LatinNews Daily - 20 March 2024

*Leonidas Iza, the president of Ecuador’s powerful umbrella indigenous organisation Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Conaie), has said that Conaie is hardening its anti-mining stance. Speaking outside Ecuador’s constitutional court, where Conaie lodged an appeal against a 6 March decree from the mining & energy ministry which established guidelines on ascertaining communities’ free and informed consent for mining projects, Iza said that “we’re moving towards a process of resistance and struggle from the territories” and towards “an uprising against mining”. Iza said that Conaie will hold an assembly on 22 March where the organisation will make further decisions about its anti-mining campaign. Conaie has strongly opposed the government’s new guidelines on free and informed consent, saying that these mean that people will only be consulted if they have registered in advance. This, Iza said yesterday, means that “[the authorities] will only register people who are in agreement” with mining projects. Clashes have taken place in recent days between anti-mining activists and police in the village of Palo Quemado, in Sigchos municipality (Cotopaxi province), where consultations are underway regarding extractive plans by the Canadian firm Atico Mining.