Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

The popular uprising in Ecuador involving several of its nationalities in June 2022, known as the Second Uprising of the Inti Raymi, did not pop up out of nowhere and has not drifted off into the atmosphere.

The roots of this uprising (Levantamiento) are to be found in the October Rebellion of 2019. As shown by the authors of the book Sinchi, the 2022 struggle questions the established order, the economic interests of the ruling classes, institutional violence, and the diktat of US imperialism through the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org . At the same time, it was an exercise in putting into practice what had been learnt in 2019, at every level. These were radical popular demands, the critique of liberal “democracy,” cessation of the production and distribution of goods and popular communal self-defence.

This all led to greater spontaneity and solidarity among the actors, whether members of different groups or not organised at all. They formed the bare bones of a parallel government for 18 days, experimenting with things like a community kitchen run by the Federation of Students and Polytechnicians or the transformation of reception centres into places where ideas could be discussed and demonstrators could rest.

The list of demands, signed by CONAIE, FEINE and FENOCIN [1], consists of 16 pages, which include the ten crucial points required to change the intolerable daily existence of Ecuadorians by combating structural violence, discrimination and neglect of the popular classes whose use of protest is a response to social conflict, and not a cause of it.

The 10 demands may be summarised as follows:

1. Reduction (and no more increases) in fuel prices and targeted subsidies for farmers, peasants, transporters and fisherfolk.
2. Provision of economic aid to over 4 million families with a moratorium of at least one year, renegotiation of debts and an end to confiscation of property.
3. Fair prices for agricultural products.
4. Work and workers’ rights.
5. Moratorium on expanding the extractive mining and oil frontier, together with the audit and comprehensive reparation for socio-environmental impacts.
6. Respect for the 21 collective rights of Indigenous peoples.
7. A stop to privatising strategic sectors, the Ecuadorian people’s heritage.
8. Policies to control the prices of products of basic necessities.
9. Investment in health and education.
10. Security, protection and effective public policies to curb the wave of violence in Ecuador.

As a researcher and militant preoccupied with the question of debt, let me draw attention to number 2 on the list of demands, which calls for a moratorium, rescheduling, debt cancellation and the cessation of property confiscation, which concerns over 4 million families. Indeed, it is worth emphasising that as a result of the Levantamiento, unpaid loans of up to US$ 3000 per family under suspension of payment were cancelled, representing over US$ 30 million. According to the bank BanEcuador, 26,000 of its Ecuadorian customers were able to profit Profit The positive gain yielded from a company’s activity. Net profit is profit after tax. Distributable profit is the part of the net profit which can be distributed to the shareholders. from the cancellation of their overdue loans of up to US$ 3,000 [2].

Thanks to the popular uprising, overdue loans of up to US$ 3000 per family were cancelled, representing US$ 37 million, according to BanEcuador.

It is also worth noting that number 4 on the list of demands calls for a complete audit and reparations for the socio-environmental impact of oil extraction and mining.
The fact that, among the ten points, there are two with this content constitutes a victory for activists who have been fighting for decades for the cancellation of illegitimate debt and a complete audit, carried out with citizen participation, of the debt system and the extractivist model of production [3].

The criminalisation of popular protests

National and international organisations that defend human rights, such as the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the World Network against Police Violence, have condemned the actions of the national police and the armed forces during the uprising, which resulted in increased diplomatic pressure against the repressive measures employed by the Ecuadorian State.

Demonstrations are criminalised by charging demonstrators with such offences as paralysing public services, theft, damage to goods or property, acts of assault and resisting authority. These constitute about half the offences of which demonstrators were accused or indicted. The government thus intends to eliminate the legitimate right to protest, by waging a legal war of attrition against the social movements.

After the events of October 2019, CONAIE launched a petition for amnesty to end the legal persecution that many people were subjected to. As a result of this, charges were dropped against 153 community defendants, 43 nature defendants and only 12 indigenous people, while many policemen and civil servants were granted amnesty or never even charged. The contrast between the people’s right to resistance and the state of emergency illustrates different approaches to the exercise of sovereignty.

