[Lasa] Manuela Picq - beaten by the police?

[Leon Zamosc]

First of all, if you expect me to attack Manuela Picq or question her personal integrity, you are going to be disappointed. I admire people who act on their beliefs, I uphold our right to choose the role of activist researcher for ourselves, and I do not think that Manuela is lying. But everybody makes mistakes, and the role of activist researcher is a minefield.

Second, I have posted online:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28492647/Leon_Zamosc_Campesinos_y_Sociologos_1985.pdf
a paper that provides background to some of my arguments. It was written a long time ago but on the whole I can still stand by the conclusions. Maybe I would change some language and qualify the reach of some statements. In those modernist times, most of us who were involved in participatory action research (PAR) did not have qualms about viewing sociology as a science. Today I would call Sociology a scholarly discipline and I agree with Zizek that we cannot totally escape the realm of ideology. Still, while do not believe in absolute objectivity, I believe that, in the ideological constellation of our times, the role of researcher demands that we take responsibility for trying to be as objective as we can. I continue to be modernist in that way, and also in the more general belief that we have to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Without pretending to be over-optimistic, our work as scholars can have some smaller or greater impact and, in this sense, what happens in Ecuador is also our responsibility.

- - - - - - -

Before getting into the matter at hand, a couple of things need to be clarified. One concerns my colleague and friend Carlos de la Torre’s rhetorical question: “será que la verdad del poder es mas cierta que la de las víctimas de la represión?” Any sympathy I may have had for the validity of such intimations in Ecuador evaporated when forensic investigators from Argentina and France separately established that the death of the Shuar demonstrator Bosco Wisuma in the Puente Upano protest of September 2009 against the water law had not been caused by a police bullet as the activists claimed, but by a pellet from one of the shotguns fired by the demonstrators (some 40 policemen were wounded by pellets that day).

The other thing is: what counts as beating? If I am being detained (setting aside for a moment the motives of the actions that got me into this, and whether my arrest is legally, politically or morally justified or not) and I do not cooperate, even the best-intentioned policemen acting on the most human-rights-respectful terms of engagement will begin to use force to make me comply; but if they are really decent and their instructions are really fair, they will use the minimum force required by my level of resistance. Dragging me, piling-up on me, and restraining me would be typical forms of such a mild use of force, and in the scuffle I may end up with scratches, bruises and perhaps even a heart attack, but none of that will change the fact that they were decent policeman following a fair protocol. In the end, it is a matter of what the policemen are up to, and we can gauge that from observing their actions.

Online, it is easy to find many examples of police beating protesters in a way that reflects malevolence and/or the existence of a repressive protocol:
http://www.rawstory.com/2011/05/graphic-video-captures-barcelona-police-beating-protesters/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg1tfYOOPGQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZCvMQMa2R8
https://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/11/30/videos-ukraines-police-surround-and-beat-euromaidan-protesters-to-clear-square/

But one can also find other examples of “badly beaten” protesters who are just detainees being dragged:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuBRbjTWnWk

- - - - - - -

I begin to approach our issue by examining the role of the plain protester (not necessarily an activist researcher). Back to my hypothetical arrest, let us add my motivation and the grounds for my detention to the mix of the police action against me. What are going to be my perceptions of the incident as a protester? Most likely I will be very unhappy (unless my arrest was exactly what I wanted as part of a strategy to delegitimize the regime). I will be convinced that my cause was just and I had the right to do what I did, I will deny the legality of the grounds for my arrest, and if I have bruises I will show them around as proof of the repressive nature of the regime, regardless of whether the police were deliberately brutal or used the minimal necessary force. I will do all that naturally and spontaneously, without bad faith and without thinking much about it, simply because it is inscribed in the logic of the prescriptions of my role as a protester. It is in my habitus, and if I do anything different, I would be acting against what I, my fellow demonstrators, the bystanders and even the henchmen of the regime are expecting from me. This is how any protester can be convinced that he/she was a victim of brutal repression despite the fact that a video may show that that was not the case.

