This year's May Day events take on special significance in the wake of the Indian-led uprising in January that forced the removal of President Jamil Mahuad. The final straw that sparked the revolt against Mahuad's attacks on working people's living standards was his government's plans to "dollarize" Ecuador's economy--to replace the national currency, the sucre, with the U.S. dollar.

The reporters are Hilda Cuzco, staff writer for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial magazine, and Juan Villagómez from Los Angeles, a frequent contributor to the Militant on political events in his native Ecuador.

The reporting team will interview unionists, peasant militants, and student activists who have been involved in the continuing protests against the regime, now headed by former vice president Gustavo Noboa. They will also travel to Guayaquil, where the January uprising put in power a short-lived Popular Assembly made up of leaders of unions and other mass organizations.

Three years ago, worker and peasant mobilizations in Ecuador of up to 2 million people led to the ouster of an earlier president, Abdalá Bucaram, after he tried to impose deep austerity measures to satisfy imperialist governments and investors.

The class-struggle developments in Ecuador are part of the palpable increase in worker and peasant struggles, as well as class polarization, throughout the Americas--from current mass protests against water rate hikes in Bolivia to the growing anticolonial movement in Puerto Rico, and stepped-up resistance by working people in the United States and Canada.  
 
 
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