Ruling Ruins. / Gobernando Ruinas. [ENG/ESP]
Is this what war feels like? Being captive in a violent conflict that one can’t make sense of? That has lost all arguments and perverted into a game of who can hold out longer? Without the bombs, at least for us. For now?
Haz click aquí para contenido en Español.
It’s devastating for me to see what is happening. How many people are now wishing for the military to come in hard. How they lost any empathy for those in the protest. Not on an ideological level, I’m all for variety of opinions, but on the human level. The protesters are all still human beings. They think they’re doing the right thing, that they’re fighting for a good cause.
So does the military.
I feel like they’re all clinging on to buzzwords. “Resistance” on the on side, “terrorists” on the other side, either superficially justifying the actions and the enormous damage that they’re causing “for the good”. Because either side is causing damage. Either side is destructive. The collateral damage of their blindness is inconceivable to them.
Not to me.
I see the fear. Every day. The families that walk by. I get reports from the leader of “Sin Miedo Foundation”. I talk to friends and acquaintances. The underlying worry is always the same:
Will one of ours be the next victim? Will we have to scramble the little we have to pay for injuries in a fight that we don’t really understand? Will the provider for our family be the next dead body?
So many questions left unanswered.
I see the anger and confusion on social media, the frustration. What are they fighting for and why do those who are not involved have to suffer so much? Why do they attack their own people? Why do they threaten us if we open our shops? Why do they want to destroy the cities economy? Why do they block all access to our city, why not only the Panamericana? If they’re so convinced that they can win this, why don’t they just march on Quito, or Latacunga, or wherever the ones in power are? Why to they terrorize us instead of focusing on who the official enemy is?
They know they can’t.
That’s my take. If they could, they would. They know they’re too weak to really take on the government, too divided due to inadequate leadership. They’re just holding out, waiting for a miracle to happen. They, too, are waiting for the military to come in. They want more martyrs. They want more to be hurt. They know that the military will come with real bullets. Sacrifice others in order to say "We tried, but the bad, bad government was just too brutal to us!"
Of course they are!
Everyone knows it, it happened several times now. Yes, it’s excessive in my opinion use “shoot to kill” against sticks, stones, self-made firework rockets and Molotov cocktails. But it’s not a surprise. It’s premeditated, both by the government as well as that half-organized mob collecting “tolls” on their barricades, harassing people and getting high on power sustained only by threats of violence – all in the name of “resistance”.
But why is nobody resisting the “resistance”?
It’s very interesting to me that the center only complains, but besides a "March for peace and the right to work!" (which had a strong taste of virtue signaling to me), they didn’t organize anything. I hear a lot that the majority of people doesn’t want the strike anymore, but apparently that majority is really bad at activism. In the end, in a small town it’s the same as on national level – even if you didn’t vote, but think that the majority supports your agenda, you can mobilize that majority and push your agenda. Especially in situations like now, where there’s no real vote going on.
The repression by the protesters is based on threats. Until now, hopefully in the future, they didn’t hurt anyone within the city. I once raised the question why the center is not organizing, creating their own groups to protect the businesses and stand up against the protesters. A friend of mine said:
Because they’re not violent!
Honestly, I think that’s a flawed argument. I think it’s not about being prone to violence or not. In a pack, everyone feels more confident. It's not the fear of violence, it's the lack of organization, the comfort of complaining, the passiveness. I never knew the indigenous to be particularly aggressive at all, or fans or violence, definitely not more than the mestizos who, in historical comparison, have a long history of using violence within Ecuador, and benefiting from the structural violence present.
As soon as the center organizes and builds their own mob to protect their businesses or clean the roads, there likely would be violence from their side, too, very quickly. As soon as they're in a pack. And though that violence is not something I wish, given the current situation, it becomes more and more likely that it comes to it, and that it's necessary in order to end this situation.
Now, before you get all upset and emotional about that, look at the current situation. It's a stale mate. Neither side is willing to do any concessions. And the one with more power will eventually use that power. And it will affect many of those who are innocent, just like it did in Otavalo, with teargas everywhere. Like in the communities, with mothers and children spending cold nights in the ravines out of fear for invasion.
Is there an alternative?
Besides putting aside egoism, pride and greed and accept that there is now way for the protesters winning this? Only civil disobedience. Resistance against the “resistance”. Organizing enough people that do not want any more dead, hurt and traumatized to talk sense into those that are still blocking the roads that nobody cares about. Organize a bigger group. Activating that majority.
And then?
