In her essay, Karla Mundim examines Indigenous protest movements in Ecuador, focusing on the protests against construction on the Piatua River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mundim argues that, despite the enshrining of the prior consultation of Indigenous communities and the "rights of nature" in the country's constitution, Indigenous communities continue to protests and make themselves visible to the state to safeguard their democratic rights.
Karla Mundim
Karla Mundim has recently earned her PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. In the Fall of 2023, she will start as an assistant professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York (CUNY). Her research focuses on Indigenous mobilization, ethnic politics, colonial legacies, and theories of multiculturalism. Her dissertation explores comparative Indigenous movements through a historical lens, with a particular focus on the Central Andes. In her article “My Body, My Territory: Indigenous Women, Territoriality, and the Rights of Cultural Minorities,” published in Politics, Groups, and Identities (2021), she argues that Indigenous women in Peru strategically engage the concept of territoriality in their dual struggle for collective Indigenous rights, and individual rights as women. Mundim was the comparative politics editorial assistant for Perspectives on Politics from 2017 to 2023, and she has conducted field research in Ecuador and Peru.