Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
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USAID spends millions of dollars funding groups that try to discredit Cuba’s overseas medical missions and accuse them of ‘trafficking doctors’.
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25 October 2019
“Exporting Democracy” to Bolivia
By Padraig McGrath
On October 23rd, Bolivian president Evo Morales gave a press-conference in which he stated that a right-wing coup d’etat was underway in the country. With victory practically assured in the first round of the presidential election, the returning incumbent claimed that widespread right-wing extremist violence was being used in an attempt to interfere with vote counting and certification of the election’s results.
Link:
“Exporting Democracy” to Bolivia
There’s Something That’s Ours on Those Streets and We’re Going to Take It Back: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2019).
OCTOBER 24, 2019
Santiago (Chile), October 2019.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
It's impossible to anticipate the spur for rebellion. In Lebanon, it was a tax on the use of WhatsApp; in Chile, it was the rise in subway fares; in Ecuador and in Haiti, it was the cut in fuel subsidies. Each of these conjunctures brought people to the streets and then, as these people flooded the streets, more and more joined them. They did not come for WhatsApp or for subway tokens. They came because they are frustrated, angry that history seems to disregard them as it consistently favours the ruling class.
Chile has a growth rate of 1.5% – a drop from 6% in 1992. The export of copper has been the main earning for the country; as copper exports have slowed, so has the economy. Chile struggles with a high inequality rate – its Gini coefficient sits at 0.50 (midway between complete equality and complete inequality). The richest 10% in the country earn an income that is more than 26 times that of the poorest 10%. If you add in the wealth of the richest 10%, the gap is even more dramatic. Chile’s tax system is notoriously regressive, with corruption legalised through the tax code. The government has raised the fees to the Santiago metro (used by three million people – a sixth of the country) over twenty times since 2007; if you buy two rides a day, the fee absorbs 16% of your income). On 14 October, frustrated middle school students began a protest that targeted the fee increases and, more broadly, Chile’s structural corruption.
Lebanon’s ruling class, like that of Chile, is encrusted with corruption, its political leaders collecting rents from government contracts, its public services saturated with graft. In 2016, the government established a Ministry for Combatting Corruption, although it inspires no confidence; a lawsuit was brought against the Minister of Anti-Corruption for corruption. Lebanon’s ‘austerity budget’ for 2019 cuts public spending but keeps in place a regressive tax system. In 2015, politicians squabbled over who would get the contract for trash removal as the population walked over the garbage on the streets to say what they all knew: that corruption is not the exception, but the rule. ‘You stink’, the people said of the political class. It is a phrase that resonates to this day.
In Antonio Gramsci’s notes on France during the Third Republic (1870-1940), he points out that the ruling class used corruption and fraud to buy off leaders of different factions to neuter any political opposition. The ruling class was not able to earn the consent of the population and it did not want to use force to batter the people into submission. Instead, it used corruption and fraud to disorient any opposition to its power, making sure that political bribery would paralyse and demoralise the people. Political parties of the bourgeoisie have entered into a conspiracy of corruption, eager to rhetorically attack corruption as they wallow in the theft of public resources for their own needs, as they allow the ruling class to remain on its long-term tax strike and to retain its fingers in the till for subsidies and tax benefits.
The United Nations’ Financing for Sustainable Development Report (2019) shows that tax avoidance strikes countries of the Global South with a bludgeon because these countries rely more on corporate tax revenues than countries in the Global North. Corruption within countries is significant, but corruption by multinational corporations is in a different league – with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake (for more on the idea of tax strikes, read our first Working Document, In the Ruins of the Present). Techniques such as transfer mispricing and base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) allow firms to declare profits not where value is extracted, but in low tax jurisdictions. These techniques are mostly associated with US-based multinational corporations. The ruling class in these countries – from Ecuador to Lebanon – is bathed in corruption, unable to move an agenda against it. That is why the people have flooded the streets: they see something of theirs on the streets, and they want it back.
Port-au-Prince (Haiti), October 2019.
It is important to ask why people have taken to the streets, to ask about their political orientation. In each of these cases – Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, and Lebanon – the core issue is that the people of these countries have been defrauded by their own bourgeoisie and by external forces (pointedly, multinational corporations). The protests have targeted their governments, but that is only because these are protests that want to uphold democracy against capitalism. These protests could go deeper, or they could fizzle out. These are the main choices.
Meanwhile, the ruling class does what ruling classes do: it sends in the military. The response in Chile, Ecuador, and Haiti has been harsh. You would expect it in Chile, where the government of Sebastián Piñera looks a lot like the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (the current Minister of the Interior Andrés Chadwick moved elegantly from his former appointment under Pinochet to Piñera without a glitch after many years of defending the notorious dictator). Que lo vengan a ver, que lo vengan a ver, esto no es un gobierno, son puras leyes de Pinochet, the people of Chile sing, ‘Come and see, come and see, this is not a government, these are just Pinochet’s laws’. And Pinochet-level violence, with emergencies, curfews, and a large number of arrests.
Below, please find Red Alert #4 on Haiti. It comes to us from our comrades in Haiti. It gives a fuller assessment of the cascading protests in that country. You can download it here and read it below. Please circulate this important statement.
What is happening in Haiti?
Haiti, with almost 11 million residents, is the most populous nation in the Antilles. It occupies the western third of the island called Hispaniola, the rest being the Dominican Republic. This island is the second largest in the Caribbean (the largest being Cuba).
Since mid-September, an intense wave of protests has cascaded across Haiti. Roughly five million people – half of Haiti’s population – have participated in road blockades and marches. They demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse, reject any foreign intervention, and call for a resolution of the energy and economic crisis. Lack of fuel on the island is the spur. The protests have paralysed Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, and other cities and towns. Government and commercial activity have ceased. Water and food cannot be easily distributed, which threatens to plunge the country into a grave humanitarian crisis.
The government’s response has been to send in the police. More than twenty people have been killed and hundreds of people have been injured over the past weeks. Paramilitary groups – organised criminal groups that are often linked to politicians – have taken hold of everyday life. Where the people have been active against the government, these groups have been instrumental in intimidating and massacring them. Their mission is to shatter the popular confidence that has led to the protests.
The ‘international community’ – namely the United States, France, Canada, the Organisation of American States, and the United Nations – has either called for more foreign intervention or has pretended that nothing is happening in Haiti. These countries – the so-called Core Group – want Moïse’s government to remain in power, while simultaneously holding conversations with conservative and ‘centrist’ sections of the opposition.
Social movements, leftist parties, and other progressive sections have formed a platform called the Patriotic Front. This Front calls for the resignation of the president, the prosecution of all those involved in the embezzlement of public funds and for the massacres, the creation of a three-year transition government, the creation of an emergency agenda that addresses the immediate needs of the people, fundamental reforms that revitalise the legitimacy of the electoral and political system that would lead to new elections, and the election of a constituent assembly to rebuild the nation.
This current cycle of protests builds upon the general strike in July 2018, when 1.5 million Haitians took to the streets. They protested the government’s attempt to increase the price of fuel – as dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Those protests resulted in the withdrawal by the government of several unpopular measures and the resignation of Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant.
Why are Haiti and the Caribbean so important?
In 1804, Haiti’s people threw off the imperialist slave owners and created the world’s first black republic. The imperialist powers would not allow this social revolution to succeed. From the first years, they set out to annihilate it and to prevent its example from spreading to other slavery states. Imposition of toxic debt by France (1825), an invasion by the United States (1915-1934), the establishment of the imperialist-backed Duvalier family dictatorship (1957-1986), and an international occupation by the United Nations (from 2004 to the present) has disrupted the ability of Haiti to drive its own historical agenda.
The Caribbean is amongst the most important geopolitical areas on the planet. Currently, it is home to two radical political processes – the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. The attack on Petrocaribe, one of the spurs of the Haitian crisis, is a result of the imperialist attack on both Venezuela and Cuba.
Haiti is an island of great wealth with abundant resources of gold, copper, and bauxite (all estimated to value $20 billion); it also has a labour force that has been routinely exploited through free trade zones by international firms that contract small-scale Haitian firms to manufacture textiles and assemble electronic goods for the North American market. Haiti has emerged as one of the key strategic points for the transfer of profits from drug trafficking.
What is the cause of the Haitian crisis?
The key issue is fuel. The US sanctions against Venezuela wrecked Petrocaribe, the Venezuelan-Caribbean agreement from 2005 that brings cheap fuel into countries such as Haiti. The blockade of the Petrocaribe initiative and the IMF insistence that fuel subsidies be cut created six weeks of fuel shortages, a rise in fuel prices, an expansion of contraband fuel, and a paralysis in the transportation sector.
Haiti has long struggled with poverty, inequality, unemployment, and food insecurity. This fuel crisis has now resulted in the devaluation of the currency (gourde), 18% inflation, and the freezing of public sector salaries.
Haiti’s economy was emptied out by the neoliberal policies put in place from the early 1980s. Agricultural production has been destroyed and small-scale manufacturing has wilted on the global commodity chain as industrial activity goes from one low wage area to another. Haiti does not have a national bourgeoisie: its bourgeoisie has been fully corrupted and marginalised by the interference of the ‘international community’. Corruption has reached gargantuan heights: the Haitian bourgeoisie, state officials, and even the president are said to have participated in the embezzlement of $2 billion from the public treasury – the equivalent of a quarter of the country’s GDP.
Haiti’s political class has been completely discredited. Electoral fraud in 2010 brought the ultra-neoliberal Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) to power; Moïse’s presidency has no credibility amongst most of the population.
