The government is faced with the task of comprehensively addressing these problems in the face of the voices and concerns of Indigenous communities and other affected sectors
It was not with surprise, but with regret that I witnessed the recent wave of news about the violence taking place in Ecuador’s cities. Just three weeks ago, I returned from the country, where I had started filming my next documentary. At a global level, Ecuador is seen as a nation on the edge of a social abyss, with consequences that are spreading throughout the country. These are especially impacting the most vulnerable sectors of the countryside and the cities: the impoverished and historically discriminated against; Indigenous, Black and mountain communities; the fishing and gathering communities of the mangroves and peasants of the sierra and the coast.
The complex reality facing Ecuador today is a supposed state of “internal armed conflict,“ officially declared as such by the government to justify an internal war against criminal organizations. This is the result of a large and painful tearing of Ecuador’s social fabrics and a state dissolving into a morass of corruption. Most particularly, however, it is the result of an extractive and export model of development that has been in place for over more than fifty years and has greatly intensified over the past two decades and four governments. This model has corrupted Ecuador’s institutions, which have been captureed by special interest groups linked to extraction and exportation.