Cultural Studies

ISSN: 0950-2386 (Print) 1466-4348 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20

Space and architecture of extractivism in the

Ecuadorian Amazon region

Alejandra Espinosa Andrade

To cite this article: Alejandra Espinosa Andrade (2017): Space and architecture of extractivism in
the Ecuadorian Amazon region, Cultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2017.1303430

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CULTURAL STUDIES, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2017.1303430

Space and architecture of extractivism in the

Ecuadorian Amazon region
Alejandra Espinosa Andrade
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

ABSTRACT
This article explores spatial and cultural transformations that are taking place in
the Ecuadorian Amazon region under an extractivist development model.
Taking as a case study the Millennium Communities project Playas de
Cuyabeno, it analyses from a critical perspective the origins and
configurations of a space and architecture of extractivism in the Amazon
forest. Discursively, the Ecuadorian legal framework and authorities claim to
be distant from neoliberal tendencies and to promote the conservation of
nature and the achieving of Buen Vivir (‘Good Living’). In practice, however,
they are triggering and imposing an ideal of urbanity and a future city that
serves political purposes and happily coexists with oil extraction. Even if
Playas de Cuyabeno also reflects the elusive spirit of cultural practice and its
capacity to escape homogeneity by creating new forms of inhabiting the
designed spaces, it most insistently marks the complicity between the
authorities’ rhetoric of modernity/progress and their intention to discipline
the space and the subjects living in it.

KEYWORDS Extractivism; space; architecture; Buen Vivir; Amazon region; Millennium Communities

Introduction
To conceive of a space as a produced space (Lefebvre 1974) implies to critically
analyse the production of categories in which this space is read and decoded
in specific periods of time. Accordingly, in order to understand how spatial
transformations affect human interactions, it becomes necessary to assume
and reveal the dialectical relationship between people and their spatial sur-
roundings. The interstices, textures, gaps and voids of a defined space are
constituted by and constitute bodies that internally replicate the external con-
ditions of a political and social struggle (Vidler 1992). In that sense, every
society (and also, as Lefebvre argues, each mode of production) produces
its own space and material forms according to its interests and internal

CONTACT Alejandra Espinosa Andrade alejaespinosa@gmail.com

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDer-
ivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distri-
bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

dynamics. From that perspective, taking as a point of departure this concep-

tual approach towards space and focusing on the urban and cultural trans-
formations promoted by the State in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, the
aims of this article are threefold: first, to understand the model of develop-
ment and the political discourse underlying the urban planning process in
the Ecuadorian Amazon region; second, to describe the origins of the
project and the aesthetic of the constructions and third, to explore what I
call the space and architecture of extractivism, which is the amalgamation
of the political discourses sustaining the intervention, the transformation of
the space reflected in the aesthetic of the buildings and residencies con-
structed in the Amazon region and the responses of the inhabitants to the
new space.
My interest in the development of the Amazonian region started 15 years
ago when, visiting as a tourist and working with international organizations, I
had the opportunity to talk with ‘colonos’1 and indigenous inhabitants of
Amazon provinces. By then, their main concern was their feeling of invisibility
and abandonment by the State and the continuous marginalization from any
benefit of economic growth. During the following years, while working in
planning and territorial development, observing the increasing presence of
governmental authorities in the region finally led me to include the case of
the Millennium Communities (MCs) in my doctoral research. Following an
inductive model of research, I investigated the MCs project – the context,
the political discourse and the ideas of development related with this
region – for 15 years ago one year. I talked with key actors involved in the
project and finally, combined and contrasted this information with a visit to
the new houses. This case study is highly context dependent, therefore,
does not seek to find explanations, but to promote a better understanding
of the processes underlying spatial transformations, as well as to stimulate dis-
cussions between scholars and urban planners.

Political discourse and development

The MCs are small villages in Ecuador erected by the government of Rafael
Correa Delgado, in power since 2007. The first communities inaugurated
were Playas de Cuyabeno and Pañacocha, in October 2013 and January
2014. Both are located in the Amazon region (Sucumbios province), which
for many decades has been considered geopolitically important due to the
diversity and multiplicity of natural resources found there. The two commu-
nities were constructed on the lands of the Kichwa, which is 1 of the 10
ethnic indigenous groups coexisting in the region. Even if the physical size
of the MCs is relatively small (12.2 and 14.51 hectares, respectively), they
are only the first of at least 200 new communities the government plans to
construct in order to build a new Amazonia in the hydrocarbon and mining
 CULTURAL STUDIES 3

zones (Andes 2013). Due to the magnitude of the governmental intentions,

the first step to uncover the motivations and imaginaries underlying this
plan is to explore the two models of ‘development’ suggested by and
visible in this initiative, which overlap and interact with each other.
The first model reflected in the main characteristic of the MCs project is the
new extractivist model of development. While the old or conventional model
was based only on the exploitation of resources for the exportation and econ-
omic growth, in the new extractivist model the State and social aspects play a
key role in the productive process. The key characteristic of the new extracti-
vist model, which, significantly, has become the basis for policy development
by both neoliberal and progressive Latin American governments (Acosta
2013), is to present the exploitation of natural resources as providing immedi-
ate entry to the paradigms of progress, seen as based on centralized control
over the economy and on the implementation of ‘development projects’
(Gudynas 2013). Following this trend and focusing on the idea of social
improvement, the development of infrastructure was considered as one of
the main pillars for growth, progress and poverty alleviation during the first
term of Correa’s presidency in Ecuador, and the exploitation of natural
resources as the main source for financing this policy
Apart from the variety of facilities constructed by the government using
the revenues of the exploitation of natural resources, in the Ecuadorian
case, the new extractivist model is accompanied by a political discourse
centred on the construction of a positive imaginary towards the oil extraction,
perceiving it as a possibility for salvation. Such discourse has its basis in a long
history of exploitation and exclusion of the Ecuadorian Amazon provinces.
Approximately since the 1970s (the beginning of the ‘Texaco Era’), due to
the detection of oil, the region has been of geopolitical interest and subject
to invasion and control by oil companies and governments eager to push
forward oil extraction. Nevertheless, since the extraction started until the
beginning of the second millennium, the situation of the provinces in this
area had not improved significantly economically, socially or politically
(Bustamante and Jarrín 2005). The Ecuadorian population, moreover, has
had little or no influence on the process of extraction, while indigenous com-
munities have seen their livelihoods come under threat as they have been
marginalized and excluded in its wake. In terms of the environment, oil
spills, deforestation and epidemiological effects have been associated with
oil extraction, and many conflicts have emerged in response and opposition
to the continuing pollution in different parts of the Amazon region.2 As a
result, inhabitants of the Amazon provinces and intellectuals have called oil
exploitation and its consequences ‘the curse of oil’.
Due to this largely negative experience with oil exploitation, the current
political discourse is introducing a whole new conceptualization of oil extrac-
tion into the imaginary of Ecuadorian citizens by stressing the idea that
4 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

