MACAS, Ecuador – Several hundred Shuar Indians wearing black war paint and toting wooden spears on Thursday reinforced a highway blockade that police failed to break up earlier in a bloody melee that left one Indian dead and at least 40 police injured.
- Police pulled out of the southeastern jungle region on orders from leftist President Rafael Correa, who is in an intensifying dispute with indigenous groups that say proposed legislation would allow mining on their lands without their consent and lead to the privatization of water.
- The Shuar maintained a traffic blockade of burning tires and wire fencing they had mounted on Monday, and vowed not to lift it until he comes to negotiate with them — personally. Correa says talks can't start until Indians abandon the blockades.
- "With us its all dialogue, no force," Correa told Publica radio Thursday.
- Ecuador's government and indigenous groups traded blame for Wednesday's clash in which police used tear gas to try to break up the roadblock.
- The government says Indians responded with shotgun fire. Ecuador's Amazon Indian federation, CONFENAIE, said 500 police provoked the violence by attacking the Shuar and one indigenous leader accused Correa of "declaring a civil war."
- Witnesses did not back claims by CONFENAIE that nine natives were wounded by police gunfire in the clash.
- The government initially said many riot police were wounded by shotgun pellets but journalists were not allowed to photograph or interview injured officers as they arrive in the capital, Quito. None of their injuries looked life-threatening in photos released by police.
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