The plan to exchange the sucre for dollars at a rate of 25,000 to one will drastically cut wages. These measures have already devastated the livelihoods of millions of working people, hitting especially the indigenous peoples that include 11 nationalities and comprise 45 percent of Ecuador's 12.4 million population. A large group of Quichua-speaking communities live in the central highlands. They rely mainly on agriculture while others driven off their lands live on the coast. Another group of more than 100,000 comprise six indigenous nationalities who live in the Amazon jungle and subsist by harvesting the rain forest soils.
Land is concentrated in the hands of a few rich landowners.
In the highlands, according to a 1994 report, 1.6 percent of farms occupy 43 percent of the land. On the coast, 3.9 percent occupy 55 percent. Lands owned communally represent only 4 percent in the highlands in the steep mountains that produce only pasture. Land ownership and use has been a key question for the indigenous peoples who have led uprisings throughout the years to assert this right. In June 1994, under the government of Sixto Dur n Ball n, a mobilization shut down the country for two weeks.