All posts tagged history

Can Peru’s Democracy Recover?

By Cynthia McClintock*

Photographs from the early hours of the Generation Z protest in Peru, 2025
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Since 2021, democratic backsliding has been severe in Peru, and Peruvians are furious. Peru’s Congress is loathed. In 2025, the approval rating for Peru’s President, Dina Boluarte, fell below 3 percent and she became the most unpopular president on the planet. Finally, in October, Boluarte was impeached on the grounds of “permanent moral incapacity”; it was the fifth time since 2018 that a president had been impeached or had resigned upon imminent impeachment.  Per Peru’s constitution, Boluarte was succeeded by the Congress Speaker, José Jerí. Presidential and Congressional elections are scheduled for early 2026.

Why are Peruvians so angry? What does their anger mean for the 2026 elections (with the Congressional elections and the first round of the presidential elections scheduled for April 12 and a likely runoff on June 7)? Is it possible that the elections can lead to a democratic recovery?

Why are Peruvians So Angry?

The key reason is not “the economy stupid,” but an escalation of organized crime and the perception that Peru’s political leaders are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Between 2019 and 2024 the number of homicides doubled and the number of reported extortions jumped sixfold. Extortion is hurting huge swathes of lower-middle class Peruvians. Transport workers have been particularly vulnerable; so far in 2025, approximately 50 bus drivers have been killed for refusing to make extortion payments.

The reasons behind the crime escalation are various. Demand for cocaine remains high and, over the last decade, Peru’s coca cultivation has increased. As the price for gold jumped, so did illegal gold mining. Peru’s gangs are fragmented—and therefore hard to track—and they have developed nefarious new strategies such as using WhatsApp for extortion.

But, Peruvians believe, the reasons also include the government’s complicity. In part because illicit operators have provided campaign finance, in 2024 approximately half of Peru’s legislators were under criminal investigation; these same legislators have passed laws to impede investigations and prosecutions. Boluarte herself is under investigation for various crimes, including illicit enrichment. She sported a Rolex watch priced at $19,000, despite no evident financial means for such extravagance.

Further, from the start large percentages of Peruvians did not deem Boluarte a legitimate president. In 2021-2022, Boluarte was Vice President under President Pedro Castillo. Leading a far-left party in fraught elections during COVID, Castillo was an accidental, unprepared president. He was virulently opposed by the dominant right-wing forces in Congress, in particular Fuerza Popular, the party of Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former authoritarian President Alberto Fujimori. As Vice President, Boluarte had said that, if Castillo were impeached, she too would resign, triggering new elections. However, in the event of Castillo’s December 2022 impeachment, Boluarte stayed on, despite massive protests and ubiquitous calls for new elections.

As President, Boluarte appeared indifferent to Peruvians’ concerns. Between December 2022 and February 2023, 49 civilian protesters were killed by the security forces. Boluarte’s response was support for an amnesty law. And, amid an October 2025 transport workers’ strike, Boluarte’s advice to Peruvians worried about crime was that they should not open text messages from unfamiliar people—placing blame for crimes on the victims.

What Does Peruvians’ Anger Mean for the 2026 Elections?

Peruvians’ anger spells difficulties for its incumbent parties and advantages for parties that can claim an “outsider” mantle. Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular is widely considered the dominant party in the Congress, and it will struggle against this perception. Its presidential candidate, Fujimori, is running for the fourth time and is likely to have worn out her welcome.

Not surprisingly, demands for an “iron fist” against crime are strong. The current presidential frontrunner is Renovación Popular’s Rafael López Aliaga (aka “Porky”), a Trump-like far-rightist who placed third in the 2021 election and was subsequently elected Lima’s mayor. López Aliaga promises a hardline strategy against organized crime, including implementing similar imprisonment policies to those of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. But Renovación Popular holds the fourth largest number of seats in Congress and it will be difficult for López Aliaga to claim an “outsider” mantle.