For over a century, Haiti’s sovereignty has been obstructed. US occupation, military dictatorship backed by external actors, coup d’états, the international guardianship of the UN– all of this imposes a political and economic direction that is fundamentally against the interests of the Haitian people and favours external interests over national sovereignty. Reconstitution of Haiti’s sovereignty is paramount.
Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Amour, colère et folie (1968) captured the intensity of Haiti’s history of plantation slavery, revolution, occupation by the United States, military dictatorship of the Duvaliers, and the great hope – out of the Revolution of 1804 – for freedom. Claire, in this miraculous novel, writes:
Freedom is an innermost power. That is why society limits it. In the light of day our thoughts would make monsters and madmen of us. Even those with the most limited imagination conceal something horrifying. Our innumerable flaws are proof of our monstrously primitive origin. Rough drafts that we are. And we will remain so as long as we lack the courage to hack a path through the tangled undergrowth of life and walk with eyes fixed on the truth.
There’s Something That’s Ours on Those Streets and We’re Going to Take It Back: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2019).
OCTOBER 24, 2019
Santiago (Chile), October 2019.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
It's impossible to anticipate the spur for rebellion. In Lebanon, it was a tax on the use of WhatsApp; in Chile, it was the rise in subway fares; in Ecuador and in Haiti, it was the cut in fuel subsidies. Each of these conjunctures brought people to the streets and then, as these people flooded the streets, more and more joined them. They did not come for WhatsApp or for subway tokens. They came because they are frustrated, angry that history seems to disregard them as it consistently favours the ruling class.
Chile has a growth rate of 1.5% – a drop from 6% in 1992. The export of copper has been the main earning for the country; as copper exports have slowed, so has the economy. Chile struggles with a high inequality rate – its Gini coefficient sits at 0.50 (midway between complete equality and complete inequality). The richest 10% in the country earn an income that is more than 26 times that of the poorest 10%. If you add in the wealth of the richest 10%, the gap is even more dramatic. Chile’s tax system is notoriously regressive, with corruption legalised through the tax code. The government has raised the fees to the Santiago metro (used by three million people – a sixth of the country) over twenty times since 2007; if you buy two rides a day, the fee absorbs 16% of your income). On 14 October, frustrated middle school students began a protest that targeted the fee increases and, more broadly, Chile’s structural corruption.
Lebanon’s ruling class, like that of Chile, is encrusted with corruption, its political leaders collecting rents from government contracts, its public services saturated with graft. In 2016, the government established a Ministry for Combatting Corruption, although it inspires no confidence; a lawsuit was brought against the Minister of Anti-Corruption for corruption. Lebanon’s ‘austerity budget’ for 2019 cuts public spending but keeps in place a regressive tax system. In 2015, politicians squabbled over who would get the contract for trash removal as the population walked over the garbage on the streets to say what they all knew: that corruption is not the exception, but the rule. ‘You stink’, the people said of the political class. It is a phrase that resonates to this day.
In Antonio Gramsci’s notes on France during the Third Republic (1870-1940), he points out that the ruling class used corruption and fraud to buy off leaders of different factions to neuter any political opposition. The ruling class was not able to earn the consent of the population and it did not want to use force to batter the people into submission. Instead, it used corruption and fraud to disorient any opposition to its power, making sure that political bribery would paralyse and demoralise the people. Political parties of the bourgeoisie have entered into a conspiracy of corruption, eager to rhetorically attack corruption as they wallow in the theft of public resources for their own needs, as they allow the ruling class to remain on its long-term tax strike and to retain its fingers in the till for subsidies and tax benefits.
The United Nations’ Financing for Sustainable Development Report (2019) shows that tax avoidance strikes countries of the Global South with a bludgeon because these countries rely more on corporate tax revenues than countries in the Global North. Corruption within countries is significant, but corruption by multinational corporations is in a different league – with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake (for more on the idea of tax strikes, read our first Working Document, In the Ruins of the Present). Techniques such as transfer mispricing and base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) allow firms to declare profits not where value is extracted, but in low tax jurisdictions. These techniques are mostly associated with US-based multinational corporations. The ruling class in these countries – from Ecuador to Lebanon – is bathed in corruption, unable to move an agenda against it. That is why the people have flooded the streets: they see something of theirs on the streets, and they want it back.
Port-au-Prince (Haiti), October 2019.
It is important to ask why people have taken to the streets, to ask about their political orientation. In each of these cases – Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, and Lebanon – the core issue is that the people of these countries have been defrauded by their own bourgeoisie and by external forces (pointedly, multinational corporations). The protests have targeted their governments, but that is only because these are protests that want to uphold democracy against capitalism. These protests could go deeper, or they could fizzle out. These are the main choices.
Meanwhile, the ruling class does what ruling classes do: it sends in the military. The response in Chile, Ecuador, and Haiti has been harsh. You would expect it in Chile, where the government of Sebastián Piñera looks a lot like the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (the current Minister of the Interior Andrés Chadwick moved elegantly from his former appointment under Pinochet to Piñera without a glitch after many years of defending the notorious dictator). Que lo vengan a ver, que lo vengan a ver, esto no es un gobierno, son puras leyes de Pinochet, the people of Chile sing, ‘Come and see, come and see, this is not a government, these are just Pinochet’s laws’. And Pinochet-level violence, with emergencies, curfews, and a large number of arrests.
Below, please find Red Alert #4 on Haiti. It comes to us from our comrades in Haiti. It gives a fuller assessment of the cascading protests in that country. You can download it here and read it below. Please circulate this important statement.
What is happening in Haiti?
Haiti, with almost 11 million residents, is the most populous nation in the Antilles. It occupies the western third of the island called Hispaniola, the rest being the Dominican Republic. This island is the second largest in the Caribbean (the largest being Cuba).
Since mid-September, an intense wave of protests has cascaded across Haiti. Roughly five million people – half of Haiti’s population – have participated in road blockades and marches. They demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse, reject any foreign intervention, and call for a resolution of the energy and economic crisis. Lack of fuel on the island is the spur. The protests have paralysed Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, and other cities and towns. Government and commercial activity have ceased. Water and food cannot be easily distributed, which threatens to plunge the country into a grave humanitarian crisis.
The government’s response has been to send in the police. More than twenty people have been killed and hundreds of people have been injured over the past weeks. Paramilitary groups – organised criminal groups that are often linked to politicians – have taken hold of everyday life. Where the people have been active against the government, these groups have been instrumental in intimidating and massacring them. Their mission is to shatter the popular confidence that has led to the protests.
The ‘international community’ – namely the United States, France, Canada, the Organisation of American States, and the United Nations – has either called for more foreign intervention or has pretended that nothing is happening in Haiti. These countries – the so-called Core Group – want Moïse’s government to remain in power, while simultaneously holding conversations with conservative and ‘centrist’ sections of the opposition.
Social movements, leftist parties, and other progressive sections have formed a platform called the Patriotic Front. This Front calls for the resignation of the president, the prosecution of all those involved in the embezzlement of public funds and for the massacres, the creation of a three-year transition government, the creation of an emergency agenda that addresses the immediate needs of the people, fundamental reforms that revitalise the legitimacy of the electoral and political system that would lead to new elections, and the election of a constituent assembly to rebuild the nation.
This current cycle of protests builds upon the general strike in July 2018, when 1.5 million Haitians took to the streets. They protested the government’s attempt to increase the price of fuel – as dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Those protests resulted in the withdrawal by the government of several unpopular measures and the resignation of Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant.
Why are Haiti and the Caribbean so important?
In 1804, Haiti’s people threw off the imperialist slave owners and created the world’s first black republic. The imperialist powers would not allow this social revolution to succeed. From the first years, they set out to annihilate it and to prevent its example from spreading to other slavery states. Imposition of toxic debt by France (1825), an invasion by the United States (1915-1934), the establishment of the imperialist-backed Duvalier family dictatorship (1957-1986), and an international occupation by the United Nations (from 2004 to the present) has disrupted the ability of Haiti to drive its own historical agenda.
The Caribbean is amongst the most important geopolitical areas on the planet. Currently, it is home to two radical political processes – the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. The attack on Petrocaribe, one of the spurs of the Haitian crisis, is a result of the imperialist attack on both Venezuela and Cuba.
Haiti is an island of great wealth with abundant resources of gold, copper, and bauxite (all estimated to value $20 billion); it also has a labour force that has been routinely exploited through free trade zones by international firms that contract small-scale Haitian firms to manufacture textiles and assemble electronic goods for the North American market. Haiti has emerged as one of the key strategic points for the transfer of profits from drug trafficking.
What is the cause of the Haitian crisis?
The key issue is fuel. The US sanctions against Venezuela wrecked Petrocaribe, the Venezuelan-Caribbean agreement from 2005 that brings cheap fuel into countries such as Haiti. The blockade of the Petrocaribe initiative and the IMF insistence that fuel subsidies be cut created six weeks of fuel shortages, a rise in fuel prices, an expansion of contraband fuel, and a paralysis in the transportation sector.
Haiti has long struggled with poverty, inequality, unemployment, and food insecurity. This fuel crisis has now resulted in the devaluation of the currency (gourde), 18% inflation, and the freezing of public sector salaries.
