Yaku Pérez, Ecuador’s Potential First Indigenous President, Explained.
The remarkable rise of a historic candidate.
(at the time of writing, the Ecuadorian electoral authority has not confirmed Yaku Pérez’s place in the second round of the Presidential Election).
In October 2019, few people in Ecuador could have imagined that, less than 16 months later, the country would be on the verge of electing its first indigenous President.
Yet on February 7th, 2021 Ecuadorians surprised the world and themselves by selecting the 51-year-old lawyer Yaku Pérez Guartambel as one of two Presidential candidates amongst sixteen to face each other in a runoff election to be held on the 11th of April 2021. The outcome of that election will not only be massively consequential for Ecuador but will also have reverberations for the left across Latin America. To understand Yaku’s ascension, we have to first try to understand the events of October 2019.
In May 2017 President Rafael Correa left Ecuador for Belgium after 10 years in office. Despite winning three consecutive terms and managing to re-write the country’s constitution, Correa’s movement was running on empty.
At the beginning of his mandate, Correa governed with a wide-ranging coalition of left-leaning academics, activists, and moderate business people, but over time he fell out with his main allies, often publically and emotionally. At the height of his popularity, Correa’s government was able to spend widely on social programs thanks to oil prices-oil being Ecuador’s primary export- eclipsing $100/barrel.
By the time he left office, the price of oil had dropped below $50/barrel, and a number of corruption scandals, including the region-wide Oderbrecht lava jato bribery scheme, were bubbling to the surface, threatening his sanctimonious discourse.
Correa’s successor, his former vice-President Lenin Moreno, inherited an inflated state apparatus that couldn’t pay its bills. The Correa government had maintained the appearance of good times by pre-selling oil to countries like China and Thailand in obscure deals, but when the Moreno government took over, it quickly found itself in the midst of a liquidity crisis, affecting its ability to meet domestic and international debt obligations.
As broke countries often do, Moreno turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which offered low-interest loans with conditions around reducing government spending.
In the meantime, Correa and Moreno fell out. Moreno empowered state prosecutors to pursue corruption wherever they found it, which led to the downfall of a number of former Correa ministers, and most spectacularly Correa and Moreno’s shared vice-President, Jorge Glas. Correa himself was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 8 years in jail, though he evades his sentence in Belgium. Correa denies the overwhelming evidence against him and his government and has threatened to jail prosecutors and replace judges that ruled against him.
Because Ecuador uses the US dollar as its official currency, even if it wanted to the government can’t print money to meet domestic obligations. As a result, if the government overspends it needs to find lenders to enable it to meet its fiscal deficit which is thought to be anywhere between $4 and $10 billion dollars.
As part of its package of reforms, the International Monetary Fund recommended the government eliminate fuel subsidies. Fuel subsidies are regressive and benefit rich people, who consume more fuel for their luxury vehicles, more than poor people. The government proposed eliminating the fuel subsidies and replacing them with cash transfers to the country’s poorest.
The decision to eliminate fuel subsidies without widespread consultation lead the country’s largest indigenous confederation, CONAIE, to call for massive protests against the government. The protests began on the 2nd of October.
Interpretations of the protests vary. It’s hard to write about.
For many, including many indigenous people, what happened was as follows: in the second-largest indigenous-led protest in the country’s history, tens of thousands of protesters descended on Quito and were violently repressed by the police and military. The protests were both inspiring in the show of force, as well as sorrowful for the injuries sustained by mostly peaceful protesters, including 10 deaths. While many critics of the protests point to the hypocrisy of an environmentally-inclined movement mobilizing in favor of subsidies for harmful greenhouse gases, that argument misses the point. Supporters of the protestors would argue that the mobilization was a rejection of the state asking the country’s poorest to sacrifice the little help they get while the wealthiest make no accommodations at all. The government mismanaged the funds. The poorest foot the bill. The wealthy lament, yet easily move on.
For others, the protests between the 2nd and 13th of October represent a dark period in the country’s history. People were confined to their homes and if they ventured out they were often the victims of random violence. Journalists were kidnapped by the protestors. Police were attacked and some sexually assaulted. Businesses were sacked, others were unable to operate, and hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity were lost. Quito’s well preserved colonial center was destroyed and hasn’t recovered. Some argue that the images of soldiers being stopped and held by protestors, even giving over their weapons in some cases, as evidence that the government exercised great restraint.