As I mentioned, violence will probably happen. There aren’t many calm and collected people left that could actually stand up peacefully and control an angry crowd, keep it peaceful. That’s the alternative. More fighting between us, the community, to protect others from being killed and hurt by bullets.
Noboa doesn’t care about Cotacachi.
It’s too far off, and the mayor positioned himself on the side of the protesters. He only cares about the Panamerican Highway, about Otavalo, Atuntaqui, Ibarra. It doesn’t make any sense to block Cotacachi off. To force everyone here into hardship and losses. To me, that part seems to be more revenge and vandalism than a part of a strategy. And it’s causing harm to the strategy. Many of those who were in favor of the movement are now against it due to the way that the protesters acted, me included. I support the idea behind it. I think that resistance is necessary, as I expressed many times. But not like this.
This is not resistance. This is the same oppression with a different face.
Do you see other options? What else could be done?
I’m scrambling here. I’m sorry if this is not up to the standard of philosophical, more or less profound thoughts that I usually try to share here. But as you can imagine, this topic is troubling me more at the moment, and thank you for reading my vents about it.
Related posts
Community
How it works - the network in action
Sin Miedo - Psychological help
Political Background
Diesel to the fire - the current situation in Ecuador
Eye by eye, we're blind - about the tensions in Cotacachi
Impressions & Thoughts
In the mines of Moria - When Efraín got killed
The demise of the civil organizations
Contenido en Español
Traducido con Gemini
¿Así es como se siente la guerra? ¿Estar cautivo en un conflicto que uno no puede entender? ¿Que ha perdido todo argumento y se ha pervertido en un juego de quién aguanta más? Sin las bombas, al menos para nosotros. ¿Por ahora?
Me resulta devastador ver lo que está pasando. Cuánta gente ahora desea que los militares intervengan con dureza. Cómo han perdido toda empatía por quienes están en la protesta. No a nivel ideológico, estoy a favor de la variedad de opiniones, sino a nivel humano. Los manifestantes siguen siendo seres humanos. Creen que están haciendo lo correcto, que están luchando por una buena causa.
También los militares.
Siento que todos se están aferrando a palabras de moda. "Resistencia" por un lado, "terroristas" por el otro lado, justificando superficialmente las acciones y el enorme daño que están causando "por el bien". Porque ambos lados están causando daño. Ambos lados son destructivos. El daño colateral de su ceguera es inconcebible para ellos.
Para mí no.
Veo el miedo. Todos los días. Las familias que pasan caminando. Recibo informes del líder de la "Fundación Sin Miedo". Hablo con amigos y conocidos. La preocupación constante es siempre la misma:
¿Será uno de los nuestros la próxima víctima? ¿Tendremos que reunir lo poco que tenemos para pagar las lesiones en una lucha que realmente no entendemos? ¿Será el sustento de nuestra familia el próximo cuerpo sin vida?
Tantas preguntas sin respuesta!
Veo la rabia y la confusión en las redes sociales, la frustración. ¿Por qué están luchando y por qué los que no están involucrados tienen que sufrir tanto? ¿Por qué atacan a su propia gente? ¿Por qué nos amenazan si abrimos nuestros negocios? ¿Por qué quieren destruir la economía de las ciudades? ¿Por qué bloquean todos los accesos a nuestra ciudad, por qué no solo la Panamericana? Si están tan convencidos de que pueden ganar esto, ¿por qué no simplemente marchan sobre Quito, o Latacunga, o donde sea que estén los que tienen el poder? ¿Por qué nos aterrorizan a nosotros en lugar de concentrarse en quién es el enemigo oficial?
Saben que no pueden.
Esa es mi opinión. Si pudieran, lo harían. Saben que son demasiado débiles para enfrentarse realmente al gobierno, demasiado divididos debido a un liderazgo inadecuado. Solo están aguantando, esperando que suceda un milagro. Ellos también están esperando que intervengan los militares. Quieren más mártires. Quieren más heridos. Saben que los militares vendrán con balas de verdad. Sacrificar a otros para poder decir: "Lo intentamos, ¡pero el malvado gobierno fue demasiado brutal con nosotros!"
¡Claro que sí!
Todo el mundo lo sabe, ha sucedido varias veces ya. Sí, en mi opinión es excesivo usar el "disparar a matar" contra palos, piedras, cohetes de fuegos artificiales caseros y cócteles Molotov. Pero no es una sorpresa. Está premeditado, tanto por el gobierno como por esa turba medio organizada que cobra "peajes" en sus barricadas, acosa a la gente y se droga con un poder sostenido solo por amenazas de violencia, todo en nombre de la "resistencia".