Is this what happened in the case of Manuela Picq? I have already stated a couple of times that in the video scenes of the arrest:
http://www.elcomercio.com/video/manuelapiqc-marchas-quito-policia-detencion.html
one cannot see the kind of thing that in the discussion above would count as a police beating. They are detaining her with minimal use of force. But we are only talking about a two-minute video. To be more certain, one needs to know whether what one is seeing is consistent with the behavior of the police in general on that night and in that particular demonstration and incident. That is why I advised everyone to view the entire 44-minute video:
http://www.elcomercio.com/video/imagenes-marcha-manifestaciones-centrohistorico-quito.html

What do we see there? The first half shows the progress of the demonstration without significant incidents, but the second half, after they arrive to the Iglesia de la Merced and the police barrier that closes their access to the main square where Correa’s followers are partying, is a very different story. There is no room for doubt whatsoever that the attitude of the police was passive, that the violence was initiated by young masked protesters who were part of the demonstration (not outsiders or provocateurs), than the violence was planned (they brought the logs and took their time setting up the battering ram), that the main leader of the demonstration Carlos Perez Guartambel stood by all along doing nothing to prevent the violence, and that the police endured long minutes of insults, stick blows, projectiles, and ramming until they finally moved to detain Perez Guartambel and disperse the protesters.

We cannot see in the video the arrest of Perez Guartambel. I have only seen one picture of the scene:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5424-ecuador-stop-the-deportation-of-manuela-picq
that shows the policemen dragging him and Manuela Picq apart. Again, there are no fists or batons in the air, but pictures are static, they do not show all the action and this must have been the moment in which Perez Guartambel got his bruise and Manuela was roughed up. Indeed, Perez Guartambel has declared that Manuela "Se lanzó sobre mí, trataba de que me soltaran, le dieron toletazos y patadas. Se la llevaron y me llevaron":
http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/carlosperez-ecuarunari-amor-manuelapicq-migracion.html
Here, however, Perez Guartambel and Manuela Picq are giving us their version as activists and, as I have reasoned above, their genuine belief that they were barbarically treated cannot be automatically admitted as fact. In the absence of the kind of proof that for example could be provided by a video, we are left to reach our own conclusions on the basis of the existing evidence. And so far what the evidence shows is that until that moment (when they withstood the provocations) and immediately after (when they took Manuela away) the police behaved with remarkable restraint. Within that overall context, then, I do not think that it is likely that Perez Guartambel and Manuela Picq were subjected to unduly harsh treatment in the moment of his arrest.

Let us be clear on what I am saying and what I am not saying. First, I am not saying that Manuela Picq is lying or that she did not suffer any contusions when she was detained. I am saying that the existing evidence shows that the police did not use disproportionate force. Second, I am not saying that Correa is a model president respectful of human rights. I am saying that in the concrete case of the protest in which Manuela Picq and Perez Guartambel were detained, the police acted with moderation. This point is also important because in this debate some colleagues seem to believe that because the police may have been brutal elsewhere, they must have been brutal everywhere. These colleagues would be better off if we avoid generalizations: anyone could come tomorrow and say that if this is what happened in the Plaza de la Merced, this is what must have happened all over the country and Correa is  right when he claims that all the violence is the responsibility of the tira-piedras.

- - - - - - -

I turn to the role of the activist researcher. In “Campesinos y Sociologos” I used my own experience and the case of Orlando Fals Borda in Colombia to reflect on the dilemmas of PAR. I identified three types of participatory research: conventional, committed, and activist; and my main preoccupations focused on how the demands and conditionants of these different roles affected the scholarly work of the sociologist and his/her relationships with social movement actors. In the specific case of the activist researcher, I concluded that the main problems were the tendency to subordinate the research to ideological pressures, the possible clashes between the research findings and the perceptions of the actors, the difficulties posed by the simultaneous fulfillment of different kinds of tasks, and the risk of losing legitimation in the eyes of the movement’s activists.

Now, please note that the paper focuses on the situation of the researcher vis-à-vis the social movement. The case of Manuela Picq, in the way in which it has come up to our attention in the last few days, raises other issues related to the position of the activist researcher vis-a-vis the rest of society, including the state, the public sphere, the academic world, etc. Doing justice to all those issues would require a whole new extension of the analysis and discussion. For the purposes of our present exchange, I will restrict myself to two points only: the credibility of the activist researcher and the protection of his/her role.

One immediately sees that the credibility issue has complications. On the one hand, one must conceptually disentangle the connection between credibility and legitimation, a big task that I do not want to even begin to attempt here. On the other hand, credibility involves several different aspects defined by the intersection of two variables. First, what credibility are we talking about? This includes the two fields of action of the activist researcher: credibility as a scholar and credibility as a militant. Second, credibility in whose eyes? This calls attention to the sets of actors with whom the activist researcher interacts: other scholars, professional associations, university administrators, funding agencies, different kinds of authorities in the field (from the president to the street policeman), journalists, politicians, his/her consulate if the person is a foreigner, etc, etc.

