Immigration Articles Summary What does each author argue? How does s/he support this argument? What do these readings have in common? Where do they disagre

Immigration Articles Summary What does each author argue?
How does s/he support this argument?
What do these readings have in common? Where do they disagree?
Which arguments do you find convincing?
How do these readings relate to ongoing class discussions and previous readings?

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/300/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227931516…

Seeing the State Like a Migrant

Why So fv1any Non-criminals Break Immigration Laws David Kyle and Christina A. Siracusa

The Human SmugglingProblem through the Eyes of Destination States

James Scott pondered the question of why “the state” seems to be the enemy of people who move around, though this question led him to write a much broader book regarding the failure of state planning due to how states “see like a state.”1 In short, states seek to radically simplify and reduce social reality to fit management schemes imposed from above. ‘vVe hm1 the lens around to ask the opposite question: How do migrants see states? We argue that the answer to this question is critical for understanding why so many non-criminals around the world are breaking states’ immigration and .labor laws.

When states began focusing their vision in the 1900s on managing and controlling migrants en masse, assigning a variety of legal statuses with or without the right to work, they created “illegal aliens.”2 Thus, illegal populations increase when states retract the legal means of entry and work for foreigners. The hallmark ofsuch periods of retraction, typically during economic downhnns, is the assertion that-at least for now-migrants’ costs outweigh their benefits to receiving states. Yet the lobbying effort of employers of immigrant labor, and above all the fact that immigration policy isalso a foreign policy concern, mitigate “immigration reforms” dur- ingeven the peaksofanti-immigrantperiods.Thus, the resultingstrategic complexities of the muddled and ever-changing laws and enforcement strategies related to immigration provide sufficient profitable ambiguities for major employers of im migrant labor and, consequently, endless hope for potential migrant workers and asylum seekers’ T he domestic and foreign political challenges and ethical questions raised by these ever-changing mi- grant management calculations represent a topic of intense debate among economic, legal, philosophical, and political theorists.

Yet during the past decade, a new actor shaping migration patterns has become the focus of mostly negative attention of those across the politi- cal spectrum concerned with immigration issues- the migrant smuggler, or trafficker, vvho aids the unauthorized migrant or asylum seeker into a foreign country for profit (with prices ranging from US$50 to US$50,000). The migrant smuggler, since the mid-1990s, has been the primary target of novel border security policies and legislation for reducing illegal im- migration, including the recent “Victims of Trafficking and Violence Pro- tection Act of 2000” in the United States. T he successful smuggling op- erations aiding migrants and asylum seekers in their clandestine or falsely documented entry into ¥estern states has produced a growing number of government and multilateral programs around the world to combat smug- glers and traffickers. T hese programs, for the most part, construct migrants who contract smugglers as passive victims of”organized crime;’ which may be distinguished, as James Finkenauer has pointed out, from “crime that is organized.’>6 They are able to do so in part by focusing primarily on the most egregious cases of smuggling abuses, including enslavement. Simi- larly, migrant smuggling is now estimated to be tl1e fastestgrowing type of “transnational crime,” with analogies to other criminal networks moving drugs, arms, and other illegal commodities across borders?

For example, a series of articles appearing in the Arizona Republic in late May 2001, reporting the deaths of fourteen migrants, represent the starkly divergent discourses of who is to blame for immigrant deaths and organized immigration lawbreaking. The first article blames the smug- gler who led the migrants to an area named “Devil’s Path” in which they baked in the scorching Arizona desert and were then allegedly left to die.8 It quotes Attorney General John Ashcroft: “They are to be condemned for putting profits before people.” A second article, after realizing that one of the dead, found crouched under a cactus, was in fact a smuggler, leads. “Suddenly the smuggler isn’t a very bad guy anymore.”9 A few months later, the newspaper, in an all too rare investigation, examined a town in lllexico in which nearly everyone is involved in the illegal migration business as a normalized activity.10 This story took a much more sociological perspec- tive on the illegal migration business, including the role of mutual trust between migrant and smuggler. Far from being an isolated incident, these deaths and the debate surrounding them demonstrate the complex ethical dimensions at play once we move beyond simplistic arguments either blam- ing the criminal smuggler, the migrant, or the unintended consequences of state actions.

Rather than enter into a normative debate regarding the foundational and evolving rights of states and immigrants, for the sake of our argument we will assume that states have legitimate interests in controlling who enters their territory, though this has not always been a high priority for states. Instead, the growing global business of migration services raises some em- pirical sociological questions that need to be examined along with more deductive economic, political, and criminological theorizing.