Pero, ¿por qué nadie se resiste a la "resistencia"?
Me resulta muy interesante que el centro solo se queja, pero aparte de una "¡Marcha por la paz y el derecho al trabajo!" (que para mí tuvo un fuerte sabor a 'postureo' moral), no organizaron nada. Escucho mucho que la mayoría de la gente ya no quiere el paro, pero aparentemente esa mayoría es muy mala para el activismo. Al final, en un pueblo pequeño es lo mismo que a nivel nacional: incluso si no votaste, pero crees que la mayoría apoya tu agenda, puedes movilizar a esa mayoría e impulsar tu agenda. Especialmente en situaciones como ahora, donde no hay una votación real en curso.
La represión por parte de los manifestantes se basa en amenazas. Hasta ahora, y con suerte en el futuro, no han lastimado a nadie dentro de la ciudad. Una vez planteé la pregunta de por qué el centro no se está organizando, creando sus propios grupos para proteger los negocios y hacer frente a los manifestantes. Un amigo mío dijo:
¡Porque no son violentos!
Sinceramente, creo que es un argumento defectuoso. Creo que no se trata de ser propenso a la violencia o no. En grupo, todo el mundo se siente más seguro. No es el miedo a la violencia, es la falta de organización, la comodidad de quejarse, la pasividad. Los indígenas nunca me parecieron particularmente agresivos, o amantes de la violencia, definitivamente no más que los mestizos quienes, en comparación histórica, tienen una larga historia de uso de la violencia dentro de Ecuador y de beneficiarse de la violencia estructural presente.
Tan pronto como el centro se organice y construya su propia turba para proteger sus negocios o limpiar las carreteras, es probable que también haya violencia de su parte, muy rápidamente. Tan pronto como estén en grupo. Y aunque esa violencia no es algo que deseo, dada la situación actual, se vuelve cada vez más probable que llegue a eso, y que sea necesaria para poner fin a esta situación.
Ahora, antes de que se molesten y se emocionen por eso, miren la situación actual. Es un punto muerto. Ninguna de las partes está dispuesta a hacer concesiones. Y el que tiene más poder eventualmente usará ese poder. Y afectará a muchos de los que son inocentes, tal como sucedió en Otavalo, con gas lacrimógeno por todas partes. Como en las comunidades, con madres y niños pasando noches frías en las quebradas por miedo a la invasión.
¿Hay una alternativa?
Además de dejar de lado el egoísmo, el orgullo y la codicia y aceptar que no hay forma de que los manifestantes ganen esto, ¿solo desobediencia civil? Resistencia contra la "resistencia". Organizar a suficientes personas que no quieren más muertos, heridos y traumatizados para hacer entrar en razón a quienes todavía están bloqueando las carreteras que a nadie le importan. Organizar un grupo más grande. Activar a esa mayoría.
¿Y luego?
Como mencioné, probablemente habrá violencia. No quedan muchas personas tranquilas y serenas que realmente puedan defenderse pacíficamente y controlar una multitud enojada, mantener la paz. Esa es la alternativa. Más lucha entre nosotros, la comunidad, para proteger a otros de ser asesinados y heridos por balas.
A Noboa no le importa Cotacachi.
Está demasiado lejos, y el alcalde se posicionó del lado de los manifestantes. A él solo le importa la carretera Panamericana, Otavalo, Atuntaqui, Ibarra. No tiene ningún sentido bloquear Cotacachi. Obligar a todos aquí a sufrir dificultades y pérdidas. Para mí, esa parte parece ser más venganza y vandalismo que parte de una estrategia. Y está causando daño a la estrategia. Muchos de los que estaban a favor del movimiento ahora están en contra debido a la forma en que actuaron los manifestantes, incluyéndome a mí. Apoyo la idea detrás de esto. Creo que la resistencia es necesaria, como he expresado muchas veces. Pero no así.
Esto no es resistencia. Esto es la misma opresión con una cara diferente.
¿Hay otras opciones? ¿Qué más se podría hacer?
Estoy divagando. Lamento si esto no está a la altura del estándar de pensamientos filosóficos, más o menos profundos, que suelo intentar compartir aquí. Pero como pueden imaginar, este tema me está preocupando más en este momento, y gracias por leer mis desahogos al respecto.
