Ecuador was shaken by an aboriginal-peasant upraise, followed by important popular protests, which took the streets of the country’s capital, Quito, the national financier-centre, Guayaquil, and some cities in the country side.

The movement almost occupied during three days the National Congress, installing the Parliament of the Peoples of Ecuador and knocking down the pro-imperialist government of Jamil Mahuad, threaten since its very beginning, in August 1998, by diverse mobilisations of masses as the national strike of March 1999. Moreover, the government lost support from important sectors of the exporter bourgeoisie, threatened by the dollarisation of the economy.

However, the popular Ecuadorian upraise finished being defeated through a "constitutional" bourgeois manoeuvre. Mahuad was substituted by his vice-president Gustavo Noboa, who besides keeping the State of Emergency and the dollarisation, applied a fierce repression to the leadership of the movement.

The "new" government decided the arrest of more than 50 officers, which, led by lieutenant-colonel Lucio Gutierrez, took part on the popular demonstrations, and threaten with catching Antonio Vargas, president of the CONAIE - Confederation of Aboriginal Nationalities of Ecuador -, who together with Carlos Solórzano, former-member of the Supreme Court, and Gutierrez constituted a "National Salvation Government" (NSG) on January 21st.

This disastrous outcome of the heroic struggle of the Ecuadorian masses is a direct responsibility of the conciliation policies of the CONAIE and the Frente Patriótico (FP) – Patriotic Front -, stimulated by the Communist Party (PCMLE), which had systematically called the Church, the military officials, and also the high command of the army to form a bourgeois government of national salvation.

With the help of this suicidal policy, general Carlos Mendoza, commander-in-chief of the army and Minister of the Defense, took part on the NSG substituting lieutenant-colonel Lucio Gutierrez. After what, the NSG asked, with the support of the high command of the army, the resignation of Mahuad.

Following the orders of the North American embassy, who demanded the army a constitutional solution and threaten to establish an economic embargo to the country if this were not the case, general Mendoza imposed Gustavo Noboa in the presidency and, through an agreement with the CONAIE and the FP, was able to demobilise the ten thousand aboriginals concentrated in the capital, who in the morning of day January 23rd, left peacefully the National Congress and Quito.

Noboa’s government is extremely fragile, supported basically by the army. The popular and aboriginal movement have not suffered a physical defeat, being able to come back at any time to the streets since the elements that produced the crisis remain. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie obtained through this manoeuvre, at least temporarily, the restrain of its regimen’s deep crisis.

The intense class struggle in Ecuador generates an uncertain horizon for the political future of this small Latin American country, today a sample that anticipates the trends of the economic, social, and political situation of all the continent.

The masses fell that they were betrayed with the inbound of Gustavo Noboa to the presidency and, therefore, new fights will come, placing in the order of the day the question of who will control the power in the Ecuador.

The bourgeoisie, from its side, is looking for a stable political period with the aim of imposing the plans dictated by the imperialism, which are paralysed since the fall of Bucaram in 1997.

A rigorous balance of the last events, pointing to the causes of the partial defeat of the upraises of Ecuadorian working movement, is indispensable to set up the working class for the future struggles. It will also be useful for the Latin American vanguard who follows with attention the struggle of the Ecuadorian people waiting that it advance toward the proletarian revolution.

The mobilisations of masses in Ecuador had their peak in February 1997 with the falling of Bucaram. His fall was product of massive demonstrations against an economical plan dictated by the IWF, which brandished brutal attacks to the workers, through the increase of prices and public tariffs. As solution for the crisis of the regimen, the bourgeoisie imposed, with the support of the FP, a temporary mandate fulfilled by the president of the Congress, Fabián Alarcon, who called to new elections in 1998. These elections given the victory to Jamil Mahuad (Popular Democracy Party) basically because he was not part of the traditional project of the Ecuadorian politicians.

During Alarcon’s government there were new fights against the imperialist dictates. In fact, he was not able to impose the measures demanded by the great capital due to the pressure of the masses. With the ascension of Mahuad, the bourgeoisie and the imperialism had again tried to advance in the new process of conquest, but the popular reaction to the economical measurements started a popular revolt which weakened Mahuad’s government.