The authors are right to show that the class struggle (between the capitalist class on the one hand, and the producers on the other, whether they be wage-earners or small farmers, whether they be under contract or forced into unemployment) is inextricably linked to other forms of conflict, for example, the indigenous peoples’ struggle for their sovereignty and the respect of their rights, or women’s struggle for emancipation. All these struggles against different forms of oppression are connected and interwoven, as indivisible as human rights. The description and analysis of the immense popular movement in June 2022 reminds me of other great social and political movements in recent decades.

In this respect, there are three examples of protests at different times and places in particular which come to mind. They are the general strike in Belgium during the winter of 1960-61, the Yellow Jackets protest and other social movements in France in the period 2018-2023, and the mobilisations that shook Peru with the events of 7^th December 2022.

In December 1960, with a homogenous right-wing government in office, there was a flush of protests in my own country, Belgium, against the so-called Unitary Law, an austerity project with a large swathe of measures favourable to the very wealthy. Their overall aim was to dismantle public services, remove social rights and labour rights and significantly raise taxes, which would have had a drastic effect on the working classes.

The whole country was completely paralysed, especially Wallonia in the south, where the forces of repression lost control of the demonstrating masses to the point where vehicles could not circulate without a pass issued by the socialist trade union, the Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique (FGTB or General Labour Federation of Belgium). Over a million went on strike. The strike lasted four weeks, during which there were violent clashes. Seven demonstrators were killed due to the intervention of the forces of repression.

In the mainstream media, demonstrations by exploited workers are presented as the acts of dangerous social classes

There are striking similarities between the way information about social struggle is covered by the mainstream media and opinion formers, both in the Ecuadorian case and in the Belgian. In both cases, demonstrations by the exploited are presented the acts of dangerous social classes. In the case of Belgium, it is the workers on strike and their trade unions who are demonized and presented in the most pejorative of terms. In the case of Ecuador, it is the indigenous nationalities and their organisation, CONAIE, who are the objects of aggressive and racist condemnation. Although these struggles took place in countries 10,000 km apart, at different periods, in different contexts, nevertheless we observe the same class hatred in the mouths and the pens of the media run by the ruling classes. Similar forms of struggle are also found when peoples wish to exercise their sovereignty and question the existing order.

Elsewhere, nearer to the present, the same kind of antagonistic narratives can be found in the Yellow Jackets’ great struggle in France in late 2018 - early 2019. The Yellow Jackets phenomenon, thus named because of their use of hi-vis fluorescent yellow safety jackets during demonstrations, emerged in France in October 2018. What triggered the protests were a price-hike for fuel, deeply unfair taxation and the antisocial policies enacted by President Emmanuel Macron, in a context of unbridled neoliberal globalisation. The groups organised around groups of friends on Facebook, internet petitions or blogs, and their calls for action, entirely transversal and with no official spokesperson in line with how they defined themselves, were sent out via the social networks. This proved highly successful: every Saturday roads and roundabouts across France were blocked and other events were organized all over the country. By the end of the six months of demonstrations, there had been 300,000 participants in the Saturday actions, over 4. 000 wounded, including several who lost an eye or a hand from attacks by hand grenades, and some 12, 000 arrests.

The Yellow Jackets didn’t follow the traditional trade union processional routes when they marched in the Capital

Now who were the Yellow Jackets, and where did they really come from? They were actually very heterogeneous groups composed of young unemployed people or people with temporary jobs, pensioners on very low pensions, micro-entrepreneurs, part-time workers, and so on.

Surveys showed that the demonstrations had up to 72% of supporters in the larger community after the incidents that occurred in Paris in November 2018, when 8,000 people took part in the demonstrations, there were 19 injured and a great deal of property damage. Yet those initiatives, those first marches on Paris, were decisive in forcing the Macron government to back down. Indeed, the protests in Paris did not follow the usual processional itineraries that trade unions had been using for the previous 20 years to march up and down the boulevards… Oh no! The provincial and suburban demonstrators converged at the seat of power, marching towards the Elysée Palace, towards the Ministries, in the well-guarded, wealthy parts of the city. To Macron’s challenge, in one of his populist tirades widely broadcast a few months earlier on news channels, “I am the only one responsible for this*! Let them come and find me!” (*The Benalla affair on 27/07/2018), [4] the Yellow Jackets responded: “We’re coming for you at your place!”

