Ambientalismo y (post-) política en un espacio de reserva: el archipielago de las Galápagos

The peculiar racionality of conservation has colonized the Galapagos Islands even before the Ecuadorian State and before the islands’ current inhabitants. The idea of protecting the local biodiversity from any kind of alien species (including human beings) has had an enormous impact upon the socio-economic, political and biological regulation of the islands, but has been ineffective in avoiding the collapse of the ecosystems. In order to understand such an impasse and to see how “conservation” may eventually be “against nature” (Grenier, 2007), in this article, we discuss the history of the territorialization of Galapagos and of the recent socio-environmental conflicts, in light of the debates on the political ecology of protected areas and on the post-political condition.