natural resources handled well are a blessing and not a curse (Correa 2013),
and by linking extraction with the possibility of a positive and radical
change of life in the Amazon region. For example, during the inaugural
speech in one of the MC’s, Correa and other authorities identified the commu-
nity as an example of the wonders that oil and mining can create when
managed with white hands (without corruption), while also emphasizing
that ‘now [the oil] is for everybody and not only for the groups in power’ (El
Telégrafo 2014).
The second development model sustaining the construction of the MC’s is
that of Buen Vivir and the ‘Rights of Nature’. From the beginning of its
mandate, the president’s political party Alianza Pais openly expressed its
opposition to the narrow idea of development coming from neoliberal con-
texts (based only in economic growth) and, after discussions with social
and indigenous movements, the Rights of Nature and the concept of Buen
Vivir were included in the Constitution of 2008. The notion of Buen Vivir
was taken from the indigenous Kichwa concept of Sumak Kawsay, which
alludes to a nonlinear notion of growth that is not based on the binary oppo-
sition of underdevelopment and development. Rather, Sumak Kawsay or Buen
Vivir is based on relationships of reciprocity and strong ties of mutual trust,
not only between humans but also between humans and nature (Calapucha
2012). Sumak Kawsay also alludes to knowledge about life that allows the
person and the community to take care of the environment which is in
perfect condition, well maintained, protected and free from pollution. Along-
side Sumak Kawsay, the Rights of Nature are also part of the Constitution of
2008, recognizing among others, that ‘Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is
reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence
and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, func-
tions and evolutionary processes’ (Ecuador. Constitution 2008 art.71).
With the introduction of this model of Sumak Kawsay and the Rights of
Nature, it seemed as though the relation between the government, the citi-
zens and nature would take another route, opening up a wide range of pos-
sibilities to rethink, plan and reinhabit the Amazonian space. Moreover, the
president emphasized the importance of preserving the cultural richness of
the ancestral groups in the MC’s, arguing that misery and poverty are not
part of the ‘folklore’ or ‘identity’ of the indigenous peoples. For him, thinking
that indigenous people could not live comfortably or receive a good edu-
cation represented ‘racist stereotypes disguised as a defense of ancestral
peoples’ (Correa 2013).
What has become clear from this discussion of the Ecuadorian political dis-
course and the two models of development, however, is their inherent incom-
patibility. The main problem with new extractivism is that it is part of an
ideology of development nurtured by ideas of Modernity, which, even
when trying to free itself from neoliberal legacies, is still obsessed with the
 CULTURAL STUDIES 5

idea of progress (Gudynas 2009). Moreover, it is liable to produce environ-

mental damages, which is one of the main reasons why this model has
been contested by strikes and protests against mining and oil exploitation
in biodiverse and legally protected territories in the Amazon region.3 Conse-
quently, it is far away from and in continuous tension with Sumak Kawsay and
the Rights of Nature proposed by the Ecuadorian Constitution. In the next
section, I will analyse in detail the case of Playas de Cuyabeno to characterize
the spatial dimensions of this tension and the configuration of what I call the
space and architecture of extractivism.

Violence and the modernity/coloniality legacy

The history behind the first MC project, Playas de Cuyabeno, is important
for understanding the struggles shaping the space. Apart from the political
discourse previously described, the origin of the construction of this MC
was marked by an act of violence. In October 2008, heavy machinery
owned by Petroamazonas (the national oil company), under military protec-
tion, entered Playas to start the oil exploration in the area. Taken by sur-
prise, the residents of Playas contested the intrusion and confronted the
military forces. Three hundred soldiers were mobilized by helicopters (El
Universo 2008) and teargas bombs and rubber bullets were used to
scatter the people. The intrusion was severely criticized by the community
residents for disrespecting the procedures and rights guaranteed by the
Constitution (Ecuador. Constitution 2008 art. 57 sec.7). Only after the mili-
tary intrusion was denounced in the media by diverse Amazonian indigen-
ous groups did the government promise to resolve the problem in
consultation with the affected communities (Montesdeoca, L. Vice director
of the Millennium School Victor Dávalos, personal communication, 18 Jan
2015).
Once the consultations had begun, residents of the community turned out
to be divided, with some wanting oil exploitation and others not. The govern-
ment suggested the construction of the MC as a compensation measure,
offering for that purpose a budget of 22 million dollars. Finally, the community
accepted to construct the project. According to Barcelino Noteno, the presi-
dent of the Kichwa community, this was at least in part because the MC
was seen as an opportunity to escape from isolation and marginalization,
and also because it was understood as a ‘must’ since sooner or later the
government would start to exploit the area anyway (Noteno, B., personal com-
munication, 19 Jan 2015). As he mentions:
After a big war, finally they convinced us to construct the city. [ … ] My intention
was good … I talked with the fellows and I told them: Considering that they will
exploit the petroleum here … they have to build us a good infrastructure, a
health center so we can die in a quality bed, otherwise only them can die in a
6 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

good bed, not like us, dropped somewhere with some disease. (Italics by the
author)

