The return of the Yasuní

Illustration by Angie Vanessita @angie.vanessita.

Opinion • Lisset Coba and Cristina Vega • August 31, 2023 • Leer en castellano

The assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and of the mayor of Manta occurred in public spaces and in broad daylight, as did other attacks and killings against politicians in the days leading up to the August 20 elections in Ecuador. These acts reveal a scenario in which the reach of the criminal economy is deepening, as is its influence over state institutions and politics, instilling fear in society as a whole.

This is but the last piece of a complex puzzle with numerous edges, which points not only to the growth of organized crime in Latin America, but also to a transformation in the way the region is governed. This transformation has been brewing for years. 

Colombia and Mexico are at the front edge of this process; today Ecuador has been incorporated and has even, at times, taken the lead. The armed neoliberal advance that is carried out via drug trafficking, money laundering and hired killers, has created many victims. It has also led to a particular kind of penetration of the institutional life of our countries: in the economy, which long ago ceased to answer to the dichotomies of formal/informal or legal/illegal; in democracy; and in social relations. 

In addition to a patriarchal and racist logic based on the sacrifice of territories and bodies, the spiral of terror generated by prison massacres, extortion and now political assassinations, has caused confusion, suspicion and fear. It has raised questions that seem to have only partial answers, answers based on police investigations of dubious neutrality, and that point exclusively at the lowest and most visible level of business, crime and corruption. 

The erosion of social organizations, which has been encouraged by governments, deepens paralysis at the moment of making demands and determining institutional responsibilities, preventing violence and forging links toward sustainability and—now more than ever—shared meaning.

Four takeaways from Ecuador’s general elections

It is in this context—in which authoritarian and militaristic appeals abound—that the elections of August 20 were held. 

The result of the elections is that the two candidates that received the most votes will face off in runoff election: the less-than-exciting Luisa Gonzalez, heiress of Correism (33 percent) whose discourse revolves around repeating "we have done it once and we’ll do it again." 

Also advancing to the second round, to the surprise of many, is Daniel Noboa, a young businessman who is the son of the largest banana exporting fortune in Ecuador (24 percent). Noboa is yet another business elite who has jumped into the political arena with a neoliberal platform.

There is much to say about the candidates that will face each other on October 15. We would like to focus here on four significant facts.

The first is the increase in participation with respect to past elections, which for many people had to do with "overcoming fear". In Ecuador, voting is mandatory, but it is also the product of refusing to be overcome by the terror produced by the wave of violence that culminated in the murder of Villavicencio, by the coordinates of democratic capture that it arouses, and by withdrawal and the generalized feeling of vulnerability. More than participating in a "party for democracy," the act of voting in this context can be read as a kind of resistance.

The second is the defeat of the "Bukele strategy"—embodied by the candidate Jan Topic—which proposes an unrestricted delegation of power to the armed forces, who many see as the cause of the escalation of violence that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable. 

Despite the pumping up of securitarian discourses in the media and party platforms, and the racism it mobilizes, many feel that an armed exit coordinated from above is not a solution, but rather would fan the flames of violence. This refusal speaks of a desire to end war, polarization, authoritarianism and patriarchal and racist verticality. The language and actions of a securitized state (mano dura) did not find widespread acceptance in Ecuador, this refusal is rooted in histories that we do not have space to develop here.

It is along these coordinates that the social problems linked to work, to the precariousness of life, to the absence of public services, to indebtedness, to education and health, to the situation in the countryside, to the abandonment of infrastructure—all problems that sparked revolts in 2019 and 2022—become reincorporated as common sense, reopening the possibility of reinterpreting security issues in a different manner.

The third has to do with the candidates, the winners and the losers, among them Yaku Pérez, who barely achieved 3.94 per cent despite the strong showing he achieved in 2021, revealing rifts between movement and political representation. 

Luísa González gives us the sense of someone whose voice has been delegitimized, this sensation extends to her Citizens Revolution Movement party, ever loyal to the master's command. If González is not resoundingly convincing, it is at least in part, because she has not been able to project a horizon of internal democracy within her party, of autonomy with respect to father-Correa, or of anti-patriarchal affirmation. She therefore lacks novel proposals in the context of the current crisis. This is a problem that has dogged the progressivism of the Citizen’s Revolution and is increasingly in tension with it. Even so, the party achieved ample representation in the Assembly and in local governments.

González received an overtly chauvinist bashing in the televised electoral debate. The other candidates declared themselves against progressivism, now incarnated in a woman, who is herself deeply conservative and anti-choice. 

Interestingly, the only candidate who did not fall into the strategy of polarization (Correism vs. anti-Correism) and avoided the pile on was Noboa, the businessman who made it to the second round. If elected, he will surely do just as Lasso did: rally the different political-business sectors of the previously defeated right.

In his messaging, Noboa Jr. sought independence from his banana-rich father. He attempted to broach the economic and social problems of the common people, distanced himself from securitization sloganeering, and referred to the lack of financial incentives to exploit the Yasuní. 

As dictated by his position within the power elite, as well as his own platform, if elected Noboa will replicate the privatizing policies promoted by the like-minded banker Lasso and other conservatives embodied in the figure of the vice-president, who is strongly identified with the region’s authoritarian right.

The desire behind the "yes" to Yasuní and Chocó

Finally, there was a resounding "yes" to Yasuní (60 percent) and "yes" to Chocó (68 percent). These consultations were the result of more than a decade of activism in the case of Yasuní, which has become emblematic of anti-extractive conflicts in Ecuador and also worldwide. The ‘yes’ vote marks an important victory for Yasunidos, CONAIE and Ecuador’s Anti-Mining Front. 

Grassroots mobilizations and patiently collected signatures translated, over ten years of struggle, into a crucial question that was charged with disagreements and feelings throughout the campaign, especially in the final phase. Earlier this year, the Constitutional Court ruled the referendum was valid. We have witnessed the return of Yasuní and its legacy.

Support at the ballot box for the non-exploitation of Block 43 and for the original proposal to keep oil underground, to defend the rights of nature, for the ecological spirit of the 2008 Constitution—abandoned by developmental progressivism—in a context marked by climate and environmental crisis on a global scale, represents hope for the future. It is also, undoubtedly, a way to channel the vulnerability produced by the extreme violence that Ecuador is experiencing into something positive. 

This is a manner of not only thinking about immediacy ("bread for today, hunger for tomorrow"), although for many in the Amazon—as demonstrated by the vote in favor of oil exploitation in some provinces—today's bread matters a lot. In spite of everything, one of the truths that we can garner from the results is that extractivism and the dispossession and displacement it generates is at the heart of the rise of the criminal economy, of the impoverished and racialized lumpen proletariat that feeds it, and of the violence against feminized bodies that is dominant many territories. 

Therefore, in this ‘yes’ is a broad ‘yes’ to sustaining life. It sets a force in motion against the totalization of the narco-economy and its extensive and annihilating political tentacles.

The ‘yes’ to the Yasuní is a challenge to the neoliberal logic of war, to the classist and racist violence it entails, it connects to the insubordination of women and working families who refuse to sacrifice their children to narco-capitalism, and reactivates the capacity to weave from diversity in order to carry on as a people and to continue toward the future we so desire.