Rethinking left Latin American populism of the XXI Century: a new approach to populism from the ecuadorian people during the government of Rafael Correa

This research seeked to rethink Latin American populisms of the 21st century by carrying out theoretical and empirical research on one of the key actors in this phenomenon: the people. A look at the conceptualizations and studies on populism, both in Latin America and in Europe, reveals that populism has been studied from the discourses and practices of the leaders. This speaks of a descending construction, from the leader to the people. On the contrary, we are interested in the reverse movement, the one that ascends from the people to the leader. In other words, we are interested in the people as a concept and actor, the populist people – a concept that I proposed-, in the understanding that the populist people is one of the semantic components of the general notion of the people and allows the formation of an identity politics. Ecuador was selected as a specific case study, and through a qualitative approach, 26 in depth-interviews were carried out to people around the country. The speeches of the participants were clearly crossed by the pandemic and the governments of Lenin Moreno, Guillermo Lasso, and the indigenous protests of 2019 and 2022, which enriches the discussion on the democratic ecuadorian system. Part of the results of the research -part of my doctoral thesis- also reflected upon the different motivations electors had for voting and public opinion around the Citizen Revolution and Rafael Correa.