The general strike of March 1999 and the recent aboriginal-peasant upraise, who knocked down Mahuad, are products of the huge economic crisis that crosses Latin America after capitalist world-wide crash, which took to debacle the Asian tigers, Russia and Brazilian economies in the beginning of 1999. This crisis is still more deep in the countries of least economic weight of the continent, as Ecuador. The fragile Ecuadorian economy was practically decimated with the depreciation of the national currency (Sucre) in comparison with the dollar and with the fall of the prices of the two main Ecuadorian exportations, the oil and the banana, in the world market.

In 1999 the inflation reached 60% and the Sucre lost 67% of its value, depreciating itself in front to the dollar 15% only in the first days of January. Because of this, the GNP fell 7,3% in relation to 1998 and the unemployment jumped to 17%. The peasants and aboriginals compose 25% of Ecuador’s population and are the more affected sectors. The basic wage in Ecuador, 50 dollars, lost two thirds of its value due to the inflation. In summary, according to a report of the World Bank, 5,1 of the 12 million Ecuadorians live in extreme poverty.

This scene stimulated a state of permanent mobilisation of masses, preparing the conditions for a crisis of revolutionary character. This happened because since the fall of Bucaram the bourgeoisie, although deviated the fight of the masses to the institutional framework through some "democratic" manoeuvres (impeachment, elections, Constitutional Convention), has not been able to impose the political stability required to proceed with the new imperialist conquest, yielding the opportunity to an extraordinary rise of the working movement.

The general strike of March against the economical plan dictated by Mahuad, which increased the public tariffs and fuels and confiscated the bank deposits to pay the external debt, had sharpened this situation still more and, at that moment, it were given the conditions for the falling of bourgeois government. The twelve days of strikes - ten beyond the foreseen by the national unions (FUT and UGT) - indicated an inexorable attitude of the mass movement against the attacks of the government.

It was the criminal politics of the CONAIE and the FP, who arranged with the government an agreement where Mahuad withdrew in some secondary points of the plan dictated by the IWF, but kept the basic measures, which gave a new breath to the government. In spite of this aid of the political leaders of the working and aboriginal movement who saved the government, Mahuad was forced on September 1999 to decree the moratorium of the external debt.

Full isolated and without a social base, Mahuad played in the start of January his last chart to unify the bourgeoisie, the army and the imperialism with sights to face the working movement and the crisis installed in the country. He announced a plan to dollarise the economy, decided to privatise all the state-owned companies and the public welfare, and launched in the parliament a deep working reform that overwhelmed historical conquests of the workers.

To succeed in this new period of imperialist robbery, the government decreed the State of Emergency, placing the army on the streets of Quito, Guayaquil and in the most important cities of the country. It was the beginning of the end of Mahuad’s government.

The dollarisation immediately caused a vertiginous increase in the prices and, as consequence, an immense wage reduction, sending to the absolute misery thousand of workers, peasants, and impoverished sectors of the middle class. This was the true detonator of the struggle of the masses.

The protests intensified all over the country, with confrontations on the streets with the police since the beginning of January. After some days of mobilisations, the CONAIE convoked the aboriginals and peasants to occupy Quito "to knock down the government, the congress and the Supreme Cut of Justice and to install a National Salvation Government and the Parliament of the Peoples of Ecuador with representatives of the Church, the aboriginals, the army, and the workers (Folha do S.Paulo, 14/01).

Some working class sectors added to the protests, as the oil workers, forming themselves local popular parliaments in important cities of the inward as Cuenca, Copotaxi and Carchi, forming part of these organisations bourgeois personalities as bishops, directors of universities and politicians of the opposition, who finished directing the so call patriotic governments in the provinces.

In January 21st, the upraise of masses arrived to its period of stronger development and the crisis of the regimen deepened itself, with thousand of peasants taking the capital, occupying the National Congress and forming the NSG. The occupation of the building of the government had the endorsement of military units which watched the headquarters of the legislative and executive power. "The actions of the popular upraise had reached an important magnitude, had succeeded in winning a sector of the officials of the Armed Forces who supported the people, fortifying the constitution of the NSG" (Manifest of PCMLE, 20/01).

