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Ecuador

Applying/Misapplying Gramsci’s Passive Revolution To Latin America

The second wave of progressive Latin American governments that began with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico in 2018 does not have the aura of excitement surrounding the first, dating back to Hugo Chávez in 1998. It is not only characterized by pragmatism, but lacks the slogans and banners of radical change associated with Chávez and Evo Morales. As stated by former Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera in the face of challenges from an aggressive right, the second-wave left “turned up to the fight in an already exhausted state.”

Indian Fighting Today: Gibson, Dunn And Crutcher

The business of Indian Hating is a lucrative one. It’s historically been designed to dehumanize Native people so that it’s easier to take their land. ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,” manifest destiny, and “merciless Indian savages” are all phrases which underscore the deep hatred of the American Empire for Indigenous peoples. After all, this is our land, indakiingimin, the very land to which we belong., And to make America, it’s important to steal it. That’s pretty much history — a lot of theft: land, cultural items and people. And where possible, the laws themselves. It starts with hating and expands to war. Welcome to the modern Indian Wars. Some of them are in the courtroom.

Ecuador Voted To Stop Drilling In The Amazon

Environmental activists rarely get to celebrate a major win for the planet, but that’s what happened in Ecuador last year. After a decade-long struggle between activists and the government, a referendum was held in August 2023 on whether to continue drilling for oil in a protected part of the Amazon. The people voted to kick the oil industry out. The government and the state oil company, Petroecuador, had tried every trick in the book to get a different result. There was a disinformation campaign, threats of austerity, even an attempt to void hundreds of thousands of signatures that were collected for the referendum to happen.

US Government Announces Entry Ban On Rafael Correa

On October 9, the US State Department published a statement declaring former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, as well as his former vice-president Jorge Glas, as ineligible to enter the country. According to the United States, the measure was taken due to the alleged “involvement in significant corruption during their time in public office”. In 2020, Correa and other politicians close to his party were sentenced to prison in Ecuador for allegedly committing acts of corruption. Correa was not arrested and imprisoned because he was living in Belgium, a country that has, on several occasions, ruled out apprehending and deporting him for the charges he faces in Ecuador.

The Urban Gardens Where Gender And Climate Justice Grow

Up in the lung-busting altitudes of Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, 71-year-old Maria Achiña and 70-year-old Alegria Irua are busy digging up soil and plucking weeds from their modest allotment of kale, onions, broccoli and cilantro. The green-fingered pair are part of a group of local women who till the land beside the neighborhood’s health clinic, which is free to them under the city’s celebrated participatory urban agriculture project focused on gender, climate and food justice. “It gives us good food to eat and a bit of income to help pay the bills,” says Achiña, who lost both her husband and daughter in recent years. “And besides, us old ladies, we need to fill our time with something.”

Secret Chats Expose Decade Of US Meddling In Ecuador

Exclusive interviews and leaked messages reveal how a key ally of the US weaponized the fight against corruption and criminal organizations to selectively prosecute Ecuador’s heads of state, viciously persecuting Rafael Correa and his Revolución Ciudadana movement on flimsy evidence, while delaying investigations into much graver crimes allegedly committed by his successors. Recently-leaked secret chats obtained by The Grayzone expose how Ecuadorian prosecutor Diana Salazar leaked information to a subject of an ongoing investigation, undermining the prosecution of associates of Ecuador’s current and previous US-aligned presidents, and acted hand-in-glove with the United States government, which essentially selected and controlled prosecutions from Washington.

Ecuadorians Call For An End To Noboa’s Austerity Measures

Ecuadorian trade union the Unitary Workers’ Front (FUT), has called for a national mobilization on July 4 against the increase in gasoline prices in the country. On June 26, through Executive Decree 308, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa ordered the elimination of gasoline subsidies in accordance with the provisions of the International Monetary Fund. The government has already reached agreements with some transportation unions to prevent them from joining future protests. According to the government, these unions will receive monthly compensation for the increase in gasoline costs. This agreement has been seen by some social leaders as an act of betrayal against the rest of the political and labor organizations.

Source Reveals US Secret Services Enabled Jorge Glas Kidnapping

A well-placed individual speaking on the condition of anonymity has informed The Canada Files that US secret services embedded in Ecuador – through spying on Mexico’s embassy – ensured President Daniel Noboa knew of Mexico’s plan to get former Vice President Jorge Glas to Mexico after granting him political assembly, enabling Noboa to order the illegal raid on Mexico’s embassy and kidnap Glas. The kidnapping of Glas, who has faced political persecution through Ecuador’s judiciary since 2017, sparked international outrage as a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention and Mexico’s sovereignty. Mexico cut off diplomatic relations with Ecuador and has taken Ecuador to the International Court of Justice for this violation.

