Crossing gender and biogeography to rethink the habitat of a fluvial community in Ecuador.

Abstract

This work is an environmental sociocritical view of the reality of certain communities in a Latin American river ecosystem. It is a journey that I have started as an architect, a landscape designer and a geographer, through multiple experiences in various communities in the continent. Natural borders determine how rural communities are designed because people depend on the goods and services of the natural resources for survival. However, the design involves multiple dimensions of social and cultural relations. This research focus on the power layers that were hidden in the design, and it was conducted in a small community of 300 inhabitants at Santa Rosa Island in the northern mangroves in Ecuador. Mangroves constitute a special limit between the sea and the inhabited territory and, at the same time, give rise to the establishment of a patriarchal social economic ecosystem that works with clear invisible borders, deepening gender and social inequalities. Results show that an educational proposal that addresses the biopolitics of the habitat from gender equality and participatory action research will contribute through the empowerment of women to improve their places of living and to improve an effective contribution on social and natural ecosystems.

Key words: human geography, social justice, mangroves, patriarchal, Latin America.