[In the aftermath of Ecuadors longest-running national strike
organized by Indigenous movements, activists now face a wave of
criminalization.]
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POST PROTEST, GOVERNMENT IN ECUADOR STRIKES OUT AGAINST INDIGENOUS
LEADERS  
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Angélica María Bernal and Joshua Holst
August 4, 2022
NACLA Reports
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_ In the aftermath of Ecuador's longest-running national strike
organized by Indigenous movements, activists now face a wave of
criminalization. _

A blockade in Puyo, Ecuador, at the beginning of the 2022 national
strike, (Joshua Holst)

 

On June 30, the conservative government of Guillermo Lasso sat down
with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) to end a
national strike and begin a 90-day process of negotiations. No sooner
was the peace accord signed than the Lasso government scaled up its
campaign of repression against protesters, beginning with a new trial
against CONAIE president and strike leader Leonidas Iza.

After a year of attempts at discussion with the Ecuadorian government,
CONAIE took to the streets on June 13, locking down Ecuador’s major
cities and petroleum wells with blockades. Since president Lasso’s
2021 election, IMF-mandated gasoline price increases, the expansion of
petroleum activity into Indigenous territories, and deepening
household debt has intensified livelihood insecurity for Indigenous
nationalities and for the urban and rural poor.

The national strike has been a historic moment for Ecuador’s
Indigenous movements, who in the face of intense repression and
violence proved themselves a still powerful and effective force in
Ecuadorian politics. After the country was brought to a standstill for
18 days, Lasso finally conceded to popular demands and sat down with
CONAIE to initiate a negotiation process.

The Lasso government’s first act under the pretense of negotiation
was to charge CONAIE president Iza with “illegal disruption of
public services
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for road blockages and interruption of petroleum production, an
infraction under Article 346 of the penal code. The Regional
Foundation for Human Rights Advisory (INREDH) reports 403 open cases
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protesters as of July 6. 

Iza’s trial and other violent attacks on the right to protest have
defined Lasso’s strategy for the duration of the strike. One day
into the protests, Lasso ordered Iza’s arrest without publicly
stating the charges or where he was being held. A video of Iza’s
arrest [[link removed]] soon went
viral, and he was released after public outcries denounced his capture
as arbitrary and illegal.

During the ensuing strike, the government’s repressive measures
progressed. Lasso declared a state of emergency in the first week,
then expanded it to six provinces and authorized increasing and lethal
use of force against protesters. These tactics resulted in six deaths,
335 injuries, and 155 detentions, the Alliance for Human Rights of
Ecuador reports [[link removed]].

Although the court postponed the case against Iza until August, these
investigations—along with repeated antagonistic media statement from
Lasso and Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo—put into question the
government’s motives and jeopardize the negotiation process. A good
faith negotiation process is imperative not only for Lasso, who
barely survived
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recent no-confidence vote in the national assembly, but also for
addressing the root causes of the strike.

ROOTS OF THE STRIKE

The Lasso administration’s failure to address a deepening political,
economic, and security crisis is at the heart of the national strike.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Ecuador hard. A month into the outbreak,
Ecuador had one of the highest death tolls in the world
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exposing serious problems in the country’s health infrastructure.
The pandemic triggered a recession and impacted household incomes,
leading to an increase in poverty, inequality, and unemployment
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Ecuador’s dependence on oil exports is another key factor. Oil is
the main source of Ecuador’s revenue and a volatile commodity,
rendering Ecuador’s economy vulnerable to fluctuating market
values. Resource politics are a driving force in national and
international policy-making in Ecuador, and increasingly have resulted
in violent state-society clashes since the late 1990s. As a case in
point, plummeting oil-prices in 2014, coupled with high debt, led
former president Lenín Moreno to implement austerity measures that
included the reduction of gas subsidies to meet IMF loan demands. The
resulting backlash produced a surge of mass protests
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Quito and other major cities in 2019 that prompted Moreno to declare a
state of emergency. Moreno backtracked on scrapping fuel subsidies.

During the pandemic, oil-barrel prices plummeted to record lows,
leading to the IMF’s approval on September 30, 2020 of a new $6.5
billion loan to Ecuador
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On October 19, 2021, Lasso’s government renegotiated with the IMF to
unlock $800 million in undisbursed payments
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a new round of austerity measures that included the end of gas
subsidies.

