Ecuador | teleSUR proved essential in the coverage of the 18-day indigenous strike in 2022 - video Dailymotion

teleSUR English

One of the most powerful stories documented by TeleSUR was the 18-day indigenous peoples' strike in Ecuador, with leaders agreeing that the official narrative would have erased their voices had it not been for the support of our multiplatform. teleSUR

Transcript

00:00Now, the fifth day of protests is underway as part of the national strike

00:05called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities

00:08against the policies of President Guillermo Lazo's government,

00:11with more details our colleague.

00:13Three years have passed and the echo of resistance continues to ring out in the streets,

00:18in parks, in the open wound.

00:20The family of Bayron Wataduca, one of the six protesters killed in June 2022,

00:25march again in Quito, not only to demand justice.

00:30But to shut out what the state wanted to silence, that Bayron was not a criminal,

00:35he was a leader, a father, a man who shows dignity over fear.

00:42He was a good person. He was a hard-working man. He worked.

00:47He was putting his children through school.

00:49And now he has left his children orphaned.

00:52And I still suffer for my grandchildren.

00:55You see, I am helping my grandchildren.

00:58I am continuing on that path so that they can study.

01:02The national strike was not just a protest.

01:05It was the roar of a country that was tired of paying the bills of others.

01:09It was the bursting of a pressure cooker built up over years of neglect,

01:15exclusion, and structural racism.

01:18While Guillermo Lazo's government responded with repression and empty rhetoric,

01:21the streets spoke another language, the language of dignity.

01:27Independent media outlets have set a very important precedent that is essential in many cases,

01:32because it provides conclusive evidence of what happened, how it happened,

01:37and obviously not only in court cases, or cases that are being investigated by the prosecutor's office,

01:44but also in the national perspective that each of us has regarding what the strike was.

01:53It was not the same thing to experience it through the alternative media than through the official channels.

01:58Official channels, mainstream media that reproduced the discourse of power without filters,

02:06national television stations repeated images of chaos without context.

02:10Telesur decided to be at the heart of the conflict,

02:13to work with the protesters, to listen to the indigenous communities,

02:17record the voices of the women who cooked to sustain the resistance of the young people,

02:22who confronted fretfuls with stones, of the community leaders who instead of weapons carried a list of demand.

02:29The mass media, the private media, present a narrative, and that narrative is their truth,

02:37hiding the truth of what is really happening in society as a whole.

02:42That is why I believe it is important to have another narrative from community media,

02:47alternative media, media that is not aligned with the policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

02:56The spark that ignited the revolt was the elimination of subsidies,

03:00but the real fuel was something else, the historical neglect.

03:04It was 18 days of resistance that did not fit into the dichotomy of good protesters versus violent infiltrators,

03:12because the true face of violence is structural, it is neglect.

03:16And Telesur knew how to see it.

03:18It did not reduce the protest to a mere story.

03:21It narrated it for what it was, a dispute for the right to access with dignity.

03:26That is why I think it is important the alternative media, the community media,

03:32Telesur and other media have become a spokesperson,

03:35has given a democratic contrast to the stories that are happening in our society.

03:41It is absolutely necessary.

03:43Telling that truth had consequences.

03:45Our team felt the repression firsthand, but we understood that at that moment it was essential to inform.

03:52In Ecuador, without the presence of media such as Telesur or others,

03:56it would have been impossible to get out the information about what happened in the uprisings of 2019 and 2021.

04:03And if that information had not been filtered,

04:05we would not have had the tools and the conditions to demand that the state stop the repression and the violence.

04:10That is why Telesur is uncomfortable, because it dared to challenge the official discussions and also the forgetness.

04:18Thanks to Telesur, Ecuador and the world learned a true roadmap of the indigenous movement,

04:24not through filters nor distortions, but from the voices of those who trace it.

04:28Because to make visible someone is not only to show him, it is to legitimize the world, the rage and the hope.

04:36With images by Henry Villajo.

04:38Elena Rodriguez, Telesur.

Ecuador | teleSUR proved essential in the coverage of the 18-day indigenous strike in 2022

Category

Transcript

Recommended