The coronavirus pandemic is advancing in Ecuado, every day more infected and dead are added to a precarious health system that reflects years of disinvestment by the governments in power. As the days go by, everybody can see that the lives of the exploited people do not matter to the Moreno government, which allows people to die like dogs, as seen in the streets of Guayas.
Faced with this harsh situation for the families of the exploited, the Moreno government, contrary to investing in health and food for the people, has guaranteed the payment of 324 million dollars to the IMF. But it did not stop there, in a week it deepened the IMF plan by its Legislative Assembly approval of the "humanitarian law" of labor flexibility and privatizations for public companies, in addition to the reduction of working hours and wages to the public sector, with the exception of the murderous police, the armed forces and allegedly the health sector. In other words, the repressive forces of the state are not touched so that they keep beating workers on the streets when they go out for decent and quality food, health, education and work.
This is due to the fact that this week the government has fired 400 health workers, including doctors, nurses and technical personnel in the provinces of Manabi and Santo Domingo, who, upon learning of this news, took to the streets outside the hospitals at the cry: "Yesterday we were heroes, today we are fired." But the attack on health is deepening, and the Minister of Health came out yesterday to say that the dismissal of 2,279 health workers is expected between the months of May and July. This attack on the public sector is also for teachers who will suffer a reduction of 1 hour a day and have a cut of 12.5% in their salary.
This is just a sample of the government's plan on behalf of the IMF and the transnational companies, since this package includes the decree to eliminate 10 public companies (leaving 4,826 workers on the street), including the Ecuadorian Railways, which will be transferred to the transnational Peru Rail. But to "compensate" for these dismissals, Lenín Moreno said he will deliver "vital baskets" to the laid-off workers, a bad joke that only fills with more hatred the workers who went out to fill the streets. The privatization plan of other public companies such as: Ecuadorian Public Media, the Works Contracting Service, Correos del Ecuador (National Post Office), among others, is in the order of the day, as stressed by the Minister of Government Romo: "knowing whether a private company might be interested in its management, this would be the ideal scenario ”(Pichincha Communications, 05-20-20).
In response to this onslaught by the government, the masses revolted and took to the streets against hunger, standing up in defense of life and decent work. In this way, during this week the workers, railwaymen, teachers, health workers, street vendors, combative students have made sit-ins in different parts of the country and their fight organizations such as UNE (National Union of Educators), CONSEP (Confederation National of Public Servants of Ecuador), the FESE (Federation of Secondary Students of Ecuador) have called for a "great mobilization" at the National level for May 25, while the FUT (Unique Front of Workers) announced a mobilization in Quito. That, however, falls on a national holiday and will not affect the employer's pocket.
Given these mobilization announcements, CONAIE held a virtual press conference on Friday morning, in which its representative Jaime Vargas announced that mobilizations are being prepared, but for the time when the health crisis would be ended. Though the IMF attack is today, CONAIE prefers to wait and make demands on the decrees and laws, leaving workers and their children to fight alone in the city. Unfortunately, they only made a “solidary” support and announced that they are guaranteeing food to the cities, while so far in the pandemic in these months there are already around 150 thousand workers laid off across the country, while the government has announced the monthly elimination of the 5% gasoline subsidy, as with the closure and privatization of refineries, gasoline would be imported in one of the largest oil reserve countries in the world.
While people desperately take to the streets against this attack and receive the sticks, tear gas, arrests from the Moreno police, Vargas of the CONAIE has limited himself to saying, "Police brothers, military brothers, let's fight to save the country, we don't want a people-to-people confrontation." While the government does not touch a penny to the police and the Armed Forces in their laws and decrees, so that they continue to slaughter the people.
The Ecuadorian masses today are paying the treason of the leadership of the FUT and the CONAIE that in October of last year were overwhelmed by the independent actions of the masses against the gasoline price increase (decree 883) of Moreno on behalf of the IMF and the US imperialists. In the streets, the poor workers and peasants imposed the General Strike, paralyzing the country, and on revolutionary days, leaving 11 dead and more than a thousand wounded, they made Moreno flee to Guayaquil and prevented the army base from freely repressing; that base of privates in the streets began to pass, weapons in hand, over to the people. Then it was these leaderships, who, fearing the generalized armament of the masses, brought Moreno back to power in Quito, thus leaving a battered government supported by the labor bureaucracy of the unions and the leadership of the peasants, and the demands of the workers came to nothing. Today, with layoffs, hunger, misery, privatizations, and the handing over of natural resources in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe, the capitalists and the government seek to punish the masses in response to the enormous revolutionary fighting that left the regime weakened and in crisis.