Haiti’s economy was emptied out by the neoliberal policies put in place from the early 1980s. Agricultural production has been destroyed and small-scale manufacturing has wilted on the global commodity chain as industrial activity goes from one low wage area to another. Haiti does not have a national bourgeoisie: its bourgeoisie has been fully corrupted and marginalised by the interference of the ‘international community’. Corruption has reached gargantuan heights: the Haitian bourgeoisie, state officials, and even the president are said to have participated in the embezzlement of $2 billion from the public treasury – the equivalent of a quarter of the country’s GDP.
Haiti’s political class has been completely discredited. Electoral fraud in 2010 brought the ultra-neoliberal Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) to power; Moïse’s presidency has no credibility amongst most of the population.
For over a century, Haiti’s sovereignty has been obstructed. US occupation, military dictatorship backed by external actors, coup d’états, the international guardianship of the UN– all of this imposes a political and economic direction that is fundamentally against the interests of the Haitian people and favours external interests over national sovereignty. Reconstitution of Haiti’s sovereignty is paramount.
Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Amour, colère et folie (1968) captured the intensity of Haiti’s history of plantation slavery, revolution, occupation by the United States, military dictatorship of the Duvaliers, and the great hope – out of the Revolution of 1804 – for freedom. Claire, in this miraculous novel, writes:
Freedom is an innermost power. That is why society limits it. In the light of day our thoughts would make monsters and madmen of us. Even those with the most limited imagination conceal something horrifying. Our innumerable flaws are proof of our monstrously primitive origin. Rough drafts that we are. And we will remain so as long as we lack the courage to hack a path through the tangled undergrowth of life and walk with eyes fixed on the truth.
There’s Something That’s Ours on Those Streets and We’re Going to Take It Back: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2019).
Ecuador as a new model of counter-insurgency for Latin America?
October 23 2019, 8:38 am.
The Quito police force was brutal during the repression of anti-neoliberal social protests. (Photo: José Jácome / EFE)
Ambiguity has been the political sign of Lenín Moreno's government since he took office, facing unawareness, unrest and the failed attempt to destabilize the oligarchic parties and sectors (media, finances) that did not know him when he was elected and now are the political base that sustains him.
The same can be said of those "on the left" and within the scope of the industrial complex of NGOs or identity politics that at the time were also in political opposition to the Citizens' Revolution under the leadership of president Rafael Correa. And that after the brief but intense (first?) cycle of protests are now effectively distributed in what also turned out to be the officialization process of a controlled opposition.
A closed box where the "narrative" is self-managed, hoping that the division produced by negotiating with one part of the opposition while expressly outlawing the other comes into effect.
The fact of the matter is that the obvious process of national dismantling that Ecuador is going through today began once Lenín Moreno was named president and Rafael Correa, the biggest leader of the Citizens' Revolution and his party, PAIS Alliance, left the country while political relations were broken.
The latter, the party, is the first indispensable focus of division for the Moreno administration to initiate its apparent policy of ambiguity, which in essence badly covers the sound of the outbreak that produces controlled demolition in which, deep down, the country enters in sociopolitical entropy.
Similarly, in the dimension of the great powers, Ecuador seized the highway of realignment to the United States, perhaps at a speed that even Moreno himself doubted he was going to achieve.
However, in the face of the closing of the cycle that, for example, represents the next elections in Argentina, destructive speed, seen as a whole (Ecuador, Brazil), is a common pattern of the race to reverse the greatest number of social conquests or signs of political independence in the region. Seen as a group they are a clear and defined historical task.
Macri, Moreno and Bolsonaro are buffer presidents. They are the rulers of the interregnum described by Gramsci: the exact geographical point between what dies and what is born, the intermission of unhealthy symptoms, stripped of the idiotic poetry with which attempts were made to sublimate Gramsci's quote in the past.
The presidents of Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina sign the Prosur agreement, ALBA's antagonist. (Photo: Rodrigo Garrido / Reuters)
The collapse of the models in Peru and Chile then move in the same direction (and all paths of oligarchic desire lead to the IMF), also becoming part of evident moment of crisis of the neo-liberal consensus. And given what appears to be the management models of this conflict, not only #LosPueblosDespiertan but also #LasOligarquías.
The Ecuadorian case, for the disputed area where it is located, constitutes one copy of perception manipulation games, as well as on the days of violence, from October 2 to 13, the administration of the conflict also constituted, apparently, the unlocking a renewed level of reaction, a model of intelligent counter-insurgency by the visible way in which it combined soft resources with pure and hard violence.
Lime-and-sand politics
Some milestones of the Moreno administration seem to indicate a pattern in the reversal process that lead to the IMF. On October 18, the Fund made it clear that it expects the new decree to continue moving forward.
Ecuador has been such a good example of austericide that at the center of the discussion surrounding the decree is the disbursement of a second tranche of the loan, since according to the IMF the conditions for continuing the reforms have already been reached.
The bottom line is that the government's "perception management" tactic marched marvelously as long as it did not immediately and directly touch the people, as Decree 833 — all that it implies — did.
Until that moment, the Moreno administration, through ambiguity, had been able to pilot part of the impact on "public opinion" by alleviating between the extremes, launching a hardcore reform along with an "inclusive" measure with great support from the euphemism they call "the international community". One way, perhaps, to produce distance and indolence for consensus building. Moreno does not have the problem that Correa had with Ecuadorian corporate media. Thus, shock measures enjoy the benefit of the padded narrative.
The trials against Jorge Glas and Julian Assange and Venezuelan immigration (and Chavismo, in a single undifferentiated lot) as scapegoats or the leaps and bounds of Ecuador's subordination to USSOUTHCOM — and its process of reopening the rule of military bases in the region — do not impact with the same speed as the worker's wallet.
Some measures can be silenced or abstracted, particularly if it is something in the field of foreign policy or the "fight against corruption"; the communication agenda may be coordinated by mitigating some effects with the benefit of distance, but it is demonstrated once again that there are clear limits once it makes contact with the streets. At this point, to control the situation, it is necessary to combine those soft resources with hard methods.
The first milestone of the ambiguity policy can be found in the successful 2018 referendum. The composition of the referendum (more "popular consultation"): five questions in an unmanifest (but explicit) manner directly attacked the previous government , since it "corrected" alleged aspects in fiscal matters.
"Fight against corruption", against "indefinite reelection", renewal of the Council of Citizen Participation (a controlling body) were combined with "child protection" and an amendment "to prohibit without exception metal mining in all its stages, in protected areas, intangible areas and urban centers", in addition to two non-endorsement questions but of "popular consultation": the Law of Surplus Value and the territorial expansion of the Yasuní project. A baroque combination of questions in which those with higher incomes are absolved of fiscal responsibility (Surplus Value Law), the institutionalization/formalization of the the previous government's prohibition (corruption, indefinite reelection, the Council of Citizen Participation composed mainly of officials of the ancién regime) plus issues of easy solution and immediate moral justification (childhood, ecology).
Thus, a consultation of high political caliber with a determining weight became a pink festival of moral upliftment. But the main objective was fulfilled (to organize the battlefield between "the good and the bad"), while the secondary (the universally and liberally correct issues) returned to irrelevance in the face of government.
As a result of the "humanitarian situation" in Venezuela, but also due to the search for political "independence", Ecuador leaves ALBA in August 2018 and joins Lima Group in the following month.
Ecuador moves a year later to the political cartel/pressure group created by the Canadian Foreign Ministry once the new internal situation became consolidated. Such has been Moreno's desire for independence that by July this year the Pacific Alliance (the counterweight to ALBA lifted by the United States) opens its doors for the country.
Ministers of the Pacific Alliance participate in working groups with observer states (Photo: Pacific Alliance)
2019 is the year in which the oxymoronic "subtleties" reach monumental dimensions. A brief collection can give us a measure of what looks more like a pattern than a coincidence in time.
The speed in which the Moreno administration has progressed this year can be understood from two important context data: poor performance in sectional elections, and the closure of the legal fence resulting from the INA Papers scandal, where many of the Lenin's officers began to be cited for what should eventually lead to a corruption trial against Moreno himself. Elements that undoubtedly weighed in the decision to accelerate the steps (which were already taking place anyway).
While on February 24 the first complaint comes to light, almost a month later, on March 30, the case was already in the hands of a judge who had summoned 153 officials to testify. This can be taken as our starting point. The point of arrival will be developed in detail later.
Parallel to this situation, the negotiations between the government and the IMF had already agreed to a financial bailout a few days before the INA Papers burst, and, between the two dates, the government announces Ecuador's departure from UNASUR.
It is the narcotic nuance that mitigates the true mood and the purposes of the administration, so that in any other way, by excluding measures of this nature, what would be offered to the media as a story would be a vulgar neo-liberal, repressive, authoritarian and denationalizing government. Perception management. An informative operation. A kind of concentrated and massive cognitive dissonance.
But, as stated above, what may work in a more distant dimension from day to day is not effective with political actions that will come into effect in that same area of everyday life of society, far from the comings and goings of what is played in the halls of power.
This change of repertoire forced a more stark approach that favored conflict management. One which demonstrated, especially in the first stage from October 2 to 7, to check (and almost checkmate) the Moreno administration.
What made the overthrow in Ecuador — where the trend was ultimately predictable — be redirected to another port, safer for the government that already proved to be nothing more than a vehicle of the IMF and concentrated capital?
The essential difference between one movement and another will be found in the displacement of those who accompanied without harshness the development of this tactic until the day of the protests, where former allies, at least for a moment, especially in the first stage of the demonstrations, were placed in the antagonistic field, opposing the decree.
These keys might be able to be unraveled by reconstructing approximately the sequence of events — more emphasised than on media behavior — analyzed here.
October 23 2019, 8:38 am.
