Ecuador's President Correa Faces Off With Indigenous and Social Movements

[Derechos]

Beginning his fourth year as president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa confronts a major challenge from some of the very social actors that propelled him into office. In an address to the country in early January, Correa expressed his ire with a "coming series of conflicts this month, including indigenous mobilizations, workers, media communications, and even a level of the armed forces."

https://nacla.org/node/6378

[Peace Patriot]

1. Oh boy. This looks, to me, like very ripe ground for the CIA.

What the CIA has traditionally done, in Latin America--and I have no reason to believe that they are not still operating this way--is to exploit differences like these (center-left vs left differences--as a broad, general description), in order to topple democracy itself and install far rightwing dictators. And, believe me, they want to do that to Ecuador. It is target #2 on the Pentagon's oil hit list, for filling up its big war machine gas tank. (Venezuela is, of course, target #1--both adjacent to Colombia, both with big oil reserves and facilities in the areas closest to Colombia, both members of OPEC, both with leftist governments; and the Pentagon now engaged in a huge military buildup in Colombia).

This was also Hitler's tactic for taking over Germany--fostering divisions on the center-left, rendering the center-left unable to govern.

Leftist that I am, and environmentalist that I am--my sympathies especially on the side of the indigenous in protecting "Pachamama" (Mother Earth), our matrix of life that is in such dire trouble--I see these black holes looming over the situation, from historical precedent, and from the geo-political reality of current U.S./Latin American relations, including the truly evil intentions of entities like Exxon Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, the CIA and the Pentagon (with the State Department likely in tow). These entities would like nothing more than to see Ecuador tear itself to pieces. And, if history is any guide, and if I am right about the Pentagon's next oil war, the result will NOT be a more consistent, more environmentalist, more grass-roots oriented, leftist president. The result will be the end of Ecuadoran democracy and installation of a fascist junta, which will re-enslave Ecuador's poor and GIVE the oil (and other resources) AWAY to these multinational corporations, who will, in turn, sell the oil to the Pentagon at greatly inflated prices, to further impoverish the people of the U.S.

I think this is what Correa may mean when he uses the word "infantile" to describe leftists, environmentalists and the indigenous. He is beset with the larger reality and great menace surrounding Ecuador--the menace induced by their possession of vast oil and mineral resources. That menace is REAL. He has been a particular target of its psyops/disinformation campaign--naked efforts to falsely tie him to the FARC guerrillas in Colombia--plus a bombing/raid on Ecuadoran territory (in March 2008) to try to draw him into a war with the U.S/Colombia. He is part of an alliance of leftist leaders in South and Central American which is being viciously targeted by the U.S.--by the coup in Honduras, by the provocative U.S. military buildup in Colombia and by other strongarm and subtle methods. He must somehow fend it off. He is the president of Ecuador. The basic security of Ecuador's democracy and sovereignty are his particular duty. I think this is what HE sees as "reality"--and why he thinks that the notion that Ecuador can somehow proceed as an ecological paradise, where vast resources go untapped, as "infantile." I don't think it is. It is, in truth, a greater maturity that grasps the peril that the entire Earth and all of humanity are in. But Ecuador cannot solve this problem alone. And the institutions and mechanisms that the leftist leaders of the region have been working on, to solve such problems--for instance, the trade groups ALBA and UNASUR--are under full-on attack by the U.S.

As to one of the mechanisms for solving the particular problem of oil drilling in the Amazon--that Ecuador would be paid not to do it, via an international climate stability fund--this article paints Rafael Correa in a bad light, as "selling out" to the oil companies, but I am not sure that that is fair, or true.

"...Correa has also allowed the state company, Petroecucador, to continue surveying and drawing up possible plans for the oil reserves in the park, while admitting that another state enterprise, Petroamazonas, was being charged with any actual exploitation and drilling. As Fander Faconi was in the process of setting up the trust agreement with the UNDP this month, Correa declared that the trust was severely flawed and that 'neither international bureaucracies nor international usurpers' would be allowed to dictate to Ecuador. He accused Fander and Acosta of conspiring with others in his government and the Country Alliance to put up "barriers" around him to stop oil exploration."

One part of this paragraph is missing a word, or has a typo or something, and is not understandable. ("... while admitting that another state enterprise, Petroamazonas, was being charged with any actual exploitation and drilling."--what does this mean?). But the gist of it is that Correa WANTS to drill in the Amazon. The truth may be more like this: Correa wants to defend Ecuador's sovereign right to use its own resources, and not be dictated to by an international body. And, Correa is allowing "surveying" and "drawing up possible plans" for drilling as pressure on the UNDP to help Ecuador protect this area while not yielding up any of its sovereignty. What international funders--especially "first world" funders--do, is, FIRST OF ALL, destroy the sovereignty of small countries and the strength of central government. This has occurred time and again. It is their MO. Then, later, they exploit that resource, or exploit the weakened country in some other way.

So--if I'm right about what Correa is thinking--this is not a trivial issue, and it does not mean that Correa doesn't want to protect the Amazon.

There is one more respect in which I think the article is misleading. It says that Correa is failing to implement provisions of the new Constitution that give the indigenous more rights with regard to their lands. The Constitution enables the indigenous to formalize their land rights, but on the matter of use of the oil and other resources, it grants them only rights of consultation, not veto. Correa is not violating the Constitution on this matter. Those in opposition to him are stretching the Constitution to where it does not go. This was a point of contention when the Constitution was put before the voters, and also in Correa's own election as president. The Constitution and Correa won by huge margins. And whatever you think of the fight in the Constituent Assembly that wrote the Constitution, this is the Constitution that the voters voted for.

On control of water and waterways (streams, rivers) the opposition has more of a point. The indigenous way of life cannot be maintained without clean water. And I believe that Ecuador's Constitution--like Bolivia's--guarantees water as a human right. This right may conflict with the provision that grants the indigenous only consultation rights as to the "resources" on their lands. (This may be a matter for the courts and constitutional scholars to sort out--I really don't know if there a conflict of rights.) Correa's point has been that the resources belong to all Ecuadorans, not just the indigenous. But I think it's rather a distortion to imply that Correa WANTS water pollution. He, for instance, supports the indigenous lawsuit against Chevron-Texaco for an existing, big pollution spill that has polluted Amazon rivers and streams and killed off many fisheries (sometimes called the "Rainforest Chernoybl," it is so bad). Correa surely does NOT want such a thing to happen again.

Correa is furthermore obliged, by the duties of his office and the new Constitution--to reduce and end poverty. How is he supposed to reduce and end poverty in a resource-dependent economy, any time soon? He can do what the Chavez government is doing--pour profits from the oil into education and other bootstrapping programs, as the basis for future economic growth and diversification--and Correa is doing this. But if Ecuador were to end oil production tomorrow, it would plunge the country into dire poverty. If Ecuador's budget is similar to Venezuela's, half of government revenues come from the oil. And both, of course, have been hit by Bush's Financial 9/11 of September 2008, plunging the entire world into Depression--and cutting oil prices by half or more. (They are now on the increase again.) It is rude to call well-meaning adversaries 'infantile.' And I don't believe that Correa is telling the truth either, when he says that. But I can see his dilemmas and they are very real, too.

Worst of all, civil disorder, paralyzing strikes, police-protestor confrontations, road barricades and so on, are fodder for CIA destabilization, and if those nefarious U.S. plots succeed, everybody's rights are over. Democracy is over. The fascists rip up the Constitution, and start killing--and not just being stubborn toward--indigenous tribes, environmentalists, union leaders, workers and the poor.