Ecuador

Authoritarianism, austerity, repression, and false narratives: the crisis in Ecuador

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Original article by Pilar Troya Fernández republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa in January 2025. Photo: Presidencia Ecuador

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has not only deepened the crisis in the country, but is also attempting to change the country’s institutions and laws through loopholes and force.

Daniel Noboa’s government in Ecuador is characterized by the implementation of neoliberal austerity policies dictated by the IMF, the violent repression of social protests, and a series of legal reforms aimed at increasing state authoritarianism, and aligning the country with US foreign policy. All this is taking place amid an unprecedented security crisis.

The security crisis

During the first half of 2025, Ecuador recorded 4,619 homicides, setting a new historical record and representing a 47% increase over the same period in 2024. This figure makes the country the most violent on the continent. No one knows what the Phoenix Plan, implemented by the Noboa government since 2024, consists of, and it has not produced positive results. On the contrary, citizen insecurity has worsened. The constant states of emergency that have militarized the country have also failed to reverse the situation.

Austerity policies

Re-elected in April 2025, Daniel Noboa has implemented a far-right program aligned with the demands of the IMF. In June, he dismissed 5,000 civil servants and merged four ministries. In the most serious case, environmental responsibilities were transferred to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Hydrocarbons, highlighting the government’s extractivist orientation. These measures represent the path toward the minimal state advocated by neoliberalism and respond to the conditions of the latest IMF loan.

On September 12, Noboa withdrew the subsidy on diesel, whose price rose from USD 1.80 to USD 2.80 per gallon until December. Subsequently, the price would depend on a band system tied to international market prices. This measure triggered a national transport strike on September 13, with transport workers quickly reaching an agreement with the government in exchange for subsidies, and subsequently the national strike called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) on September 18, demanding the repeal of the measure, a reduction in the VAT from 15% to 12%, no mining, respect for prior consultation, and more investment in education and health. It should be noted that public hospitals are in precarious conditions, without medicines or supplies. The media reports that patients who required dialysis treatment died because they did not receive it.

Submission to the United States and constitutional reforms

On June 3, the National Assembly, where the government has a majority, approved an amendment to Article 5 of the Constitution allowing foreign military bases. This amendment required the approval of the Constitutional Court and subsequently a referendum. On September 5, the Constitutional Court rejected four of the eight questions that Noboa had sent for popular consultation and referendum, including this issue.

Authoritarian laws and the Constitutional Court as the last bastion

In June 2025, the government managed to pass three new laws that were sent as economically urgent without actually being so: on Intelligence, National Solidarity, and Public Integrity. The progressive camp filed 23 constitutional challenges with the Constitutional Court because they violate rights related to children and adolescents, freedom of expression, intimacy, and privacy, among others. The Court provisionally suspended 16 articles of these laws, prompting a smear campaign organized by the government, which accused the Court of leaving the country defenseless against crime.

The National Solidarity Law sought to institutionalize the concept of “internal armed conflict” that Noboa used in a decree in January 2024. This implied: free use of the military in police operations; prior pardon for security personnel for potential crimes and human rights violations; criminalization of opposition organizations by classifying them as armed groups; and treatment of areas, movable and immovable property presumed to belong to criminal groups as military targets.

The Intelligence Law sought to intercept any communication without a court order, require information within two days without a court order, access personal data without a court order, reinstate confidential expenses (non-transparent discretionary funds), and incinerate documents rather than keep them on file.

On September 27, the Constitutional Court definitively rejected two of the laws, the National Security Law and the Public Integrity Law, as flagrantly unconstitutional.

The Constitutional Court is the only state body that the Noboa government does not control. The National Court of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office have supported the government by implementing lawfare against the opposition, especially Rafael Correa’s Citizen Revolution party, while failing to investigate any of the signs of corruption in the current government. These include million-dollar contracts with companies owned by Noboa’s relatives, new mining concessions that also lead to his relatives, 48 generators purchased to provide electricity, of which 30 are not compatible with the Ecuadorian system, and the scandal of the contract with Progen for the electrical system, for which USD 149 million was paid without results, leaving open the possibility that last year’s 14-hour daily blackouts will be repeated.

