Sebastián Ignacio Oviedo Castelnuovo. Spatializing the communal by MaHS-MaULP

SPATIALIZING THE COMMUNAL: Sebastián Ignacio Oviedo Castelnuovo Master (of Science) Urbanism, Landscape and Planning Faculty of Engineering and Department of Architecture Promoters: Prof. Viviana d'Auria, Jeroen Stevens, PhD Academic Year 2021 - 2022 Material articulations of dispossession and resistance in the Comunas of Ilaló Quito, Ecuador

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contests. DEPARTMENT ARCHITECTUREOF

Quiero agradecer a mi ñaña Soledad, a mi ñaño Esteban y a mi primo Dani por aguantarme cada vez que les pedí que por favor encontraran y escanearan otro de los libros de su abuelo.

También hay una serie de personas que han hecho posible esta tesis gracias a su apoyo y consejo a través de los años. Camila, Lore, Baca, Andrei, Diana, Mari, Jorge y Emilio, gracias por estar siempre ahí. Quiero agradecer a mi tía Andrea y a mi abuela Beba, que junto al resto de mi familia, han sido siempre una fuente inagotable de cariño y apoyo. Por último, me gustaría dar el agradecimiento más grandes a mi hermano Santi y a mis viejos, Má y Pá. Aunque no hay mucho que decir: gracias por todo, siempre. Les quiero. This thesis would not have been possible without the generosity of the comunerxs who allowed me to participate in their assemblies, celebrations, work sessions and everyday life, welcoming me and trusting me despite being an absolute outsider. Though it would be impossible to name everyone, I would like to thank Darío Iza, Nancy Simba, Gerardo Simbaña, Floresmilo Simbaña, Guido Salazar, Johanna Meneses and Cecilia Vallejo for their insights and generosity. I would also like to thank the councilmembers of La Toglla, Tola Chica, Alangasí, Santa Clara de San Millán, Oyambarillo, UCCIL and Pueblo Kitu Kara, as well as the comunerxs with whom I engaged throughout this process, thank you for allowing me to learn from and collaborate with you. I hope that this continues.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSAGRADECIMIENTOS

Esta tesis no hubiera sido posible sin la generosidad de los comunerxs que me permitieron participar en sus asambleas, fiestas, mingas y vida cotidiana, acogiéndome y confiando en mí a pesar de ser un absoluto desconocido. Aunque sería imposible nombrarles a todos, me gustaría agradecer a Darío Iza, Nancy Simba, Gerardo Simbaña, Floresmilo Simbaña, Guido Salazar, Johanna Meneses y Cecilia Vallejo por su comprensión y generosidad. También quiero agradecer a los consejos de gobierno de La Toglla, Tola Chica, Alangasí, Santa Clara de San Millán, Oyambarillo, UCCIL y el Pueblo Kitu Kara, así como a los comunerxs con los que me relacioné a lo largo de este proceso. Gracias por permitirme aprender y colaborar con ustedes. Espero que esto continúe. Estoy especialmente agradecido con mis promotores, Viviana d'Auria y Jeroen Stevens, por su aguda orientación y su atento apoyo a lo largo de estos dos años en el ICoU, y durante el desarrollo de esta tesis. Gracias a ambos. Este trabajo se ha mejorado gracias a los comentarios y sugerencias de Ilze Wolff, Khalda El Jack y Nelson Carofilis. Gracias. Del mismo modo, agradezco la generosidad de Ana María Durán Calisto, Jeremy Rayner, Paul de Housse, Gabriela Borja y Salime Jalil, que han compartido conmigo sus sugerencias personales y experiencias en la elaboración de esta tesis. Estoy más que agradecido con mi familia extendida de MaHS-MaULP, que me ha apoyado y sostenido a lo largo de estos dos años. Un Millón de gracias. Al concluir esta tesis, estoy especialmente agradecido con Ariane Cantillana y Camille Hendlicz, con quienes he compartido los altibajos de este proceso desde el principio. Gracias a ambas.

Finally, I would like to say the biggest, deepest thank you to my brother Santi and mis viejos, Má y Pá. Though there is not much that needs to be said: gracias por todo, siempre.

I would like to thank my tia Andrea and my abuela Beba, who alongside the rest of my family, have always been an endless source of care and support.

I am especially grateful to my promoters, Viviana d’Auria and Jeroen Stevens, for their sharp guidance and thoughtful support throughout these two years at the ICoU, and during the development of this thesis. Thank you both. This work was improved through the insightful comments and suggestions of Ilze Wolff, Khalda El Jack, and Nelson Carofilis. Thank you. Similarly, I am thankful for the generosity of Ana María Durán Calisto, Jeremy Rayner, Paul de Housse, Gabriela Borja and Salime Jalil, who have shared with me their personal suggestions, experiences and material in the making of this thesis. I am beyond grateful for my extended MaHS-MaULP family, which has supported and sustained me throughout these two years—a Million thank yous. As I wrap up this thesis, I am particularly grateful to Ariane Cantillana and Camille Hendlicz, with whom I have shared the ups and downs of this process from the beginning. Thank you both. I would like to thank my sister Soledad, my brother Esteban and my primo Dani for putting up with me whenever I asked that they please find and scan another one their grandfather’s Abooks.number of people have also made this thesis possible through their continuous encouragement, advice and support throughout the years. Camila, Lore, Baca, Andrei, Diana, Mari, Jorge and Emilio, thank you for always being there.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2. Delayering the material bases of communal struggle Canal, tanque, estanque, lavandería: water as agent and evidence (Tola Chica) A laundry across the road A water repertoire of artifacts and practices S. Displaced above the line: Making Tola Chica inhabitable M. From valley to summit: Altitudinal water struggles Water and the Ceremonial L. Neither irrigated nor served XL. Comunas as collateral territories for urban infrastructure Water provision and racialization

2.1

Abstract

XS.

A ravine that needs maintenance Mama Tena: Beyond native vegetation S. Versions of ‘the forest’ M/L. Communal forests, productive landscapes and settlement: a contested mosaic XL. Dichotomic readings

2.2 Bosque, wayku, chakra, plantación: converging social practices and diverging notions of ‘the forest’ ( Alangasí)XS.

1. Approaching the Communal Communally-sustained territories and the urban to a body of knowledge Contested boundaries and territorialities

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ACollaborationMethodologyResearchHypothesisQuestions(spatial)contribution

QStructureuito:astepped plateau between two cordilleras Ilaló-Lumbisí: between urbanization, environmentalisms and the Indigenous movement

5 2.3 Cráter, pamba, loma, ladera: the role of topography (La Toglla) S. The school: a platform Pakiloma: Nestled in the ravine M. Plateaus: Communal Stages L. Flatland appropriation: a pattern XL. Dispossession and displacement…uphill Topography and hierarchy 3. Speculations on a contested future 3.1 La Toglla: Contextualizing contestations S. Contested claims and property regimes Communal planning and the binary threat L. The road and the ravine: Competing settlement systems XL. The Communal Project: a spatial reading 3.2 Jackpi: Articulating the communal as a spatial grActammar1.Private claims 2. Inscribing communal presence 3. Dwell to claim Act 4. Enacting water contestations 5. Planting the threads 6. Sculpting stages 7. Fitting into armatures of territorial care 8. The communal project as a sociospatial constellation Final Reflections 10258707278

A first section of the thesis, divided into three subchapters, elaborates a cross-scalar analysis of socio-spatial dynamics and formations, taking observations from three of UCCIL’s comunas and communities—Tola Chica, Alangasí and La Toglla— as a starting point. Making use of ethnographic fieldwork and literature, alongside current and historic cartographic and iconographic material, each subchapter respectively discusses Water, Forest, and Topography as the material bases of dispossession and resistance in the communal territories of Ilaló.

Then, responding to a request for suggestions by comuna leaders for Jackpi, one of La Toglla’s contested plateaus, I develop a projective speculation as designresearch for the area. Building upon the ongoing process of territorial dispute and transformation being carried out by comunerxs in Jackpi amidst the threat of dispossession, I explore the potential socio-spatial articulations and territorial strategies that advocates of the ‘communal project’ may mobilize as future contestations continue to unfold in the area.

Keywords Comunas, Quito, Indigenous Territories, Urbanization, Dispossession

ABSTRACT

More than 70 comunas are located within the current boundaries of Quito’s Metropolitan District. Despite their recognition by several legal figures including the 2008 National Constitution—which, alongside other international agreements, confirmed their protection from alienation, division or seizure— comunas are insistently rendered invisible by public and private discourse and practice, including planning mechanisms and plans. As a response, and articulated with the country’s Indigenous Movement through Pueblo Kitu Kara, advocates and activists of what has been described as the ‘Communal Project’ (Rayner 2017; Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015; Rayner 2021) mobilize for the recognition of the historical continuity and ancestral trajectories of comunas, alongside the consequent upholding of their collective rights as territorial and jurisdictional authorities (PKK 2016; UCCIL 2019).Within this context, and aiming to sustain their territories amidst the converging forces of rapid suburbanization and varied forms of environmentalism, the comunas and communities of Ilaló-Lumbisí coalesced into the Union of Comunas and Communities of IlalóLumbisí [UCCIL] in 2015. Building upon a growing literature on Quito’s comunas, mostly emerging from the social sciences and law (Rayner 2021; Rayner et al. 2019; Rayner 2017; Bayón 2019; Andrade 2016; Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015; Kingman 1992; Bustamante 1992) but also focusing on cartographic processes and representations (Fernández-Muro and Morales 2016; IEE 2014), this thesis aims to explore how spatial dynamics and physical formations emerge from— and are complicit in—the struggle over communal territories in Ilaló-Lumbisí as they interact with urbanization processes. My work on the subject, which precedes and will hopefully transcend this thesis, is framed as a collaboration and dialogue with several leaders and advocates of the comunas and comunidades of Tola Chica, Alangasí and La Toglla; members of the government council of UCCIL; and the current leadership of Pueblo Kitu Kara. My findings and process are also shaped by the testimonies and practices of comunerxs beyond leadership roles with whom I engaged while participating in assemblies, celebrations, collective work sessions, and everyday life during fieldwork.

