Ecuador Indigenous Uprising Forces Moreno to Withdraw IMF-Backed Fuel Subsidy Cuts

President Lenín Moreno’s government enacts Decree 883, an IMF-backed austerity measure that eliminates fuel subsidies and causes significant fuel price increases, triggering massive indigenous-led protests that ultimately force complete withdrawal of the decree. The measure is part of IMF loan conditionality following Moreno’s reversal of his predecessor Rafael Correa’s policies. Moreno maintains the IMF loan and consequential austerity measures are necessary after ‘years of overspending’ by Correa, though Correa had successfully used the 2000s commodities boom to fund social programs by accepting Chinese loans with fewer requirements than Western institutional lenders. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Latin America’s most influential indigenous movement, organizes weeks of demonstrations, marches, and road blockades that shut down Quito and other major cities. On October 13, after ten days of sustained protests, Moreno agrees to withdraw Decree 883 and negotiate with CONAIE. The successful uprising continues CONAIE’s three-decade record of resistance to Washington Consensus policies: since founding in 1986, the organization has led at least five major national uprisings against neoliberal reforms including privatization, deregulation, dollarization, and now IMF austerity. CONAIE’s resistance represents consistent indigenous leadership against extractivism and neoliberalism—from opposing Rafael Correa’s 2010 water privatization bill and 2012 Chinese mining agreements to fighting Moreno’s IMF conditions. The 2019 victory demonstrates that sustained grassroots mobilization can defeat IMF-imposed austerity, though it also reveals the persistent threat: international financial institutions continuously seek to impose similar conditions regardless of democratic opposition, requiring eternal vigilance and resistance from civil society to protect economic sovereignty and social welfare.