Largely unnoticed by the outside world, Ecuador is a country in quiet turmoil. After “20 years of a long and sad neoliberal night,” as stated by the president himself, it may finally awaken to a new socialist beginning. Much lauded by those cheering on Latin America’s ongoing scramble to the left, Ecuador’s recently-elected Rafael Correa is the continent’s newest head of state to join in the “socialism of the 21st century.” With Bolivarian rhetoric galore, particularly by those watching up north, Correa is easily seen as a revolutionary. Within Ecuador’s frustrated borders, however, the sensation is not so animated. There is no doubt that the people crave drastic change, but with 1,097,833 ballots (more than a tenth of the electorate) deliberately nullified by the voters themselves, often profanely, it becomes evident that the situation in Ecuador is not one of eager, poor peasants following a righteous King.

The absurdities of the political world are the same in any country. Ecuadorians recognize this issue with a straight response, “Aquí más,” or “Here, more.” From the liberal tropical coast, to the conservative mountainous region, as far as the inflammatory oil-ridden Amazon, it seems that there is one potent, albeit often unrecognized, unifying factor that manages to hold Ecuador together: disdain and distrust toward their government. The latest Gallup poll found that 92% of the population believes that government corruption is rampant. And not without reason; the last 20 years of presidency have seen enough scandal, corruption and flagrant abuse of power to drive over 60% of the population (87% among the indigenous) into poverty, up an afflictive one-third from 1995.

Of course, these are only numbers, but the statistics represent a caustic reality that has become increasingly difficult to avoid. Child malnutrition among the indigenous is 59%, easily seen outside the up-market McDonald’s in the form of a ragged five-year-old shoe shine boy, accompanied by a slightly older sister with an infant strapped to her back. Inside, the more fortunate children climb about a plastic palace, throwing colorful balls amidst fits of laughter – all under the watchful eye of both the handicam of a loving parent and the armed guard stationed at the door between classes. It is difficult to determine what appears more incongruous, the McDonald’s or the dejected kids. One thing that is certain: the upper class seems to be doing a bang-up job of ignoring the entire situation.

It must also be confessed, however, that in the absence of McCharities, McDonald’s itself gives a decent quantity of money yearly to Hogar de Christo, a local NGO that aims to assist street children. Whether or not trashy fast food restaurants (which have semi-successfully reinvented themselves to embody a bizarre form of western chic) should be present in Quito is questionable. But this does indeed point toward the deplorable circumstance in Ecuador that a silly ketchup-stained fast food clown is taking a more active social role than the national government.

 

Like most South American nations, Ecuador has a turbulent past. The discovery of oil in the 1970s, in addition to a flourishing banana trade, saw Ecuador headed toward a similar standard of living as Chile. All this extra dinero paved the way for big government, and by the 1980s, Ecuador naïvely adopted the majority of the IMF and World Bank’s Policy recommendations, as did most of the developing world. With more money heading away from social spending and into ill-famed austerity measures, in addition to falling global oil prices, governmental incompetence became abruptly obvious. By 1987, then-president León Febres Cordero was ousted from power. As a supporter of compliance with international creditors and pro-US policies, he was kidnapped and beaten by rogue members of the military in protest. There is little doubt that the implemented measures helped push Ecuador into the economic crisis of the 1990s.

And yet, surprisingly, the IMF cannot hoard all the blame. When economic policy author Vice President Alberto Dahik Garzoni, entrenched in corruption charges, fled the country in 1995, politicians campaigned noisily against foreign monetary interventions, an effective salsa dance to distract attention from the blatant government corruption. Emerging from the diversionary smoke in 1997, Abdalá Bucaram Ortiz was elected to office. Remember this name. Serving less than six months, the president – nicknamed “El Loco” (the madman) – dined with penis-chopper Lorena Bobbit, recorded a pop song, and stole an estimated $100 million from the public purse during his brief time in office. Congress declared him “mentally unfit” for presidency, and he fled to Panama with rumored trash bags of cash and paintings from the Palacio´s walls. Following a very competitive game of presidential musical chairs, head of Congress Fabian Ernesto Alarcón Rivera assumed a brief interim Presidency. Not accredited for much, he was arrested on corruption charges a year after stepping down, replaced in 1998 by elected Jamil Mahuad Witt.

