Ecuador: a new failed state?

As happened in the 1990s, the Ecuadorian population took to the streets in recent years with two formidable mobilizations: that of October 2019 against the economic adjustment perpetrated by Lenin Moreno and in June 2022 against the neoliberal policies and the misrule of banker Guillermo Lasso.

However, both periods are not comparable. Three decades ago, there was a much more integrated society that was beginning to glimpse the neoliberal model that was installed with force in 2000, when a major political crisis led the elites to replace the sucre with the dollar, giving a blow to popular economies but nipping hyperinflation in the bud.

In 1990, the indigenous movement appeared for the first time as a collective actor capable of moving the political agenda and establishing itself as an essential interlocutor for governments, political parties, and civil society organizations. These were years of optimism and hope since the renewal of political-social subjects removed the old ways of politics.

In a short time, there began to be the talk of indigenous communities of the various nationalities and peoples that exist in the country, coining the concept of plurinationality to define both a diverse reality and the political objectives of the movements. Many of the people’s demands were incorporated into the constitutions of 1998 and 2008.

In three decades, things have changed radically. Walking the streets of downtown Quito means encountering signs written by shopkeepers warning thieves that “we will kill you with our hands”. A reckless warning reflects the sentiment of a large part of the population in the face of increasing urban violence, leading Quiteños to lock themselves in their homes after dark.

Violence has spilled over in the last two years to unbearable levels, with an increase in homicides, robberies, and drug trafficking. It led President Guillermo Lasso to decree a state of emergency on several occasions for “grave internal commotion” in the country’s most populated provinces. However, the rising homicide rate is half the peak in 2008. What has changed is the attitude of the authorities.

Prison deaths, which total nearly 400 detainees since 2021, are due, according to Human Rights Watch, to overcrowding and lack of state control: “These violent events are an alarming reminder of the authorities’ failure to effectively control prisons and protect the lives and safety of Ecuadorians,” said HRW acting Americas director Tamara Taraciuk Broner.

Successive Ecuadorian governments, since the progressive decade of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), have been bent on strengthening the repressive State apparatus that was deployed with brutality and forcefulness in the street battles of 2019 and 2022, causing eleven and seven deaths, respectively, thousands of wounded and detainees.

But this armed apparatus is not used to control the drug gangs that roam freely in prisons and city streets, particularly in Guayaquil, where 70% of violent incidents occur. It sounds curious to see how the state apparatuses strengthen but abdicate the monopoly of violence, which is one of the keys to a legitimate state.

The current Ecuadorian disaster -including the possibility that it is a failed state- is the responsibility of international organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF, the U.S. governments, and local elites, who have promoted policies that have destroyed the social fabric and the capacity of institutions to articulate.

The panorama is dramatic: an increasingly powerful indigenous and popular movement and, in front of it, a militarized State, increasingly racist and violent middle and upper classes that only think of individual salvation.

The country’s project no longer exists; it has been devoured by the ambitions from above and the fear of the popular sectors. The worst thing is that this trend crosses the entire region.

A social and political train wreck seems inevitable in a region that, let us remember, boasts the highest rates of inequality on the planet. It would be the first element to consider, especially in Ecuador: to the extent that no government has been able to weaken the popular movements, native peoples, and nationalities, the conflict tends to unfold from time to time.

On the 18-day strike in June, things would have calmed down after two or three days since none of the organizations had planned such an extensive mobilization. However, the government’s clumsiness in arresting Conaie’s president, Leonidas Iza, ignited the prairie. The communities overflowed their leaders and began to cut highways, occupy public spaces, and march on Quito, as they have been doing for three decades.

The truce agreed that ten commissions to meet to address the many indigenous movement demands would end in early October. But it is just that, a truce forced by the power of the movement and the government’s fragility, although neither of the two actors was in a position to prolong the conflict.

Every time a social movement acquires an exceptional level of strength, herds of narcos appear, armed and ready to disembowel the social fabric. The modalities change, but we have already seen this movie in Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala. Now we see a similar scenario unfolding in Wall Mapu, a territory of the Mapuche people in southern Chile. Could it be a coincidence?

With information from Viento Sur