Ecuador – FAI: SOLIDARITY WITH OUR COMRADES MARÍA ORTEGA, WILFRIDO ESCOBAR, AND PIEDAD GUARANDA!
We hereby share an unofficial translation of the statement by the Anti-imperialist Front of Ecuador (FAI) published by the Defense Front of the People’s Front in Ecuador on August 29.
The Anti-Imperialist Front of Ecuador denounces before the Ecuadorian people and the international community, the sentence imposed on our comrades María Ortega, Wilfrido Escobar, and Piedad Guaranda – people’s activists who have dedicated years of their lives to defending the land, water, and nature against the advance of mining extractivism in the Las Naves canton.
This case cannot be understood as a mere legal dispute. It is rooted in the contradiction between, on the one hand, the peasant communities, mostly poor, who are defending their territories, and, on the other, the interests of mining imperialism, which seeks to turn natural resources into commodities in the service of private accumulation.
The company Curimining, linked to foreign capital (Chinese-Canadian), carries out its activities through land consolidation, effectively becoming a big landlord. Meanwhile, thousands of peasant families struggle to make a living on small plots or with very little land – land that imperialism is also polluting. In this context, resistance is portrayed as a crime, and the defenders of the territory are turned into defendants.
The conviction of our comrades María Ortega, Wilfrido Escobar, and Piedad Guaranda also comes amid public scrutiny of the relationships between sectors of economic power and politically influential figures, such as the family of the President of the Republic himself, who has faced public allegations that his relatives are shareholders in that company – a circumstance that demands the utmost vigilance and the strictest respect for judicial independence.
We denounce the use of criminal proceedings against community leaders and warn that the criminalization of protest constitutes a threat to democratic freedoms and to the people’s right to resistance.
We call on Ecuador’s popular, peasant, labor, student, indigenous, environmental, and democratic organizations to remain vigilant and show solidarity with this cause, as the appeal hearing will take place before the Provincial Court of Los Ríos, in the city of Quevedo, on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, at 2:30 p.m.
Solidarity with María Ortega, Wilfrido Escobar, and Piedad Guaranda!
No to the criminalization of the people’s struggle!
Defend the land, water, and nature!
ANTI-IMPERIALIST FRONT OF ECUADOR
