Mike Phipps reviews Uprising: The October Revolution in Ecuador, by Leonidas Iza, Andrés Tapia and Andrés Madrid, published by Resistance Books.

Leonidas Iza, co-author of this book, is the leader of the Confederation of the Indigenous Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE). This book is about the social explosion that gripped the country in October 2019, which took on an almost insurrectionary quality, in which his organisation played a central role.

2019 had already seen nearly thirty mass protest actions, primarily against the government’s attacks on living standards. These included a pensioners’ hunger strike, roadblocks in the highlands to demand better prices for agricultural products and oppose illegal logging, occupations against land grabs in the Amazon and labour strikes against redundancies and privatisations.

The immediate spark for the October revolt was the neoliberal Moreno government’s introduction of tough austerity measures, including a decree to scrap transport fuel subsidies, heavily squeezing the poor.  CONAIE’s decision to break off talks with the government and call a national protest took the protests to a qualitatively new level. Transport workers called a national strike and key roads were blockaded in protest. By Day Two, there were 281 points of protests across the country, soon rising to over 1,000.

Up to 50,000 people flooded into Quito from the provinces, effectively taking control of the capital, amid mounting repression. The government was put forced to relocate outside the capital: the National Assembly was stormed. Access to the city was closed and inside 100 barricades were erected.

The protesters stood firm and ten days in the President and his Cabinet were forced into publicly broadcast negotiations. The government conceded, withdrawing its decree. The result was a popular victory – notwithstanding the eleven dead and 1,700 injured – led by the Ecuadorian Indigenous movement, with the trade union leaderships tailing along.

This book provides detailed analysis of the role of each social sector in these events: the workers, the middles class, women, youth, peasant organisations and the so-called institutional left – “the bureaucratic apparatuses that use leftist rhetoric as a tool for social validation.”

It also attempts to draw out the lessons from this intense moment of struggle. Mass protests from the streets forced the government to pay attention. The struggle created new social relations based on intersectional solidarity, particularly between city and countryside. International solidarity also intensified the pressure – there were demonstrations of support in countries in North and South America and Europe. And the creative activity of these few days is set to enrich the movement for years to come.

The October days also generated a wider awareness of the forces ranged against the movement – not just a reinforced repressive state apparatus, but also, argue the authors, much of the ‘institutional left’. Over time, there would also be a growing consciousness of the movement’s main weaknesses – its short-termism and lack of any perspective for power.

As elsewhere, the prospect for the further development of this new movement was abruptly curtailed by the onset of Covid 19. Ecuador had one of the worst excess death rates in the world, with the virus devastating communities.

In the first year, 40,000 people  died of the virus, nearly double that of the US in per capita terms. The Moreno government’s agreement with the IMF had led to the dismissal of 3,680 public health workers, exacerbating the crisis. Ecuador’s western city of Guayaquil was so overwhelmed that dead bodies were left in the streets.

In 2021’s presidential elections, Andrés Arauz, an economist and follower of the social democratic former President Rafael Correa, of the Unión por la Esperanza (Union for Hope) coalition, was ahead in the first round over Guillermo Lasso, a right wing banker.  Yaku Pérez, the leader of indigenous party Pachakutik, the political wing of CONAIE, came third. In the second round play-off, CONAIE refused to support Arauz, which Leonidas Iza later recognised was a mistake: Lasso won.

This important detail about second round tactics is briefly mentioned in Michael Löwy’s Preface to the English edition of this book, but it needs underlining. Iza’s clarity about the treacherous role of the ‘institutional left’ in 2019’s October uprising would doubtless have been reinforced by indigenous hostility to the extractivist model pursued by President Correa during his decade in power from 2007 to 2017. Its understandable that this movement would be reluctant to endorse Correa’s followers.

But Correa’s achievements in office were real. He cut extreme poverty by 47%, while doubling social spending. “He was able to do this,” according to one analyst, “by defaulting on odious debt, ignoring mainstream economists’ advice to keep taxes on the wealthy low and increasing the government’s share of the country’s oil revenues from 13% to 87% — much to the chagrin of foreign energy corporations.”

Clearly, Correa and his supporters since he left office cannot simply be dismissed as fakes. Meanwhile, President Lasso’s economic policies are a re-run of those of the discredited and hated Moreno. CONAIE were once again in the forefront of protests against them in June 2022, in response to which Lasso declared a state of emergency and unleashed deadly violence against the protesters. In May this year, he moved to rule by decree, backed by Ecuador’s military leaders.

Elections are due later this year. Lasso won’t be a candidate, nor will Arauz – but Indigenous leader Yaku Pérez has declared he’s in the race. It will be interesting to see if the Correa-ist left and the Indigenous organisations can find a basis for a greater degree of cooperation this time around.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.