I would like to start by saying that I agree 100% Efrain should not have been killed. And his friend should not have been beaten. No matter what happened before that - I do not think a kill shot should have been fired. I have heard no details about any investigation into exactly how and why Efrain was killed - perhaps it will be a coverup. I just don’t know.
In fairness, I also think that given the thousands and thousands of physical interactions that occurred between the military and the protesters it is worth pointing out that the number of fatalities (three that I know of) and injuries (hundreds??) could have been a lot worse. If there is another Paro soon (I do not believe so - but there are rumors) I fear the results could be far worse.
“One is a disturbance. The other one is death.”
@beelzael uses this phrase in your post https://peakd.com/hive-126152/@beelzael/appropriate-escalation. You are calling the blocking of the Pana (and all other main other major back road alternative routes in the province) a disturbance. I want to make a quick estimate of how many people this “disturbance” affects.
- I estimate that if I stand on the Pana for any normal 24 hour day I will see an average of 10 vehicles per minute (5 in each direction) travelling on this road for about 18 hours out of each day. For some hours it will be much more than that - for other hours maybe not quite that many. It’s a guess but it cannot be too far off.
- That means there are 10 * 60 * 18 * 7 = 75,000 vehicles per week.
If we were to ask each one of these travellers “Where are you going? And Why?” we would surely get a variety of answers! I will just make a few up!
- I am going to my son’s birthday party
- I am going to meet my friends to play pickleball
- I am going to my mother’s funeral.
- I am going for a doctor checkup in Quito.
- I am going to work.
- I am going to school.
- I am going to eat at my favorite restaurant.
- I am going shopping.
- I am a truck driver - I am bringing goods from the north to sell in Quito.
- I am a truck driver - I am bringing goods from Quito to sell in Ibarra.
- I am a bus driver - I have 30 people on the bus and I have no idea why the passengers are on the bus.
I doubt there will be one driver that says he is just going for a drive - no particular reason.
I want to point out that my estimate says we have 75,000 vehicles. Counting buses we must have twice that number of actual people in those vehicles. I will also point out that on this section of the Pana in front of my house there is a toll booth. Each vehicle pays $1 each way to help build and maintain this road so people can travel on it. Many of the vehicles travel this road on a daily basis to/from work or school so this amounts to paying $10 per week.
This is Not a “Protest”. It is Not a “Disturbance”.
If you tell a few people they cannot use the Pana to travel from Ibarra to Otavalo using an automobile you could call this a disturbance. But when you tell 75,000 vehicles they cannot travel between Ibarra and Otavalo for a week it is way more than a disturbance. This affects in a big way the entire economy of the area. And it also affects individual people in ways that are just not possible to measure. And you are also saying that there is no plan for when they will be able to travel on this route again. No way to know!
Telling this many people who have no say in your decision at all they cannot travel on this road for an indefinite length of time is just not right. These are public roads, paid for by taxes and tolls by all the citizens of Ecuador. People have every right to expect to be able to travel on these roads. I believe that when a Paro blocks all these roads it is illegal but I don’t know exactly what crime I would charge the protesters with. I have no legal expertise in either the US or in Ecuador.
But in my opinion these Paros clearly violates the golden rule I learned in first grade “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. And I know if I was the president of Ecuador I would consider it my duty to keep these roads clear for everyone to use safely. I would not wait a week or even one whole day before doing something to clear the roads.
To make a comparison - my wife about 6 or 9 months ago decided to do a march to make people aware of the “Pachamama Green” group that she is part of in Cotacachi. This group wanted to march around the streets of Cotacachi with some banners to promote their cause. To get permission for this march to block a few roads in downtown Cotacachi for approximately one hour this group needed to get permission from the following people:
- National Commissary
- Municipal Commissary
- Fire Chief
- Hospital
- Police
All these people had to sign off before they can legally march the streets of Cotacachi for one hour. There were always other roads to use to dodge our little march for those that wanted to go on their way.
