Ecuador: Rebellion against Lenin

By Rodrigo Acuña

American Herald Tribune

19 October 2019

With most of the world’s corporate media giving endless coverage to protestors in Hong Kong, a far more critical political crisis has just taken place in the South American country of Ecuador. Although the government of Lenin Moreno continues to be in power, it has only just survived after a series of major protests led by the country’s indigenous communities, transport unions and student groups.

After days of massive demonstrations that started on October 3, which were sparked off by the government’s acceptance of a structural adjustment package by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March at $4.2bn, and saw Moreno recently end a fuel subsidies program that resulted in a 30 percent increase in the price of petrol, the administration moved its entire seat of government from the capital of Quito to Guayaquil for security reasons. When serious police repression and hundreds of arrests was still insufficient to quell protestors, Moreno called out the military and declared a state of emergency.

Once in Guayaquil, flanked by the military and members of his government, Lenin addressed the nation in a short video. Blaming ex-president of Ecuador Rafael Correa and Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro for the massive protests, Moreno stated that “the satrap that is Maduro has activated, along with Correa, his destabilization plan”. These two leaders, according to Moreno, were the ones that “are behind this attempted coup and are using and manipulating some indigenous sectors, taking advantage of their mobilizations to loot and destroy.” In another declaration Oswaldo Jarrin, Moreno’s Defence Minister, labelled the protestors “terrorists” and “criminals” while threatening to use lethal weapons.

When much of the global media turned its attention to Ecuador, the story was completely simplified. Here was a government trying to implement much needed economic reforms, however, with certain sections of society violently protesting, officials needed to resort to martial law to restore order.

Writing on October 13 on the violence by certain protestors, Michael Weissenstein and Gonzalo Solano in the Associated Press said nothing about State repression against sections of the media that were critical of Moreno (TeleSUR’s signal was taken off air on October 12 while Radio Pichincha Universal was raided by police), the hundreds of people wounded or the more than 1,000 people who were arrested, according to the Ecuadorian Ombudsman. On October 9, Amnesty International (AI) put out a statement condemning Ecuadorian authorities “heavy-handed repression of demonstrators, including mass detentions”. AI also called for authorities to investigate “allegations of arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force, torture and other ill-treatment of those who have been detained in the context of the protests.”

Weissenstein and Solano were also bereft of writing anything insightful on Moreno’s broader policies that contributed to trigging such massive protests. Writing on his track record of governance once he took office in early 2017, the authors simply state that: “Moreno served Correa as vice president before he became president and the two men went through a bitter split as Moreno pushed to curb public debt amassed on Correa’s watch.” 

Guillaume Long, former Foreign Minister of Ecuador and a researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, challenges the above perspective. Speaking on a panel on Al Jazeera, Long argues that debt was “below 40 percent of GDP” which is “half of the European Union’s debt”. This debt, from Long’s perspective, is “pretty low by [an] international comparative perspective” while Moreno for his part indebted the country more in 2 years than did ex-president Correa in 10 years from 2007 to 2017.

According to Joe Emersberger – a Canada based observer of Ecuadorian politics – the Moreno administration has been looking to take out private loans to benefit the private sector while refusing to borrow internally. From his view Moreno’s “priority has been to just give the rich whatever they want.” And with the IMF package expecting a 20 percent cut in wages for new public sector jobs, the requirement that public sector employees sacrifice one day’s worth of wages to the government each month, and see their vacations days cut in half from 30 to 15 days a year, Emersberger’s comments appear on point.

Indeed, when one looks at who benefits from the IMF’s loans, it is difficult not to conclude that, not only is Moreno a neoliberal ideologue who did a 180-degree political turn soon after he took office (he was originally voted on a leftist agenda that promised to continue Correa’s “citizens’ revolution”), but is also personally corrupt.

Wilma Salgado – former Minister of Economic Affairs of Ecuador and an expert on fiscal affairs under various administrations – argues that the biggest winners of the IMF package are fossil fuel corporations, an offshore phone company, Exportadora Bananera Noboa S.A., several private banks and a Mr. Alex Bravo – a former manager of Petroecuador “known to still have accounts in offshore tax havens”. Currently in prison, Bravo owes US$6.3 million but will be forgiven US$3.9 million in debt thanks to the IMF. Salgado notes that the Brazilian construction conglomerate “ODEBRECHT is also on the list, owing US$11.8 million of which US$4.5 million will be forgiven.” In recent years ODEBRECHT was involved in massive acts of corruption throughout South America “for which Ecuadoran beneficiaries and accomplices have yet to stand trial”, according to Salgado.

