The Two-Pronged Attack That Broke Ecuador's Protests
In Ecuador, Noboa has won a standoff with protesters by playing dirty against a weakened opponent.
After 33 days of protests and blockades, Ecuador’s indigenous movement called off its national strike on October 22 without any concessions from President Daniel Noboa.
“In light of the government’s brutal repression,” Marlon Vargas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), said in a social media post, “we (..) end the 2025 Paro Nacional [national strike], clear the roads, and retreat to our territories to safeguard the lives of our people.”
Vargas’ announcement is unequivocal: The violent deployment of the military against protests worked.
But Noboa’s strategy was two-pronged. Apart from brute force, Noboa also froze bank accounts of indigenous organizations and suspended indigenous-affiliated media.
This approach appears to have been particularly successful given how deep the cracks in the region’s most powerful indigenous movement run.
50 international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued a joint statement condemning the excessive use of force, criminalization of protesters, arbitrary detentions, and freezing of bank accounts.
Blockades turn bloody
CONAIE declared the paro, or nationwide strike, on September 18. The immediate trigger was Noboa’s elimination of diesel subsidies, which raised fuel prices from $1.80 to $2.80 per gallon.
The decision ignited widespread opposition from Indigenous communities, transport workers and social organizations, who viewed it as an attack on Ecuador’s poorest populations.
But this trigger was accompanied by a long list of other demands and complaints. These included a halt to the expansion of mining and oil projects on or near Indigenous territory; a demand for more investment in social programs, including public health and education; and a rejection of a proposed referendum to rewrite the country’s constitution.
Indigenous communities, peasant farmers and allied social organizations, especially in the northern and central Andean regions, mobilized.
Demonstrations featured marches, public assemblies and the occupation of key highways and provincial capitals, effectively paralyzing transport and commerce in cities like Quito and the province of Imbabura.
Violence exploded quickly.
On September 28, the military fired live ammunition into a group of people blocking a highway in Cotacachi, in the north of Ecuador.
A verified video of the attack shows four men trying to carry a wounded man, 46-year-old Efraín Fueres, to safety amidst a panicking crowd.
As the military keeps shooting, three of the four men put down Fueres and run. The fourth, a man in a blue hoodie, remains standing and shakes his fist, yelling to the military that they are “killing their own people.”
Two army vehicles pull up, and soldiers in full combat gear beat the man until he falls on the ground. They continue to pummel both the man and his wounded comrade with the butts of their guns. Then, they drive away.
The man in the blue hoodie survived, but Fueres died of his wounds, becoming the first casualty of the protests.
“This was an act of violence,” General Manuel Davila, operational commander of the armed forces, told local media. “This was not a progressive use of force.”
Yet from there, violence and militarization only escalated.
Noboa deployed thousands of troops to break up highway blockades and halt marches in both the provinces and in the capital, Quito.
Before the CONAIE called an end to the paro, two more protesters died, hundreds were injured, and hundreds more arrested, according to local media. An Ecuadorian coalition of human rights groups received 391 reports of human rights violations as of October 23rd.
Protesters also engaged in violence. On two occasions, they threw rocks at the convoy transporting Noboa. Protesters also held 17 soldiers hostage for three days and wounded some of them. In total, 49 military and 24 police officers were injured.
Silencing Dissent
Previous paros in 2019 and 2022 saw more violence, yet did result in partial concessions from the government to the Indigenous movement. Possibly, Noboa’s non-violent actions allowed him to end the paro without compromising.
The government suspended media organizations and targeted the bank accounts of Indigenous and environmental organizations and leaders.
Ecuador’s telecommunications regulatory agency suspended at least three community media outlets on questionable grounds, seemingly to limit protesters’ ability to mobilize.
Human Rights Watch reviewed one case in which the telecommunications regulator suspended UHF Channel 47, operated by the Indigenous and Peasant Movement of Cotopaxi (MICC), for 15 days. The agency justified the move by alleging the station had “harmed national security,” citing a “secret” report.
Ecuador’s Superintendency of Banks, under government directive, also froze bank accounts belonging to CONAIE, the MICC, Yasunidos, Cabildo por el Agua de Cuenca, and dozens of individuals, including presidents of Indigenous federations, anti-mining movement leaders, and representatives of major environmental alliances.
According to CONAIE, the freezes aimed to “To suffocate the social organization, block legitimate political action, and break the right to resistance.”
In many cases, authorities failed to provide any judicial warrant, prior notice, or legal justification, instead linking these freezes to accusations of “terrorism,” “unjust enrichment,” and alleged financing of violent acts.
The government has done little to back up these accusations, which civil society, Indigenous, and environmental defenders dispute.
“They froze our accounts to open your oil fields. Freezing our money is an attempt to silence our resistance,” reads an open letter signed by multiple such organizations addressed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Last year, Noboa signed a $4 billion IMF loan based on a promise that investment in the mining sector would make Ecuador a “preferred destination for businesses worldwide.”
Noboa may be playing dirty, but the Indigenous movement was not strong to begin with.
Historically, Ecuador’s Indigenous movement has been one of the best-organized and politically influential in Latin America.
But the 2025 presidential elections showed that the movement is far from united. Ahead of the elections, we wrote about how it would have little bargaining power under Noboa if it could not close its ranks.
“If the cracks aren’t fixed, the ability to pressure the government to meet Indigenous demands will wane,” Alexita Imbaquingo, a Kichwa activist who used to belong to CONAIE, told us as we reported for Al Jazeera.
And that appears to have happened. The Indigenous movement mobilized but did not get results.