Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa is facing what he is calling the final test of strength before the formal start of the election campaign on 18 October, ahead of presidential and congressional elections on 17 February 2013. An indigenous march is approaching Quito from Zamora Chinchipe, the country’s southernmost province, and should reach the capital on 22 March. The marchers are protesting against large-scale mining projects: Conaie, the umbrella indigenous group organising the march, maintains that mining will consume and contaminate vital water supplies and that it has never been consulted by the government about its plans. The march will pass through Andean highland provinces where support for Correa has waned in recent years. The government is trying to undercut support for the march by rolling out projects in these provinces in advance of its arrival, as Correa seeks to crush any confidence the political opposition could derive from it.
Some 300 indigenous protesters set off on 8 March from the small Amazonian canton of El Pangui, near the site of the concession awarded last week to the Chinese company Ecuacorrientes to invest US$1.4bn in developing a huge open-cast copper mine [WR-12-10]. They were soon joined on the 700km “march for water, life and dignity” by a further 300 protesters en route to the province of Loja. “Correa minero, el agua está primero” (“Correa the miner, water comes first”, the rather less-catchy translation) was a popular chant. They also called for the impeachment of the ministers who signed the mining concession with Ecuacorrientes in the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range [WR-12-10].
The marchers then turned up the central spine of the country, arriving in Cuenca, the capital of Azuay, on 12 March. Here, the prefect (governor) of Zamora Chinchipe, Salvador Quishpe, who had launched the march with a symbolic “bath” attended by national deputies representing Conaie’s political arm Pachakutik, was greeted by his Azuay peer Paúl Carrasco. As we went to press, the march had passed through Azogues, the capital of the province of Cañar, and was approaching Riobamba, the capital of Chimborazo. It will then head to Ambato, the capital of Tungurahua; Latacunga, the capital of Cotopaxi; and finally Pichincha, where Quito is located (see map below).
A group of some 500 supporters of President Correa’s party Alianza País (AP) gathered in the centre of Cuenca outside the Azuay government building in rejection of the march. Backed by the six AP mayors in the province (out of 15), they accused Carrasco of corruption and clientelist practices. There was a degree of irony to the claims of clientelism. Days before the march reached Chimborazo, for instance, various government officials programmed a series of visits to indigenous communities bearing gifts in the form of subsidies and social projects. Promises of land titles; agricultural insurance; mobile medical provision (from Cuban doctors); human development bonds and credits; and a health campaign, “the State by your side”, are being rolled out. The ministries of agriculture, health and social inclusion, as well as the national secretaries of peoples and water, in conjunction with the political coordination ministry and interior ministry, are all being deployed throughout March.
The government maintains that this was already envisaged under its overarching rural territorial development programme ‘Buen Vivir’. But, the timing of this surge in activity looks like a systematic attempt to undercut support for the march so that it does not amass more and more followers along the way and is comfortably outnumbered by AP supporters when it arrives in Quito.
Correa said on his weekend broadcast that Quito would be filled with tens of thousands of supporters of his citizens’ revolution to greet the marchers on 22 March. “In a peaceful, democratic way, we will show that we are millions and that we will not allow the same old people, extreme Left, extreme Right and the corrupt press to destabilise this historic process of change,” Correa said. “It has been a total failure… I think there are more organisers than marchers,” he quipped, before adding, “They are few but their power is inversely proportional to their size. They are few but they have the media.”
Correa alternately belittles the march and acknowledges it as the biggest test for his citizens’ revolution before the elections, intent on destabilising his government. Conaie protests provided the catalyst for bringing down two of Correa’s predecessors, Abdalá Bucaram (1997) and Jamil Mahuad (2000). Correa is in a much stronger position than either of them as he remains, by a distance, the most popular politician in Ecuador, but he suffered an electoral setback in the Andean highland provinces through which the march is passing in his referendum on constitutional, judicial and media reforms last May. The “no” vote prevailed in Bolívar, Cañar, Carchi, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Loja and Tungurahua, where the indigenous population is most highly concentrated, and five of the six Amazonian provinces (in many cases by large margins).
Correa had initially celebrated a crushing victory in the referendum based on an erroneous exit poll. The president of Conaie, Humberto Cholango, reminded him of his premature triumphalism. He predicted that the government’s clientelistic practices would not deter people from joining the march, while insisting that the march had absolutely no intention of destabilising the government and merely sought consultation over mining projects and entrenchment of water rights. Cholango also dismissed Correa as a pseudo Socialist: “a true Socialist,” he said, “would not hand over Ecuador’s natural resources”.
Cholango is under pressure to demonstrate that Conaie can still mobilise large numbers of people. Conaie and Pachakutik regained some of their political clout after stalling the government’s planned water reform bill in May 2010 [WR-10-20] and then again in the referendum a year later when Facebook and Twitter campaigns played a key role. Both are also being used to promote the march, but Conaie and Pachakutik need more than virtual numbers to build momentum ahead of the elections – and for the rest of the opposition to take heart.
- Opposition
The opposition is fragmented and lacks a clear figurehead. It cannot rely on President Correa’s narrow victory in last May’s referendum as reflective of overall support for the government. In many cases this showed a desire to constrain Correa not replace him. The government, meanwhile, will continue to polarise politics, while being dismissive of all opponents. The official daily El Ciudadano ran a piece this week implying, with racist undertones, that the indigenous had not evolved from colonial times when they were paid in alcohol for working in the fields: “520 years later alcohol continues to be the motor of the indigenous,” it argued, after Azuay’s prefect, Paúl Carrasco, presented his peer Salvador Quishpe with a bottle of spirits when greeting the marchers.
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