Made in Ecuador: Consuming national imaginaries of nature and culture

This article examines the relevance of dominant mestizo imaginaries of Ecuadorian natural and cultural heritage in constructing national identity as expressed through consumer perceptions of national products. Conducted in collaboration with a large retail conglomerate and focusing on mestizo consumers in the country’s two largest cities, Quito and Guayaquil, we consider how consumer perceptions embody a legacy of (post)colonial tensions regarding the symbolic anchors of abundant yet exploited natural resources and a national “peoplehood” based on contradictory currents of mestizaje and racialized fragmentation. While Ecuador’s natural resources are a source of national pride, they are also linked to extractivist dependencies. Conversely, while mestizo consumers express thinly veiled racist, classist, and gendered explanations for national social problems, they simultaneously advance paternalist counternarratives of honest work and engage in racialized appropriations of artisanal traditions. We analyze how buying Ecuadorian or not is inflected by such complex historical tensions.