International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Indigenous organizations in Ecuador have long provided the foundation for popular struggles in the twentieth century and a model to the rest of Latin America for organizing social movements. In the 1920s Jesús Gualavisí, a leader in the municipality of Cayambe, led a community protest against a neighboring hacienda that expropriated their lands. Gualavisí searched for urban allies to support his fight, and attended the founding of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party in the capital city of Quito in May 1926. Subsequently, urban socialists and communists became strong supporters of rural indigenous struggles. In 1930 indigenous workers on the Pesillo hacienda in Cayambe went on strike for higher wages and improved working conditions. For the next several decades, Pesillo became a zone of fierce indigenous protest. Dolores Cacuango, one of the strike leaders, became known as a leading Ecuadoran indigenous rights activist. In February 1931 Cayambe activists organized a national conference for peasant and indigenous rights. The specter of thousands of marginalized people congregating to fight for their rights unsettled the government, which quickly sent police to end the protest. The indigenous movements have promoted their cause with help from educated urban communists, publishing a newsletter called Ñucanchic Allpa (Our Land) that appeared occasionally from the 1930s to the 1960s. On ... log in or subscribe to read full text