00:00After a 31-day national strike in Ecuador, people were pushed to believe that everything had come back to normal
00:07in the country.
00:08But behind the cameras and the official narrative, another story began to be revealed,
00:13where repression is not only measured by tear gas or detentions, but in police records, frozen accounts, estimations and fear.
00:22Our correspondent Elena Rodriguez, Tesla Smart.
00:28After the 31-day strike between September and October of 2025, Ecuador did not return to calm.
00:35There was no truce.
00:36According to community leaders, what followed was a mutation of violence, more silent, more technical, more calculated.
00:43While the country returned to its routine, another phase of the conflict began in the communities, the settling of scores.
00:52We are artisans. We are indigenous people. We are junas.
00:57But they level us as terrorists, saying we are part of the Tren de Aragua.
01:06Those were not isolated accusations. They followed a pattern.
01:10Leaders of indigenous organizations faced charges of terrorism, illicit enrichment and other serious crimes.
01:16Several had their bank's account frozen. Their daily lives were blocked.
01:21For Pacha Teran, whose account has remained disabled since the strike, what happened was not improvised.
01:26It is a model imported from Israel.
01:32The repression launched by the government is now new and has pressure that we have already seen in the occupation
01:38of the Palestinian territories.
01:39For example, they took away our internet signal. They did the same there.
01:44They tested there and applied it here.
01:46They took away our electricity. They did it there and they also did it here.
01:50They took away our brains and they tried to impose narratives on us that we are terrorists, drug traffickers, illegals,
01:57minors, you name it.
02:04The accusations seem to change names, but not their objective.
02:08To wear down leaders, to isolate organizations, to delegitimize protests, to turn social mobilization into a crime and protests into
02:15a threat.
02:15For experts, criminalization no longer appears to be an exceptional reaction, but rather a state policy.
02:23It's a state terrorism that doesn't want us to get organized, doesn't want us to organize our voices, social force
02:30for defense of our rights.
02:31And that, at the same time, is killing us, is starving us, it is killing us in hospitals, it is
02:36leaving us without jobs.
02:38And there is nothing that can come of that except a legitimate popular rage.
02:42And what they are trying to do is contain that popular rage by criminalizing anyone who raises their voice at
02:49any time.
02:51While the official rhetoric speaks of order and security, the records reveal another intention, exemplary punishment.
02:58We saw there were not enough evidence to open investigations, they don't fringe their accounts.
03:04However, this has been led as a show of force on the part of the government.
03:08That is to say, at this time, every social leader or social activist is being told, look what can happen.
03:19Intimidation whose effects were quickly felt.
03:21In Ecuador, calls for new days of protests have lost momentum, but not because of social agreement or support for
03:28the government.
03:29For Yuma Cortis, what prevailed was fear.
03:32People don't want to attend because they are afraid of being arrested.
03:38They will be arrested or they will be persecuted.
03:41Let's not forget that they are stopping their opponent.
03:44The city's revolution, the indigenous movement, anyone who opposes Nogua will be persecuted.
03:51The strike ended months ago, but for those who let it, the conflict remains unresolved.
03:57Marked bodies, communities and alerts, a power that persecutes even when the noise fades away.
04:02Incluso cuando el ruido se apaga.
04:04Con imágenes de Juan Carlos Jativa, Elena Rodríguez, Telesur Ecuador.
Comments