Source: Jacobin
Left and indigenous forces in Ecuador are attempting to create an alternative to both Rafael Correa and the Right.
On August 13, an indigenous march and people’s strike converged on the Andean city of Quito, Ecuador’s political center. The march was coordinated principally by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and began on August 2 in Zamora Chinchipe, passing through Loja, Azuay, Cañar, Chimborazo, Tungurahua, Cotopaxi, and Salcedo before arriving in the capital. Demands emanating from the different sectors of urban and rural groups supporting the initiative were diverse, and sometimes contradictory.
But Alberto Acosta, at least, sees a certain clarity in the tangle of ideas and demands. Acosta was the presidential candidate for the Plurinational Unity of Lefts in the 2013 general elections. An economist by profession, he was the minister of mines and energy and president of the Constituent Assembly in the opening years of the Correa government. After the assembly ended, he and Correa parted ways, but Acosta remains an important shaper of opinion in the country. In the lead-up to August 13, he maintained that, contrary to popular assessments, there was a discernible political core to the protesters’ demands.
According to Acosta, the people in the streets are opposed to any constitutional changes that will allow indefinite reelection of the president and demand an end to the ongoing criminalization of social protest. They are outraged by a new agrarian reform initiative that will displace peasants and advance the interests of agro-business, and they are lined up against the expansion of mega-mines and their nightmarish socio-ecological implications.
The demonstrators are defending workers’ rights to organize and strike, elemental freedoms limited in the Labor Code introduced in April this year. They are aligned against oil exploitation in Yasuní, one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, and a zone that Correa promised to protect and then abandoned. Finally, the popular organizations are opposed to the neoliberal free trade agreement Ecuador signed with the European Union that erodes the country’s sovereignty. These overlapping concerns, according to Acosta, overshadow other divisions on the Left.