Quito, Ecuador – After days of road-blocking protests, Ecuador’s powerful federation of Indian groups extended an olive branch Wednesday to the government, easing opposition to a free-trade pact with the United States and announcing that the country’s Catholic Church has agreed to mediate the conflict.
The vice president of the group known as Conaie, Santiago de la Cruz, told EFE that he and his colleagues gave the bishops a letter to be relayed to President Alfredo Palacio.
“With the letter, it’s quite possible that the president, if he has the will to fulfill his mandate, can respond favorably, and that would make possible a quick solution of the issue,” De la Cruz said.
He said the contents of the missive to Palacio represent a more flexible stance on the proposed trade pact with Washington, as the Indians are now prepared to contemplate such an agreement provided it is submitted to a referendum here.
Conaie, according to De la Cruz, asked several entities, including the United Nations, to act as mediators in the dispute with the government, but the only response came from Ecuador’s Catholic hierarchy.
“The Bishops Conference has responded and is going to help us establish a channel for the first contact with the president’s office,” the activist said.
The letter, he said, suggests that Palacio “lift the secrecy surrounding the TLC (free-trade treaty) negotiations, disseminate what has been negotiated so far and open an analysis with all social sectors, with participation of those of us who are against the TLC, to be able to better understand.”
Conaie also wants the president to submit the proposed pact to Ecuador’s voters in a plebiscite to be held within the next three months, De la Cruz said.
His comments came just hours after the leader of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, or Conaie, had vowed to press ahead with the highway-blocking protests despite imposition of a state-of-emergency prohibiting such actions.
Luis Macas told foreign journalists in Quito that the Indians were protesting to bloc any trade deal with Washington, to press their demand for the nationalization of Ecuador’s oil and to force authorities to convene a constitutional convention aimed at radical structural change.
Crude oil is Ecuador’s chief export, funding about one-third of the annual government budget, and most of the petroleum lies in the overwhelmingly Indian-populated Amazon provinces.
Macas said Conaie wants to dismantle the current Ecuadorian state because, “for us, the indigenous peoples, it continues to be colonial.”
Soldiers in armored personnel carriers and on bulldozers deployed in six provinces of central Ecuador on Wednesday to remove barricades blocking highways and enforce a rights-suspending state-of-emergency imposed to quell the protests.
EFE witnessed protesters withdraw from the roadblocks they set up along routes in the central province of Chimborazo in order to avert any clashes with security forces.
“We’re not going to confront the soldiers, but neither will we abandon the protest,” one peasant said. “Let them pass, let the soldiers pass, so later we return.”
Another man explained why the Indians are so opposed to the idea of a trade accord with Washington by pointing to the generous subsidies received by agricultural producers in the United States.
“We’re going to be the ones most hurt by this TLC, because – just imagine – a U.S. farmer gets from the government a gift of around $25 a day and we, conversely, get nothing. The things the gringos bring will be cheaper than ours and then no one will buy anything from us,” the peasant said.
Elsewhere in Chimborazo, army Lt. Col. Freddy Drouet described for EFE what his men have encountered while trying to clear a highway leading to coastal Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city.
“All this seems like a game of cat and mouse,” the officer said, “because while the soldiers clear the roads, no sooner do we live then the Indians come back to block the highway.”
While Conaie’s Macas asserts that the road-blocking protests “have achieved a fundamental objective: putting on the table the discussion about the TLC (free-trade treaty),” others suggest they have created a climate of uncertainty over the country’s immediate political future.
Gilberto Talahua, coordinator of the Pachakutik Movement, Conaie’s political arm, called Palacio a “coward” and said the state-of-emergency decree, which restricts constitutional rights such as freedom of assembly, shows the government’s inability to solve problems.
It also shows Palacio’s “intolerance of his own people,” he told EFE.
“We Indians are not going to back down and alongside us are several other social sectors; our struggle is for the country, not our individual interests,” said Talahua, who added that “all cowardly, mendacious and corrupt governments do these kinds of actions, which we don’t fear anymore.”
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Felipe Vega, the fifth to occupy the post in Palacio’s 11 months in office, announced at a press conference that a state of emergency was being imposed in the provinces of Tungurahua, Imbabura, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Cañar and part of Pichincha under military control.
Vega said that the goal of the measure was to “guarantee freedom of transit” and put an end to the supply shortages – especially of food and fuel – that have begun to affect central Ecuador.
He added that it was necessary to have “a country at peace in order to work,” and he defended the free-trade negotiations with the United States.
The Indians have said that the trade deal would be ruinous for the nation’s poor people and benefit only the wealthy and powerful. Talks are set to resume Thursday in Washington.
“The pressure Palacio must be receiving (in favor of the free-trade pact) surely is coming from the business leaders, the multinationals, the U.S. Embassy,” said Talahua.