With the cost of gas for consumers rising, CONAIE organized protests
that October. The public outcry prompted Lasso to institute gradual
monthly gas price increases instead of a sudden removal of subsidies.

After his election, Lasso pledged to double oil and mining operations
to eliminate fiscal deficit and address poverty. After a year in
office, his government seemed poised to begin a new round of licensing
to expand the mining industry and increase oil production
from 500,000 to 550,000 barrels a day
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the end of the year.  

By June 2022, gas prices had doubled in Ecuador, driving up the cost
of transport and all basic goods including staple foods in urban
areas. For the poor, these price increases meant food insecurity. As
of the strike’s start, the only campaign promise that Lasso had
fulfilled was to speed up Covid-19 vaccinations.

Lasso's extractive and IMF-driven policies have particularly impacted
Indigenous communities. The wanton expansion of petroleum and mining
activity is pushing Indigenous populations further into food
insecurity and health crises, causing rural poverty to spiral out of
control.

In the face of economic pressures, plummeting popularity ratings, and
a growing security crisis linked to narcotrafficking
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homicide rates
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Lasso responded with quick and violent repression against protesters.
Techniques of criminalization during and after these protests are a
sign of Lasso’s efforts to reassert his weak hold on power.

[Abandoned oil pits in Shushufindi, Ecuador's oil-rich northern
Amazon. (Joshua Holst)]

Abandoned oil pits in Shushufindi, Ecuador's oil-rich northern Amazon.
(Joshua Holst)

INSTITUTIONALIZING THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PROTEST

Lasso’s actions are nothing new. The criminalization of protest has
long been a familiar tactic of Ecuadorian presidents,
who—irrespective of left- or right-wing affiliations—follow
similar patterns to justify repression against mass mobilizations and
dissent. 

Patterns of criminalization
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on the rise since the mid-2000s and are closely linked to the
commodities boom that saw oil prices reach record highs. The state
expanded the extractive frontier into large-scale mining and increased
oil production to exploit this boom. In turn, affected groups
organized resistance movements in response to ecological damage
threatening health, food, and cultural survival. Successive
governments have followed by institutionalizing the criminalization of
protest through the use of courts and penal processes.

The three-term presidency of leftist leader Rafael Correa from 2007 to
2017 restricted the right to protest in multiple domains. Foremost,
Correa’s administration increased persecution and judicialization of
individual protesters through arbitrary arrests, detentions, and
lengthy penal processes. Furthermore, he oversaw attacks
on nongovernmental organizations
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limited press freedom through the controversial 2013 Communications
Law, and discredited activists as “terrorists” and
“saboteurs.”
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Indigenous and campesinos protesters have been primary targets. As the
most directly affected populations, they challenged Correa’s
policies to expand extractive industries and the promises of his
Citizens' Revolution to end poverty through oil revenues. They
questioned at what price and at whose expense, and they exposed the
underlying contradictions of Ecuador becoming the first country in the
world to grant nature constitutional rights,
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at the same time expanding natural resource extraction.

Correa’s successor and former vice president, Lenín Moreno,
continued these patterns to more deadly effect during the 2019
protests. Moreno’s administration oversaw the violent repression of
demonstrators that resulted in 11 deaths, 1,228 detained, 1,507
injured, and over 400 criminal investigations
[[link removed]].

After two decades, the legacy of criminalization is vast, familiar,
and clear in purpose: to paralyze the work of activists and eliminate
pathways of social dissidence.

LASSO: A NEW IMAGINARY OF CRIMINALITY

While Lasso has shown himself no different than previous leaders, his
actions also demonstrate the intractable nature of criminalization as
a tool for governance. A case in point are attacks on the Indigenous
guard and new discourses of criminality that link Indigenous
protesters to narcotrafficking.

In 2018, the A'i Cofán community of Sinangoe brought a case against
the Ecuadorian government to halt mining activities on their lands,
spanning 15,000 square miles of rainforest near the border with
Colombia. The government had granted 20 illegal large-scale mining
concessions
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with more pending, thereby infringing on Cofán rights under
Ecuadorian and international law to free, prior, and informed consent
for any resource policy decisions on ancestral lands. These
concessions were discovered by the Indigenous guard
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an institution created under Cofán law to provide for territorial
monitoring and compliance.

