FLOOD, LATIFUNDISM AND DEATH IN THE DM OF QUITO

This is from the blog of Communist Party of Ecuador, Red Sun / Partido Comunista del Ecuador - Sol Rojo. It was translated mostly by Google, with some adjustments from Steve Otto. For this site in Spanish see: Click here. 

More than 20 dead and a similar number of disappeared after the strong flood in La Gasca, a central-western neighborhood of Quito.

How much misfortune! As always, it would seem that nature is merciless with the poorest, with those who have to look for any physical space, no matter how hyper-degraded it may be, to be able to build their homes, geographical scenarios with innumerable natural dangers and that are also enhanced by misery.

The municipal authorities basically point out that the responsibility lies with those who build houses in unauthorized areas, in “risk zones”.

What is not said is that the old bureaucratic-landlord State cannot and does not want to solve the serious housing problem that afflicts the majority; that the masses, in order to survive, build four walls and a rustic roof in any space where it is basically possible to do so, so much so that they have had the need to live in sectors (as is the case of the city of Quito) that are over 3,500 meters above sea level, above the slopes of Pichincha, without transportation, basic services, roads, etc.

The struggle to have a home in the country's big cities has also become a struggle for land. In Ecuador, the figure of landowners is not necessarily chained to the ownership of large estates in the countryside, in rural areas, it is also expressed in the cities, where we can speak of the existence of urban estates. It is not strange that powerful economic groups such as El Juri, Deller, Uribe-Schwarzkopf, own thousands of hectares (divided into land) in the metropolitan district of Quito, concentrating the land destined for large real estate projects or speculation in the real estate market. , in contrast to the hundreds of thousands of Quiteños who live on vacant land, while they can; in ravines, under bridges or in small areas, with a very high rate of density and precariousness.

The great concentration of urban land is a process that is tied to political clientelism. Deller, the Paz Delgado family, (among others) have positioned themselves in vast tracts of urban land through the concession of important urban and peripheral spaces. Land such as the San Luis Shopping Center and El Jardín, for example, are the product of fraudulent concessions for 99 years without these economic groups having to pay a single penny for those lands. No different happened with the sports complex of the Liga Deportiva Universitaria in La Pampa, in Quito, the figure of the concession resolves everything in favor of the ruling classes.

Another vehicle for land appropriation is gentrification, that is, the displacement or expulsion of the masses from areas with potential for investment and high income prospects. The hoarders, protected by the corruption of mayors and municipal authorities, appropriated land that even belonged to community members, as happened in the neighborhoods of Cumbayá (Tanda), Cerro El Auki, Calderón, etc.

The flood that has affected thousands of families living in the urban periphery is not only the product of a natural phenomenon, but also expresses the critical situation in which the most depressed, exploited and marginalized popular sectors have to live. Those responsible are fully identified: the old State, the new groups of urban landowners, the patronage and corrupt municipal authorities, and an outdated society that permanently and systematically push the poorest, the wretched, the outcasts, into disgrace and death.

The People's Defense Front of Ecuador expresses its deepest solidarity with the affected masses, especially those who have lost their families as a result of state inaction. For those responsible, our deepest class hatred.

NEITHER FORGIVENESS NOR FORGIVENESS FOR THE PEOPLE'S EXECUTORS!

 We don't know why this article was pulled from the blog of Communist Party of Ecuador Red Sun. We will find out eventually.