Collective power, violence and elections in Ecuador

A boy’s eyes and a street scene in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Photo collage by Ismael Bernal.

Interview • Dawn Marie Paley • September 8, 2023 • Leer en castellano

Violence has increased sharply in Ecuador, framed as the result of  conflicts and clashes related to drug trafficking. Even Mexican cartels have been blamed, conjuring images of well-established drug lords straight out of a Netflix series. 

But experiences of violence in Colombia and Mexico allow us to better understand with what’s happening in Ecuador, we can see the similarities in the militarization of borders and other strategic territories, in official discourses that criminalize victims, and in the deepening of austerity, displacement and marginalization.

Within Ecuador, however, everything is still very confusing. “It’s very hard to put a name to and understand what’s happening in the country,” said anthropologist Ana María Morales during a video call last week. She is a part of Amazonas magazine, a member of the transborder feminist investigation team Laboratoria, and has collaborated with the Mujeres de Frente collective in Ecuador. 

Morales, born in the city of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is also part of the feminist movement. 

To further explore various issues with compañeras in and from Ecuador, Ojalá decided to interview Ana María Morales, so that we could learn from her perspective on the electoral results, militarization and the rising climate of fear, was well as to highlight various forms of social organization that continue even in these difficult conditions. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity, and translated by Dariela Terán Ortiz for Ojalá.

Dawn Marie Paley: We’ve heard a lot about the connection between violence in prisons and violence in Ecuador. Can you tell us more about this?

Ana María Morales: We’ve had a great deal of difficulty in sustaining an anti-punitive stance while simultaneously raising awareness of what is taking place in prisons. It’s very complex, I mean, there’s been a huge effort to get the information out there, but even still: people are being murdered in prisons, police operations keep getting more intense, and prisons are becoming more and more militarized.

We know that when something happens in jail, corresponding actions take place in surrounding neighborhoods. The reaction is immediate. This happens in the peripheral neighborhoods of Guayaquil: when there is a massacre in the prison, there is immediate militarization, policing and violence on the outside as well. There are parallel shootings, explosions… The terror grows.

DMP: Can you tell me more about the situation in Quito?

AMM: You see the cache reveals on TV, and it’s like a fiction. I don’t know if fiction is the appropriate word… They come out on TV and say “this is what military operations at the bus terminal have found” and take out a pipe, some scissors, a switchblade, and a knife just like the one used by the lady that was selling fruit on the street corner. Nothing adds up, it’s all very confusing.

But there has been a tangible increase of militarization in the city. There is more military presence in public transportation, in the streets and highways and at checkpoints.

Over the last two months there have been two important public cases in which Afro-Ecuadorian adolescents were beaten and violently detained by the military and police. There are probably many more cases like this that we don’t know about.  

DMP: Some of our readers might be aware of the massive strikes in Ecuador—against austerity, the economic measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund, and rising gasoline prices—in 2019 and 2021. But for people who don’t know much about Ecuador, can you tell us more about these uprisings and the collective organization and power that makes them possible?

AMM: Social organizations are very powerful in Ecuador. The CONAIE [Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador] is a national organization that has led historic national mobilizations. It’s set up in a way that has allowed it to cultivate its own autonomous internal political organization.

The CONAIE is also a political force that engages in dialogue with the state. It does so from a position of power, backed by its own strength and that of the Indigenous peoples it represents. It has historically had a great deal of political protagonism in the country.

Major mobilizations in recent years have been carried out by the CONAIE, and efforts have been sustained by other organizations and popular sectors. Today, with the 2021 strike in mind, it’s important to note how we’ve seen social organizing be reinforced by neighborhood organizations in Quito so that the strike could be sustained for several days. There are alliances between people in the city and in rural areas. This [kind of mobilization] requires the management of food, day by day activities, caregiving, medicine, and housing by local organizations.

It’s very clear and well known that these spaces are gathering strength. These same neighborhoods are increasingly affected by the violence; for example, there's been talk in Quito about women-led committees to manage community safety. 

There are also organizations that have emerged in Guayaquil, like the Committee of Family Members for Justice in Prisons. New social actors are beginning to emerge. 

We can also see the work that ecological movements have done. Their ability to bring to referendum [the two questions regarding extractivism that were on the ballot on August 20th] an important process. They have successfully formed a coalition and an agreement or social consensus big enough to protect the Yasuní and the Chocó Andino. 

DMP: And how was March 8, International Women’s Day, this year? You were in Quito, right?

AMM: Yes. There were a ton of people, and it was surprisingly beautiful because there were many, many women from different sectors who were present.

It rained and it was freezing, but the mobilization persisted and, in addition, something happened that hadn’t taken place in previous years. This year there was an important gathering of women from different communities and nationalities headed by the CONAIE on March 8. It was extremely positive, after not having had their presence, to have such a large delegation of Indigenous nationalities present in Quito on March 8th. They had previously marched in their own territories, but this time our compañeras from the Amazonía and the Sierra joined us. 

I don’t know if you recall that an Indigenous leader, Eduardo Mendúa, the director of International Relations for CONAIE, was assassinated at the end of February. At the [March 8] events, his wife and family were present, and that was important. 

DMP: Tell us more about what has happened after the last national strike, in 2021. 

