CONAIE: To our bases and the Ecuadorian People (October 10, part 1)

Source:
CONAIE

(October 10, 2019) We have seen days filled with agitation. We have been surprised by our own capacity to fight and resist, and we have demonstrated to the world that the Indigenous movement and the Ecuadorian peoples are one single force, and, from the place that history has granted us, we have made the power tremble. We have stated our position: this does not end until the IMF leaves Ecuador. 

Like all governments who have been debilitated and delegitimized, the only response that Lenin Moreno has given is violence and repression. [the government] Has treated the people as its enemy, without a shred of respect to the simplest norms of respect for human rights. They did not respect the zones of humanitarian protection, instead throwing tear gas bombs towards our children and our elders. They prevented us from creating humanitarian pathways so that the injured could reach hospitals. And, they have massacred our fallen brothers with bullets to their bodies, impacts of gas cannisters, collisions by horses, being beaten and even thrown off of a bridge.  What we are living in this country does not have a name, there is no memory of such atrocious and violent repression in recent history against a people who are reclaiming their rights. 

For those who sustain this government so that they feel empowered to throw themselves in a war against the people: the same who are protecting them in Guayaquil. The business class, who has sold the country and is pro-imperialist, who wants to secure the funds from the IMF for their own debt, their crisis. We the working classes, Indigenous peoples and the popular sectors, are paying [for their crisis].

This struggle isn’t for today, nor is it only for the price of gasoline. It is to prevent them from auctioning off our future. What we are unsuccessful of stopping today, two or three generations of us will be forced to pay with hunger and poverty.

We have tears of rage but we have learned from our mothers and fathers that those who die in battle are honoured by multiplying them. The dialogue that Lenin Moreno is proposing is a farce. This is why, comrades, we will radicalize our actions. There is no dialogue with this assassin government unless the minimum requirements are met: the exit of Maria Paula Romo and Oswaldo Jarrin from the government and the abolition of Decree 883.

Until then, our homework is to struggle., to rejuvenate our strength and sustain the road blockades and the take-overs of the departmental offices and public buildings, to hold assemblies in all of the communities and to build alliances with all of the sectors of the people.

No one will take the words of the Indigenous movement to speak with this assassin government until these demands are met. The only official voice is the leadership of the CONAIE. It has been said, leaders who do not comply with the mandate of the people will be subjected to popular and indigenous justice.

Not one step back!

IMF Out of Ecuador!

This Strike does not End!

[signed]

For the council of the government 

Jaime Vargas 

President of CONAIE 

[translated from original statement by Kirsten Francescone, MiningWatch Canada. Any errors are my own]

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