The Quito police force was brutal during the repression of anti-neoliberal social protests. (Photo: José Jácome / EFE)
Ambiguity has been the political sign of Lenín Moreno's government since he took office, facing unawareness, unrest and the failed attempt to destabilize the oligarchic parties and sectors (media, finances) that did not know him when he was elected and now are the political base that sustains him.
The same can be said of those "on the left" and within the scope of the industrial complex of NGOs or identity politics that at the time were also in political opposition to the Citizens' Revolution under the leadership of president Rafael Correa. And that after the brief but intense (first?) cycle of protests are now effectively distributed in what also turned out to be the officialization process of a controlled opposition.
A closed box where the "narrative" is self-managed, hoping that the division produced by negotiating with one part of the opposition while expressly outlawing the other comes into effect.
The fact of the matter is that the obvious process of national dismantling that Ecuador is going through today began once Lenín Moreno was named president and Rafael Correa, the biggest leader of the Citizens' Revolution and his party, PAIS Alliance, left the country while political relations were broken.
The latter, the party, is the first indispensable focus of division for the Moreno administration to initiate its apparent policy of ambiguity, which in essence badly covers the sound of the outbreak that produces controlled demolition in which, deep down, the country enters in sociopolitical entropy.
Similarly, in the dimension of the great powers, Ecuador seized the highway of realignment to the United States, perhaps at a speed that even Moreno himself doubted he was going to achieve.
However, in the face of the closing of the cycle that, for example, represents the next elections in Argentina, destructive speed, seen as a whole (Ecuador, Brazil), is a common pattern of the race to reverse the greatest number of social conquests or signs of political independence in the region. Seen as a group they are a clear and defined historical task.
Macri, Moreno and Bolsonaro are buffer presidents. They are the rulers of the interregnum described by Gramsci: the exact geographical point between what dies and what is born, the intermission of unhealthy symptoms, stripped of the idiotic poetry with which attempts were made to sublimate Gramsci's quote in the past.
The presidents of Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina sign the Prosur agreement, ALBA's antagonist. (Photo: Rodrigo Garrido / Reuters)
The collapse of the models in Peru and Chile then move in the same direction (and all paths of oligarchic desire lead to the IMF), also becoming part of evident moment of crisis of the neo-liberal consensus. And given what appears to be the management models of this conflict, not only #LosPueblosDespiertan but also #LasOligarquías.
The Ecuadorian case, for the disputed area where it is located, constitutes one copy of perception manipulation games, as well as on the days of violence, from October 2 to 13, the administration of the conflict also constituted, apparently, the unlocking a renewed level of reaction, a model of intelligent counter-insurgency by the visible way in which it combined soft resources with pure and hard violence.
Lime-and-sand politics
Some milestones of the Moreno administration seem to indicate a pattern in the reversal process that lead to the IMF. On October 18, the Fund made it clear that it expects the new decree to continue moving forward.
Ecuador has been such a good example of austericide that at the center of the discussion surrounding the decree is the disbursement of a second tranche of the loan, since according to the IMF the conditions for continuing the reforms have already been reached.
The bottom line is that the government's "perception management" tactic marched marvelously as long as it did not immediately and directly touch the people, as Decree 833 — all that it implies — did.
Until that moment, the Moreno administration, through ambiguity, had been able to pilot part of the impact on "public opinion" by alleviating between the extremes, launching a hardcore reform along with an "inclusive" measure with great support from the euphemism they call "the international community". One way, perhaps, to produce distance and indolence for consensus building. Moreno does not have the problem that Correa had with Ecuadorian corporate media. Thus, shock measures enjoy the benefit of the padded narrative.
The trials against Jorge Glas and Julian Assange and Venezuelan immigration (and Chavismo, in a single undifferentiated lot) as scapegoats or the leaps and bounds of Ecuador's subordination to USSOUTHCOM — and its process of reopening the rule of military bases in the region — do not impact with the same speed as the worker's wallet.
Some measures can be silenced or abstracted, particularly if it is something in the field of foreign policy or the "fight against corruption"; the communication agenda may be coordinated by mitigating some effects with the benefit of distance, but it is demonstrated once again that there are clear limits once it makes contact with the streets. At this point, to control the situation, it is necessary to combine those soft resources with hard methods.
The first milestone of the ambiguity policy can be found in the successful 2018 referendum. The composition of the referendum (more "popular consultation"): five questions in an unmanifest (but explicit) manner directly attacked the previous government , since it "corrected" alleged aspects in fiscal matters.
"Fight against corruption", against "indefinite reelection", renewal of the Council of Citizen Participation (a controlling body) were combined with "child protection" and an amendment "to prohibit without exception metal mining in all its stages, in protected areas, intangible areas and urban centers", in addition to two non-endorsement questions but of "popular consultation": the Law of Surplus Value and the territorial expansion of the Yasuní project. A baroque combination of questions in which those with higher incomes are absolved of fiscal responsibility (Surplus Value Law), the institutionalization/formalization of the the previous government's prohibition (corruption, indefinite reelection, the Council of Citizen Participation composed mainly of officials of the ancién regime) plus issues of easy solution and immediate moral justification (childhood, ecology).
Thus, a consultation of high political caliber with a determining weight became a pink festival of moral upliftment. But the main objective was fulfilled (to organize the battlefield between "the good and the bad"), while the secondary (the universally and liberally correct issues) returned to irrelevance in the face of government.
As a result of the "humanitarian situation" in Venezuela, but also due to the search for political "independence", Ecuador leaves ALBA in August 2018 and joins Lima Group in the following month.
Ecuador moves a year later to the political cartel/pressure group created by the Canadian Foreign Ministry once the new internal situation became consolidated. Such has been Moreno's desire for independence that by July this year the Pacific Alliance (the counterweight to ALBA lifted by the United States) opens its doors for the country.
Ministers of the Pacific Alliance participate in working groups with observer states (Photo: Pacific Alliance)
2019 is the year in which the oxymoronic "subtleties" reach monumental dimensions. A brief collection can give us a measure of what looks more like a pattern than a coincidence in time.
The speed in which the Moreno administration has progressed this year can be understood from two important context data: poor performance in sectional elections, and the closure of the legal fence resulting from the INA Papers scandal, where many of the Lenin's officers began to be cited for what should eventually lead to a corruption trial against Moreno himself. Elements that undoubtedly weighed in the decision to accelerate the steps (which were already taking place anyway).
While on February 24 the first complaint comes to light, almost a month later, on March 30, the case was already in the hands of a judge who had summoned 153 officials to testify. This can be taken as our starting point. The point of arrival will be developed in detail later.
Parallel to this situation, the negotiations between the government and the IMF had already agreed to a financial bailout a few days before the INA Papers burst, and, between the two dates, the government announces Ecuador's departure from UNASUR.
- On April 11, the threat of expelling Julian Assange, director and founder of WikiLeaks, from the embassy where he took refuge in London, was concretized.
- On June 11, Oswaldo Jarrín declares at a press conference that the United States air force will be able to use the airstrip of the San Cristóbal Island airport in Galápagos. The minister clarified that it will only be used by airplanes with espionage tasks, and his focus will be on "the fight against drug trafficking." On the previous year the government had already agreed to the creation of an Office for the Investigation of Transnational Crimes, and a few months later, in the Galápagos context, an Office for Security Cooperation with USSOUTHCOM.
- But the following month, on July 9, after a couple of sentences of the Constitutional Court (close to the current president's orbit), same-sex marriage is approved.
- On September 17, the National Assembly ratifies the country's effective withdrawal from UNASUR, giving a fatal blow to the regional organization, whose headquarters were precisely in the Middle of the World (where the equator marks zero degrees) on the outskirts of Quito. The withdrawal of the facilities spared no symbolic aggressions, as shown by photographs of the statue of Nestor Kirchner on the ground.
- The next day the news comes out that the Assembly itself decriminalizes the use and production of medical marijuana.
- On October 1, the government reports on its readiness to withdraw from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as of January 1, 2020.
- On October 2 the package of reforms is announced that continues the path towards orthodoxy and austericide (the departure of OPEC harmonizes with the "fiscal responsibility" of the IMF) with the signing of Executive Decree 833, which within the combo of reforms, a dramatic increase in the price of fuel was included, with the consequences on the street known to all.
- After five days retracted in Guayaquil (the powers that support the government learned the historical lesson, knowing that as things were going, if it remained in Quito, it would fall), on October 12, the government simultaneously calls for dialogue and issues a curfew, militarizing the capital. It recognizes one opposition while it suppresses the other at the same time.
It is the narcotic nuance that mitigates the true mood and the purposes of the administration, so that in any other way, by excluding measures of this nature, what would be offered to the media as a story would be a vulgar neo-liberal, repressive, authoritarian and denationalizing government. Perception management. An informative operation. A kind of concentrated and massive cognitive dissonance.
But, as stated above, what may work in a more distant dimension from day to day is not effective with political actions that will come into effect in that same area of everyday life of society, far from the comings and goings of what is played in the halls of power.
This change of repertoire forced a more stark approach that favored conflict management. One which demonstrated, especially in the first stage from October 2 to 7, to check (and almost checkmate) the Moreno administration.
What made the overthrow in Ecuador — where the trend was ultimately predictable — be redirected to another port, safer for the government that already proved to be nothing more than a vehicle of the IMF and concentrated capital?
The essential difference between one movement and another will be found in the displacement of those who accompanied without harshness the development of this tactic until the day of the protests, where former allies, at least for a moment, especially in the first stage of the demonstrations, were placed in the antagonistic field, opposing the decree.
