This piece was originally commissioned for Jacobin’s web site but for some unexplained reason, it was never published. After having read it, we thought it would have been a waste not to publish it for the benefit of those who are interested to know more about recent events in Ecuador.
When the Ecuadorian Lenin took power in 2017, exactly 100 years after the first legendary Lenin did, few could have imagined that this powerful symbolism would have been squandered so ignominiously and so swiftly. Curiously, over the last few days, an old picture of the Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno circulated in the social networks. He appears relatively joyful while marching, surrounded by red flags and banners, in the streets of Quito, in the second row just behind some of the leading members of his political movement, the now-extinct Marxist-leaning Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). It was April 1978, and he and his comrades were protesting against the increase of the local bus fare. What would the young Lenin have thought if he were told that some 40 years later he would have been politically accountable for the killing of at least eight demonstrators, the wounding of 1,507, and the arrest of 1,330, protesting for similar reasons to the ones of April 1978?
Such are the appalling figures of the harsh repression unleashed by Moreno’s government against la revolución de los zánganos (zángano meaning drone, but also, in the local jargon, lazy, which is the way in which protestors were baptized by Moreno himself), the 12-day national strike that has shaken Ecuador after the government decreed the elimination of a historic fuel subsidy. The subsidy, which has now been restored thus signaling a partial victory of the protestors, applies to everyone, but it has largely benefitted the lowest sectors of society, especially by reducing the costs of national supply chains, with positive repercussions on the final price of items of massive consumption as well as on the bus fare. The protest was initially organized by the associations of carriers and taxi drivers, but it soon became clear the infamous decree 883 had sparked the rage of large segments of Ecuadorian society. The streets started to be filled by people of different age, class, gender, and race and, despite the carriers and taxi drivers withdrew after a couple of days, the protest radicalized itself once the indigenous movement joined in, with over 20,000 people reaching the capital from different parts of the Ecuadorian highlands. Soon, 20 provinces out of 24 were affected by the protest, with Quito exhibiting, as per tradition, the highest level of combativity. The repertoire staged by the demonstrators evoked the previous feats of Ecuador’s uprisings, which contributed to the fall of three presidents at the turn of the ’90s and 2000s: gigantic street demonstrations, roadblocks made of burning tires on the main highways of the country and even within the cities, clashes with the police at every corner, the blockage of oil extraction in the Amazon, a nation in revolt against its president.
How did the protest turn so virulent? On the lines of the birth of the French yellow vests movement and not too dissimilarly from what has been happening in Chile in the last few days, the elimination of the subsidy uncovered a wide discontent that was boiling just below the surface. It became, in other words, the moment for a generalized indictment of the politics of Moreno, which, starting with the first counter-reforms adopted towards the end of 2017, intends to bring Ecuador back to full-blown neoliberalism. In fact, decree 883 is only the taste of a vaster and yet-to-be-approved package of measures that Moreno’s government agreed with the IMF, in exchange for a $4.2 billion loan to shore up the country’s finances. The other measures are perfectly in line with the traditional requirements of international financial institutions: on one side, a decade-long tax rebellion of the local elites is awarded with fiscal amnesty and the abolition of the tax on foreign exchange outflows, while the odious tariffs on luxury goods are lifted. On the other, labor rights are curtailed through the decrease of the holiday entitlement, salary cuts, and the first steps towards the privatization of social security, whereas the state is rolled back with the firing of thousands of public officers—a bitter medicine, whose nefarious effects on the welfare of the great majorities are well-known around here.
For those still grappling with how all this was possible in the first place—wasn’t Moreno the designed successor of Rafael Correa, the 10 year-long left populist president after all? It may be worth recounting the swirling political developments of the last couple of years in the Andean country in a few words. Against all odds, Moreno made a complete U-turn very little after he took office. Judging by his tones before the 2017 elections, it could be guessed that his political line would have been softer than Correa’s, but he went much further than that. Not only did neoliberal policies return to full control after a decade of by and large heterodox economic management, not only did Ecuador return under the aegis of the United States—let’s not forget the gift of handing back Julian Assange—but Moreno also boycotted Correa’s alleged plan for a Putin-Medvedev-Putin style succession by promoting a constitutional reform that prohibits presidential re-election after a second mandate—thus de facto disabling Correa to run again as a presidential candidate. At the moment, Correa cannot even set foot in Ecuador because of the arrest warrants hanging over his head. The second vice-president of Correa (and initial vice-president of Moreno himself), Jorge Glas, is behind bars and many correistas politicians who have not taken distance from the former president are currently persecuted through judiciary proceedings that do not even display the minimum legal requirements—so much so that Interpol tellingly ignored the international arrest warrants for Correa issued by Ecuadorian authorities.
