Recent years have seen Western governments extoll their democratic values while leading increasingly harsh crackdowns on dissent, with activists arrested and accused of terrorism.
Now, Ecuador has gone even further. President Daniel Noboa’s far-right government met recent nationwide anti-austerity protests with a brutality that has left two protesters dead, 473 injured, 12 missing, and 206 detained, according to the Alliance of Human Rights Organisations of Ecuador.
A 31-day national strike erupted on 22 September, nine days after Noboa removed fuel subsidies, raising the price of diesel by 55% from $1.80 to $2.80 per gallon. The demonstrations, which disrupted the movement of goods and people across the country as protesters blocked main roads, were led by Ecuador’s largest Indigenous organisation, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, which represents many of the people who will be the hardest hit by the price hikes.
The government responded by imposing a state of emergency and deploying troops to break up protesters, leading to state-inflicted violence that drew criticism from civil rights groups in Ecuador and across the world.
Human Rights Watch reported it had “verified 15 videos” of “soldiers or police officers forcibly dispersing peaceful demonstrations and using tear gas and other ‘less lethal’ weapons recklessly and indiscriminately”, while Amnesty International warned of “excessive use of force against protesters by the security forces, possible arbitrary arrests, as well as the opening of abusive criminal proceedings and freezing of bank accounts belonging to social leaders and protesters”.
The unrest came as Ecuadorian voters prepare to vote on a series of referendums on 16 November. Perhaps the most controversial question they will answer is over whether to accept foreign military bases on Ecuador’s territory.
The ballot does not explicitly refer to the United States, but it may as well do; this week, US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem made her second visit to the Latin American country in four months to scout out locations for new US military bases.
Noboa’s government has long pushed for greater alignment with the US. While Ecuadorian opposition leaders warn that US military bases would threaten Ecuador’s sovereignty, both Noboa and Donald Trump’s administrations argue that they would help to stop transnational crime gangs from using the country to smuggle drugs from South America into the US.
Although polls suggest a slight majority of voters are against the bases, many are still undecided. Regardless of how they vote, Trump’s influence over Noboa’s government is already clear from the reaction to the recent Indigenous-led demonstrations. Taking from the US president’s playbook, ministers accused protesters of carrying out “terrorist acts” – directly echoing language used against activists in the US – and at least 13 people have been charged with terrorism after allegedly attacking the offices of police in Otavalo, a city in northern Ecuador.
This decision to cry terrorism is part of a strategy to turn social discontent into a security threat. Rather than answering the demands of protesters – the majority of whom were the poor people, transport workers and Indigenous peoples who will be hardest hit by fuel price increases – the government has chosen to criminalise dissent and militarise social conflict to protect its austerity measures from popular resistance.
But protest is not terrorism. It is the democratic voice of those who suffer most from inequality.
Unequal sacrifices
In Ecuador, an oil-producing country, the dispute over fuel subsidies is a recurring issue.
The subsidies have kept prices for petrol and diesel artificially low since the 1970s, but consecutive governments have argued they put too much strain on the national budget, costing the state billions, while international financial institutions have criticised them for “distorting” the economy. In 2022, the subsidies were equivalent to around 2% of Ecuador’s GDP, according to a report by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
But for farmers, truck drivers and informal workers, the subsidies provide indispensable respite from low incomes and rising living costs. Therein lies the clash: what governments see as an easy way to make savings on their balance sheet will mean hunger for many ordinary people.
One key measure of the cost of living in Ecuador is the monthly price of the ‘basic family basket’, a government-defined set of goods needed to sustain a family of four, including food, clothing, medicine, household items and transport costs. In May this year, the price of that basic family basket reached $812, while the monthly minimum wage remained at $470. This disparity will only worsen with the removal of the diesel subsidy, which will make transport, food and the production of goods more expensive.
Previous attempts to scrap the fuel subsidies have caused the social unrest that has marked Ecuadorian politics in recent years. Two previous governments tried to do so in 2019 and 2022. Both instances sparked huge demonstrations that forced ministers into U-turns.
This time, Noboa’s government, which was elected in 2023, does not appear to be backing down. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities eventually called off their strike on 23 October in the wake of the state’s brutal repression, having been unable to secure any concessions.