Earlier this year, prior to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and arrested by British authorities, Ecuador’s attorney general started an investigation into president Moreno and his family based on the establishment of INA Investment Corporation. Established in 2012 in Belice by Edwin Moreno (Lenin Moreno’s brother), a series of documents known as the INA Papers have implicated that, through INA Investment Corporation, the president and his family have allegedly, notes one press report, “been involved in crimes of corruption, perjury and money laundering”.

With that political crisis gaining momentum, and WikiLeaks publishing the INA Papers, Moreno, according to ex-president Correa, was motivated to hand over Assange to the British in order to deflect attention from himself and the ongoing investigation.  

Returning to the latest political crisis over Ecuador’s acceptance of an IMF package, in the last few days Moreno has once again bought himself more time having reached a deal with the protestors and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). Claiming he will reintroduce the fuel subsidies program, one economist writes that the “agreement contains other regressive ‘reforms’ that are sure to be unpopular, including layoffs, wage cuts, regressive tax increases, and pro-employer changes in labor law.”

Speaking to CNN ex-president Correa said Moreno’s government had been left in a “vegetative state” given that the level of State violence against protests was quite remarkable and has left “deep wounds” throughout Ecuadorian society. How much longer Moreno will continue in office remains to be seen but chances are high his legitimacy will once again be challenged.

Colombia: the FARC returns to war?

By Rodrigo Acuña

Latin America Bureau

20 September 2019

The recent announcement by Iván Márquez – the second highest commander of the original Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – that sections of South America’s largest demobilised guerrilla movement are returning to war, should come as little surprise to some observers of Latin America. In a recent video, Márquez, whose real name is Luciano Marín, said that the Colombian State has failed to implement its promised land reform for peasants as established in the 2016 Peace accords.

From the rebel’s perspective, the Attorney General, ultra right-wing members of Congress, former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez and current president Iván Duque Márquez are to blame for the failure of the peace agreement. The Embassy of the United States in Bogota was also mentioned.

Elaborating on the breakdown of the accords Márquez stated:

‘When we signed the agreement of Havana, we did it with conviction that it was possible to change the lives of the humble and the dispossessed. But the State has not fulfilled even the most important of the obligations, that is to guarantee the lives of its citizens and particularly to prevent their murder for political reasons. All of this, this trick, this betrayal, this perfidy, the unilateral modification of the text of the accord, the unfulfilled commitments on the part of the State, the judicial setups and insecurity have obliged us to return to the mountains.’   

The FARC dissidents

Accompanied by close to twenty armed men and women, including ex-rebel leaders Hernán Darío Velásquez (alias ‘El Paisa’), who was once commander of the guerrillas’ strongest military wing, the Teófilo Forero Column, and Seuxis Pausías Hernández (alias Jesús Santrich), Márquez added that: ‘[i]n two years, more than 500 social leaders have been killed and 150 guerrilla fighters are dead amidst the indifference and the indolence of the state.’

According to the dissident commander, the majority of Colombians do not support a war with neighbouring Venezuela while this branch of the FARC will look to establish an alliance with the National Liberation Army (ELN) – historically, Colombia’s second largest rebel group and currently the only one not to have signed a peace agreement.

Shortly after Márquez’s declaration, president Duque Márquez claimed that he ordered an offensive against the ‘gang of narco terrorists that has the shelter and support of the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro’ in Venezuela. For its part, the FARC, which now goes under the name Common Alternative Revolutionary Force, expelled Márquez along with five other commanders. The FARC claim the majority of their rank and file are still committed to the 2016 Peace accord.

Commenting on developments in Colombia on PBS NewsHour, Latin American studies expert Cynthia Arnson from the Wilson Centre in Washington was recently asked if there was any truth in the accusations made by the dissenting rebels. From her perspective, ‘there is truth’ in their claims as ‘about 130 to 150 members of the FARC that had demobilized have been killed’ while there are ‘hundreds and hundreds of social leaders, or even government officials that are based in Colombian communities, that have been killed with impunity.’ Arnson notes that the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia has condemned these assassinations. 

Despite her previous remarks, Arnson does not consider the high number of assassinations of ex-FARC rebels and social activists to be the ‘main reason’ for some commanders to be taking up arms again. Failing to elaborate on what may be their real motives, Arnson concedes paramilitary groups have predominantly been responsible for the spate of recent killings.