Read more: Ecuador in the dark: Daniel Noboa increases power cuts to 14 hours a day

Abuses, protests, and repression

On September 16, in Cuenca, the country’s third largest city with 800,000 inhabitants, the largest environmental march in the country’s history took place: 100,000 people marched against the Loma Larga mining project in the Quimsacocha area, which would put water sources for agricultural and human use at risk. The project had been suspended by a local court for failing to comply with prior consultation and environmental requirements.

On September 19, Noboa ordered the National Electoral Council, by decree, to organize a National Constituent Assembly without seeking the opinion of the Constitutional Court, which constitutes a violation of the Constitution and was interpreted as an attempted coup d’état. The Court admitted five constitutional challenges and the execution of the decree was blocked, although the CNE quickly launched the call for elections for the Constituent Assembly.

At the time of publication of this article, the national strike called by CONAIE continued after 20 days, with support in several cities, especially from students. Roadblocks, protests, and shutdowns are spreading throughout the country, but are strongest in the Sierra, where the Indigenous movement is the main actor in the popular camp.

Tanks and military vehicles repressed the protests in the province of Imbabura, even firing on unarmed Indigenous communities. The Minister of Government, Zaida Rovira, said that it was a humanitarian convoy “ambushed by terrorist structures”. The convoy arrived without prior warning while all internet communication was interrupted, and there is no terrorist group linked to the incident. Efraín Fuérez was killed by the military in a nearby area. A Spanish journalist reporting from the area, Lautaro Bernat, was deported.

Read more: One dead and nearly 100 arrested amid heavy repression of protests in Ecuador

At least 100 people have been detained and 10 are missing. On September 26, twelve detainees were sent to one of the maximum security prisons where a prison massacre had taken place the day before, killing 17 people. These massacres have been repeated even with prisons under military control since 2024. These people were falsely accused of terrorism and of having criminal records. The government has frozen the bank accounts of popular leaders and organizations without a court order, claiming without evidence that the strike is being financed by the Venezuelan drug trafficking organization, “Tren de Aragua”.

The former president of CONAIE, Leonidas Iza, leader of the 2019 and 2022 uprisings, suffered an attempt on his life by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate on August 18, 2025. Four children from a suburb of Guayaquil were tortured and extrajudicially executed by the military in December 2024. The level of authoritarianism is such that the US State Department itself denounces it in a report that points to serious human rights violations in Ecuador between 2024 and 2025. International reports show that since 2024 there has been an increase in crimes of abuse of power in the execution of official duties, torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions.

Noboa’s response to the Constitutional Court’s rejection of the two laws was, on September 30, to send a new urgent economic law to facilitate donations to the National Police and the Armed Forces.

There are no negotiations with the actors on strike. Faced with demands for more democracy and state investment, the government responds with austerity, increased repression, and a communication strategy that seeks to establish the false narrative that all protesters are criminals and/or terrorists. In line with this, on October 8, the presidential guard, after attacking an Indigenous demonstration in the province of Cañar, broke the windows of the presidential motorcade’s vehicles and then claimed that it was an attempt to assassinate the president. This would be the first time that an attempt has been made to assassinate a president by throwing stones at the presidential motorcade, which is protected by the military, police, and private security, who had been warned about the protest by the mayor days earlier.

Pilar Troya Fernández is an Ecuadorian anthropologist with a master’s degree in gender studies and a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. She was an advisor to the National Secretariat of Planning, an advisor to the National Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation, and Deputy Secretary General of Higher Education in Ecuador. She currently resides in Brazil.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Original article by Pilar Troya Fernández republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingAuthoritarianism, austerity, repression, and false narratives: the crisis in Ecuador

Disappearance of 4 Afro-Ecuadorian children after detention by military has sparked mass indignation

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https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/12/27/disappearance-of-4-afro-ecuadorian-children-after-detention-by-military-has-sparked-mass-indignation

Rally outside prosecutors office in Guayaquil demanding the immediate return of the four disappeared children. Photo: CDH Guayaquil.

The case has revived an existing social trauma about the disappearance of children, especially poor and Black ones, at the hands of the State. There is a general feeling of pain and uncertainty among the population.