The community sought an opportunity of visibility and recognition as an indi-

genous people, which had historically being marginalized from the ‘develop-
ment’ and ‘progress’ of the rest of the country. Without full knowledge of the
consequences that this process of urbanization could represent, the fact of
having infrastructure similar to the ‘city’ was perceived as a step towards
recognition.
After the approval the government decided to build the MC in a period of
one year. The new MC was erected in the former community, which implied
the displacement of the inhabitants to temporal residencies until the works
were finished. With the construction of the houses the government demon-
strated the inhabitants that, thanks to the oil exploitation, it was producing
a radical change in the living conditions of people in the Amazon region.
Nevertheless, as one of the managers of the project argues (in a conversation
off the record), to construct a whole new community for the Kichwa group
technically was not necessary, because the Kichwa Community already had
houses that could had been only remodelled and improved with the installa-
tion of basic services. According to the same key actor, the construction of the
houses was realized mainly as part of a ‘Plan B’ related to the Yasuní-Ishpingo,
Tambococha and Tiputini initiative (Yasuní-ITT).4 This governmental initiative
aimed at keeping the oil in the ground to protect the Amazon region, but it
was put aside in 2013 as economically unaffordable, despite criticisms by citi-
zens, indigenous groups and non-governmental organizations.5 Since techni-
cally the construction of a whole new community was not that necessary, it
could be said that the construction mainly fulfilled the political purpose of
showing the benefits of the oil exploitation. At the end of 2013, the Millen-
nium Community Playas de Cuyabeno was inaugurated. With it, in the
middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon region a new model of urbanization was
presented as the future of the Amazonia and as one of the most important
benefits of oil extraction.
The modernist legacy is fundamental to explore the space created by the
MCs project. Indeed, it would be impossible to understand the MC’s without
evoking the architectural and urban projects of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, in which the design of the city was seen as a vision to be fulfilled
erasing any sign of the past. The modernist urban desire was ‘to construct a
theoretically water-tight formula to arrive at the fundamental principles of
modern town planning’ (Le Corbusier 1987, p. 328) and to construct rules
and principles that could be used in any system of modern town planning,
no matter where it was located. The new ideal city was built on a clear site,
an empty space, and constructed geometrically, using predetermined
 CULTURAL STUDIES 7

constructions designed independently of the particularities of the territory,

context, history or tradition.
The consequence of geometrical planning, as Le Corbusier argued, was
repetition and mass production: ‘repetition dominates everything. We are
unable to produce industrially at normal prices without it; it is impossible to
solve the housing problem without it’ (Le Corbusier 1987, p. 430). The moder-
nist house was conceived as a ‘house-machine’, which had to be practical and
emotionally satisfying, while also being designed for a succession of tenants:
the idea of the ‘old home’ disappears, and with it local architecture, etc., for labor
will shift about as needed, and must be ready to move, bag and baggage. The
words ‘bag and baggage’ will do very well to express the kind –the ‘type’- of fur-
niture needed. Standardized houses with standardized furniture. (Le Corbusier
1987, p. 444)

Thus, the idea of the modernist city was based on the control and separation
of zones, on similarity and on standardization.
In the Millennium Community Playas de Cuyabeno this modernist legacy is
present in different forms. The space of the MC’s, in terms of its architecture, is
reduced to a fixed and neutral background acting as a ‘mere container or
stage for the human drama’ in the terms Edward Soja used when talking
about Western social thought concerning space during the nineteenth
century (Soja 2006, p. xvi). As is clear from the name MCs, the project
evinces anxiety about the future, implying the idea of dragging the Amazo-
nian Region into the twenty-first century or the new millennium (which, para-
doxically, was already not new anymore at the time of construction) and
suggesting a desired future in which the Amazonian region is projected as
an urbanized territory. The first step towards this urbanized aspiration was
to destroy almost all the buildings that were previously part of the Kichwa
community such as some residential houses and a communal house for meet-
ings and social activities. In personal communication one of the managers of
Petroamazonas (who prefers to stay anonymous) argues that from the begin-
ning, the ringmaster was time and the priority was to build the new houses as
rapidly as possible. Consequently, factors such as the sustainability or the aes-
thetics of the buildings were not considered. Modular and standardized
design was used to reduce the cost and time of construction, as is character-
istic of other infrastructure projects implemented by the government (Correa
2012; Manager Petroamazonas, personal communication, 28 Feb 2015).
The result of this complicity between a political necessity and a race against
time was a new community – a new city – based on a homogenized and regi-
mented distribution of space (Figure 1). All the houses have a green roof and
are located in rows. They are configured in a symmetrical pattern: the distance
between the houses is about 15 meters and the main streets have right
angles, giving the impression of a military camp. More specifically, the
8 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

Figure 1. Millennium Community Playas de Cuyabeno 1. Photo taken by the author,

January, 2015 © (Alejandra Espinosa).

buildings evoke and follow an aesthetic and infrastructure similar to that of

the Petroamazonas oil fields, which use the same colours and the same prin-
ciples of rational division. This is hardly a surprise, since the people in charge
of constructing the MC were Petroamazonas engineers, for whom it made
sense to design the community in the image and likeness of what they
already knew. The material result observed in the MC is a residential
complex where, when looking at it for the first time, is difficult to determine
whether the owners of the new houses are the residents, the government or
the oil company. However, as I will show in the next pages, is possible to
hypothesize that the inhabitants of the MC are being perceived as Petroama-
zonas employees (which many of them are) and that this is why they are sub-
jected to the national oil company’s rules and spatial structuring.

