(12 Oct 2019) Hundreds of indigenous protesters clashed with police on Saturday as they poured into Ecuador's capital from the country's Amazon, protesting against rising fuel prices.
Protesters were seen using cardboards to protect themselves and took cover behind makeshift barricades as police shot tear gas to disperse them.  
Some of them set fire to wooden planks and barb wires as the streets of Quito turned into battlefields.
Faced with a $64 billion debt and a $10 billion annual deficit, Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno is raising taxes, liberalizing labor laws and cutting public spending in order to win more than $4 billion in emergency financing from the International Monetary Fund.
As part of that plan, Moreno eliminated a subsidy on the price of fuel on October 2, driving the most popular variety of gasoline from $1.85 to $2.39 a gallon and diesel from $1.03 to $2.30.
Panic and speculation sent prices soaring, with costs of some products - papayas, rural bus fares - doubling or more.
Ecuador's indigenous people, wracked by poverty and under served by government programmes, were infuriated.
Over the last week, thousands of Shuar, Saraguro, Quechua and other indigenous people streamed into Quito from deep in the Amazon rainforest and high in the towns and villages of the Ecuadorian Andes.
They set up camp in the Casa de la Cultura, the neighbouring park known as El Arbolito and three universities, supported by thousands of protesters from Quito and surrounding areas.
Despite the dire situation, Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno said he cannot restore the fuel subsidies as backing down to protesters would be a defeat for the president's effort to undo the policies of his predecessor and former mentor, Rafael Correa.

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