“Medioambientalismo colonial”

Los discursos progresistas de Rafael Correa y Evo Morales que acompañaron la apropiación de la Amazonía en los casos Yasuní-ITT y TIPNIS

Abstract

This article examines how the progressive presidents of Ecuador and Bolivia during the 2000s and 2010s justified the appropriation of the Amazon in two emblematic environmental conflicts: the Yasuní-ITT Initiative in Ecuador and the dispute over National Route 24 in the Isiboro Sécure National Park in Bolivia, both accompanied by social discourses on buen vivir (good living). An argumentation model based on Toulmin (1958) and Plantin (2012) is employed, within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, to analyze the arguments used by the two leaders when announcing their political measures, which were seen as environmental threats. As is shown by the analysis, both argued that their political decisions were necessary to combat poverty and ensure the sovereign development of their countries, framing environmentalism as a concession to industrialized Western countries. Although Correa and Morales had previously promoted the inclusion of the buen vivir concept in the new constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia, in their speeches they defend a socialist-statist interpretation of buen vivir, according to the model of Cubillo-Guevara et al. (2018), which is a concept made compatible with neoextractivism.