Figure 2. Playas de Cuyabeno House. Photo taken by the author, January, 2015. ©
(Alejandra Espinosa).
 CULTURAL STUDIES 9

The use of materials also provides clues as to the logic underlying the MC’s
use and spatial organization. The houses in the MC’s are stilt houses with
white walls, made using iron rods and concrete6 (Figure 2). This is a radical
departure from the traditional houses in the Ecuadorian Amazonian region,
which are made from wood and palm leaves, elements capable of regulating
the temperature in an environment characterized by high temperatures, fre-
quent rain and humidity (Figure 3).
Apart from the use of different materials, the rational use of the space
shown in the MCs is distant from the perceptions and concepts used by the
Kichwas to understand the forest. Traditionally, the Kichwas have perceived
the forest as a resource of life and spiritual energy, and many Kichwa concepts

Figure 3. (a) and (b). Traditional architecture in the Amazon region. Photos taken by the
author, January, 2015. © (Alejandra Espinosa).
10 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

proclaim a connection between the space and spirits (Noteno, E., personal
communication, 17 Jan 2015). They use, for example, the dynamic concept
of llakta to designate the created space, which involves an environmental
and spiritual dimension. According to this concept, the territory is shaped
by the space–soil, the space–water, the space–forest and the spiritual space
(Calapucha 2012). In other words, llakta comprises a system of social, cultural,
spiritual, political and historical relationships that are part of an integrality
composed of space–time–water–soil–wind and based in a physical, biodiverse
territory (Calapucha 2012). The concept of sacha, moreover, is used to refer to
the space inhabited by animals, plants and local spirits. At the same time,
sacha harbours a spirit called Amazanka, which is the most important spirit
of the Kichwa world. It is a masculine spirit, owner and protector of the
animals of the forest, and it has the ability to appear in the shape of any
animal (Calapucha 2012). Unfortunately, although these concepts are harmo-
nious with a notion of an integral unity between the settlement and the
environment, they are not considered at all in the MC’s project. Instead, the
past is disavowed in the Millennium project, as everything is made to look
new, renovated and ‘urban’.
Regarding the importance of keeping traditional designs, paradoxically,
during the inaugural speech president Rafael Correa pointed out that it was
the government’s intention to be more demanding in relation to the design
of future new projects, and that it is possible to do modern houses while
also maintaining aspects of Cofán and Waorani (indigenous groups) tra-
ditional architecture. ‘In this case’ he added, ‘we will assume a little bit of a
dominant role. It is not worth constructing houses made of cement every-
where with the same design if we have a beautiful tradition of housing
from the Waorani, Confanes, Shuar, Achuar … ’ (Correa 2013, p. 20, translation
by the author). Yet, according to Felipe Borman, the president of the Junta Par-
roquial (the administrative level of government in charge of the area where
the community is located), during the process of construction of the new
houses the government did not consider the culture and identity of the
people. For him, what the government tried was to urbanize the people to
make them lead a modern lifestyle (Borman, F., personal communication,
19 Jan 2015) (Figure 4).
However, it is important to mention that the type of housing was discussed
with the Kichwa residents prior to the construction, and they agreed to not
use traditional designs and materials. This is understandable knowing the
context and history of the region. Kichwa indigenous traditional houses
have changed shape over time, and traditional concepts about Nature are
rarely put in practice in Amazonian cities, mainly because of the growing
introduction of a discourse that repudiates ancestral and local practices,
appointing any trace of indigenous tradition as ‘undeveloped’. As a result,
many of the indigenous communities have created a necessity and a self-
 CULTURAL STUDIES 11

Figure 4. Inauguration of the Millennium Community Playas de Cuyabeno 2. President

Rafael Correa with indigenous people 1. 1 October 2013. Photo by Walker Vizcarra.
Reproduced by permission of Walker Vizcarra.

imaginary about how their future must be, assuming the idea of living in an
urbanized area as synonym of a good and better life.
This probably explains why, when the architecture of the houses was ‘dis-
cussed’ among the Kichwa, they preferred to use materials similar to cement
instead of wood and palm leaves, arguing that they deserved houses made of
the same materials as those in the city (perceived as a developed space). As a
testimony presented in the newspaper shows: ‘[During the inauguration of
the MC] Bolívar Tapou from the [indigenous] community Tarabiayo asked
the president to construct the same kind of houses in his community
because they also want to be part of the progress’ (El Telégrafo 2013, italics
added). Similarly, Barcelino Noteno, the president of the Kichwa community,
explains:
We took our position, we claimed our right as indigenous people with ancestral
territories. We said that not only developed provinces are in need. We are also
Ecuadorians, which have been living here forever, we want decent housing,
decent education, decent infrastructure, as any human being. [We told the gov-
ernment that] we also wanted good hospitals, a school, as in any other city. And
also skilled teachers so we can have a quality education. I don’t think that they
[the government] will keep us, for being indigenous people, all our life margin-
alized. (Noteno, B., personal communication, 19 Jan 2015. Translated by the
author)

As these testimonies demonstrate, big constructions made of concrete are

perceived as decent infrastructure and decent housing. Related to this, one
of the main buildings constructed in the MC is the Millennium School. The
12 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

