Farmland market and deterritorialization. A view from the ecuadorian Andes

Deterritorialization is a process that makes it impossible for rural populations to control their territories. In this article, we analyze how the land market was progressively transformed into a favorable axis for the development of agrarian capitalism during the 20th century, diminishing the possibilities for land resources to remain regulated by pre-capitalist forms of exchange and local relationships, and at the same time generating diverse destructuring effects in an Andean territory in southern Ecuador. A methodological strategy combining quantitative and qualitative techniques was used to develop the research. In this territory, a series of complex phenomena related to the advance of a clear process of deterritorialization are combined: territory revaluation from new economic and productive dynamics, loss of identity and original culture, change in the rural landscape, and expulsion of the local population towards neighboring cities.