If the government does succeed in removing the subsidies, it will lead to rising costs that will not be borne equally across Ecuador, a plurinational and multi-ethnic country where wealth is concentrated in certain areas and among certain racial groups.
The most recent data finds that 72% of the population self-identifies as mestizo, a term that refers to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. The next largest demographic group is the Montubio people (7.4%), a rural ethnic group from coastal Ecuador; followed by Afro-Ecuadorians (7.2%), who also primarily live in the coastal provinces; then Indigenous people (7%) who largely live in the highlands and Amazon; and white people (6.1%), who have historically been based in larger cities.
The Afro-Ecuadorians and Indigenous populations in the country’s Amazon and rural coastal provinces will suffer most from the increases in transport and labour costs. Many of the families who will be affected are already impoverished, with a 40% poverty rate in these areas, far above the national rate of 28%.
Ecuador’s coast is dominated by export-oriented agribusiness and ports; the Andean highlands by public administration, services and manufacturing; while the oil extraction in the Amazonian east accounts for a large part of the country’s national income, without translating into local well-being.
The paradox is evident: the territories that produce wealth also face the greatest inequalities and deficits in health, education and basic services.
Women will also be hit harder by the removal of the fuel subsidies than men. The country’s 3.6% unemployment rate masks key gender inequalities; among women the rate is 4.6%, compared to 2.8% among men. Similarly, only 27% of women have access to adequate employment, with sufficient income and stability, compared to 41% of men, according to official figures.
The greater job insecurity created by rising food and household goods prices will disproportionately affect women. They will be forced to work longer hours to survive, particularly where they are responsible for the care of children or elderly relatives – another burden that disproportionately falls on women.
There is no neutrality in austerity: there is a regressive redistribution that privileges fiscal balance at the expense of the country's most impoverished.
‘Terrorism’ and state coercion
While protests started in the immediate aftermath of the announcement on 13 September that the subsidies would be scrapped, the coordinated national strike began on 22 September.
Over the following 31 days, news broadcasts were full of images of this resistance across Ecuador: closed roads in Cuenca, pots and pans banging in Quito, women and children fleeing tear gas in San Rafael de la Laguna.
President Noboa imposed a state of emergency in many provinces, a measure that suspends constitutional guarantees such as the freedom of assembly, the inviolability of the home and correspondence, and the freedom of movement due to curfews. Last year, the Constitutional Court issued a warning to the president over the repeated use of this tool, which it said should be applied only in “extraordinary” circumstances.
By also condemning the protesters as “terrorists”, the government aims to delegitimise collective action, depoliticise the dispute over income and enable repression. Labelling Indigenous people as ‘offenders’ revives an old colonial trope of ‘internal enemies’, where racialised bodies are seen as a threat to order.
Noboa's discourse is also part of a well-known Latin American genealogy: during the years of counterinsurgency, the labels of ‘subversion’ and ‘terrorism’ justified massacres, states of siege and arbitrary detentions. Today, that same language is being revived to shield a neoliberal model that is based not on consensus but on coercion.
For now, the question is not whether Ecuador can sustain fuel subsidies in the long term, but who gets to decide this. Removing subsidies without dialogue or progressive compensation mechanisms is governing against the majority.
A truly democratic policy would require real dialogue with Indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and peasant organisations, and including their voices in defining policies on the prices of utilities, including fuel, water and energy.
Wage and labour reform is also needed to link the minimum wage to the cost of the basic basket of goods and reduce gender and ethnic gaps, as well as territorial investment in the Amazon and rural areas to provide health, education and basic services. Finally, the demilitarisation of social conflict and the repeal of laws that criminalise protest.
The Noboa government seems to be choosing another path: shielding austerity with repression. But labelling those who defend life and bread for their families as terrorists does not resolve the conflict: it deepens it.
Protest is the language of those who refuse to be expelled from history by a model that promises order in exchange for inequality and silence.
*Rose Barboza is a Brazilian researcher and doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal. She specialises in transitional justice, feminist epistemologies and critical race theory. Her current work explores comparative cases of state repression and social movements across Latin America.