A candidate likely to claim an “outsider” mantle is Mario Vizcarra, running as a proxy for his brother, former President Martín Vizcarra. As President in 2018-2020, Vizcarra confronted the dominant parties in Peru’s Congress, building his popularity but ultimately catalyzing his impeachment. After a strong showing in Peru’s 2021 legislative elections, he was disqualified from holding elected office for ten years. Yet, Vizcarra’s government was far from without fault. There are other candidates, including the popular former clown, Carlos Álvarez, who could seize the “outsider” mantle.

Can Peru’s 2026 Elections Lead to Democratic Recovery?

The challenges to Peru’s elections are serious. In recent years Fuerza Popular and other illiberal parties in Peru’s Congress have allied to skew the electoral playing field in their favor.  Interim President Jerí is, of course, new to his position and his possible impact on the elections is unclear. (His first-month record was better than was first expected.)

As elsewhere in Latin America, Peru’s illiberal parties have strategized to achieve the disqualification of viable candidates. As indicated, this strategy is currently being used against Vizcarra; it could also be used against a rising new candidate.

Peru’s illiberal parties have calculated that a plethora of candidates is in their interest. Currently, 39 party lists are registered. Such a head-spinning number is problematic for journalists trying to cover the campaign and problematic for voters trying to identify their preferred candidate, especially because pre-election polls are more likely to be inaccurate. Yet, Peru’s Congress cancelled a provision for a preliminary round of voting, in which parties would have been required to secure 1.5 percent of the vote in order to qualify for the “first round.”

Still, there are grounds for optimism. The massive protests of recent years have shown that Peruvians want their political views heard. Peruvians recognize the importance of honest, capable leadership and want to find it.

*Cynthia McClintock is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University.

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by clalsstaff on November 12, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 12, 2025

https://aulablog.net/2025/11/12/can-perus-democracy-recover/

Bolivia Decisively Enters New If Unknown Political Territory

By Robert Albro, Associate Director, CLALS

Rodrigo Paz is sworn in as president of Bolivia, 2025
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Centrist Rodrigo Paz’s victory in October’s runoff election signals a dramatic change of direction for Bolivian politics. The era of dominance of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, led by ex-president Evo Morales, is definitively over. For only the second time since 2006 the MAS will not control the presidency. As a result of the recent election, it now has a mere two representatives in the legislature’s lower house, and no one in the upper house. Though it does not hold an outright majority, Paz’s Christian Democratic Party is now the single largest presence in both legislative chambers. How did Bolivia get here?

Twenty years ago, the leftist-populist MAS swept into power, as a new and energetic grassroots alternative to the elite-run traditional parties that had traded off governing Bolivia since the end of dictatorship in 1982, or one could even argue, since the 1952 Revolution. The MAS’s popularity sprung largely from the dynamism of Morales, himself, then a coca grower union leader adept at organizing and leading large-scale protests in opposition to prevailing Washington Consensus policies and government efforts to sell off Bolivia’s non-renewable resources to transnational corporate interests. The MAS styled itself a bottom-up social movement and not a party. Its participatory “lead by following” approach to governance appealed to a great majority of indigenous voters and working-class people of indigenous descent.

Morales and the MAS proved historically consequential in undertaking a contentious but innovative rewrite of the country’s Constitution, which went into force in 2009. It fully embraced Bolivia’s “plurinational” identity and incorporated an unprecedented variety of collective indigenous rights of consultation, to their traditional territories, and perhaps most controversially, of judicial autonomy. The Morales administration also used a large surplus from the country’s extractive boom to finance a wide range of new social safety net provisions that halved the number of people living in poverty, including cash transfers to families, a pension program, minimum wage increase, as well as public investments in schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure. Perhaps most importantly, his presidency raised the public visibility of Bolivia’s indigenous majority, no longer as second class citizens but as political protagonists of their own present and future.