Uribistas and paramilitaries

The long-standing connection between paramilitary groups, the drug cartels and the Colombian State of course cannot be ignored. Historically, all these actors have been closely connected with the paramilitaries long doing the dirty work for the cartels, the military and private corporations. At a political level, ex-president Álvaro Uribe Vélez stands out as he has exercised vast power through his connections to these groups while directing the most aggressive aspects of State policy in its attempts to destroy the guerrillas.

In a 1991 report by U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) operatives in Colombia, Uribe (at that time a Senator) was considered to be a ‘close personal friend of Pablo Escobar’ who was ‘dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín [drug] cartel at high government levels.’ The country’s president from 2002 to 2010, Uribe’s administration, writes researcher Alejandra Silva Ortega, ‘was riddled with secret wiretapping, corruption, blatant support of right-wing paramilitaries and severe human rights abuses.’

Commenting on numerous Uribe ministers who ended up in prison on corruption charges, Silva Ortega adds that an even more serious concern was: 

‘His administration’s ties to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary coalition with the primary goal of fighting against the leftist insurgency groups in Colombia and a designated terrorist group by the U.S. government as of 2001. This group is responsible for the largest number of human rights abuses in the conflict, including kidnapping, extortion, murder, and rape, even when considering the abuses committed by FARC and ELN.’

In the largest controversy to grip the Uribe administration and known as the ‘false positives’ scandal, up to 5,000 civilians were assassinated by the military and dressed up as guerrillas in order for their killers to claim bonuses from the government. Adding to this nefarious record, Silva Ortega notes that eventually Uribe’s own brother and several close relatives were incarcerated on charges for supporting paramilitaries.  

In 2009 though, Uribe ensured that his former defence minister Juan Manuel Santos was endorsed as a presidential candidate. While Santos as head of state (2010-2018), with the support of Cuba and Venezuela, achieved a peace deal with the FARC, he concurrently, according to one report, ‘continued Uribe’s policy of denying the continuation of paramilitarism in spite of increasing evidence elements within the military and the political establishment continued working with the illegal armed groups.’

In 2013, the National Centre of Historical Memory published one of the most extensive studies into the conflict in Colombia which it claimed cost the lives of 220,000 people since 1958. With over 5.7 million Colombians displaced, the report documented 1,982 massacres between 1980 and 2012 attributing 1,166 to paramilitaries, 343 to the rebels and 295 to government security forces and unknown groups.

Giving strong backing to the Colombian State, the United States has had a massive impact on the conflict, as Washington sent Bogota close to US$10 billion in aid to fight the rebels since 2000 under the Clinton administration.  

Orders to kill

Fast forward to today and another one of Uribe’s political protégés (Iván Duque Márquez) sits in the presidential office while Colombia, as noted by journalist Antony Loewenstein in his recent book Pills, Power, and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, is the world’s largest supplier of cocaine following a 31 per cent increase in cocaine production since 2018.

Uribe himself has recently been ordered to stand trial in October on charges he tampered with a witness who claimed he formed a death squad in the 1990s. While only about 1,500 to 2,000 FARC rebels failed to demobilize under the 2016 Peace accord, and Colombia has not seen major fighting between the military and the rebels since, The New York Times revealed in May this year that the Colombian military has been ordered to escalate the number of its military operations. Titled ‘Colombia Army’s new kill orders send chills down ranks’, the article notes that the military’s new strategy looks rather similar to Uribe’s ‘false positives’ scandal.

On the ground, Jonathan Levi – co-director of the García Márquez Fellowship in Cartagena – and Marta Orrantia – a Colombian lecturer at the National University of Colombia – recently visited the Catatumbo region in north-eastern Colombia where numerous ex-guerrillas and social leaders have been murdered. According to them, the Santos government claimed that the political murders taking place throughout the country were ‘crimes of passion and jealousy’ while Iván Duque blamed the ELN left-wing guerrillas. The problem with this version of events, note Levi and Orrantia, is that the killings taking place are in ‘regions overrun by paramilitary splinter groups.’ The ELN has virtually zero presence.

Chile: Killing of Mapuche activist provokes large protests

By Rodrigo Acuña

Latin America Bureau

27 November 2018

The recent death of the 24-year-old Mapuche activist and leader Camilo Catrillanca has sparked widespread condemnation and protests throughout Chile.

On Wednesday November 14, a newly created special ‘anti-terrorist’ unit of Carabineros, the Chilean police, known as Comando Jungla entered the Mapuche traditional community of Temukuikui near the town of Ercilla in the Araucanía region, approximately 370 miles south of Santiago. Claiming to be in pursuit of local car thieves, the operation involved hundreds of police offices with two helicopters.

