By Editorial of the MRT of Ecuador

Despite the government’s announcements and its falsely optimistic rhetoric, violence in the country continues to grow uncontrollably, and will worsen without a clear way out or an adequate policy to confront it. The Ecuador en Llamas websites notes: The visibility of criminal violence grew during the term of Daniel Noboa (November 2023 – April 2025). A key indicator is multiple murders, that is, three or more fatalities in the same event. During that period, there were 330 multiple murders on a national scale.

82% of the victims are innocent people and cynically called “collateral victims”, most of them concentrated in the coastal provinces. According to the same source, we have fully entered the phase of “Expansion and consolidation of the conflict”, from April 2024 to date.

Faced with this situation, along with armed solutions, the government, with the support of the National Assembly, approved two laws, with which it intends to find solutions to uncontrolled violence, the National Solidarity Law and the Organic Intelligence Law. The latter is an attack on basic freedoms and is actually designed to control social movements and the possibility of popular uprisings against the Noboa government, which will be able to freely persecute popular leaders.

All rights to communication, information and privacy remain in the hands of the government, which is not liable of anything, nor does it need legal authorization to do so; moreover, the registration of the activities protected by this law will disappear without leaving any trace. Moreover, the National Assembly has just made a set of reforms including judging children and adolescents as adults. What kind of country are we if children are not protected and cared for, but seen as common criminals?

As part of this offensive against democracy, the ADN parliamentary majority, with the complicity of the Citizens’ Revolution and the six Pachakutik assembly members who joined them, approved the reforms to the Democracy Code, especially since the method of allocating seats for the National Assembly has now changed from a method that guaranteed the representation of minorities —Webster— has been changed to the calculation made with D Hondt method, which, as we know, gives more representation to larger parties to the detriment of the small and local formations.

In addition, the deterioration of the living conditions of the majority of the population hit us deeply. We are experiencing a sharp contraction in consumption, which is down by -5.3% and an increase of 3.6% in prices, which means that the popular sectors are buying less and less, especially basic inputs for daily life, including food. Education, health and housing have long been sacrificed by neoliberal policies.

The deterioration of social organization is also deepening; attacks on trade union organizations and the violation of their rights are a daily occurrence. The ILO, in its 113th International Labor Conference, points out Ecuador for the violation of labor rights. Edwin Bedoya, president of CEDOCUT, stated: “After Noboa’s victory, layoffs and precariousness increased. Outsourcing continues with the support of the Ministry of Labor.”

Where are we going? Is there a clear trend in Noboa’s government? What is waiting for us from now on? Are we facing the worst of neoliberal policies or is it something deeper, such as a possible regime change? What is the situation of the mass movement in this situation?

The policy implemented by Noboa’s government in its first term and the few months of its current one, present an authoritarian tendency that’s now consolidating due to his triumph and parliamentary majority.

This trend is the imposition of a right-wing and authoritarian government, will not stop until achieving its goals. The laws we mentioned, the change in the Democracy Code, the deepening of exclusively military solutions against crime, the attack on any opposition no matter how small, the encirclement around the decentralized autonomous governments that are not on their side, sufficiently shows the increasingly authoritarian orientation of this government. Plus Noboa’s total obedience to Trump’s imperialist designs.

Democratic spaces are shrinking more and more, the press continues to be hijacked by big businessmen who simply echo government policies, basic and minimum freedoms disappear, the possibilities of any right to resistance and mobilization are increasingly limited.

The popular sector faces the defeat of progressivism, which it had largely supported, mortgaging its class independence; the political deterioration of Pachakutik with a part of its assembly members siding with the government and endorsing its most repressive and retrograde laws, the difficulty in building a true alternative from the workers, make the possibilities of resistance and mobilization quite limited.

The political unity of the social movements, especially of the workers and indigenous peoples, has been practically impossible. The indigenous movement has preferred an alliance with Citizen Revolution and turned its back on the other organized social movements.

However, the unity of the popular sector is a demand to confront the government that now has all weapons on its side. No social sector is free from the repressive attacks protected by these new laws; for this reason, no one will be able to resist in isolation, relying exclusively on their own strength. If the unity of social organizations continues to be entangled in the conflicts between the leadership, especially those who oppose a united front with the workers’ organizations, it is time to make a call to the grassroots, to launch the much-needed unity from below, with all those who want to join the struggle against the authoritarian government and its neoliberal policies.

(1) http://www.llamasuce.com/ecuador-en-llamas