Configuración del imaginario colectivo, generado en la red social twitter, alrededor de los personajes e instituciones que tuvieron presencia durante las jornadas de protestas del 3 al 13 de octubre del 2019. Casos de estudio: #romoasesina y #conaieterroristas.

Abstract

In the mobilizations from October 3rd to 13th, 2019 in Ecuador, social networks played an important role in communicating, denouncing, misinforming, convening, disputing and organizing the different sectors and actors that participated in these events. On Twitter, according to the platforms Trendinalia Ecuador and GetDay Trends an approximate of 98 hashtags or tags related to this juncture emerged. Twitter is considered a social network to inform, post and dispute political issues; in that sense, the tags that were trending for several days are: #ParoNacionalEC, #yositrabajo, #BastadeNoticiasFalsas, #paroenecuador, #LeninnoCedas. But through two specific hashtags that were trending for two days respectively, the discomfort of the citizenship was expressed with two actors: #RomoAsesina and #ConaieTerroristas. These tags point to two names or political and social subjects, clearly identified in the public opinion: the first one refers to a Minister of State, who some time later, was removed from her position by the National Legislative Assembly. The second is related to a social organization considered the most important of all indigenous organizations in the country and the continent. Both, through binary virtual discourses promoted in the social network, on the one hand, of total blame to the adversary and unwavering support to the ally, were attributed the responsibility of: "murderer" and "terrorist", as a result of the events of repression, violation of human rights and social violence, occurred during the days of protest. The hashtags #RomoAsesina and #ConaieTerroristas were trending on Twitter on October 10 and 12, respectively, built two images of María Paula Romo: the second as the person responsible for responding in a fair manner on behalf of the State and giving clarity to the leadership of the regime about the events, as the representative of the governmental institutions. But, at the same time, the former, as the authority responsible for ordering or allowing serious human rights violations, which had not been registered before in Ecuador: the massive number of people, mostly younger citizens, who lost their eyes due to non-casual shootings, expressly aimed to perform such eye damage, as a transversal and transnational modality also taken place in Chile and, later on, in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, although not in the Chilean and Ecuadorian dimension. VI On the other hand, the hashtag #ConaieTerrorist, was obvious from the beginning: rather than building an image of social subject for the indigenous population, it reinforced the imaginaries built based on stereotypes of racism, class and caste, which has been for decades, and even centuries, carving in society, a look towards the indigenous as an adversary subject of peace, alien to 'the one nation', dissociative, violent, aggressive, grotesque, which is only well regarded when their mobilizations serve the interests of the urban, social and economic elites of the country: 1997 and 2004. But, in addition, two totally new elements converged in the past formats previously registered in the indigenous mobilizations in Quito: the convergence, casual or not, of other actors, urban, partisan, linked to the previous administration, very organized and virulent this time, and conscious of the role of mobilizations and symbols in the virtual era of the social network; and, on the other hand, the effective and real adoption in different parts of the country, of strategies that, for the first time, did not mean, as in the past, massive and peaceful mobilization and that was it, but attempts to terrorize the urban population and especially the middle class: water and electricity cuts, threats of oil cuts, looting, seizure of trucks with basic necessities and attacks on military barracks. In other words, society witnessed the collision of two actors, one state and the other social, both very different, which is evidenced in the debate that each one wanted to dispute and impose on the social network and, of course, on the country.