BY JANE BUSSEY

 QUITO, Ecuador -- Sister Ana Estela is holding her poverty, 11 small coins worth
 25 cents, in her gnarled hands, and she is angry. ``This isn't enough to buy
 bread,'' Ana Estela said. ``This president is killing us. That is what these people
 are doing.''

 The object of her wrath, President Jamil Mahuad, a Harvard-trained economist,
 thought he could save his struggling presidency with a radical announcement that
 he would dollarize the economy.

 Instead, he is now fighting for his political survival. While dollarization reduced
 pressure from the opposition to resign, it offered no hope to his largest group of
 adversaries, the millions of poor who charge they have become paupers under his
 rule.

 Meeting with top experts on dollarization, guarded by army troops, armored tanks
 and barbed wire barricades inside the presidential palace in the Plaza Grande,
 Mahuad rarely viewed his real opposition, until the situation had spun out of
 control.

 REFUSED TO RESIGN

 On Friday, the military asked Mahuad to resign after Indian protesters, joined by
 mid-level officers, stormed an empty Congress building. Mahuad refused to step
 down, saying anyone who wanted to overthrow him would have to do it by force.

 The poor have become the mark of Ecuador -- some 5.1 million impoverished
 Ecuadoreans by World Bank accounts -- who were slated to become the first
 Third World people in modern times to see their currency become coins to make
 change and everything else work in dollars.

 ``I don't know what the dollar is,'' said Bolivar Pazmiño, 67, who helps his wife,
 Alicia Ortega, sell tomatoes, avocados, green onions, berries and other fresh
 produce -- in Santa Clara, the main market in downtown Quito.

 ``Our life has become just terrible,'' Pazmiño said.

 ``Everything we buy has tripled in price, and there are no customers. The only
 thing we can do is eat just once a day. I don't even shave because I can't afford a
 razor,'' Pazmiño said, rubbing the day-old stubble.

 AT ECONOMIC BOTTOM

 Ecuador is living through its worst economic crisis of this century. Hit by a drop in
 exports, the collapse of most of the country's biggest banks and other economic
 difficulties, inflation rose more than 60 percent and the economy shrank more
 than 7 percent in 1999. This year will be worse.

 Mahuad's announcement that the dollar would become the currency at a rate of
 25,000 sucres to $1 sent prices soaring, doubling or tripling in some cases.

 While experts insist that it's not dollarization per se that sparked the inflationary
 spiral, by setting the value of the sucre so low, prices have to rise to adjust to
 international levels.

 Ecuadoreans say they have no hope. Pazmiño said he was given a poverty bond
 of 50,000 sucres (now $2) a month, but that was taken away because he owns an
 old car. With the official unemployment rate running at 16 percent, but with
 underemployment much higher, residents have little hope of finding new jobs. The
 private sector is aware that salaries -- which now run about $40 to $50 a month --
 need to be hiked. But most businesses are doing so poorly that wage increases
 could doom them to bankruptcy.

 LITTLE END IN SIGHT

 Religious groups have set up soup kitchens to feed hungry Ecuadoreans, but
 there is little end in sight to the economic problems.

 It's this lack of hope that has sparked the growing opposition to the government,
 not in the traditional world of politics, but on the street. From the street vendor to
 the store clerk, people blame the government for mismanagement and corruption.

 ``It all started when this government came into office,'' Pazmiño said. ``They want
 to assassinate the people.''

 Before Friday's events, a majority in the National Congress had been expected to
 approve Mahuad's measures, which include dollarization and a series of laws to
 privatize, deregulate and open the economy to the global economy. While big
 multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund have their
 reservations about the hasty dollarization plan, the privatization and deregulation
 program is the classic IMF remedy for economic troubles. But it does mean more
 job losses as state-run companies are sold and downsized, and higher prices as
 electricity, gasoline and telephone rates more closely approximate international
 prices.

 OUT OF DESPERATION

 It's desperation that prompted indigenous groups to sneak past heavy military
 control to reach the capital by hiding in vegetable trucks or dressing up as
 mestizos. On Wednesday, an estimated 6,000 indigenous people marched
 through downtown Quito, demanding that Mahuad resign and that a Government
 of National Unity be installed.

 Police kept the march from reaching the presidential palace, but police fired tear
 gas on other protesters. Indigenous groups blocked roads in the north, and
 transportation workers in Cuenca staged a 48-hour strike.

 The administration had planned to send the dollarization bill along with other
 economic bills to lawmakers for urgent approval.

 But the Wednesday march was all about halting these top-level plans, and by
 Friday those plans were uncertain as Mahuad resisted calls for his resignation.

 Francisco Ponce, an unemployed construction worker, has drawn his own
 conclusion about the government's plan to change the currency.

 ``People are crying because they are suffering,'' Ponce said. ``Dollarization is the
 graveyard of the poor.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald