While President Guillermo Lasso is strongly criticized a year after his accession to power, the authorities fear to see the October 2019 uprising, which had paralyzed the country for ten days and left eleven dead.
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Las natives of Ecuador are again in the street. And on the country’s roads, partially blocked since Monday, June 13. Wednesday, June 15, the chief of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie), Leonidas Iza, who had been arrested the day before, was released. But the Conaie announced the continuation of the protest movement. “The detention of Mr. Iza has united and intensified a mobilization which had started in dispersed order,” notes the political scientist Sofia Cordero, of the Institute of High National Studies.
The natives protest, among other things, against expensive life and the increase in the price of gasoline. Isolated incidents and scuffles with the police marked the first three days of demonstrations. Half a dozen police cars were burned and, in the west and south of the country, small oil wells were paralyzed by the protesters.
Collectives of students and workers joined the natives. Wednesday, in Quito, trucks loaded with demonstrators entered the avenue Pedro Vicente Maldonado. The southern exit from the capital was blocked by vehicles. The public transport service was partially interrupted. The Ecuadorian Football Federation has announced the suspension of the matches scheduled for this weekend. 2>
an arrest that welded the demonstrators
The October 2019 uprising is in all minds. He paralyzed the country for more than ten days and ended in the death of 11 people – Leonidas Iza on this occasion imposed itself as a charismatic leader, more uncompromising than others in the face of power in place. Eighteen months later, this agronomist engineer, from Cotopaxi province, was elected head of the native organization. In the 1990s, the Conaie, at the height of its power, had played a decisive role in the demonstrations which would overthrow three presidents. Repression and divisions then weakened the conaie for several years.
“M. Iza is more ideological than his predecessors and his direction much more vertical, explains M me Cordeo. He is far from being unanimous within Conaie, but his arrest has welded the indigenous community. “According to the government, Leonidas Iza was captured in the act as it” obstructed the Pan -American Route E35, where he directed and encouraged actions to intensify violence “.
In a video posted on Twitter after the arrest of Mr. Iza, the Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, said that “the intellectual and material authors of the crimes committed will have to answer for their acts before the justice and the Ecuadorian people “. The detention of the indigenous leader was all the more surprised since, Monday, the Minister of the Government, Francisco Jimenez, had minimized the importance of the mobilization, deemed “less important than expected”. Mr. Iza denounced that he had been the victim of a “political kidnapping”.
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