Gerard Coffey*
February 2001
On the 16th of January 2001, a little less than one year after the indigenous people and a small group of-mid rank army officers had taken control of the Ecuadorian Congress and Presidential palace, and a little more than a few days after the beginning of a new indigenous protest against the imposition of economic measures, the Ecuadorian military joint command issued the following statement.
"The forces of public order will act firmly and decisively, based on the rule of law, in order to combat any intent to destabilise the established order ... The armed forces and the police will assume no responsibility for the consequences which result from the accomplishment of their constitutional mission to safeguard life, property and the legal activity of the citizens of the country"
One week later, On the 23rd of January, four native people were shot while they blocked a road leading from the mid-sized city of Latacunga to the capital city Quito. From all reports the two hundred or so people blocking the road did so peacefully. They were not armed.
These two events mark the turning point in what was, up until that time, a relatively low-key protest. In the following days both the extent and the tone of the protest increased. Five thousand people marched in Latacunga, the closure of roads spread to other provinces and a decision was taken by indigenous leaders to begin a march on Quito. The government's position was clear. We will not negotiate while the disruptive measures continue, the economic measures are non-negotiable.
The final outcome of the more than two weeks of protests clearly show that, as in the past, the government's strategy did not work. President Noboa was forced to the table. His popularity dropped to 30%. The economic measures were changed. The indigenous movement showed once again that after more than five hundred years of virtual and often real oblivion, it is a political force that can not be denied. Almost 80% of the population are now supportive of the movement.
But the price paid was high. Four dead and eighty injured. Hundreds arrested. And this without counting the economic costs, both for the producers who could not ship their goods, and for Ecuadorians who will pay the cost of the massive police and military presence, the cost of the bullets that injured and killed them, and the thousands upon thousands of tear gas canisters used to maintain the "established order". An interesting phrase.
The specific events of those two weeks of protest have been well recorded. The arrival of 15,000 native people in Quito. The state of siege imposed on the Salesian University where the majority were housed. The declaration of the state of emergency. Battles between troops and indigenous people and campesinos in a number of places, but most seriously around the city of Tena, the capital of the Amazonian Province of Napo. There, three people died, including the son of an army sergeant, his brains blown out by an army bullet during the fighting. Twenty more including soldiers were injured. The Tena airport control tower burned after rumours circulated that the armed forces were about to bomb the town. The final signing of the 21-point peace treaty, for that is what it amounted to. The reduction of the price of gas. The freezing of gasoline prices for one year. The withdrawal of the indigenous road blocks. The avoiding of a more generalised armed conflict. The collective sigh of relief.
These are the concrete events, but it could prove both interesting and useful to go beyond them, examining in a little more detail both the context and the root causes of the conflict. Interesting because of the juxtaposition of global events. While the poorest of the Ecuadorian poor were marching and rebelling against economic measures that threaten to make their lives even more miserable, the richest of the world's rich were meeting in Davos Switzerland, and bewailing the fate of globalisation and the impacts on the poor that are staining its name. Useful because these events did not arise spontaneously, rather they are the result of a number of economic and social policies implemented by successive Ecuadorian governments, often at the behest or insistence of the representatives of the "established order" that were meeting in Davos.
With regard to the root causes, one very basic question comes to mind. Why was it necessary for native people to be killed and injured in order to lower the cost of a cylinder of cooking gas from $2 to $1.60? or event to be heard at all?. The answers are complex, and function on different levels, but they are not impossible to decipher.
On the most concrete and local level, Ecuadorians died and were injured because President Noboa assumed a hard line regarding any negotiations with the protestors, and at the same time encouraged the armed forces to act with severity in repressing them. Why did he do so? Because the revolt of the previous January still weigh heavily on Noboa himself, who became president as a result of the events of that day, on the economic power brokers, who were on the point of finding themselves on a plane to Miami, and on the armed forces who, while they were shown to be both sensitive to the plight of the poor (particularly the army), were also shown to have deep divisions within their ranks, and between branches.