Morales and the MAS were immensely popular. But then cracks began to appear. In 2011 a plan to build a controversial highway through a protected indigenous reserve brought the MAS government into direct conflict with the reserve’s residents, damaging its support among some indigenous groups. When the extractive boom ended around 2014, Bolivia’s economy slowed considerably, and the MAS fiscal policies that had lifted so many out of poverty became increasingly unsustainable. Part of the problem was Morales, who served two presidential terms and aspired to another, without any thought to a succession plan. Constitutionally limited to two terms, in 2016 he soundly lost a national referendum in a bid for a third and then ignored the result, further alienating many former supporters.

The upheaval around the contested 2019 election, which eventuated in Morales going into exile in Mexico and the persecution of MAS loyalists by a rightwing caretaker government, set the stage for the party’s eventual fall from grace. The 2020 election restored the MAS to power. But soon Morales and the new president, his ex-finance minister Luis Arce, were in a pitched battle for control over the party, a bitter and increasingly personal rivalry that fatally fragmented the MAS into opposed camps. Their protracted feud, which paralyzed congress, strayed into surreal territory, with accusations of a staged coup and mutual assassination attempts. The credibility of the MAS was so fundamentally damaged that the incumbent Arce, with his poll numbers plummeting, suspended his campaign. Morales, meanwhile, remains holed up in his coca grower redoubt to avoid criminal charges.

The MAS-led government’s political fragmentation, and its ineffectual response to Bolivia’s increasingly disastrous economy, have left the party deeply unpopular. The country is currently floundering amid its worst economic crisis in 40 years. Its natural gas production is half of what it was in 2014, with nothing to replace it. Bolivia has failed to develop its large reserves of lithium. Depleted currency reserves and a scarcity of US dollars have driven up inflation, creating severe shortages of fuel and basic goods. Over the past year, ordinary Bolivians have angrily expressed their discontent with the country’s economic collapse through repeated strikes and protest actions.

Emerging from this bleak political and economic state-of-affairs is the surprise election winner, Rodrigo Paz. Son of onetime leftist president Jaime Paz Zamora, former mayor of Tarija, and recently a senator, Paz’s campaign focused on restoring Bolivia’s economy, but gradually rather than by instituting sweeping fiscal austerity measures as his rival in the run-off proposed. Non-indigenous, pro-business, and ideology averse, Paz successfully positioned himself as a pragmatic reformer. He has delivered a strong anti-corruption message, pledged to restore relations with the US and bring back foreign investment. His populist call for a “capitalism for all” hopes to thread the needle by mixing decentralization, lower taxes, support for small businesses, and greater fiscal discipline, with continued spending on popular MAS-era social programs.

Paz’s critics argue that what he proposes is an impossible fiscal balancing act. Desperate and impatient Bolivians will expect immediate results. But it remains far from clear whether Paz will be able to overcome likely regional opposition to at least some of his policies. And if he does not stabilize the country’s dysfunctional economy quickly, Paz’s political honeymoon might be brief.

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by clalsstaff on November 11, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 11, 2025

https://aulablog.net/2025/11/11/bolivia-decisively-enters-new-if-unknown-political-territory/

The Rise, Decline, and Crisis of Ecuador’s Indigenous Movement

By Dr. Pablo Andrade Andrade

October 17 Demonstrations (Manifestaciones del 17 de Octubre)
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Just six years ago, in 2019, the three major organizations of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement were on the rise. CONAIE (the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador) led the charge against Lenin Moreno’s government. For eleven days their widespread demonstrations posed a serious threat to the government’s stability. The “Paro Nacional” (Nationwide Strike) not only facilitated CONAIE’s alliances with the other two indigenous organizations (FENOCIN, the Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas y Negras, and FEINE, the Federación Ecuatoriana de Indígenas Evangélicos) but also broadened its coalition with a diverse range of civil society organizations, marking a significant shift in Ecuadorian politics. The impact of the indigenous movement on Ecuadorian politics was profound, as Moreno´s government was seriously weakened. Two years later, in 2021, CONAIE’s political party, Pachakutik, won substantial representation in the National Assembly and placed third in the Presidential elections.