‘Millennium Schools project’ is another initiative launched by Correa’s govern-

ment to improve education in Ecuador. It consists in the construction or reno-
vation of public schools mainly in zones where the educational infrastructure
has been characterized as being of a low quality. What draws attention in the
architecture of these schools is the complete denial of the potential of the
space and landscape. There is no creativity and diversity in the use of
materials, and the structures have no relation with the environment or local
practices. In the governmental discourse, the facilities of the schools, which
are equipped with computers, sciences laboratories, libraries and classrooms
with beamers and electronic boards (Ayala 2014), are invoked to demonstrate
that education in the Amazon region can be as good as in Quito (the capital)
or in Europe and the United States (Correa 2013). Yet, in practice, in Playas de
Cuyabeno, the Internet barely works and teachers are reluctant to work there
due to the low salaries, short-term contracts and the remoteness of the
community.
Even if some residents of the MC perceive that the quality of life of the
people living in the community is quite better than before (Borman, F., per-
sonal communication, 19 Jan 2015) the problem with the spatial transform-
ations implemented by the government and their reproduction of
modernity’s rhetoric is that they carry with them a darker side, which is colo-
niality (Mignolo 2007). As the dark and constitutive side of modernity, coloni-
ality is understood as the rhetoric of salvation and newness that started to
dominate in the colonial processes of the sixteenth century, and that was
accompanied and articulated on the basis of ontological and epistemic differ-
ences, locating indigenous or native people as ontologically lesser human
beings and, consequently, not fully rational. A whole colonial matrix of
power was constructed, resulting in the dominion and control of subjectiv-
ities, authority, economy and knowledge. The reproduction of this local and
internal colonial matrix is visible in the management and construction of
the MC. Beginning with the use of violence as a first act, the government,
mainly through the oil company, is establishing rules to control and urbanize
the community, using a political discourse that reproduces the rhetoric of sal-
vation, civilization and progress in service of its own (mis)understanding of
Sumak Kawsay/Buen Vivir.
The desire to control space is combined with the desire to discipline the
inhabitants of the MC, and to monitor the aesthetic of the houses in order
to guarantee and promote ‘good’ habits. For example, even if the commu-
nity’s main activities are agriculture and fishing (Araujo 2013), to have crops
within the MC is forbidden by the oil company, so the inhabitants need to
commute frequently (mainly by canoe) to work their lands, which are
located away from the MC, some of them approximately five kilometres
away but others 10 or more. In order to keep the clean appearance of the
houses, it has also been prohibited to have domestic animals or to make
 CULTURAL STUDIES 13

Figure 5. Millennium School. Photo taken by the author, January 2015. © (Alejandra
Espinosa).

any changes to the facades for at least two years. Alongside with this rule to
keep the facades clean and homogenized, the biggest buildings (the Millen-
nium School and the Coliseum) are decorated with the Ecuadorian ‘country
logo’ (Figure 5). In 2010 this logo, which ‘is based in the sun, in life, in the
soil, in mega diversity, in pre-Columbian designs, flowers, fauna [ … ]’
(Ehlers in La Hora 2010), was created by the Ministry of Tourism to promote
the country abroad and it quickly became a State brand. Together with the
slogan ‘Ecuador loves life’, it intends to reflect that Ecuador is a diverse, plur-
icultural country, as is also stated in the Constitution, where it is noted that the
country treats with respect the diversity of groups within its territory and the
institutional, social and cultural differences between them. In the MC, the
country logo thus appears as a brand of the State and of national identity,
showing visitors that the communities were built by the government as
part of its commitment to pluriculturalism that, however, finds no real
expression in the way the MC is constructed and managed.
It is important to underline the way the shadow of this modernist legacy
hangs over the MC’s, shaping the extractive space: The rigid spatial segre-
gation of the MC from its environment makes it easier (and cheaper) for the
planner, or in this case the government, to construct social housing, but
beyond that, it facilitates the creation of a future city where Amazonian com-
munities can live happily together with the oil camps and extractive activities.
What seems to be behind this architectural transformation of the space is a
clash between, on the one hand, the intention to construct a new Amazonia
and to promote national development (which gestures towards the plural but
also needs to bring all Ecuadorians together) and, on the other, the history of
the residents and the space, which is ignored. The narrative supporting the
14 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

creation of the MC’s is based on an idea of progress, spatial homogenization

and rationality, which, in the communities’ architectural execution, is visible in
the straight lines, the white walls and the controlled vegetation, as well as in
the rules implemented to discipline the residents. Therefore, similar to the
modernist project and coloniality as its darker side, the space of the MC’s rep-
resents a monopolistic interpretive power that is also diffusionist, intended to
interpellate others from a centre (Pratt 2002). In the end, the indigenous com-
munities are not really consulted, but interpellated into participation from the
centre through a discourse of progress that they find hard to refuse.

The production of the uncanny and new dynamics of the use of

space
Walking through the streets of Playas de Cuyabeno in 2015, a little more than
a year after the MC’s inauguration, it was already possible to see the effects of
weather conditions and daily use on the buildings, which seemed to be
waging a constant battle with nature. In the Coliseum for instance, some of
the lights did not work and the basketball hoops were in very poor condition.
In the boarding school, damages caused by moisture were visible. The oil
company also had to build an expensive barrier to prevent the river from
flooding the MC. While the decay was not as evident thanks to ongoing main-
tenance performed by the oil company, it was clear that the moment these
efforts stop, a process of rapid degradation will commence. As such, it was
possible to see an interesting replication of temporality: the community
was constructed at extreme speed, but had also started to deteriorate
almost immediately.
The temporality of constant change observed in the MC seems to be in
harmony with the temporality of the oil company, which is one where oil
needs to be kept flowing at all times. In the Petramazonas ‘Corporate Maga-
zine’ in 2009, José López, the company’s manager of social responsibility and
community relations, explained that Petroamazonas aims to always work with
efficiency because in the oil industry any hesitation or mistake could be very
expensive. Paraphrasing López, the article explains that ‘because it is a
company of the State, the oil company measures the results in terms of the
oil obtained, that is to say, time is measured in oil barrels’ (Petroamazonas
2009, p. 13, italics by the author). As long as the company is in charge of
the MC’s maintenance, the buildings will remain standing, but once oil extrac-
tion finishes in the region, who knows. Given the problems with infrastructure
and the high maintenance costs, Barcelino Noteno, the president of the
Kichwa community, admitted in January 2015 that he would not recommend
starting a similar project in other communities in the area (Noteno, B., per-
sonal communication, 19 Jan 2015).
 CULTURAL STUDIES 15