What has been lacking from most public debates and news reporting on migrant smuggling and human trafficking is the empirical reality of how migrants themselves view their actions and the often orderly, contractual nature by which they enter into a diverse range of “migrant-exporting schemes” (see following section). By understanding the political and moral reasoning ofundocumented workers and those who aid them, we gain a bet- ter understanding ofwhy so many non-criminals are choosing to selectively disregard some states’ immigration laws prohibiting unauthorized entry and work. During a period in which clandestine border crossings are not nearly as simple as they used to be just five years ago, we ask what may be posed as the “human smuggling question”: Why do hundreds ofthousands of otherwise non-criminals each year willingly choose to break immigra- tion laws by contracting intermediaries? In other words, do migrants and their abettors (who are now subject to lengthy prison sentences in some destination countries-but in few sending or transit countries) view their actions as “criminal”?

While simplification is necessary to all analytical frameworks, the sim- plistic notions of”trade in human cargo” carried out by “human smugglers” is much too inadequate to the task. A more useful concept would attempt to overcome the complex relationships among various apparent dichotomies such as micro/macro; legal/illegal; state/non-state. To this end we develop the concept of”migrant-exporting schemes.”

.Migrant-Exporting Schemes: The Orderly Business of Disorderly Migration

Migrant smuggling is best understood as a strategic set of “migrant- exporting schemes” embedded in historical social relationships involving both private and public actors. The concept of a scheme implies both its strategically opportunistic (legal and illegal) and visionary meanings. This concept also provides a better conceptual grasp of the organization and logic of”human smuggling,” which narrowly limits its field ofvision to one small, albeit important, part of a wider field of social action. The label of “migrant smuggling” fails to capture the mix of legal and illegal strategies (often blurring the lines) used by those who are attempting to gain work abroad for a price.

The primary goal of a migrant-exporting scheme is to provide a limited or “package” migration service to a specific country, and often a specific locale or employer. Typically, migrants are driven to professional smug- glers by blocked social mobility, pre-existing corruption, and uneven de- velopment-not absolute poverty. Many would be considered middle-class within their home communities. Ethnic persecution and sexism are also common reasons for perceived ceilings in mobility. Most of the organizational activity takes place on the sending side; the contract is terminated once the migrant has arrived at the destination. In some cases, however, financial loans for the smuggling fees also become an important source of income after arrival, but there is great variety in the terms of interest and payment and the division oflabor; the smuggler is not necessarily the loan shark. It is quite common for family members already abroad to lend the smuggling fee for a reduced rate. Such migrant-export- ing schemes are often characterized by highly irregular, often short-lived criminality, much of it opportunistic and therefore shaped by one’s social networks. And since many ”migration merchants” are part-timers, halting organized illegal migration is not simply a matter of breaking up a stable criminal organization.

In many parts ofthe world, the business ofmigration as a form ofexport- able commodified labor has been developed by economically debilitated and politically weak states, which view their own citizens as their most valuable comparative advantage. Formal government programs, as well as tacit acceptance of illegal migration of its citizens, as in the case of the Philippines, form part of an export-led strategy that conveniently resolves two of the most challenging problems for weakened state regimes that have adopted export-led development and International Monetary Fund (IMF) “stabilization and structural adjustment programs.” First, emigration pro-vides a safe valve for some of the countrY’s most ambitious but frustrated – citizens who may cause political instability. At the same time, exporting labor provides a source ofhard currency, which in many countries has now overtaken some ofthe traditional natural resource and commodity exports of migrant-exporting countries. After all, developed states with declining birth rates have experienced shortages in specific occupational areas, rang- ing from unskilled agriculhuallabor to relatively high-skilled medical oc- cupations. Several countries that have developed this labor export strategy have erected government bureaucracies with overseas outposts, thus insti- h ltionalizing the orderly export of their citizens abroad, championing the rights of illegal residents, and offering dual citizenship to those who are assimilating politically.

