By Michael Otto
November 24, 2025

Ibarra, Imbabura province, Ecuador

Shock waves of the NO reached Washington. Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa flew to the U.S. in a panic without addressing Ecuador’s people after his failed bid for a YES referendum (consultation) vote on Nov. 16. In a vote that stunned the pro-Donald Trump president, six out of ten Ecuadorian voters stood up and said NO foreign (U.S.) military bases, NO changes to the Constitution and NO Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution.

The referendum (consultation) vote follows a month-long strike led by Indigenous organizations that Noboa’s police and military suppressed earlier in the fall. It also follows more than two months of gunboat diplomacy by a fleet of the U.S. Southern Command in the Caribbean Sea. The U.S. warships directly threaten Venezuela and indirectly attempt to intimidate all people in South America and the Caribbean.

National strike

Ecuador had woken up in September with a Paro Nacional, a national strike. After 31 days, extreme state violence finally forced an end to peaceful Indigenous resistance against a disastrous elimination of fuel subsidies that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had ordered. The grassroots uprising was led by peasant communities in Imbabura province that were shocked by a $1.00 per gallon increase in diesel fuel. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) joined the fight.

The 31 days of resistance were unable to defeat the IMF and its vassals, but state terrorism failed to intimidate the people into passivity. Angry citizens decided to make Noboa pay by voting “NO, four times NO” to the four questions of his referendum (consultation).

Speaking about the vote, Leonidas Iza, former president of CONAIE said: “This is a victory for the struggle of the poor, inspired by the flame of rebellion in Imbabura, a territory where Noboa showed his true colors, willing to murder the people for coming out to fight. This victory belongs to anonymous people without political aspirations, to diverse collectives, to community members, to neighbors, to associations, to organized and unorganized actors who today say enough is enough to abuse and to arrogance.” (Video in Spanish available at Facebook.)

Two hundred years ago in the decade of the Monroe Doctrine, Simón Bolívar, known as the liberator from Spanish colonialism, warned, “The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

Trump’s warfleet bombed a fishing boat on Sept. 22, a major escalation of the 21st century hybrid war on the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela. During the strike (paro) and in the days leading up to Ecuador’s November referendum, three powerful U.S. officials visited Ecuador: SOUTHCOM Commander Admiral Alvin Holsey, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Head of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. (A month after his visit to Ecuador, Adm. Holsey resigned his command, apparently in quiet resistance to the illegal orders received from Washington.)

Afro-Ecuadoran playwright Ibsen X Hernández wrote in a Nov. 19 article in rebelión.org: “This victory is a collective song. It is the voice of a country that will not be fooled, that protects its nature, that honors its waters and forests as part of its own soul. It is the echo of the drums that remind us that freedom is not asked for: it is exercised, built, and protected. Today, the people won. Life won. The dignity of a nation won, a nation that, like its ancestors, workers, peasants, and maroons, will not allow itself to be chained.”

The people of Imbabura province were steadfast. The military murdered three people in Imbabura. Across the country 473 were injured, 206 were arrested, with hundreds of human rights violations committed. The NO vote was a cry for justice.

People remember the four teenage soccer players who were kidnapped by a military squad in the Malvinas barrio of Guayaquil last December. Their bodies were found burned beyond recognition. The NO vote was a cry for justice.

Professor Arturo Ramírez from Guayaquil told Workers World that the victory was not a coordinated effort by political parties or unions. Local organizations in every part of Ecuador went into the streets with homemade banners and flyers, just as the people did here in Ibarra. It was spontaneous.

Cell phones were effective instruments in the hands of the people against a massive media war conducted by the government and the commercial networks. Countless debates, memes, songs and imaginative contributions on social media overcame all of the millions of dollars spent to bribe and blackmail the nation into submission.

Ecuadorians are proud of their Montecristi Constitution of 2008 and voted NO to a proposal for a Constituent Assembly in the consultation. The Constitution grants rights to Mother Earth and makes foreign military bases illegal. The Constitution requires that the state consult with communities which would be affected by extractive exploitation of the land and affirms the right of popular resistance.

Ecuadorians are frustrated and fed up with the current government’s failure to keep its promises to solve the numerous crises caused by eight years of neoliberal austerity and the horrific Covid-19 disaster.

Criminal violence on the streets and massacres in the prisons are escalating under Noboa’s rule. Ecuador was once a tourist attraction and is now the most dangerous country to visit in Latin America.

Scholarships to assist highly motivated students have been eliminated. The mismanaged energy infrastructure which enabled Ecuador to be an exporter of electricity is rotting such that the country must import energy during periods of drought.

Class oppression in Ecuador

Noboa is the son of one of Ecuador’s richest people. Agribusiness and corporate taxes are often not collected. Noboa Trading Co. (Bonita brand) was exposed for cocaine trafficking by Andrés Durán aka Chochologo, who works outside of the country because of death threats. (progressive.international, March 31)

Noboa Trading’s $98 million in unpaid taxes were unconstitutionally reduced to zero last month. This obscenity cannot obscure the structural relations of capitalism. The exploitation of the working class and the massive poverty of the oppressed are a violent requirement of the system. Six out of 10 Ecuadorian workers labor in the informal economy without any state protections.

The elite vassals of the IMF maintain a 28% poverty rate while they avoid paying taxes. The class that Noboa represents does not care to develop a modern, sustainable and sovereign economy that respects Mother Nature in accordance with the Constitution.

In a speech available on YouTube, Leonidas Iza said: “Imbabura showed the true face of what Daniel Noboa is capable of. He doesn’t care about children. He doesn’t care if they are poor. He doesn’t care about anything. He just wants to shoot. … The Ecuadorian people saw [Imbabura] as a mirror of what could happen to the rest of the country.

“The first task is … to look for alternatives to the government’s actions. We cannot remain triumphalist. … Triumphalism will hurt us. That is why my first reaction on the first day was to say, ‘This is not a time to celebrate, much less to go out and dance.’”

Iza stressed: “What we need right now is to build unity … to consolidate a goal for the country, because the national government is not going to do it. And a third element that I think is important is that we need to unify messages, unify voices, because the media siege controlled by the government, by the mass media, will continue to destroy this possibility of unity.”

An Otavalo song went viral on TikTok in September: “Get out Noboa. Go! You are not one of us.” “!FUERA¡ NOBOA !FUERA¡”