1. APPROACHING THE COMMUNAL

Communally-sustained territories and the urban As I started participating in conversations with comunerxs, I quickly realized that saying that I was an aspiring urbanist was not the most pro ductive—"but urbanization is one of the things what we oppose”, told me one of La Toglla’s coun cilmembers. Over time, I learned to emphasize that I was also studying Landscape and Planning, which was usually better received. Comunas are complex, heterogenous and dyna mic formations, both in social and spatial terms. Hegemonically associated with ‘rural’ space and historically constructed as ‘agricultural commu nities’ (Simbaña 2019), the interactions between ‘the city’ and comunas is one that tends to be framed as a binary opposition. As a result, it is not uncommon for scholars, public officials, environ mentalists and average citizens alike to say—as I heard multiple times during my fieldwork—that one place or another “is no longer a comuna” as soon as its spatial features and physical appearan ce begin to resemble those more commonly as sociated with ‘the city’: asphalt roads, concrete or brick buildings, a certain level of density, etc. On a social level, similar claims about comunas are made if the livelihoods of comunerxs are closer to those of what is commonly considered an ‘urban subject’—cashier, architect, taxi driver, public ser vant, doctor…—than to those of an agricultural worker. Among other factors, this is heavily in fluenced by the racialized—and racializing—dis courses that portray an allegedly whitened-mesti zo city in opposition to a supposedly Indigenous rural realm (Kingman and Bretón 2017; Rayner 2021; also discussed in Oviedo 2022b).

At the same time, comuna advocates and in tellectuals reject the common conception that limits comunas to their use of collective property regimes with usufruct rights (see Simbaña and Daza in Rayner et al. 2019). As I write this, co muna leaders now holding seats in the National Assembly are mobilizing to advance a new Law of Communes that, among other things, transcends this Accordinglimitation.toseveral leaders, activists and intellec tuals such as Fernando Cabascango, what charac terizes comunas is the recognition of inhabiting on Indigenous land, alongside the mobilizing of collective forms of celebration, material (re)pro duction, and decision,: fiesta, minga and asamblea (Rayner 2021). A similar statement was made by Darío Iza, current president of the Pueblo Kitu Kara, during one of the assemblies I accompanied in September 2021, when he said that “neighbor hoods promote the individual, we organize the collective: the fiesta, the minga, the asamblea”. In that sense, comunas can ‘look’ like anything they want—just like neighborhoods can. Their diffe rence is deeper. What characterizes comunas is a repertoire of communal notions and practices. Taking note of these, and although I have used the term ‘communally-owned’ elsewhere (Oviedo 2021; Oviedo, Stevens, and D’Auria 2021), throug hout this thesis I will refer to comunas as ‘com munally-sustained territories’. Hypothesis In Quito—and elsewhere in the country—comu nas inhabit, produce and maintain a variety of territories that transcend the urban-rural binary, deployed as a category of governmental legibility and management (Roy 2016; Rayner 2021; also discussed in Oviedo 2022b). Throughout this thesis, I will try to demonstrate that the comunas of Ilaló, and by extension those of the larger Quito conurbation are, in their historical and socio-spa tial diversity and complexity, deeply embedded in, part of, and influenced by processes of the urban at large—understood as an ampler notion than the country-city binary. Furthermore, as Cleanup minga in Comuna Santa Clara de San Millán

11 Reforestation Minga in Comunidad Ancestral La Toglla

comunerxs mobilize against what they describe as layered forms of dispossession and oppression ba sed on classist and racist systems (PKK 2016; UC CIL 2019; Rayner 2021, 2017), I hypothesize that the physical realities of comunas simultaneously provide evidence of, and give shape to, the social processes of dispossession and resistance as they unfold spatially on the territory. In other words, that space, rather than as a passive background, is complicit in the unfolding contestations of com munal territories in Quito. As an aspiring urba nist—who also studies landscape and planning, as I told the councilmember of La Toglla—I will try to contribute with a spatial reading and interpre tation of the contested interplays between urbani zation and comunas.

Methodology If what characterizes comunas are a number of social practices of collective reproduction, it fol lows that one’s approach to understanding them as socio-spatial formations should also be rooted in situated experiences. I have tried to honor this both in the structure and methodology of this thesis. Consequently, I started the development of this thesis with a six-week long period of field work during August and September of 2021. In coordination with comunerxs in leadership positi ons in Tola Chica, La Toglla and Alangasí, along side UCCIL and Pueblo Kitu Kara, I accompanied assemblies, mingas, celebrations and everyday activities. After a semester in Belgium, I returned to Quito for another month of fieldwork between January and February of 2022.

Throughout the process, I was guided through communal territories, participated in collective actions, and became acquainted with the histories and trajectories of these places through formal and informal interviews and exchanges, while developing relationships with comunerxs with different levels of involvement in leadership roles. The thesis is also influenced by the nature of these relationships—the varying levels of proximity and collaboration with inhabitants and leaders of each comuna has shaped this process. For example, closer ties and a more fluid communication with comunerxs from La Toglla resulted in a speci fic request for suggestions from the part of the council, which determined the selection of the site for the projective component of this thesis. As a response, through an exercise of design-research, I imagine and speculate about strategies through which the practices and actions mobilized by co munerxs may be reinterpreted and spatially cho reographed to enhance the territory as conceived and reproduced by advocates of the ‘communal project’ (Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015; Rayner 2017). Following a request by coun cilmembers of La Toglla, the area of focus of this exercise was Jackpi, one of the contested flatlands in the comuna.

Research Questions What kinds of spatial articulations and material formations emerge from—and are mobilized in—the struggle over Ilaló’s communal territories? How are space and physical structures simultaneously evidence of, and complicit in, the historical processes of dispossession, displacement and resistance in the co munas and communities in Ilaló as they interact with urbanization processes? How might the vocabulary of practices mobilized by comuna inhabitants be spatially choreographed into a set of strategies to further reproduce the comunas and communities of Ilaló as an integral habitat?

13 Elections Assembly in Comunidad Ancestral La Toglla

Partners / Collaborators Pueblo Kitu Kara CONAIE UCCIL Indigenous Territorial Authority 90+ Comunas and Communities, Quito Metropolitan District + Cantón Mejía & Rumiñahui National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador Union of Communes and Communities of Ilaló-Lumbisí Second-Level Organization 12 Communes and TerritorialCommunities+Jurisdictional Authorities Base 3/12OrganizationsCommunesof UCCIL Tola Chica La AlangasíToglla MACRO MESO MICRO

Collaboration

From the beginning, I have attempted to frame and develop this thesis as a broader collaboration process, perhaps a form of action-research. Rather than aiming to ‘study’ the comunas, I wanted to contribute to and learn from the people and pro cesses that mobilize for the recognition of their collective rights. In exchange for being allowed to participate in assemblies, collective work sessions and celebrations, I offered my photographs, all of which have been made available in their ori ginal form to the councils of each comuna and Pueblo Kitu Kara. In addition, I helped produce cartographic material used, for example, for the communal interpretation of and response to the landslides in Santa Clara de San Millán, or to geo-reference the Community Land-use Plan of La Toglla. Lastly, I have committed to provide translated versions of the maps and cartographies included in this thesis. However, framing the interpretations and analysis included here as a co-production would be unfair. I take full responsibility for the contents of this thesis, that though produced in dialogue with re presentatives and inhabitants of comunas, do not represent anyone’s interpretations but my own. Similarly, I acknowledge that the design-research component of this thesis—framed as an imagina tive speculation—has been produced by myself, and is yet to be discussed with the inhabitants of La Toglla. My interest in and alignment with the processes and struggles of comunas—which I consider crucial for the future of Quito—precedes this thesis, and I hope that my collaboration with them will continue after it.

A (spatial) contribution to a body of knowledge

The interaction between Indigenous territories— including the comunas of Quito—and urbanizati on processes has been a focus of my interest over the last years. As a result, this thesis builds upon research papers that I have presented to different courses while at the KU Leuven’s International Center of Urbanism including Urban Studies, Colonial and Postcolonial Urbanism, Urban Anthropology, and Strategic Spatial Planning. My Master of Human Settlements thesis also briefly elaborated on the subject of comunas, alongside an article published with my thesis promoters Viviana d’Auria and Jeroen Stevens, in the Maga zine on Urbanism (MONU). Though unpublished except for the latter, these papers appear as refe rences throughout the text and in the bibliography for the purpose of clarity. At the same time, this thesis aims to contribute to a growing body of knowledge produced about, by, and in comunas. While borrowing from other dis ciplines, I have tried to stay close to my training in architecture, urbanism, landscape and planning by focusing on the production and analysis of cartographic, planimetric and photographic ma terial, which I have set in dialogue both with my fieldwork and the literature on comunas in Quito produced by experts from a variety of fields. Contested boundaries and territorialities As comunerxs mobilize for the recognition of their historical continuity as landed ancestral communities and territorial figures—beyond spatially-abstract and historically detached social organizations—they hold on to the boundaries of their territories and demand their inclusion in planning documents and official maps. In the best of cases, municipal maps and datasets show comunas as location points, devoid of any spatial definition beyond the one-dimensional—thus

denying their rights as collective subjects rooted in specific territorial conditions (Fernández-Muro and Morales 2016, 2019). Other public institu tions such as the Ministry of Agriculture have been responsible for the cartographic delineation of comunas—speaking to their limited historical construction as agricultural units, as previously discussed. However, the coordination between in stitutions is either limited or non-existing, which has most recently led to the absence of communal territories in the development and content of the city’s last Land Use and Management Plan (PUGS), approved in late 2021.

