Thousands of high school and university students took to the streets of Quito on the afternoon of Saturday, October 10, 2026, in a protest directed at the government of Daniel Noboa, Global Voices reported. Accounts of police beating demonstrators and journalists followed. The marchers assembled near the Central University and headed for the city's Historic Center after a call from the Autonomous Resistance Front (FARO), a coalition of youth collectives.
Police response
According to Global Voices, numerous videos shared on social media showed officers attacking people who were protesting peacefully, along with reporters covering the event. One of them, teleSUR reporter Elena Rodríguez Yánez, wrote on X on October 11 that a police baton hit her from behind on the head while she was filming officers striking young protesters. She said that when she turned and raised her teleSUR microphone to show she was press, a second baton strike broke it.
Global Voices says the government dispatched authorities to put down the demonstrations. Allegations that dozens of students had been suffocated, hurt or arrested circulated rapidly online. These figures come from accusations made on social media; Global Voices does not cite an official tally.
Jobs, medicine and university funding
Demonstrators complained that hospitals lack medicines and medical supplies, that public education spending has been cut, that young people struggle to find work, that insecurity keeps rising and that state agents are behind forced disappearances, Global Voices reported. Chants also condemned what marchers called genocide in Palestine and US interventionism in Latin America.
Data from Ecuador's statistics institute, INEC, indicate that 40 percent of the country's unemployed are aged 15 to 24, Global Voices notes. The outlet adds that the 2026 budget, passed by the National Assembly in November 2025, removed roughly USD 99 million from postgraduate programs, co-financed institutions, state universities and polytechnics.
The government's main youth jobs programme, "Youth in Action," began its third edition on October 30. It gives people aged 18 to 29 temporary work lasting two months at USD 400 monthly. Several academics and civil society figures have attacked the scheme, arguing it lacks a broad, long-term plan, according to Global Voices.
A different kind of protest
Global Voices describes the student-led movement as a shift for Ecuador, where large protests have more often been organised by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), labour bodies including CEOSL, the FUT and the UNE, or feminist, anti-mining and environmental groups.
Hatari Ulcuango, president of the student federation at the Catholic University of Ecuador, said in a speech that the mobilizations were "just the beginning." Participants vowed to keep coming back to the streets for as long as their demands are ignored, Global Voices reported.
Sources
- Global Voices (CC BY 3.0)
