Thousands of indigenous protesters on Thursday evening left the Ecuadoran capital after their leaders and the government signed a deal that would cut fuel prices and end their cost-of-living demonstrations that largely paralyzed the country for 18 straight days.
The agreement, mediated by the Catholic Church and signed in Quito, provides for a US$0.05 per gallon reduction in the price of diesel and gasoline on top of a US$0.10 cut already conceded by the government.
“Very likely we are tired ... so it’s time to go home,” protest leader Leonidas Iza told a crowd of about 4,000 demonstrators after announcing an end to the protests earlier in the day.
Photo: AFP
The protesters funneled out of the city peacefully in buses and trucks, many of them waving Ecuadoran and indigenous multi-color Wiphala flags.
Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso, for his part, wrote on Twitter that the parties had achieved “the supreme value to which we all aspire: peace in our country.”
Later, in a radio and television broadcast, he said it was “time to heal wounds, to overcome the division between Ecuadorians and unite in a single objective: to rebuild Ecuador.”
Fast-rising fuel prices were the catalyst for the protests called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) and marked by burning roadblocks and sometimes violent clashes with the security forces.
Five civilians and a soldier have died since the protests started on June 13, hundreds were injured on both sides, and about 150 people have been arrested.
Signed by CONAIE leader Iza and Ecuadoran Minister of Government Francisco Jimenez, the agreement foresees further negotiations between the two sides, an end to the disruptive roadblocks erected countrywide, and the lifting of a state of emergency in four of Ecuador’s 24 provinces.
The deal would also provide for a review of government decrees on oil exploitation and mining in Indigenous lands.
An estimated 14,000 Ecuadorans — most of them in Quito — took part in the mass show of discontent against deepening hardship in an economy dealt a serious blow by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thursday’s agreement provides for “the cessation of the mobilizations and the gradual return [of the demonstrators] to the territories” where they came from to join the protest.
In a statement, the UN office in Ecuador welcomed the protests’ end, and indicated that guarantees of peace were essential in “addressing polarization and exclusion, and in moving towards reconciliation.”
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