The Ecuadorian Police arrested the indigenous leader Leonidas Iza, who leads the protests that indigenous peoples have been carrying out since Monday to ask the conservative government of Guillermo Lasso for a drop in fuel prices, according to the authorities on Tuesday.
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“@PoliciaEcuador apprehended Leónidas I., in Pastocalle #Cotopaxi, for presumption of committing crimes,” the institution said on Twitter.
Iza, who was arrested in the sector
Pastocalle, south of Quito and one of the sources of roadblocks during the demonstrations, “is in a temporary security room, for a flagrancy qualification hearing” to be tried, the police added.
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The authorities did not specify the time or the crimes for which Iza, president of the powerful and opposition Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), was arrested.
Iza’s arrest was confirmed by Conaie, an organization that called the indefinite protests that began on Monday and in which the indigenous people also demand a restructuring of the debts that the peasants have with the bank.
Once the arrest of the leader was known, the organization called for “radicalizing” the protests.
“Elite groups of the Police and the Armed Forces illegally detain @LeonidasIzaSal1 president of CONAIE. We call on our organizational structure to RADICALIZE the measures in fact for the FREEDOM of our maximum leader and for the dignity
of our struggle,” the movement said on Twitter.
In 2019, Conaie led more than a week of violent demonstrations against the government, which left eleven dead. In addition, he participated in social uprisings that overthrew three presidents between 1997 and 2005.
For his part, President Lasso denounced this Tuesday that during the protests that began on Monday there were “acts of vandalism“, which led to the arrest of the maximum leader of the demonstrations, Leonidas Iza.
“Yesterday there were acts of vandalism that are prohibited by the Constitution,” the president said in a video posted on his Twitter account.
The president explained that in the midst of the protests against his government, “the burning of patrol cars, the invasion of agricultural producers, the breaking of the windshields of private and school vehicles, the attack on an oil pumping facility, the water cut of communities, closure and serious damage to state roads.
Protest
Indigenous protesters have been blocking highways in Ecuador since Monday amid indefinite protests called against the government of conservative President Guillermo Lasso to protest the rise in fuel prices and unemployment in the oil country.
The nationwide demonstration started on a frigid dawn with barricades and tires engulfed in fire to prevent the passage of vehicles.
Blockades were reported in at least 10 of Ecuador’s 24 provinces, and access to Quito was temporarily cut off, officials said. The protest was called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie), the largest indigenous organization in Ecuador and responsible for revolts that overthrew three presidents between 1997 and 2005.
“It is our forceful demonstration until the government listens,” Manuel Cocha, an indigenous peasant who was protesting near the town of San Juan de Pastocalle on the Panamericana Sur highway, the main access route to Quito, told AFP.
After a day without incident, minor clashes between police and students took place in the afternoon in the capital. Six students from a school in the capital were temporarily detained for participating in “acts of vandalism,” according to the authorities.
A march of university students also led to an exchange of stones and tear gas, AFP found.
Upon reaching the colonial center of the capital, where the presidential headquarters is located, the demonstrators “began to vandalize” and the police “dispersed” them, Interior Minister Patricio Carillo told the press. But there were no arrests in the entire country, he said.
Carrillo estimated that some 3,800 people participated in the demonstrations nationwide, concentrated in Pichincha – whose capital is Quito – and its neighbors Cotopaxi (south) and Imbabura (north).
Lasso warned on Sunday that his government will prevent “political groups … from paralyzing the country again.”
But the head of the opposition Conaie, Leonidas Iza, stated that the Executive was “minimizing” the protests and warned that they will continue “indefinitely.”
Last October, Lasso – a former right-wing banker who has been in power for a year – raised fuel prices before freezing them. The measure fueled the discontent of the native peoples, who make up at least one million of the 17.7 million Ecuadorians.
Conaie, which has held several unsuccessful dialogues with the government, demands that prices be reduced to 1.50 dollars for a 3.78-liter gallon of diesel and 2.10 for 85-octane gasoline.
Between May 2020 and October 2021, prices were revised monthly, with diesel almost doubling (from $1 to $1.90) and regular gasoline rising 46% (from $1.75 to $2.55). .
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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