Quito, Ecuador – Ecuador’s military and Napo province officials brokered a truce early Thursday, bringing a temporary end to violent protests that have interrupted the flow of crude in the nation’s two main oil pipelines.
“After these recent events in our province we have come to believe as authorities that it is time to make a decision … to declare a truce,” Gina San Miguel, Napo’s regional governor, told reporters.
The truce announced near dawn Thursday followed six hours of negotiations between army Gen. Gonzalo Meza, government Undersecretary Maria del Carmen Estupinan and a delegation of local officials in the village of El Chaco, 80 miles (130 kilometers) east of Quito.
President Alfredo Palacio declared a state of emergency in the zone Tuesday, a day after protesters raided state-owned Petroecuador’s Salado pumping station, 45 miles (70 kilometers) east of Quito, shutting the pipeline down for a day.
Protesters also seized the Sardinas pumping station, shutting the privately owned OCP pipeline and taking 24 of its employees hostage.
San Miguel was one of several local leaders of the jungle province who supported protesters’ demands that the government spend $40 million to build two highways and an airport – projects promised by former President Lucio Gutierrez, a native of the region, who was forced out of office in April 2005 and who is now imprisoned.
San Miguel and two local mayors were arrested under the state of emergency, and authorities said she remained in police custody after announcing the truce to allow further negotiations. Talks were expected to continue Thursday in Quito.
Television stations broadcast images of three people apparently shot and wounded by soldiers who were trying to repel hundreds of protesters hurling stones at them Tuesday in the town of Borja, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of Quito.
On Wednesday, two police suffered severe leg wounds from a stick of dynamite that authorities said was hurled at them by protesters and were evacuated back to the capital in an army helicopter.
Later Wednesday, 24 pipeline workers being held hostage in the Sardinas pumping station escaped when their captors let down their guard, an OCP executive told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
The two pipelines form the Andean nation’s main oil arteries in a country where exports, taxes and royalties from crude account for 43 percent of the national budget.
