A major protest mobilization by Ecuador’s indigenous movement, led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador, CONAIE | website facebook twitter) began on Sunday, August 2. The following is my translation the document produced by the organization’s July assembly spelling out its demands.

Resolutions of the Annual Ordinary Assembly of CONAIE
Salasaca, Tungurahua
July 17 and 18, 2015

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, meeting in its General Assembly with the participation of official delegates from grassroots organizations and from the regional affiliates CONFENIAE, ECUARUNARI, and CONAICE, faced with current political conjuncture and the situation of the indigenous movement, resolve:

1. To convene the grassroots of all the peoples and nationalities of Ecuador to the Great Indigenous Uprising, in unity with sectors of society and the Ecuadorian people in all the provinces of the country, on August 10, 2015. Putting forward the national demands of our people and our own agenda as an indigenous movement. We ratify our firm position of No to the Dialogue [as proposed] with the national government.

2. To recover the autonomy of Intercultural Bilingual Education and to demand the immediate reopening, instead of the closure, of intercultural bilingual education schools, teaching institutes, colleges, Childhood Centers for Good Living (Centro Infantil del Buen Vivir; [an early childhood education program for poor children]), and the Amawtay Wasi University [an indigenous university co-founded by CONAIE in 1989], free access to public education, as well as the creation of research centers at the regional level to strengthen the process of autonomous education on the part of the nationalities and peoples.

3. To halt the plunder of the land and territories that government promotes by means of the new land, water, and mining laws; and thus, we call for the land law to be shelved and for the repeal of the laws that affect the development and rights of indigenous peoples. To strengthen control over our territories and to not permit the entry of any government functionary nor of a single transnational corporation.

4. To shelve the proposal to amend the constitution, which promotes the restriction of the rights which we, by our struggle, managed to have included in the Constitution.

5. To stop political persecution and the judicialization [of politics; i.e., using court cases to pursue political opponents] implemented by the government of Rafael Correa against the leaders of social movements, and the leaders within indigenous peoples, students, doctors, retired people, defenders of nature, and of human rights, and other organized social sectors. To do away with institutionalized corruption and the state of repression so as to build plurinational democracy.

6. To strengthen a unified agenda together with the other sectors of society. To organize the mobilizing process that begins with the great march of the peoples from Tundayme-Zamora Chinchipe on August 2, the Indigenous and Popular Uprising on August 10, and the national strike organized by the Unitary National Collective on August 13.

7. To ratify our full commitment to defeat the capitalist economic model built upon oil and mining exploitation implemented by this government and to establish an alternative community-based economy coherent with the [concept of a] Plurinational State.