Jacqueline Kelley-Cogdell

MA
Geography

Prison Expansion in Rural Ecuador

In 2024, President Noboa attempted to site a prison near the primarily Indigenous town of Archidona. The community protested the construction and raised concerns about the threat posed to their livelihoods by prison-related environmental degradation. The Ecuadoran government put the construction on an indefinite hold. In 2025, the government built El Encuentro prison near the ancestral community of Bajada de Chanduy. This project seeks to examine how the knowledges, beliefs, and experiences of the people in Archidona explain how Indigenous ontologies threaten the state’s coloniality of power and the way these expansions of power are being contested