In those first weeks, the government feared that growing convergence, from the deepest ranks of the masses, with no filters, that desire to have it out with the president and concentrate on him, to question his legitimacy. Straight away, President Macron cancelled the tax increase on fuel. That did not prevent thousands of debates of all kinds taking place at roundabouts, in weekly demonstrations, on the pages of internet, bringing together demands for a life of dignity and the search for true democracy. Once again, President Macron and the right-wing press used the same terms as Ecuador’s President Lasso and the dominant media in Ecuador to demonize demonstrators. They condemned their violence, their deep lack of respect for private and public property and the so-called diktat that they were trying to impose on the rest of society.

Several years later, in 2023, Macron harshly repressed demonstrations in the working-class suburbs, where there is a high concentration of immigrants and young people of various origins. This came after a long sequence of mass demonstrations throughout the entire country against the pension reform bill, when Macron’s government had felt obliged to remove its democratic mask, cynically refusing to put the bill to the vote in the National Assembly but instead forcing it through using the antidemocratic trick of Article 49 of the presidentialistic Constitution (“a permanent coup d’Etat”). The protest marches in the suburbs had been triggered by the murder at point-blank range of a youth living in Nanterre, caught live on film. The same year, the French government violently repressed the social and environmental protests known as “Earth Uprisings” against the construction of huge water reservoirs destined to serve the interests of agribusiness. In one demonstration of 10,000 people, the forces of repression officially used 6,000 grenades to disperse the crowd; then the Minister of the Interior described the organisations that had organised the protest as ecological terrorists. He even tried to close down and ban “Earth Uprisings” as a movement.

My examples from Belgium and France are meant to show that what is happening in Ecuador is in fact very similar to what is happening in other latitudes where Capitalism reigns. Of course, what happened in Peru in 2022-2023 is another such example.

In December 2022, the Peruvian president of the time, Pedro Castillo, a former primary school teacher from a peasant family in the province of Cajamarca, in the Andean highlands of north-eastern Peru. A left-wing schoolteacher, elected on the vote of the working classes and peasantry of the Andean regions, he announced in a message to the Nation on the morning of 7 December 2022, his decision to dissolve Congress and call a new general election within 9 months, and to then form a Constituent Assembly to reform the Peruvian Constitution. He intended to thus block a fresh attempt by the Peruvian Congress, dominated by the Capitalist and racist right wing, to remove him for “permanent moral incapacity.” Indeed, from the first day of his election to the Presidency, the House of Commons, widely known to be extremely corrupt (those who had lost the presidential election), acted in an obstructionist fashion, making several attempts to remove him from power throughout the short period of eighteen months that his mandate lasted. Congress refused to dissolve parliament and proceeded to take a vote that resulted in the impeachment of the constitutional president, and then his arrest. Pedro Castillo was arrested on 7^th December, and on the same day the then Vice-President, Dina Boluarte, acceded to the Presidency (though she had been elected on the same left-wing list as the president). This was all thanks to a pact between the Right and the Ultra-Right in Congress and the representatives of the highest authority in the state’s institutions of repression (the army and the police). These events gave rise to huge frustration and indignation on the part of the people, even though the elected president’s administration over his first year and a half in power had not fulfilled the hopes they had invested in him.

The popular anti-putschist uprising took off in the south of Peru, led by peasant organisations, trade unions, local politicians, federations and women’s organisations. There was an escalation of events as the rebels took to the streets and surrounded an airport. The number of dead and injured began to climb throughout the country, provoked by extremely violent repression. People’s assemblies, demonstrations, and roadblocks spread across all the provinces, gaining momentum over the following weeks. Dina Boluarte’s government accused the rebellious masses of peasants, artisans, teachers, independent workers and young students of “trying to undermine democracy”, and called them “terrorists” in a slanderous attempt to conflate their movement with the long-gone terrorist movements of the 1980s. The government sent out the forces of the police and the army to put them down with brutal and indiscriminate violence.

