2023-05-27 05:00:00
Lenidas Iza, candidate for the presidency of Ecuador for the Conaie indigenous movement HECTOR STEPPE
The pre-candidate for the presidential elections qualifies the president’s decrees as unconstitutional and warns that he is vigilant against any attempt to violate the rights of indigenous people
27 may 2023 . Updated at 05:00 h.
Lenidas Iza (San Ignacio, Cotopaxi, 1982) is the face of the massive protests that took place in Ecuador in 2019 and 2021 against the economic measures of the governments of Lenn Moreno and Guillermo Lasso. This environmental engineer and leader of the combative Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) decided to accept this Friday the presidential candidacy of the indigenous Pachakutik party, which was third in the 2021 presidential elections. a few tenths of going to the second round.
While preparing the campaign for the anticipated elections on August 20, Iza assures that she remains vigilant, like the rest of her organization, in the face of the economic decrees that the Constitution allows President Lasso to sign after having dissolved the National Assembly to avoid his trial. political. If there are large demonstrations in the coming weeks, it will be because he has called the protest.
“How do you know Lasso is ruling by decree?”
“He’s in a hurry. He is trying to do what he could not in these two years in which Conaie has fought to defend the patrimony of all Ecuadorians. We are going to put a legal resource for each action, and we are also going to oppose any decision that the president makes in violation of our rights. We have declared ourselves in territorial assemblies and in permanent vigil. The decrees that are going to come out these days are practically unconstitutional, illegal and illegitimate because it has not been possible to guarantee due process. they are already talking [del sector de] the miner. Right now [el Gobierno] You cannot use the police and the military to interfere in the territories without guaranteeing the right to prior, free and informed consultation.
“Are you afraid of some kind of military action?”
-Completely. That is why we believe that it is very important to call Ecuadorians to unity, but also to the Armed Forces and the Public Force. They cannot, at this moment, protect a fallen government against the rights of the peoples.
—Conaie warned that there would be protests if the National Assembly was dissolved. Why were they more cautious in the end?
—At such a delicate moment in Ecuador, with the security crisis, we calm down and we are going to confront each measure that Lasso is taking in the territories.
—In 2022, Ecuador experienced the most violent year in its history. How did this situation affect indigenous peoples?
—Right now we have very poor conditions. There is no work, no education. The youth of this generation, then, what do they do? They are starving, and that is a breeding ground for them to be recruited by organized crime. Drugs and common crime have already entered our territories.
—Conaie has criticized that members of Pachakutik have approached the right. Why?
—We are within the limit of the left. That’s how we conceived ourselves. We are a left-wing community movement, which articulates with whites, blacks, blondes, cholos, mestizos or indigenous people who are in the popular camp, because we have a social class and that is the popular one.
—Could there be some kind of confluence with the corresmo?
—The followers of [expresidente] Correa have their own political capital and I believe that, by respecting those political capitals, we should make a much broader engagement without losing our identity and without being subjugated.
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