Ecuador: nonviolent sounds and gestures, Once declared the curfew from 3pm in Quito, capital of Ecuador, the action of the public force was maintained with force until the end of the afternoon, especially in the vicinity of the House of Ecuadorian Culture. Military cars and police force were deployed throughout the city. It was feared at some point that they would enter the Agora of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana and violently expel the indigenous people who decided to stay there and not move towards the three zones of peace that have been functioning since the beginning of the situation in nearby universities. Happily, it did not happen and at 9:59 pm, although outside the agora there was public force, the situation was calm.

Police motorcycles and groups of police circulated around the universities and rumours spread that they would enter the Catholic University and evict it. They met with the medical students, who have worked day by day to respond to this situation: they surrounded their university and shouting “peace zone”, they managed to get the public force to withdraw. This close the tenth day of protests

‘ We demand that the peace zone is respected and denounce the state repression against human rights!’

Night advanced, and to the sound of pots and pans in all points of the city and the valleys that surround it, the inhabitants of Quito decided to go out into the streets (despite the curfew) to walk the streets of their neighborhoods; even, a group of people came to the front of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador – PUCE.

Thus, with their pots and pans, the cry for an end to repression, violence and even the slogan Moreno Out, were felt throughout the city.

‘La Floresta was occupied by the people protesting with pots and pans’

Other voices and other forms, all nonviolent, make themselves felt in the capital of Ecuadorians.

Final note: A few minutes ago, on national television, President Moreno announced that decree 883 is being revised to advance the dialogue with the indigenous movement and social organizations that have opened up to that process, that the curfew and militarisation in the city will be maintained until conditions change and he blamed Correa and Maduro once again, in alliance with narco-terrorism and gangs, for generating the chaos that the country has lived through. It is the affirmation that the government has sustained since the beginning. No evidence of this has been published so far.

Translated by Pressenza London