In 2022 CONAIE’s president, Leonidas Iza, led a successful national strike against Guillermo Lasso’s right-wing government. His leadership, bolstered by unity among indigenous communities and their allies, made it the most powerful leftist organization. Newfound solidarity among indigenous communities and stronger ties with student, feminist, and environmental movements, enhanced Iza’s national and international reputation. Less than a year later, President Lasso had to end his term and called for early general elections. However, at that moment Iza´s radical wing of CONAIE also attempted to impose its agenda over Pachakutik and the Amazonian federation CONFENIAE, which proved to be a high-cost strategy. The internal conflicts that followed led, in 2025, to the most serious electoral defeats that both organizations had suffered in decades.

The 2023 general elections were marred by prison massacres and political assassinations, including that of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and the mayor of Manta, among numerous other government officials. Amid this unprecedented turmoil, a young center-right candidate, Daniel Noboa, emerged victorious as interim president. His win signaled yet another shift in Ecuador’s political landscape, with the country’s fragile democracy once again at the mercy of a personalist, plebiscitarian president.

The first warning sign of the current political turn to populist rule came with the 2025 regular election. The President’s party (Alianza Democrática Nacional, ADN) and the opposition party (Revolución Ciudadana, RC) totalled over 80 percent of National Assembly representatives. Noboa won his first five-year mandate. Pachakutik saw its representation shrink to five members, who the government rapidly coopted. Free from legislative checks, Noboa advanced his economic adjustment program. In addition, amid the ongoing public security crisis, Noboa expanded the military’s role in maintaining domestic order. Although assassinations have risen since 2023, militarization has strengthened Noboa’s control over organized violence, boosting political support for his government.

As part of its economic program, in September 2025, the Noboa administration raised diesel prices, a decision that in 2021 and 2022 sparked the wrath of CONAIE. But the leaders misjudged the lasting strength gained in 2021 and 2022, failing to account for damage from the 2023 and 2025 leadership races. As a result, they  rushed to emulate the apparent successes of the past. This time, however, CONAIE was at its lowest point. Unable to coordinate a nationwide strike, organizations in the northern province of Imbabura were left to their fate. The indigenous peoples of Cotacachi, Ilumán, Peguche, and Otavalo sustained demonstrations for a month. Still, they paid a high price in lost lives, injured people, and detainees due to systematic and brutal repression at the hands of the Armed Forces and the Police. This time, the government did not back down; the solidarity of  allied urban groups was, in this case, mostly symbolic and ineffective.

If CONAIE’s crisis should not be seen as the end of the indigenous movement, its significance cannot be overlooked. While grassroots mobilization once seemed effective, Noboa’s strong appeal and military support present new challenges. The aftermath of the national strike has called into question CONAIE’s representativeness and capacity to organize. An emboldened Noboa is now proposing a national plebiscite, in which he will likely be victorious, while Ecuador’s civil society appears weaker than ever. The challenges ahead are complex. The failed challenge to Noboa´s government could herald a new era of competitive authoritarianism, a scenario made even more likely by renewed international tolerance of hybrid forms of democracy. The lost battle left the indigenous organizations of Imbabura with wounds that could be challenging to heal, and racism lurks underneath the surface of Ecuador’s still young experiment with intercultural co-governance.

Pablo Andrade Andrade is Professor and Chair of the Germánico Salgado Lectures, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar

*This post continues an ongoing series, as part of CLALS’s Ecuador Initiative, examining the country’s economic, governance, security, and societal challenges, made possible with generous support from Dr. Maria Donoso Clark, CAS/PhD ’91.

