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They're practiced despite Ecuador's new 2008 Constitution, recognizing and guaranteeing indigenous peoples' rights, and a mandate to "preserve and promote their management of biodiversity and their natural environment," among other populist provisions, including the "rights of nature."
As a result, indigenous groups like the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality (ECUARUNARI) criticized him, including recently saying:
"While the government has dedicated itself exclusively to attacking and delegitimizing organized sectors like the indigenous movement, workers' unions, etc., it hasn't weakened in the least the structures of power of the right, or those within the state apparatus."
After the failed September 30 coup, Quito's Regional Advisory Group on Human Rights urged Correa to renew support for his base, saying:
"(W)e call upon the national government to set aside its arrogant attitude that is isolating it from the social bases. Together we can build a country with dignity, peace and sovereignty, in which dialogue with social sectors in a daily activity that guides our path toward a country distanced from extractive polices and dependence on a development model based on the destruction of nature."
Given his close call, it remains to be seen if he's listening, though Washington and internal hard liners will try again if he goes too far. James Petras explains that they don't oppose his domestic policies, mainly his "ties with US arch enemy Chavez and ALBA," the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas WTO/NAFTA alternative endorsing pro-South trade principles, ones Washington strongly opposes as well as Correa's decision to close the US Manta airbase.
As a result, Pentagon and CIA operatives, in league with Ecuadorean hard-liners, want Correa ousted, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID financing opposition groups and political parties to topple him. Correa knows it, saying on September 30 that the:
"attempt at destabilization is the result of a strategy that has been brewing for quite some time. A barrage of messages and misinformation have been given to the National Police, which today has been realized through violent actions from a conspiracy attempt."
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