Indoamerican communism is barbarism

By Luis Fierro Carrion (*)

Twitter: @Luis_Fierro_C

The president of CONAIE, Leonidas Iza, and his co-authors (Andrés Madrid, Secretary of the Casa de la Cultura; and Andrés Tapia, communication director for CONFENIAE), conclude their book “Estallido” (Outbreak) with the phrase “The light at the end of the tunnel comes from the believed, searched and urgent affirmation: Indoamerican Communism or barbarism”.

The three of them, together with Andrés Madrid's father, Dimitri Madrid (Dean of the Faculty of Social Communication of the Central University of Ecuador) have been the visible leaders of the mariateguista movement in Ecuador.

This movement takes its name from the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, who founded the Peruvian Socialist Party in 1928, which, after his death in 1930, would become the Peruvian Communist Party, aligned with Stalinism and the Comintern.

Nevertheless, Mariátegui was an original Marxist philosopher, emphasizing the role of the indigenous masses as the authentic “proletariat” of the continent and proclaiming the need for a socialist revolution. In some way, he was ahead of Maoism, a Marxist current that also gave an important role to the peasantry (after the Japanese invasion of China, Mao launched the "Yan'an Rectification Movement" in 1942, which carried out the main deviation from the Soviet line, highlighting the importance of the peasantry as a revolutionary subject).

Other Marxist leaders who continued in this line were Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Abimael Guzmán, leader of Sendero Luminoso in Peru (the very name of his terrorist group derives from a phrase by Mariátegui: "Marxism-Leninism is the shining path of the future").

In the book "Estallido", Marxist thinkers such as Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci are cited, as well as left-wing leaders in Ecuador such as Arturo Jarrín, Tránsito Amaguaña and Fausto Vargas, among others.

Marxist groups in Ecuador have sought to infiltrate CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) since its founding. Some of them were established left-wing parties and movements (Communist Party, Socialist Party, the Maoist Marxist-Leninist Communist Party), but also groups of rebels, such as Alfaro Vive, Montoneros Patria Libre, the “Gías”, Sol Rojo, the FARC and the ELN of Colombia, among others. His cousin Leonidas Iza Quinatoa, when he was president of CONAIE, had contacts with the FARC (https://www.codigovidrio.com/code/la-conexion-ecuador-bolivia/)

CONAIE has participated in various coup attempts, in some cases successful:

- Overthrow of Jamil Mahuad in January 2000; a “National Salvation Board” claimed power for a few hours, led by Army Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, and also made up of Antonio Vargas – then president of CONAIE – and Carlos Solorzano, the former president of the Supreme Court of Justice.

- In 2005, they participated in the overthrow of their former ally, Lucio Gutiérrez.

- In October 2019, they tried to overthrow President Lenin Moreno (elected by Rafael Correa's Alianza PAIS movement, although Moreno later distanced himself from Correa and his vice president Jorge Glas, due to various corruption convictions).

- In June 2022, CONAIE led a violent strike for 18 days, which included an attempt to impeach President Guillermo Lasso led by the Correismo caucus in the Assembly. After demanding an increase in the subsidy for extra gasoline, ecopaís and diesel, they finally signed an "Agreement" with the Government.

- They had a less leading role in the overthrow of Abdalá Bucaram in 1997, which was led by the Quito middle class.

Interestingly, against Rafael Correa, who imprisoned multiple indigenous leaders and even seized CONAIE's headquarters, there was no similar indigenous strike.

It is difficult to think that a significant percentage of the “bases” of CONAIE, FENOCIN and FEINE (the three organizations that led the strike, the latter of “indigenous evangelicals”) were in agreement with this marginal Marxist tendency; but in any case Iza was elected president of CONAIE by a wide margin.

Now Iza has given a truce of 90 days, but without a doubt he will continue promoting "the tendencies of the revolutionary struggle in Ecuador", as he affirms in his book.

(*) A Spanish version of this column was published in Diario "El Universo" on July 15, 2022.

https://www.eluniverso.com/opinion/columnistas/comunismo-indoamericano-es-barbarie-nota/