Weekly Report - 27 January 2004

If only by their absence, the indigenous organisations demonstrated on 21 January that without them there is no opposition of any substance in Ecuador. The decision by Conaie, the umbrella indigenous body, and Pachakutik, its political arm, to withdraw from a planned `mobilisation' on an anniversary dear to them and to President Lucio Gutiérrez, left only the students out on the streets.