In the end, regardless of one’s perspective, the week of protests and violence represent a collective trauma for Ecuadorians and Quiteños in particular. After the government agreed to maintain fuel subsidies, and the indigenous protestors retreated, there were no efforts towards any sort of societal reconciliation. Many non-indigenous Ecuadorians took to Twitter to spit racist vitriol. Whatsapp groups overflowed with hateful messages. Though no longer a topic of conversation, the wounds remain open and stinging.
Furthermore, little was done to investigate what actually happened during that chaotic week. Almost everyone agrees that the mostly peaceful indigenous-led protests were infiltrated by violent provocateurs, but their identity remains a mystery. Some suspect Venezuela’s government may have played a part. Others point to the dependency drug cartels have on subsidized diesel to process cocaine along the Colombian Ecuadorian border, suspecting cartels may have played a part. The office of the Federal Comptroller, the government department responsible for investigating corruption, was attacked on multiple occasions and set on fire. Some see the precision of such an attack as being in the interest of Rafael Correa and his sympathizers. Ecuadorians have many questions and few answers.
When Yaku Pérez launched his presidential campaign, he found himself between the sword and the wall, as they say in Spanish. For many non-indigenous Ecuadorians, Pérez’s presence on the periphery of the protests that week should disqualify him from their consideration.
For many indigenous peoples, on the other hand, Pérez’s lack of presence in the front-lines of the protests should disqualify him from representing the wipala in the Presidential campaign.
Indeed, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), whose leaders were the faces of the October protests, held an emergency meeting to ask that Pachakutik, the indigenous’ movements political arm, annul Yaku Pérez’s presidential candidacy. Facing criticism on all sides, in August of 2020 Yaku was dismissed by most as an also-ran candidate.
When Ecuador’s Presidential election landscape began to take form in December 2020, many considered it a two-horse race between former banker Guillermo Lasso and political novice Andrés Araúz. The conservative Lasso was making his third attempt at the Presidency, having lost to Correa in 2013 and Moreno in 2017.
This time around, Lasso was running on a united ticket with his former rivals the Social Christian Party, a formula many political watchers considered a requirement in order to broaden Lasso’s appeal. With Ecuador facing a health crisis and economic crisis as a result of both the Correa/IMF hangover as well as being one of the worst-hit countries in the region by COVID-19, the cards seemed to be falling in place for the religiously-minded Lasso to finally achieve the power he has desperately coveted.
Running against Lasso was the 36-year-old economist Andrés Araúz, Correa’s handpicked surrogate. Prior to the 2021 election campaign, few knew anything about Andrés Araúz, except for political watchers aware of his role in a corruption scandal surrounding an over-budgeted cultural festival.
With many of his former ministers and allies in jail, in exile, or awaiting trial, Correa had few options, and thus gave Araúz his blessing, his still functional grassroots campaign machine, and the rights to use his image and speak his name as often as possible.
Mostly avoiding media interviews, Araúz ran on a platform of restoring the Correa-era glory. In addition to offering $1000 checks to people who voted for him, Araúz promised to re-write the Correa-era constitution, which was nobody’s priority except for the term-limited former President tweeting angrily from an attic in Belgium.
Alongside Lasso and Araúz were 13 other candidates, many operating from the realms of demagoguery and the absurd, and then there was Yaku. Polls consistently placed Yaku in third place, but few saw him as overcoming the well-known and well-financed Lasso. As the race tightened, Lasso supporters began telling others that they had to vote for Lasso as the only alternative to a return to the corrupt authoritarianism offered by correístas. Yaku campaigned effectively on a shoe-string.
For Yaku, representing a left-wing alternative to the tired, corrupt and oppressive Chavez-Ortega-Correa discourse was also personal. In 2015 during a protest against the Correa government, Yaku and his wife, the French-Brazilian academic Manuela Picq, were targeted and attacked by police. As an act of vengeance against Pérez, Correa had Picq deported. (A documentary about her persecution is available here).
