MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peace in Ecuador: Government and protestors strike a deal; sharp rise in fuel prices suspended

Under the agreement announced just before 10 p.m., Moreno will withdraw the IMF-backed package known as Decree 883 that included a sharp rise in fuel prices

President Lenin Moreno and leaders of Ecuador's Indigenous peoples struck a deal late Sunday to cancel a disputed austerity package and end nearly two weeks of protests that have paralyzed the economy and left seven dead.

Under the agreement announced just before 10 p.m., Moreno will withdraw the International Monetary Fund-backed package known as Decree 883 that included a sharp rise in fuel prices. Indigenous leaders, in turn, will call on their followers to end protests and street blockades.

“Comrades, a deal is compromise on both sides,” Moreno said. “The Indigenous mobilization will end and Decree 883 will be lifted.”

The two sides will work together to develop a new package of measures to cut government spending, increase revenues and reduce Ecuador's unsustainable budget deficits and public debt.

“The moment of peace, of agreement, has come for Ecuador,” said Arnaud Peral, the United Nations' resident coordinator in Ecuador and one of the mediators of the nationally televised talks, which started about 6 p.m.

“This deal is an extraordinary step.”

Wearing the feathered headdress and face paint of the Achuar people of the Amazon rainforest, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nations, Jaime Vargas, thanked Moreno and demanded improved long-term conditions for Indigenous Ecuadorians.

“We want peace for our brothers and sisters in this country,” Vargas said. “We don't want more repression.”

Protests over the austerity package have blocked roads, shuttered businesses from dairies to flower farms and halved Ecuador's oil production, forcing a temporary halt to the country's most important export.

In a shift from the heated language of the last 10 days of protests, each side at the negotiations praised the other's willingness to talk as they outlined their positions in the first hour before a short break.

Other Indigenous demands included higher taxes on the wealthy and the firing of the interior and defense ministers over their handling of the protests.

“From our heart, we declare that we, the peoples and nations, have risen up in search of liberty,” Vargas said. “We recognize the bravery of the men and women who rose up.”

Earlier in the day, hundreds of black-clad riot police drove protesters out of north-central Quito's Arbolito Park, the epicenter of the protests, and into surrounding streets.

The park had filled on Friday with mostly peaceful protesters chanting against the government.

But by Sunday afternoon the air was white with smoke from burning tires and tear gas after more than 24 hours of clashes between police and hard-core protesters armed with sharpened sticks and shields improvised out of satellite dishes or plywood.

Volunteer medics from the fire department and medical schools waved white sheets on poles as they led downcast protesters out of the area to safety. Young men from Ecuador's Indigenous minority and mixed race, or mestizo, majority, milled about on streets under the watch of police and a few dozen soldiers.

The public ombudsman's office said on Sunday that seven people had died in the protests, 1,340 had been hurt and 1,152 arrested. The government loosened a 24-hour curfew imposed Saturday, allowing people to move freely around the capital between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.