When migrant-exporting schemes develop as a sort ofgrassroots develop- ment project without government authorization, which typically involves some level of corruption ofstate officials, sending states generally find little political will to disrupt such schemes.This is due to both a lack of criminal law for related “smuggling” activities in most sending and transit states and, especially, due to the large sums of migrant remittances outpacing earnings from other major state exports. Like state regimes that hun to export-led strategies for political as well as economic reasons, would-be il- legal migrants have moral claims based on notions of social, economic, and political (in)justice which help shape their decision to override the various legal routes to work abroad. Migrants make particularistic claims to certain immigration rights to enter and work in states using a historical logic. Il- legal migrants often view themselves as a type of economic citizen of the political economic empire Vestern states and transnational corporations have created. This idea is relentlessly reinforced in the popular discourse of “globalization” as a naturalized social reality promoted in a myriad of institutions, and it has led to the real blurring ofstate claims to sovereignty.13

Theme thuds by which migrants break immigration laws,far from being a completely underground criminal activity, is typically done in an orderly, businesslike manner using legal contracts to borrow smuggling fees. In most sending regions those public officials and private citizens involved in migration services are well known, and they quite often publicly, though discreetly, advertise their services. The intermediaries who help migrants cross borders, obtain false identities, or find work in the underground labor market-manyofwhomarereturnmigrants- alsocommonlybelievethat their actions are justified and, in many cases, humanitarian. While this

maybe dismissed by law enforcement as the common self serving rhetoric of criminals, we must consider that even legal scholars argue that immi- gration lawbreaking is the textbook case of a “victimless crime.”li Hence, illegal migration and work has become not only a means to an end but itselfa profitable business for entrepreneurial non-migrants and especially return migrants willing to risk the initial investment period of a few years of indebtedness (not unlike many college students).

The purpose of this description of “migrant-exporting schemes” as an ideal type is not to gloss over its very real dangers, including the regular malfeasance of the intermediaries (migration merchants) and corrupt state officials, as well as the bad luck of soaring temperatures or sudden storms at sea. Hundreds each year in various parts of the world die en route due to the risky conditions under which they undertake their journeys, sometimes simply due to unforeseen conditions as they cross oceans and deserts, and other times due to the negligence and human error of the migrant smug- glersY T hese dangers grow exponentially when slave-importing operations take advantage of immigrants’ precarious illegal status by opportunistically enslaving a substantial minority of unsuspecting migrants who thought they were simply part of a victimless migrant-exporting scheme. Migrant- exporting schemes provide the opportunities for organized crime to oper- ate slave-importing operations, which unlike a migrant-exporting scheme, makes most of its profits from unpaid labor in the destination state.16 How- ever, once again, both the enslavement of illegal migrants by opportunistic criminal organizations and the deaths of migrants en route can only be understood against the backdrop of the ubiquitous businesslike migrant- exporting schemes and their relation to a wider set of local, national, and foreign institutions of power.

Research Design and Methods

This chapter is part of a larger study to illuminate the commodification of migration services in many regions of the world, with Ecuador as our most in-depth case study. How does one study illegal migrants who have been part ofa migrant-exporting system? Obviously random-sample surveys are precluded for interviewing actual smugglers or “migration merchants,” but they can be used in sending communities. In this study we conduct most of our in immigrant communities. In several cases, immigrants without legal docu- ments permitting them to work in Spain allowed us not only to interview them but videotape them and their places ofrecreation. That we can easily and readily discuss with migrants their various strategies, both in Ecuador and in the destination countries, tells us a lot about how migrants view their own actions as justified. Unlike many accounts of human smuggling or other systematic transnational lawbreaking, “transnational criminals” in the traditional sense do not figure in the migrant-exporting schemes of Ecuadorians working illegally in Spain. This is also a telling difference be- hveen the smuggling, including self-smuggling, ofhumans and other illicit commodities crisscrossing the planet-transnational criminal organizations may be present in some nehvorks but are not a necessary condition.

The rest of this chapter is organized into three sections: First, an over- view ofthe Ecuadorian mass migration; second, the political and economic realities faced by Ecuadorians at home and in Spain and their testimonies characterizing Ecuador as a predatory state. T he level of destitution and generalized loss of hope by Ecuadorians as a result of the predatory state leads to the rationalization, ‘1f we can’t beat’em, join ’em,” which brings us to testimonies describing the decision to enter migrant-exporting schemes.

The final section discusses migrants’ claims that illegal work is not a real turn to a case that has m any features of migrant-exporting schemes as an ideal type. Ecuadorians represent a new wave oflong-distance illegal emigration, built not simply on long-standing social networks but on local economies emboldened by the increasing involvement of sending and receiving states and employers seeking to profit from their cheap labor. Migrants’ remittances back to Ecuador are the second largestsource ofhard currency behind oil exports.To understand why Ecuadorian migrants have been leaving in large numbers in just the past three years, we must first examine the magnitude of the failure of the Ecuadorian state and, most importantly, the general perceptions by Ecuadorians of its causes.