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by clalsstaff on November 6, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 6, 2025

https://aulablog.net/2025/11/06/the-rise-decline-and-crisis-of-ecuadors-indigenous-movement/

The First Freedom

The First Freedom: How We Lost Sight of Our Oldest Right—The Freedom of Movement

By Bashir Mobasher  

Image: David Peinado Romero / shutterstock.com

Today, when we speak of migration, we no longer picture the awe-inspiring journeys of Herodotus, Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, or James Cook, men who ventured across oceans and deserts, through empires and unknown lands without needing a permit to enter and sometimes even received an audience with curious royalties.[1] We forget that their stories represent countless others, unnamed, unrecorded. We overlook the migration of the earliest human, homo erectus and homo sapiens, those bold crossings over mountains and plains, rivers and seas, islands and continents, by people who knew no boundaries, only the pull of necessity, survival, and discovery. They exercised the most ancient human freedom: the freedom to migrate.

Now, when we hear the word migration, our minds leap not to the journey, but to borders, passports, patrols, visas. We ask whether someone’s movement is legal or illegal, allowed or forbidden. We debate thresholds and quotas, risks and threats. Rarely do we ask the more human question: Does a person have the right to move freely? Doesn’t a person have the right to seek safety, pursue happiness, or simply adventure elsewhere?

What once seemed instinctive is now seen as impermissible, unnatural, even immoral. But this distorted view of movement is astonishingly new. It is newer than carriages and clocks, than spectacles and telescopes. For most of human history, the idea that one needed permission to move would have been absurd. Questioning human migration was questioning human nature—it still is. For over 90% of our existence as hunter-gatherers, humans were entirely dependent on movement.

Even with the rise of agriculture and the building of cities, migration between spaces remained natural to individual and social life. Entire communities shifted with the seasons. Trade and travel routes like the Silk Road, the trans-Saharan highways were arteries of constant movement. Nomadic peoples endured. Even the settled recognized migration as a response to drought, war, or opportunity. One needed no reason, or any reason would suffice.

This right to move is older than nearly all others. It predates the right to property, that most revered right in American political mythology. Property only became relevant when humans began to fence off land. Even the American settlers who enshrined property rights had to first migrate across oceans and continents to claim the land often by force. The right to the ‘pursuit of happiness’, enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence (1776), presupposes freedom of movement. Before there was freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to vote, or the right to due process, there was the right to migrate. Kings and empires might silence your tongue, outlaw your prayers, chain your thoughts, but they rarely questioned your decision to migrate. To migrate was beyond question. Often, it was the only freedom you could use to protect other personal rights by going to a new place. As the most respected freedom, it was the guardian of all other rights and freedoms.

Ancient thinkers, and traditions revered it as a sacred endeavour. Herodotus wrote, “Human prosperity never abides long in one place.” Aristotle saw migration as part of the natural order, while Socrates found it preceded new polities and civilizations. Religious traditions elevated migration into a moral duty: Abraham’s journey across deserts, the Exodus of the Israelites, the disciples’ missions across lands and cultures, and the Prophet Muhammad’s Hijra from Mecca to Medina were not mere detours or escapes. They were profound tales of faith, survival, and liberation in these traditions. Similarly, the Buddha’s Great Renunciation, the exiles in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and the Anishinaabe migration were considered sacred journeys in these traditions shaping both the self and the world.

And yet today, that great engine of human history has been stalled. The rise of modern nation-states, colonial cartographies, and rigid immigration regimes has replaced this freedom with control. The invention of passports, visa systems, and surveillance bureaucracies has shackled what was once humanity’s most basic instinct. A species that roamed the earth for millennia now finds itself trapped inside boxes, walled by citizenship papers, embassies, fences, and checkpoints.

Ironically, it was the very colonial powers who once championed expeditions, economic and political adventurism, and settlement expansion that later rebranded rather more peaceful and kinder versions as a threat. The same empires that moved freely across oceans and continents in search of resources and dominion turned around to criminalize movement when it came from the margins. They eagerly promoted a pantheon of liberal rights, including free speech, religion, property, and even humanitarian intervention, but withheld the most ancient and universal of them all: the freedom of movement.

