educativas y sanitarias a comunidades, hogares e individuos, provocando de todas maneras nuevas formas de adaptación y creatividad cultural. En cuanto a la presencia represiva del Estado, los participantes expresaron apoyo considerable hacia medidas estatales autoritarias, frecuentemente justificadas por discursos esencialistas sobre el carácter de la ciudadanía nacional.

Fuel subsidies have been an enduring policy in Ecuador’s political and economic history. Given their lack of targeting and high opportunity cost, they have been amply criticized. As of 2017, the Ecuadorian government started a budget consolidation plan that so far has involved seven reforms to subsidies policy in less than seven years. In late 2019, in response to social unrest motivated by a temporal elimination of fuel subsidies, the government pledged to study new targeting mechanisms for this policy to mitigate the impact on the most vulnerable sectors. This work seeks to contribute to that effort by evaluating the macroeconomic effects of these subsidies and serving as a guideline for targeting. A computable general equilibrium model is used to assess counterfactual scenarios. The results suggest that by implementing progressiveness and productive linkage criteria, targeting household final consumption and intermediate consumption is a feasible way to reduce the reforms’ negative effects.

Thirty-one individuals buried at Salango, a Machalilla phase fishing village, constitute the only significant Middle Formative funerary assemblage so far recovered for the coast of Ecuador. Our description and discussion of the burials in the context of the nature, location, and history of the settlement and a comparison with preceding coastal Valdivia and contemporary highland Cotocollao funerary practices show that, although they represent a new general tradition, Machalilla burial rituals at Salango reflected specific social conditions and concern with community identity. In particular, the elaborate burial of an adult female not only points to the continuing authority of women in coastal Ecuadorian Formative communities but also expresses the spiritual and economic importance of the sea for Machalilla phase Salango.

Allophane is a very fine-grained clay mineral which is especially common in Andosols. Its importance in soils derives from its large reactive surface area. Owing to its short-range order, allophane cannot be quantified by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) directly. It is commonly dissolved from the soil by applying extraction methods. In the present study the standard extraction method (oxalate) was judged to be unsuitable for the quantification of allophane in a soil/clay deposit from Ecuador, probably because of the large allophane content (>60 wt.%). This standard extraction method systematically underestimated the allophane content but the weakness was less pronounced in samples with small allophane contents. In the case of allophane-rich materials, the Rietveld XRD technique, using an internal standard to determine the sum of X-ray amorphous phases, is recommended if appropriate structural models are available for the other phases present in the sample. The allophane (+imogolite) content is measured by subtracting the amount of oxalate-soluble phases (e.g. ferrihydrite). No correction would be required if oxalate-soluble Fe were incorporated in the allophane structure. The present study, however, provides no evidence for this hypothesis. Mössbauer and scanning electron microscopy investigations indicate that goethite and poorly ordered hematite are the dominant Fe minerals and occur as very fine grains (or coatings) being dispersed in the cloud-like allophane aggregates.

Allophane is known to adsorb appreciable amounts of water, depending on ambient conditions. The mass fraction of the sample attributed to this mineral thus changes accordingly; the choice of a reference hydration state is, therefore, a fundamental factor in the quantification of allophane in a sample. Results from the present study revealed that (1) drying at 105ºC produced a suitable reference state, and (2) water adsorption has no effect on quantification by XRD analysis.

In Ecuador, DINAGE (known today as the Servicio Geológico Nacional) and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources have discovered a huge allophane deposit covering an area of >4000 km2. This study presents the results from an investigation of a 16-m thick vertical sequence from this deposit, supposedly the weathering product of two different volcanic ash deposits. In particular, the distribution of alkali metals within the uppermost layer indicates that the weathering process is still ongoing.

According to the mineralogical composition, an allophane-rich layer (allophane facies) could be distinguished from the underlying halloysite-rich layer (halloysite facies). A 2-m thick transition zone is characterized by the presence of gibbsite and intermediate specific surface area values. Only a few imogolite fibers could be identified (by scanning electron microscopy), indicating the dominance of allophane over imogolite in the allophane facies. Single allophane particles were investigated by atomic force microscopy, though this method was less accurate than transmission electron microscopy with respect to the determination of the primary particle diameter. Carbon isotope analysis (14C) suggested an age of ∼20,000 y for the allophane layer.