Witt’s first order of business was to freeze bank accounts nationwide in an attempt to control the mushrooming inflation as Ecuador’s currency, the sucre, which was becoming imminently worthless. It is widely assumed that he and his inner circle removed millions of dollars before implementation of the freeze. Next up was a tremendously unpopular military arrangement, PLAN Colombia, granting the US use of a northern Ecuadorian airbase for sketchy operations in southern Colombia. By 2000 he began to lose national control as indigenous launched massive protests in response to his proposed dumping of the sucre for the US dollar as national currency. As the unrest turned to instability, the military dispelled Witt to replace him with Gustavo Noboa. Somehow oblivious to the pulse of the entire country, Noboa proceeded with “dollarization” then eventually fled in exile to the Dominican Republic, successfully avoiding the traditional post-presidential corruption charges. Jamil Mahuad Witt now gives courses in political ethics at Harvard and the Kennedy School of Government.

Amassing loads of left-wing support, including the powerful Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE), former coup leader Lucio Gutiérrez was elected popularly in 2002. Standing on a revolutionarily aggressive platform, he pledged to eliminate rampant corruption and nix the free trade negotiations with the US echoing popular sentiment. After just three months of nationwide breath-holding, he, too, broke alliances and pursued the free trade deal. By 2004, he was accused of embezzling public funds to support the campaigns of allied candidates. Predictable. Yet, the debauchery of this political soap opera continues. Accusing (possibly justly) the Supreme Court of bias, he dismissed the majority of its members with irrefutable intentions of dropping charges against the exiled Abdalá Bucaram Ortiz, (El Loco) obliviously expecting to gain political support. A big behind-the-scenes player in this lunacy, Bucaram promptly returned to the coastal city of Guayaquil, descended from a helicopter into a crowd of supporters, burst into song, and rode a horse through a park to the sea.

Disgusted with the government in its ridiculous entirety, Quito, and much of the country, erupted into progressively violent demonstrations. Contributing to the national sense of déjà vu, the military refused to restore order, and after a week of near-anarchy, Luis Gutiérrez was forced to flee the besieged National Palace by helicopter.

And today, Ecuador is holding its breath once again. The last few months saw vicious campaigning from two combatant poles, Ecuador’s richest man, billionaire banana mogul Álvaro Noboa and social populist Rafael Correa. They have certainly lived up to their descriptions. As Correa danced on stage, whipping his belt in the air (symbolizing his slogan “Dale Correa,” a play on his name translated as “Give them a belting”), Noboa was busy handing out wheelchairs, computers, televisions, and cash in exchange for votes. While some voters indeed cherish their new TVs, most Ecuadorians, no longer able to stomach this sleazy nonsense, elected Correa’s radical socialist stance.

While American tourists clamored to shake 43-year-old Correa’s hand, the Congress – publicly perceived as the wealthy, racist, elite – will not be as easily swayed. Neither, with over 100 corporations operating in Ecuador, will the US giggle nervously when Correa snaps his belt on stage. The new preseident has already irked Wall Street, proposing to halve payments on Ecuador’s massive $16.8-billion debt service, to reserve money for direly needed social programs. First on the agenda is the tattered “public” school system, which students must currently pay to attend. Correa has also stood firm against the notorious free trade agreement, TLC (Tratado Liberación Comercial), which would threaten an already dilapidated economy in innumerable ways – most noticeably, the potential to flood Ecuador with cheap subsidized produce that would destroy any remains of an indigenous marketplace. As a final aggravation to Uncle Sam, Correa will not renew the detested Plan Colombia. Too often seen as Ecuador’s Guantanamo Bay, the “Plan” holds much of the blame for the some 400,000 Colombian refugees that have fled to Ecuador. (He did, meanwhile, concede to a possible reconsideration if the US permits an Ecuadorian military base in Miami.)