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, freedom of movement was included but subtly severed from the act of migration. A quiet sleight of hand. The right to leave was affirmed; the right to enter was not. It was a masterstroke of legal illusion, a political magic trick from the Western sleeve that has since cast a spell over global consciousness. A disillusion so complete, we forgot that the right to move was indeed the right to migrate; and it was never theirs to define, give or take. It was ours all along.

They even manufactured some baseless rights like preemptive self-defence, preemptive strikes, trade liberalization, and economic embargo, but somehow framed the right to migrate as too unrealistic, too disruptive, too dangerous to recognize. Denying the right to free movement has never been merely a matter of security or order; it reflects much deeper structural concerns. Facilitating and even coercing the flow of capital and resources from the Global South while restricting the movement of people ensures that global inequality remains entrenched, locking entire populations into structural disadvantage. These deeply embedded, often racialized, immigration systems have historically privileged certain regions and populations over others.

This redefinition has traveled far beyond its Western origins. For example, it is not only the United States or Germany that now deport Afghans, the very people they once claimed to protect. So too does Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan, who call Afghans their ‘Muslim brethren’, their ‘cultural kin’, their ‘linguistic neighbours’. Yet all these words evaporate at the border. Solidarity collapses at the gate.
Today, we no longer speak of migration as a right. We speak of it as a problem. A crime, a disruption to be managed. The image of the migrant has shifted from that of a seeker or survivor to that of an invader. We no longer greet them with wonder. We do not ask about their journeys, their struggles, their dreams. We fear them. Our attention has shifted from people to policies, from humanity to geography. We have created a world where those most in need of movement are the most forbidden to move. People are trapped in war zones, failing economies, and ecological disasters, not because they cannot escape, but because they are not allowed to. The powerful still glide across borders with ease; the vulnerable are held hostage by the coordinates of their birth. Worse still, this system has seeded hatred and xenophobia, nationalism, and exploitation. It has enabled trafficking where safe passage is denied. It has weaponized difference and built moral hierarchies out of geography. Borders are no longer lines; they are Great Walls of China, dividing people, excluding them.

To forget this freedom is not only to forget our past; it is to endanger our future. In boxing humanity into artificial lines, we have betrayed the very idea of freedom. We have turned a natural preservation instinct, a birthright, into a crime. We have silenced the journey. And in doing so, we have not only lost sight of our first freedom; we have lost a piece of what it means to be human.
 

[1] The empires were, however, hesitant to let Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo leave because they needed their services, not because they had some random law about migrations.

Dr. Bashir Mobasher teaches at the American University (DC) Department of Sociology, New York University DC, and the American University of Afghanistan Departments of Political Science. Dr. Bashir is the current President of Afghanistan Law and Political Science Association (in Exile). He is an expert in comparative constitutional law, identity politics, and human rights. He has authored, reviewed, and supervised numerous research projects on constitutional law, electoral systems, and identity politics. His recent research projects are centered around decentralization, social justice, and orientalism. Bashir obtained his B.A. (2007) from the School of Law and Political Science at Kabul University and his LLM (2010) and PhD (2017) from the University of Washington School of Law.

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by clalsstaff on September 2, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 2, 2025

https://aulablog.net/2025/09/02/the-first-freedom/

Beyond the ITT Initiative: How Ecuador’s Civil Society Reclaimed the Future of Yasuní

By Edgar Aguilar

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Photo from flickr

The failure of Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative in 2013—an internationally recognized proposal to leave oil in the ground in exchange for global compensation—sparked a nationwide civic response. Civil society actors mobilized not only to oppose oil drilling in Yasuní National Park but to redefine what environmental governance could look like in Ecuador’s constitutional context.

Indigenous federations condemned threats to ancestral territory and the rights of uncontacted peoples. Environmental organizations cited Yasuní’s status as one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. Youth activists framed the issue around climate justice and generational rights. Meanwhile, oil producing communities, local governments and the state oil company defended drilling as a source of critical state revenue and social investment.

