On the way back from a walkabout Wednesday we came across this protest between us and the rest of our route home (just up the street a couple of blocks past the mounted police.) Decided to wait it out and record it. All and all, it seemed like a pretty chill demonstration.
Seems like a lot of issues are coming up, from fears that changing re-election law is paving the way to dictatorship, to protection of the environment from mining and oil and putting up the Galapagos islands as collateral for loans from China, skirmishes around free speech issues, removing the gas subsidies, etc.
Ecuador has come out of some bad times in the past, is wary of what is happening with other South American countries, particularly Venezuela, and is distrustful of foreign claims to its resources and suspicious of manipulation embedded in global trade agreements that heavily favor richer countries at the expense of developing nations. One can learn a lot here, I think, about what it means to be a citizen of the world.