Yet the protesters of the Paro believe that they need no permission from anybody to decide by a vote only they can participate in to close the Pana and all alternate routes indefinitely until they decide to end the Paro. It comes as no surprise to me when we see these Paros do not end well.
What I Hope for Going Forward
I hope it will be a long time before we see another Paro (actually - never would be good for me).
But also - perhaps even a bigger problem Ecuador faces is a complete lack of trust in the government from many of its citizens. It would really help if we could see very soon a popular program implemented that directly assists some of the poorer people in the country. I would recommend listening to this guy for some ideas here.
Some thoughts from Fidel Acero, nativo de Cangahua, Cayambe.
It goes into the very deep question of "How much is one life worth?" - even though it wasn't intended. I'm pretty sure that the deaths weren't, but a consequence of the bias created by abuse of information, as well as other circumstances that lead to military shooting sharp. I've always struggled with sacrificing life for the economy. If the strike would've started to starve people and become more than an inconvenience (which it was for most people, except some singular cases), then yes, we're at the trolly problem.
There was a humanitarian corridor, which worked well in most of the cases - what we hear about are usually the exceptions. Climbing over barricades, changing vehicles, getting passes, yes, that's inconvenient. But it's not life threatening.
Nobody was starving. That's why I see the argument of economy as a very macabre argument to justify the excess of violence.
As I wrote in my second post about it, there are indeed many other factors that lead to the tragic events, the two deaths through shots. But using money-not-made as an argument to justify all those injuries and the three dead? That's disgusting in my eyes, and I hope I understood that wrong somehow. I personally can't ever put money over humans. In any way. As said and written, there are many other arguments.
As to the bureaucracy - yes, that's like it everywhere. But as well as everywhere - as soon as you get a critical mass, you can more or less do what you want. I wrote about that as well, how the protesters became a state within the state - unfortunately, with the same flaws, too. If your wife gets a critical mass together, she'll be able to do the same. We've done it, with bikes in Ibarra, 12 years ago. Becoming so many biking down the road that nobody could do anything against it, creating awareness for bicycles. In the end, it became famous enough to be supported by municipality and police.
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You seem to take as the starting point: “The protesters have blocked all the roads” and then all the injuries and deaths that happen after that are the government's (and military’s) problem.
That is just wrong. The starting point is when the indigenous say “We are going to close all the roads in the Province”. And if it was up to UNORCAC they would do it for the entire country. They should take at least some of the responsibility for what happens after they block the roads. After all - it is not difficult to predict that deaths and injuries will occur eventually. I predicted it - and I’m just a foreigner who doesn’t speak Spanish.
My argument about the true cost of closing the roads is not just about money at all. Look at all those reasons I list for why people are on the road. Here are a couple more that I did not list:
There are 75,000 stories every week about the true cost of closing all these roads. There is no way anybody can really estimate it. Obviously - I think it costs a lot more than whatever benefit anybody gets out of it. In this last Paro I don't think there was any tangible benefit at all (something I also predicted from day 0 of the Paro).
Yeah, it looks like the true argument is about preserving the privilege of playing pickleball. Seriously...
And yes, those are exceptions. I know as many people who never had any problem as I know those who did. Depended on the time of the day and the people at the corridor. And I'm not saying that the paro was a good thing or thought through or beneficial, I think quite the opposite is the case and how it was done was incredibly counter productive - I just wholeheartedly reject your arguments of economy and privilege to justify the killing and injuries. You have many good arguments, that's why it surprises me that you go all in on those two.
Also, the starting point was the governments decision to break their word and take away the subsidies for Diesel abruptly. Unfortunately, the civil organizations fell for that trap, as we discussed before. And if you could predict that outcome - the government could predict that 10 times over. As I said before, they're not my kind of people, but they're very smart.
OK - we agree on a lot more than we disagree on.
I think this concludes my contributions to discussions on Paros!
Going to move on with a discussion of speedbumps - coming soon!
Looking forward to it!