Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador [Paperback]

"Crude Chronicles is a splendid example of fine-grained ethnography. It illustrates in many ways why this approach continues to be the hallmark of anthropology. The best feature of the book is the lovingly detailed descriptions and close-to-the-ground analysis of dialogue and events. It will be mandatory reading for Latin Americanists interested in social movements, especially the indigenous and environmentalist movements, and of course, students of Ecuadorian politics."--Jean E. Jackson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Crude Chronicles seamlessly weaves the compelling richness of an exceptional ethnographic account with the power of a story well told. By chronicling the history of the ongoing contest that has characterized the politics of petroleum in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Sawyer brilliantly illustrates the imbricated process by which indigenous and neoliberal geophraphies are configured and reconfigured in the process of making nature, nation, and citizens. Crude Chronicles will surely become a key reference point in future debates about the cultural politics of nature."--Peter Brosius, University of Georgia "Crude Chronicles offers a first-hand account of the complex and contested politics of land and oil in Ecuador during the 1990s... it is an engaged analysis of the micropolitics of neoliberalisation"--Jrnl Latin American Studies, May 2006 " ... Crude Chronicles represents the kind of book I wish more scholars would aspire to write. Sawyer is courageous, impassioned, and fiercely political in this book and attacks the contradictions of contemporary capitalism head on, without apologies. She does so in engaging, straightforward, and convincing prose that, although it helped me understand a complex political situation, also meant I did not have to work very hard to do so. Sawyer does not simply seek to describe the politics that are played out as a result of the stranglehold of neoliberal capitalism on indigenous environments; instead she "sets in motion the natural forces which belong to her own body, her arms, legs, head and hands" in order to change the world."--Environment and Planning A, 2007 issue 39/1 "Suzana Sawyer's Crude Chronicles examines the complex terrain of contention and negotiation among indigenous communities, transnational petroleum corporations and the state in Ecuador's Amazon region... Based on rich ethnographic research and hundreds of hours of meetings with OPIP leaders, state officials, adn ARCO executives, the book's greatest strength and much of its originality lie in the analysis of the discursive and performance strategies employed by the three central sets of actors."--BLAR, VOl 26, No. 2, April 2007 "... a finely observed ethnographic account of indigenous organizing in the 1990s... As Sawyer's excellent ethnography illustrates by the turn of the millennium indigenas were anything but invisible."--JRAI, Sept 2007

Ecuador is the third largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the western United States. As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. "Crude Chronicles" traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neo-liberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neo-liberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America's strongest indigenous movements. Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a trans-national neo-liberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneouvres and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality - that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and re-writing narratives of national belonging - as they were about the material use and extraction of rain forest resources.