With the opened crisis and facing the conformation of a government of nationalistic characteristics, something like the Ecuadorian Chavesism, the high command of the army who formerly supported Mahuad demanded his resignation. "We ask the president to resign in order to prevent a social explosion" (Folha do S.Paulo, 22/01) declared the minister of the Defense and Commander-in-chief of the army, general Carlos Mendoza. After this decision, the high command of the army FFAA integrated itself to the NSG and general Mendoza assumed the place of lieutenant-colonel Lucio Gutierrez, forming a three members government which later would be dissolved to put Noboa in the presidency. The words of Antonio Vargas, leader of the CONAIE disclose how deeply were subordinated the leaders of the movement to the army. He said, "we were betrayed by the militaries. They should have been in the side of the movement, but they had choose the politicians side. Without them we cannot face the corrupts who govern the country " (Folha do S.Paulo, 24/01).

The position of the military command was determined by the orders of the Yankee imperialism which imposed this "constitutional" solution. "Any regimen that appears from an unconstitutional process must face a political and economic isolation, causing even a bigger misery to the Ecuadorian people" said the spokesman of the Department of State. And he completed, "the army and the police have the responsibility to keep the public order and to defend the constitutional process. Any attempt to put down the constitutional government of Ecuador, it does not matter the excuse, will have disastrous consequences for all the Ecuadorians" (Folha do S.Paulo, 22/01).

Hours after general Mendoza dissolved the NSG, he obtained the withdrawal of the masses from Quito and the National Congress, through an agreement with the CONAIE and the FP, and announced that Noboa would be the new president, the spokesman of the White House, Mike Hammer, declared: "While we lament the circumstances that had suffered president Mahuad, we support Noboa. Mahuad’s magnanimous gesture opened the path to the restoration of the Constitutional order in the country" (Folha do S.Paulo, 24/01), making clear that the capitalist interests were preserved with the new government.

Despite its constitutional facade and the fact that it has been approved for the parliament, Noboa’s Government is based on the army and the imperialism. As in the previous crises (impeachment against Bucaram, Alarcon’s provisional government, election of Mahuad) the bourgeoisie uses the constitutional facade and the "democratic" manoeuvres to deviate the course of the revolutionary fight, despite the terrible reputation of the formal democracy and of its mechanisms among the masses.

The outcome of the popular upraise in Ecuador and the ascension of Noboa, who in his first speech reaffirmed that it would keep the State of Emergency and the dollarisation and that he would continue applying the pro-imperialist policies of Mahuad, open a debate in the vanguard on the causes of the defeat of the Ecuadorian people and the role of its political leaders.

Despite its enormous popular, the aboriginal-peasant demonstration which occupied the National Congress, installing the Parliament of the Ecuadorian Peoples and the NSG, the upraise in Ecuador did not take the power from the bourgeoisie in a revolutionary rupture with the institutions of the regimen. A general strike of masses which paralysed the country until the falling of the government was not decreed. In addition, the manifestations were pacific, without gaining contours of a proletarian rebellion.

What happened was an ample movement of masses which that capitalised the hatred against an extremely weak government and the deeply consumed "democratic" institutions, but it was limited to present itself as an embryo alternative of nationalistic appearance to the bourgeois government, respecting the capitalist regimen and no placing the question of the revolutionary taking of the power and the construction of a new social regimen based on the end of the private property.

The programme of the NSG restricted itself to clean the bourgeois state with anti-corruption measures and revoke the most regrettable Mahuad’s decrees (dollarisation, increase of the tariffs, etc.) without pointing a program of rupture with the national bourgeoisie and the imperialism.

Because of this, the proletariat, as social and political leader of the revolutionary process, due to its role in the capitalist production, was almost absent in the mobilisations; or when it took part on them, as in the case of the oil workers, it did it without a class profile, dissolved among the popular masses.

