News of interest from Latin America by David Morris
Vol. 1, No. 5. Monday, October 1, 2007
A Bolivarian step forward
Ecuadorians have once again voiced strong approval of the Bolivarian revolution by electing an Alianza País majority to the country’s new Constituent Assembly. By an early count, the September 30 vote gives followers of Alianza between 76 and 79 of the 130 seats in the Assembly.More than 80 percent of voters had decided by referendum in April to change the constitution after President Rafael Correa won a political battle over the question against the country’s unicameral legislature. The new constitution will be the twentieth in the country’s history, replacing a document adopted in 1998. The legislature, reviled by most of the population, is seen as the major impediment in the path to the just and democratic society envisioned by Correa, Alianza País, and most of the citizens. Even the former head of the International Monetary Fund, Michael Camdessus, has described the body as characterized “by an incestuous relation between bankers, political-financial pressure groups and corrupt government officials.” A popular description of the traditional Ecuadorian way of government is “partidocracia,” rule by entrenched parties, devoted to serving their own interests and unresponsive to the needs or the demands of the people.
The new constitution is likely to change the structure of the legislature, possibly to a bicameral body. Other changes are suggested in a draft constitution written at Correa’s request by the Consejo Nacional de Educación Superior (CONESUP), which Constituent Assembly members are free to disregard altogether. It would allow for simplifying the process of citizen initiatives and for making impeachment easier and would open the possibility of legal abortion and recognition of lesbian and gay partnerships.
More fundamentally, the Assembly’s new document is expected to institute policies of state control of natural resources and confiscation of unused land and to grant a degree of autonomy to indigenous groups, which make up 40 percent of the population.
Indigenous Ecuadorians are largely responsible for the sweeping political changes the country has seen in recent years. Of the eight men who have occupied the presidency in the past ten years, three have been driven out of office by popular pressure, mostly from indigenous citizens. President Correa, who is himself of European descent, enjoys wide, but wary, support from indigenous peoples. There is a potential contradiction in indigenous opposition to exploitation of the petroleum deposits in their lands, with the resultant ecological damage and displacement of residents, and Correa’s intent to use the oil to improve the national economy and relieve the country’s extreme poverty. Correa, a close associate of Hugo Chávez, has made agreements to have Ecuadorian crude oil refined in Venezuela until refineries can be built, with Venezuelan assistance, in Ecuador.
In May of 2006, two weeks after Evo Morales had nationalized Bolivian gas, Correa’s predecessor, Alfredo Palacios, proved unwilling to face the wrath of indigenous groups and organized labor that had forced his own predecessor, Lucio Gutiérrez, out of office. He cancelled the contract of U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum, which had violated provisions of the contract, and soon afterward the U.S. gave up its efforts to negotiate a free-trade agreement with Ecuador.
Since his election last November, Correa has defied Washington by declaring that the only U.S. military base in South America, in the northeastern Ecuadorian town of Manta, will be allowed to remain in the country only if the United States allows an Ecuadorian military base to be built in Miami.
Ecuador snubbed the U.S. when it withdrew from the 2007 UNITAS Pacific, an annual U.S.-sponsored naval exercise held since 1959 involving Peru, Panama, Colombia and Chile.
More recently, the Ecuadorian government on September 25 ordered Ascendant Copper of Canada to cease work on an open-pit copper mine it had been developing in Junin because the company had violated mining laws. Located in one of the most ecologically diverse areas of the world, the mine, according to a study by a Japanese mining company that had abandoned plans for the area in the ‘90s, would cause massive deforestation and climate change, would poison water supplies and would displace hundreds of families living in the area. Ecuadorian officials say paramilitaries in the pay of a company subcontracted by Ascendant have attacked unarmed residents of the area who oppose the mining operation.
(Sources: El Mercurio, Ecuador; La Hora, Ecuador; Hoy, Ecuador; Upside Down World, U.S.; Council on Hemispheric Affairs, U.S.; Green Left Weekly, Australia)
Braking CAFTA
Continuing popular pressure and a political scandal favor opponents of Costa Rica’s participation in the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), the ratification of which will be decided in a binding referendum on October 7.Opponents have planned a number of events for the days leading up to the vote, including a major demonstration in San José on Sunday, September 30.
The scandal erupted when a university newspaper published a memorandum written on July 29 by Second Vice President Kevin Casas and Representative Fernando Sánchez to President Óscar Arias recommending that scare tactics be used to persuade citizens to vote for ratification, that opponents of ratification be portrayed as allies of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega, and that local officials whose constituencies vote against it be threatened with the withholding of government funds.
After pressure from the opposition and from their own Partido de Liberación Nacional, Casas resigned from the Ministry of Planning and the vice presidency on September 22. Sánchez gave up his legislative committee assignments two days later but retains his seat in the legislature. Both men were close associates of President Arias and wielded considerable influence in his administration.
An earlier scandal resulted from revelations made in 2003 that several members of the Costa Rican negotiating team working out the terms of the treaty with U.S. representatives were in the pay of the Costa Rica-United States Foundation, an organization funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
In the meantime, a group of 94 Costa Rican Catholic priests, including the former publisher of the church’s official weekly publication, have ended their neutrality by issuing a statement strongly opposing DR-CAFTA. The treaty, declared the priests, “is not a free-trade agreement but the imposition of a national model for the benefit of large transnational corporations.”
(Sources: La Nación, Costa Rica; La Prensa Libre, Costa Rica; Prensa Latina, Cuba; Upside Down World, U.S.)
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