Several exercises of collective and individual mapping of comuna boundaries have been carried out in Quito (Fernández-Muro and Morales 2019; IEE 2014). While I align with the urgency and importance of defining the boundaries of comu nas amidst the compound pressures that converge on their territories, and the subsequent violati ons of their collective rights that unfold, this has not been the aim of my thesis. Instead, I have taken the boundaries available in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and the maps used by comunas themselves as a starting point As will become evident throughout this thesis, I assume that not only comunas, but all of what we know today as Quito is in fact Indigenous land, settled on through historic processes of disposses sion that could be interpreted as forms of sett ler-colonial urbanization (Hugill 2017; Taylor and Lublin 2021; Porter and Yiftachel 2019). Though expressed in other terms, I believe that this is implicit in many statements by comuna advocates and voices of the Indigenous movement (see, for instance, PKK 2016; UCCIL 2019).

Boundaries and 'location' of comunas of IlalóLumbisí. The crosses represent the comunas as seen by the municipality (MDMQ 2021), whereas in black are the boundaries recognized by MAG (2021). In red, communally mapped boundaries by IEE (2014). By author, based on Google Earth Imagery, Topographic information by IGM and GIS data from the institutions mentioned above

Structure The thesis is organized in two main sections.

(1) The first section aims to provide a spatial un derstanding of the comunas of Ilaló and the con tested social practices, histories and regimes that unfold in—and are shaped by—their territories as material formations. Starting from the specificity of a place and a situation in one of the comunas or comunidades of focus—Tola Chica, La Toglla or Alangasí—each chapter tries to unpack the in terplay between spatial characteristics and social dynamics across scales. While acknowledging the co-presence and interwovenness of diverse material elements in each of the comunas, each subchapter proposes a deeper reading of either Water, Forest, or Topography, as material elements that simultaneously structure and are shaped by processes of dispossession and resistance. For instance, then, what begins with the story of a make-shift structure built by a comunera in Tola Chica to do laundry is used as an entry point to explore a repertoire of water strategies deployed by comunerxs at the settlement scale.. The ‘tele scopic’ approach then moves up to the scale of the entire territory of the comuna and then UCCIL, before positioning the discussion in relationship with larger issues and trajectories—such as the racializing role of urban water infrastructure in Quito—as they are represented in historical carto graphic and iconographic material of Quito. I fol low a similar exercise for Alangasí and La Toglla, respectively focusing on Forest and Topography as complicit actants in the processes of disposses sion and resistance enacted and inscribed on the territory. Each step of the analysis, which moves from the micro to the macro scale, is accordingly labeled with the rubrics XS, S, M, L, and XL.

(2) The second section develops a design-research speculation focused on the area of Jackpi, one of the plateaus in La Toglla under constant contesta tion between comuna advocates and both inter nal and external private claims over communal land. Here, comunerxs created a grid of 12,5x25m ‘microparcels’ and distributed them amongst comunerxs as a way to inscribe their presence on the territory against the threat of privatization—as expressed among other things by the registration of plots in this area on the municipal cadaster. As future construction and permanent forms of dwelling are anticipated in this area, council members asked me to include suggestions for the area as part of my thesis. This section builds upon the instances of communal action and subse quent spatial transformation outlined above. At the same time, it borrows from the socio-spatial practices of minga, fiesta and asamblea, alongside the everyday forms of resistance that I witnessed on-site and documented in the first section, in order to speculate about possible territorial pro cesses of inhabitation and contestation in the area.

In sum, the final section tries to imagine ways in which the principles and practices mobilized by the communal project might be advanced through their articulation as a spatial grammar on the territory—and how those might engage with and find resistance in, hegemonic practices.

19 Layered forms of urbanization just outside of Alangasí

Quito: a stepped plateau between two cordilleras The conurbation of Quito has been shaped by the characteristics of the territory it occupies. Located on a stepped plateau in the inter-Andean corridor that stretches between the eastern and western ‘cordilleras’, or mountain ranges, settlement has historically concentrated on the higher platform, where the colonial center is. During centuries, the footprint on the upper plateau consolidated and expanded, with disperse settlements between the cordillera, which navigated the deep canyons and ravines eroded into this landscape. During the last few decades, however, the fertile eastern valleys separated by Ilaló have seen massive waves of construction, primarily in the shape of suburban subdivisions built as gated communities, and facilitated among other things by a number of new roads (see Bayón 2019).

21 eastern valleys eastern valleys upper plateau colonial center western cordillera Ilaló Ilaló eastern cordillera Generated by author, using OpenStreetMap and Mapbox data through https://anvaka.github.io/peak-map/#7.68/47.727/-122.574 Alexander Keith Jonston, 1856. Geological Phenomena, Plan of the volcanoes of Pichincha and Antisana surveyed by A. von Humboldt. Scale 1:200,000. Retrieved from David Rumsey Historical Maps

Within this context of growth of the built footprint of Quito, the comunas and communities of IlalóLumbisí have seen increased pressures on their territories. On the one hand, by those transformations directly related to settlement in the area, such as augmented rates of impermeabilization and deforestation, the destruction of agricultural land, rising prices of life, land seizures for the creation of real estate projects, displacement caused by the inscription of roads and other infrastructures, the onslaught of disruptive tourism on communal land, among others. On the other hand, the ecological disruptions caused by increased settlement in the eastern valleys of Quito have prompted different efforts of environmental preservation, adding another type of pressure on the comunas of Ilaló-Lumbisí.

Ilaló-Lumbisí: between urbanization, environmentalisms and the indigenous movement

In 2015, the municipality of Quito proposed the creation of an area of special intervention and rescue (AIER) Ilaló-Lumbisí, including the territories of twelve comunas and communities. After a long process, the ordinance project was finally stopped through the protests of comunas, who opposed the imposition of preservation policies on their lands, claiming that the process disregarded communal general assemblies as the highest level of territorial authority (Rayner 2021; UCCIL 2019; MDMQ 2019; FFLA 2015, 2016). It is from the struggle against this instrument of preservation policy that UCCIL emerges as a union of the 12 comunas and comunidades of Lumbisí. From the platform of this coalition, nestled within the Indigenous movement as a second-degree organization, the 12 comunas of UCCIL begin to simultaneously articulate their joint opposition to the ecological, environmental and social disruptions caused by urbanization, as well as the unconsented designation of their lands as environmental set-asides, limiting their customary uses and planning mechanisms (Rayner 2021; also discussed in Oviedo 2022a).

However, the emergence of Ilaló-Lumbisí as a contested territory is not new. For centuries, waves of dispossession, appropriation and displacement have been present on these lands—home to some of the earliest settlements of what is today Ecuador (Costales 2006). In particular, appropriation of Indigenous territories is documented as early as the 16th Century, starting with the seizure of land in Lumbisí by an order of nuns during the colony (Rebolledo 1992). Ilaló-Lumbisí comunas protesting against the AIER Ordinance. Photo by Jeremy Rayner, taken from Rayner 1762(2021)map of the area appropriated by the nuns of conception within the boundaries of the ancestral territories of Lumbisí. Photo of the original. Archivo Nacional de Historia, Sección Indígenas, Box 79, exp 1, p75

23 Growth GIS Data from (2021)MDMQ Comunas amidst a growing footprint of the urban Comunas201520031987198319561946192118881760 (MDMQ 2021) Comunas (IEE 2014) Comunas (MAG 2021) 1971

DELAYERING THE MATERIAL BASES OF STRUGGLE capas2. y bases materiales de la disputa

Tola Chica. Perched above the water line

27 Tola Chica Tola Grande

Alangasí. The comuna as a productive landscape

29 Alangasí

La Toglla. Inhabiting the crater

31 Lumbisí La Toglla

canal, tanque, estanque, lavandería. CANAL, TANK, POND, LAUNDRY. TOLA CHICA water as evidence and agent 2.1

Since the water of the open irrigation canal and ponds is not potable, comunerxs have devised a number of strategies at the domestic scale. Houses have complex water collection systems that funnel rain into plastic barrels and tanks, ferrocement ponds, and other stor age elements. These layered systems that interweave ‘different types of water’ attempt to phase out the pro vision water through water trucks. Potable water is still often bought bottled at one of the stores just outside of (official) of communal boundaries.

Fabiola’s laundry is part of a broader lexicon of water struggles articulated in Sector 1, as the comunerxs of Tola Chica have designated the lowest area of their ter ritory. Dedicated to settlement within their planning schemes, everything in Sector 1 seems to be about water. As Floresmilo Simbaña, historical leader of the comuna and a referent of the country’s indigenous movement, told me during our first conversation on the phone, when discussing the layered forms of exclu sion that comunas face: “In my comuna, for example, we don’t have potable water”.

Fabiola lived in the house across the road, but did her laundry here, in the makeshift structure she built by another comunero’s rows of corn. The position of her house, a few meters higher in elevation than the laundry, meant that the water pressure pro vided by the pond was not strong enough. She explained that the other water—from the other pond, filled by truck—was either intermittent or polluted, so she had to do laundry here. "And for drinking?" I asked, before receiving what should have been an obvious answer: "For drinking, we buy bottles." house laundry

A water repertoire of artifacts and practices

XS.

Privatized

Tola Chica

A laundry across the road

Seen across a section, the vertically-organized rep ertoire of Tola Chica´s water artifacts and practices begins with the Canal de Riego Ramal Ilaló, a 1m-wide open irrigation canal that stretches along the lowest part of Sector 1, acting as a boundary between the comuna and its privatized surroundings. From this canal, water is pumped up to a number of ponds carved into the steep slopes of Tola Chica. Located between 2535 and 2570masl., the ponds and their associated systems were collectively produced by the comunerxs in different arrangements with public authorities, including co-financing. A complex system of pipes and hoses distribute water down from these ponds through gravity. Fenced-off, they are all located around the Centro de Capacitación, a circular building built in earth and eu calyptus wood. The Centro, the excavated platform in front of it, and the pond across the road constitute the most prominent architectural constellation of Sector 1, and together symbolize some of the main elements of communal life—and struggle—here in Tola Chica.

