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With almost all ballots counted, 59 percent of voters sided with the young activists who spent a decade fighting for the referendum, as we wrote last week. It is widely considered to be the first time a country’s citizens voted decisively to leave oil in the ground. In a separate referendum, Ecuadoreans also voted to block mining in a biosphere reserve.
“The answer from the Ecuadorean people suggests to us that the people are proposing a different way to live,” Monserrat Vásquez, an anti-mining activist, told reporters after the victory was announced.