[News] Ecuador: The Ghosts of the National Strike

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Ecuador: The Ghosts of the National Strike
By Javier Tolcachier on July 3, 2022

photo: Ana Gabriela Soria Morales

After 18 days of mobilizations throughout Ecuador, which had their final
epicenter in Quito, the indigenous organizations signed an agreement with
the national government, bringing to an end what they called the “first
stage” of the strike.

A period of 90 days is now open in which compliance with the agreement will
have to be verified. However, the country is far from achieving the peace
touted by the government. Effective peace is unlikely to emerge if the
current neoliberal orientation in the management of the state persists.
Peace with justice that will have to overcome not only the plummeting
welfare of the majority in a complicated international context, but also
address the severe human rights violations produced by government
repression.

In addition to the objective factors that stand in the way of this task,
there are the ghosts that emerged during the strike, intangibles whose
volume will have a strong impact in the weeks and months to come.

A ghost president

During the *Paro*, Guillermo Lasso was totally absent, except for short
video appearances on national television. The banker in government did not
attend any of the appointments required by the situation, but neither did
he attend those provided for by law in the event of activating the process
for his removal “serious political crisis and internal commotion”, as
stipulated in the second paragraph of Article 130 of the National
Constitution.

The president sent Fabio Pozo, his legal secretary, to defend him before
the legislature, while at the negotiating table with the indigenous
movement, he was represented by government minister Francisco Jiménez, who
had replaced the resigned Alexandra Vela in April.

Days earlier, another of Lasso’s ministers, retired general and now
Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo Rosero, had opened the way to
repression by applying the “proportional use of force” against the
demonstrators. It is worth remembering that Carrillo had been Director
General of Operations of the National Police during the National Strike of
October 2019.

The presidential omni-absence was at first placidly justified by an alleged
Covid-19 contagion, later called into question by photographs posted on his
twitter account that showed the president in jubilant embraces with the
Interior Minister and other armed forces chiefs. The meeting took place the
day after a strong repression against a march of indigenous women and
students, and on the same day that the National Police threw tear gas bombs
into the agora of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, where hundreds of
indigenous people were gathered in deliberation.

The ghosts of the past are present

The interruption of presidential mandates has powerful antecedents in the
country. After the Revolución Juliana, between 1925 and 1948, 27 presidents
passed through the country.

In 1952, Velasco Ibarra took office. He was Ecuador’s president five times,
completing only his first four-year term. After long years of military
dictatorship, Jaime Roldós Aguilera – elected in 1979 – was unable to
complete his term either. He died in a dubious plane crash with his wife 21
months after taking office.

Later, popular pressure led Congress to remove Abdalá Bucaram, Roldós’
brother-in-law and elected in 1996, from office before he had even been in
office for a year. His successor, Jamil Mahuad, of whom Lasso was
“super-minister of the economy”, met the same fate just over a year after
taking office.

Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, who took office in 2003 after the coup that ousted
Mahuad from the Carondelet palace, was himself forced out of office in 2005
after what he called the “Rebellion of the Outlaws” (a nickname with which
he tried to discredit the mobilizations and the young people who took to
the streets).

In all the uprisings since the national indigenous uprising of June 1990,
the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), founded
in 1986, has been a key player.

As was also the case in October 2019, in which, together with broad sectors
of the population, the indigenous organizations were at the heart of the
protest.

The root cause of all presidential replacements was almost always the same.
The intrinsic contradiction of governments that promised social
improvements for the people while at the same time defending the property
of the power groups generally ended in the early termination of their
mandates.

The ghost of the past came to life in the present, once again disappointing
the false expectations of improvement that Lasso had spread prior to the
second round of elections in April 2021, after Lenin Moreno’s calamitous
turn to the right in the previous term.

This time, though, and by a slim margin, Lasso retains the presidency.

A ghostly government

Beyond the concrete achievements in the 10-point agenda set out at the
beginning of the strike, the Ecuadorian people know that the grassroots and
indigenous leaders twisted the government’s arm, leaving it extremely
weakened.