As she pulled another bucketful from the barrel, I asked Fabiola how come she was there. "This water does not reach my house", she said, "so the compañero lent me this part to set up my laundry".

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Displaced2010 above the line: Making Tola Chica inhabitable 2525 2520 2515 2510 2505 2500 2495 2490 2485 2480 24802475 24752470 24702465 24652460 2455 2455 2455 246025302535254025452550255525602565257025752580258525902595 0 250m S.

The physical reality of Tola Chica is associated with broader processes of urbanization. The irrigation canal, which roughly follows the 2495masl. contour line, is not only the altitudinally lowest component in the repertoire of Tola Chica’s water struggles, but is also the new boundary of the comuna. The area below the line, Plazapamba, detached itself from Tola Chica’s territory after a long and violentprocess in which, according to comunerxs, the involvement of public officials and land traffickers played a significant role. After becoming recognized as a barrio by the municipality under a private property regime and the relinquishing of collective territorial rights, Plazapamba was incorporated to the public systems of water and sanitation—a pattern of privatization that has been denounced by comunerxs and discussed in literature since the 90s (see Kingman 1992; Rayner 2017; Oviedo, Stevens, and D’Auria 2021). In this case, it is worth noting how the infrastructure for agricultural irrigation provided the material basis upon which privatization occurred, to then act as the spatial matrix for potable water and sanitation Imageprovision.byauthor, based on aerial imagery from IGM and GIS data from IGM, MAG, and Junta de Riego Tumbaco

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2016) For a detailed inquiry on the role of Ruta Viva in the urban transformation of Tumbaco and its pressure on communal territories, see Bayón 2019.

Formerly limited to agricultural parcels, the (official) communal territory saw the creation of permanent places of residence more recently. The construction of Ruta Viva, a major thoroughfare connecting Quito’s main footprint with the valleys of Tumbaco and inaugurated in 2014, cut through many of the popular neighborhoods where many comunerxs lived in the valley, including Barrio Tola Chica*. Either directly evicted to make way for the road, or indirectly displaced by the transfiguration of their places of residence, comunerxs reorganized their territory and began moving above the line, within the recently updated official boundaries of the comuna. This transition can be read in the communal creation of ponds, which multiplied in the period after the construction of Ruta Viva, to make these lands Imageinhabitable.byauthor, based on Google Earth imagery and GIS data from IGM, MAG, and Junta de Riego de Tumbaco.

250m

*For an in-depth discussion of the territorial relationships between comunas and the barrios with the same name, see Fernández-Muro and Morales

Ramal Ilaló: The Irrigation Canal as (new) border1. From valley to summit: Stratified water struggles M. Sector tres: Rain-dependent agricultural chakras on the summit 3. Sector uno: A repertoire of water artifacts and practices 2.

39 3 2 1 Ruta BarrioVivaTola Chica 3 Barrio ComunaformerlyPlazapamba,partofTolaChica

ChicaTolaFB

Iglesia Tola Chica and Casa Comunal Barrial act as points of departure. Taking the figure of Saint Francis from the church is the starting point of a The carved platform in front of the Centro de Capacitación is simultaneously a crucial stop of processions and the main location of other fiestas

Entering the sacred: A fence separates sectors two and three, articulating a material delineation of the The millenary tree on the summit acts as the final stage Water and the ceremonial M. Water is also present in the ceremonial practices of Tola Chica, which are also influenced by the spatial characteristics of the territory. As a narrow strip stretching from the canal to the summit of Ilaló, Tola Chica’s steep slopes create a rather linear configuration, one that suggests movement rather than static permanence—as opposed, for example, to La Toglla, shaped as an amphitheater within the inactive volcano. Accordingly, fiestas here tend take the shape of processions, as a form of asserting a sense of permanence on the territory—even beyond official communal boundaries. Rogativas, an annual practice where comunerxs ascend to the sacred wila tree on the summit to request for rains, are a form of appropriation, but also of production of the territory (Simbaña 2007; Moreano Venegas 2019). They take place in October, together with the celebrations of San Pedro and Koya Raymi.

If the irrigation canal is hegemonically conceived as the “rural” version of water infrastructure, the public potable water system (represented here in the dotted hatch) is its “urban” flipside. At the same time that both notions are contested as binary governmental categories (Roy 2016; Rayner 2021) by comuna advocates, the overlap of these two water networks elements and their overlaps with communal territories shows the varied, yet consistently conflictive relationship between communal territories and public services.

Neither irrigated nor served L. The figure of the irrigation canal, built in the 20th Century to increase agricultural productivity in the Tumbaco valley north of Ilaló, becomes apparent at the scale of UCCIL. Deviating water from sources on the Eastern Cordillera, the canal is made up of a series of branches that negotiate the terrain of valley and the deep canyons of rivers, from the foothills of Ilaló down towards the plains (Chile Asimbaya and Ortiz Calle Overlaps2021).between the irrigated areas and communal territories frequently coincide with those that have been either officially or unofficially seized, as in the case of Plazapamba. Farther into the valley, they represent the areas from which comunerxs have often been displaced as suburbanization unfolds. The process reveals correlations between topography, irrigation and fertility on the one hand, and rising land values, urbanization and dispossession on the other. At the same time, the geometry of the irrigation subbranches, has been a significant determinant in the morphology of urban (and suburban) development in the Tumbaco valleys.

An architecture of water struggles, Comuna Tola Chica.

Private2021. companies advertise water purifying systems in La Toglla, Municipal2022water is collected in Comuna Santa Clara de San Millán, yet the upper areas are still disconnected from public systems. 2022

"Communal territories are exempted from tax payments by constitutional mandate, which is why basic infrastructural needs (electricity, potable water, sewage), facilities and mobility works have not been addressed, generating an unequal social growth relative to other sectors of the city".

Map by author, based on GIS data from IGM, MDMQ and Junta de Riego Tumbaco

UCCIL 2019, 16

"Los territorios comunales están exentos de pagos de impuestos por mandato constitucional. por lo que las necesidades básicas de infraestructura (energía eléctrica agua potable. alcantarillado), obras de equipamiento y movilidad no han sido atendidas. lo que genera un crecimiento social desigual con respecto a otros sectores de la ciudad".

Comunas as collateral territories for urban infrastructure

LA TOGLLA Central GuangopoloSectorPatojotoScar

XL.

“Traditionally, Race has been thought of in terms of people, but ultimately (and originally) its politics becomes comprehensible only when it is contemplated in territorial terms: race is always, more or less explicitly, the racialization of space, the naturalization of segregation."

of mining in Patojoto, La Toglla Maps by author, based on aerial imagery from Apple Maps,Comuna2022 leaders and advocates denounce the unfolding of a systematic pattern that associates the construction of urban infrastructure—including roads, airports and other major works—with the decimation of communal territories (Rayner et al. 2019; Oviedo, Stevens, and D’Auria 2021). Water infrastructure is no exception. In the case of La Toglla, for example, comunerxs trace the first forms of seizure of communal lands to the construction of the Guangopolo reservoir in the 1960s (Iza 2015). Mining operations in the sector of Patojoto, in La Toglla, not only created a physical scar on the territory, but also triggered processes of privatization: to this day, the mine is registered as private in the municipal cadastered, and occupied by non-comunerxs.

Joshua Lund, El Estado Mestizo, 2019, 150.

In colonial and republican Quito, depictions of “El Indio Aguador”, or the “Water-Carrying Indian” in English, illustrate the role of water in producing racial categories and hierarchies in Quito and beyond. The conflation of the categories of “Indian” and “Water Carrier” visibilize how the position of subjects relative to processes of water provision—and their associated artifacts, practices and infrastructures in the city—are complicit in the creation and perpetuation of racial categories, and the consequent forms of exclusion and dispossession inscribed on the territory, alongside the forms of resistance to them.

The processes of dispossession and communal resistance discussed above, simultaneously shaped by and materialized in physical structures related to water, resonate with broader historical trajectories.

1868. Images adapted by author, originals by Camillus Farrand, in "El Ecuador". Getty's Open Content Program.

“Tradicionalmente se ha pensado en la raza en términos de personas, pero en última instancia (y en sus orígenes) su política se vuelve comprensible sólo cuando se examina en términos territoriales: la raza es siempre, de manera más o menos explícita, la racialización del espacio, la naturalización de la Joshuasegregación.”Lund,ElEstado Mestizo, 2019, 150. Water Carriers collect water from the fountain in San Francisco, one of the main squares of Quito's colonial center, to distribute it to households who could pay for the service.

Water provision and racialization

FOREST, RAVINE, CHAKRA, bosque,ALANGASÍPLANTATION.wayku,chakra, plantación. converging social practices and diverging notions of 'the2forest'.2

XS. After a long walk on the trail that cuts across the densely vegetated upper slopes of Alangasí, we finally arrive to a small opening in the forest, right where the ‘chakiñan’ intersects with a shallow water course that runs per pendicular to it. While the other compañerxs stayed farther downhill to fix the edges of the road that collapsed in the last rains, our part of the minga is here, right in Mama Tena. Joining a group of six comunerxs equipped with picks, hoes and shovels, our role is to clean up the ravine, an activity that I do not quite grasp—why would we need to clean a ravine?

As we walk through the narrow canyon that leads to the Mama Tena water spring that irrigates—and gives name to—this lush landscape, one of the male compañerxs explains: “Decades ago, these were built as drinking foun tains for cattle. Now that they are not used, we have to clean up for the water to run down nicely”.

A ravine that needs maintenance

Mama Tena: beyond native vegetation Often revered in media and literature, as well as in comunerx and environmentalist circles as one of the few remnants of primary vegetation cover that needs to be preserved, Mama Tena has the physi cal imprints of human activity at its core.

