Ecuador

Some 30 protesters crashed the opening of the sixth Expominas trade fair at the Quito Exhibition Center April 3, where Ecuador’s government sought to win new investors for the mineral and oil sectors. The protesters, mostly women, interrupted the event’s inaugural speech with an alternative rendition of the song “Latinoamérica” by the Puerto Rican hip-hop outfit Calle 13, with lyrics referencing places in the country threatened by mining: “You cannot buy Intag, you cannot buy Mirador, you can’t buy Kimsacocha, you can’t buy my Ecuador.”

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Rafael Correa cruised to re-election on Sunday with 57 percent of the vote, while conservative banker Guillermo Lasso came in a distant second place with 23 percent. Surprising was how poorly Ecuador’s left fared in the election. Former close Correa ally Alberto Acosta running at the head of a leftist coalition that opposes the government’s neo-extractivist policies won just 3 percent of the vote.

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Part of the problem you’re seeing in Ecuador is what contradicts directly with what was codified in the 2008 constitution. This is particularly true in terms of plurinationalism and sumak kawsay (the good life). This is supposed to incorporate alternative visions of development and Correa wants to see those exclusively on the levels of symbolic statements rather than something that will be operationalized. Indigenous movements don’t see this as something symbolic, but something that needs to be operationalized and put into practice.

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The first professional transgender generation in Ecuador are now in college or just graduating. This is an immense achievement, over ten years in the making. But according to Elizabeth Vasquez from Proyecto Transgenero, or ‘Project Transgender’, “because access to rights is so recent, it means that there are thousands of people who face the consequences of that earlier deprivation, especially of lack of education, therefore lack of access to better jobs.”

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In the last few years, Latin American governments have been adjusting their legislation to categorize marches, demonstrations, the occupation of roads and public buildings, and, ing general, manifestations of social protest as terrorism. Correa’s proposal of an interrnational, coordinated persecution of social protest related to mining opposition is a dream come true for the mining industry.

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Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, proposed that his country, together with Peru and Colombia, address the problem of anti-mining activists who provoke violence while acting under the false pretext of defending the environment. “This is something we have to deal with together, Colombia included, because Peru has the same problems. There have been outbreaks of violence from activists who are full of talk about democracy,” he stated.

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While the reelection of Rafael Correa may seem to be a foregone conclusion, the eight candidates competing for the office point to the ongoing fragmented and volatile nature of Ecuadorian politics.
Correa’s most serious challenge from the left comes from his former ally and fellow economist Alberto Acosta.

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The Ecuadorian government is accusing Harvard Medical School, the Corriell Institute for Medical Research, and oil company Maxus Energy Corporation of stealing DNA from an indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Researchers on the lookout for specimens indigenous to an area call this activity bioprospecting, The terms that  activists for indigenous rights have created to describe the result of these activities are bio-colonialism and biopiracy: the theft of life from indigenous communities without prior information and consent.

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