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Cómo funciona - la red en acción
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Diesel al fuego - la situación política en Ecuador
Ojo por ojo, estamos ciegos - sobre las tensiones en Cotacachi
When governments don't understand the needs of the people, it's no wonder chaos erupts. It must be such a difficult time - people really fighting for their basic needs and sometimes what other recourse do they have but fierce protest?
How easily resistance can lose its moral compass once fear and exhaustion take hold! Heartbreaking for so many, and I can't even imagine the anxiety and tension you all feel.
It's a very confusing time, especially now that social media has taken over the brains of so many. It's getting really hard to focus on what's within my power, on what I believe in, and find ways to push that forward despite the noise. But I'll manage. It's good to have some community. And to not fall for the traps of social media, spending energy where it's useless.
I don't get it. We all know social media brain isn't a brain, but there people go, being brainless because of it. If I ruled the world, I would utterly ban it - just try coming at me if you don't agree.
My friend Chasqui (alias) wrote this comment that was just brilliant, the perfect words at the perfect time for me:
Your column this morning moved me. It’s not easy to write from inside confusion and fear, to speak honestly when no one seems to be listening. You’ve done that—captured what it feels like to live in a place where meaning has collapsed and survival itself becomes political. I recognize much of what you describe, and even though I don’t see things exactly as you do, I feel the same weight of sadness and the same longing for something more human to return.
You describe what it’s like to be held inside a conflict that no longer has a clear center—a contest of endurance rather than conviction. The lines blur, and people you once trusted to care now seem ready to welcome force as the only solution. You grieve the loss of empathy, and I hear that. When fear turns into contempt, when neighbors stop seeing each other as human beings, something essential dies in a community.
I share your unease at that death of empathy. But I also try to remember that empathy itself is unevenly distributed—that those most exposed to hunger, loss, and police repression are often those who have had to keep it alive the longest. Your writing opens a space to think about that, too.
The way you describe fear—not as a concept, but as the daily rhythm of wondering who will be next—feels very true. The families walking past your bakery, the quiet conversations with friends, the sense that even peace has a price: that’s what conflict really looks like up close. You’ve made that visible.
Fear, though, doesn’t tell us who is right or wrong. It only tells us how deeply everyone is entangled. That recognition—that suffering isn’t confined to one side—is the beginning of moral clarity, not its end.
You ask, Why here? Why must a small town bear the weight of a national struggle? From where you stand, the blockades look like punishment turned inward. I can understand that. But I also think of how often in Ecuador’s history the periphery has had to make the center pay attention. What feels senseless from inside can sometimes be the only way the forgotten become visible.
That doesn’t erase the hardship or make it right. But it does remind us that power rarely moves until it is made uncomfortable. Your question, Why here?, is also the question of every small town forced into history’s path.
You see a movement divided and exhausted, waiting for martyrdom—perhaps even courting it. I can understand why it feels that way when all you see are barricades and fear. But I wonder if what looks like waiting for bullets might sometimes be waiting for recognition: for someone to see that lives on the margins are already being taken slowly, by debt, by hunger, by indifference.
You’re right that both government and protest have become predictable in their choreography of violence. But it’s not the same choreography. The state rehearses power; the poor rehearse survival. Both look chaotic from inside, yet one begins much further from safety.
That question you ask—why no one resists the resistance—is powerful. You mean it literally, but it also points to a deeper worry: why people have stopped resisting despair itself. You see how easy it is to become passive, to accept fear as normal.
You’re right that organization is the difference. The communities on the roads have built that capacity over generations; those in the center have not needed to. It’s not that one group loves chaos and the other loves peace—it’s that one has been trained to fight for survival, and the other has been trained to expect stability. You’re noticing that gap in real time.
You speak of civil disobedience against the resistance, of the majority standing up for calm. I hear the yearning for peace beneath that—the wish for something gentler than confrontation. But I also sense the danger of believing peace can be imposed from above. What you’re calling for may be impossible until the deeper wound—the inequality that shapes whose peace matters—begins to heal.
Still, I share your desire for calm, for people to rest, for the air to clear. Those wishes are not apolitical; they’re human.
There’s something else, though—something inside the language itself. I notice how the same words mean opposite things depending on who speaks them. Resistance, peace, order, terror—all of them have been seized and repurposed by power. It’s as if even language is under curfew.
In Cotacachi, you can feel this struggle over words in every conversation. The same word that shields one person wounds another. But in the plazas and over community radio, people are trying to give these words back their meaning—to make peace mean safety, not silence; to make resistance mean care, not chaos. When voices rise together, language becomes a kind of shelter again.