The terraced tubs that have been carved into the rock of the site to provide drinking water for cattle act as one of the many material witnesses of the layered social life and complex history of this place. A history that the comunerxs in my group tie to economic factors: “Imagine, back then, with the lack of employment, people dedicated them selves to agriculture and cattle, and it gave good sustenance”. So cows from all over was herded here, to the heart of Mama Tena, often portrayed as a primordial wilderness—either explicitly or implicitly. The drinking fountains are not only the physical remnants of a distant past: They also shape the social practices that unfold in this forest today, such as the clean-up mingas that co munerxs enact to keep a functioning ravine—and thus a healthy forest ecology. The forest provides the material basis for the sustenance of several medicinal practices and livelihoods. Milagros, the eldest woman with us, picks up plants and herbs along the way, and puts them in her bag while patiently explaining their uses whenever either I or one of the younger comunerxs asks. After picking up a small herb with broad leaves, she looks at me. “Do you have a girlfriend? If she takes this she does not get pregnant”, she says, before bursting a laugh that helps make me less uncomfortable with the joke. A bit farther up the chakiñan, as we approach the agricultural parcels on our way back, she picks up a yellow flower and goes: “This is a remedy. Even for cows that cannot give birth. You give them a handful of this and done. I go to the veterinary and it costs 30 dollars for the consultation, so I say we leave it like this... One runs to the doctor, and then they say ok let’s see the money. From where?” Then, she points at a reed and continues: “This is pajilla de monte, we used to make beds with this.”

Finca La Merced and surroundings, Ilaló summit Encounters between eucalyptus polyculturalandspecieshigh-andeanmonocultures,forest,nativeasagriculturalhedgeschakras,traditionalfoodsystems

Finca La Merced and

Introduced in the 19th Century, Eucalyptus was promoted as “the timber salvation of the Ecuadorian sierra” by public institutions, including the National Department of Forestry, formerly embedded within the Ministry of Economics and Agriculture (see Acosta Solís 1949). Eucalyptus plantations, which constitute 11% of the territory of Ilaló, have welldocumented negative effects on soil, fauna, and water sources (see Secretaría de Ambiente MDMQ 2013; Borja 2020).

VersionsS. of 'the forest'

Catalogue of woody vegetation in Ilaló- invasive and native Mama Tena is embedded in a broader mosaic that includes a variety of patches and corridors of what is usually discussed under the umbrella term of ‘forest’. However, what classifies as ‘forest’, as well as the meanings and practices associated to this term, vary amongst social groups (Hecht, Morrison, and Padoch 2013, 99). Within a broader set of socio-natural nuances and gradients, comuna advocates tend to be quite clear about one distinction: eucalyptus plantations are not forests. Indeed, alongside environmental activists of different groups, they insist on the need to phase out invasive species including eucalyptus, and propose to replace them with native vegetation—processes that they are already advancing (UCCIL 2019, 20; Secretaría de Ambiente MDMQ 2018).

MavicRickybyimageBase

High-Andean Forest Eucalyptus Plantation

51 Mama Tena High-Andean Forest. Communal. Finca La Merced Largest Eucalyptus Plantation on Ilaló. Exploited for timber. 185 Hectares. Private. Eucalyptus patches La Toglla. Communal. Ojos de Agua, La Toglla High-Andean Forest. Communal. Agricultural reforestationgrid Communal. Tola Chica High-Andean Forest. Comunal.

Image by author, based on aerial imagery from Google Earth (2022), GIS data from IGM and MAG, and Secretaría de Ambiente MDMQ (2013)

3.2.

As the altitudinally highest area within the ter ritory of Comuna Alangasí, Mama Tena [1] is part of a stratified system of forest types and the socio-natural practices and configurations that reproduce—and decimate—them. In this figu re of high-andean forest*, divergent ideological and cultural notions and expectations about ‘the forest’ converge spatially. As such, conflicts bet ween comunerxs, NGOs and public agencies are not uncommon. Comunerxs will denounce that NGOs want to appropriate the forest and deny their customary practices in it, while NGOs argue that their interests are indeed in line with those of the comuna, claiming that they just want to contribute with technical suggestions and infor mation for the preservation and management of Mama Tena. Beyond trying to clarify the rights and wrongs of these arguments, I would like to bring attention to is the way in which the physical reality of a forest—in this case Mama Tena—is simultaneously the basis and result of continuous processes embedded in a series of contested soci al, political and cultural/ontological divergences and convergences. In contrast with Tola Chica and La Toglla, the co munerxs of Alangasí have decided that permanent places of dwelling will not be constructed within their territory. As a result, the hard-lined figure of Mama Tena—surrounded by a ‘zanja’ or trench built by the comunerxs as a physical inscription of its boundary—transitions into an agricultural grid that roughly follows the contours of the area. Allocated for the development of chakras—tra ditional Andean polycultural systems similar to the now more widely celebrated milpas—the units of this matrix are used by comunerx families for both subsistence and commercial purposes. Ho wever, with an aging population and the transiti on towards other sources of livelihood amongst younger members, the parcels located in the higher plateau at the crown of Ilaló [2] have slow CommunalM. forests, productive landscapes and settlement: a contested mosaic

1. Mama Tena: Layered notions and practices in a native forest remnant transition:Plateau Aging populations and agriculturalpostreforestationparcel Chalmapata: A systemforest/chakrasuperimposedgrid

53 3 12

Real- estate developments in Chiviquí, across the ravine from Tola Chica Medicinal plant harvesting in Mama ReforestationTena efforts are a structuring axis of mingas in different comunas. Pictured here, a minga in Kaizanloma, Comunidad Ancestral La Toglla.

Farther down the slopes, in Chalmapata [3], na tive vegetation becomes the outline of the chakra grid. Though not usually conceived as ‘forest’, this meshwork ought indeed be considered part of the ‘agro-ecological matrix’ (Vandermeer and Perfec to 2014) within which Mama Tena is embedded. If as Vandermeer and Perfecto argue, the quality of the matrix matters more than the preservation of pristine isolated remnants, then the urbanizing valleys—from which the comunerxs of Alangasí have been displaced by a process of dispossession, as I will try to demonstrate in the following chap ter—must also be considered as part of the ‘forest’ to be reinvigorated. Whereas this coincides with the view of many environmentalists and public officials such as Cecilia Pacheco, for example, who told me that “the Ilaló cannot become an island”, it collides with some of the discourses that construct Ilaló as a ‘pristine’ area to be conserved—rather than as a contested territory that is simultaneous ly cultivated, ancestrally inhabited, decimated, exploited and reproduced by a number of compe ting practices and rationales. For instance, the delineation of Ilaló-Lumbisí as a protection area has been denounced by some M/L.

ly been phased out. Consequently, the hard-lined edge of Mama Tena is transitioning into an area of ‘forest resurgence’, enabled by practices that range from comuna-led reforestation programs to ef forts of corporate social responsibility—including associations of oil-drilling professionals looking to ‘offset part of their carbon emissions’—signa ling again the different notions and practices that converge in the (re)production of these ‘forests’.

"We, the communes and communities, conceive the territory of Ilaló not as a natural resource that can be exploited, much less as a commodity, our first relationship with the Ilaló is spiritual. On this mountain we recharge ourselves with energy and strength. We do not see ourselves as the owners of the hill. We see ourselves as an integral part of it, therefore we assume our responsibility for its care, conservation, use and destiny, in order to guarantee our historical continuity within this Territory."UCCIL 2019, 3

"Las comunas y comunidades concebimos al territorio del Ilaló no como un recurso natural factible de explotación, mucho menos como una mercancía, nuestra primera relación con el Ilaló es espiritual. En este Cerro nos recargamos de energía y fuerza. No nos mostramos como dueños del cerro. nos mostramos como parte integrante de éste, por lo tanto asumimos nuestra responsabilidad en su cuidado, conservación, uso y destino, a fin de garantizar nuestra continuidad histórica dentro de este Territorio"UCCIL2019, 3

L/XL. comunerxs as an exclusionary effort, as these policies position their territories as environmen tal set-asides while limiting their collective rights on and authority over their own territories (see Rayner 2017, 2021; UCCIL 2019; also discussed in Oviedo 2022). Following these claims, I further argue that they frame territories predominantly inhabited communally as the binary counterfi gure to an extractive urbanization process that advances on—and uphill from—the same valleys that have historically been appropriated from and denied to Indigenous peoples and popular classes. In Alangasí and beyond, the forest acts as a broa der proxy for ‘nature’ as a socially constructed and politically/ontologically disputed notion (Escobar 2020; Blaser 2009; Blaser and De la Cadena 2017).

Taking the Plaza. Comuneros in front of the municipality, in Quito's main colonial square. Several protests were part of UCCIL's repertoire to oppose the 2015 Ordinance that tried to set aside Ilaló-Lumbisí as a special area of environmental intervention. Photo by Jeremy Rayner (2021) *for an in-depth discussion of the vegetation profile and ecological composition of Mama Tena and Tola Chica forests, see (Curipoma, Cevallos, and Pérez 2018)

Plano General de Quito Con las Zonas Permitidas para la Urbanización, 1934, Director Técnico de Obras Públicas Municipales. Courtesy of STHV, MDMQ and D’Auria 2021) including the nature-culture divide that is constitutive of racialized geographies and ‘colonial cultures of planning’ (Porter 2016). As such, it elucidates some of the broader historical trajectories within which the unfolding territorial contestations of Ilaló must be read.