Ecuadorian Migration to the U.S. and Spain: An Overview

Throughoutmostofthe 1980sand 1990s,internationalmigrationfrom Ecuador was highly concentrated in the southern provinces of Azuay and Cafiar, from which most made their way to New York Cit;Y They t) pically entered and worked illegally, using local migrant-exporting schemes; most “coyotes” came from the same communities as the migrants and were often related by kinship.Mass emigration from this original sending region is still continuing unabated; however, international emigration is now widespread throughout the country and at all socioeconomic levels. While any illegal population is difficult to estimate, the Ecuadorian diaspora is calculated to include more than two million people, approximately half of whom live in the U.S.18 Between 1999 and 2000 alone, 400,000 Ecuadorians joined their one million compatriots already in the United States.

Deparhues to Spain escalated from 5,000 people in all of 1994 to more than 7,000 per month in 2000.19 Before April 2003, Ecuadorians entered Spain legally as tourists without visas, but generally almost immediately sought employment rather than tourism, thus making their status illegal.

Though this is not “migrant smuggling,” Ecuadorians do make use of mi- g r a n t- e x p o r t i n g s c h e m e s , w i t h t h e p r i c e s e t a t r o u g h l y h a l f t h a t o f t h e U . S . destination (US$8,000 to US$10,000). The price includes transportation and the initial funds needed to show the Spanish authorities upon entry (approximately US$2,000) that they bring a “tourist” budget. Because Spanish authorities are now much more likely to question the intentions of Ecuadorians, migrant-exporting schemes also include a variety of routes and strategies for entering a European Union state as a believable tourist. Once at work, the income earned can be astounding to some: “Vith the salary of one or two days I cover the month’s expenses; the rest is savings,”20 saysRocio,an EcuadorianemigrantworkinginMurcia.Tensofthousands have followed Rocio. Ecuadorians have contributed mightily to Spain’s rapid transition from labor exporter to labor importer, making them the largest immigrant community in Spain after Moroccans.

So what prompted this mass exodus of Ecuadorians from their country? In the last decade, Ecuadorians have witnessed one of the more dramatic economic and political downturns in the country’s history. Beginning with the undeclared border war with Peru in 1995 and the political instability generated by the populist presidency ofAbdala Bucaram (1996-1997), Ec-

uador then suffered the collapse of its coastal agro-export sector due to the climatological effects ofEl Nino, resulting in a loss billion, all of this exacerbated by an international financial crisis rippling through Latin America. The deepening economic crisis reached a peak when small- and medium-scale savings accounts were indefinitely frozen in 1998 (some for more than two years). In 1999, the GOP fell more than 7 percent, along with the greater part of the country’s financial system, when President Jamil Mahuad eliminated the national currency, the sucre, to replace it with the U.S. dollar, unleashing what could rightly be called total chaos

in the short term.

Near-complete state collapse in the late 1990s has brought a dubious sue-

van Schendel, Willem, and Abraham, Itty, eds. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things : States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 19 August 2015. Copyright © 2005. Indiana University Press. All rights reserved.

cess: it has caused the rapid development of mass migration to the United States and Europe of broad sectors of Ecuadorian society, producing more than US$1 billion per year to the Ecuadorian economy in remittances.22 ltligrants’ remittances exceed revenues from banana and shrimp exports

and are second onlv to the countn-‘s oil revenues. —

But the rise of illegal migration and human smuggling can also be linked to the processes of democratization and economic liberalization in Latin America in the 1980s as well as to failed development projects. When economies went sour and unfulfilled expectations were primed by the successes ofprevious small-scale migrations, established social nehvorks were quickly revitalized. In this sense, migrant-exporting schemes can be viewed as a “successful” large-scale strategy of integration into the global

marketplace rather than a criminal fringe activity.

