ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Afro-Ecuadorian politics in the three historical periods: monocultural Mestizaje, neoliberal multiculturalism and autocratic redistributive multiculturalism. It describes state policies that created ethnic and racial identities, efforts of stigmatized racialized groups to challenge or to accommodate to state policies, and Afro-Ecuadorian participation in the political system. The discussion is organized around two axes: the processes of exclusion/invisibility and inclusion of Afro-Ecuadorians and the paradoxes between co-optation and autonomy from the state for Afro-descendant organizations and politicians. The chapter argues that process of inclusion during neoliberal multiculturalism was incomplete because it did not address policies of socioeconomic redistribution. Under Correa policies of redistribution were enacted from the top down attempting to transform citizens into grateful masses. The election of an Afro-Ecuadorian as Miss Ecuador in 1995 also disrupted narratives of Black invisibility and of the Mestizo nation. The left-wing populist government of Rafael Correa rolled back neoliberal policies, built the state and put it at the center of development.
