Thousands of people blocked roads, paralyzed the transport system, and shut down the country for a week while making demands for bilingual education, agrarian reform, and recognition of the plurinational state of Ecuador.

CONAIE's political agenda includes the strengthening of a positive Indigenous identity, recuperation of land rights, environmental sustainability, opposition to neoliberalism and rejection of U.S. military involvement in South America (for example Plan Colombia).

[5] CONAIE represents the following indigenous peoples: Shuar, Achuar, Siona, Secoya, Cofán, Huaorani, Záparo, Chachi, Tsáchila, Awá, Epera, Manta, Wancavilca and Quichua.

[10][11] In May/June 1990, CONAIE organised the largest uprising in Ecuador's history, using trees and boulders to block roads, paralyze the transport system, and shutting down the country for a week.

The 1990 uprising is generally regarded as marking the emergence of Indigenous peoples as new political actors on the national level, as CONAIE forced negotiation on their demands for bilingual education, agrarian reform, and recognition of the plurinational state of Ecuador.

The occupiers in the Santa Domingo church were about to begin a hunger strike when "hundreds of thousands of Indians, in some areas with the support of mestizo peasants, blocked local highways and took over urban plazas.

[3] A coalition of Indigenous groups called for an uprising that shut down the country for several days in opposition to an Agrarian Reform Law that provided state support for capitalist agriculture, eliminated communal property, and privatized irrigation water.

[2] President Sixto Durán was forced to negotiate, and the final version of the law supported peasant agriculture, recognised water as a public resource, and reaffirmed communal land ownership.

In cases such as ARCO’s deal to exploit oil resources in the Amazon, the government has totally ignored these new indigenous rights and sold communal land to be developed without another thought.

Such violations have become commonplace and the reformation of the constitution seems in many ways to have just been a populist tactic used by the government to appease the indigenous groups while continuing to persistently pursue its neoliberal agenda.

[2] On January 21, 2000, in response to Mahuad's plans, CONAIE, in coordination with organizations like CONFEUNASSC-CNC, blocked roads and cut off agricultural supplies to Ecuador's major cities.

In response, government officials ordered transit lines not to service Indians and individuals with indigenous characteristics were forcibly removed from interprovincial buses in an effort to prevent protesters from reaching the capitol.

Angry demonstrators led by Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez and CONAIE president Antonio Vargas stormed the Congress of Ecuador and declared a new "National Salvation Government".

For a period of less than 24 hours, Ecuador was ruled by a three-man junta – CONAIE's president Antonio Vargas, army colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, and retired Supreme Court justice Carlos Solórzano.

Gutiérrez was not widely trusted, but he was seen as the only alternative to rival candidate Álvaro Noboa, the richest man in Ecuador who embodied popular fears of crony capitalism.

Hundreds of protestors from the Amazon region took control of airports and oil installations in the two provinces for five days, which has prompted a strong response from Alfredo Palacio's government in Quito.

In April and May 2010 massive nationwide protests condemned Correa's legislation; protestors viewed the water bill as a neoliberal, extractivist policy that violated the tenets of sumak kawsay.

[15] In 2012, the Ecuadorian government under Rafael Correa made agreements with China to enable investment of $1.4 billion to develop copper-gold mines in the Amazon rainforest in the Zamora Chinchipe province.

[19] By August, an alliance of rural farmworkers, Indigenous federations such as CONAIE, student groups, and labor unions had organised protests involving hundreds of thousands of people with a wide range of grievances, including the controversial tax laws; constitutional amendments removing presidential term limits; expanding oil and mining projects; water, education, and labour policies; a proposed free trade agreement with the European Union; and increasing repression of freedom of speech.