Returning home with a 15-year-old minor on his tractor who was also wounded in the incident, Catrillanca – the grandson of a local indigenous leader – was shot multiple times. According to community members, despite being severely wounded, Catrillanca was surrounded by police and taken to a local clinic instead of a hospital. The minor, who accompanied Catrillanca and has recently given a statement to the Public Ministry, claims he was later assaulted by police.

Quick to back the police special forces version of events – that Catrillanca was killed in  crossfire – Minister of Interior Andrés Chadwick and Luis Mayol, Intendente of the Araucanía region, ­gave a series of bungled press conferences. Chadwick for days persisted in claiming that Catrillanca had a criminal record, hence cynically implying that his death was justified.

Missing video

The government’s version of events drew much ridicule when it was established that Catrillanca had no previous convictions.

Comando Jungla, according to Bloomberg, had been trained in Colombia and the United States and was ‘equipped with bullet-proof jackets, drones and high-tech communications systems’. Yet the police could produce no video footage of their operation. Eventually, second sergeant Raúl Ávila Morales declared he had video footage of the incident on his GoPro camera but had destroyed it because the memory card contained ‘private images’.

Catrillanca’s death is only the latest in a series of actions by the Chilean State to defend the forestry industry and other firms which are exploiting southern Chile’s natural resources, especially water. While the forestry industry argues that their purchase or rental of large tracts of land in the region is perfectly legal, indigenous communities have for years complained about the negative environmental impacts of logging which, among other effects, causes soil erosion, damages indigenous crops and contaminates food supplies for livestock.

Numerous Mapuche communities have decided to fight back. According to statistics published by a local business association in the city of Temuco, in 2017 43 attacks, usually in the form of arson, were carried out against logging companies.

Conflict means business

While forestry firms hired their own security guards, in recent years Carabineros de Chile  has stepped in to protect forestry companies, and has been accused of persecuting indigenous activists and falsifying evidence against them.

Journalist Francisco Marín writes, in the Mexican journal Proceso, that:

‘The murder of Catrillanca joins a series of other similar incidents, in which carabineros have killed unarmed Mapuche, as happened with Alex Lemún Saavedra (2002), Matías Catrileo Quezada (2008) and Jaime Mendoza Collío (2009). Although justice proved that the police version of events in each case were false, all those responsible were given short, non custodial sentences.’

According to the indigenous newspaper Werkén.cl, since 2001 the number of Mapuche leaders murdered stands at 14, and that was before the killing of Catrillanca. Earlier this year, the Red por la Defensa de la Infancia Wallmapu (Network for the Defense of Wallmapu Children) noted that more than 40 Mapuche children have been mistreated by police, including some who received gunshot wounds.

Adding further complexity to the conflict, Carabineros de Chile appears all too keen to requestadditional State funds, specifically to deal with what is described as ‘ethnic conflict’, in other words Mapuche protests. This comes, as Christopher A. Martínez from Temuco Catholic University observes, just as the police force is ‘currently going through its deepest crisis yet in the post Pinochet period’, with numerous ‘top-ranking Carabineros officials, including a former general, under investigation for a US$ 40 million fraud.’ This fraud was possible because of the flow of unrestricted funds to deal with ‘conflict’ and the self-interest of the officers responsible in ensuring that conflict continued and grew.

To make matters worse, the Chilean State in the last two decades has begun to use Anti-Terrorist Laws (specifically Law 18.314) against the Mapuche, actions which have been condemned by both Amnesty International and the United Nations. Established under the Pinochet dictatorship in 1984, the law facilitates the crushing of any political dissidence.

In the latest development, the Intendente of the Araucanía region has resigned while several police officers have done likewise or been suspended. The National Institute for Human Rights has also filed a criminal lawsuit against Carabineros claiming murder, attempted murder and obstruction of justice.

In his classic work Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, historian Brian Loveman notes that in over two centuries, due to Mapuche resistance, no other colony drained the Spanish royal treasury more or cost so many lives. According to the 2017 national census, the Mapuche population today numbers 1,745,147 (9.9% of the Chilean population) while they have lost 95% of their native lands. Contemporary Chilean politicians would do well to read this history.

Right-wing Venezuelan attempts to disrupt university forum

Rodrigo Acuña

Green Left

August 16, 2017, Issue 1150, News

In recent months a small section of Venezuelans living in Australia have decided to embrace some of the aggressive tactics used by fellow right-wingers living in other parts of the globe.