The Ecuadorian crisis could gained contours of a revolutionary situation if the proletariat, armed and organised through its proper organisations, would acted as leading force of the peasants and aboriginals. The attempt to present the local popular parliaments and the installed one in Quito by the CONAIE as Soviet-like organisations of dual power, is a political fraud. They must, because of their composition (full of representatives of the bourgeoisie) and their advisory character, be considered as much as organisations of the "civil society". In fact, the minister of government of president Noboa stimulated the creation of these supposed Soviets, which only existed in the head of the reformists.

The working class did not take and control through its revolutionary action the strategic means of production and other bourgeois properties (banks, media, etc.) and was not organised as a military force to assault the capitalist state in a confrontation with the army through workers and peasants’ militias, as in the Bolivian revolutionary crisis of 1952.

The sectors of the working class that were the vanguard in the passed fights, as the oil workers and the fishers, occupying companies in Quito and Guayaquil and even though the taxi drivers who stimulated the strike of March 1999 and the protests of July 1999 had a secondary role in the current upraise. Moreover, the professors and students had only served as a support force the aboriginal-peasant movement.

The aboriginals, who historically assumed the role of the peasants in Ecuador, as any peasant movement do not have their own strategy and are not independent of the bourgeoisie. The peasant and, in this specific case, the aboriginals are a social force that unites itself, during a crisis, either to the bourgeoisie or to the proletariat, not being able of having a leading role in the revolutionary fight. Because of the absence of the proletariat in the mobilisations and the proper features of the peasants, who has as leadership popular frontist organisations, the movement did not try to make a workers-peasants alliance and to confront with the basic pillar of the State bourgeois, the army.

Actually, it took the inverse path, it took as strategical allies the progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie and the nationalistic militaries in order to keep the institutions of the regimen, now with a popular face, as summarised the words of lieutenant-colonel Lucio Gutierrez: "we are here for breaking the fetters that tie us to the most amazing corruption and to fortify the democratic institutions" (Folha do S.Paulo, 22/01).

Under this reformist strategy, the aboriginal movement finished yielding the control of the situation to the high command of the army, since it looked for a common path with the nationalistic militaries. Thus, the manifestations had been demobilised by the proper bourgeoisie and the military command, because in their front was the peasant movement, which does not have a leading and revolutionary design of rupture with the capitalism.

In contrast with this policy, which places the masses as appendix of the army, in a revolutionary crisis, the working class should use its leadership to stimulate the rupture with the military hierarchy, convoking the low sectors of the troop, sergeants and soldiers, to support the proletariat. In this form, they would be subordinating to the proletarian strategy and would use their weapons against the bourgeoisie and the officials.

The political and military unity with the low sectors of the troop is only possible because they do not represent any bourgeois design and are not linked to the leadership of the army. They are mere executors of the repression on the working class and have in the proletariat and the peasantry their social origin.

The policy that the working class must have towards the sergeants and soldiers in periods of revolutionary crisis is completely different to the one that it must exert with the officials (lieutenants, colonels and generals). These last ones represent directly the interests of sectors of the bourgeoisie inside the army and when they establish a political unity with the movement of masses they do it to use the masses as appendix to gain social weight in the construction of a government with nationalistic characteristics, which keeps untouchable the capitalist regimen, as intended lieutenant-colonel Lucio Gutierrez.

With the absence of the working class, of its power organisations, of the workers’ militias, and of a revolutionary party which stimulated the workers-peasants unity, under a proletarian political strategy (being the poor peasants a basic allies in the fight for the taking of the power), the Ecuadorian upraise did not take profit of its possibilities. Inclusively, if the NSG had gotten success, because of its reformist program, it would finish convoking new elections and reorganising the bourgeois regimen, as the Chavesism did in Venezuela convoking the Constitutional Convention.

With the ascension of Noboa the crisis is not closed. The bourgeoisie only gained a new breath and as the current government is extremely fragile (supported basically by the army) and applies the same Mauhad’s program. For sure, the mobilisations will come back but now in a bigger degree. In this way, under the perspective of a retaken of the mobilisations, the working class will fight to directing to the whole of the exploiteds.

