We must take the resolution of the crisis and the pandemic in our hands:
For a National Public Health Committee made up of health workers and workers and peasant organizations!
For self-defense and rank and file soldiers committees that defend the workers and poor people!
Again there is a massacre by the Moreno Government against the Ecuadorian people. The pandemic is advancing rapidly in the face of the conditions of misery and hunger imposed by the capitalist system. Bleak and dismal images are seen in the streets of the province of Guayas that is the most affected, of which the capital Guayaquil (with 2.3 million inhabitants) is where the contagion is suffered the most, which would exceed 72% of the total in all of Ecuador. A city with 11.2% of its people living in misery and which is known as one of the most impoverished in the entire country.
The sick no longer have anywhere to go. With a precarious health system, hospitals are collapsed, lacking doctors or sufficient supplies, and until April 8, according to the report of the Medical College of Guayas, there were 53 dead doctors and 1600 infected and suspicious health workers (including nurses and doctors). In this way, years of disinvestment in public health by the successive governments in power are exposed, as they had been giving priority to the payment of the fraudulent external debt to the IMF and the looting of natural resources by the transnational corporations.
The sick who cry for medical attention from their homes only find the absence of the government and die in their homes. Amid helplessness and rage their relatives have either to pack them or incinerate them on the streets. The situation is tragic. In these weeks of a pandemic, images of hospitals were seen with wrapped corpses lying in the corridors. Dozens of corpses are abandoned by the state that neither takes them to the morgues, nor to the cemeteries, there are even videos of the police leaving a coffin in the middle of the street in a neighborhood. Meanwhile the government prepares refrigeration containers to lift the bodies. The number of the dead is still unknown, Moreno had to go out to say on Cadena Nacional on April 3 that: "We know that (about) both the number of infections and deaths, official records fall short." As of April 13, there are 7,529 officially registered cases of the Coronavirus and 355 deaths, but these figures are way far to reality since hundreds of deaths are seen on the streets every day. In fact, in a report by the police and the army, through their chief Jorge Wated on his twitter account today, in three weeks the removal of 771 deaths from homes and 631 from hospitals has been carried out.
The life of the exploited does not matter to the Moreno government that allows people to die like dogs. After paying 320 million dollars to the IMF, and taking advantage of the pandemic, it has decreed a quarantine and taken the police and the army out to the streets so that the hungry do not revolt. Given the increase in contagion, the government has prolonged the curfew hours nationwide (from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. until April 12), reinforcing military and police control. From 13 to 26 April, the so-called “sanitary traffic light” is in effect, to which each province will be categorized according to the risk of contagion (red, orange or green) and different restrictions are established accordingly. These weeks the entire country is in "red" which leaves all measures of the curfew in full force. The “non-compliance” by the population is sanctioned for first timers with a fine of USD100, for the second time this fine amounts to a basic salary (USD 400) and the third transgression is punished with prison. Thus, to date, more than 9,000 people have been sanctioned. So you either stay at home or due to hunger you risk looking for food in the streets where the repressive forces of the state are to quash you. For example, in the first week of April the police repressed the hungry who tried to enter the Wholesale Market of Quito, breaking the security fence, and now the area is reinforced with members of the Armed Forces.
Given this cruel situation, under the excuse of the pandemic and supported by the general labor law, the employers are firing thousands of workers. In the first week of April alone, more than 2,500 layoffs were reported, i.e. at "La Mora" farm, located in El Quinche, 110 workers were fired. Arbusta, owner of the 5 Agritab Farms flower farms in Cayambe, laid off 140 workers. Another 140 fired workers from the Confiteca company were forced to take a box of sweets and only 25% of their severance payment; however the leadership of the Workers' Unitary Front (FUT) only calls the "honest" employers to pay what they have to pay. It is clear that these leaders leave us in the hands of the bosses and the government, who have clearly showed that for them our health and life are worth nothing, they only care about their businesses and profits.
