candidates. Instead, it promoted local campaigns. By 1996, however, grassroots pressure had pushed the organisation to rethink their position on electoral politics, with the president of CONAIE, Luis Macas running for national congress and the launching of the Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement - a political party based on the Indigenous movement. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, CONAIE organised at least five national Indigenous uprisings, mobilising thousands of campesinos to shut down Quito. During these uprisings CONAIE made demands for land rights and plurinationalism while protesting corruption, deregulation, privatisation, and dollarisation of the Ecuadorian economy. Beginning in 1993, CONAIE supported lawsuits against Chevron saying that the corporation deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste onto Indigenous lands as a cost-saving measure at the Lago Agrio oil fields. 1990 uprising 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 1990 uprising marked the 500th anniversary since Columbus' first trip to the Americas. In Quito, protestors occupied the Santa Domingo Church and, protesting the failure of the legal system to process land claims. The protesters intended to occupy the church until CONAIE was able to meet with a government representative to discuss changes in policy regarding their land claim issues. Police surrounded the church. 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. Their demands were focused mostly on land, but also included such issues as state services, cultural rights, and the farm prices of agricultural products. This movement caused so much disruption that the government relented and met with the leaders of CONAIE; the government made some concessions to people in rural areas and settled some land disputes, but the status of ancestral lands in the lowlands remained an unresolved issue. 1992-1994 uprisings advocating for land and water rights In April 1992, two thousand Kichwa, Shuar, and Achuar people marched 240 miles (385 kilometers) from the Amazon to