In this context, YASunidos was born. Formed in 2013 by a coalition of artists, students, lawyers, environmentalists, and Indigenous youth. YASunidos set out to trigger a national referendum to halt extraction in Block 43. By early 2014 it collected over 756,000 signatures—well above the legal threshold. Yet Ecuador’s National Electoral Council invalidated more than half on technical grounds, effectively blocking the referendum.

Over the next decade, YASunidos evolved. Faced with institutional barriers, the group pursued a multi-pronged strategy: legal challenges in domestic and international courts, cultural campaigns, public education, and transnational alliances. Their demands were anchored in Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, which enshrines both the Rights of Nature and participatory democracy, a globally unique legal foundation that positioned extraction in Yasuní not only as an environmental threat but as a constitutional violation.

Crucially, YASunidos helped keep the issue in the national spotlight. Even when the media cycle moved on or administrations changed, they maintained public pressure. Through sustained outreach and alliances with indigenous federations, human rights defenders, and global environmental networks, the group broadened its message and constituency. Rather than frame Yasuní as a niche ecological issue, they positioned it as a symbol of the country’s democratic and development crossroads.

That civic pressure paid off. In May 2023, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court approved a binding referendum on oil drilling in Block 43. On August 20, nearly 60 percent of Ecuadorian voters opted to halt extraction, which marked the first time a national electorate democratically voted to leave oil in the ground. The result was globally unprecedented, representing a major step in participatory environmental governance.

Still, the vote revealed important nuances. In oil-producing provinces like Orellana and Sucumbíos, where jobs and infrastructure depend on extraction, a majority voted to continue drilling. These regional differences underscored a key tension: while many voters perceived few benefits from extractive activity despite its costs, others remain economically dependent on it. Civil society’s challenge was—and remains—to articulate a just transition that resonates across these divides.

Following the vote, the Ministry of Energy announced plans to decommission the Ishpingo B-56 well, beginning a phased shutdown of Block 43. The court-mandated timeline requires full dismantling within one year, though the Energy Ministry estimates the process will take five years and cost over $1.3 billion. Whether the state follows through remains uncertain, which makes the ongoing need for civil society oversight critical.

The Yasuní case shows how civil society can do more than resist. It can reshape national debates. YASunidos didn’t just oppose drilling; the coalition reframed it as a matter of constitutionality and democratic participation. By grounding its message in Ecuador’s legal framework and sustaining civic pressure over time, it turned an aborted referendum into a test of the country’s democratic and legal architecture.

The coalition’s success also underscores the value of adaptability. When formal avenues were blocked, YASunidos shifted tactics. They combined litigation, media, and grassroots organizing, without losing focus. Few civic movements sustain relevance over a decade, let alone drive constitutional interpretation and national decision-making. YASunidos did both.

Finally, the decade-long social discourse around Yasuní demonstrates that public debate matters. It was not just a legal battle, but a cultural and moral one about how Ecuador defines development and whose voices count. The 2023 referendum wasn’t the end of that conversation, but a civic milestone in a much longer struggle.

As Ecuador begins to implement the results of the referendum, civil society remains a critical force not only in holding the government accountable but in imagining and advancing alternatives that confront the complex realities on the ground. In many oil-producing regions, communities have received some benefits—such as jobs or infrastructure—but have also shouldered the heaviest environmental and health burdens. The perceived gains have often been limited, unevenly distributed, and insufficient to justify the long-term damage. YASunidos demonstrated that civic engagement can do more than just oppose extractivism. It can defend rights, reframe national debates, and build lasting democratic momentum.

Edgar Aguilar is a Researcher at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and a graduate student in International Economics at American University

Edited by Rob Albro, Associate Director, Research, at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies

*This post continues an ongoing series, as part of CLALS’s Ecuador Initiative, examining the country’s economic, governance, security, and societal challenges, made possible with generous support from Dr. Maria Donoso Clark, CAS/PhD ’91.

