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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.resumen-english.org/2022/07/ecuador-the-ghosts-of-the-national-strike/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Ecuador: The Ghosts of the National Strike</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits"></div>By Javier Tolcachier on July 3, 2022</div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-wrapper2">
<div id="gmail-attachment_20718" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20718" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/7-6-Ecuador-img.jpg?resize=300%2C247&ssl=1" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="300" height="247"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-20718" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><font size="1">photo: Ana Gabriela Soria Morales</font></p></div>
<p>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.<span id="gmail-more-20717"></span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A ghost president</p>
<p>During the <em>Paro</em>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The ghosts of the past are present</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This time, though, and by a slim margin, Lasso retains the presidency.</p>
<p>A ghostly government</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Clearing the ghosts of the future</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.pressenza.com/2022/07/ecuador-the-ghosts-of-the-national-strike/">Pressenza</a></p>
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