Ecuador’s Indigenous movement splinters over presidential election support

Saquisili, Ecuador – Every Thursday, the Indigenous market in the Ecuadorian town of Saquisili buzzes with crowds from across the province of Cotopaxi and beyond. Women in felt hats and men in weathered ponchos barter over alpaca scarves and clay pots amid the aroma of slow-cooked stew.

But in recent weeks, campaign posters have appeared among the stalls.

As the run-off in Ecuador’s presidential race approaches on April 13, the final two candidates are attempting to court one of the country’s key demographics: Indigenous voters.

Both the centre-right incumbent President Daniel Noboa and his main rival, leftist Luisa Gonzalez, received about 44 percent of the vote in the first round of the election on February 9.

But in Saquisili, the Indigenous candidate, Leonidas Iza, won. Nationally, he secured 5 percent of the first-round vote, putting him in third place behind Noboa and Gonzalez.

Given the tight race in the second round, the roughly 539,000 votes he garnered could be crucial to the outcome in the run-off.

The president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Iza had run as the candidate for the group’s political arm, the Pachakutik (PK) party.

After Iza was knocked out in the first round, his party endorsed Gonzalez at a March 30 assembly, where she agreed to a list of 25 demands.

“The support for Luisa Gonzalez isn’t a blank cheque,” said Iza, who joined the assembly remotely through video. “It’s an opportunity to create space for and strengthen the autonomous struggle against the right.”

But the decision has divided Ecuador’s Indigenous communities, with local leaders denouncing the agreement and one of the largest regional organisations supporting Noboa despite the PK’s endorsement.

Insiders and activists say that dissent calls into question not only Iza’s ability to mobilise his base but also the overall unity of the Indigenous movement going forward — whoever wins.

Ordinarily, CONAIE – an umbrella organisation – prides itself on representing the diversity of Ecuador’s Indigenous peoples, from the Pacific coast to the Andes mountain range.

One scholar even dubbed it “Latin America's strongest, oldest and most consequential Indigenous movement”.

But critics say the show of unity at the March 30 meeting masks deep political divisions within Ecuador’s Indigenous communities.

In theory, CONAIE’s decisions emerge from thousands of local assemblies, where communities debate before passing agreements upward through more than 50 grassroots organisations.

These groups then consolidate their positions through three regional bodies — representing the Amazon rainforest, the Andes and the coast — before CONAIE's national assembly announces the collective will.

Cristina Taco, a coordinator for the Indigenous and Peasant Movement of Cotopaxi (MICC), explained that the idea is for CONAIE to “obey” the people it represents.

“We call it command by obeying,” she said.

In February, Iza emphasised his commitment to that process, telling a room full of supporters: “Señor Iza will not define the run-off. The collective will.”

But attempts to reach a consensus in the run-up to the March 30 assembly failed.

From the start, the leadership of the organisation’s top regional body in the Amazon, CONFENIAE, refused to attend CONAIE’s assemblies.

Then, Fernando Guaman — a prominent leader from Chimborazo, the province with the largest Indigenous population — called on voters to choose Noboa or cast a null vote.

Eventually, CONFENIAE’s leadership went even further, declaring their endorsement of Noboa on March 12.

“And we’re going to do it under the PK flag,” Jose Esach, CONFENIAE’s president, told a crowd of supporters.

However, some local Amazonian leaders have since accused the CONFENIAE president of making decisions that go against the wishes of his base.

“We are very ashamed and very puzzled. The president’s actions suggest that he alone is CONFENAIE,” Norma Mayanshia, a Kichwa leader in the Amazon, said in a news conference.

Esach did not return Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

On the same day Esach offered CONFENIAE’s endorsement to Noboa, CONAIE passed a resolution calling on its members to cast “not a single vote” for the incumbent.

Though the resolution did not mention Gonzalez by name, it effectively pledged to mobilise its membership for her party, Revolucion Ciudadana (RC).

“Yes, it only leaves one option, but we’re not going to raise our flag in support of [RC],” Taco told Al Jazeera days before the March 30 meeting. “The proposal was carefully worded not to divide the base.”

But by March 30, the PK party had made its stance unambiguous: It was endorsing Gonzalez.

The schism over the upcoming run-off comes down to scepticism towards the two final candidates.

Gonzalez, for instance, has been dogged by questions about her ties to her political mentor and RC party founder, Rafael Correa.

The Indigenous vote was considered crucial to electing Correa as Ecuador’s president in 2006.

In exchange for the PK’s support, Correa backed a new constitution, which codified Indigenous rights and recognised Ecuador as a plurinational state — in other words, a country composed of many nations.

He went on to serve three terms, with a brand of strong-armed, left-leaning populism commonly known as “correismo”.

But soon after winning the 2006 election, Indigenous leaders say Correa turned on his allies, walking back the autonomy he had promised and pursuing resource extraction on Indigenous land.

The expansion of oil and mining operations into the Amazon led some critics to accuse him of endangering isolated Indigenous groups in the region — and thereby perpetrating genocide.