The final toll was of 69 dead, 49 of whom had been shot, and hundreds of injured. Marching on Lima (La Toma de Lima, at the end of January 2023), thousands of protesters, self-organized, in busloads, came from all over the country to castigate their president: “Dina asesina el pueblo te repudia” (Dina, murderess, we the people repudiate you). They demanded “Cierre del Congreso” (Closure of Congress), “¡Nuevas elecciones ya!” (New elections now!), “Referendum para una Asamblea Constituyente” (referendum for a constituent assembly) “¡Castigo a los culpables!” (Punish the guilty!). In April 2024, it is once again with the same slogans that a Coordinadora Nacional Unitaria de Lucha (National Unitary Coordination of Struggle) is trying to unite the nation for a new march on Lima based on the same demands and the same struggle, deeply embedded in the regions, but which has yet to define and assert the power of a national alternative project.

José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) as a source of inspiration

Talking about popular resistance and uprisings in Peru almost automatically brings us to the character and work of the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui who was known by the Quechuan honorific title “the Amauta”, meaning “wise teacher” or “master”. In 1928, in his book Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian reality, Mariátegui alludes to the importance of Andean thought, stuck between Inca traditions and Hispanic colonialism and confronted with the resulting culture shock. His combat aimed to claim one of the most concrete and vital necessities: land ownership. In this work, he laid the foundations of understanding how Latin America was subjugated to global capitalism, rooted in the colonial past.

As Mariátegui wrote: “Of course, we do not want socialism in Latin America to be an imitation or a copy. It must be a heroic creation. We must inspire Indo-American socialism with our own reality, our own language. That is a mission worthy of a new generation.” José Carlos Mariátegui (Mariátegui in “Aniversario y Balance Balance End of year statement of a company’s assets (what the company possesses) and liabilities (what it owes). In other words, the assets provide information about how the funds collected by the company have been used; and the liabilities, about the origins of those funds. ”, Amauta, 1928, Nº 17 pp. 2-3).

We do not want socialism in Latin America to be an imitation or a copy. (José Carlos Mariátegui)

This quote from Mariátegui emphasises the need to reject once and for all the Eurocentrism and dogmatism that have characterised so many authors and organizations throughout the last two centuries. We must start from the characteristics of each country, and manage to incarnate the programme of social, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist, ecological and revolutionary emancipation in the reality of each country and each continent. We must give a concrete and contemporary form to the universal “Indo-American Socialism” that Mariátegui fought for.

At the same time, he stated, “We have the duty not to ignore the national reality; but we also have the duty not to ignore the world reality.” (José Carlos Mariátegui, ‘Lo nacional y lo exótico’, Mundial, 28 Nov. 1924).

Mariátegui understood the fundamental role of the indigenous nationalities in winning their emancipation. “The solution to the problem of the Indian must be a social solution. And it must be brought about by the Indians themselves.” (Mariátegui in Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality, U. of Texas Press, Austin, Texas. Copyright 1971 ISBN 0-292-70115-2 Translator: Marjory Urquidi).

The solution to the problem of the Indian must be a social solution. And it must be brought about by the Indians themselves. (José Carlos Mariátegui)

Mariátegui considered that if one wanted to create a socialist society, one should take into account “the survival of the community and elements of practical socialism in agriculture and indigenous life” (Mariátegui in the Seven Essays, q.v.).

As Alberto Acosta and John Cajas Guijarro write: “The Amauta even suggested that indigenous community life has ancestral roots grounded in ‘Inca communism’ that could evolve towards an ‘agrarian ayllu communism’” [5].

This reminds us of a very significant text by Karl Marx (that Mariátegui could not have known, as it was not published until later) in which he responds to the Russian populist, Vera Zasulich, that Russia could skip the stage of capitalism that was dominating Western Europe by making use of the community tradition of the peasant village [6].

