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Ecuador's Indians to Join Labor Protests Against the Dollar
Tue, 14 Mar 2000, 8:23am EST
Quito, Ecuador, March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Ecuador's major
Indian group will join labor unions in next week's planned
nationwide protest against making the U.S. dollar the nation's
currency, a move blamed for soaring food prices.
Talks between the government and the Indians, whose mass
protests in January sparked a coup that ousted former President
Jamil Mahuad, appear to have broken down after last week's
approval of a law to switch Ecuador's currency from the sucre to
the dollar. Still, the protests aren't planned to duplicate the
scale of January's demonstrations.
``We're protesting the price increases caused by
dollarization,' said Mario Bustos a spokesman for the powerful
Indian group Conaie. ``It is too little time for us to properly
organize a full uprising, but we are supporting the
demonstration.'
Ecuador President Gustavo Noboa last week signed into law
omnibus legislation for the currency switch and to implement
measures to overhaul the collapsing $13.7 billion economy. As the
legislation worked its way through Congress, worker groups made
plans for a series of strikes against ``dollarization and
hunger,' capped by a March 21 nationwide demonstration.
Indian leader Antonio Vargas has warned the new Noboa
government it will face a ``social explosion' if the living
conditions of Ecuador's impoverished Indians aren't improved.
The International Monetary Fund and other lending bodies last
week pledged $2 billion in loans over three years to Ecuador to
shore up its balance of payments, improve its banking system and
for social development projects. Some $900 million in credit could
be disbursed in the first 12 months, the IMF said.
``These demonstrations will be totally different to those
which we saw on Jan. 21,' said Simon Pachano a politics lecturer
at the Latin American College for Social Studies. ``The country
appears to have reluctantly accepted dollarization, so the
protests won't have the same support.'
quote.bloomberg.com |