To this, we should add the recent arrest of Paula Pabón, governor of the province of Pichincha, for supporting the strike. Police also raided the house of former lawmaker and executive secretary of Correa’s movement Virgilio Hernandez—now officially in hiding, while former National Assembly’s president and current MP, Gabriela Rivadeneira, took refuge along with other prominent correistas in the Mexican embassy. All this should not be surprising: Moreno’s ruthless cleansing, orchestrated with the systematic help of the national corporate media and sustained by disingenuous rhetoric of goodwill and fight against corruption, meets with a continental policy of lawfare that has systematically targeted the protagonists of the previous political season in Latin America. Correa and Lula are just the two most visible victims of a new strategy serving two related aims: impeding the come-back of the left and pure and simple vengeance.
Equally bolstered by the media but now divested of any goodwill, has been the response of the government to the demonstrations. As hinted above, the protest has been met with an unprecedented reaction, now showing the truest face of Moreno’s politics. The images coming from Quito in the days of the mobilization were breathtaking: young faces tortured by the batons, defenseless protestors on the ground run over by police motorcycles, tear gases and pellet bullets fired at eye level, violent police raids into the Salesiana and Católica universities where demonstrators hoped in vain to find a safe-haven. To be sure, vandalism infiltrated in the demonstrations across Quito, with the burning of cars, a state-building and a private TV channel—at times, pictures of the city from the above looked as if they were from a proper war zone—but the violence of the police and the army were entirely disproportionate and constituted a serious breach of human rights.
That Moreno was ready to defend the implementation of neoliberal policies through a brutal deployment of force was made clear not just by the declaration of the state of emergency (then enhanced by a proper curfew), but also by the aesthetic of a later address, the one in which he announced that he would temporarily move the government from Quito to Ecuador’s second-biggest city Guayaquil. No more jokes and humor—for which he has become renown—but a dry and concise message delivered from a TV studio with a black background, where he sat between the Minister of Defence and the Vice-president, and the four highest military commanders in uniform standing behind them, looking glaring. On the repression, the Ministers of Defence and Interior deserve a special mention. The former, Oswaldo Jarrín, is a retired army officer who has maintained a very close relationship with the US during and after his first stint as Minister of Defence in 2005/2006, as many Wikileaks cables demonstrate. In one of them dating back to January 2007, Quito’s US Embassy goes as far as describing him as a ‘hard-line conservative’: it is thus no surprise that he chillingly reminded the protestors that the armed forces have “war experience.” The latter figure, María Paula Romo, has a very different pedigree, one that resembles, if only in a more accelerated fashion given her younger age, the trajectory of Moreno. The leader of Ruptura de los 25, a left-of-center group that gained popularity in the last massive street rebellion of 2005 and which later allied with Correa, Romo took a distance from the former president in 2011 because of his judicial reforms and the way in which he dealt with some minor protests. Only a few years later, it turns out that she has been the chief organizer, along with Jarrín, of a repressive wave that had suddenly brought Ecuador back to the dark ’80s, when state-led political violence had become the norm. With good reason, it is to these figures that much of the anger of the protestors was directed as the days of protest passed by and violence intensified.
Another aspect of the demonstrations that needs to be emphasized is the role played by private media. Their connivance with Moreno’s government went beyond any journalistic decency: the protest was initially concealed, and, once that was no longer possible, the available information was systematically distorted. The two main narratives that the media tried to posit were: 1) that the measures taken by Moreno were absolutely necessary; 2) that protestors were involved in a coup attempt on behalf of Correa or were, at best, a bunch of violent hooligans. Not even the slightest effort to maintain a façade of pluralism was made. Conversely, alternative media—small, local radios, or even simple social media channels—have been key in breaking the media siege. Even though they were hindered through measures that ranged from sheer governmental censorship and intimidation (as in the case of radio Pichincha Universal, which was raided and taken out of air) to digital obstruction (with the internet shutdown in certain areas), they managed to give a voice to the protest and channel the claims of those who took it to the streets. Together with some international media, they ventured to the heart of the clashes and spread the terrifying images that now haunt Moreno and his accomplices.
Yet, despite the repression and the media misrepresentation, the protest obtained a partial, albeit crucial victory. Both sides understood that the protest could not continue for much longer: the indigenous leaders knew that their people were badly strained, while the government, besides the international humiliation, was facing serious damage for the national economy, widespread shortages, and all sorts of social disruption. Talks were launched even if the conditions that the indigenous leader had posed for discussing had not yet been met: the immediate abrogation of decree 883 and the ousting of ministers Romo and Jarrín. In the end, after the televised dialogue that took place on Sunday 13 October with the mediation of the UN and the Ecuadorian bishop’s conference, an agreement was reached: a new decree would render the decree 883 ineffective, for which a joint technical commission, including indigenous organizations, has been set up to formulate a new decree. Protest paid off as Moreno had to backtrack, yet ministers Romo and Jarrín are still there, and the remaining measures of the paquetazo are being qualmlessly pushed forward. Even more importantly, the indigenous movement later withdrew from the joint commission amid the legal persecution of the protesters, including their leaders.
