Cracking the Capitalist Code: Archaeology, Resistance and the Historical Present in Ecuador

The CONIAE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) continuously critiques the global capitalist neoliberal structure. Similarly, this Indigenous critique is embodied in the projects studying the past in the Ecuadorian territory, particularly in the research of the gendered/sexual relations of the Enchaquirados during the pre-Hispanic period. This article builds upon this ethnohistorical research to show how these noncapitalist forms of economic, political, and gendered/sexual relationships continued to develop and evolve alternative forms of agency, livelihood and resistance. In Engabao (one of Ecuador’s many rural coastal communities), like in the CONAIE’S discourse, these cultural alternatives to the capitalist system tie this historical past to an agent-filled resistant Indigenous political present.