The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Spanish: La Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador) or more commonly, CONAIE, is Ecuador's largest indigenous organization. Formed in 1986, CONAIE has pursued social change on behalf of the region's significant native population using a wide range tactics including direct action. CONAIE is most well known for its organization of popular uprisings ("levantamientos populares") that often include blockading of commercial arteries and the takeover of government buildings.
CONAIE's political agenda includes the strengthening of a positive indigenous identity, recuperation of land rights, opposition to neoliberalism, and a rejection of U.S. military involvement in South America (for example Plan Colombia).
Most recently, CONAIE was a primary force behind the coup d'état of democratically elected President Lucio Gutiérrez, who was widely perceived as corrupt and beholden to neoliberal influence.
Read more about Confederation Of Indigenous Nationalities Of Ecuador: Organization, History
Famous quotes containing the word indigenous:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)