ALBA-TCP Holds World Gathering For A Social Alternative

Starting April 18, Venezuela will host the World Gathering for a Social Alternative, a two-day event organized by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People's Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) and the Simon Bolivar Institute (ISB). This international meeting seeks to promote a common agenda to protect the Latin American people from the different forms of contemporary imperialist aggression. This event will bring together member countries of the bloc, leaders and social movements of the region in activities and working meetings to be held in the city of Caracas.

Ola Bini Sentenced To A Year In Prison; Ecuadorian Court Overturns Acquittal

A court in Ecuador has sentenced Swedish software developer and digital rights activist, Ola Bini, to one year in prison for “Attempted Non-Consensual Access to a Computer System”. The ruling by two out of three judges of the Provincial Court of Pichincha overturned the unanimous verdict issued by the Court of First Instance (trial court) in Quito in January 2023, which had declared Bini innocent. The acquittal had come nearly four years after Bini was arrested in April 2019, the same day as his friend, WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange was seized from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Latin America Condemns Ecuador’s Storming Of The Mexican Embassy

The decision by the government of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa to forcibly enter the Mexican Embassy in Quito with dozens of police officers to arrest former Ecuadorian official Jorge Glas has been met with widespread repudiation across Latin America and the Caribbean. Xiomara Castro, Honduran president and the president pro-tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), announced on Saturday that two emergency meetings of CELAC would be held on Monday April 8 and Tuesday April 9 to address the situation in which the American Convention on Asylum and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations were both violated by Ecuador against Mexico.

US Troops Will Return To Ecuador, Decades After Removal By Correa

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa ratified military cooperation agreements between Ecuador and the United States on February 15. The agreements regarding joint operations to combat illegal maritime activity and the status of US troops in the country were signed by Noboa’s predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, in September 2023. They were ratified by the young president after a ruling by the Constitutional Court on January 23, 2024 that the agreements do not have to go through the legislature.  The approval of the agreements comes in the second month of the “internal armed conflict” declared by Noboa on January 8, 2024 following a spike in violent crime by drug trafficking groups in the country.

Capitalism And Drug Trafficking In Ecuador

Ecuador is experiencing a wave of organized crime violence that is linked to structural problems. It is the product of a complex context divided between the increase in poverty, new drug routes worldwide and the emergence of a local narco-bourgeoisie. Amid all this, a global crisis of neoliberal capitalism, and consequently, the decomposition and rupture of the social pact between classes, peoples and hegemonic blocks. In this context, the Government of Daniel Noboa has decided to confront the wave of drug crime that is drowning Ecuador through the declaration of internal armed conflict. In other words, war against the poor, forcibly financed by the poor, supported by the middle class, and certain sectors that have been trapped by the Government’s punitive discourse.

SOUTHCOM Chief: United States Has A ‘5-Year Plan’ For Ecuador

The commander of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), General Laura Richardson, stated that the United States has a “five-year plan” in terms of security for Ecuador. “There are several things that we have done very recently with Ecuador,” General Richardson said in an interview with the Ecuadorian media Primicius on Tuesday, January 23. “For example, we have the Security Assistance Roadmap, called ESAR, with Ecuador. There is only one other country in the region with which we have signed this roadmap.” According to Richardson, the ESAR is a five-year plan that outlines “cooperation in security matters,” and it includes a binational working group to facilitate the exchange “between the Pentagon and Ecuador.”

Wealthy Corporations Use Investment Agreements To Extract Millions From Developing Countries

When Rafael Correa entered Ecuador’s presidency in 2007, the nation faced an opportunity and a challenge. Ecuador’s economy depended on oil, and global crude prices were near a record high. Much of the oil was extracted by foreign companies, however, so as prices surged more wealth began flowing overseas. More than a third of Ecuadorians were living in poverty, and Correa had come to power as a leftist promising “radical, profound and quick changes to the current model of so much exploitation, of so much injustice.” Soon after taking office, Correa increased a recently enacted windfall tax on oil companies. The idea was to use the tax as leverage to extract better terms from the companies, and this fight against foreign firms quickly became a high-profile pillar of Correa’s broader campaign to assert the nation’s sovereignty.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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