Of course I cannot here get into the exploration of this maze. I will just set aside the entire area of credibility as a scholar assuming that we, the other scholars, are the most relevant actors there, and that we are wise and rigorous enough to be able to properly read and critically evaluate the scholarly merits of the work of an activist researcher. [I only do this for the sake of expediency, since I often feel frustrated by the astonishing lack of debate in the field of race, ethnicity and indigenous peoples, where mythology is rampant and people can get away with virtually anything]. Another reckless shortcut I will take is to disregard the complexity of the variety of actors with whom the activist researcher interacts by simply talking about “the public”.

The big asset of the activist researcher, which creates the possibility of important contributions to the cause he/she is trying to publicly defend or promote, lies in the fact that his/her status as a scholar can reinforce the effectiveness of his/her messages as an activist. When we face the public and talk about issues related to the cause, we set in motion Barthes’ constantly moving turnstile. I am a sociologist of education, I am doing research in Cotopaxi, and I am being interviewed by Radio Latacunga about the future of Quichua in Correa’s millenium schools. As I speak and convey different kinds of meanings critiquing Correa’s policies and defending the stances of the indigenous movement, the listeners are alternately hearing the scholar, with the authority of my knowledge and expertise, and the activist, with the movement’s proposals on what should be done to promote the Quichua language. My message is in all likelihood going to be much more persuasive that a similar message coming from an ordinary activist of the indian movement. Bourdieu would have no difficulty identifying the source of my magic: I am converting my cultural capital into political capital.

Of course, there are limits to my magic. I can keep it going until someone stops the turnstile and starts questioning what is going on. In addition to me, the director of the millenium school is in the studio participating in the interview. After talking about the advantages of Correa’s program, he/she points out that I am an adviser of the provincial indigenous organization, that the things I am saying are the same things that CONAIE says, that CONAIE ’s leaders are a bunch of tira-piedras, and so on. The more successful he/she is in “unmasking” me, the less the listeners will hear me as an expert, until in the end I will be reduced to just another activist without any special credibility or something worse, someone who was cheating by posing as an expert when in reality I was trying to advance a political agenda.

The limits will be set by the political relevance of the issue. The more important the issue, the more difficulties for the activist researcher. Nothing can be more important in a polity than challenging the authority of the chief of state. And that is the position in which Manuela Picq found herself a few nights ago. Of course her version of events was bound to be scrutinized, and of course in this scrutiny she was bound to be considered as simply a militant. That is the problem of Manuela’s credibility, and that is why the public needs to see additional evidence, beyond just her word, that she was indeed beaten up by the police.

Being aware of the limits is essential for the activist researcher. I will never criticize Manuela for being an activist researcher or for participating in a protest in which the dominant chant was “fuera Correa fuera” (contradicting, by the way, the leaders of FUT and CONAIE’s claim that the purpose was not to bring down Correa). It was up to her to exercise her freedom by making these choices. But if you ask me, I will say that Manuela made a mistake. It would have been more prudent to leave the place when it became clear that the protesters were going to use violence. The mistake was to expose herself into a no-win situation that was beyond the safe limits for the role of activist researcher, particularly one who is on a visa that explicitly forbids participating in demonstrations (I have no direct knowledge of the conditions of her visa, I am just relying on Norm Whitten’s message to the list). There were other things in Manuela’s public declarations that I also think were mistakes, especially the statement “Me trataron como criminal solo por caminar en las calles”:
http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/testimonio-manuelapicq-visa-paronacional.html
which sounded so disingenuous that by itself must have done a lot to stop the turnstile in the eyes of public opinion.

This brings me to the other point, the protection of the role of activist researcher. I will be really brief on this. The last thing one wants as a dedicated activist researcher is being forced by the circumstances to stop doing what one is doing. But that is precisely the ultimate risk one faces when one is fulfilling this role. We have all been following the news and we know that Manuela had to leave the country. Her loss is not complete, since she can continue fulfilling the role of activist outside Ecuador (she has already declared she will). But the professional and personal cost for her is still immense and my heart sincerely goes out to her for it: she cannot do research in the field, she lost her job, she is far away from her boyfriend, she is being insulted by the Correistas…

- - - - - - -

In writing this, I am hoping that it will contribute to a healthy debate on something that is dear to me and I see as truly important for all of us as researchers, especially those researchers who want to transcend academia and try to help make the world a better place.  Beyond this, I have my own analytical takes and personal opinions on what is going on in Ecuador. There are vital issues that need to be discussed, especially the question of violence, which cannot be reduced to the caricatures of “Correa the tyrant” that are flying around. Once again, I look forward to productive exchanges that will contribute to enlightenment (or is this too modernist a word?).


Prof. Leon Zamosc
Department of Sociology
University of California, San Diego