This time around, neither the President nor the hawks that surround him were willing to risk another change of command, even though it was perfectly obvious from the statements of the indigenous leaders that no one (or very few) was interested in another president. This in strict contrast to the previous January when the agenda was clear; Send Them Packing (President, Congress and Judiciary). On the other hand, the regime's hard liners (minister of State Manrique and Minster of Defence, Admiral Hugo Unda) were also determined to show that the armed forces and the police would not be accomplices to another "Indian rebellion". The established order would be maintained, come hell or high water.
But there are other less obvious and more underlying reasons for the deaths and injuries. Reasons that range in scope from the national to the regional to the global.
First of all on the national level, the "Indians", for all intents and purposes, are still not considered as forming part of "real" Ecuadorian society. Conquered, marginalised and brutalised for centuries, the native people have recently become aware of and begun to exercise their own power, and their ability to influence political and economic events. But many Mestizo and "white" segments of society are still suffering from a form of colonialist time lag, considering the native people, at best pityingly, as quaint and childlike, at worst with hatred, as ignorant troublemakers and a burden for the members of real society (i.e. themselves) who just want to work and compete in the new globalised world. Juan Jose Pons, ex President of Congress, put it most plainly when he said in an interview with the national daily "El Comercio", that the government is basically comprised of people from the coast (i.e. Guayaquil) and that "on the coast we just don't understand the indigenous problem"
So as people "misunderstood" and with no recognised rights, the "indians" are therefore to be dealt with severely if they try to cause problems for real society. For example, a representative of the Guayas Chamber of Industry has been quoted as asking why, if the armed forces are supposedly trained to invade another country, they are not able to deal with the indigenous uprising.
Secondly, since the rebellion of the 21st of January 2000 the Ecuadorian armed forces have come under the watchful eye of the U.S., and its operations stop or rollback the guerrilla expansion in Colombia. From the point of view of the U.S., it is simply not good strategy to have potentially troublesome left leaning elements in the armed forces of a neighbouring country when you are about to exert military pressure on a major leftist guerrilla movement. The presence of these troublesome elements becomes even more problematic when that neighbouring country has just agreed to hand over, without congressional debate, a new U.S. military base in South America, and a new point of operations to replace the one lost in Panama with the transfer of control of the canal zone.
According to the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Charles Wilhelm, one of the objectives behind the agreement to lease the new base, and the port of Manta, is that of "reorienting" the Ecuadorian armed forces. A high-ranking official in the Ecuadorian armed forces expressed his concern about this reorientation in the following manner:
"Part of this reorientation is to modify the training of the Ecuadorian military to one similar to that of the armies of the Southern Cone (Principally Argentina and Chile), within a repressive doctrine, taking into account the reality of the regions" He also stated that in order to achieve this end "it is necessary to eliminate the progressive elements that could oppose (this initiative)".
As ex President Leon Febres Cordero succinctly put it, the role of the armed forces is not to think like sociologists, but to act.
Finally, on the global level, Ecuadorians died because the IMF, one of the three pillars of the neoliberal system enshrined in Davos, insists on economic reforms that for the vast majority of Ecuadorians only add to a multitude of present problems, while promising little relief in the long term. Of course, there are clearly other actors with responsibility for the recent events. The IMF does not do, nor even order, the shooting, nor does it directly twist the arm of the Ecuadorian government. However in a world in which, according to the economic elites, globalisation is the only alternative; in which the Ecuadorian state has lost control over fiscal policy due to its adoption of the dollar as the national currency; in exports are promoted to markets over which it exercises no control; in which the IMF, as one of the major forces for the expansion of the economic and commercial interests of the industrialised nations, is the only recourse in the case of a financial crisis, or indeed to simply balance the budget; and in which the approval of the Fund is necessary in order to renegotiate external debt with the creditors such as the Paris Club, what the IMF says is, for all intents and purposes, law.
No one is fooled by the multilateral institution's low-key approach, both government and the native people see all this clearly. They just differ in their responses to the problem. Its Davos versus Porto Alegre, played out on a national stage.