Yaku campaigned on his principles, with his main message being that Ecuador can opt for an alternative economic model other than the resource-extraction model Ecuador has pursued since the 1970s. According to Yaku, resource extraction has only brought environmental destruction, inequality, corruption, and a consistent boom-and-bust economy. No-one can question his commitment to the cause: born Carlos Pérez, he changed his name to Yaku (water in Kichwa) in 2017.
When at approximately 8 pm local time on February 7th, 2021, the Ecuadorian electoral authority announced the results of its “quick count” sample of votes showing Yaku Pérez in second place with a thin lead over Guillermo Lasso in third, Twitter commentators dismissed the lead as likely to disappear once more ballots were counted.
Indeed, within a few hours Lasso appeared to overtake Yaku, only for Yaku to pull ahead again. Two days later vote counting has not finalized but Yaku’s lead has not changed. Guillermo Lasso has not conceded but has stated he will wait until all ballots are counted before deciding his next course of action, which could include demanding a recount.
In social media, many former supporters of Lasso quickly abandoned the candidate and embraced Yaku, recognizing that the former lawyer likely represents the best possibility of overtaking the lead established by Correa’s surrogate.
Yaku’s ascendency to the spotlight does not mean Ecuador has overcome racism: memes both in favor and against the candidate often evoke racist tropes. The Telesur left, as demonstrated by the Correa supporting Chilean partisan Patricio Mery Bell, has called into question Yaku’s ideological credentials, stating “(between Lasso and Yaku) it’s the right that bathes every day against the right that doesn’t”. Others try to put into question Yaku’s indigenous heritage, noting his name was originally Carlos and claiming that his father is mixed-race. Just as at the beginning of his campaign, Yaku is attacked from all sides.
Despite the very real possibility that Yaku may become the next president, no-one, including probably him, knows what kind of President Yaku will be.
Before launching his presidential career Yaku had only a year and a half in office as an elected official. In 2019 he was elected to head the prefecture of the province of Azuay, the highest elected office in the provincial government. Though proving himself an effective and austere campaigner, Yaku had little time, once in office, to enact an agenda before launching a Presidential campaign.
Aside from his clear environmental stance, we know little else of what Yaku can do. President Yaku will inherit a country that is broke. Yaku has been lukewarm on continuing to work with the IMF but has been clear that he sees austerity as the disease and not the cure.
An alternative to the IMF would be seeking financing from China, but China’s environmental and human rights record in Ecuador is ghastly. A companion of Yaku’s, the Shaur indigenous activist José Tendetza, was mysteriously killed in 2014 after protesting against Chinese environmental crimes in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Yaku has not forgotten.
In addition to the poor state of government coffers, Yaku will not have a majority in congress. Deal-making between political parties is the origin of much corruption in Ecuador. Nonetheless, Yaku has promised a clean government. He’s also promised gender parity in his cabinet, which would be a first for Ecuador, and to build bridges across party lines and based on shared mutual interest. Even his own movement, Pachakutik, covers both soft and hard left. From day one he will be under pressure to satisfy everyone, knowing he can likely only satisfy a few.
For Yaku to reach the Presidency, Ecuador’s electoral authority will first have to certify the election results and Yaku’s participation in the second round.
Yaku will then have to convince many people, including those who voted for his ideological adversaries, to vote for him.
The task is massive but doable: though some long for the abundance of the Correa years, others remember the constant corruption scandals and the daily confrontation played out through Twitter. Many tired of the berrinches (hissy-fits) of the insecure, fragile, and constantly fighting Rafael Correa.
And since being in exile Correa has only indulged his authoritarian tendencies more. Like a left-leaning Donald Trump, he’s doubled-down on his extreme-base as they double-down on him. Even Correa sympathizers fear an Araúz government might abandon dollarization, the one stable institution in an unstable country. Yaku has promised to maintain dollarization, for better or for worse.
Regardless of what happens, Yaku’s journey from the periphery to the center of the Ecuadorian political debate is nothing short of remarkable. An indigenous President would be meaningful for the country and the region, and will hopefully kickstart the process of reconciliation the country desperately needs. In the meantime, Yaku finds himself where he performs best: under-attack, underestimated, and undeterred.
Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo is a Canadian-Ecuadorian businessman and political/social commentator. You can read his articles in Spanish here. You can find him on Twitter here. He lives in Quito.
