Ecuador Indians Must Drop Resignation Demand-Gov't

Wednesday, January 19, 2000

By Carlos A. DeJuana 

QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador's interior minister demanded on Wednesday 
that protesting Indian groups drop their call for the resignations of 
President Jamil Mahuad, Congress and the Supreme Court if they want the 
government to negotiate with them. 

Police estimate some 6,000 highland Indians have made their way into 
Quito the past two days to protest a government they accuse of 
corruption and mismanaging the economy to their detriment during the 
country's worst economic crisis in decades. 

Local media said 8,000 to 10,000 Indians had arrived in the capital of 
1.2 million people. 

"Those who don't recognize a constitutional government can't sit down 
and talk with the constitutional government," Interior Minister 
Vladimiro Alvarez told local television. 

Indigenous leaders say publicly they will block roads and practice other 
forms of civil disobedience as long as necessary to force the government 
out of office. 

"We are going to continue fighting slowly, peacefully," said Antonio 
Vargas, head of the Conaie Indian confederation leading the protest. He 
says he represents 45 percent of Ecuador's 12.4 million people, although 
other estimates put the Andean country's Indian population at a third 
or less. 

But indigenous leaders say privately their chief goals are deep 
structural economic and social reform, with or without Mahuad, to help 
end a history of poverty for the Indians. 

On Wednesday morning, a police helicopter dropped pamphlets in Spanish 
and the Indian Quechua language over the thousands of Indians camped in 
"El Arbolito" (The Little Tree) park near Quito's colonial downtown. 

"Your animals need you," the pamphlets said, urging the Indians to 
return home. 

About 30,000 police and military troops have fanned out across the 
country to guard roads and key government buildings from the protesters. 
Many military checkpoints on main highways have blocked Indians from 
entering by bus, forcing some to take sideroads or walk into the city. 

The protests and roadblocks have spread to other cities in Ecuador, 
where some schools and markets have closed. 

Helped by striking transportation workers, indigenous groups paralyzed 
Quito for nearly two weeks in July in protest of Mahuad's proposal to 
hike gasoline prices. 

Their latest complaint against Mahuad is his shock plan to adopt the 
U.S. dollar as the country's main currency. Mahuad, a member of the 
center-right Popular Democracy Party, says the move would slash 
inflation and revive the economy through increased investment. 

But many fear the move will only inflate prices to international levels 
while keeping salaries low. 

"This is something that will help only the rich, not the poor," said 
Juan Pomayala, an Indian farmer from the province of Cotopaxi, carrying 
sacks of potatoes and firewood to the Quito park. 

Analysts say Mahuad, who took office in August 1998 after being elected 
the previous May, must get Congress to approve the dollar proposal, and 
resolve the Indian problem if he hopes to last to the end of his term 
in 2003. 

The Harvard-trained lawyer's popularity has rebounded slightly but is 
still below 20 percent after 17 months in office in which Ecuador's 
economy has worsened due to bad weather, poor export prices, rising 
unemployment and poverty, a banking crisis and a foreign debt load 
almost equal to its economic output. 

Saying it simply could not pay, Ecuador shocked world markets last year 
when it became the first country ever to default on its Brady bonds, a 
type of debt created in the 1980s to help emerging market countries. 


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