The President and his administration, and the people they represent, and who are generally those who benefit from globalisation or, more concretely, from the emphasis on export markets, competitiveness, privatisation etc., respond by getting down to the business of business: putting the books, and the country, in order; maintaining creditworthiness with the G7 and the multilateral financial institutions; voting against Cuba at the U.N; handing over military bases to the U.S.; repressing opposition to make sure that the economy gets "back on track".
The indigenous people on the other hand are not simply looking for a quick fix. Their banner is other. Despite the fact that the average income of an indigenous family is approximately $40 per month and that 39% rural indigenous people are chronically undernourished, what the they and their organisations are looking for is not just solutions to their own problems but to those of all poor Ecuadorians, and in a larger sense to the problems of a substantial portion of humankind: a more just and equitable economic system, respect for cultural diversity, environmental sustainability, food sovereignty, stimulation of national over international markets, participation etc.
What President Noboa, and his advisors and friends learned during the rebellion of last January was that if the indigenous people are allowed to become protagonists for all the country's poor, and thereby achieve power, the very basis of their wealth and power, the Davos version of globalisation and their lucrative part in it, is threatened by another very different vision of society.
Its a tricky problem for the system, a problem that will need to be resolved in a timely fashion if this latest uprising is not to just another in a series that, one way or another, will erode their power. Tricky because a few bullets obviously don't work, and massive military repression of the Argentinean or Chilean scale isn't fashionable at present, and besides it frightens away "foreign investors". On the other hand, within ten years the indigenous people and their long-term project could perhaps become an unstoppable electoral force.
So for them the final question becomes, in the face of the indigenous "threat", how to maintain "the established order". Perhaps the most pertinent clue lies in the very processes of globalisation, and how globalisation itself functions in maintaining that order.
Generally speaking, institutions and systems, such as democracy, are officially "useful" only as long as they work for the most powerful interests, but when they don't, something better has to be found or invented. At times this involves leaving in place the "democratic" facade while actually channeling power through other less open and transparent institutions that are more responsive to the control of the more powerful economic interests.
A perfect example is that of the United Nations, stripped of almost all its power because it doesn't work in the interests of the most powerful nation, or to be generous, nations. So either the UN changes to fit the new reality (global compact etc.) and/or exits the international stage as an effective actor, while the real power is transferred to the Bretton Woods Organisations. Also illustrative of this tendency is a recent call for the formation of a different world trade organisation which would work with only the rich countries and leave the rest to their own devices. If one could guarantee that the rest would in fact be left alone, perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea. But while there is still something to be gained, such as a semblance of participation or equity, then the WTO in its present unstable and unwieldy form will continue to exist, while the real emphasis will be placed on regional and inter-regional agreements.
All of which goes toward saying that as Ecuador probably isn't in the position to do away with democracy, some attempt will probably be made to adapt "democracy", just in case the "indians" do manage to win at the ballot box.
We have already seen a number of possible responses. The first is virtual autonomy for the regions, i.e. turning the port of Guayaquil into an Ecuadorian style Singapore, which until Leon Febres Cordero decided de launch another strong man presidential bid, was the position of the major exporters of the coast. Another is imposition of the type of "democracy" Peruvians enjoyed under Alberto Fujimori. But perhaps the most likely response is that of tying the hands of any future government by betting on Globalisation and further economic integration, in particular through regional "Free Trade" agreements such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which effectively strip national governments, even those of the most progressive and participatory nature, of major economic policy options.
However, perhaps it won't be so simple. In parallel to the rejection of the neoliberal model represented by Davos, which has been felt around the world during the last year, the success of indigenous movements in Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador in presenting their demands for recognition and participation are changing the ground rules at the most basic level. The combination of the two processes promise some interesting moments for the established order.
* Gerard Coffey is a writer, translator and activist involved with social movements in Ecuador, Canada and the UK. He lives in Quito and translates Focus on Trade into Spanish. If you would like to be put on the mailing list for Enfoque Sobre Comercio, send an email to anoop@focusweb.org