The current discussion can be seen more broadly in light of a binary separation that poses ‘city’ and ‘forest’ as mutually exclusive figures. Historical maps of Quito, such as the one below from 1934, show this dichotomic reading, as they portray the inhabitable areas juxtaposed against an empty background planted with trees, here highlighted in green. Labeled with the rubric “areas permitted for urbanization”, the map illustrates the conceptual exclusion of ‘the natural’—a contested and problematic notion, to be sure—from ‘the urban’, and vice versa. The only exception to this binary division is in the centerbottom of the map (highlighted in white), where the language of the grid overlaps with the pattern of trees. Only to confirm the rule, the area is labeled as “La Floresta”, which has now become one of Quito’s most distinctive—and contested—neighborhoods.

The map embodies several “ontologies of separation” that are central to the modern/colonial project (Escobar 2020; Quijano 2010; also in Oviedo, Stevens, The exile of Earth from the city is a reflection of a twofold civilizational anomaly: on the one hand, the construction of cities on the basis of their separation from the nonhuman living world […] on the other, the tendency towards the historical deprecation of everything that is not the city: all forms of rural life; indigenous and ethnic cultures…” Arturo Escobar, Habitability and Design, 2021, 132. El exilio de la Tierra de la ciudad es el reflejo de una doble anomalía civilizatoria: por un lado, la construcción de las ciudades sobre la base de su separación del mundo viviente no humano […]por otro, la tendencia a la depreciación histórica de todo lo que no es la ciudad: todas las formas de vida rural; las culturas indígenas y étnicas…” Arturo Escobar, Habitability and Design, 2021, 132.

Dichotomic readings

CRATER, PLAIN, PLATEAU, SLOPE. LA cráter,TOGLLApamba, loma, ladera. the role of topography in dispossession and communal forms of resistance 2.3

The first, smaller classrooms were built in adobe and wood by the comunerxs themselves. Then, an agreement with the State resulted in the construc tion of new classrooms, all in prefabricated steel structures that surround the platform of the cour tyard. After the State dropped support for bilin gual intercultural education, the school remain ed closed for several years, before Achik Muyu moved in in 2020. As Salime —the director of the school— told me, the pedagogical project aims to transcend advance a “truly autonomous, emanci patory model that is connected to its territory”. The territorial rootedness of the school is spati ally enhanced by the imposing backdrop of Ilaló. The school sits on the head of Pakiloma, a small plateau nestled between the main branch and a se condary tributary of Togllawayku, the ravine that gives the name to this land. Placed at the culmi nation of a long road, the school provides a spatial sense of arrival. While providing imposing vistas of the crater, the elevated position of Pakiloma intensifies a simultaneous condition of rootedness and exception—being surrounded by ravines, the place dominates over its surroundings, but is physically separated from them.

Pakiloma is the most memorable and active space of communal life in La Toglla. Farther down the road sits the communal house, an introverted building made of adobe and wood, and used for smaller meetings and minor assemblies, followed by the ‘Wawacentro’—or children’s center— re cently constructed by the municipality: a concrete and glass box, with a very institutional presence.

The school: a platform Pakiloma: Nestled in the ravine

It’s a windy evening in January and comunerxs of different ages rush to set things up before the rain starts. The general assembly to elect the comuna’s council are today, so the tents must be ready. The communal house is around the corner, yet assemblies in La Toglla take place here, on the concrete plat form that acts as the school’s yard. The slight differences in height caused by the incremental construction of this surface result in most people sitting on ledges and steps—so less chairs are needed. A huge wiphala—the flag of indi genous Andean peoples—waves in the background. The monumentality of the collapsed crater makes it feel like we’re sitting in the stage of an amphit heater. In this setting, exercises of self-government inevitably take a theatri cal turn. The relationship with the territory cannot be escaped. S.

Plateaus: Communal Stages Pakiloma’s spatial configuration as a plateau nest led between two branches of the ravine provides it with a sense of monumentality. At the same time, it is part of a broader pattern that shapes the stra tegies deployed by the comuna through its asserti ons of presence and autonomy on the territory. Located in the collapsed crater of the volcano, La Toglla is shaped like an amphitheater that stret ches from the summit of Ilaló to the San Pedro River. Bounded by these two monumental figures, La Toglla is a clearly defined, rather introverted space. If Tola Chica (see chapter 2.1) is about dwelling ‘on’ the mountain, La Toglla is about communal forms of living ‘in’ the mountain. Here, two perpendicular systems compete and intermingle: the linearity of the ravine, juxtapo sed against the linearity of Avenida Intervalles (in Settlementred). and agriculture have historically concentrated on the scarce flatlands, represented in the map to the right as a gradient of orange hat ches. The density of the hatch shows slope grade, going from 0 to 25%. Of the plateaus along the Togllawayku ravine, three are particularly relevant to the socio-spatial strategies mobilized by the communal project as it continuously (re)claims and (re)produces its territory.

Pakiloma: School as stage and palimpsest of self-governmentCommunal Jackpi: Dwell to claim and other forms of flatland contestation

1. Ukshapamba: Communal assertions of persistence in the crater

Ukshapamba [1], which sits farther into the crater in an open plain, is surrounded by a mosaic of agricultural parcels, native forest vegetation and pastures. Here, the community asserts its presen ce by organizing cultural fairs and ceremonies, with a collection of movable structures including tents, stages and market booths that are assembled and disassembled for gatherings. As discussed in Chapter 2.1, ritual practices in Tola Chica are of ten shaped as processions that traverse the linea rity of its territory. In contrast, in La Toglla, the social practices that reproduce a sense of “persis tence in place” (Rayner 2021) take more spatially static forms: Plateaus are mobilized as stages of the communal. M.

3.2.

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A fence, a mediagua and the remnants of a ravine. At the entrance of Jackpi, Comunerxs from La Toglla set up a temporary structure to guard the plateau that ‘foreign’ privates have tried to claim as their own. Families take turns to spend the night here. A fence located against the footprint of the ravine—now reduced to a small trench in the ground in this part—further delineates this as a boundary.

Pakiloma [2] is shaped by the permanent presen ce of infrastructure such as the communal house and the school, which is simultaneously stage and palimpsest of communal deliberation, or, in the words of Tzul Tzul, the collective production of decisions (2019). Jackpi [3], the lowest plateau in La Toglla, is also the scene of an unfolding assertion of territoriality by the communal project. Mobilized by the threat of privatization, which includes the unconstitu tional registration of several parcels as private property in the municipal cadaster, comunerxs re claimed their territory amidst the violent deploy ment of military and police personnel. Through mingas, comunerxs created ‘microparcels’ of 12,5x25m, and distributed them amongst pro-co muna members. Parcels are being fenced off with barbwire and used to grow food. However, it is foreseen that comunerxs might build houses here in the near future—the seedlings of which are already present as temporary makeshift shacks that signal the need to dwell on this land in order to claim it against the threats of dispossession and Asprivatization.Iwilltryto demonstrate in the next section, La Toglla’s strategic deployment of communal asser tions of presence on the flatter areas of its territory is not ungranted. Instead, it responds to a pattern in which plains, plateaus and other forms of flat lands are the most vulnerable to different forms of appropriation and dispossession.

Flatland appropriation: a Plazapambapattern

Formerly within Tola Chica, the plains at the base of the comuna seceded as a "barrio" (neighborhood with private property regime). Comunerxs denounce the participation of authorities and land traffickers in the conflict, which started in the 80s.

El Paraíso First claimed by a landowner who then sold subdivision plots, the seized plains of Alangasí remain within the comuna, but operate as an independent "sector". Comunerxs have prevented their official recognition as a barrio, but the area shows as private in the municipal cadaster. L.

Jackpi

In the lower part of La Toglla, several parts of this plateau have been registered as private property in the public cadaster, which the community continuously contests in court and on the ground.

67 LTTC TC LT AL AL

UphillXL.

A view of Ilaló commissioned in 1786 shows the areas in dispute between the “Indians of the Commons of Alangasí” and a private landowner. In white, the contested area reads “Vaxios de la disputa”, or “Empty lands of the dispute”. The irrigation ditches are described as “built by the Jesuits”. The current area of the Comuna of Alangasí reads “Hill of the ancient peoples of Alangasí”. The valleys are no longer part of officially recognized communal territory, demonstrating the historical progression of uphill displacement and reduction of—again, officially recognized—Indigenous land. Similarly, an 1857 map of Santa Clara de San Millán shows the areas that the “Indigenous of the Commons” dispute against their appropriation by neighboring landowners. The areas labeled with the rubrics YYY and XXX represent the areas in dispute, with clearly indigenous names and altitudinal references: “from Sullu-zanja up” and Pamba-Chupa, respectively. The map is consistent with the community’s recollection that their territory reached the plains of what is now a densely built area in Quito’s urban core, before their incremental displacement uphill. As the indigenous territory was historically reduced and pushed towards higher ground on the Pichincha volcano, comunerxs had to occupy steeper areas (Capello 2011; IEE 2014, 70–73; Rayner 2017; Jácome Calvache 2015; Jacome 2019), including the areas shown in the 1857 depiction as a green swath of ‘forest’. These historical processes of dispossession and uphill displacement are indissociable from the increased vulnerabilities that comunas and popular neighborhoods of Quito face, and that resulted, for example, in the fatal landslides of Santa Clara de San Millán in 2022.

Photograph of the original, Archivo Nacional de Historia. Archivo Indígenas, Caja 118, exp. 16, p. 58.

Photograph of the original. Archivo Nacional de Historia. Archivo Indígenas, Caja 175, exp. 29, p. 32.

displacement

It is no coincidence that many comunas are located on steep terrain. Historically, flatlands and valleys have been appropriated by colonial powers, the Church, haciendas, and now urbanization. This topographically-based form of dispossession—as the geomorphological basis of what in its current form might be discussed in terms of settler-colonial urbanism (Hugill 2017; Porter and Yiftachel 2019; Taylor and Lublin 2021)—is evident in several historical maps and depictions.

