Quito, Ecuador — More than 1,000 Indians and leftists marched on Thursday in protest against Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez’s IMF-backed economic program, which includes plans to raise fuel prices and taxes and make it easier to fire workers.
Heavy security overshadowed the protests in the Ecuadorean capital Quito as hundreds of police in camouflage and riot gear stood guard outside Congress and government buildings.
Officers outside the legislature estimated that about 1,300 people had joined the march. Previous mass protests in Ecuador, a South American nation with a history of toppling leaders in popular uprisings, had been bigger.
Demonstrators carrying the red flag of the communist party denounced Gutierrez’s economic policies, implemented under a $205 million loan from the International Monetary Fund.
The government’s austerity measures have won praise from economists but raised opposition from poor Ecuadoreans, who make up the majority of the Andean nation’s population.
The country’s biggest indigenous organizations did not participate in Thursday’s march.
Two of Ecuador’s presidents have been toppled since 1997 in popular revolts. Gutierrez, a retired army colonel who led an uprising against former President Jamil Mahuad in 2000, was elected due to support from leftists and Indians.
His former backers have branded him a traitor for doing a deal with the IMF.
