· 3 min read
On 13 September 2025, the Ecuadorean government announced the removal of the diesel fuel subsidy. What was presented as a technical economic policy measure quickly triggered social rupture. Since the start of President Daniel Noboa’s government, energy policy has been guided more by electoral calculus than by long-term planning. This decision, presented as fiscal reform, threatens to increase the series of compounding crises affecting the country.
Coming out of the pandemic, Ecuador’s economy was already fragile. Despite promises of renewal under a young ministerial cabinet, Ecuadoreans have faced 14-hour power cuts, a higher value-added tax, and ever-rising crime. The decision to lift the diesel subsidy became the final expression of a broader pattern of austerity without inclusion.
The social cost of fiscal ‘discipline’
The decree raised the price of automotive diesel from about US$1.80 to US$2.80 per gallon, equivalent to a ~56% increase. The government justified this decision as a way to free up fiscal space and reduce fossil fuel dependency, announcing temporary compensations for transport and social transfers. Without a long-term social investment plan, the burden falls squarely on the poorest.
Diesel is used across the whole food supply chain, deeply embedded in agriculture and transport, as well as domestic energy generation. The increase in diesel fuel will also increase by 14% the price of the domestic basic food basket, meaning that families would need US$100 extra to cover it. For the 38% already multidimensionally poor, this reform is particularly devastating, as higher fuel costs mean less access to food, education, and healthcare, not just less cash.
What has been framed as a step towards efficiency, in practice, deepens inequality.
Violence against violence: the Fanoian logic of repression
For many, these policies are just the final confirmation that the State had abandoned its social contract.
The discontent erupted on the streets to protest against not only the removal of the subsidy. Protesters are denouncing the government’s broader neglect of public services: the shortages of medicines in hospitals, the decline of public education, and the continuous expansion of mining and oil projects into protected territories, often without prior consultation or regard of democratic mandates.
The government's response to these protests has been militarisation and criminalisation of dissent, and indigenous and civil society groups have been labelled as terrorists.
President Noboa has governed under states of emergency for over 600 days, nearly his entire term. The use of military force and emergency decrees, as well as the stigmatisation of indigenous movements, fits what Frantz Fanon described as the continuity of colonial domination:
“Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip… it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.”
As Fanon argued, violence becomes the language through which domination sustains itself. This neoliberal reform rhetoric hides in its pledge for modernisation and efficiency as it replicates the old logic of extraction. It is reproducing the colonial exploitation model, which turns entire regions into sacrifice zones while promising progress that never arrives.
Beyond transitions
Militarisation has closed the space for dialogue, leaving protest as the only remaining language for political participation. If progress means silencing those who defend life and territory, then it is not progress at all.
If this government wants real sustainability – fiscal and environmental – it needs dialogue, consent, and redistribution. As Fanon reminds us, liberation is not given; it is claimed. The people of Ecuador are reclaiming their dignity and reminding us that transitions without human justice are not possible.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
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