Ecuador’s Historic Strike

By Andrea Sempértegui, Visitor (2021–22) in the School of Social Science:

"For eighteen days this June, thousands of Ecuadorians participated in a national strike that blocked highways across the country, paralyzed the capital city of Quito, and obstructed oil wells and mining sites from the northern Amazon to the southern Andes. Led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), an umbrella group of Indigenous organizations founded in 1986, this mass mobilization was the first of its scale in Ecuador since 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic and before the conservative president Guillermo Lasso, the former CEO of one of Ecuador’s largest banks, took office. For two weeks, Indigenous and peasant families, including women, men, elders, and children, came to Quito from across the country and flooded the city’s streets, joined by members of social organizations and labor unions. Those who stayed in their communities participated in different forms of direct action to pressure Lasso’s conservative government into negotiating."

Read more at New York Review of Books.