Alongside the threat of rapid degradation, empty spaces are showing up in

different forms as a reminder that this is an artificial community. The residents
of Playas de Cuyabeno, for example, are only partially living in the houses.
Many of them prefer to spend most of their time on the farms ( fincas)
where they have animals and crops. This is why many of the houses are
only partially occupied and some even uninhabited. The uninhabited
houses are being used for storage or simply stand there, like Lego houses
dropped on a carpet. Other examples of empty spaces are the cemetery
and the market. The cemetery is located in the most remote part of the com-
munity; made from cement, it exudes emptiness and degradation. Its walls
(once white) are already becoming grey and mildewed. In 2015, residents
mentioned that so far only two bodies have been placed in the niches.
Even the manager of Petroamazonas interviewed mentioned that the ceme-
tery had not been used because, in Kichwa tradition, the deceased are buried
near to the houses where they lived (Manager Petroamazonas, personal com-
munication, 28 Feb 2015). In other words, the cemetery is a space for the
dying that is itself dead. In the case of the market, it was built according to
desk plans made by the oil company; the community never had a space desig-
nated as a market and consequently has no use for it. All these dying and
empty spaces contribute to a sense of walking through a community main-
tained by force at constant risk of vanishing. It is an artificial space, built to
be an example of new urbanization and development, but not lived as such.
Analysing the whole project and specifically the empty and dying spaces in
the community, a hypothesis arises that a sort of extractive-uncanny space and
structures are emerging as a result of the government’s radical spatial and
architectural intervention. Following the Freudian concept of Unheimlich,
which literally means unhomely and refers to ‘something that is familiar and
old-established in the mind and which has become alienated’ (Freud cited
in Lindner 2009, p. 94), in his book The Architectural Uncanny (1992),
Anthony Vidler defines the uncanny as a concept that evokes nostalgia and
the ‘unhomely’, notions that are connected with a sense of estrangement,
alienation, exile and homelessness reflected in architectural shapes. The
concept of the uncanny opens up dilemmas about the self in terms of the
relation between the body and space, the psyche and the dwelling; it is a
movement, a transformation that is a product of modern and modernist ima-
ginaries ‘of something that once seemed homely into something decidedly
not so … ’ (1992, p. 6). In the uncanny spectrum, unhomely houses are
described as houses that generate a non-specific feeling, a sense of abandon-
ment, real or imaginary, nostalgia, fear, among others. The structures of the
MCs are evoking precisely this sense of estrangement. For the inhabitants
of the MC, the entire space they knew became new, it was planned and ima-
gined following parameters from outside, other realities, and changed drasti-
cally their living conditions. In the empty and dying spaces of Playas de
16 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

Cuyabeno, it is possible to perceive something disturbing and strange, a sense

of lurking unease, an uncomfortable sense of haunting (1992, p. 23), which, in
this case, would be the haunting of a desire for progress imposed from the
outside, but also appropriated by the community.
The implications of this irruptive urbanization and production of uncanny
space and structures are not only visible in the disused parts of the infrastruc-
ture, but also in what the residents do with the spaces they do use. Even if the
desire to be part of the country’s ‘progress’ is transversally present in the
whole community, in its bodies, practices and statements, some gestures
and actions reflect a need to resist this model and to reconfigure it in a dis-
tinctive way. Infinitesimal and more comprehensive transformations are
wrought in order to adapt the new spatiality to their own interests and
their own conventions, generating a particular culture of everyday life
within the dominant cultural model (De Certeau 1984, pp. xiii–xiv). Everyday
life emerges as a sphere of resistance, taking shape not as overt opposition
but as a process that slowly develops and that includes both preservative
and inventive forms of appropriation (Highmore 2002). It evidences an ‘inven-
tiveness’ through acts of appropriation and through the redeployment of
materials, procedures and tactics, which, together, compose the network of
an antidiscipline (De Certeau 1984, p. xv). This is exactly what can be observed
in Playas de Cuyabeno; the residents, consciously or unconsciously, refuse in
different ways to be fully interpellated by the domineering modernist vision.
One of such anti-disciplinary responses can be discerned in the attitude
taken by the residents to the monthly payment for services. When the MC
was being constructed, neither the residents nor the engineers-planners con-
sidered the sustainability of the buildings and of the way of life they imposed
upon the families living in them. As mentioned by an employee of Petroama-
zonas who was working with the community:
No prior social assessment was carried out before the constructions. The govern-
ment sold an idea … how could I say? It sold an idea to start oil activities … but
without prior social assessment. We should know that the Kichwa people have
been all their lives hunters, gatherers (… .). If you ask the people about how they
see the new community … you will see that the infrastructure has generated
needs. Needs. Now the people will need to work to pay the basic services.
(Employee Petroamazonas, personal communication, 19 Jan 2015. Translated
by the author)

This statement is reinforced by the president of the junta parroquial, Felipe

Borman:
… when they were building the Comunidad del Milenio they didn’t think in a
long term how was it going to sustain itself and that is a big problem. Just sus-
tainability in the whole community like the public infrastructure, they didn’t take
into consideration that. And most important is that they didn’t take into con-
sideration the sustainability of the families, how they were going to sustain
 CULTURAL STUDIES 17

their houses. Now they have electricity, pumping water, which the government
started to charge, you know, like everybody else. (Borman, F., personal com-
munication, 19 Jan 2015)

