FDLP – Ecuador: All for Organization and Struggle, Nothing for Electoral Politics!
We hereby share an unofficial translation of a statement published by the Defense Front of the People’s Struggles in Ecuador (FDLP-EC) on August 9th.
Fuel prices have risen; hospitals are out of medicine; The cost of the basic food has skyrocketed to over $860; public transportation fares have just increased; and the living conditions for the masses are deteriorating to levels rarely seen before,
While all this is happening, Noboa insists that things are going well and that there is money in this country. The proof? His friends and acquaintances have been able to buy beachfront apartments. Yes, that’s the caliber of the administrator of the old State: he uses the wealth of his inner circle to measure the country’s supposed economic growth, while millions of people barely manage to reach the end of the month.
Young people disappear from the streets every day. In the best-case scenario, they turn up dead—but at least they turn up; for many, not even that happens. Their families are left behind, condemned to search for them among district attorney’s offices, hospitals, prisons, and morgues, while the regime responds with fabricated statistics claiming that crime rates have fallen.
We live in a completely militarized society. That’s not an exaggeration. The masses, conscious organizations, and their leaders are under scrutiny. Police, the Armed Forces, the DEA, the FBI, the CIA, and the Mossad; as well as tactical units from Israel and the US. From Colombian troops to the north and Peruvian troops to the south of the country; and from the criminal gangs operating throughout the national territory that serve the old State. We are brutally ambushed.
But there’s another ambush: the elections. As they say on the streets, We’re screwed! This is neither pessimism nor defeatism; it is a graphic description of what we are experiencing. The presence in the country of high-ranking security officials from the United States and Israel confirms the course the regime has taken. They are in charge of the criminal “refinement” of the repressive apparatus, advising on and participating in surveillance and repression plans at various levels. They are here to impose their military doctrine—and with it, the plans of imperialism.
Perhaps today, more than ever, we’re witnessing a relentless, grim spectacle—filled with filth and puss everywhere.
Revisionism is rearing its ugly head once again. So is opportunism. Unidad Popular now appears allied with the supporters of Correa, alongside the Socialists. What utter stupidity and shamelessness! Years ago, they were mortal enemies, to the point that Unidad Popular allied itself with Guillermo Lasso to politically combat the Citizen Revolution. The “socialists” are no different; they allied themselves with Lenin Moreno for the same purpose. Now they’re scrambling to join the electoral orgy. It’s unbelievable how much filth can fit into the electoral toilet!
Could there be greater degeneration, corruption, and ideological rot? Impossible!
But stupidity is infinite, just like the universe. At a “people’s assembly” held in Imbabura, the very same leaders who agreed to the cessation of the latest indigenous, peasant, and popular uprising, proposed to oppose the fare increases. So far, nothing unusual. The problem is that they couldn’t come up with anything more “revolutionary” than declaring “bus drivers” who raise fares in their communities to be targets of indigenous justice.
Just as it reads: they attack the drivers, most of whom are underpaid and exploited workers. Once again, the rope snaps at its weakest point, and the drivers end up becoming that frail strand onto which all the blame is shifted.
They do not plan to fight against the economic measures, against the government, or against the old State. Why don’t they do it? Because their leaders are too cowardly. But also because an uprising or struggle in the streets would disrupt their calculations, their alliances, and their miserable electoral ambitions.
The Kayambi people are also doing their part. While their resolutions show some consistency with what other leaders of the Imbabura indigenous movement are saying, they close their statement with a piece of nonsense as big as Taita Imbabura itself: “We prohibit ADN—the ruling party—from engaging in political campaigning in our territories.”
They neither reject nor oppose the electoral processes. Nor do they issue an open call to fight against the government. All they want is to prevent ADN from campaigning in “their territories,” while leaving the door open for Unidad Popular, the Socialist Party, Pachakutik, and whoever else shows up to do so. In this way, revisionists and opportunists don’t miss the chance to fight over bureaucratic posts—governorships, mayoralties, and other positions within the old State.
That’s how things are, that’s the truth. But, in the midst of all this filth, we organize, we combat, and we resist. What the class-conscious elements of the working class and the people have been doing is not enough. We must do more: reach the deepest masses, organize and mobilize them.
Are they threatening us with the Encounter prison? So what? What do we have to lose? They take our lives every day: while deep-sea fishing, in markets, outside schools, on any street, and at any time. There are no set patterns anymore; anything can happen at any moment. In a store, at a neighborhood restaurant, at a street stall selling “agachaditos [Translator’s note: ],” on any street corner, in a shaft of an artisanal mine, right at our front door—death lurks.
There is no work, neither land; precariousness grows. So what the hell do we have to lose, apart from this miserable life they’ve forced upon us? In return, we have a lot to gain: a new society and a new world.
All we have to do is break the shackles of fear. All we have to do is free our organizations from those bastards who are dragging us into the heap of trash of electoral politics. We simply have to take the initiative.
Once again, and as many times as necessary, we must organize ourselves and throw ourselves into the struggle to stop the beast that governs us and those who support it from Washington and Tel Aviv. Otherwise, the time will come when we have nothing left in our hands—not even a trace of life. Organizing and fighting have become vital necessities, prerequisites for survival. We must do it.
Let’s organize days of struggle. The number doesn’t matter; what matters is determination, and ideological consistency. Let’s make fear switch sides. Let’s unmask the revisionists who are willing to make a pact with the devil to achieve their electoral goals, and the opportunists, who by now have already sold their miserable lives to the regime and all the rot it represents.
Let us remember: if we do not combat opportunism and revisionism, we will have accomplished nothing!
LET’S PREPARE FOR DAYS OF COMBATIVE STRUGGLE!
LET’S EXPOSE THE TRAITORS, THOSE WHO TRAFFIC WITH THE STRUGGLES AND POPULAR ORGANIZATION!
ORGANIZE, COMBAT, AND RESIST!
