Andean Group - 8 February 2005

Some 150,000 anti-government demonstrators took to the streets of Guayaquil on 26 January. Although the pro-government counter-march attracted fewer than 10,000 supporters, the Gutiérrez administration had much to be grateful for; as the two opposing camps did not meet, the violence many had feared never materialised and the marches passed off peacefully. However, the marchers were keen to give notice that this was just the first of many.

Jaime Nebot, the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC) mayor of Guayaquil, summoned the 'white march', so called because its aim was supposedly apolitical, to protest against the government's failure to guarantee security in the coastal city and honour its commitment to spending on health and sanitation. "Today Guayaquil's patience has come to end," said Nebot in a speech in front of the town hall. The mayor said that the demonstration was the first in a wave of protests and that marches were being organised in Quito, Cuenca, Loja and other cities.

The demonstration also allowed the city's citizens to give vent to their longstanding wish for independence; Nebot even called for the establishment of "solidary autonomy" for the provinces of Ecuador, whereby the better-off provinces would help those not so well endowed. The government immediately dismissed Nebot's "selfish" and "separatist" intentions.

The counter-demonstration was a damp squib. Around 8,000 sympathisers of the Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano (PRE) and the president's own Sociedad Patriótica marched a few blocks away from Nebot's protestors. The government's attempt to convene 5,000 indigenous demonstrators failed; a group of some 2,000 marched away from the others, demanding equal rights for indigenous workers in Guayaquil.

The opposition's next target is Quito on 17 February. The march, organised by the Izquierda Demócratica - the party of Quito's mayor, Paco Moncayo, - and Pachakutik, an indigenous peoples' political party, aims to attract around 300,000 protesters. Quiteños, however, have less cause for grievance than Guayaquileños and Moncayo lacks the political clout of Nebot. The demonstration is likely to be weakened further by the widening split between Conaie, the umbrella group for indigenous peoples' social organisations, and Pachakutik, its political offshoot. The new president of Conaie, Luis Macas - himself a former Pachakutik deputy, has said that his organisation will not attend the demonstration. 

"We support the march, but the country's problems are not limited to the composition of the supreme court and rotten institutions_the fundamental issues are the free-trade agreement, Plan Colombia," he said. Macas added that the indigenous organisation was worried about the increasingly violent political atmosphere in the country, saying that he had received a number of anonymous phone calls threatening him over the last few days. Indeed, over the last few months there have been a number of attacks on the property and persons of outspoken critics of the administration, yet some of the stories surrounding the assaults are so far-fetched that they appear to be the work of sloppy agent provocateurs rather than state-sponsored terrorism.

As in Guayaquil, the government intends to hold its own march on the same day as the opposition. "We are not going to wait with our arms folded while these shameless people try to destabilise our country," said Gilmar Gutiérrez, an SP deputy and brother of the president.