AMM: After the national strikes in 2019 and 2021, the economic crisis took a sharp turn. Migration is taking place not only because of fear, or out of grief, or because of militarization and the immobilization that it generates, but also because of hunger.

Ecuador is being dismembered. Outward migration is massive. We’re seeing an exodus, and every year more people are migrating. A Mexican visa is once again required for Ecuadorians, and for more than a year the migratory route has gone through the Darién Gap. Migrants exiting Ecuador must cross seven countries to arrive in the United States, so it’s very risky and dangerous.

A boy’s eyes and a street scene in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Photo collage by Ismael Bernal.

DMP: And so this is the context in which unexpected elections are called…

AMM: I don’t know how best to measure the impact that the violence against candidates has had. I think that its significance lies not only in the political dimension of the assassinations, but also in the pedagogical role they fulfill in society in general. This isn’t new: during the [local] elections that were in February of this year, there were several attacks and, in fact, they assassinated a mayoral candidate a few days before the elections. In July, the mayor of Portoviejo, a coastal city, was killed, just three weeks before the elections [in August]. 

Prior to what happened with the presidential candidate [Fernando Villavicencio], there had been several attacks. Today, the presidential candidates who advanced to the second round are wearing bulletproof vests. This generates a kind of shock, and it makes us wonder: who is controlling who?

Security is the issue on the agenda, and all the candidates suggest that the solution is an iron fist, more security, and eliminating crime and mafias. There were also very specific profiles among the candidates. Fernando Villavicencio, the candidate who was assassinated, had a very anti-Correísta [the political current named after former President Rafael Correa] discourse, he was anti-corruption and security-focused, and ran on strengthening the prison system. 

There was another candidate named Jean Topic who didn’t make it to the second round, he is a shareholder in several security companies. He made securitization proposals on another level, even more extreme than [Nayib] Bukele. 

In the most recent elections, the candidate who took the lead is a Correísta: a candidate of the most conservative wing of the Citizen’s Revolution party , who is also anti-choice. Her name is Luisa González.

In second place—and this was the wildcard in these elections—was Daniel Noboa, a very young guy. He’s the son of Álvaro Noboa, a prominent business owner who tried to be a presidential candidate many times without success. They’re millionaire banana magnates, their riches come from tax evasion and the exploitation of their workers. If Noboa wins, we can expect a continuation of the governance and policies of [President Guillermo] Lasso.

During the presidential debate and throughout her campaign, González was extremely self-referential, talking mostly about what the Citizen’s Revolution Party had done in previous years. There is little clarity or expectation that radical changes will occur, although she makes constant reference to the state and the need to bring back public programs that were defunded by previous governments. And, of course, Noboa’s outlook is mostly about privatization, he clearly represents the corporate interests of his family and economic elites. To me, it feels like there is a new kind of parallel social order that’s being established right now.

DMP: From what you’re saying, the indiscriminate increase of violence and this call for “security” is similar to some of the expanded counterinsurgency strategies documented in Colombia and in Mexico. Do these experiences ring a bell for you? 

AMM: Yes, for sure. The threshold of violence keeps increasing, and it hasn’t slowed since the strike in 2019. In an interview I did with Raquel Gutiérrez, in order to help us understand what’s happening in Ecuador, she asked me when I thought this wave of violence began, and my mind immediately went to the national strike of 2019. 

Other researchers in Ecuador have traced this moment to the signing of the Peace Accords in Colombia and the kidnapping and killing of two journalists on the north border with Colombia in 2018.

There are terms like “war on drugs” that are used in Colombia and Mexico to refer to campaigns of violence, leading us to wonder about the strategies, techniques, and technologies that are being implemented in the production of these multiple forms of violence.

In Ecuador, the most affected territories are the most racialized: Esmeraldas, a majority Afro-descendant province, the popular neighborhoods in Guayaquil and others along the coast, and, of course, the population living in prisons. Homicide rates have not stopped rising. 

We have seen how terror expands, and with it the control of territories. Last week, for the first time in Quito, two car bombs exploded in a middle class neighborhood. Clandestine graves have been found; massacres haven’t only been carried out in prisons, but also outside them, as in the small fishing port of Esmeraldas.

We don’t know where the weapons are coming from, and I think that’s crucial information we need in order to figure out who is responsible. We don’t really know who’s making good off all this violent plundering. Those being armed are young people, racialized teens are being recruited, and this forced recruitment is provoking the displacement of many families. Historically, an important number of displaced people from Colombia found refuge in Ecuador. Now, we see Ecuadorian families taking refuge in Colombia.

And as you point out, Dawn, saying that the state is complicit isn’t enough. It doesn’t fully explain what we’re experiencing. The state is responsible, it’s a key actor. At the same time, we don’t have any clarity regarding how these geopolitical strategies have been set in motion, or who is behind the policies that are being sold to us as needed to fight organized crime.

We have learned, for example, of agreements with Israel, of tanks donated by Turkey, which are portrayed on TV as weapons against terrorism. It’s difficult to thread all of this together. There are so many facets. I think it’s important to think of how neoliberal policies, like extractivism and expanded counterinsurgency strategies are interwoven, in contrast to the official narrative advanced by the state, which reduces everything we’re living through to conflicts associated with organized crime and drug trafficking.

Translated by Dariela Terán Ortiz.