In the landmark 2018 Sinangoe decision, Ecuador’s constitutional
court sided with the community. The court nullified 52 mining
concessions, halted mining operations, and affirmed the status of the
Indigenous guard as a legitimate authority within their ancestral
territories
[[link removed]].
For their efforts, guard leaders and case activists Alexandra Narváez
and Alex Lucitante were awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental
Prize. [[link removed]]

Despite constitutional recognition, Lasso and Interior Minister
Carrillo repeatedly painted the Indigenous guard as violent criminals.
In the opening days of the 90-day dialogue, Carrillo condemned the
Indigenous guard in Ecuadorian media as an “armed group
[[link removed]]” and part of “urban
guerrillas [[link removed]].”
Furthermore, state rhetoric sought to connect Indigenous groups to
narcotrafficking. In a July 7 interview, Lasso claimed drug
traffickers working in coordination with former president Correa were
financing protests to the amount of “15 million dollars for 18 days
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Through its association of Indigenous movements and institutions like
the Indigenous guard with narcotrafficking and urban guerillas, the
Lasso administration expands Correa’s imaginary of criminality of
Indigenous protesters from “terrorists” to “narcos.” 

To insert Indigenous protest into this imaginary is problematic. One
need only turn on any news source in Ecuador over the past few months
prior to the protests to know the state of fear and anxiety the
security crisis and rising homicide rates has produced in the
Ecuadorian public. As an Alliance for Human Rights report
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these are stigmatizing discourses that “promote a message of hate,
discrimination, and segregation,” exacerbate racism, and put the
rights of Indigenous peoples, their lives, and practices at risk.

PRECARIOUS PROSPECTS FOR DIALOGUE

The first few weeks of the dialogue process have not looked
optimistic, with Lasso’s government on the media offensive to link
protesters to criminal elements and frame the strike in relation to
the economic loss from blocked petroleum production. With 1,096 wells
blockaded during the strike, and the Iza case as a precedent,
Indigenous activists believe that the “paralyzation of services”
pretext will be used extensively to target Indigenous leaders.
"Ecuador’s petroleum production has halved… I think the government
is going to focus on these cases," Andres Tapia, head of communication
with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian
Amazon (CONFENIAE) said in an interview.

Moving in this direction contradicts the spirit of compromise in the
peace accord agreement. In the agreement, the government conceded to
a 15-cent reduction in combustibles
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notably revoked Executive Decree 95, which would have expanded
petroleum production.

During the strike, Lasso proved himself time and again as a bad-faith
negotiator, fueling conflict with increased militarization and
violence, organizing “shadow” negotiations with Indigenous leaders
not affiliated with the strike, mobilizing misinformation campaigns,
and calling in sick during negotiations on account of an alleged case
of Covid-19. If Lasso persists in his use of the legal system and
media to continually discredit and criminalize Indigenous protesters,
it will undoubtedly have chilling effects on the dialogue process,
raising the possibility of a new cycle of social unrest.

_ANGÉLICA MARÍA BERNAL teaches politics at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of  Beyond Origins (Oxford
University Press, 2017) and editor of  De la Exclusión a la
Participación (Abya Yala Press, 2000). She is currently working on a
book on women’s resistance and extractive politics in Ecuador._

_JOSHUA HOLST is an applied visual anthropologist specializing in
globalization and conflict. He has worked for NGOs and
intergovernmental organizations in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and
the Americas. For more
information: www.rethinkpolitics.org/joshua-holst/ 
[[link removed](Oxford%20University%20Press,%202017)%20and%20editor%20of%20De%20la%20Exclusi%C3%B3n%20a%20la%20Participaci%C3%B3n%20(Abya%20Yala%20Press,%202000).%20She%20is%20currently%20working%20on%20a%20book%20on%20women%E2%80%99s%20resistance%20and%20extractive%20politics%20in%20Ecuador.%20Twitter:%20@angelicabernalg%20Joshua%20Holst%20is%20an%20applied%20visual%20anthropologist%20specializing%20in%20globalization%20and%20conflict.%20He%20has%20worked%20for%20NGOs%20and%20intergovernmental%20organizations%20in%20West%20Africa,%20Southeast%20Asia,%20and%20the%20Americas.%20For%20more%20information:%20http:/www.rethinkpolitics.org/joshua-holst/]_

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* Ecuador
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* indigenous people
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* big oil
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* IMF
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