These keys might be able to be unraveled by reconstructing approximately the sequence of events — more emphasised than on media behavior — analyzed here.
Chronology of political violence and the "work-in-process"
1) First reactions of the parties in the conflict
The outbreak bursts through the weakest link in the chain: the gasoline subsidy, an essential social cohesion factor that was maintained for ten years under the administration of Rafael Correa.
Knowing this, the Ecuadorian State had to at least anticipate the response of the transport sector and some political sectors of the country. However, in view of the extreme decisions it made in terms of guaranteeing control, we can infer that it did not imagine the expansion it would have at all social levels.
The transport sector was the first identifiable group that was organized against Decree 833, due to the obvious effects of the elimination of the subsidy among the guild. It was quickly disjointed by combining the use of police and judicial force. Within hours of issuing the decree, the transport operators announced an indefinite strike that began in synchrony with the application of the law, with their derogation being the condition to end the strike.
In two days, transport operators are neutralized and put back in their lane. Several of the leaders of the strikes are arrested under questionable trials. Such is the case of Jorge Calderón, president of Fedotaxi in Quito; Mesías Vicuña, general secretary of the drivers union in Azuay; and Manolo Solís, president of the transportation house of Cuenca, all under the accusation of having "paralyzed the transport service".
Página 12 of Argentina wrote a note on the irregularities that were committed in the arrest of Calderón. His nephew, Alejandro Calderón, told the media that the case was not warranted because "the measure adopted by the taxi industry was about suspending activities, not paralyzing them. It is a measure covered by constitutional law".
The effective control of the transport sector's agitation contrasts with the growing mobilizations of Ecuadorians who are taking over the capital city.
Their motivations do not stop at a specific measure, they are the generalized expression of a population that drags a systemic crisis that encompasses the economic, political and social aspects of life, as summarized by Francisco Herrera Arauz, general director of the Ecuador Inmediato portal, in an interview for Sputnik.
For this reason, Moreno advanced with the state of emergency decree, recognizing the force and threat, not only of the group of transporters that blocked roads in some areas of the country, but of Ecuadorians in general who were making a presence in the streets.
Thus, the figure of the state of emergency is invoked to criminalize the protests. It contrasts with Venezuela, where in several cycles the levels of violence of the demonstrations were extreme, but with the cardinal difference that in Caracas and other cities the state of emergency was not decreed at any time.
The government minister, María Paula Romo (a feminist and leftist opposition to the previous government), says that the decision is made to guarantee the "mobility of all citizens", handling the narrative of safeguarding public order.
The minister will take center stage in the chambers the following days for two reasons: she will whitewash the repressive measures that will be executed, and will promote the conspiracy theory of the "coup d'etat" coordinated by Rafael Correa and the Venezuelan government. The "hard" demonstration of this accusation will be the arrest of 17 Venezuelan taxi drivers, whom they ended up releasing due to lack of evidence.
On October 4, Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrín appears, along with Romo, weighing up the two days of state of emergency: "The fundamental purpose of restoring order and social peace is being achieved."
Jarrín appears in the report of the Truth Commission that compiles the human rights violations committed in the governments prior to Rafael Correa. Under his command, the Armed Forces and National Police will be coordinated to "lower the intensity of aggressions and violence". He is the direct channel with the United States. 350 people are arrested, of which 90 are prosecuted by the Prosecutor, accused of vandalism.
It is striking that this institution lets Marlon Santi remain free, one of the indigenous leaders who will later sit down to talk. An issue that does not allign with the persecution of politicians linked to the Citizens' Revolution.
In any case, the transport strike officially ends that day: October 4. But indigenous movements come to relieve it, taking over the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, the best structured movement (it has a budget, operational cadres) and the one with national reach.
Meanwhile, excessive policing is becoming a trend inside and outside the country through social networks, since private and state media project the protester as a looter and terrorist.
2) The immune system of the institutions responds
But this escape to the media fence forces the institutions to establish a position in some way.
The prosecution launches a first press release for excesses of the public force, which remains only in the warning that the Criminal Code sanctions these extralimitations of the security agents but no investigations against their members are activated.
The Ombudsman's Office also echoes the weighing up of violence. On October 6, it issued the following report: "485 people were arrested nationwide. Of this figure 80% of the people have been released, which evidences the excessive use of force by the National Police and Armed Forces".
From then on, two parallel realities will come together. On the one hand, that of the "dialogist" government that offers to establish a bridge with the indigenous groups in protest within the capital, under an armed consensus with the UN, the Catholic Church and some universities. On the other hand, the one that will lead the security forces in the streets, once Moreno leaves Carondelet and protects himself in the city of Guayaquil.
With the support of the OAS and protected in Guayaquil, the Moreno government points out Nicolás Maduro to be responsible for these mobilizations: "Maduro the satrap activated his destabilization plan together with Correa". It gives force to the coup d'etat narrative and consequently to the security measures surrounding the case.
Police and Armed Forces are bulging the excesses and abuses to civilians, generalizing the rest of the 11 days of the insurrectionary day. They impose the IMF package on fire and blood at the expense of the criminalization of popular protests and prevent them from having a political leadership of the political groups linked to Correa.
Now the step is the state institutions that begin to negotiate with nationalities and peoples, relying on the UN initiative that is offered as a mediator to finalize the dialogue.
The leaders of the indigenous movements, the second sector that goes on to conduct the demonstrations, are isolated from the "extremist ideas", among them the one that demands the resignation of Moreno, which runs between factions of his groups.
How does the government influence the leadership of Conaie and other social movements? It was being advised at least by an intermediary who knew very well the structure and behavior of the indigenous movements, as was later learned by filtering the audio of the former dean of the Simón Bolívar Andean University, Enrique Ayala Mora, leader of the Socialist Party of Ecuador and renowned landowner from the province of Imbabura.
In addition, there are several activities carried out by the Human Rights Secretariat in relation to those affected by violence, following the opinions of international human rights organizations to comply with the "goodwill" profile: it meets with the deans of the universities that welcome indigenous people and accompany some of the women detained, assessing that their rights are guaranteed in detention centers.
In this way, the narrative goes on to reduce the generalized political crisis to an indigenous labor union conflict.
The universities associated with the Catholic Church play a fundamental role: their intervention prevents the attacks of the armed forces from leaving greater casualties in indigenous protesters, the opposition made visible by the government of Quito.
Precisely, the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE) and the Salesian Polytechnic University house indigenous groups, women, injured children, especially, who arrive from the interior of the country to the Ecuadorian capital. They declare the facilities of their campus as "zone of peace".
When they are attacked with tear gas bombs by the National Police, immediately the PUCE dean Fernando Ponce León intercedes by lowering the tension of violence and highlighting the "correct reaction of Minister Romo." María Romo even issues a public apology for this event and orders to investigate the police officers involved. Hence, we understand religious academics to be articulators so that violence is ceased in the necessary foci and mediations can occur. The controlled distribution of roles "between the parties" begins to harmonize.
The government can easily take refuge in these "autonomous" institutions without political affiliation to show their willingness to dialogue with the conflicting counterpart.
They also serve to filter demands. Those who enter will not include the rejection of the full spectrum of the neo-liberal model or the dismissal of the Ecuadorian president, even though these are a central requirement of people on the streets. They are there simply to discuss the proposals that dose the blow of the privatization of the fuel, to which the universities propose a "reorientation of the subsidy" that happens to cover investments for the agricultural development of the indigenous peoples.
Other actors who propose soft exits to the problem of Decree 883 will have a turn to speak.
c) Third act: the "intermediate" interlocutor
The Conaie fit as the legitimate opposition: what can be more antagonistic, at least in principle and in the abstract, to corporations and financial interests than indigenous peoples? It was with them and not with the business community that Lenín was creating channels for consensus.
However, none of the organization's multiple demands became a blunt block of rejection of the neo-liberal model. The final resolution was not exceeded from the margins imposed by the government. The ideas of resignation of Moreno, other senior military officials and Jarrín and Romo of their respective portfolios, or the total reversal of the package, were labeled as "correístas", tracing the place of the "radical", uncontrolled periphery, violent and supervised by the Correa-Maduro binomial. The time they spent trying to disassociate from this political force so as not to be displaced by it in the conduct of the outbreak, nor to lose the main attention granted to them by the government, was taken advantage of by the Moreno administration that detected complacent spokespersons within their ranks.
Salvador Quishpe is in charge of delivering a letter on behalf of the indigenous movements to the UN delegates in Ecuador.
When reviewing Quishpe's profile, it is understood that the government prefers it to the detriment of other spokespersons: it makes the derogatory condition more flexible to "at least revision" of the document, and in his Twitter account he launches opinions that wash Moreno's blame, pointing out that the military repression is due to pressure from sectors of the right that do not allow it to "reconcile with the indigenous movement."
At first Conaie denies that they have agreed to negotiate, to later end up accepting the dialogue after the universities involved confirm the meeting with the United Nations and validate the letter. In this way, Conaie, represented by the media as "the indigenous", goes to a consensus process where the rules are set by the State. They participate only in the repeal of a decree (which will be reformulated) and there is no room for consultation on what will come to replace that measure.
Quishpe, from the other side of the street, placed his grain of sand to denounce that "correísmo" had appropriated the demonstrations preventing them from negotiating. And the role of Conaie, at best, has been ambiguous. The coincidence.
