Manuela Picq

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Manuela Lavinas Picq (born in France in 1977) is a Franco-Brazilian radical feminist academic, journalist, and political activist. She is married to Yaku Pérez Guartambel, a prominent Ecuadorian indigenous rights activist and politician.

Biography

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Manuela Picq is a Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College (USA). She is the author of scholarly books and articles, including Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (University of Arizona Press 2018) and contributes to international media outlets. Her work at the intersection of scholarship, journalism, and activism led her to be detained and expelled from Ecuador in 2015. She was nominated a New Generation of Public Intellectuals (2018) and featured in the FemiList 100 (2021) of women working in law, policy, and peacebuilding across the Global South. In 2023, she coordinated the electoral campaign of presidential candidate Yaku Perez in Ecuador.

Picq attended the University of Miami, where she received a PhD in International Studies.[1] In 2003, she served as foreign affairs specialist for Republican Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and was a co-coordinator of civil society participation for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) ministerial meeting.[2]

In 2004, Picq moved to Ecuador, where she would serve in an academic capacity at Universidad San Francisco de Quito until 2024. In 2016, she was awarded for her anti-correista activism with a scholarship as a "human rights defender", and two years later by the publication Global Americans, sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2005, she was member of Front Line Defenders, an NGO funded by the European Union, Taiwan, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.[2]

Picq was a regular contributor to Al Jazeera English between 2011 and 2014, where she published revelations about corruption within the Rafael Correa government, including the Glas Viejó case, in which the father of Vice President Jorge Glas was involved.[3][4][5] Glas Viejó, father of then vice-president Jorge Glas, repeatedly raped the 11-year-old daughter of his domestic worker; he threatened the child into silence, but one day, she passed out at school, and at the hospital, doctors found out she was pregnant by her rapist. The rapist recognized the child but was never detained; Manuela Picq, together with Martha Roldos and Pedra Granja, denounced the rape, and the rapist was eventually detained; all three suffered repression for their active voices in the Glas Viejó case.[6]

On August 21, 2013, Picq married in an indigenous ceremony Yaku Pérez Guartambel, who was serving as president of the ECUARUNARI.[7][8] Two years later, during the 2015 protests, she was arrested by police at a demonstration, and her visa was canceled the next day by Rafael Correa's Ecuadorian government. Picq fled the country on August 21 as a result of "legal limbo".[9][10]

After leaving Ecuador, Picq joined the Academics at Risk association, and would receive a short scholarship at the Free University of Berlin and is a visiting professor at Amherst College. Picq returned to Ecuador on January 15, 2018, following the inauguration of Lenín Moreno as President.[11]

In 2024, Picq won the International Studies Association's IPE Outstanding Activist Scholar Award for her remarkable blend of academic excellence and social activism.

2015 Ecuador Protests

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In August 2015, Manuela covered a series of peaceful indigenous-led protests in Ecuador for Jazeera English. Citizens took to the streets to express their discontent over a series of issues ranging from extractive policies damaging the environment to government efforts to eliminate presidential term limits. The mobilizations were violently repressed, especially in Quito but also in rural communities such as Saraguro, as police forces beat and arbitrarily detained peaceful protesters, especially Indigenous peoples. A Human Rights Watch report indicates that "police or military personnel used unnecessary and unlawful force against unarmed people in at least 50 cases," including beatings and arbitrary detentions of dozens of people and unlawful entry into the homes of people who were not involved in the protests in any capacity.[12]

Manuela was beaten and detained on the night of August 13 in the streets of the historic center of Quito, then spent the night under police escort at the hospital Eugenio Espejo. In the morning, her visa 12-VIII was revoked, and she was detained in a center for undocumented immigrants. Four days later, a judge ordered her release due to a lack of evidence of misbehavior, yet the government refused to reinstate her visa. The Ministry of the Interior ordered the courts to transfer the case to the executive branch, and Picq left for Brazil. 

Following the illegal revocation of her visa in 2015, Manuela was repeatedly denied a Mercosur visa until 2018, when Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa finally granted the visa under the administration of President Lenin Moreno. That same year, the investigative network Plan V listed Manuela among the survivors of repression by the Correa government.[13]

Books

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Journalism

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Manuela is a well-respected and renowned journalist, having authored many articles for Al Jazeera and The New York Times.

References

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  1. ^ "Documental aborda salida del país de Manuela Picq y romance con Yaku Pérez". El Comercio. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  2. ^ a b "Ecuador: ¿golpismo judicial y electoral en marcha?". La Jornada. 17 February 2021. Retrieved 2021-04-15.
  3. ^ "Manuela Picq: "Me dieron la visa para minimizar el escándalo Assange"". Plan V (in Spanish). 2018-01-22. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  4. ^ "Correa contra Manuela Picq: ¿quién dice la verdad?". Plan V (in Spanish). 2015-09-08. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  5. ^ "Manuela Picq, una estudiosa de la visión indígena". El Universo (in Spanish). 2015-08-23. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  6. ^ "A Much Needed International Day of the Girl". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  7. ^ "Manuela Picq dio a conocer que el Registro Civil negó su matrimonio ancestral con Carlos Pérez Guartambel". El Comercio. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  8. ^ "Carlos Pérez Guartambel pidió visa de amparo familiar para Manuela Picq". El Comercio. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  9. ^ "Manuela Picq dejó Ecuador pero asegura que volverá". El Universo (in Spanish). 2015-08-21. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  10. ^ "El viaje de Manuela Picq". El Comercio. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  11. ^ "Documental aborda salida del país de Manuela Picq y romance con Yaku Pérez". El Comercio. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  12. ^ "Ecuador: Crackdown on Protesters". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  13. ^ "Manuela Lavinas Picq". Plan V. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
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