Correa also unleashed security forces on protesters. His administration ultimately charged some Indigenous leaders with “terrorism”.

However, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch found that prosecutors failed to provide “sufficient evidence” to justify the accusations — and called the arrests “abusive” and “baseless”.

Guaman, the Indigenous leader from Chimborazo, said that history has made him wary of supporting Gonzalez.

“The last time correismo was in power, they tried to exterminate the peoples and nations. They tried to erase CONAIE. They threw social leaders in jail,” Guaman told Al Jazeera. “They minimised Indigenous people. They humiliated us.”

Correa currently lives in exile in Belgium to avoid being imprisoned for corruption. He faces an eight-year prison sentence should he return to Ecuador.

While Gonzalez has tried to distance herself from her former mentor during this election cycle, Correa's shadow looms large over her candidacy.

“What people are afraid of is that Correa will come back,” Gabriela Borja, a sociologist and former PK member, told Al Jazeera.

Still, Gonzalez’s Indigenous supporters emphasise that she is not Correa. And Noboa, they say, has the potential to do worse.

“Noboa is a neoliberal fascist,” Taco said. “If he were to win again, there will be no stopping him.”

The son of Alvaro Noboa, the candidate Correa defeated in each of his three elections, the younger Noboa came to power in a snap election in 2023. His mandate was to serve the remainder of his predecessor’s tenure.

So far, during his truncated year-and-a-half term, Noboa has expanded large-scale foreign mining and petroleum concessions. He has also pledged to build maximum-security prisons on Indigenous territory.

To pursue these projects, critics say he bypassed the legal right to consent that Indigenous people have in Ecuador before any resource project can be launched on their lands.

Noboa, however, has repeatedly responded to Indigenous protests by deploying security forces.

For instance, when Indigenous leaders protested Canadian mining activity in the Palo Quemado territory of Cotopaxi, Noboa’s administration sent in the military, injuring at least 36 people.

The prosecutor’s office ultimately charged 70 of the protesters with “terrorism” and accused another 45 of “organised crime”. The United Nations Human Rights representative for South America met with the protesters’ lawyers in June 2024. Though the protesters were let out of prison, their cases are still ongoing.

“‘This territory isn’t Indigenous,’ they told us,” said Diocelinda Iza, an Indigenous activist and former MICC president who participated in the protests.

She sees Noboa’s re-election as an imminent threat. “If Noboa wins, they’re going to come back and kill people.”

For Diocelinda and her fellow Indigenous leaders, voting for Gonzalez is simply choosing the lesser of two evils.

“I’ll vote for RC, though I’m ashamed of it,” Taco said, adding that it was akin to choosing a more strategic adversary. “I’m choosing who to fight.”

Taco added that a change in government could work to the Indigenous people’s advantage.

If Gonzalez were elected, for instance, the RC would “have to get up to speed, to change ministers”, Taco explained. “And that gives us a bit of time to breathe.”

Even those who oppose Gonzalez’s candidacy agree that Ecuador’s Indigenous political movement needs to be prepared for a confrontation.

“Whichever of the two candidates wins, the Indigenous movement will have to be ready to fight,” Guaman said.

But the bitter divisions this election cycle have raised concerns that the Indigenous movement will be too weak to push back against the next administration, no matter who is at its head.

“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 Al Jazeera.

Some advocates believe the only way forward is to acknowledge that the Indigenous movement doesn’t naturally align with the left or the right.

Maribel Pandilla Ochoa, a community development coordinator who spent 14 years working with Indigenous communities, believes that reality is lost on the left-leaning PK leader Leonidas Iza.

“Iza fails to recognise that the Indigenous reality is not homogenous,” Pandilla Ochoa said. “Trying to maintain that everyone is a leftist is a mistake.”

Others have dismissed the political divisions as the result of a few individual leaders corrupted by outside forces.

Two former high-ranking MICC leaders told Al Jazeera that, during their terms, they were approached by people claiming to represent political parties, both on the right and left.

Mario Alomoto, a Kichwa leader from the Ninín community in a town on the outskirts of Saquisilí, is one of them. Diocelinda Iza is another.

They allege that they were offered financing for community projects, key government positions for family members, and even cash if they agreed to suppress dissent or enter into a quid pro quo arrangement.

In Diocelinda’s case, she said political leaders pressured her to end her support for Indigenous protests in the early 2000s.

“I told them my conscience wasn’t for sale. That my dignity cost more than $80,000,” Diocelinda told Al Jazeera, citing the sum she was allegedly offered.

Later, she said a different political leader offered her a government post in exchange for support.

“The government — all the governments that we’ve had — they try to divide and weaken the Indigenous movement,” Diocelinda said. “And if some young person with no experience takes the deal, what can you do?”

But despite the internal divisions, she and others believe any fractures within the Indigenous movement will disappear in the face of a crisis.

“When it comes to the struggle, we are united,” Taco said. “When we fight, it's for a common cause — and that’s what pulls us back together.”