An early opponent to the governments of Correa, Conaie had no problem getting on the side of the coup in 2010. In 2013 it supported USAID's expulsion from Ecuador, but there is also a relationship at least publicly contradictory manifested here, since they haven't closed their doors to the U.S. agency in the past. However, given their point of shock (the gasoline subsidy) there is a rectification of the government (which already controls volatile margins), validating the narrative of the triumph of the protests.
Likewise, being at the forefront of the demands during these days also allowed it to earn points as a political option. The announcement of wanting to found a party and run in the presidential elections of 2021 confirms it. A clientelist solution covered in virtuous speech.
After tying the soft sector of the opposition, the Moreno government gives the command to the army to be responsible for sweeping the people left in the streets through the curfew, and intensify the siege against the leaders linked to "correísmo" that was being developed in parallel.
The increase in repression was proportional to the extent of the uprising against the government. The curfew decreed in Quito on October 8 was parallel to the intermediation of the UN, the Catholic Church and universities.
On October 9, the national strike was formalized on the initiative of Conaie, sold by the media as "the indigenous" and not as a political group with clear interests, being welcomed by the protesters in Quito. The Joint Command of the Armed Forces, in turn, doubles the bet by exempting itself from responsibilities for the actions that they would take and assigning the consequences of the next few days to the "actors that generate the social upheaval". The repressive forces lashed out at the country that was seeking a radical change from the government's subordination to the IMF.
4) Surfing the ambiguity: fabricate an enemy according to your needs
At this point it would be necessary to stop to add context information: the progressive use of force by security agents entered into debate in January this year, when a pregnant woman was killed by a Venezuelan man while surrounded by police. Then, María Romo declared that the woman's death "should have been avoided with the use of police force".
1) First reactions of the parties in the conflict
The outbreak bursts through the weakest link in the chain: the gasoline subsidy, an essential social cohesion factor that was maintained for ten years under the administration of Rafael Correa.
Knowing this, the Ecuadorian State had to at least anticipate the response of the transport sector and some political sectors of the country. However, in view of the extreme decisions it made in terms of guaranteeing control, we can infer that it did not imagine the expansion it would have at all social levels.
The transport sector was the first identifiable group that was organized against Decree 833, due to the obvious effects of the elimination of the subsidy among the guild. It was quickly disjointed by combining the use of police and judicial force. Within hours of issuing the decree, the transport operators announced an indefinite strike that began in synchrony with the application of the law, with their derogation being the condition to end the strike.
In two days, transport operators are neutralized and put back in their lane. Several of the leaders of the strikes are arrested under questionable trials. Such is the case of Jorge Calderón, president of Fedotaxi in Quito; Mesías Vicuña, general secretary of the drivers union in Azuay; and Manolo Solís, president of the transportation house of Cuenca, all under the accusation of having "paralyzed the transport service".
Página 12 of Argentina wrote a note on the irregularities that were committed in the arrest of Calderón. His nephew, Alejandro Calderón, told the media that the case was not warranted because "the measure adopted by the taxi industry was about suspending activities, not paralyzing them. It is a measure covered by constitutional law".
The effective control of the transport sector's agitation contrasts with the growing mobilizations of Ecuadorians who are taking over the capital city.
Their motivations do not stop at a specific measure, they are the generalized expression of a population that drags a systemic crisis that encompasses the economic, political and social aspects of life, as summarized by Francisco Herrera Arauz, general director of the Ecuador Inmediato portal, in an interview for Sputnik.
For this reason, Moreno advanced with the state of emergency decree, recognizing the force and threat, not only of the group of transporters that blocked roads in some areas of the country, but of Ecuadorians in general who were making a presence in the streets.
Thus, the figure of the state of emergency is invoked to criminalize the protests. It contrasts with Venezuela, where in several cycles the levels of violence of the demonstrations were extreme, but with the cardinal difference that in Caracas and other cities the state of emergency was not decreed at any time.
The government minister, María Paula Romo (a feminist and leftist opposition to the previous government), says that the decision is made to guarantee the "mobility of all citizens", handling the narrative of safeguarding public order.
The minister will take center stage in the chambers the following days for two reasons: she will whitewash the repressive measures that will be executed, and will promote the conspiracy theory of the "coup d'etat" coordinated by Rafael Correa and the Venezuelan government. The "hard" demonstration of this accusation will be the arrest of 17 Venezuelan taxi drivers, whom they ended up releasing due to lack of evidence.
On October 4, Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrín appears, along with Romo, weighing up the two days of state of emergency: "The fundamental purpose of restoring order and social peace is being achieved."
Jarrín appears in the report of the Truth Commission that compiles the human rights violations committed in the governments prior to Rafael Correa. Under his command, the Armed Forces and National Police will be coordinated to "lower the intensity of aggressions and violence". He is the direct channel with the United States. 350 people are arrested, of which 90 are prosecuted by the Prosecutor, accused of vandalism.
It is striking that this institution lets Marlon Santi remain free, one of the indigenous leaders who will later sit down to talk. An issue that does not allign with the persecution of politicians linked to the Citizens' Revolution.
In any case, the transport strike officially ends that day: October 4. But indigenous movements come to relieve it, taking over the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, the best structured movement (it has a budget, operational cadres) and the one with national reach.
Meanwhile, excessive policing is becoming a trend inside and outside the country through social networks, since private and state media project the protester as a looter and terrorist.
2) The immune system of the institutions responds
But this escape to the media fence forces the institutions to establish a position in some way.
The prosecution launches a first press release for excesses of the public force, which remains only in the warning that the Criminal Code sanctions these extralimitations of the security agents but no investigations against their members are activated.
The Ombudsman's Office also echoes the weighing up of violence. On October 6, it issued the following report: "485 people were arrested nationwide. Of this figure 80% of the people have been released, which evidences the excessive use of force by the National Police and Armed Forces".
From then on, two parallel realities will come together. On the one hand, that of the "dialogist" government that offers to establish a bridge with the indigenous groups in protest within the capital, under an armed consensus with the UN, the Catholic Church and some universities. On the other hand, the one that will lead the security forces in the streets, once Moreno leaves Carondelet and protects himself in the city of Guayaquil.
With the support of the OAS and protected in Guayaquil, the Moreno government points out Nicolás Maduro to be responsible for these mobilizations: "Maduro the satrap activated his destabilization plan together with Correa". It gives force to the coup d'etat narrative and consequently to the security measures surrounding the case.
Police and Armed Forces are bulging the excesses and abuses to civilians, generalizing the rest of the 11 days of the insurrectionary day. They impose the IMF package on fire and blood at the expense of the criminalization of popular protests and prevent them from having a political leadership of the political groups linked to Correa.
Now the step is the state institutions that begin to negotiate with nationalities and peoples, relying on the UN initiative that is offered as a mediator to finalize the dialogue.
The leaders of the indigenous movements, the second sector that goes on to conduct the demonstrations, are isolated from the "extremist ideas", among them the one that demands the resignation of Moreno, which runs between factions of his groups.
How does the government influence the leadership of Conaie and other social movements? It was being advised at least by an intermediary who knew very well the structure and behavior of the indigenous movements, as was later learned by filtering the audio of the former dean of the Simón Bolívar Andean University, Enrique Ayala Mora, leader of the Socialist Party of Ecuador and renowned landowner from the province of Imbabura.
In addition, there are several activities carried out by the Human Rights Secretariat in relation to those affected by violence, following the opinions of international human rights organizations to comply with the "goodwill" profile: it meets with the deans of the universities that welcome indigenous people and accompany some of the women detained, assessing that their rights are guaranteed in detention centers.
In this way, the narrative goes on to reduce the generalized political crisis to an indigenous labor union conflict.
The universities associated with the Catholic Church play a fundamental role: their intervention prevents the attacks of the armed forces from leaving greater casualties in indigenous protesters, the opposition made visible by the government of Quito.
Precisely, the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE) and the Salesian Polytechnic University house indigenous groups, women, injured children, especially, who arrive from the interior of the country to the Ecuadorian capital. They declare the facilities of their campus as "zone of peace".
When they are attacked with tear gas bombs by the National Police, immediately the PUCE dean Fernando Ponce León intercedes by lowering the tension of violence and highlighting the "correct reaction of Minister Romo." María Romo even issues a public apology for this event and orders to investigate the police officers involved. Hence, we understand religious academics to be articulators so that violence is ceased in the necessary foci and mediations can occur. The controlled distribution of roles "between the parties" begins to harmonize.
The government can easily take refuge in these "autonomous" institutions without political affiliation to show their willingness to dialogue with the conflicting counterpart.
They also serve to filter demands. Those who enter will not include the rejection of the full spectrum of the neo-liberal model or the dismissal of the Ecuadorian president, even though these are a central requirement of people on the streets. They are there simply to discuss the proposals that dose the blow of the privatization of the fuel, to which the universities propose a "reorientation of the subsidy" that happens to cover investments for the agricultural development of the indigenous peoples.
Other actors who propose soft exits to the problem of Decree 883 will have a turn to speak.
c) Third act: the "intermediate" interlocutor
The Conaie fit as the legitimate opposition: what can be more antagonistic, at least in principle and in the abstract, to corporations and financial interests than indigenous peoples? It was with them and not with the business community that Lenín was creating channels for consensus.
