Ecuador Between Three Wagers
Will the People Come to the Rescue of Rafael Correa?
By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER
October 1 - 3 , 2010
As this article goes to press, Ecuador is in a state of surreal uncertainty and political purgatory. Until just moments ago, President Rafael Correa sat injured in a Quito hospital, where he was essentially a prisoner, but the military High Command consistently affirmed their loyalty. In other words, this was a coup that was not a coup. While Correa’s eventual rescue by loyal soldiers means that crisis has been momentarily averted, and despite the flowery rhetoric of the victory speech he is giving as I pen this, an underlying crisis remains and if the correct lessons are not gleaned, the conditions for the permanent overthrow of the Correa government will remain.
Specifically, what we are witnessing in the Ecuadorean conflict is the collision between three wagers, three clashing sectors playing a high-stakes game with the future of Ecuador, and what will matter more than anything else is what role will be played by the popular masses who represent the vast majority of the country and the continent. In the days and months to come, it will be their intervention, or failure to intervene, that will make all the difference in the world.(MORE)
http://www.counterpunch.org/maher10012010.html--------
Ciccariello-Maher then analyzes these three wagers (bets)--the Golpistas' wager, Correa's wager and the Radical leftists' wager--in brilliant and incisive detail. I have been ignoring reports of the ambivalence of some of Indigenous and leftist groups about the attempted coup because I didn't think that it was relevant YET and also I didn't quite understand it. If Correa was ousted by a rightwing coup d'etat, it wouldn't matter what these groups said or wanted. They would be crushed--as they are being in Colombia, utterly decimated with state murder and terror (funded by the USA). With Correa as president, at least they have a voice and human and civil rights. They have a vote. The Indigenous have some protection of their land rights. They haven't gotten everything they wanted--for instance, total Indigenous control of all resources on their lands--but they have gotten
some of what they wanted, and a government that is hardly describable as "neo-liberal" compared to previous governments, and that has acted in numerous ways to protect the sovereignty of Ecuador's people and to resist outside--particularly U.S. multinational/war profiteer--interference. I guess I would say that I've felt impatient with them in this situation, with all that they've gained by supporting Correa in great peril.
Ciccariello-Maher takes this issue on and fully discusses it. Here is one of his points with which I very much agree:
"In this view (note: the ambivalent view), shared by some sectors of the Ecuadorean left, what occurred was not in fact a coup attempt, but instead a justifiable response to the neoliberal policies of the Correa government. Some are actually claiming that, in demanding their salaries and benefits, the police in fact represented popular demands against a neoliberal state. But anyone who assumes that the police and sectors of the military will spontaneously position themselves on the right side of history is naïve to say the least, and when it’s a question of Latin America, this naïve self-deception becomes pathological."---
Ciccariello-Maher is clearly on the side of "the people"--the previously excluded Indigenous, the poor majority, the left. I think what he is doing is cautioning both Rafael Correa and his government, and these movements who helped elect him, to pull together. Neither can afford myopia--the greater threats to Ecuador. They must both compromise and proceed in a peaceful framework to work issues and policies out, and to have each other's back in a crisis.
One of Correa's points to them is that Ecuador's natural resources belong to all Ecuadorans, not just to the Indigenous. Their point--and, as an environmentalist, I'm totally on their side, on this--is that they don't want Mother Earth to be raped any more. But if there is
no resource extraction, how will Ecuadorans pull themselves out of the poverty that decades of "neo-liberal" and fascist policy has plunged them into? That is Correa's problem. He is president of all. How can the groups that have clashed with him on these kinds of issues help him and the rest of Ecuador to solve it?
Well, these are my thoughts. Here is Ciccariello-Maher:
"The danger is not so much that the majority of Ecuadoreans will at some point join a coup against Correa, but that they might not resist it vigorously enough."
---
As it turned out, thousands of Ecuadorans rallied to Correa's defense, although, as human rights worker Jorge Rojas points out here...
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53024
...the Indigenous groups and the student left were not evident in the pro-Correa crowds. And the military seems to have been more of a factor than civilian supporters in quelling the coup and restoring constitutional order. Unfortunately, now, President Correa doesn't owe these Indigenous and leftist groups much, in human terms. They didn't have his back. (But has he had theirs? There is evidence that he has not--as to their environmental protests.) This situation needs to be healed if the extremely powerful and vicious forces arrayed against the Ecuadoran people are to be kept at bay. And, yes, I mean our own government, or rather our real rulers--multinational corporations and war profiteers--who will ruthlessly exploit any handy dispute, even a leftist cause, to put fascists back in power in Ecuador and throughout Latin America.
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