Background and Code for Reading Max-Neef


Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean development economist, and these chapters are a fragment of his book From the Outside Looking In. Here we have a bit of his reflection on a development project undertaken in 1971 in Ecuador. His book's title refers to an "inside" which is elite First World economics, and an "outside" which is the perspective of nearly all the world (beyond institutionalized economics).
    The project --ECU-28-- was sponsored by the "Andean Mission of Ecuador" (MAE), which was begun in 1955 as an arm of the International Labour Organization, a UN agency. Its purpose was development: to promote "the improvement of living conditions among Indian communities." By the time ECU-28 got underway, however, MAE had become part of the Ecuadorian government itself, expressing the "National Rural Development Plan" of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare.
    ECU-28 was formally titled "Planning of Zonal Programmes for the Modernization of Rural Life in the Andes", and Max-Neef was hired to head it. He read the project as "a mandate to mobilize the peasants of the selected area, giving them the opportunity to design their own plan." (p. 27) The meetings he reports on here are meetings of the local people, through representatives, to determine what might be done. To Max-Neef, the whole project was to be defined by the targets of the "modernization":
While all the different communities had established their individual channels of communication with higher government authorities, they completely lacked similar communication channels between themselves, on a horizontal level. Such horizontal communication was deemed fundamental to the formation of a regional consciousness, itself indispensable for the design of coherent solutions to be tackled with governmental support. (p. 65)
    That's all you need to know to read past the flurry of initials, etc. Read it as a story.
    Notice that the peasants involved here are not necessarily from the mountains: "Andes" here seems to refer to all of Ecuador, even coastal pieces like Esmeraldas.
    Finally, here's a quote from M-N on the highland parts of the area. It applies in general to the situation and views of peasants:
  The Sierra is a tragic environment. The accumulated resentment is so great that any person with any degree of sensibility can feel it surfacing through even the apparently passive and humble mien of the Indian peasant. It therefore requires much effort, dedication and, above all, sincerity to gain his confidence. He has been deceived so many times by so many people, that words no longer suffice to convince him of one's good intentions. This was the situation that prevailed in the Ecuadorian Sierra, although improved interrelationships had been established with a number of Indian communities, thanks to the sensibility and devotion of many of the MAE field workers. In other communities the distrust had not yet been overcome, and some MAE members had been killed in their attempts --mistaken for land robbers or potential exploiters. In such communities, feelings and reactions bred by more than four centuries of injustice were extant.
What sorts of goals should we be pursuing when we intervene in other people's lives and ways? How should those goals be determined? Who should have a say? The issue here is not just "values", but deep cultural commitments of which we may not exen be aware.
 
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