With a campaign established to deport Lucia Rodriguez, the daughter of Caracas mayor and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Jorge Rodriguez – she was accosted in Bondi a few months ago – and two Venezuelans removed by police from the Latin America Down Under mining expo held in Perth, it is becoming apparent some Venezuelans view these types of actions as acceptable.

Earlier this year the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies (ANCLAS) at the Australian National University (ANU) invited me to speak on Venezuela and the political crisis that country has been experiencing for some time.

The successful event, which was held on August 11 and attracted over 60 people, was co-sponsored by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and ANCLAS, to its credit, and like most Latin American Studies (LAS) departments in Australia, saw no issue with this collaboration.

For those familiar with my work, it is no secret that I have previously viewed certain policies to reduce poverty by the Venezuelan government in a favourable light.

Likewise, since 1999, I have considered positively the Venezuelan government’s challenge to US hegemony throughout Latin America, resulting in the creation of such organisations as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americans (ALBA).

In a similar manner, when I have differed with the administration in Caracas I have expressed these views publically on numerous occasions, most recently in an interview I gave to the ABC.

Unfortunately, for some, none of the complexity of the points I often make matter.  

Commencing my lecture at ANU by reading out a short article I recently published in the American Herald Tribune (AHT), where I documented some of the opposition’s violence in Venezuela in the last few months, I soon heard a member of the audience make comments such as “bullshit”, “lies” and “propaganda.”

A few paragraphs into the article, a man stood up and started yelling. Not identifying himself, I was later told this was the Venezuelan hard right-wing and arts promoter Frank Madrid.

Stating that I was telling nothing but lies, Madrid took exception to a comment I made about the guarimberos – right-wing youths in Venezuela that, throughout the recent crisis, have burnt buses and government buildings, used explosives against police officers, attacked a maternity hospital and will be soon be investigated by a Truth Commission for the alleged deaths (among others) of the young Afro-Venezuelan Orlando Jose Figuera and judge Nelson Moncada.

Perhaps unaccustomed to how an academic forum works – it is basic manners to listen to a speaker and ask questions or make comments at the end – a member or two from the audience grew tired of Madrid’s rant and called him a “fascist” in Spanish. Another yelled out “Chile 1973 shouldn’t be repeated!”

As quickly as Madrid’s tirade commenced it soon came to an abrupt end. Informing the audience that he was utterly offended, and so was his mother who was also present, Madrid stormed off with one other audience member.

Attempting to re-establish order, I was later told one of the organisers tried to calm Madrid down and invited him back into the event.

Again, upon his return, Madrid was unable to sit quietly for more than a few short minutes, launched another tirade and left the auditorium. Later, I was informed he was particularly upset when someone took a picture of him as campus security and police debated whether to escort him out of the building.

Had Madrid stayed longer than a few minutes at the forum he may have actually learnt something.

During my presentation I noted that the Venezuelan government had failed to diversify the economy, that far stronger measures against corruption should be taken and that human rights violations had been committed by some sections of the security force against certain opposition protesters in recent months. I even made a point of showing a video where members of the opposition were interviewed and images of police firing tear gas at crowds were clearly visible.

I noted that most middle class Venezuelans who protest against incumbent president Nicolas Maduro do so peacefully, and, to the government’s credit, where cases of excessive use of force against protestors have been suspected, investigations have been conducted.

In contrast to the simplicity of the mainstream media though, I discussed specific details regarding the conflict. While most middle class Venezuelans of European heritage may demonstrate in a civil fashion, this is hardly the case with the guarimberos or, more importantly, key opposition leaders who have long incited their supporters to use violence – a necessity according to Justice First (PJ) opposition leader Juan Requesens in order to provoke a “foreign intervention.”

As many experts on Venezuela could attest, the government has long banned opposition protests in the heart of Caracas due to the manner in which a coup in April 2002 developed.

Then, opposition protests reached the presidential palace and, after unidentified snipers shot at opposition demonstrators and pro-government supporters (Chavistas), a military takeover occurred which saw former president Hugo Chavez kidnapped. With dozens of people killed (the overwhelming majority Chavistas), the president was soon restored to power by the bulk of the armed forces that remained loyal to the constitution.    

In 2002, the Bush administration supported the coup against Chavez just as the successive administrations in Washington have funded millions into the coffers of the opposition.

This point, as with actually enquiring into the details of the political crisis in Venezuela, or stating that the country’s sovereignty should be respected, makes the opposition and its sympathisers highly uncomfortable.

Perhaps this is why Madrid could only stomach a few minutes of my presentation and why he and other right-wing Venezuelans have continuously sought to shutdown meetings about Venezuela that do not conform to their views.