Gringos and Caimitos : a political ecology of coloniality in a marginalized farming community

Abstract: This study examines articulations between place, power, and difference between social groups in a farming community of afro-descendance and foreigners appropriating land in Ecuador. It is an iterative-inductive ethnography that combines the extended case study with autoethnography to move between layers of systemic structures, intersubjectivity and subjectivity. Socio-ecological space is understood in terms of nature regimes read through the lens of decoloniality. Local models of organic natures are constantly threatened by capitalist natures, why collaboration between lighter versions are formed protecting ecology and toacertain degree the autonomy of the villager. However, these versions still pertain within modern/colonial paradigm, why coloniality to some extentbecomes reconfigured in the community by the logic of hierarchical dichotomies of white man and all other(s) Even when it is detrimental to the intentions. Why I propose self-reflexivity, a reflection on one’s positionality and a responsiveness to historically subjugated others, as a way to decolonize the gringo and bring forth other ways of being in the world.