Category Archives: Indigenous peoples

Canada-Ecuador free trade deal sparks concern in both countries

by Jim Hodgson

As ministers signed a new free trade agreement today in Ottawa, civil society organizations in Canada and Ecuador repeated their concerns about the deal.

The 26-chapter document was signed in Ottawa today by Canada’s international trade minister, Maninder Sidhu and Ecuador’s minister of production, foreign trade and investment, Luis Alberto Jaramillo.

Ministers meet. Photo: Primicias, Ecuador.

In Canada, Common Frontiers and MiningWatch Canada said the agreement was “deeply dangerous.” From what is known about the deal, it’s clear that it “grants sweeping and undemocratic protections to Canadian investors while deepening Ecuador’s human rights crisis.”

(I have worked with both organizations and their members for the better part of three decades – since our struggles over the North American FTA, opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas – a fight we won in 2005 – and the impacts of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala and beyond. Challenging as the current situation in Ecuador is, I am pleased to see Common Frontiers and MiningWatch fighting the good fight against these FTAs that only benefit the rich.)

Groups in both countries had previously criticized Ecuador’s ban on its largest opposition party, ongoing criminalization of ecological defenders, failure to consult with Indigenous peoples, and collaboration with the United States in military attacks on supposed drug-traffickers.

Common Frontiers and MiningWatch prepared a four-page explainer on why the deal is bad. And here is a statement on the new FTA from colleagues at Latin America is Better without Free Trade.

Most of what follows is text from the Common Frontiers-MiningWatch news release:

Minister Sidhu said the agreement will “open new opportunities for Canadian companies in a growing market, strengthen supply chains, and provide more predictable access to goods, services, and investment.” But Canada’s own assessment of the agreement projected insignificant growth in trade. Its main purpose is to attract and protect Canadian investment in Ecuador’s mining sector. 

The agreement is massively opposed by a large share of Ecuadorian civil society and Indigenous groups.

Paramount among the concerns:

  • A worsening human rights crisis in Ecuador. Ecuadorian and international human rights organizations have documented widespread, systematic human rights violations, including increasing militarization, repression of dissent, the criminalization of environmental defenders, and the imposition of executive decrees that undermine the rule of law. Much of this is exacerbated by – or in support of – existing Canadian mining investment in the country.
  • No consultation, consent, or transparency. The agreement was negotiated and signed without the free, prior, and informed consent of affected Indigenous Peoples, violating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Ecuador’s obligations under the Escazú Agreement.
  • Investor protections that violate Ecuador’s constitution. The agreement contains an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism that is prohibited by Ecuador’s constitution and was rejected in two recent plebiscites. According to former UN Rapporteur David Boyd, ISDS poses “catastrophic” consequences for climate action, environmental protection, and the realization of human rights.
  • No corporate accountability mechanism in Canada. The recent closure of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) and the lack of due diligence legislation underscore a major accountability gap in Canada. Communities harmed by the operations of Canadian companies in Ecuador will have no standing in investor-state disputes and nowhere to turn for justice and remedy.

The agreement now heads to Parliament to be ratified. In response to repeated concerns raised by Ecuadorian civil society and Indigenous communities and echoed by prominent civil society voices in Canada, the organizations are urging Members of Parliament to reject the agreement.

In Ecuador, the Primicias news site said the trade agreement with Canada will allow almost all of the products that Ecuador exports to that market to enter with zero tariff, once it comes into force. According to the Government, the benefit covers 99.6% of items for Ecuador.

Among the products that will enter without paying tariffs are: textiles, vegetables, roses, sardines, confetti, chocolate and ceramics.

Likewise, some of the products imported from Canada that will reach Ecuador without paying tariffs, including: wheat, cell phones, cleaning products, laptops, drones, fertilizers, medicines and sporting goods.

Ecuador bans opposition party, criminalizes ecological defenders, joins U.S. military attacks

by Jim Hodgson

In a just world, news that Ecuador has banned its largest opposition party would be enough to scuttle Canada’s plans for a free trade agreement with the country – and even end U.S. military collaboration. But that is not the world we live in.

The news came as 77 organizations from Ecuador, Canada and around the world sent a letter to Canada’s ambassador in Ecuador urging the embassy to adopt Canada’s 2019 Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders in response to the criminalization of Indigenous and environmental defenders. Among the signatories are MiningWatch Canada, Common Frontiers, and KAIROS Canada.

The letter to Ambassador Craig Kowalik was sent in response to the criminalization of Indigenous and environmental defenders from the Federation of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations of Azuay (FOA, Federación de Organizaciones lndigenas y Campesinas del Azuay). 

FOA members are facing criminal proceedings for their environmental defense work to safeguard the Kimsakocha páramo from the Loma Larga gold mining project, owned by Canadian mining company DPM Metals Inc.

The letter to the embassy expresses concern over criminal charges initiated by DPM Metals against six FOA members — Lauro Sigcha, Lizardo Zhaqui, Marco Tapia, Ruth Pugo, Carmita Pérez, and Yaku Pérez — following a peaceful clean-up action to remove mining waste left by the company near the headwaters of the Irquis and Tarqui rivers in the Kimsakocha páramo. The Kimsakocha páramo is a fragile ecosystem that regulates the regional hydrological cycle and provides fresh water to tens of thousands of people. For more than 30 years, Indigenous and peasant communities have defended this ecosystem against large-scale mining projects.

Ecuador bans opposition party

Acting on the request of the government-aligned Prosecutor General, an electoral judge in Ecuador on Friday (March 6) ordered the nine-month suspension of the country’s largest opposition party, the Citizens’ Revolution (RC ). 