Even your writing is caught in that battle—you’re fighting to keep words like humanity and dignity alive while everything around them is being twisted. Maybe that’s what it means to write honestly in times like these: to struggle not just for safety, but for meaning.
Here, words are not only speech; they are territory. They’re part of the land we defend. In the minga de la palabra—the collective work of words—people rebuild meaning together, each voice like a tool passed from hand to hand. Truth isn’t found alone. It’s built, like a roof or a road, by many hands speaking together.
“This isn’t resistance,” you write. “It’s the same oppression with a different face.” That sentence carries enormous grief. I understand the heartbreak behind it—to watch something that once inspired hope start to resemble what it fought. I’ve seen that before too.
Where I differ is that I still see in this movement—even through its mistakes—a stubborn spark of collective dignity. It may not look like resistance where you stand, but to many it still feels like the only language left for survival. I think we’re both mourning the same thing: how hard it is to keep that spark from being swallowed by rage.
You and I both see the suffering of ordinary people. But we understand its causes differently. What you describe as the collapse of moral order, I see as the exposure of an old and deliberate system—one that keeps Indigenous, campesino, and working families on the margins and then blames them for the chaos it creates.
When roads are blocked, you see paralysis; I see a country refusing to die quietly. What looks like disorder from above is, from below, the shape of survival. As one local communiqué put it: “El paro no es sólo contra la eliminación del subsidio al diésel: es una respuesta colectiva al autoritarismo, la crisis económica y el atropello a la dignidad del pueblo.” (The national strike is not just against the removal of the diesel subsidy: it is a collective response to authoritarianism, economic crisis, and the assault on the people’s dignity.)
You speak of people turning against each other, losing empathy. I see a government and an economy that weaponize scarcity—forcing communities to compete for crumbs and punishing those who share. Violence does not erupt from human nature; it is arranged and rationed, like fuel or grain.
As one Cotacachi broadcaster said during the strike: “La criminalización de la protesta social busca deslegitimar las demandas populares y sembrar miedo.” (The criminalization of social protest seeks to delegitimize popular demands and sow fear.)
You describe despair at the loss of truth, but truth itself has been captured—by those who own the channels through which it flows. When community radio was silenced and journalists shot in Otavalo, the goal was not confusion; it was obedience. “El cierre de TV MICC mostró que el control de la información también es parte del campo de batalla.” (The closure of TV MICC showed that control of information is also part of the battlefield.)
You say everyone is to blame, but false balance only protects power. The repression, the deaths of Efraín Fuérez and Braulio Morales, the silencing of community voices—these are not equal errors on both sides. They reveal the pattern of a state that demands order without justice, peace without equality, and silence in place of truth.
Our differences, then, are not about who suffers—we both see that clearly. They are about where suffering comes from and what can break it. You describe the world as if it were collapsing; I see it trying to be born again, through courage, through minga, through voices that refuse to disappear.
I don’t write these words to defeat your argument. I write them because I believe you—I believe the fear, the weariness, the disorientation you describe. No one should have to live with that kind of uncertainty, watching their neighbors turn suspicious, hearing the far-off thud of tear gas as if it were the weather.
I think we’re standing in the same field but facing in opposite directions. You look at the destruction and see madness overtaking sense. I look at it and see the price people are paying for having been unheard too long. Both of us want it to stop—the hunger, the terror, the isolation. Neither of us wants to see another young man carried to a hospital or another mother crying for someone shot at a blockade.
Where we meet, I think, is in the conviction that human life matters more than slogans, more than tactics, more than any government’s show of force. You keep writing because you don’t want to lose that conviction. I keep answering because I don’t want you to.
I also know how it feels when empathy begins to erode—when exhaustion makes you want the loudest side simply to win so things can quiet down. But beneath that exhaustion, something else still lives: the will to care, even for those you don’t understand. That’s where the future begins, not with a victory but with the recovery of that will.
You once said that a gate had been built in front of an old house, and the house would have to be torn down to make sense of the gate. Maybe what we’re seeing now is the opposite: an old house falling, and people struggling to build a gate that leads somewhere better. It’s hard to tell which pieces to keep and which must go. But you and I both know that no gate worth building should lock anyone out.
I read your column not as despair but as an act of faith—that words can still hold meaning, that the town can still find its voice. And I answer in the same faith: that even amid anger and noise, we can still talk to each other, not about who is right, but about how we keep the fragile thread of care unbroken.
That thread is all we have. But it might be enough to weave something new.