Ecuador: Workers, Farmers Launch National Strike Against Moreno’s Gov’t

Ecuador’s National Campesino Movement (Fecaol) and workers’ unions have launched a five-day national strike Monday to protest President Lenin Moreno’s neoliberal government, as massive manifestations in the country’s capital and major cities are expected on Tuesday.

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"The national strike is strengthened: Campesinos, Indigenous people, Afro-descendants, retail traders, health workers, electricians, will come out to this day of struggle against this neoliberal government and against the interference of the International Monetary Fund," the president of Fecaol, Richard Intriago, said Sunday. 

The nationwide strike began on July 15 as protestors blocked roads in Guayaquil, Cuenca, among other cities in the central region of the country. The organizers plan for the intensity and amount of demonstrations to increase and last until Friday, July 19. 

The organizations that have joined the strike emphatically denounce the path Moreno’s administration has taken in order to fulfill the IMF’s conditionalities, as part of the “recipe” used by the neoliberal model. 

Some of these devices include nationwide austerity measures, massive layoffs, the proposal to raise four points to the national sale tax from 12 to 16 percent, a private sector-led proposal to eliminate workers’ rights and bring about labor flexibilization, privatization of public goods and services, and dismissing the Constitution to deal with transnational companies, mainly in mining. 

“The social struggle revives as the country rises in unity with a Campesino and worker call of despair and hope, for our fields, for our food, for our country, we march without fear as the triumph will be for our children,” Intriago added.

As transport and trucking unions set to join the strike, the Fecaol leadership denounced on Monday that one of the transporters’ leaders Omar Delgado was arrested without charges.

A large scale protest has been called for Tuesday in Quito and elsewhere in the country, various sectors of civil society are expected to join as the day progresses.