María Belén Garrido

On April 20, 2005, Lucio Gutiérrez left his position as constitutional president of Ecuador. This occurred due to the nonviolent action of several weeks, especially in the country’s capital. The reasons for his early departure from power were, above all, political and not so much economic as has happened in other Latin American countries.

Lucio Gutiérrez came to power in 2003 in collaboration with the political party Movimiento Popular Democrático (MPD) and Pachakutik, considered in those years the political arm of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie). Unfortunately, that alliance lasted only six months. Gutiérrez’s main political mistake was supporting the members of his own political organization, the Patriotic Society Party (PSP), who, together with other deputies, removed from their positions the magistrates and directors of the Supreme Court of Justice, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the Constitutional Court. The lack of respect for the independence of the powers of the State produced the frontal rejection of several local and national organizations in Ecuador, who carried out nonviolent actions against them.

Gutiérrez, at first, tried to legitimize these decisions with a popular consultation, which did not take place, and, in the face of incessant pressure, Gutiérrez dismissed the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice on April 15, 2005. The president of the mentioned Court, Guillermo Castro Dáger, had annulled the criminal trials against Abdalá Bucaram, former president of the Republic and until that year a fugitive from justice due to corruption issues. Thus, his return to the country was allowed. This further increased the population’s participation in the protests, which intensified and called for “everyone to leave.” Gutiérrez, for his part, decided to confront these claims with police repression and counter-marches. The various participants in the nonviolent actions were described by Gutiérrez himself as “outlaws,” a name that the Protestants decided to adopt.

Police repression was more intense than in previous presidential defeats such as that of Abdalá Bucaram in 1997 or Jamil Mahuad in 2000. The amount of tear gas used was much greater, leaving three dead.

What made it possible to limit the repression by the Police? What caused the resignation of the General Commander of the Police, General Jorge Poveda? Next, I present, from the concept of social distance, the role that this factor can have in defection, understood as an act through which a person no longer aligns themselves with the guidelines or orders of the institution to which they belong, which can lead to resignation, non-cooperation with the assigned position and even cooperation with the opposing side. Defections, according to Chenoweth and Perkosky, can help reduce violence by 88%.

The data collected for this article is based on three field works carried out between 2017 and 2020 in various cities in Ecuador, semi-structured interviews with various representatives of social, indigenous, union organizations, non-governmental organizations, members of the Police and the Armed Forces. and the review of newspapers and secondary literature.

The concept of social distance was introduced by Johan Galtung and implies that the shorter the relationship with their origin, economic condition, education, place of work, among others, in this case between members of nonviolent movements and the police, the more possibilities they will have the former to influence the latter. In the case of the April protests against Gutiérrez, the members who made up the so-called “outlaws” group mainly belonged to key sectors of society, with which this leverage was possible. One of these sectors were the generals of the Armed Forces in passive service who were against the actions of Gutiérrez. For example, to demonstrate their rejection of Gutiérrez’s actions, the general in passive service, José Gallardo, and the former director of the military school, Colonel Luis Hernández, participated in various protests in the streets and were in concrete actions such as carrying a coffin with the Constitution to burn it in front of the Supreme Court of Justice.

The social distance between military personnel on active duty and military personnel on passive duty is very short and the role of the latter can be decisive, if they are still active in politics. That was the case of General Paco Moncayo, who was not only the mayor of Quito at that time, but in 1995 General Commander of the Armed Forces, a war hero and, using that prestige, he appealed to the military in a demonstration, telling them: “They have to understand that [Lucio] Gutiérrez and [Abdalá] Bucaram are the ones who have most offended and denigrated the military class.” He was against Gutiérrez’s decisions on the Supreme Court of Justice and that is why, at first, he called for several peaceful demonstrations in the capital. Furthermore, Moncayo, as mayor, convened the Quito Assembly, made up of various organizations that represent different sectors of society, amplifying and diversifying the protesters.

Paco Moncayo, as mayor of the capital, was able to use municipal resources to stop the counter marches that came to the capital on buses. For this purpose, he declared the city in a state of emergency and closed the main land entrances to the capital, placing dump trucks and municipal machinery on the General Rumiñahui Highway and the Pan-American Highway.

Many of the participants in the protests had a short social distance from the police, this can be argued from the statement of a police officer interviewed about Los Forajidos:

“Basically, middle class people who complain, who protest peacefully, but above all things I believe that there was a sense of identity that was created with these people, because they were not the poor people of the country, they were more the middle class that was that was protesting and, with this middle, upper middle class, the Police officers identified themselves. So, being the Commander General, a person who comes from the middle class, a middle class identifies and says what they are protesting, their interests are affecting them, and their interests are the interests of my family, they are the interests of my brothers”.

This characteristic is very important because the members of the Police High Command largely belong to the middle and upper class of the mountains of Ecuador. It is important to remember that every member of the public force has a family outside the barracks: cousins, brothers, grandparents, uncles, friends, schoolmates, neighbors, etc. All of them are not indifferent to the police or military, even more so if this group of people participate in the mobilizations and are the ones they must repress. For this reason, identifying these ties and thus seeking to reduce social distance can be very beneficial to encourage defections among gendarmes.

Thus, on April 20, 2005, the General Commander of the Police, General Jorge Poveda, requested his discharge and resigned from his position. This resignation created a vacuum in the police who were on the street facing the protesters, “for a moment the police did not know what to do, or who to shoot” according to Gerardo Merino. For his part, Saad Herrería in his book “Lucio’s Black Book” indicates that the police officers who were on the General Rumiñahui Highway placed themselves under the orders of Paco Moncayo, who was there to prevent the passage of the countermarches, and prevented them from enter the capital. The military, for its part, through the Joint Command withdrew support for Gutiérrez and he had to leave the presidential palace.

To reduce social distance, you can also use national signs with which law enforcement forces identify. For example, in the protests against former President Gutiérrez, the national anthem was sung or Ecuadorian flags were carried before the arrival of the Police in order to limit their repression.

This text is based on the author’s book “Presidential Ruptures: the actions of the public force in the face of nonviolent movements in Ecuador in 1997, 2000 and 2005”, 2022, Universos de Letras.

*María Belén Garrido, has a doctorate from the Eichstätt/Ingolstadt University in Germany. She has worked as a teacher at the Catholic University of Ecuador and a researcher at Flacso Ecuador. He has a master’s degree in Peace Studies from FernUniversität Hagen in Germany. His research focuses on issues of peace and conflict with an emphasis on nonviolence.

*** Image source: This image was originally posted to Flickr by AgenciaAndes at https://www.flickr.com/photos/75116651@N03/19364273812. It was reviewed on 6 July 2015 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0.

Translated by Damian Vazques