FLDP – ECUADOR: FOR THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS MURDERED IN TARUKA: IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!
We hereby share an unofficial translation of a statement published by Defense Front of the People’s Struggles in Ecuador (FDLP-EC) on June 18th.
The Defense Front of the People’s Struggles in Ecuador expresses its militant solidarity with the community of Taruka, Cascales canton, Sucumbíos province, brutally attacked on June 12th, 2026, during a military operation carried out under the pretext of combating so-called “illegal mining.”
Historically, Indigenous, peasant, and communal communities have complemented their agricultural activities with artisanal mining. They have done so for decades, primarily as a survival strategy, completely unrelated to the activities promoted by large mining companies, violent networks, or the State itself.
Artisanal and informal mining has been heavily demonized. From the perspective of opportunistic environmentalism—one that, as Chico Mendes would say, is nothing more than “gardening environmentalism”—this activity has been condemned by lumping together the transnational, imperialist, and predatory mining company with subsistence mining, which responds to elementary living conditions: lack of land, displacement, absence of employment opportunities, precarious work in the countryside, dispossession of territories by the State, and the historical abandonment of communities.
As a result of the brutal onslaught of the old bureaucratic-big landlord State against the poor peasantry, members of the Armed Forces, supported by armored vehicles and armed helicopters, literally attacked the community of Taruka, indiscriminately assaulting its inhabitants under the pretext of combating “illegal mining.”
The result? Three community members murdered and several injured.
The community members describe these events as acts of war. There were not only direct victims; the entire population was also profoundly affected: children, the elderly, and entire families who, terrified by the armed attack, sought refuge deep in the jungle.
Once again, we reject the attitude and statements of CONAIE, whose leaders, in an absurd, lukewarm, and subservient manner to the State, instead of condemning this massacre against peasants and artisanal miners—whom they now euphemistically call “ancestral”—merely requested that the operation be “investigated,” that it be determined whether there was “excessive use of force,” and that “the indigenous communities of the area not be criminalized.”
These are apathetic, cowardly, and even complicit statements from leaders who are supposed to defend the interests of the country’s indigenous communities and peoples.
It is clear that this was not a simple “operation.” It was a criminal act against the peasant masses, with deaths, injuries, and displacement. It wasn’t a case of “excessive use of force”; there was a use of lethal force. Under the logic of these opportunists, should there be use of force, but not “excessive” force? Should there be repression, but moderate repression? Should there be armed attack, but with limits on its procedures?
The State, the government, and imperialism constitute a triad of crime, dispossession, displacement, and criminalization. They are leaving no room for the dignified life of the masses, nor space to confront their policies of terror, militarization, imprisonment, and death.
The masses can no longer continue living as they have; and the ruling classes can no longer continue governing as they have. That is why they resort to open fascism, to persecution, to murder, to the expansion of their coercive and punitive network, with prisons and concentration camps like El Encuentro prison.
The objective conditions for the masses to rebel are reaching an increasingly critical point. It is essential to strengthen the subjective conditions so that the class struggle, the anti-imperialist struggle, the struggle for land, dignity, and life can take the only consistent path before them: the path of organized popular rebellion.
We cannot remain tied to cowardly and opportunistic leadership. We cannot continue trailing behind the local bosses and big landlords of the old State, who today place themselves at the head of the country’s Indigenous, peasant, and labor organizations to contain, divert, and domesticate the popular struggle.
We must promote new forms of organization, capable of ideologically leading the masses and channeling all the organizational and combative potential of the people to confront the State, the government, and imperialism. This struggle must be waged on all fronts, without losing sight of the fact that objective measures will be taken in conjunction with the necessary and unavoidable fight against revisionism and electoral opportunism.
FOR THE COMMUNISTS MURDERED IN TARUKA: IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!
FOR THE CRIMINALIZATION OF POVERTY AND POPULAR STRUGGLE: IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!
FOR THE IMPOVERISHMENT OF LIVING CONDITIONS FOR PEASANTS AND OTHER OPPRESSED AND EXPLOITED MASSES OF THE COUNTRY: IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!
IN THE FACE OF THE CRIMINAL PRESENCE OF IMPERIALISM IN THE COUNTRY: IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!
ORGANIZE, COMBAT, AND RESIST!