The proletariat has to convoke to the unity with the poor peasantry, its historical ally, forging the workers-peasants alliance, materialised politically through the construction of a workers-peasants united front. This front among the exploiteds of the field and the city, under the leadership of the proletariat, must lead the workers, the poor small-bourgeoisie and those who break the military hierarchy, to an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle for the conquest of the power and the construction of a Workers and Peasants’ Government.

This unit is basic for the victory of the revolutionary process. As Lenin propose in the Russian peasant upraise of 1902, brutally restrained by the Tsarism: "the peasants’ rebellion was jammed because it was a rebellion of the ignorant and not conscientious mass, a rebellion without definite claims and clear politics, without the aim of changing the state. The peasants’ rebellion was jammed because it was not prepared. The peasants’ rebellion was jammed because the proletarians of the field were not united with the proletarians of the city. These are the three causes of the peasants’ failure. In order to made a successful rebellion is necessary to prepare it conscientiously, is necessary to accumulate forces all over Russia and made an union with the workers of the city " (To the pours of the field).

The history of the working movement has demonstrated that the proletariat and the peasantry will not take the power from the bourgeoisie only through mobilisations of masses, it does not matter the heroicity and the massivity of these. To impose its government and its class dictatorship over the stains of the capitalism is necessary to break the structure of the bourgeois democracy (parliament, justice, and army) through the armament of all people directed by dual power organisations (soviets), which need to be prepared and to be stimulated by the most conscientious vanguard of the workers and peasants. This is an inexorable law of the class struggle and even reformist organisations, as the Castroists in Cuba, who had headed a revolution without desiring to bring it until the end, had been obliged to demystify and to destroy the institutions of the bourgeois democracy, constructing a social regimen of new type.

On the other hand, the strategy of the Ecuadorian left, since the fall of Bucaram in 1997, has been the constitution of a national unity government with sectors of the national bourgeoisie, the army, and the Church. The main leaders of the Ecuadorian popular masses, the Frente Patriótico, stimulated by the Maoist PCMLE, the CONAIE, the social-democrat forces, as Izquierda Democrática, and the parliamentarians of the aboriginal movement Pachakuitic, restrict themselves to defend a national capitalist model in opposition to the so call neo-liberalism.

These organisations, which had systematically supported the constitutional manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie against the popular mobilisations are the main obstacle for the rupture of the Ecuadorian masses with the regimen. Not by chance, the national unions - FUT and UGT - , controlled by the PCMLE and the social democracy, did not convoke a general strike during the aboriginal-peasant upraise. They did it because they were afraid that the working class run away from their control, heading the fight against the government and imposing the destruction of it with its proper methods (occupation of factories, workers’ militias). Then, they preferred to give a popular and civic tone to the protests.

Now, after the ascension of Noboa, the CONAIE suspended all the activities of protest against the government and gave a truce of six months to the new president. The aboriginal leader, Antonio Vargas, said: "a truce until seeing if the current strategy of the government consists in searching alternatives in benefit of our country"(Folha do S.Paulo, 31/01). This policy represents an enormous treason to the heroic struggle of the Ecuadorian people who, to be successful, needs to surpass the ominous policy of its leaders and to give no truce to this pro-imperialist government, coming back to the streets and constructing its power organisations to knock down in a revolutionary form the capitalist government.

The partial defeat suffered by the Ecuadorian masses only postponed temporarily the future combat which will place again the national bourgeoisie, the imperialism and the army in one side and the proletariat and the peasantry in the other. Therefore, it is necessary to retake to the streets to obtain the revolutionary falling of the pro-imperialist government of Gustavo Noboa, without allowing him to apply the supposed democratic and constitutional manoeuvres. The class collaboration policy of the workers and peasants’ leaders, the absence of working class actions (based on a revolutionary programme), and the not existence of dual power organisations had been the main elements which produced the defeat of the Ecuadorian upraise. The proletariat and the peasantry of this small Latin American country had given heroic examples of fight and, certainly, will obtain the conclusions that allow them to continue the combat in the right way, forging in Ecuador through their most conscientious elements, the communist, the revolutionary party (section of the Fourth International) essential to achieve the proletarian revolution.