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) denounced the ban as the latest escalation in a broader pattern of authoritarian regression, including lawfare against opponents, repeated states of emergency, and deepening military ties with the Trump administration.

“The government of President Daniel Noboa, who is strongly backed by President Trump, is trying to accelerate the destruction of what is left of democracy in Ecuador,” said CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot. The move bars RC –led by former President Rafael Correa – from local elections to be held in 2027.

U.S.-Ecuador military strikes

On the same day as the ban on the RC party, the Ecuadorian and U.S. militaries conducted joint airstrikes near the Colombian border targeting a site allegedly tied to dissidents from the former FARC guerrillas from Colombia. 

These “lethal kinetic operations,” as the U.S. military calls them, are another of Noboa’s efforts since his 2023 election to deepen ties with Washington — including a failed attempt to re-establish a U.S. military base in the country.

Days earlier, on Tuesday (March 3), the United States and Ecuador launched joint attacks against “designated terrorist organizations” – Trumpspeak for drug-traffickers.

Since September last year, the United States has attacked small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, but these attacks in Ecuador are the first known land operations by U.S. forces against drug cartels. At least 150 people have been killed in 44 known strikes. The United States has never shown proof that any of the dead were in fact moving illegal drugs.

While neither government will say precisely where the attacks are happening, Noboa ordered curfews in four provinces west and southwest of Quito, extending to the city of Guayaquil and beyond. Noboa said his country was “entering a new phase in the internal war.”

* An update (March 25 from Drop Site News:

A New York Times investigation raises serious questions about a March 6 airstrike that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicized on social media as proof the U.S. military was “now bombing Narco Terrorists on land.”

According to the Times, the target appears to have been a 350-acre cattle and dairy farm owned by a 32-year-old carpenter named Miguel, not a drug trafficking compound. Farm workers told the Times that Ecuadorean soldiers arrived three days earlier, beat and detained four Colombian workers, subjected them to waterboarding and electric shocks, doused structures with gasoline and set them alight—then returned on March 6 to film themselves bombing the smoldering ruins, producing footage Ecuador and the U.S. jointly promoted as the destruction of a traffickers’ training camp.

The Pentagon said the strike was conducted “jointly” with Ecuador, though Times sources said U.S. troops had no direct involvement in the bombing itself. Ecuador claimed to have recovered weapons and evidence of illicit activity but released no photographs, as it typically does following drug seizures. “It’s a lie that 50 people trained here,” Miguel said, standing amid his dead chickens. “There’s no logic.” (NYT)

"Another World is Possible," World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2005)

The old order is dead. Let’s make a new, more just order.

by Jim Hodgson

It was too much to hope that the well-heeled audience at Davos would boo Donald Trump from the stage a day after they had offered Mark Carney a standing ovation. But by the end of Wednesday, it seemed that the wall of resistance to any U.S. take-over of Greenland was successful, and the president backed down. An important victory.

Still, “la rupture de l’ordre mondial” of which Carney spoke remains. And he’s right: we shouldn’t mourn it. The international financial institutions invented in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, gave overwhelming power to the rich countries of the Global North. 

And the United Nations system that followed, with a veto given to each of the five most powerful countries, has protected their interests – even in the face of overwhelming contrarian votes in the UN General Assembly. Think, for example, of the annual vote to end the cruel U.S. blockade of Cuba.

That order was designed by the nations that existed at the end of World War II, especially the colonial or neo-colonial states of Europe and the Americas. Most of the Caribbean, Africa and large parts of south Asia were still under colonial rule. That order imposed and perpetuated a Global North-based order on all the new nations that were born in the 25 years or so after the war: the majority of nations that exist today.

And that order, at least in the eyes of three of the five veto-holders, effectively imposed capitalism as a synonym for democracy. The United States and its allies were satisfied with a sort of formal democracy, a certain alternance between parties of the right and centre-right, and if that failed, then a military government was a useful interlude until the real order could be re-established and markets were safe. 

Canada would “go along to get along,” as Carney admitted. 

Just as it did less than three weeks ago when the United States bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president. And just as it has for more than two years over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

In his speech, Carney seemed to offer a vision of capitalism without the now-erratic United States. It’s still reliant on resource extraction, military spending, and massive capital investment.

But if we are all to grow and thrive, we must demand more. We require an end to practices that exploit social inequities and our shared ecology. 

Alternatives

Because of the paths on which my life has taken me, one that is especially close to my heart is the call from the Indigenous people of Zapatista communities in southern Mexico for “a world with room for all” – “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.” But other visions come from other places, including three decades of gatherings of the World Social Forum.

More than 50 years ago, the majority world united behind a vision of economic decolonization, sovereign development, and international cooperation across areas such as debt, trade, finance, and technology. That vision became known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and was adopted by the UN General Assembly. But, power relations being what they are, it was never implemented. (Progressive International put together a set of reflections that trace its history and update the proposals for the 21st century.)

In March last year, the World Council of Churches and several global communions of churches repeated their call for a New International Financial and Economic Architecture (NIFEA). “It is immoral that over a billion people – half of them children – subsist in poverty whilst billionaires increased their wealth by over 15% in 2024 to US$15 trillion. It is outrageous that the richest 10% of the global population receives more than half of global income, whereas the poorest half earns merely 8.5% of it,” they said in a statement.

They expressed deep concern about “a rapidly escalating climate and biodiversity emergency that jeopardises livelihoods and poses an existential threat to all life.” It notes that “several tipping points are close to being crossed or have already been crossed, leading us to recognise that we may be beyond a point of no return.”

The old order is dead. The time in which we are living demands we do better.