Ecuadorians are increasingly blocked by both U.S. and Mexican border

authorities and navies as Mexico makes a bid to cut a deal for its own illegal aliens in exchange for blocking Central and South AmericansP The U.S. Coast Guard now regularly transfers hundreds of Ecuadorian migrants off the Mexican waters to detention centers in Mexico.z.t As a result, Spain has become a refuge, particularly for women and the middle class. Even the wealthiest and most productive regions of Ecuador are sending thousands of workers abroad,Z’ who in Spain work for as little as half the minimum \-‘age paid a Spaniard. Many of them are professionals with children who lost their jobs, their savings, and generally their quality of life prior to the great monetary devaluation of 2000. This rapid depreciation of their sav- ings-while inflating their debts by about 400 percent26 -precipitated the collapse of banks, businesses, and several government regimes. Even Ec- uadorian sailors attempted to transform a navy ship into a smuggling vessel for their own escape, creating the image of a stampede out of the country. ”We can’t detain the wave of emigration. .. . If things continue like this, the country could lose half of its inhabitants in the next decade;’27 said Fernando Vega, a priest and director ofthe non-governmental organization ltlovilidad Humana (“Human Mobility”).

If, however, such a truly mass migration from Ecuador comes to pass, emptying the country of its working-age population, two common themes ofcurrent migrants’ perceptions will have to persist and even deepen. First, that Ecuador is an incorrigible predatory state, and second, that breaking immigration and labor laws is not a real crime in destination countries will- ing to hire them, a perception that is exacerbated by the mixed messages and ever-changing immigration and labor laws governing their tenuous legal status and economic survival.

van Schendel, Willem, and Abraham, Itty, eds. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things : States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 19 August 2015. Copyright © 2005. Indiana University Press. All rights reserved.

Seeing the State Like a Migrant

DAVID KYLE AND CHRIST INA A. SIRACUSA

Theme O ne: Ecuador as a Predatory State

This section weaves political and economic realities faced by Ecuador- ians in Ecuador and Spain with their views on the Ecuadorian and Spanish

states, regardless of the views’ empirical validity. It is the result of interviews carried out in Spain in December 2001 and July/August 2002, and rich

lntemet testimonies of migration through various Ecuadorian websites. An overwhelming theme of these testimonies is the view of Ecuador as a

predatory state in which crimes ofthe elite have completely debilitated the economy. The elite is defined as interlocking public and private officials who use the state apparatus to pilfer funds from the middle class and write legislation for the outright pillaging ofstate funds and foreign aid or loans. In short, the impression that laws are written for lawmakers is widespread. There is a corollary theme: corruption is possible only by the powerful. And insofar as Spain is the former imperial power in Ecuador, the Spanish state, or at least its policies, is seen by many as an extension of the predatory state- willing to speak the language ofglobalization and transparency for its economic and political convenience but to the detriment ofthe migrant laborer.

In Riobamba, Ecuador, as a schoolteacher for twelve years, Eduardo made US$50 a month and drove a taxi to supplement his salary. He has been in Spain five years and has several jobs including his own business in Bilbao running a locutorio, which specializes in long-distance phone

calls back home for a variety of immigrants. He explains how as the head of a household with two children, ”I was always paying debts, at the end of every month, more debts. Do you know what a teacher is there? A teacher is J1e who most gives of himself, because you always give, and then you still have debts. The end ofthe month would come and I would pay debts, every month, debts.”

By leaving their country, migrants incur debts, but they are debts with a possible future for escaping debt, as Eduardo saw it. In Ecuador, he had lost all hope of being able to support his family and provide them a pros- perous future.

In light of this, a professional with children who wants to gi1e the best to his children, I realized that there in my countn· the1 weren’t gi1ing me a chance. Fi1·e 1·ears ago I resigned from m1· work. 1e been here in Bilbao four 1ears. EYeryyear in Ecuador got worse. Instead of impro1·ing, things got worse, getting deeper into debt. The state was in greater debt always. It was normal for the state to pa1· us with two months delm·. It was “normal”- the super famous burglaries of the state treasury by a congressperson who would steal three billion sucres and another who would steal fi1·e billion sucres.

van Schendel, Willem, and Abraham, Itty, eds. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things : States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 19 August 2015. Copyright © 2005. Indiana University Press. All rights reserved.

Seeing the State Like a Migrant T he time comes when you feel an impotence to act. And e1·eryone knows it.

