ECUADOR: Native Leaders Call for Anti-Government Protests http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50629

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." The words of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after the 1942 defeat of Germany's forces in Africa are an apt description of the situation between the government of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

The alliance of social movements, including indigenous people's organisations, that impelled Correa, then a political novice, to unprecedented victories in two successive presidential elections, the constituent assembly that rewrote the country's constitution, two referendums and a parliamentary election, has clearly come to an end. 

At a special assembly in late February, CONAIE decided to launch a "progressive escalation" of anti-government protests, and called on workers and students to join them in rejecting what they called Correa's "neoliberal and colonialist" policies. The president, who prides himself on having done volunteer work in an indigenous village before going off to university, said the decision was "separatist," and that the indigenous people were "playing into the hands of the (political) right."