"Asumo que la raza no es reducible a ninguna identidad previa o preexistente. No es un punto de partida sino un producto final, el resultado de un proceso llamado racialización. Los procesos de racialización que se iniciaron con el proyecto colonial español se encauzaron a través de una política del espacio." Daniel Nemser, Infrastructures of Race, 2017, 20. Early depictions of these territories under Spanish colonial rule show the role of topography in shaping spatial strategies of control and hierarchy. In his representation called Pontifical Mundo, chronist Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala’s showed major cities of the “Indies” as miniature versions of the settlements in Castille (below). With Cuzco in the center, the colonial cities on this side of the Atlantic hierarchically occupy an area represented as valleys, whereas a number of minor, peripheral settlements are dispersed on the surrounding slopes. Meanwhile, Castille is represented as a series of urban conglomerates amidst a flat savannah landscape. The same pattern of hierarchical occupation of flatlands —marked by the characteristic colonial grid—and peripheral settlements on the slopes is visible in historical maps of Quito.

Topography and hierarchy

“I assume that race is not reducible to any prior or preexisting identity. It is not a starting point but an end product, the result of a process called racialization. The racialization processes that began with the Spanish colonial project were routed through a politics of space.” Daniel Nemser, Infrastructures of Race, 2017, 20.

Guamán Poma de Ayala. Pontifical Mundo: las Yndias del Pirú en lo alto de España, 1615, Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno. Slide 03 (042), page 34. Retrieved from Gonzáles Vargas et.al. 2001. Guamán Poma de Ayala. La Ciudad y Audiencia de Quito, 1615, Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno. Slide 993 (1011), page 348. Retrieved from Gonzáles Vargas et.al. 2001.

Ciudad de Quito, Dionisio Alcedo Herrera, 1734. Archivo General de Indias. Available at http://sthv.quito.gob.ec/

SPECULATIONS ON A CONTESTEDhipótesisJackpi,3FUTURE.LaTogllasobre un futuro en disputa

Jackpi, La Toglla

Jackpi Togllawayku

ContestedContext.S. land claims and property regimes

While I align with comuna leaders and advocates who struggle for the recognition of comunas beyond—and regardless of—their own heterogenous systems of usufruct and property regimes (see Simbaña and Daza in Rayner et al. 2019; Rayner 2017), the registration of private plots within comunas remains an important mechanism of internal and external forces of dispossession, fragmentation and dissolution.

SanPedroRiver

As of 2015, 224 out of the 551 hectares of the communal territory of La Toglla were in dispute with foreigners (Iza 2015).

Despite the legal provisions that protect La Toglla and other communal territories from any kind of seizure, division or alienation —including the 57th article of the 2008 National Constitution of Ecuador—, plots are registered as private in the public cadaster.

The map on the right shows the lots registered in the municipal cadaster in the area of focus, alongside an interpretive color-coding of the different forms of tenure associated with it. Included are also areas that though not registered, have been seized by noncomunerxs (diagonal red hatch, no background). Also on the map is Lumbisí in yellow, where the comuna registered the entire territory as a single lot. Though considered perhaps the most appropriate form of negotiation with the State systems of property and planning, this has not prevented the transfiguration of communal land in Lumbisí.

CommunalContext. planning and the binary threat Comunas and communities have their own forms and systems of territorial planning, recognized by public institutions and legal frameworks to varying degrees, but often ignored, rendered invisible or deemed illegitimate by the practices of public officials and the general public (Rayner 2017; Rayner et al. 2019; Rayner 2021; Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015). As a result, UCCIL and Pueblo Kitu Kara, alongside the broader Indigenous Movement, have continuously mobilized for the recognition and articulation of communal planning instruments with those of the State (see PKK 2016; Gómez 2008; UCCIL In2019).the case of La Toglla, the community developed its latest Territorial and Land-use Planning documents through a series of workshops in 2018 (Comunidad Ancestral La Toglla 2018). The map on the left shows the zones within the area of focus. On the general plan, a portion of which is shown here, the categories used are: (1) Livestock potential (2) Traditional agriculture (3) Conservation (4) Forestry/ pencos/vicunas (5) Fruit trees/diversification (6) Urban areas (7) Urban expansion areas.

73 0 500m

Jackpi Togllawayku

SanPedroRiver

Jackpi SanPedroRiver Togllawayku

The zoning of their own territory represents an exercise in autonomous planning that the community is entitled to. At the same time, I argue that the zoning scheme internalizes many of the rationales of dominant public planning. For instance, the use of the term “urban”, which conflates areas of permanent dwelling forms with the category used by the State, obscures the rural/urban divide which comunas themselves aim to transcend (UCCIL 2019; also discussed in Oviedo 2022).With the exception of zone 3, which implies a silvopastoral system, the other categories suggest a mutually exclusive opposition between areas of inhabitation (urban, urban expansion) and those of production and environmental conservation (all others).

While not representative of the nuances imbued in the processes and conceptions that shaped it, I suggest that the categories may more deeply contradict the foundational bases of ‘Communal Project’ (Rayner 2017; Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015). I contend that the zoning categories used by the community reproduce many of the underlying logics of the modern/colonial project as it translates to spatial planning and urbanism, including a binary separation that opposes territories associated with ‘nature’ and those associated with ‘culture’(Porter 2016; Escobar 2019)In turn, this represents a distancing from the more complex and relational ‘ontologies of the city’ and the territory that characterize the deep—yet living—history of inhabitation in the Americas/Abya Yala (Durán Calisto 2020, 2021) and that the Communal Project resonates with.

Croquis de los caserios del Barrio y Guangopolo, 1923, scale 1:10000. From Ortega (2015) "In the Andes, the territory is configured through Llactas (yaqtas), a Quechua word that applies both to the city or town and to the land or territory ... The city of deep America is another form of city, both conceptually and physically ... it is animist, it is built on water and sacred land, it is territory". Ana María Durán Calisto, Agro-ecología Urbana en América Latina, 43

TheContext.road and the ravine: Competing settlement systems L.

In La Toglla, two settlement systems seem to coexist and compete. I argue that these systems have been in place since at least the beginning of the 20th Century. As I suggest with the color coding of the traced 1928 map of the community on the left, these two systems are: [1] A settlement system that is based on roads, which, in turn, are linked to Guangopolo, the colonial settlement and parish (in black). [2]A settlement system (in blue) that is structured around Togllawayku, the ravine that gives the name to the community, and the plateaus that are nestled around it. Without aiming to suggest a clear-cut dichotomy between "Indigenous" and "colonial" forms of settlement, much less propose that these are representative of the subjects carrying out these forms of settlement as enactments of a static essence, I would like to point out the different rationales that underpin these two forms of inhabitation. Whereas one is anchored on the logics of the territory, the other one is imposed on it through roads—an infrastructure that might be defined as primarily Iextractive.contendthat it is no coincidence that the most iconic spaces mobilized for the sustenance the communal project in La Toglla (the school, Ukshapamba and the football field) are all anchored on the ravine (see Chapter 2.3). Foregrounding the monumental presence and sacred character of the territorial figures of the ravine, the river, and the amphitheater of Ilaló, these spaces root the struggles of La Toglla’s communal project. To further articulate an integral reading of the habitat as a socionatural constellation, I suggest that the structuring role of Togllawayku and other major features of the territory should be strengthened.

"En los Andes, el territorio se configura a través de Llactas (yaqtas), una palabra quechua que se aplica tanto a la ciudad o el pueblo como a la tierra o el territorio … La ciudad, de la América profunda es otra forma de ciudad, tanto conceptual como físicamente… es animista, se levanta sobre agua y tierra sagrada, es territorio" Ana María Durán Calisto, Agro-ecología Urbana en América Latina, 43

CONCEPTUAL BASES

Throughout literature, statements, communiqués and their practices, members of what has been discussed as the ‘communal project’ (Rayner 2017; Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015) mobilize, both implicitly and explicitly, several conceptual foundations that set the framework for their efforts to sustain comunas. This interpretive map attempts to identify some of those, while focusing on their spatial implications, to then connect them to the main spatial demands and proposals of UCCIL for the management of Ilaló.

theinterdependenceethicssovereigntyrightsofnatureofcareandreciprocity,complementarityrelationalnaturevs.cityenvironmentalset-asidevs.uncared-forlandnaturevs.cultureforestvs.agriculture beyond rural vs. publiconlystatelandscapesconsumptiveurbanvs.productiveandmarketaspossibilitiesvs.private the communal beyond territorial decentralizationautonomy,collectiverightsrighttothecity(otherwise) XL.

"Con el término proyecto [comunal], enfatizamos que la reproducción de las comunas lleva trabajo... y que este trabajo está orientado por una concepción de lo que debe ser una comuna" Rayner 2017, 93

TheContext.Communal Project: a conceptual/spatial reading

“With the term [communal] project, we emphasize that the reproduction of the comunas takes work... and that this work is oriented by a conception of what a comuna should be"Rayner 2017, 93 food

77 UCCIL's DEMANDS AND PROPOSALS FOR ILALÓ (2019) irrigation systems + solar power 'territorially appropriate' infrastructure and services ancestral, agroforestal, agroecological practices native seed bank native crop species recovery organic waste reuse and natural fertilizer production agriculturally-apt soil recovery foreign species replacement (ie. eucalyptus) create community tree nurseries designreforestationintercommunal and ecological paths promote community tourism create interpretation centers recover sustainable trades and crafts

Jackpi: articulating the communal as a spatial grammar

The following section sketches out a speculation of the strategies and practices that might continue to unfold in the territory of La Toglla, as part of the community's ongoing struggles for the design—spatial and beyond—of possible futures. It emerges from a specific request by the council of La Toglla to include suggestions for Jackpi as part of my thesis. Beginning with the land seizure attempts in 2020 in Jackpi, and the subsequent assertions of communal presence by comunerxs, the speculation develops a number of layers framed as acts. Through them, I imagine sociospatial strategies that might align with the communal project, while also finding resistance in—and engaging with—hegemonic practices and power Thoughstructures.informed by the dialogues and exchange with comuna leaders and other inhabitants, as well as my analysis of the previous chapters, the projective speculations (from act 4 onwards) have not been discussed with comunerxs of La Toglla yet.