Without a single party representative in Congress, Correa’s battle within the country will likely be more bloody. Presidents have served as convenient scapegoats, allowing lawmakers to remain unaccountable for their consistent failure to represent the interests of the Ecuadorian people. Aware of this situation, Correa hopes to avoid the inevitable grand finale of exile or death, and has proposed a new governmental Constitution. In the spirit of Bolivian President Evo Morales, Correa also plans, after halving his own salary, to re-negotiate oil contracts with foreign interests who have offered to take four out of five barrels of Ecuador-produced oil.

To bring about this kind of reform in the face of such colossal corruption is both painstaking and dangerous. Correa understands that he must circumvent much of the existing national government to do so. Pledging a “citizen’s revolution,” he has threatened to evoke the same type of demonstrations previously used to oust presidents, to force this transformation upon an otherwise obstinate and ineffectual congress. A populist revolution, in other words.

As easy as it is to idolize Latin America’s recent left-wing ascent from afar, it is vital to understand, especially in the case of embattled Ecuador, exactly where this rhetoric comes from, and what significance it holds for the people of Latin America. Too often nations are observed by the negligent western media’s reporting of particular governments, rather than the actions of the people. In Ecuador’s case, the people are no longer concerned with left or right wing. To date, these political directions have indicated no true bearing on the future of the nation. Protests continue. Flaming indigenous roadblocks draw attention to governmental neglect. Children march in solidarity, and university students take to the street whenever they can. Ecuador has been through hell the last few years, and the people are ready for change. There is one responsibility for those of us observing from a distance: to watch what is unfolding. Correa very well could be the catalyst to bring Ecuador’s people out of the mud, but if he is not, we should be ready to shout with them.

_Sean Angus MacKinnon

 

COMMENTS:

Considering that the Communist(?) President of El Salvador was ousted in the mid-fifties with the help of US-sponsored state terrorism as well as the condition of Guatemala during the 80s (I believe it was), at least the way Guatemala was treated in the media, I am counting down the days before Correa is either corrupted or pushed out by leftist and rightist rebels. Those rebels, of course, being trained and aided by our own polyarchical country.
Galapagos

It's too early to say if this is finally Ecuador's chance to get a real government or another failed attempt at doing so.
Mike Smith

The author could have added that the vice president's name is nothing other than: Lenn Moreno. Talk about coincidences, let's hope this one bears fruit for Ecuador.
zatopek

Great article. Funny, informative and easy to digest.
M. Hoop

Stop only old and blind with clouded eyes you can't see what I can I blindly throw my faith to the face of the next good thing that comes my way.
davem.

An interesting follow-on article could describe whether, based on what is known about current U.S. government activity, the CIA is likely to try to remove this president.
Monte Asbury

The situation is the same all around the world. The parliamentary democracy has gotten extremely corrupted. We have to stop seeking THE president that will save us. There is none! We have to try more direct implementations of the democracy.
Midyetava

The political unerst in latin america will only come to a stop when cocacola owns all the rights to the fresh water.
sarge

As long as the political system of Ecuador, or any country emulates pyramidal structure, population will be alienated from legislative process. Ecuador can be a very instable place, volcanoes, landslides, earthquakes. But she is also be very compassionate, spiritual, and forgiving. To see a country for its government is like discarding honey for the bees. The real power in Ecuador is based not in the social and economic elite but in the magic of the jungle and the mountains. McDonalds is nothing.
taitiku

Let's wait and see – normally in the last years a president kept his chair about two years. Let's wait and see!
kill.waas

Having spent the election season in Ecuador I'd say this article is pretty much right on point. I'd add however, that Correa ran with 2 main campaign points: one being rejecting a fair trade treaty with the US, and the other being a refurendum to completely remake the political structure of Ecuador, radically changing the party system and the congress. At the moment Correa's party has no 'diputados' in the congress, because none ran. His platform won a solid mandate in the elections but his efforts to bring it into action are predictably being resisted by the congress and the opposition parties, who hold the vast majority of the de facto power in Ecuador, if very little of the de jure popular legitmacy Correa has, for the moment at least.
Jacob

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