Now, the community is confronted by a previously unknown reality: having to

make a monthly payment for basic services like water, electricity and a tele-
phone connection. Once the telephones had been installed, for example,
the residents started calling everywhere, but at the end of the month,
when the bills came, they did not want to pay arguing that the amount
charged was too high. The same occurred with the Internet connection.
Therefore, while the community was conceived as a Millennium City with
the same access to means of communication as in a city, these means were
not used as the government and the oil company intended and expected.
Another response in the sphere of inventiveness is the creation of neigh-
bourhoods with their own identity. The MC is formally divided into blocks
and each block has a number. Nonetheless, as mentioned by some residents,
the blocks have become neighbourhoods and each neighbourhood has a
name and celebrates certain festivities. For example, there is the neighbour-
hood ‘January 12’ and the neighbourhood ‘May 2’, recalling dates of impor-
tance to the inhabitants. Significantly, there are no signs on the streets or
on the houses showing the name of the neighbourhood (in accordance
with the prohibition of changes to the facades). Yet as an invisible dynamic,
the creation of neighbourhoods disrupts the homogeneity and the visual rep-
etition of the MC. The neighbourhoods also participate in the minga, a collec-
tive activity for the benefit of the community. Following Kichwa tradition,
once a month, all the families gather to clean the streets and other public
places. Before the communal minga, each neighbourhood must ensure the
cleanliness of its block, and families that do not follow this rule are punished
with a fine. The consumption of chicha (a typical Kichwa drink) is also part of
the minga.
Besides the creation of neighbourhoods and the maintenance of the minga
tradition, some changes have been made in the structure of the houses,
mainly on the ground floor. Few families have closed off the ground floor,
adapting the area as a business (Figure 6), storage room or place of leisure.
The businesses are primarily grocery stores (there are seven in the MC),
with the space modified to welcome customers, who can also take a seat
outside. Other types of businesses construct canoes or carry out mechanical
repairs (Figure 7). There are also bars (two or three), which are deliberately
made difficult to distinguish, since not all of them are currently legal (Figure 8).
Changes to the prescribed use of time can be also pointed to as part of the
MC inhabitants’ anti-disciplinary conduct. Since traditional activities (such as
having crops or raising animals) are restricted in the community, the new
infrastructure has led to an expansion of leisure time and some of the
18 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

Figure 6. Store ‘Gaby’ – Millennium Community Playas de Cuyabeno, February 2015.

Photo by author. © (Alejandra Espinosa).

residents interviewed said they feel bored and prefer to stay in the fincas
(Noteno, B., personal communication, 19 Jan 2015; Yumbo, R., personal com-
munication,16 Jan 2015). To fill the time, it is common for families to organize
parties that can last for more than 12 hours; an activity that is far removed
from the oil company’s mantra of time is money.
The latter example of anti-disciplinary practice also opens up the discussion
of the reverse situation, as the changes enforced in the use of time reveal that
disciplining is taking place, effectively, and that the residents are being
affected in a way that is favourable to the pursuit of oil exploitation. The
expansion of leisure time is not only an effect of the restrictions imposed

Figure 7. Family business – Millennium Community Playas de Cuyabeno, February 2015.

Photo by author. © (Alejandra Espinosa).
 CULTURAL STUDIES 19

Figure 8. Bar – Millennium Community Playas de Cuyabeno, February 2015. Photo by

author. © (Alejandra Espinosa).

inside the community in order to keep the residents organized, but also an
effect of the economic changes caused by the presence of the oil company
in the area. Many residents work, directly or indirectly, for the oil company
and most of the families receive monetary ‘bonuses’ every time it needs to
conduct the seismic explorations to find oil. This has created an economic
dependency on the oil company, causing them to prefer to stay in good
terms with it. Economically speaking, when the head of the family works for
the oil company, the family income surpasses the amount needed to fill
basic needs. Consequently, many inhabitants have plenty of free time.
Almost every house in the community has the television on for the whole
day, showing North American movies, morning shows and governmental
announcements. The residents express that more and more, the younger gen-
eration prefers to stay in Playas de Cuyabeno to use the computer or watch
television instead of going to the fincas. They no longer want to fish or
farm like their parents, and are also not interested in speaking the Kichwa
language (Noteno, B., personal communication, 19 Jan 2015). The high con-
sumption of alcohol is also a growing problem.
As has been shown, the modernist planning of the houses, the rejection of
the past and the local dynamics have led to the emergence of, on the one
hand, uncanny dead and empty spaces and, on the other, disciplining prac-
tices. Faced with this new urban reality, the responses of the inhabitants
waver between resistance, boredom and dependency on the oil company
(and, with it, the State), a situation that raises doubts and opens questions
about the meaning of Buen Vivir, in the eyes of the State, and the role of
the inhabitants in the future Amazonia.
20 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

Conclusions
As was mentioned at the beginning of this article, to conceive of a space as a
produced space (Lefebvre 1974) implies to critically analyse the production of
categories in which this space is read and decoded in specific periods of time.
Having described the architecture and aesthetics of the Millennium Commu-
nity Playas de Cuyabeno, and the dynamic interaction between spatial plan-
ning and the residents’ ways of living there, what I have called a space and
architecture of extractivism can be summarized as follows.
The space and architecture of extractivism are based on a mode of pro-
duction and model of development known as new extractivism. As was men-
tioned at the beginning of the analysis, in this model, unlike traditional
extractivism, the exploitation of resources is accompanied by a stronger
presence of the State. Among other characteristics, this stronger presence
of the State comes along with a new conception of the exploitation of
resources, which is now perceived as necessary to combat poverty and
promote development, keeping intact the ‘myth of progress’ (Gudynas
2009, p. 221). Constructions such as the MC’s are created with revenues
from the exploitation of natural resources and are justified to public
opinion as a step towards the social and economic progress of the Ecuador-
ian nation. The constructions are embedded in a discourse that heralds the
extraction of natural resources as the main source of wealth and moderniz-
ation. As the case of the MCs shows, the State is even willing to resort to
violence (through military intervention) to achieve its purposes. Thus, one
of the main characteristics of the space and architecture of extractivism is
that the spatial changes are violently imposed rather than in dialogue
with the communities concerned.
Another characteristic of the space and architecture of extractivism in
Ecuador is that it is the product of a discursive tension between the new extra-
ctivist model of development and the discourse of Sumak Kawsay and the
Rights of Nature. While the government emphasizes the idea of respecting
social and cultural differences, it simultaneously homogenizes Ecuadorian
society by constructing uniform infrastructures and buildings. Thus, the MCs
are far from being a representation of Ecuadorian pluriculturalism or of a har-
monious relation with Amazonian flora and fauna. Instead, they reproduce a
modernist narrative that perpetuates ideals of modernity, progress and
national development. This modernist narrative is accompanied by a colonial
narrative which is reflected in the use of violence (at the beginning of the
extractivist project leading to the construction of the MCs), the establishment
of rules to control and urbanize the community, the community’s economic
dependence on the oil company and the political discourse that reproduces
the rhetoric of salvation, civilizing mission and progress in service of its own
understanding of Sumak Kawsay/Buen Vivir.
 CULTURAL STUDIES 21