Within the allophane facies, a 4-m thick layer occurs containing 70–80 wt.% allophane with an N2-BET specific surface area of >300 m2/g. Based on infrared and energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction measurements, an Al/Si ratio of 1.3–1.4 was established for this allophane, which is between Al-rich and Si-rich allophane. The allophane layer may be of economic value due to the large allophane content, the small amount of organic matter, and the significant thickness of the deposit.

We investigated the association of household food insecurity (HFI) with developmental delays in 36–59-month-old preschool children (n 7005) using cross-sectional data from the 2018 Ecuadorian National Health and Nutrition Survey. HFI was assessed with the Food Insecurity Experience Scale and developmental delays with the Early Childhood Development Index. Log-binomial regression models estimated the association of HFI with global (overall) developmental delay (GDD) and delays in four individual developmental domains, adjusting for covariates. Nearly half of the children lived in households with marginal (24⋅5 %) or moderate-severe HFI (21⋅7 %). Eighteen percent were identified with GDD. Delays in the individual domains of literacy-numeracy, social-emotional, physical and cognitive development were identified for 64, 21⋅5, 3⋅3 and 3⋅1 %, respectively. GDD was more likely among preschool children from households with marginal (aPR = 1⋅29; 95 % C.I. = 1⋅10, 1⋅49) and moderate-severe HFI (aPR = 1⋅30; 95 % C.I. = 1⋅11, 1⋅51). Social-emotional development delays were also more likely among those from households with marginal (aPR = 1⋅36; 95 % C.I. = 1⋅19, 1⋅56) and moderate-severe HFI (aPR = 1⋅33; 95 % C.I. = 1⋅15, 1⋅54) different from the other three domains. Several other potentially modifiable risk (violent discipline, maternal depressive symptoms) and protective factors (adequate child stimulation, higher maternal education, handwashing with soap/detergent) were also independently associated with GDD and/or literacy-numeracy and cognitive delays. Our findings suggest that HFI is an independent risk factor for GDD and social-emotional developmental delays in Ecuadorian preschoolers. They underscore the importance of strengthening and expanding poverty reduction, food security and early childhood development policies and interventions to improve the opportunities for children to achieve their full developmental potential.

The Hacienda El Progreso functioned as an important Ecuadorian agro-industrial enterprise in the late nineteenth century. Operating out of San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos archipelago, the plantation exported refined sugar, coffee, cattle products, and other goods to national and international markets. From its beginnings in the 1860s, the plantation established the first permanent human settlement on the island, and long after its demise in the 1930s, it continues to exert an important influence in local culture. Contemporary communities of San Cristóbal are shaping their identities based on the historical importance of the hacienda. The summer of 2018 was our last field season. From its start, the Historical Ecology of the Galápagos Islands project involved close participation with communal authorities and town leaders to investigate the island's human past. In this article, we discuss legacy and services of our project in the contemporary setting of Galápagos. We examine the relevance and contributions of our project to education, heritage policies, and the local economy. We discuss lessons learned from interactions and collaborations between archaeologists and the local community, and we evaluate the consequences of implementing an archaeological project on a remote environmental sanctuary where interest in human history can collide with the agendas of nature conservation and a lucrative ecotourism industry.

In 2008, Ecuador recognized rights of nature (RoN) in its Constitution. Since then, RoN have been relied upon in judicial decisions 55 times in Ecuador. Following years of ad hoc treatment of RoN by Ecuador's government and courts, its Constitutional Court selected various cases to establish binding jurisprudence in respect of RoN. In doing so, the Constitutional Court and various provincial courts in Ecuador have clarified the content of RoN, including specific criteria for determining RoN violations and the relationship between RoN and other constitutional rights, including community and economic rights related to development. Moreover, the courts are imposing sanctions on RoN violators, including the state and powerful commercial sectors. This article shows how Ecuadorian court decisions are changing RoN from a vague, abstract concept into a set of specific standards for how to balance RoN with various human rights and existing environmental law in order to implement sustainable development in an integrated and holistic manner that does not sacrifice ecosystem functioning. In doing so, the article contributes to the emerging literature on how new environmental law norms are constructed as they are put into practice, as well as the important role that judges play as norm entrepreneurs.