This weakness was expressed institutionally in the result of the vote in
the National Assembly in the course of the removal process initiated by the
Union for Hope (UNES) bench. After three days of debate, the 47 deputies
from the progressive sector, who voted unanimously in favor of dismissal,
were joined by 33 parliamentarians – 23 of them from Pachakutik, the
political arm of CONAIE, 4 dissidents from ID, 3 independents and even 3
ex-government supporters – to reach 80 votes in the affirmative. The 48
negative votes (including 14 from the Social Christian party and 9 from the
Social Democrats, 5 independents and the rest of the ruling party’s bench
(BAN)) and nine abstentions (3 from Pachakutik, 2 from ID, 2 from the PSC
and two from the ruling party) prevented the 92 votes necessary to approve
the dismissal.

The vast majority of the population celebrated the agreement reached and
acknowledged the FORCE and fortitude of the indigenous resistance, and the
mobilized contingent was greeted with cheers and thanks from residents of
southern Quito as they set off on their return to their communities.

The exception were middle and upper-middle class sectors that adopted an
openly classist and racist attitude, echoing the government’s proclamations
reproduced by the hegemonic media, as a counterpart to the juicy publicity
they receive from the government.

In this way, the government is now caught on two fronts. If it chooses to
continue aligning itself with local and foreign capital and the austerity
measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund, it will face
widespread popular discontent and an even more widespread rebellion than
the one it has just faced. If, on the other hand, it takes a more moderate
path, with fewer cuts and delaying its privatization projects, it will come
under enormous pressure from business and the financial sector. Even the
media groups now at his disposal will turn their backs on him and tax
evasion, “shell companies” in tax havens and mismanagement of state
affairs, among other “news”, will once again come to the fore.

Thus, with strong opposition and the almost certain blackmail of the
formations previously allied in parliament, he will be left with only the
brute force of the armed institutions, which in the end will not want to
pay the political cost of sustaining the unsustainable.

Clearing the ghosts of the future

The question that many Ecuadorians are surely asking themselves is what
comes afterwards after Lasso’s failure, what alternatives can and should
emerge for the country to return to a path of inclusion, human growth,
solidarity and general well-being.

Is it possible to think of a Historic Pact, similar to the one that now
aspires to remove them from barbarism and humanize Colombia? If so, there
is no doubt that a broad alliance of these characteristics would have among
its main vectors the forces loyal to the Citizen Revolution and the
indigenous movement, strengthened and without a dent in its power to
mobilize, although divided in its political leadership.

However, there are powerful ghosts that appear when imagining such a
possibility. Ghosts linked to the severe misunderstanding that ended the
relationship between Rafael Correa’s government and a large part of the
organized indigenous sector. Ghosts that also have to do with the
historical cultural, socio-economic and lifestyle gap between the coast,
the highlands and the Amazon, and between the country’s rural and urban
centers, but also with the corporate and pretender way in which the
different social sectors have tried to advance in the unilateral
improvement of their situation.

To re-imagine a future free of these ghosts, the only possibility is to
reconcile, to unite the divided, to build bridges and to construct a great
social front similar to the one that allowed the drafting and approval of
the Montecristi Constitution. A front in which today the participation,
ideas and sensitivity of the new generations will also be fundamental,
together with the vital feminist drive, as well as the inclusion of
organizations and groups from different sectors.

In order to form this heterogeneous mosaic with sufficient force not only
to win elections, but also to build with a certain solidity a new political
project centered on human solidarity, it will surely be necessary to
overcome mistrust and discard the aspirations of hegemony and centralism on
the part of any particular sector. For which, in turn, it will be essential
to add a good dose of generosity in favor of the whole and at the same time
work on transforming the inner landscape of militants and leaders, far
removed from resentment or revenge and based on the principle of treating
others as one wants to be treated.

It is very likely that there are already leaders thinking and feeling that
this is the best alternative and perhaps already trying to activate that
direction.

Source: Pressenza
<https://www.pressenza.com/2022/07/ecuador-the-ghosts-of-the-national-strike/>
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