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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2008After Colombian invasion of EcuadorThe March 1 calculated and bloody incursion of Colombian troops into Ecuador resulted in the bombing and massacre of 25 individuals, including FARC's number two leader, Raśl Reyes (aka Luis Edgar Devia), and Mexican youth who had attended a conference in Quito and had gone on to meet with the FARC leader in the Ecuadorian jungle. This event calls attention to the "Iraq in our hemisphere" that is too often forgotten, and the destabilizing effect the U.S. interference has had on the region. Colombia is surrounded by Venezuela and Ecuador, both of which have elected governments that are intent upon challenging U.S. hegemony. Colombian President and Bush lapdog, Uribe, almost certainly was able to locate Reyes with the aid of U.S. intelligence, perhaps making use of the U.S. military base on Ecuadorian soil, which it was granted in a near-secret treaty enacted by the now disgraced Mahuad government and which the current government is committed to seeing abolished when the treaty expires next year. Just as certain was his motivation to sabotage any chance of prisoner exchange or a possible negotiated end to the civil war that has raged in Colombia for over 40 years. The divide between the Bush agenda of world domination and the aspirations of Latin Americans was brought into the open by the U.S./Colombian rejection of the otherwise unanimous condemnation by the Organization of American States (OAS) of the Colombian attack, on the grounds that it was a "defensive" action. The Orwellian Bush Doctrine that defines any opposition to its imperial goals as "terrorist" and justifies military action regardless of national boundaries, is a major impediment to peace and social change in the Andes region and all of Latin America. Turning to Ecuador, we see the government of Rafael Correa, which refers to itself as revolutionary, winning a series of landslide election victories. The Constituent Assembly's first act was to suspend the Ecuadorian Congress, which has been dominated by corrupt and rightist political parties and is universally despised by the vast majority of Ecuadorians. The Correa government and the Constituent Assembly, which in effect it controls, are openly allied with Ch‡vez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia, in what I would characterize more as progressive nationalism than genuine socialism. Nonetheless, in the face of virulent attacks by the corporate media and the pundit class, Correa retains massive popular support. The desperation of Bush and Uribe can be seen in their attempts to picture the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador as allies of FARC (and then presumably defined as "terrorist") based upon supposed evidence from a computer that allegedly belonged to Reyes. Ecuadorian intelligence had not informed President Correa of information they had on the one Ecuadorian who was killed in the March 1 Colombian raid, and it was implied that the information was instead forwarded to the U.S. Correa made the accusation that Ecuadorian intelligence is widely infiltrated by the CIA, and that he would remedy this even if it costs him his presidency and his life. In the wake of this, his Minister of Defense resigned along with three of the four generals of the Joint Chiefs. They have all been replaced and swear loyalty to Correa. The new Minister of Defense, Javier Ponce, has indicated that he favors breaking ties with the U.S. with respect to training its military officers and its intelligence services. --Ecuadorian observer |
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