Four children in Guayaquil, Ecuador were disappeared after they were arrested by state forces on December 8. The news of their parents desperately searching for their underage children has dominated the news in Ecuador for the last several weeks even amid the festive season. On December 8, Ismael and Josué Arroyo (15 and 14 years old), Saúl Arboleda (15 years old), and Steven Medina (11 years old) were detained by a military contingent patrolling the area where the boys were playing football. The four young Afro-Ecuadorian boys have not been seen since then.

What is known about the disappearance of the children?

According to the relatives of the victims, the children went to play a football game in the neighborhood of Las Malvinas, south of Guayaquil. At some point after the game, soldiers came and arrested the four of them. A now widely circulated video,clearly shows how the military captured and beat the child detainees, and then took them away in a white van. While Ecuador also has a police force to carry out arrests and general internal public safety tasks, in the last Popular Consultation carried out in the country, people voted to grant the army special powers to carry out internal security controls. The military’s powers have vastly increased since President Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency in the country in January 2024.

One of the children’s parents, Luis Arroyo, reported that shortly after their detention, he received a call from his son asking for help and to be rescued. That call was the last time he heard his son’s voice. A key witness, who reportedly lent his cell phone to the boy to call his father, reported that the child had been beaten by the military and was naked.

After several days without answers, it was reported that four charred corpses were found in Taura, near a military base. The parents have already been summoned to the city morgue to confirm if they are their children. However, the state of decomposition and calcination of the bodies is so advanced that it is not possible to know with the naked eye if the remains correspond to the four missing children. Currently, forensic analyses are being carried out to determine the correspondence between the missing children and the remains that were found. Several experts have stated that, if such correspondence is confirmed, the crime could be defined as an “extrajudicial execution”.

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Article continues at https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/12/27/disappearance-of-4-afro-ecuadorian-children-after-detention-by-military-has-sparked-mass-indignation

Continue ReadingDisappearance of 4 Afro-Ecuadorian children after detention by military has sparked mass indignation

Ecuador’s world-famous Galapagos Islands now open to US military

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ecuador’s-world-famous-galapagos-islands-now-open-us-military

AN IDYLL THAT MAY NOT LAST: View of Puerto Ayora, Galapagos in 2020 Photo: David C.S./CC

THE national government of Daniel Noboa approved a resolution that enables US ships and crews to use the Galapagos Islands for control and patrol activities in the area.

On February 15 2024, Noboa signed a series of military co-operation treaties with the US government, allowing ships, military personnel, armament, equipment, and submarines to be installed in the natural reserve, which Unesco declared a World Natural Heritage Site in 1978.

In doing so, Noboa ratified the Washington Agreement, signed by former president Guillermo Lasso. The agreement grants US soldiers and their contractors several privileges, exemptions, and immunity in Ecuadorian territory, similar to those enjoyed by members of diplomatic missions as agreed on in the Vienna Convention.

According to Resolution No. 23-CGREG-10-12-2024 adopted by the Governing Council of the Galapagos Provincial Regime, the execution of the so-called Integral Security Project in the Insular Region was approved, which empowers US troops to operate in the Ecuadorian islands without paying the administrative taxes that other entities have to pay.

The official document states that the arrival of US troops seeks to diminish the agency of local drug traffickers, which, in alliance with transnational cartels, have caused a serious security crisis in the country.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ecuador’s-world-famous-galapagos-islands-now-open-us-military

Continue ReadingEcuador’s world-famous Galapagos Islands now open to US military

South America on fire

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Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Fires in Córdoba, Argentina have been raging for the past month. Photo: Córdoba Government

More than 300,000 fires have been reported so far in 2024 across South America. The blazes have displaced hundreds and killed several. The causes of this tragedy must be sought in deep geopolitical injustices.

South America is facing one of the most serious environmental crises in recent decades. In the last two months, there has been a dramatic increase in the outbreak of forest fires that have devastated thousands of square kilometers across Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Perú, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina. The impacts of the blazes are exponential, not only seen in the direct destruction to the forests and wildlife and surrounding communities, but in many countries the dangerous smoke has traveled far beyond the site of the fire.

The tragedy of fires in South American countries

So far in 2024, more than 300,000 fires have been registered across South America.

In Brazil, the number of fires in southern Brazil (Pantanal and the Amazon) have increased by 92% compared to last year. In the whole country, more than 170,000 have been registered so far and more than 11 million hectares have been lost in this year so far. The fires have required massive state investments in order to alleviate the destruction. In the State of São Paulo alone, more than 15,000 people from the civil guard, firefighters and others have been mobilized to try to put out the fires.