Elsewhere, Mariátegui wrote: “the most advanced primitive communist organization known to history is that of the Incas. We certainly do not want socialism to be absolute, abstract, indifferent to facts and to changing, mobile reality; the initial idea, concrete, dialectic, operational, rich in power and capable of movement, is worthwhile” (cited by Michael Löwy in El Marxismo en America Latina, LOM, Chili, 2007, p. 120. Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present: An Anthology (Revolutionary), Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992 by Michael Lowy (Editor), Michael Pearlman (Translator))

Let us return to the book Uprising: the October Rebellion in Ecuador, originally published in Spanish in June 2022 [7], almost where we left off, at the right to resistance.

In the text, the authors draw attention to the difference Quintana makes (2020, 45) between resistance, rebellion and revolution, taking “resistance” to mean actions aimed at undermining the law, “rebellion” a series of actions of resistance rejecting authority altogether and “revolution” as the sum of the rejection of authority and the intention to establish a new government or a new regime.

According to Quintana, the right to resistance aims to forestall a situation and to limit a state of non-defence, so that when laws become tyrannical, they lose their legitimacy and protests become more significant.

As indicated by the data provided in Latinobarómetro (2022), distrust regarding the functions of the Ecuadorian State was at nearly 85%, which leads an organization that claims legitimacy to take an adversarial position towards the State (positive opinion of CONAIE at the time was at 62%).

Confrontation was imminent; the clash of ideas pushed “the power as it really exists” (in the authors’ definition) to elaborate strategies through all sorts of alliances with the “mercenary media” and the forces of repression, leaving behind even the minimum objectivity or journalistic independence expected of any media that does not lend itself to being an instrument of propaganda.

Distrust regarding the functions of the Ecuadorian State was at nearly 85%, while CONAIE enjoyed the positive opinion of 62% at the time

Methods used went from censorship to intimidation, from unethical behaviour to silence, and to self-serving processing of information. Preferred methods consisted of minimising the size of a demonstration, broadcasting false information about the presence of people in the streets, then denying in a “constant and schizophrenic” manner acts of State violence and finally vaunting demonstrators’ lack of enthusiasm for dialogue.

Similarly, the hoax that drug trafficking was the main source of finance for demonstrators and the smoke screen between Correism and anti-Correism were spread about to sow discord and confusion. Not satisfied with that, they finally resorted to the spectre of the enemy within, creating a false dichotomy between “indigenous” and “non-indigenous”.

In the end, these strategies came up against three problems: the inability to influence public opinion and divide organisations, the contrast with the version of events given by international media and the fact that the social sectors denounced and condemned the criminalization of protest and the disinformation from the “mercenary” media.

Repressive policies have evolved, right wing discourse has become radicalized and organizations have been registered as terrorist associations by decree. The elite’s need to hang on to power has been crystallized in street mobilizations of the bourgeoisie, the appearance of new politicians claiming to be above the fray and not interested in politics, the appearance of parties pretending to be citizens’ movements. The social networks are ablaze with slurs of a racist, xenophobic or misogynistic nature that clearly show rampant neo-fascist tendencies.

The street protests of October 2019 and June 2022 did not mark the emergence of the peoples’ programme of demands (which has existed since the 1990s), nor that of Ecuador’s first nationalities and the working classes, but they have brought them into the limelight. On the issue of plurinationality, the debate remains open on several questions. What does it mean? How does the present government plan to handle it? What are its advantages and its inconveniences?

The street protests of October 2019 and June 2022 did not mark the emergence of the peoples’ programme of demands (which has existed since the 1990s), nor that of Ecuador’s first nationalities and the working classes

The Uprising revealed the collapse of the bourgeois myth, the crisis of liberal “democracy”, the continued dominance of a few over the many.

These words of Mariátegui’s are still valid today, so many years later: “The bourgeoisie no longer has any myths. It has become incredulous, sceptical, nihilistic. (…) What differentiates the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in our era is myth. (…) The bourgeoisie denies; the proletariat affirms” (Mariátegui in the Seven Essays, q.v.).

