By: Revolutionary Movement of Workers (MRT)

Mobilizations of the Cabildo del Agua de Cuenca, the CONAIE, the FUT and the Front in Defense of Health, Public Education, Decent Working Conditions, Social Security, Human Rights and Nature have converged and show that a popular opposition is being structured against the anti-democratic and neoliberal government of Daniel Noboa. The struggles of the Ecuadorian people, the protests carried out by indigenous people, workers and students are fully legitimate and just. Noboa’s government has embarked on a mad race to rapidly implement a neoliberal model according to the conditions of the International Monetary Fund: reduce state investment, lay off public workers, increase fuel prices (diesel was just the most recent example), privatize public companies and the resources of all Ecuadorians, destroy nature on the altar of the mirage of mining.

But this economic program comes together with the establishment of an authoritarian regime: militarization of the country, subjugation of all state functions and institutions to the will of the president, promulgation of laws that allow him to spy and persecute social fighters and opponents without judicial order, approval of electoral changes that cut the possibilities of democratic representation of the citizenry and tend to concentrate the majority of representatives in one or two parties. But the government’s response has been the same as always: repression, threats, slander and accusations without evidence, mobilization of thousands of military and police against the people, against the communities, against students, against women; arbitrary detentions, beatings, concealment of the whereabouts of the detainees; initiation of trials for “terrorism”.

And, on the side, compensations and occasional bonuses to calm the situation, which do not represent a sustained social policy, but only patches for times of conflict or elections (or both at the same time, as in this case). Noboa justified his authoritarian and repressive path with the pretext of the “war against terrorism” of drug trafficking. But after more than a year of internal war, drug and criminal violence does not diminish and, on the contrary, reproduces itself. On the other hand, the State, the military and the police, act with speed and violence against the people and their protests. For Noboa, the real war is against the people. Only struggle and unity will allow us to overcome these dark hours.

Long live the struggle of the Ecuadorian people, long live the struggles of the defenders of water and nature, of workers, students, indigenous people and women!

September 2025