However, none of the organization's multiple demands became a blunt block of rejection of the neo-liberal model. The final resolution was not exceeded from the margins imposed by the government. The ideas of resignation of Moreno, other senior military officials and Jarrín and Romo of their respective portfolios, or the total reversal of the package, were labeled as "correístas", tracing the place of the "radical", uncontrolled periphery, violent and supervised by the Correa-Maduro binomial. The time they spent trying to disassociate from this political force so as not to be displaced by it in the conduct of the outbreak, nor to lose the main attention granted to them by the government, was taken advantage of by the Moreno administration that detected complacent spokespersons within their ranks.
Salvador Quishpe is in charge of delivering a letter on behalf of the indigenous movements to the UN delegates in Ecuador.
When reviewing Quishpe's profile, it is understood that the government prefers it to the detriment of other spokespersons: it makes the derogatory condition more flexible to "at least revision" of the document, and in his Twitter account he launches opinions that wash Moreno's blame, pointing out that the military repression is due to pressure from sectors of the right that do not allow it to "reconcile with the indigenous movement."
At first Conaie denies that they have agreed to negotiate, to later end up accepting the dialogue after the universities involved confirm the meeting with the United Nations and validate the letter. In this way, Conaie, represented by the media as "the indigenous", goes to a consensus process where the rules are set by the State. They participate only in the repeal of a decree (which will be reformulated) and there is no room for consultation on what will come to replace that measure.
Quishpe, from the other side of the street, placed his grain of sand to denounce that "correísmo" had appropriated the demonstrations preventing them from negotiating. And the role of Conaie, at best, has been ambiguous. The coincidence.
An early opponent to the governments of Correa, Conaie had no problem getting on the side of the coup in 2010. In 2013 it supported USAID's expulsion from Ecuador, but there is also a relationship at least publicly contradictory manifested here, since they haven't closed their doors to the U.S. agency in the past. However, given their point of shock (the gasoline subsidy) there is a rectification of the government (which already controls volatile margins), validating the narrative of the triumph of the protests.
Likewise, being at the forefront of the demands during these days also allowed it to earn points as a political option. The announcement of wanting to found a party and run in the presidential elections of 2021 confirms it. A clientelist solution covered in virtuous speech.
After tying the soft sector of the opposition, the Moreno government gives the command to the army to be responsible for sweeping the people left in the streets through the curfew, and intensify the siege against the leaders linked to "correísmo" that was being developed in parallel.
The increase in repression was proportional to the extent of the uprising against the government. The curfew decreed in Quito on October 8 was parallel to the intermediation of the UN, the Catholic Church and universities.
On October 9, the national strike was formalized on the initiative of Conaie, sold by the media as "the indigenous" and not as a political group with clear interests, being welcomed by the protesters in Quito. The Joint Command of the Armed Forces, in turn, doubles the bet by exempting itself from responsibilities for the actions that they would take and assigning the consequences of the next few days to the "actors that generate the social upheaval". The repressive forces lashed out at the country that was seeking a radical change from the government's subordination to the IMF.
4) Surfing the ambiguity: fabricate an enemy according to your needs
At this point it would be necessary to stop to add context information: the progressive use of force by security agents entered into debate in January this year, when a pregnant woman was killed by a Venezuelan man while surrounded by police. Then, María Romo declared that the woman's death "should have been avoided with the use of police force".
5) The "good cause" behind the violence
The violence extended for more than a week did not go unnoticed before the eyes of the international community. According to the Ombudsman's Office, the 11 days of demonstrations left 7 people dead, 1,340 injured and 1,152 arrested. A measure taken in the heat of the moment by Moreno to maneuver his tenure in power. When social tension dies down and dialogue finds a channel, he dismisses the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, Roque Moreira, and the Army commander, Javier Pérez, but his Minister of Security and his Minister of Defence remained in place (his resignation was part of the claims of the protests).
This apparent "subtlety" could tell us more about the mood within the military. Kintto Lucas says that the splitting is not only social but that "the armed forces no longer give full support" to the government of Lenín Moreno.
How much will be the real impact of the undermining of sovereignty, the new security agreements with the United States and the semi-official treatment (reinforced by the renewal of command) of those responsible for the violence in the barracks and command offices?
Jarrín (in 1969) and the two new designated generals, Luis Lara and Luis Altamirano, all took courses at the US Army School of the Americas as cadets (in 1982 and 1983, respectively).
María Paula Romo is held accountable for the wave of violence marked by the deployment of security agents in the streets. Similarly, the Association of Venezuelans in Ecuador is campaigning for her to retract false accusations against Venezuelans and their arbitrary detention.
For his part, the Minister of Defence unleashed controversy at one of the high points of the protests by making a video go viral where he threatens the use of lethal weaponry to protect "strategic facilities" of Ecuadorian citizens whom he qualifies as terrorists. "Do not forget that we have experience of war," he warned, making clear allusion to the so-called Fake Paquisha War (1981) and the Cenepa War (1995), two border wars with Peru in remote and sparsely populated areas, where Jarrín was Chief of operations of the latter. There was lethal armament, against civilians (and ultimately in defense of an international entity), and they could hardly be considered equivalent to a war between professional armies in an advanced theater of operations.
6) The Leopard-like assessments
It is very difficult to imagine that the government did not consider within its calculations the dimension that the response in the street could have to the measures contemplated in Decree 833; it could be conceded that a reaction capable of evacuating the seat of government was not expected, the same in the true demographic composition of the mobilizations and protests, much broader and less limited than the final result, clearly capitalized by Conaie, granted that grassroots leadership had a lot to do with what was considered the institutionalized leadership of the organization.
It was a popular uprising with all its letters, with its load being diffused in the conducting process (there was union, but no political direction) where the government could anticipate in essential aspects, if we consider that in the treatment of information, media actors came forward to the events delineating the confirmingly predetermined narrative thread leading to dialogue, the division of the protest, the progress on the detention/suppression of senior members of the Citizen Revolution still in the country, repealing the famous Decree (for now), keeping the current government in power and pacifying the country. In terms, say, of hybrid wars, the government was able to break the OODA loop (Observe, Organize, Decide, Act) or Floyd's principle of mobilization.
This was calculated as a kickback, because a force blow was expected. And we see that the degree of success (even if it is of short duration), going backwards with the measure, advanced in other ways: neutralizing opponents, sterilizing the political content and direct responsibilities of the measures in the system of privileges in which Conaie came out as the main winner (with a brand new game) while the narrative that "the indigenous" (a half truth) turned the board was sold with all effectiveness. A situation closely followed (supervised?) By the United States.
Conaie and Lenín Moreno had reached a political agreement before the end of 2017. (Photo: @Lenin)
But to get to this point, in short:
"Faced with this imminent threat, the Armed Forces will continue to prepare to destroy the intention of imposing criminal interests through urban subversion and terrorism"
Fidel Araujo, army Major prosecuted for the September 30, 2010 assault
On October 22, the newspaper Expreso published a note titled "Defense is getting ready to face the insurgency" with the shorthand introductory heading "Changes in the [military] dome point to that goal. The last strike evidenced violent groups".
"In the country there are insurgent groups, it is the new reality of Ecuador. It was reflected by the violent actions that criminal groups carried out in the indigenous protest that paralyzed the country for almost 12 days and left six dead, more than 1,300 injured and a similar number of detained", opens the note.
At a military stop where the new command of the army and the general staff was presented, Minister Jarrín declared that the "concrete objective" is "to face the insurgency of the country", since, according to the news, management is a concern of the crisis, given that the minister has led visits to the United States and the United Kingdom to learn about the models of crisis rooms they offer in those countries.
"In addition, to know how to act in acts of terrorism, a commission went to Spain and Israel to learn how plans are developed and managed in counter-terrorism situations. It seeks to prevent and anticipate situations such as those that occurred in the strike," says the Expreso note.
Chile's president, Sebastían Piñera, declared in the midst of the social protests that his government (which could be read as an extension of the neo-liberal oligarchy that controls it) is at war "against a powerful enemy, who is willing to use violence without limits" adding that "we are very aware that they have a degree of organization, logistics, typical of a criminal organization".
For some time now, from Colombia to Argentina, the Forum of São Paulo has been granted a governing role, which according to this conspiracy logic would currently operate in a parallel organization named Grupo de Puebla, to "undermine the foundations" of the Lima Group. This is promoted by the circuit of politicians, soaked fighters and soldiers of the Cold War, like Jarrín himself, whose respective political establishments feel threatened.
Because there seems to be a sine qua non condition that, as well as at the government level, cases such as Ecuador's that in life's current political realignment are at stake, the same also happens at the individual level down from the presidents, something that becomes an existential battle, where the orders that are issued from the Embassy probably have to be fulfilled.
Macri, Moreno, Bolsonaro (plus Cunha and Temer), Duque (and uribismo), fujimorismo and the Vizcarra government, Mario Abdo Terán, Juan Orlando Hernández and, apparently, Juan Guaidó as well, are all hanging from a judicial thread with two files weighing a lot, to the point that, by not following the line, they will fall in jail in an instant if the gringos want to.
Thus, an extreme combination of necropolitics, zombie capitalism and white-collar lumpencracy head governments that now touch the limits of neo-liberal metabolism. The Ecuadorian case is descriptive since, unlike Chile, it is in a clear situation of transit between the paradigm shift of the time and that of the neo-liberal restoration. And Chile is the cradle of the neo-liberal experiment.
Contrary to any reality, the necessary enemy is manufactured from the usual signal system of anti-communism with new components supplied in reality and in an ideal way, a foreign threat (the now omniscient Venezuelans), increasingly better defined as a regional "insurgent" objective to face and win.
Behind the noise and political cosmetics with which the heavy hand is softened, the control mechanism that seems to become an extended regional brand is emerging. A transnational enemy, according to this logic, would demand a joint strategy. A Postmodern Operation Condor.