On April 3 the FUT together with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) in the leadership of Jaime Vargas called a pot-banging with the slogan "First life and then the debt, prison for the corrupt, solidarity with the popular sectors from Guayaquil". On that day Jaime Vargas declared: "... wether we are poor or rich, TODAY WE ARE ALL EQUAL". But that is a lie. In the midst of the pandemic and in order to save their business, the bosses are kicking us out of work recklessly and leave us without wages, health, food, or housing. What "equality" are they talking about? When today 27 exploited who were detained on October 12 last year continue to be prosecuted by the government, seeking to chastise the workers and peasants who have dared to rise up against the attack of imperialism by the hands of Moreno. We are not equal, the bourgeoisie does not care about the lives of the workers and the people, because in a devastated country, Moreno has allowed the spread of the coronavirus pandemic to take place, producing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
Today the Ecuadorian masses are paying for the betrayal of the leadership of the FUT and the CONAIE that last October were overpassed by the independent actions of the masses against the gasoline price increase (decree 883) that Moreno decreed on behalf of the IMF and the US imperialists. In the streets, the poor workers and peasants imposed the General Strike, paralyzing the country, and on revolutionary days they made Moreno flee to Guayaquil and prevented the army base from freely repressing, that base of private soldiers who in the streets began to pass themselves, weapons in hand, over to the people. Then it was these leaderships, who, fearing the generalized armament of the masses, brought Moreno back to power in Quito; thus the battered government was supported by the labor bureaucracy of the unions and the leadership of the peasants, and the demands of the workers came to nothing. Today, with hunger, misery and a humanitarian catastrophe, the capitalists and the government seek to chastise the masses in response to the enormous revolutionary combat that left the regime weakened and in crisis.
From the rank and file workers and peasants, FUT and CONAIE must be recovered because their collaborationist leaders have dedicated themselves to save Lenin Moreno, who today is killing the people! These kneeling leaderships ask the IMF for "moratoriums", "renegotiations" and "new non-reimbursable credits"... Enough of these collaborationist leaderships that work as advisers to our executioners!
Let the cry of October return: Down with the Moreno government! Out with the IMF!
No to the repayment of the fraudulent external debt!
Out with the UN, the OAS and the US military bases in Ecuador and Latin America!
The pandemic advances, making the people sick, and this semi-colonial capitalist system kills us. Ecuador is plundered and super exploited by imperialism and its transnational mining and oil companies with the complicity of successive governments, time ago by Correa and now by Moreno, who did not invest a penny for health, education; on the contrary they left the peasant in misery and the worker without decent wages or work.
It is time to go all the way for them. All their land, banks, factories and warehouses must be expropriated without compensation and under workers' control! We must recover hydro-carbons, oil and mines! For us to live, imperialism must be expelled from Ecuador and the entire Latin America!
At the end of October, the general staffs of the Americas' Armed Forces, under the command of the Pentagon, met in Quito to outline their plan for the recolonizing offensive in US backyard. The rank and file soldiers who refused to repress the people must return to the people! The soldiers who in October refused to repress their parents, neighbors, brothers and sons must be called to elect their leaders and end with the officer caste of pro-imperialist generals, defenders of capitalists.
For a National Public Health Committee made up of workers and peasant organizations expunged from collaborationist leaders, and committees of private soldiers who take the crisis into their hands and all the urgent measures proposed here and guarantee a Single Unified Health plan by expropriating all private clinics and laboratories without compensation and under the control of its workers.
Only thus the deaths, hunger and misery of the masses will stop! For a quarantine with wages equal to the family basket for all employed, unemployed and retired workers!
IT'S THEM OR US. While these parasites are safe in their haciendas, mansions and on the Galapagos Islands, it is us, the poor people, who leave the dead in the streets, in the parks, in our homes, in refrigerated containers, in mass graves and sometimes even do not know the whereabouts of our loved ones. We are the only ones interested in eradicating this crisis for the sake of our families. |
|
Strike of wokers of EDESA SA
against lay-offs
Strike of wokers of EDESA SA
against lay-offs
Bodies in the streets of Guayaquil
Cops dropping a coffin in the street
Jaime Vargas (CONAIE) with Lenin Moreno
Protests against the fuel hike of Moreno in October 2019
Protests against the fuel hike of Moreno in October 2019
Strike of wokers of INCASA against lay-offs
|