Yaku Pérez, the “ecosocial” indigenous man who wants his revenge in the Ecuadorian elections

Yaku Pérez, the indigenous politician of the Kichwa Kañari people who two years ago disrupted the presidential elections in Ecuador By staying at the gates of the second round, he seeks revenge with his proposal “ecosocial”which he presents as an alternative to the right and the correísmo.

At the age of 54, Yaku Pérez (Cachipucara, 1969), a lawyer, teacher and staunch defender of water and nature, returned to the political arena as one of the best-known faces for the Ecuadorian electorate among the eight presidential candidates registered for these extraordinary general elections, called for Sunday, August 20.

With his leftist, environmentalist and humanist profile, Yaku exudes symbolism wherever he walks, and he runs for the left-wing alliance in these elections “Of course it can”, integrated among other parties by his own political movement, Somos Agua, created after his previous presidential candidacy.

And it is that water is the great flag of this candidate who in 2017 decided to change his name from Carlos to Yaku (water, in Kichwa). “From water we come, to water we become. Water is our future”says the candidate, currently a member of the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature.

Gone was his previous 2021 candidacy with the Pachakutik movement, the political arm of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), the largest social organization in the country, of which he claims to have the support of its bases, although its leaders They have not expressed their support for him or other candidates.

His always peaceful and calm demeanor contrasts with the firmness with which he defends his convictions and his fierce opposition to extractive industries such as oil and mining, activities on which he promotes their accelerated abandonment, while he is open to foreign investment in other more sustainable sectors.

Yaku Pérez maintains that he was the victim of a “fraud” in the scrutiny of votes for the 2021 elections, in which a tight count gave the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, the pass to the final ballot, who was measured in that second round with the correísta candidate Andrés Arauz.

Chacana, saxophone and bicycle

Hanging from his neck is a chacana (Andean cross), also called the constellation of the south, stars that represent the community and harmony with Pachamama (Mother Earth), and that for the candidate, mark the four directions of an eventual Government. theirs: security, economy, ecology and governability.

In the beginning, he led several indigenous organizations, such as the Federation of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations of Azuay (FOA), from 2003 to 2012; the Confederation of the Kichwas Peoples of Ecuador (Ecuarunari), from 2013 to 2019; and the Andean Coordination of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), from 2016 to 2019.

Saxophonist and lover of the bicycle, with which he tries to move everywhere, Yaku Pérez was several times arrested and imprisoned for “sabotage and terrorism to public services” and criminalized for protesting in defense of water and nature during the presidential decade of Rafael Correa (2007-2017).

After one of these protests, he was sentenced to one year in prison, a sentence that was appealed and that in second instance was reduced to eight days, for dealing with the defense of water with a “noble purpose”. In 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted him precautionary measures after he denounced threats against his life.

Leap in politics and indigenous marriage

His great step in politics was being elected in 2019 as prefect of the Andean province of Azuay, whose capital is Cuenca, where he was also a councilor between 1996 and 2000.

As prefect of Cuenca, he promoted the protests of October 2019 against the Government of President Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) for the elimination of fuel subsidies, although he later ended up making peace with the Executive.

A clear example of his commitment to defending indigenous rights is the world precedent he achieved when in 2022 the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recognized the legality of his ancestral marriage with the outspoken educator and journalist -Brazilian Manuela Picq, his second wife, after being widowed by Verónica Ceballos, with whom he had two daughters.

After a ten-year legal battle, the CERD ruling ordered the Ecuadorian State to register the marriage between Pérez and Picq, contracted in 2013 before the authority of the grandmothers of the Kichwa Kañari people, under the full moon and in the Quimsacocha lagoon, surrounded by a circle of flowers.

Source: EFE