This is Popular Front, a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan. Today we're speaking to a researcher from

Ecuador named Francis. She doesn't want to say a full name for reasons which are understandable because right now in the

country there are very serious clashes the government is cracking down hard on

protesters who are essentially fighting for a better future for Ecuador.

It's been reported as a fuel thing, but there's a lot more to it than that.

We're going to go over it in detail.

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being censored on every single platform. It's a fucking nightmare but yeah.

To start with, before we go into where this has come from why these clashes are happening maybe just explain to us what is actually happening right now in Ecuador?

So beginning on June 13th was the beginning of the start of a paronational, it was called by Konei, which is the Confederation of Indigenous Nationale,

of the Nationalities of Ecuador, is kind of an umbrella corporation. of other sectors that are involved as well, including educators, transistors, the banana industry.

It's really not just the indigenous Konei organization.

It really is a cross-sector protest.

So the protest was called nine days before it actually began, so everybody had plenty of time to know what was coming.

There was a very large paro that happened in October 2019.

So many people were aware of the direction

this could take and were able to prepare.

But there has been ongoing conversation with the Ecuadorian government.

The current sitting president is Garamal Lasso.

He's been in office since May of 2021, so he's been in office just a little over a year.

There are 10 very distinct points that Konei is trying to get the government to compromise on them, particularly around the

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