The produced space in the Amazonia region, therefore, is the reflection of a

political struggle or, better, the result of contradictory political intentions in
which the Foucaultian triad of space–knowledge–power is clearly visible: it
is based on the construction of a political discourse proclaiming the benefits
of oil extraction, resulting in the construction of a planned community within
which the State tries to promote order and homogenization through a disci-
plining that is not just spatial, but also affects the inhabitants’ bodies and
minds. The MC’s were constructed in a space treated as a tabula rasa, with
no room for traces or residues of former dwellings, or for memories and tra-
ditional practices. The result of the disconnect between new extractivism,
Sumak Kawsay and the Rights of Nature is a corresponding disconnect
between the standardized, sterile way in which the MC’s are constructed
architecturally, their natural surroundings and the traditional livelihoods and
practices of the inhabitants.
The third aspect of the space and architecture of extractivism is the
seeming discord between the time of the authorities’ interests, the time of
the physical structures and the time of the inhabitants, each of which
seems to follow a different temporality. The first, privileging speed, are con-
tinuously running against time (needing to construct the MC as quick as poss-
ible, needing to sell oil barrels); the structures, which were rapidly constructed,
are experiencing accelerating degradation; and, finally, the residents are
wavering between the expansion of leisure time and boredom.
The possible effects of the space and architecture of extractivism on culture
and identity are vast and harmful. Since space, culture and identity are inse-
parable terms, it is important to ask what kind of identities and cultural prac-
tices are promoted and pre-empted by these projects? As I have tried to show,
the extractive space and architecture are transforming elements of the Kichwa
ways of life. In turn, the inhabitants are adapting to the space while also man-
ifesting some anti-disciplinary actions. Nonetheless, it is not possible to say if
these actions are really escaping the authorities’ narrative of modernity/pro-
gress and their intention of disciplining the space and the subjects living in
it. To gain a fuller picture than can be given here, it would be important to
analyse in depth the possible implications of these space transformations
for the construction and formation of an extractive cultural identity. What
can be said on the basis of the present analysis, however, is that urban pro-
jects with the characteristics described above devalue the everyday activities
and historical practices of inhabitants of the Amazon territory, irrespective of
whether they are indigenous people or mestizos settlers; as a result, the com-
munities in the Amazonian Region are being moulded, by means of the
rearrangement of the spaces they live in, into the shape of a national iden-
tity/way of being constructed on the basis of the interests of the government
and the oil companies.
22 A. ESPINOSA ANDRADE

Notes
1. Name given in the region to people that have lived there for decades but come
from other provinces of Ecuador.
2. The Kichwa Sarayaku-case presented to the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights exemplifies the antagonistic relation between some of the communities
and the government and oil companies (see Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, 2012).
3. See, for example, the Chevron case and reports published by organizations such
as Observatorio de derechos colectivos del Ecuador CDES (http://www.
observatorio.cdes.org.ec/), Oil Watch (http://www.oilwatch.org/), the Fundación
Regional de Asesoría en Derechos Humanos – INREDH (www.inredh.org), Acción
Ecológica (www.accionecologica.org), and the United Nations Human Rights
Council, among others. Significantly, the Ecuadorian State has also targeted
some indigenous groups and environmental organizations opposed to its
mining, oil and water policies by accusing them of terrorism. See, for example,
the cases of Carlos Pérez Guartambel and Javier Ramírez, who were accused
by the Ecuadorian government of being terrorists in 2010 and 2014, respectively,
when participating in activities against water policies and mining exploitation
(Articles El Comercio, 10 June 2014 and El Mercurio, 22 January 2013).
4. For more information about the Yasuni ITT initiative see: Ministry of Environment
(2010).
5. For more information about the critics against the closure of this initiative see
the information collected by the group Yasunidos, a group of the civil society
created to protect the Yasuní forest and the governmental initiative. http://
sitio.yasunidos.org/es/yasunidos/crononologia-de-hechos.html
6. Each house comprises 96.04 sqm and has three rooms: a kitchen, a living room
and a bathroom. The latter is situated in the empty space below the main floor.
The houses, including basic furniture and household appliances, were given for
free to the inhabitants of the communities (Araujo 2013).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work is part of the author’s Ph.D. research supported by the Secretariat of Higher
Education, Science, Technology and Innovation of Ecuador.

Notes on contributor
Alejandra Espinosa Andrade studied social psychology in the Diego Portales University
(Chile) and obtained a Master Degree in Political Science in the Latin American Faculty
of Social Sciences (FLACSO Ecuador). She has worked as a researcher and lecturer of
topics related with human rights, participative methodologies, social movements,
project management and territorial planning in national and international organiz-
ations (UNICEF, UNHCR, FLACSO Ecuador). Currently she is working in her Ph.D. at
the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). In her research she analyses,
 CULTURAL STUDIES 23

from a critical and multidisciplinary perspective, governmental urban projects and its
relation with Ecuadorian cultural identity. Her Ph.D. Research is financed by the Sec-
retariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation of Ecuador.

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