Today again the Stalinist leadership of CONAIE comes out to save Moreno who is the representative of the IMF; moreover, one of its representatives, a member of the Pachakutik Party in parliament, Eddy Peñafiel Izquierdo, shamefully voted for the approval of the "humanitarian" law and the CONAIE only declared it "persona non grata” in Ecuador and asked for his expulsion from the party, but this same legislator was one of the four of the Pachakutik who had voted in favor of the Tax Simplification Law in January of this year and on that occasion the CONAIE also requested a sanction against those assemblymen because "they do not represent the position of the structure of the indigenous movement." Stop! The imperialist offensive is against all the exploited people of the city and the countryside, and it is advancing in the depredation of natural resources by the transnational companies that have contaminated the rivers and lands. This attack will be deepened by the government, sending what Vargas calls the police "brothers" to repress, and massacring with the generals of the Armed Forces.
The workers and peasant bases must recover the FUT and CONAIE because their collaborationist leaders have dedicated themselves to saving Lenin Moreno, who today is killing the people! Let the FUT and CONAIE break with the bourgeoisie! Forward to democracy in our unions, open the way to the assembly! Forward to the worker and peasant alliance! Let the cry of October return: Out with the IMF and Out with Moreno!
From the worker, student, teacher, health worker, street vendor base, who heroically resist in the streets ... together with the poor peasants, let's prepare the REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE STRAIGHT NOW! until the government representing the rich falls.
While Moreno's daughter stays in New York with a monthly salary of USD 7,600 for her position as a counselor in the Ecuadorian Representation to the UN, they cut the workers' wages and working hours by half. Stop! Let's expropriate their factories, land, mines, oil companies, refineries, banks without compensation and under workers control! There is the money for sorting out health, education and all the most heartfelt demands of the workers!
Any factory or company that closes, suspends or dismisses passes to workers control without compensation! Reduction of the working hours/day, without a salary reduction, and creation of one more shift in all the necessary factories in production, with all the hygiene precautions to stay the least time exposed to the pandemic and for the unemployed to enter work! For a Committee of the unemployed of TAME (Aerolineas de Ecuador), of Railways, of Incasa, of Edesa, of Health, Education and all the workers that have been sacked! For a basic and vital salary for all the unemployed based on the family basket!
The rank and file soldiers who in October refused to repress the people must return to the people. The soldiers who in October refused to repress their parents, neighbors, brothers and sons must be called to elect their leaders and end with their officers, the pro-imperialist and capitalists' defender generals.
Imperialism and the IMF are trying to advance in the colonization of Latin America with the excuse of the pandemic and we must not allow it. In Bolivia, the exploited in El Alto, and in Kara Kara (Cochabamba) have already risen against hunger imposed on us by quarantine, and the factory workers in La Paz are rising against the layoffs by the bosses. Let's unite the uprising of the slaves of Bolivia and Ecuador in one single fist.
From the base of the workers, youth, teachers, street vendors, and poor peasants, let us call for a Day of International Struggle together with the workers who resist the same attack in Matamoros-Mexico, with the workers of General Motors, with the black vests of France, the workers and peasants who resist in Bolivia and the world. For the working class to live, imperialism must die.
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21-5 - Workers of the Railway Company protesting for the shut-down of this company in the center of Quito
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22-5 - Employee of the airline Tame staging a strike after the decision of the government of liquidating the company
10-29-2019 Lenín Moreno and the leaders of Frente Unitario de Trabajadores-FUT (United Workers' Front)
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Protestas de octubre 2019
Jaime Vargas, president ofCONIAE, with Lenin Moreno in 2019
Protest of the dimissed workers of Incasa and Edesa on May Day
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Lagard (IMF) and Lenin Moreno
Dimissed health workers protesting
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"Yesterday we were heores, today dimissed"
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"Health system is in mourning"
Protest of teachers and students
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