The bourgeoisie no longer has any myths. It has become incredulous, sceptical, nihilistic (José Carlos Mariátegui)

The concept of pluri-nationality goes along with the conception of an anti-capitalist, community- and people-based State, that has broken away from socio-economic dominance, especially by calling into question dependence on the system of indebtedness imposed by the capitalist markets and the heavy burden resulting from payment of illegitimate debt that the ruling elite refuse to negotiate.

The concept of pluri-nationality implies an anti-capitalist, community- and people-based State, that has broken away from socio-economic dominance, especially by calling into question dependence on the system of indebtedness

As asserted by the book’s authors, the paralysis of production, circulation and trade hit the ruling classes, but also consolidated the power of the popular sectors of society. Fundamental community-based democracy emerged from a torrent of solidarity, both organized and spontaneous. On 20 June 2022, after an intense week of continuous protest, the government could take no more and turned to dialogue as the only way out. Of course, at no point was it true dialogue: conditions were still laid down by those who had always laid them down; and the first meeting, on 25 June, with representatives of the five State powers, did not achieve any positive outcome. After a series of negotiations, a peace agreement was signed on 30 June, bringing an end to 18 days of country-wide mobilization and protests and establishing a 90-day negotiation period to assess how far the agreements and signed commitments were being complied with.

The “ten-point” agenda presented by the presidents of CONAIE, FEINE and FENOCIN was subject to mediation with the government through the Episcopal Conference of Ecuador between 13 July and 14 October 2022 and despite the fact that the organizations insisted on making the ten dialogue workshops public, the government’s resistance was evident throughout.

According to the organizations, there was more disagreement than agreement, preventing any viable solution from being reached in adversarial discussions. The workshops which did make progress were those devoted to social policies, while the demands of the poorest sectors were rejected, revealing the “hypocrisy of the capitalist creed”. The inertia on the part of the government was clear, as shown in this sentence used by protesters: “In a completely opposite sense, PPP (for Plurinational People’s Power) is more like the harmonization of an orchestra and a change of repertoire for a recital than the destruction of the instruments and the stage, which would cause consternation among the public”. After the protests, there is an urgent need to understand the importance of popular control of national territory and of a return to the exercise of sovereignty by the Sovereign, that is, the people themselves.

Plurinational People’s Power is more like the harmonization of an orchestra and a change of repertoire for a recital than the destruction of the instruments and the stage, which would cause consternation among the public

At the same time, Pachakutik soon came in for strong criticism from CONAIE, in response to accusations of “indigenous ethnic authoritarianism”, underlining the division that occurred at the end of 2021 between CONAIE and its political arm.

Finally, the authors are favorable to “Mariateguism” and critical of the way the existing government have misused it to inoculate the virus of “the enemy within” by falsifying the ideas of José Carlos Mariátegui. The authors consider Mariátegui to be “ahead of his time” in bringing a specific contribution to the Marxist narrative for the Andes and its relationship to global capitalist modes of production.

The last of the 14 tables found in the book (all examples of the authors’ fine attention to detail throughout the text, in terms of figures, data, dates, etc.) compares the proposals of CONAIE’s political project with the Seven interpretative essays on Peruvian reality by Mariátegui.

There are obvious convergences.

And we thus find ourselves faced with the pertinence of one of the wise master’s statements which, after decades of struggle, goes straight to the heart of these troubled times: "Despite my certainty that it is imperative to rule ourselves with our brains, I am romantic enough to rule myself with my heart”.

Despite my certainty that it is imperative to rule ourselves with our brains, I am romantic enough to rule myself with my heart (José Carlos Mariátegui)

The author would like to thank Alberto Acosta, Vicki Briault, Alex Florés, Fernanda Gadea, Maxime Perriot, Jean Puyade and Carlos Rojas for their comments and help in writing this epilogue. The author alone is responsible for the opinions he develops in this article and for any errors it may contain.

Translation: Vicki Briault Manus