[stop-imf] Ecuador: strike against dollarization and IMF

[Robert Weissman]

WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
             ISSUE #542, JUNE 18, 2000
  NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
        339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
           (212) 674-9499 <wnu@igc.org>

*1. ECUADOR: NEW STRIKE AGAINST DOLLARIZATION

On June 15 and 16 Ecuadoran president Gustavo Noboa Bejarano
confronted his first general strike since taking office in
January. The strike was called by the Patriotic Front (FP), a
coalition of unions and grassroots organizations, to protest
neoliberal economic policies promoted by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF). The strike demands included:
no dollarization (a plan to replace the currency with the US
dollar); a price freeze and the elimination of all structural
adjustments; no payment of the external debt; and an end to plans
for privatization of state-owned companies in strategic sectors.
Protests led by many of the same forces around the same issues
led to a brief coup attempt and the removal of then-president
Jamil Mahuad Witt on Jan. 22; Noboa had been Mahuad's vice
president [see Update #521]. [El Telegrafo (Guayaquil) 6/15/00;
La Hora (Quito) 6/15/00]

The June 15-16 strike was at best partially successful. In Quito,
union and student demonstrators were met with tear gas when they
tried to approach the Government Palace in the morning of June
15; later in the day, activists blocked trolley buses in the
Plaza de Santo Domingo. One passerby received a bullet wound
during a demonstration in the El Ejido park. In Guayaquil, the
country's main commercial center, police threw tear gas grenades
at hundreds of demonstrators attempting to march to the
Governance offices on June 15. A bomb exploded at a Citibank
branch at about 11am; no injuries were reported. In the
countryside, groups of indigenous Protestants blocked some
highways in the southern part of Chimborazo province, but
circulation was normal on the Panamerican Highway in the northern
part. [ET 6/16/00; Agencia Informativa Pulsar 6/15/00]

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
(CONAIE)--probably the country's most important social force, and
the leading factor in the January events--did not back the
strike. Although it supported the demands, CONAIE left it up to
each indigenous community to decide whether to join the strike.
[Pulsar 6/14/00] At the same time, the general strike coincided
with other strikes. The National Educators Union (UNE) had
already been on strike for five weeks, while health care workers
started selective job actions at hospitals on June 12. [ET
6/13/00] Workers in the Ministry of Government and Police went
out on strike on June 15 over wage demands, so that Government
Minister Antonio Andretta Arizaga had to work out of the
president's offices while he directed police operations against
the general strike. [LH 6/16/00]

On June 17 FP president Luis Villacis Maldonado announced at a
press conference that the June 15-16 actions had been "very
important" but not a "success." He told the Spanish wire service
EFE that the FP was "preparing a general uprising" for June 21.
"On the 21st there will be a great taking of Quito," he said. "No
less than 20,000 teachers, parents, indigenous people and
campesinos will participate." [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 6/18/00
from wire services]

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