Indigenous people of Ecuador raise pressure on Lasso with protest amid state of emergency

The powerful indigenous sector of Ecuador will mobilize from midnight on Monday against economic measures of the government, in an additional challenge to the state of exception that governs to combat drug violence.

“Our base structures from zero hours (Tuesday, 05H00 GMT) will be at different points nationwide”Leonidas Iza, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie), who declared himself in opposition to the government.

The indigenous peoples, protagonists of Ecuadorian politics in the last 30 years with marches that have even overthrew three presidents between 1997 and 2005, will take to the roads near their communities and join the protests of unions and students called in Quito.

The demonstrations, which aim to be the largest since the conservative came to power Guillermo Lasso in May, they will occur in half of a state of exception for 60 days decreed by the president.

Lasso sent the military to patrol the streets together with policemen, but so far it has not suspended freedoms such as that of protest or meeting despite being empowered to do so under the figure of emergency.

While fighting the violence of the mafias, the president is committed to economic reactivation in the face of the devastating effect of the pandemic through measures that are rejected by opposition sectors as they are considered neoliberal in nature.

The opposition will rally around the rejection of the rise in fuel prices that it decreed Lasso, followed by a rate freeze that did not dissipate popular discontent.

“Let the law prevail”

This Monday the government warned that it will not allow excesses.

“We are going to develop a whole device to avoid the closure of roads, so that the law prevails because the closure of roads and the obstacle to the free movement of people and goods is prohibited by law,” he said. Lasso Monday to the press in the government house.

“With the public force, with the national police, we are going to impose order,” he emphasized.

Nelson Erazo, president of the Popular Front -which brings together diverse social sectors-, issued a warning in accordance with the announcement of the natives:

“Blockades against the city of Quito are not ruled out if the national government does not understand that it should back down in its policies that have hit the majority of the Ecuadorian people,” he said, hinting that Tuesday’s could be the first of a series of shares of Pressure: “We do not rule out new actions in the course of the month and so far in the first days of November”.

The trigger for the protests

The conservative president raised the price of fuel by up to 12%, bringing regular gasoline from $ 2.50 to $ 2.55 on Saturday and diesel from $ 1.69 to $ 1.90.

At the same time, it suspended the monthly increases that were applied based on the price of oil in the international market since 2020, when diesel cost 1 dollar, with a view to gradually eliminating the subsidies that for this year represented the State about $ 1.9 billion.

The Executive plans to send tax and labor reforms to Congress in the coming days to try to alleviate the economic crisis that the country is facing and that worsened with the pandemic.

In September, he presented a bill to the Parliament to reactivate the economy and generate employment, but the opposition National Assembly returned it, arguing inconsistencies with the Constitution.

In 2019 the natives, representing 7.4% of the country’s 17.7 million inhabitants, mobilized en masse in harshly repressed demonstrations peppered with violence against the elimination of fuel subsidies.

At the end of several days of protest, which left eleven dead, the government of then president Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) reversed the measure it had agreed with the IMF, to receive millionaire loans.

In 2020, it established the monthly readjustments according to the price of oil, which in the case of diesel was a maximum of 3% per month.

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