79 79

80 Terraces and a clearing in the plantation in Jackpi

81 81

Acts 1 and 2.

Private claims and the inscription of communal presence

February 2020 In 2020, several private claims were made on a significant portion of communal territory in Jackpi. In order to prevent the seizure of these lands, the community mobilized. Faced with the violent deployment of police and military personnel to defend private property claims—not unusual, even on communal lands—comunerxs inscribed their presence on Jackpi by creating a grid system of ‘microparcels’ of 12,5x25m (see map on the right) and allocating them to comunerx families that needed land. As part of this process, new access roads were established. The changes can be seen in the maps below, from February and November 2020. On the left map, in red the plots registered as private in the municipal cadaster as of February 2022. Based on Google Earth imagery and GIS data from IGM and MDMQ.

83 November 2020 non-comunerx dwellings on cadastered land comunerxs create grid of micro-parcels of 12.5x25m fed by dirt roads

I read the actions of the comunerxs in the context of the systematic construction of Indigenous territories as ‘empty’ land to be appropriated, a constitutive rationale of colonial and settler-colonial modes of planning and urbanization in Ecuador and beyond (Porter 2016; Porter and Yiftachel 2019; Hugill 2017; Gaechter 2007; del Hierro 2018; UCCIL 2019; PKK To2016).inscribe their presence on Jackpi, however, comunerxs deploy a spatial language of roads and parcels that is very similar to the real-estate subdivisions that advocates of the communal project oppose (see Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015). I contend that while this is a strategic action shaped by—and mobilized against—the layered forms of oppression and dispossession that comunas face, it may prove counterproductive to the communal project and the socio-ecological sustenance of La Toglla and Ilaló. parcel terracing for agricultural and dwelling purposes "This condition of dispossession and displacement ... has been a constant feature of the Ecuadorian state, which has fragmented indigenous territories. First, establishing them as barren land, then classifying them as rural, and finally, as urban expansion advances, categorising them as private property" Pueblo Kitu Kara 2016, 13; UCCIL 2019, 10

Act Dwell3. to claim S.

Over the next year, comunerxs fenced off their parcels with barbwire and started growing food in them—a strategy that became even more important amidst the accentuated precarity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, comunerxs built makeshift structures which hinted at the permanent dwellings yet to come: according to members of the council, comunerxs expect to build ‘ecological houses in mixed materials’ on their microparcels. Similarly, a shack and fence were built at the entrance of Jackpi, were comunerxs sleep overnight to prevent further seizure attempts in the area.

85 guarding shack and fence at the entrance road barbwire fences and makeshift structures on microparcels consolidated dwellings and fencing around parcel claimed as private

How can the vocabulary of practices mobilized by comuna inhabitants be spatially choreographed into a set of strategies to further reproduce the comunas and communities of Ilaló as an integral habitat? How can the communal project be articulated as a spatial grammar in Jackpi specifically, and La Toglla by extension?

Act Enacting4.

water contestations a grammar of commons comunerxs establish amunas (infiltration swales on contour) and ponds as the basis for the cultivation and inhabitation of the territory beyond the matrix of property taking Jackpi's ravine as the starting point, amunas weave the territory together, bursting through the lines of usufruct and property. They provide a spatial framework of commons, beyond a binary 'public'domestic spatial matrix

89 free the ravines! UCCIL protests demand road damming of Togllawayku to be reverted resurfacing the memory of water mingas reopen Jackpi's infilled ravine sections reclaiming runoff comunerxs co-produce works with the provincial government to capture runoff from Avenida Interocéanica. Phytoremediation terraces purify the road's polluted water before feeding the ravine.

Act Planting5. the threads threads of the agroforest comunerxs organize mingas along amunas, making use of increased irrigation and the doubled topsoil of contrazanjas from zanja to zanja amunadora, from boundary to texture zanjas have historically been used in comunas to delineate boundaries. Reinterpreting them as zanjas amunadoras, rather than as a boundary, comunerxs use them as the texture of a cared-for territory

91 strategic thinning comunerxs keep 1/3 of eucalyptus monoculture as bands on contour to prevent erosion the struggle continues authorities and police protect land claimed as private in communal territory, preventing reindigeneization of eucalyptus monoculture comunerxs plant forested zanjas on contour (amunas) as structuring matrix

Act Reindigenizing5. the plantation: a process of variegation

This monoculture transformation strategy is based on conversations with Paul DeHousse, forest engineer and Ilaló expert based in La Toglla.

Act Re-producing5. the forest, a material catalogue

UCCIL celebrates Pawkar Raymi in sculpted platform aligned with equinox projectedexisting processions slopesreindigeneizedtraverseforest communal tree nursery and timber processing facility set the framework for inhabitationplateau Act Sculpting6. stages 0 100m

97 meeting

extractionJackpi´sseedingterraplénTogllawaykudelospencostheplateaugatewaygoeson comunerxs articulate a platform as a clearing in the forest, right where the ravine meets the river. Oriented in the East-West axis, it welcomes the equinox celebrations of Pawkar- and Kolla Raymi comunerxs accentuate the preexisting platform by clearing the plantation and reforesting the slopes beneath it. a row of pencos (agave americana) frames the platform and the views toward the San Pedro Canyon and the Western Cordillera La Toglla builds a communal tree nursery and timber processing facility on the highest plateau comuna advocates re-claim land from anti-comunerxs. A terraced dike diverts water from the ravine and collects it in a pond. The terraces welcome assemblies despite communal actions in court and on the territory to prevent it, a company builds warehouses in the former Patojoto mine A

Act Fitting7. into armatures of territorial care processingcommunal facilities for productsagro-forestaldouble as market run by the school ceremonial springs recover infiltrationincreasedfromwater comunerxs embed individual dwellings within the agroforestal matrix of amunas and terraces La Toglla uses timber from outphased eucalyptus monoculture to produce first woodframed housing cooperative in Quito wetlandsconstructedchakrascooperativeintegrate existingprojected 0 100m

99 B

Act 8. The communal project as a sociospatial constellation surrounded by the onecomunerxseucalyptusremainingbands,decidetobuildtalleronparcelandkeeptherestforchakrasandconstructedwetlands comunerxs integrate water collection earthworks with terraced assembly building, doubles as outdoor school anticomunerx parcels remain claimed as private, but comunerxs reclaim them into common territorialthroughframeworkamunas Jackpitournamentecuavoleyinter-comunainrunoffwithirrigatereopenafterrecoversravineJackpi´smingasitandittreatedpencos frameplatformcommunalonviews of the San Pedro Canyon volcanoPichinchaand 0 100m

101 constructed wetlands are built by comunerxs to process wastewater from school in Pakiloma UCCIL protests on Avenida Interocéanica continue to demand undamming of Togllawayku ravine C

concluding reflexionesreflectionsfinales

Prompted by the request of council members of La Toglla to provide suggestions for Jackpi, one of the comuna’s contested plateaus, I have developed an exercise in design-research framed as a speculation. Building upon the actions of comunerxs to inscribe their presence on the territory, and based upon the repertoire of practices mobilized in relationship to water, forest and topography as structuring elements, the speculation attempts to articulate some of the notions and practices of the communal project (Rayner 2021; Rayner, Morales, and Simbaña Rengifo 2015; Rayner 2017) into a spatial grammar. As such, for example, I imagined mingas being choreographed along infiltration ‘amunas’, as the first step of the deployment of armatures of territorial care that inscribe a communal presence on the territory that transcends the dominant language of domestic parcels and roads. As much as I have attempted to develop this thesis as a process of collaboration and dialogue with the comunerxs that I have engaged and developed relationships with, I would like to once again clarify that its contents represent my own interpretations. Consequently, both the analytical and projective components of this thesis are, though shaped in dialogue with different collaborators, of my responsibility. In particular, the projective speculations are to be taken as a provocation, which has yet to be discussed with the inhabitants of La Toglla. I hope that the different components of this thesis can lead to discussions and understandings that help position comunas as plural socio-spatial formations—a crucial component of their recognition as subjects of collective territorial rights. At the same time, it is my hope that it contributes with useful material and provocations to continue examining the ways in which we inhabit Quito in particular, and this world by extension—a question that though implicit, is at the center of the communal project.

Throughout the pages and the process of this thesis, I have attempted to uncover some of the relationships between the spatial configurations of comunas in Ilaló and the social practices mobilized to reproduce them. Borrowing from my own ethnographic fieldwork on site alongside literature, maps, and other iconographic material, I found that space is indeed both participant in and testimony of the processes of dispossession and resistance that continue to unfold over the communal territories of Ilaló. In particular, I have found that the physical realities of Tola Chica, Alangasí and La Toglla, as analyzed through the lenses of Water, Forest and Topography, provide insights into the mechanisms and processes of dispossession and contestation that take place within and beyond communal boundaries as they interact with urbanization and other processes of territorial Attransformation.thesametime, these ‘material bases’ are proof of the complicit role of space in social dynamics. In other words, that space acts as a ‘stage’ that simultaneously shapes, and is shaped by, the social constellations and practices that interact with it (Heynen 2013). As such, the way in which fiesta, minga or asamblea are mobilized as constitutive practices of the communal project (Rayner 2021) is influenced by the specific spatial characteristics of a territory. At the same time, these practices alter space, either temporally or permanently, through symbolic and material forms of intervention. Thus, for instance, the amphitheaterlike configuration of La Toglla, at the same time that influences the vulnerability of specific areas to appropriation by privates, shapes the strategies that comunerxs deploy in order to inscribe their presence on the territory. Similarly, a makeshift structure built by a comunera to do laundry in Tola Chica provides insights into the layered histories of displacement and marginalization that comunerxs have been subjected to as urbanization unfolded, and which is readable as it manifests spatially across scales.

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