Could an individual’s perception of the possibility of a future ecological crisis be linked to their level of political trust? Studies of environmental attitudes have identified political trust as an important predictor of support for environmental taxation or risk perceptions surrounding specific local environmental hazards, but less is known about its role when environmental risks are perceived as diffuse and distant. Using original survey data from Ecuador, this article finds that political distrust predicts heightened ecological crisis perceptions and that higher educational attainment intensifies this relationship. A follow-up analysis of the AmericasBarometer’s Ecuador survey shows that political distrust also predicts higher concern about climate change. These findings suggest that when evaluations of political institutions reflect perceptions of environmental risks, individuals blame the government for environmental failures. The implications of this study are particularly relevant for political institutions in developing economies, where the public sector often spearheads development efforts.

Research on ecosystem services (ES) is heavily concentrated on ecological and economic indicators and values, with a much more limited understanding of communities’ dependence on cultural ES. That body of research is also typically focused on current generations and generates limited insights into the intergenerational dynamics of ES dependence. We use a survey of six palm harvesting communities in coastal western Ecuador to assess the livelihood dependence of four generations on 17 ES provided by the ivory palm, a near-threatened keystone species in Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama. Despite the historical prominence of the use of the ivory palm’s nut, we find that dependence is highest for regulating, supporting, and cultural ES, a result that holds across generations. We find a negative association between the current generation’s dependence on the ivory palm’s provisioning ES and that of their grandparents, who experienced the historical boom of the ivory palm’s nut exports. In contrast, respondents expect the future generation’s dependence to be positively associated with that of the grandparents’ generation. We find that provisioning ES have a complementary relationship with cultural ES and a substitutive relationship with supporting ES. Relationships across ES categories can be reversed from one generation to the next.

Racism in social media is ubiquitous, persisting online in ways unique to the internet while also reverberating from the world offline. When will racist frames activate in social media networks? This article argues that social media users engage with racist content when they perceive a threat to the in-group status, selecting frames that serve as markers to separate the in-group identity from the out-group identity. Racialized frames serve as these markers, and the perceived threats to the in-group status make racist content cognitively congruent. Evidence of this behavior is provided by examining Twitter activity during the indígena protests in Ecuador in October 2019. A novel, multistep machine-learning process detects racist tweets, and an interrupted time series analysis shows how events that can be perceived as threats to the in-group activate racist content in some social media communities.

Frequent ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is consistently associated with poor health outcomes. Little is known about UPF intake during early childhood and its effects on growth. We assessed UPF in relation to child anthropometry, bone maturation, and their nutrition profiles in a rural Ecuadorian community. Covariate-adjusted regression models estimated relationships between UPF intake from a 24-hour Food Frequency Questionnaire and three outcomes: linear growth, weight status and bone maturation. Nutrient Profiling Models (NPM) evaluated a convenience sample of UPF (n 28) consumed by children in the community. In this cohort (n 125; mean age = 33·92 (sd 1·75) months), 92·8 % consumed some form of UPF the previous day. On average, children consuming UPF four to twelve times per day (highest tertile) had lower height-for-age z-scores than those with none or a single instance of UPF intake (lowest tertile) (β = –0·43 [se 0·18]; P = 0·02). Adjusted stunting odds were significantly higher in the highest tertile relative to the lowest tertile (OR: 3·07, 95 % CI 1·11, 9·09). Children in the highest tertile had significantly higher bone age z-scores (BAZ) on average compared with the lowest tertile (β = 0·58 [se 0·25]; P = 0·03). Intake of savoury UPF was negatively associated with weight-for-height z-scores (β = –0·30 [se 0·14]; P = 0·04) but positively associated with BAZ (β = 0·77 [se 0·23]; P < 0·001). NPM indicated the availability of unhealthy UPF to children, with excessive amounts of saturated fats, free sugars and sodium. Findings suggest that frequent UPF intake during early childhood may be linked to stunted growth (after controlling for bone age and additional covariates), despite paradoxical associations with bone maturation.