T he news stories were that so and so had stolen $5 million and was now in the United States. And f- ! T here I am, killing myself to make $50. And to see nw children go hungry? The crisis got worse and the moment came when I realized there was nothing to be done. There was no hope for tomor- row. It was a terminal cancer- there was no hope. Here I hm·e nothing to do. I’m lea1ing. I went to Boli1ia. l didn’t like it. I went to Caracas. There was more porert}·, Latin American insecurity. At least in Ecuador there was peace. But in C aracas it was terrible. I’m better off in my country. A friend told me Spain was good to work. Let’s go to Spain! he said. l bought my ticket and sold ererything l had to bm· m1· ticket for Spain. l gathered m1· mone1· and trareled b1· mrself. I didn’t know am·one here but I couldn’t back

“.

out. I had resigned m1· job and gone into debt to tnwel. 1ih brother acted

as guarantor. . . . I came No1ember 4, 1998. I arrired in Madrid. ( went to El Retiro jPark] and b1· chance I ran into a guy who had been m1 student years before. He told me that in Bilbao there were few foreigners and there was work there.

Eduardo opened up his own locutorio with a Spanish partner in Bilbao’s Old City. He has already bought some land in Quito. Now he wants to buy a truck to transport vegetables from Riobamba to Guayaquil and pick up banana refuse in Guayaquil to take to a pig farm he wants to start in Riobamba. He will leave a chauffeur in charge and return to Bilbao. Ifthe business in Ecuador goes well, he will stay in Ecuador.

( want to stm· a maximum of two (more) ears (in Spain). I hme my two bon there in Riobamba. When l talk to them ther call for me. T her sa1·

J•

their friends ask them wh1· their father doesn’t go to the school meetings, if the1 eren hm·e a father. One gets depressed here. Until when?This is a

borrowed life.Zb

Buttressing Eduardo’s claims and frustration, Ecuador received the title of the most corrupt country in Latin America by Transparency Internation- al for the year 2000, only to become Transparency International’s second most corrupt country in 2001. This is not to lessen the historic structural limitations on the Ecuadorian economy that could be argued are reason enough for failed economic and political “development.” But as many Ec- uadorian observers assess the situation, responsibility for the Ecuadorian economic crisis rests with the neo-liberal economic policies of the succes-

sive governments of Jamil Mahuad and Gustavo Noboa, which advocated policies in lockstep with IlllF and >Vorld Bank prescriptions29 -policies which, unwittingly or not, were geared to the specific interests of a less- than-“transparent” oligarchic banking sector protected by the state and fattened by a captive national market.30

van Schendel, Willem, and Abraham, Itty, eds. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things : States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 19 August 2015. Copyright © 2005. Indiana University Press. All rights reserved.

.

DAVID KYLE AND CHRISTINA A. SIRACUSA

Ultimately, the dramatic social costs ofthe dollarization ofthe economy led to a coup d’etat by an odd and short-lived junta of military and indig- enous (‘1ndian”) leaders that cost Jamil Mahuad his presidency on January

21, 2000. But the economic “adjustment” program was assured with the succession to power of Gustavo Noboa, l’vlahuad’s fonner vice-president and Ecuador’s sixth president in five years/ ‘ in the return to a semblance of a democratically elected regime. Despite the inaugural US$2 billion IMF credit and a welcome increase in oil exports, President Noboa and the mobilized peasant-indigenous masses confronted each other over IMF-prescribed and government-implemented price hikes on gasoline and domestic gas consumption, a necessary condition for continued IltlF credits despite pacts with tl1e mobilized popular sectors!1 lMF structural readjustment measures imposed in December 2000 led to a series of mass mobilizations, particularly among Ecuador’s indigenous and rural popu- lations, more than 75 percent of which lived in poverty and lacked basic housing, health, education, and employment.33 One hundred percent yearly inflation, out-of-control budget deficits since the 1980s, rampant govern- ment corruption,'” and a complete lack of faith in Ecuador’s banking system only served to undermine Ecuadorians’ faith in their government, which came to be seen as a shadow regime of the military. T he armed forces constitutionally receive ten percent of all oil revenues, and its own investments have made it the dominant economic and political institution in Ecuador!1 After the peaceful sit-in of a university in Quito by 5,000 in- digenous Ecuadorians, the state decreed a national state of emergency and lifted basic constitutional rights36 in January 2001. As one emigrant said, “corrupt politicians have a safe-conduct to political exile. . .. Corruption has its nurturing motl1er in the marriage of politics and economic power. Can we be hopeful ofa divorce? I believe that this marriage in Ecuador will be more long lasting llian the war against terrorism.”37 In fact, the Ecuador- ian state is sometimes referred to by Ecuadorian immigrants and journalists alike as an organized and pow