But also, as for example Chile, it is clear that the only novelties are presented at the level of communications: the local, regional and global journalistic consensus, social networks, 2.0 technologies, the eagerness to digitize everything (which offers an informal profuse and chaotic audiovisual archive). On the other hand, in the hardware of the methods of representation and their doctrinal justification, nothing has changed.
This situation coexists with a Bolivia that, unlike the governments that are obliged to defend the neo-liberal consensus, is subject to the corresponding mechanisms of a country clearly located in the other geopolitical field, in which the State is attacked and not defended.
If any lesson remains from all this is that in the face of the collapse of the neo-liberal consensus in the region, the denationalized ruling class and its transatlantic manipulators in corporations, entities and federal agencies, are prepared for the paradigm shift.
Perhaps the best way to understand it is directed towards the fact that, despite its very high current technology, the resources and objectives will be the same as the political content, therefore it does not exempt the imperial drift from the continued suffering due to its sustained inability to reinvent itself, despite the destructive load volume.
Ecuador as a new model of counter-insurgency for Latin America?
The violence extended for more than a week did not go unnoticed before the eyes of the international community. According to the Ombudsman's Office, the 11 days of demonstrations left 7 people dead, 1,340 injured and 1,152 arrested. A measure taken in the heat of the moment by Moreno to maneuver his tenure in power. When social tension dies down and dialogue finds a channel, he dismisses the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, Roque Moreira, and the Army commander, Javier Pérez, but his Minister of Security and his Minister of Defence remained in place (his resignation was part of the claims of the protests).
This apparent "subtlety" could tell us more about the mood within the military. Kintto Lucas says that the splitting is not only social but that "the armed forces no longer give full support" to the government of Lenín Moreno.
How much will be the real impact of the undermining of sovereignty, the new security agreements with the United States and the semi-official treatment (reinforced by the renewal of command) of those responsible for the violence in the barracks and command offices?
Jarrín (in 1969) and the two new designated generals, Luis Lara and Luis Altamirano, all took courses at the US Army School of the Americas as cadets (in 1982 and 1983, respectively).
María Paula Romo is held accountable for the wave of violence marked by the deployment of security agents in the streets. Similarly, the Association of Venezuelans in Ecuador is campaigning for her to retract false accusations against Venezuelans and their arbitrary detention.
For his part, the Minister of Defence unleashed controversy at one of the high points of the protests by making a video go viral where he threatens the use of lethal weaponry to protect "strategic facilities" of Ecuadorian citizens whom he qualifies as terrorists. "Do not forget that we have experience of war," he warned, making clear allusion to the so-called Fake Paquisha War (1981) and the Cenepa War (1995), two border wars with Peru in remote and sparsely populated areas, where Jarrín was Chief of operations of the latter. There was lethal armament, against civilians (and ultimately in defense of an international entity), and they could hardly be considered equivalent to a war between professional armies in an advanced theater of operations.
6) The Leopard-like assessments
It is very difficult to imagine that the government did not consider within its calculations the dimension that the response in the street could have to the measures contemplated in Decree 833; it could be conceded that a reaction capable of evacuating the seat of government was not expected, the same in the true demographic composition of the mobilizations and protests, much broader and less limited than the final result, clearly capitalized by Conaie, granted that grassroots leadership had a lot to do with what was considered the institutionalized leadership of the organization.
It was a popular uprising with all its letters, with its load being diffused in the conducting process (there was union, but no political direction) where the government could anticipate in essential aspects, if we consider that in the treatment of information, media actors came forward to the events delineating the confirmingly predetermined narrative thread leading to dialogue, the division of the protest, the progress on the detention/suppression of senior members of the Citizen Revolution still in the country, repealing the famous Decree (for now), keeping the current government in power and pacifying the country. In terms, say, of hybrid wars, the government was able to break the OODA loop (Observe, Organize, Decide, Act) or Floyd's principle of mobilization.
This was calculated as a kickback, because a force blow was expected. And we see that the degree of success (even if it is of short duration), going backwards with the measure, advanced in other ways: neutralizing opponents, sterilizing the political content and direct responsibilities of the measures in the system of privileges in which Conaie came out as the main winner (with a brand new game) while the narrative that "the indigenous" (a half truth) turned the board was sold with all effectiveness. A situation closely followed (supervised?) By the United States.
Conaie and Lenín Moreno had reached a political agreement before the end of 2017. (Photo: @Lenin)
But to get to this point, in short:
- they had time to contain for months the evidence of the process of handing over the country's sovereignty;
- they were formulating a new hybrid internal enemy, a combination of Venezuelan migration and "correísmo" (they had the opportunity to test it, months before);
- they took leaps and bounds in the structural reform of the economy, to the point of being praised by the IMF itself;
- they were able to test the response, strength, organization and logistics capacity of the population for possible future scenarios;
- they became the epicenter of a diplomatic maneuver that they now try to extend to the rest of the region, laying the foundations for a new idea of emerging regional security;
- the recent experience constitutes an export model, capable of moving in the Leopard-like waters, "changing everything so that everything remains the same";
- while the return of the unrest is guaranteed, Moreno leaves weakened but in the light of the media he is "renewed" in his position of power, and the IMF, as always, is intact.
"Faced with this imminent threat, the Armed Forces will continue to prepare to destroy the intention of imposing criminal interests through urban subversion and terrorism"
Fidel Araujo, army Major prosecuted for the September 30, 2010 assault
On October 22, the newspaper Expreso published a note titled "Defense is getting ready to face the insurgency" with the shorthand introductory heading "Changes in the [military] dome point to that goal. The last strike evidenced violent groups".
"In the country there are insurgent groups, it is the new reality of Ecuador. It was reflected by the violent actions that criminal groups carried out in the indigenous protest that paralyzed the country for almost 12 days and left six dead, more than 1,300 injured and a similar number of detained", opens the note.
At a military stop where the new command of the army and the general staff was presented, Minister Jarrín declared that the "concrete objective" is "to face the insurgency of the country", since, according to the news, management is a concern of the crisis, given that the minister has led visits to the United States and the United Kingdom to learn about the models of crisis rooms they offer in those countries.
"In addition, to know how to act in acts of terrorism, a commission went to Spain and Israel to learn how plans are developed and managed in counter-terrorism situations. It seeks to prevent and anticipate situations such as those that occurred in the strike," says the Expreso note.
Chile's president, Sebastían Piñera, declared in the midst of the social protests that his government (which could be read as an extension of the neo-liberal oligarchy that controls it) is at war "against a powerful enemy, who is willing to use violence without limits" adding that "we are very aware that they have a degree of organization, logistics, typical of a criminal organization".
For some time now, from Colombia to Argentina, the Forum of São Paulo has been granted a governing role, which according to this conspiracy logic would currently operate in a parallel organization named Grupo de Puebla, to "undermine the foundations" of the Lima Group. This is promoted by the circuit of politicians, soaked fighters and soldiers of the Cold War, like Jarrín himself, whose respective political establishments feel threatened.
Because there seems to be a sine qua non condition that, as well as at the government level, cases such as Ecuador's that in life's current political realignment are at stake, the same also happens at the individual level down from the presidents, something that becomes an existential battle, where the orders that are issued from the Embassy probably have to be fulfilled.
Macri, Moreno, Bolsonaro (plus Cunha and Temer), Duque (and uribismo), fujimorismo and the Vizcarra government, Mario Abdo Terán, Juan Orlando Hernández and, apparently, Juan Guaidó as well, are all hanging from a judicial thread with two files weighing a lot, to the point that, by not following the line, they will fall in jail in an instant if the gringos want to.
Thus, an extreme combination of necropolitics, zombie capitalism and white-collar lumpencracy head governments that now touch the limits of neo-liberal metabolism. The Ecuadorian case is descriptive since, unlike Chile, it is in a clear situation of transit between the paradigm shift of the time and that of the neo-liberal restoration. And Chile is the cradle of the neo-liberal experiment.
Contrary to any reality, the necessary enemy is manufactured from the usual signal system of anti-communism with new components supplied in reality and in an ideal way, a foreign threat (the now omniscient Venezuelans), increasingly better defined as a regional "insurgent" objective to face and win.
Behind the noise and political cosmetics with which the heavy hand is softened, the control mechanism that seems to become an extended regional brand is emerging. A transnational enemy, according to this logic, would demand a joint strategy. A Postmodern Operation Condor.
But also, as for example Chile, it is clear that the only novelties are presented at the level of communications: the local, regional and global journalistic consensus, social networks, 2.0 technologies, the eagerness to digitize everything (which offers an informal profuse and chaotic audiovisual archive). On the other hand, in the hardware of the methods of representation and their doctrinal justification, nothing has changed.
This situation coexists with a Bolivia that, unlike the governments that are obliged to defend the neo-liberal consensus, is subject to the corresponding mechanisms of a country clearly located in the other geopolitical field, in which the State is attacked and not defended.
If any lesson remains from all this is that in the face of the collapse of the neo-liberal consensus in the region, the denationalized ruling class and its transatlantic manipulators in corporations, entities and federal agencies, are prepared for the paradigm shift.
Perhaps the best way to understand it is directed towards the fact that, despite its very high current technology, the resources and objectives will be the same as the political content, therefore it does not exempt the imperial drift from the continued suffering due to its sustained inability to reinvent itself, despite the destructive load volume.
Ecuador as a new model of counter-insurgency for Latin America?