AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

32 JONATHAN CONNOR
mestizo landowners. As production became progressively less governable
and less profitable, certain hacienda owners simply “gave up trying to
preserve a particular regime of resource and social control, and sold their
land to Quechua people” (Bebbington, 2007: 59). Peasants lacking the
funds to acquire these lands themselves were frequently supported by
NGOs and churches—collaborations that facilitated the transfer of the
remaining hacienda land (Bebbington, 2000: 512). The result was a relatively
equitable distribution of agricultural land throughout the canton.
In addition to large-scale land redistribution, these early peasant struggles
also helped to consolidate the region’s intercommunity federations,
known in Ecuador as second-level organizations, or OSGs (Cameron,
2003: 170). According to Carroll and Bebbington (2000: 214), an OSG is
“a system of regional or multi-communal cooperation”. It operates at the
meso level, establishing various internal and external linkages. Internal
linkages include neighbor or kin-based networks, as well as intercommunity
cooperation and support. External linkages refer to higher-level
institutional linkages, such as the OSG’s relationship with state agencies,
municipal and regional linkages, and relations between the OSG and civil
society organizations or NGOs (Carroll and Bebbington, 2000). The
aims and activities of OSGs can vary considerably. Some are more politically
oriented and are primarily concerned with protecting and advancing
the concerns of their members. Other OSGs act more as economic and
developmental organizations, preferring to undertake livelihood initiatives
and to facilitate the provision of local social services. In a context
of state ‘rollback’ and privatization, these second-level federations can
provide low-income households with vital economic and social services,
often collaborating with NGOs and other development agents. However,
many OSGs combine both political and economic activities. In this
sense, their fundamental role “is to recapture dignity and voice in the
political realm and to capture income flows and employment opportunities
in the economic sphere” (Carroll and Bebbington, 2000: 227).
In Guamote, these supracommunity federations played a leading role
in transforming local governance structures during the 1990s. As their
organizational capacity grew, they became increasingly involved in the
canton’s municipal affairs. During the 1980s, Guamote’s OSGs began
nominating and supporting indigenous candidates for positions on the
municipal council. In 1992, they succeeded in electing the canton’s first
indigenous mayor, and by 1996, they had effectively ended the mestizo