Yet the true political victory exceeds the immediate conquests of the struggle: after a long process of political de-activation, a dormant civil society has awakened, by way of a politicization along the neoliberalism/anti-neoliberalism axis that divides society into two neat blocs. One is clearly embodied by the national elites: it is made of the business sector, the media, the government, and the traditional right-wing parties (that have promptly aligned with Moreno during the uprising) with the participation of the upper echelons of the middles classes. Its tropes are order, stability, and the delegitimization of the strike by way of linking it with Correa and Maduro. To the other bloc pertain all those sectors that filled the streets during the protest frenzy: along with the indigenous, there were students, workers, intellectuals, peasants, urban youngsters—many of them barely reaching the age of 20—with the participation of many collectives and social organizations, from ecologists to feminists, and of course there were the supporters of the former president Correa. All share a common denominator: they reject outright the austerity policies, the involvement of the IMF in the national economy, and the complicity between the national oligarchies and Moreno. They also demand justice in reparation to the atrocious losses suffered during the days of the national strike.
This does not mean that the emerging popular camp is exempt from contradictions. These will have to be worked out if the new movement is to have any impact in the medium-long run. The whole strike has been characterized by the skirmishes between the indigenous movement and Correa. More specifically, the indigenous movement, as well as various sectors in the streets, distanced themselves from any attempt of juxtaposition with correismo suggested by the government and the media. It should come as no surprise that the tactic of reducing the strike to a plot masterminded by Correa was employed. The former president certainly counts with a consistent hard-core group of supporters, but his figure is now quite divisive, and he could hardly replicate the sweeping victories of the past years. His Twitter hyper-activism—coupled with his calls to new elections – was seen by many as an infelicitous way to appropriate a wave of protest that far exceeds his actual contribution and current political standing. In fact, some of the protestors see Correa as responsible for the situation in which Ecuador currently lies.
The line of argument of these detractors goes as follows: during his presidency, Ecuador’s budget became unsustainable because of Correa’s massive spending and the over-indebtment contracted with China, payable with shipments of oil at a relatively low fixed price for decades to come. This position runs the risk of buying Moreno’s discourse by which he was left with the “table served” and had no other option but to resort to the IMF. This take is certainly ungenerous towards Correa. While this is not the place for an exhaustive analysis of this sort, suffice it to say that Correa managed to launch an ambitious Keynesian-minded project that strengthened the internal market and consistently alleviated a range of social conditions. However, amid the economic crisis, the model displayed serious cracks which would have required Correa to confront more aggressively some powerful national interests. Nonetheless, he showed himself unwilling to do so as he lacked a genuine and politically sound popular base. Correa’s logic has indeed been prevalently electoral and personalistic throughout his ten years in power. In this sense, it should be stressed that Correa’s Citizens Revolution showed serious limitations in institutionalizing and consolidating his political capital. The very fact that, after ten years in power, Correa had to resort to a successor he was suspicious of and who later showed ‘loyalty’ to the project of the economic elites is indicative of a lack of hegemonic construction. It is also paramount to point out that, amid the evident difficulties encountered in the last few years in power, Correa resorted to an exacerbation of his polarizing rhetoric that at that point was no longer able to articulate social demands, but rather became the source of social discomfort, signaling a fundamental incapacity to bring about some sort of stabilization of the social order.
This explains full well why the precious resurfacing of the axis neoliberalism/anti-neoliberalism should not be weakened by the axis anti-correismo/correismo. It needs to be kept in mind that the two are not overlapping and that it is only by foregrounding the former at the expense of the latter that this new movement has any future chance of success. Despite still being one of the most important political players in the country, Correa can no longer be the hinging point of the popular camp. At best, along the lines of Cristina Fernández in Argentina, he may play a secondary role, provided that he can adequately interpret that position, with the further difficulty that in Ecuador there is no historically consolidated popular tradition the likes of Peronism. At any rate, what is key at this stage is that the 12-day popular uprising has forged new solidarities and triggered a new political phase. The current moment is not an electoral one and it better not be. The reconfiguration of the popular camp will take time to unravel, and its development is dependent upon a more capillary and heightened political awareness of what is at stake as well as upon the emergence of new leaders, movements, and discourses. More talks, assemblies, protests, dynamics of self-organization, and articulation are needed to smoothen the differences that have grown within the Ecuadorian left in the last decade and to consolidate a new robust political project. This will necessarily have to heed the heterogeneity of the constituencies involved: it was precisely at the moment in which Correa overpowered them that his leadership slowly started to crumble.
In this sense, the return of the indigenous movement as a national player is a welcome development. The protest would not have been the same if they had not joined. The two most visible figures, Jaime Vargas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and Leonidas Iza, president of the Indigenous and Peasant Movement of Cotopaxi, have so far shown great political leadership. Whether this will dissipate the shadows over the indigenous movement after it strayed away from its emancipatory vocation—Pachakutik, the political wing of CONAIE, just to make an example, regrettably backed Moreno until a few days before the protest started—can not be anticipated, but things look hopeful. However, it is important that new nation-wide alliances and joint political routes are constructed so that racial, cultural, class, and geographical divides are cut across. In other words, these new leaders will be up to the task if they manage to stick to the historic universalistic motto of the indigenous movement: “Nothing for the Indians, everything for everyone.”