In the El Chaco area, encompassing Bolivia and Paraguay, fires continue to consume thousands of hectares. More than 60,000 fires have been reported in Bolivia this year, with the regions of Rio Blanco and Palestina, in the east of the country, being the most affected and hundreds of people were evacuated. President Luis Arce has declared a national state of emergency to better address the environmental catastrophe. For now, Chile and Venezuela have offered assistance to Bolivia, which has not been able to quell the flames on its own.

In Córdoba, Argentina, fire continues to destroy millions of plants and animals despite the efforts of almost 1,000 firefighters who are trying to extinguish the flames. The strong winds in the central region of the country have made it even more difficult for hundreds of firefighters to extinguish the two large fires. In several cities in Córdoba, hundreds of people were urgently evacuated due to the threat of the flames.

In Colombia, more than 31 forest fires devastated 10,000 hectares of forest. The most affected region is the southwest encompassing the departments of Tolima, Valle del Cauca, and Huila. In these places, Petro’s government ordered the deployment of military troops to help in the rescue tasks and to alleviate the fires. Over a dozen fires are still raging in the country that threaten the lives of hundreds of people.

In Peru, the serious fires have already claimed the lives of over 20 people and experts estimate that it will take about 500 years for Peru’s ecosystems to recover from the latest fires. More than 49 active fires have reported by the National Emergency Operations Center, and are mainly located in Tumbes, Ayacucho, Amazonas, Cuzco, San Martin, and Cajamarca. The army has also been deployed in these areas, which are suffering from the ongoing forest fires.

Some underlying causes of fires 

The eruption of fires across the region and the widespread devastation to the continent’s flora and fauna has once again brought many to ask why these fires are breaking out. In some cases, the fires are literally sparked by “human intervention”, yet even in these cases, they could not have reached large proportions if it were not for the generalized state of drought in the region, as well as the high temperatures.

According to experts, the leading cause behind the fires is the climate change-induced drought in the region. The lack of rainfall is devastating in an ecosystem that especially requires water during certain periods of the year to subsist. Most of the environmental changes that have occurred worldwide due to global warming are due in particular to large companies that devastate ecosystems, and developed countries, which consume most of the world’s goods and generate most of the world’s CO2 emissions and waste.

In this case, the South American region, rich in flora and fauna (and therefore one of the most fragile areas), is one of the most affected by the economic inequality and production imbalance between developed and developing countries, with many countries on the continent producing overwhelmingly raw materials for export.

The production of monoculture crops for agro-export business in many regions of the continent often requires the destruction of native plants to clear land. The vast forests of the continent are also often taken advantage of by large timber companies whose felling of trees also desertifies vast areas of land. The extraction of minerals by multinational mining companies also requires large amounts of water for processing and has severe impacts on the surrounding region also because of the chemicals used in the process.

In addition, it must be taken into account that the fires, already a product of global warming, release thousands of tons of additional CO2 into the environment, which worsens global warming. It is a vicious circle that endangers not only the affected regions but also the existence of all species on Earth.

For now, South American states are quite simply not prepared to face these challenges, especially because many of them have decided to reduce the size of the state, further liberalize the economy by allowing large companies to do whatever they want in rural areas and with their countries’ natural resources, and defund various emergency and rescue groups such as firefighters and forest rangers. The drought is also preventing hydroelectric plants from producing the energy needed to supply its citizens. In addition, wildfire emergencies are not being adequately addressed by firefighting groups that often do not have adequate funding to hire more recruits and acquire better equipment. This is without taking into account the millions of animals (many of them endangered) that are dying every day in the flames, or that have to flee their natural habitat without the certainty that they will be able to survive in a new environment.

Climate change has long ceased to be a theoretical hypothesis. Old speculations about the consequences of a radically unjust world now take the form of flares that can be seen for hundreds of kilometers (only a blind man does not see them); developed countries pollute poor countries and in doing so are destroying the natural wealth of the people, which, in many ways, is all they have. Climate change in South America (this environmental projection of colonialism) is killing people and devastating life and is today a hell that seems to have no end.

Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

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