Who Really Discovered America? TV - John Perkins - New York Times - Abby Martin & Guillaume Long - The Curse of Oil TV - Rafael Correa - The Economist - Stansfield Smith & Counterpunch - La Muerta de Jaime Roldos 2013 -
Ecuador 3044 B.C. 4,536 years before Columbus ... They are starting to make pottery ... Where did they learn these sophisticated techniques? Who Really Discovered America? History 2010
Twenty-six similarities in technique and motif on pottery from Japan and Valdivia. ibid.
Ecuador for many many years had been ruled by pro-US dictators. Often relatively brutal. Then it was decided that they were going to have a truly democratic election. Jaime Roldos ran for office and his main goal, he said, as President would be to make sure that Ecuador’s resources were used to help the people. And he won. Overwhelming. By more votes than anyone had won anything else in Ecuador. And he began to implement these policies to make sure that the profits from oil went to help the people. Well, we didn’t like that in the United States. I was sent down as one of several economic hit-men to change Roldos. To corrupt him. To bring him around. To let him know, you know, OK, you can get very rich, you and your family, if you play our game. But if you continue to try to keep these policies you’ve promised, you’re going to go. He wouldn’t listen. He was assassinated. As soon as the place crashed, the whole area was condoned off, the only people allowed in were the United States military from a nearby base and some Ecuadorean military. When the investigation was launched, two of the key witnesses died in car accidents before they got the chance to testify. A lot of very very strange things went on around the assassination of Jaime Roldos. I like most people who have really looked at this case have absolutely no doubt that it was an assassination. Of course, in my position as an Economic Hit-man, I was always expecting something to Jaime, whether it be a coup or an assassination, I wasn’t sure, but that he would be taken down because he was not being corrupted. He would not allow himself to be corrupted the way we wanted to corrupt him. John Perkins, author Confessions of an Economic Hitman & economist Chas T Main Inc
Ecuadorian Leader Dies in Place Crash: President Jaime Roldos Aguilera was killed today when an Air Force plane carrying him crashed in the Andes near Ecuador’s southern border with Peru, the Presidential Palace announced. He was 40 years old. The New York Times article 25th May 1941
The kind of institutional weakness, the kind of failed state … nothing worked properly … there was lots of dodgy debts ... The history of Ecuador has been marked by this vulnerability. Abby Martin, The Empire Files: Rejecting Neoliberalism With Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Guillaume Long, Youtube 2016
Centuries of colonialism, also decades of western capitalism and how it’s ravaged the country. ibid. Abby
Inequality served with neoliberalism. ibid. Long
The Amazonian Indians – it is they who are paying the price of oil. The Curse of Oil I: Rich and Poor, BBC 2004
‘Texaco left 627 open-air pits. It is the worst ecological disaster in the hemisphere.’ ibid.
For the first time an oil producer country, Ecuador, where a third of the resources of the State depends on the exploitation of the above mentioned resources, resigns this income for the well-being of the whole humanity and invites the world to join efforts through a fair compensation, in order that together we lay the foundations for a more human and fair civilization. Rafael Correa, address United Nations 24 September 2007
Socialism will continue. The Ecuadorian people voted for that. We are going to emphasize this fight for social justice, for regional justice. We are going to continue the fight to eliminate all forms of workplace exploitation within our socialist conviction: the supremacy of human work over capital. Nobody is in any doubt that our preferential option is for the poorest people, we are here because of them. Hasta la victoria siempre! Rafael Correa
The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget. Rafael Correa
When Rafael Correa first ran for Ecuador’s presidency in 2006, supporters at his rallies brandished belts in homage to their candidate, whose surname means belt or strap. Dale correa, or give them a whipping, the crowds roared. It was a demand to punish what they regarded as the corrupt elites who had governed Ecuador since the return of democracy in 1979. Mr Correa promised he would. He won that election and then two more. His presidency brought a rare spell of political stability. Living standards rose and public services improved. Mr Correa, who has a respectable approval rating of 42%, is not a candidate. He is counting on Lenin Moreno, a former vice-president, and his running mate, Jorge Glas, the current vice-president, to carry on his ‘citizens’ revolution’. Mr Moreno, who shares his alarming first name with 18,000 other Ecuadoreans, hopes to win in the first round by capturing the bulk of Mr Correa’s support and adding to it. The Economist 18 February 2017, ‘What to Expect from Ecuador’s Elections 18 February’
Ecuador, still a relatively poor Third World country, has made achievements we can still only dream of here: free health care, free university education, effective anti-poverty programs, democratizing the media, environmental protection, respect for the rights of oppressed groups such as LBGTs and Original Peoples, repudiation of debt gouging by the banks, increasing taxes on the rich, clean elections. It has taken the initiative, along with President Evo Morales of Bolivia, in demanding action by the West in combating climate change and in shutting down tax havens. The challenges facing Ecuador remain the continued power of the old neoliberal ruling elite in the country, the need to further diversify the economy, to eliminate poverty, and the need to build an organized, politically active mass structure to carry on the Citizens Revolution.
