FRONTIERS AND POPULAR NATIONHOOD - GEOGRAPHIES OF IDENTITY IN THE 1995 ECUADOR-PERU BORDER DISPUTE

Drawing on substantive work on Ecuadorian national identities, an exam ination is made of the multiple geographies of identities which were a rticulated and negotiated during the border dispute between Ecuador an d Pent in January and February 1995, an incident which became known as Tiwintza. While territorial claims and border protocols (particularly the 1942 Rio Protocol) form a significant geography of identity throu gh which state-initiated nation-building imaginative geographies are a rticulated, these are not the only geographies imagined and expressed by citizens during and around the time of the dispute. Material from s urvey questionnaires about national identities before the recent dispu te provide contextual information for the analysis of varied responses to the 1935 incident, and allow for a theoretical consideration of re lations between dominant and popular imaginative geographies and natio nal identities. The particular situation of the Shuar-Achuar indigenou s groups, and of a Peruvian and Ecuadorian women's statement, provide illustrations of these popular 're-drawings' of borders. (C) 1997 Else vier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.