We have translated the following declaration by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador that was published today.
D.M., Quito, October 10, 2019
To our Ecuadorian brothers and sisters:
We have lived an agitated day. We were surprised by our own capacity of struggle and resistance and have showed the world that the indigenous movement and the Ecuadorian people strike as a single fist. Despite the place that history as given us, we have shaken the established power. Our position is clear: this will not stop until the IMF leaves Ecuador.
Like every weak and de-legitimated government, Lenin Moreno´s only response of has been violence and repression. Without any respect to the most basic human rights, he has treated the people as an enemy. He has not respected the zone of humanitarian shelter, firing tear gas where our children and the elderly are sheltered. He has banned the creation of humanitarian corridors to allow the wounded to reach hospitals and massacred our brothers by firing bullets at their bodies, launching bombs, trampling over them with horses, beating and even throwing them over a bridge. What we are living in this country has no name; there are no memories in recent history of such a violent repression against the people that protest for their rights.
Those who support this government to give it confidence in waginging war against its people and have sheltered him in Guayaquil: the business class, those who sell off their homeland and support imperialism, those who secure the loans of the International Monetary Fund for their debts and crisis to be paid for by the working people, the indigenous people and those from below.
This struggle is not just for the present, for the price of gas, it aims to avoid the mortgage of our future and the payment of that mortage with the hunger and poverty of two or three generations, if we do not stop it today.
We cry tears of anger, but we have learned from our past that those who fall in struggle must be honoured by multiplying them. The dialogue that Lenin Moreno proposes is a lie. That is why we must radicalize our actions. We will not dialogue with the murderous government until it fulfils our basic demands: the resignation of Maria Paula Romo and Oswaldo Jarrin from the government and the derogation of Decree 883.
Meanwhile, our task is to fight, to renew our strength and maintain the blockades in the streets and the occupations of public and government buildings, to hold assemblies in every community and build alliances with every sector of the people.
No one will speak in the name of the indigenous people to dialogue with this murderous government until it fulfils our demands. The only official voice is the leadership of the CONAI. It is already established: leaders who break the people´s mandate will fall under indigenous justice.
Not one step back!
The IMF must leave Ecuador!
This strike will not end!
In name of the government Council,
Jaime Vargas
President of the CONAIE