The accomplishments of the Citizens Revolution have made President Correa, one of the most popular presidents in Latin America. Moreover, in a poll of 18 Latin American countries, Ecuador ranked the highest in citizens’ evaluation of their country’s government, in reduction of corruption, and distribution of wealth. Yet, ‘The greatest achievement of this revolution is having recovered pride and hope. We recovered our country,’ said Correa speaking on the 10th anniversary of the revolution. Stansfield Smith, article Counterpunch, ‘Accomplishments Under 10 Years of Rafael Correa’s Citizen’s Revolution’
Ecuador’s transformation during the presidency of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and The Citizens' Revolution stands as a great step forward for the worldwide struggle against the 1%. President Correa … came to power in a country controlled by a super-rich elite, dependent on oil and commodities exports. Ecuador still suffered from the devastating effects of corrupt banker dealings, which caused the currency and peoples’ savings to lose two-thirds of their value, leading to the US dollar becoming the new national currency. Governments preceding Correa instituted neoliberal austerity and privatization programs, causing inequality, poverty and unemployment to soar. Ecuador became one of the poorest and least developed nations in the region. Poverty rates reached 56% of the population, and from 1998-2003 close to 2 million Ecuadorans out of a population of 12-13 million, over 1 in 10, had left the country for economic reasons.
William Blum, in Killing Hope, wrote that the CIA in Ecuador ‘infiltrated, often at the highest levels, almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right … In virtually every department of the Ecuadorian government could be found men occupying positions high and low who collaborated with the CIA for money. At one point, the agency could count among this number the men who were second and third in power in the country.’ Ecuador was also saddled with the US’s largest air base in the region at Manta, instrumental in Plan Colombia and in enforcing international banking and corporate rule over Ecuador. ibid.
The Ecuadorian military decided to call elections in 1978. They had been in power since ’72. During the first years a group of nationalist military led by a general known as La Bombita nationalised the oil that the transnational corporations had just discovered in the Amazon and received with military honours. La Muerta de Jaime Roldos, 2013
Very soon the confrontations with the extreme right-wing military began … Bombita was over thrown in January 1976. ibid.
The disputes within the armed forces were so great that the power of the dictatorship was worn out quickly, and it did not take long for them to call elections … Those same soldiers decided to veto the candidacy of Assad Bucaram. ibid.
The CSP launched the candidacy of Jaime Roldos, a 37-year-old lawyer. ibid.
The right denounced that Roldos had committed fraud and that elections should be annulled. ibid.
Abdon Calderon Munoz was murdered, a politician who openly denounced the corruption of the military, and who had announced his support for the candidacy of Roldos. ibid.
That [student] massacre went unpunished, but that day an entire generation became politically aware. ibid.
Roldos announced that he would call a plebiscite so that the people would authorise him to dissolve the legislative chamber and call new elections. ibid.
The plane in which the president and his wife Marta were travelling crashed. ibid.
A new generation governs the country and dreams of changing it. ibid.