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by clalsstaff on April 11, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Ecuador, South America
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 11, 2025

https://aulablog.net/2025/04/11/beyond-the-itt-initiative/

Innocence Suspended: From Seeking Security to the Guantanamo Concentration Camp

Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera graduating from high school in Venezuela (Photo courtesy of his family; Source: Migrant Insider)

Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera graduating from high school in Venezuela (Photo courtesy of his family; Source: Migrant Insider)

The story of Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera, a Venezuelan asylum seeker, has gone viral on TikTok and gained media coverage. Castillo is a man without any criminal history or gang affiliation who entered the United States through a legal pathway. In 2024, this Venezuelan asylum seeker flew to Mexico and awaited his court date. Once he received his appointment date on the CBPOne app on January 19th, 2025, he presented himself at the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, where he was processed by immigration authorities and held in detention for no given reason. At the ICE detention center in El Paso, authorities started to question his tattoos, specifically one he had of Michael Jordan. Authorities claimed his Jordan tattoo was affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua. Many of the tattoos identified by a law enforcement list as used by Tren de Aragua, including stars, roses, tigers, and jaguars, are common among Americans. These so-called identifiers may just be a flimsy pretense for criminalizing the average, non-criminal migrant.

Castillo in a photo released by the Department of Homeland Security of the first flight of migrants preparing to takeoff for Guantanamo Bay, Feb. 4, 2025. DHS

Castillo in a photo released by the Department of Homeland Security of the first flight of migrants preparing to takeoff for Guantanamo Bay, Feb. 4, 2025. DHS

On February 3rd, Castillo told his family that he would be deported to Venezuela, even without a hearing. The next day, he lost contact with his family and was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on February 4th. President Trump stated he is sending those who have committed crimes in the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay, but Castillo had no criminal history nor gang affiliation and never even had the chance to freely step foot in the U.S.

Castillo’s family was not notified that he would be held at the “longest-running war prison.” His family members only found out about this after seeing pictures online of migrants arriving in Guantanamo Bay. When his family searched for him on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, it appeared he was still in the processing center in El Paso, Texas. Attorneys are calling Guantanamo Bay a “legal black hole,” a place where typical legal protections do not exist for some of the detainees. Some are being held without due process indefinitely without trial or conviction, including thousands of Haitian refugees in the 1990s and almost 800 Muslim men, including minors, over the past two decades. Some of these prisoners have endured incredible physical and psychological abuse and torture in this extralegal space.

Now, the first group sent to Guantanamo Bay, including low-risk migrants and migrants with no criminal record, such as Castillo, were detained in the “counterterrorism suspect” part of the prison – rather than the Migrant Operations Center used in the past to process migrants. The conditions these individuals are facing at this maximum-security prison are inhumane, including mold, undrinkable water, and a lack of adequate medical care. Guantanamo Bay does not even meet the minimum safety standards for detention facilities as set by the U.S. government. Furthermore, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are subject to permanent physical and psychological trauma.

A less-known but recent story close to home is one where five migrants in North Florida went into a gas station to grab breakfast on the way to their construction job on January 27th and were detained by ICE. Four of them remain detained in Florida. One of them, a Mexican man name Jose Angel Juarez, was sent to Guantanamo Bay; the rumors go that he would be held there for two years. He has no criminal record beyond being caught multiple times crossing the border. He is simply a worker who has been entering and leaving the U.S. every year to work and go home. The idea that Guantanamo Bay was ever for the “worst of the worst” is an illusion. These are just two among many cases of immigrants being detained, held, deported, or sent indefinitely to Guantanamo Bay without due process after being profiled racially or for having tattoos. 


Katheryn Olmos is a Research Assistant at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and a graduate student at the Sociology Research and Practice program at American University.

Edited by Ernesto Castañeda, Director, and Emma Wyler, intern at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab.

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by clalsstaff on February 13, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Cuba, Immigration
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Posted by clalsstaff on February 13, 2025

https://aulablog.net/2025/02/13/innocence-suspended/