Dispatches From The Edge

Ecuador: Riot or Coup?

By Conn Hallinan

October 7. 2010

A police riot over an austerity bill, or a failed
attempt to oust leftist Ecuadorian President Rafael
Correa from office? In the aftermath of the Sept. 30
attack on Correa by police in Quito, it is looking more
and more like this was an orchestrated coup. And while
there is no evidence that the U.S. was directly
involved, the Obama administration's strong support for
the current Honduran government may well have
encouraged the plotters to expect similar treatment by
Washington.

The police attack on Correa was co-coordinated with
similar takeovers in several other cities, the seizure
of Ecuador's two largest airports by army troops, and
the occupation of the National Assembly. In the end the
Ecuadorian Army supported the President, freed him from
the police hospital where he was being held, and
whisked him to safety, but only after a firefight
killed one soldier and a student who had turned out to
support Correa. The President's car was struck by five
bullets. According to the Latin American Herald
Tribune, eight people died and 274 were wounded in
incidents nationwide.

Suspicion has fallen on former president and army
colonel Lucio Gutierrez, who led a 2000 coup and has
called for Correa's ouster. Gutierrez currently lives
in Brazil and denies any link to the attempted coup.
Correa also charges that Gutierrez's brother Gilmar, a
member of the National Assembly, supported the coup.

Last year's coup in Honduras that ousted Manuel Zelaya
has cast a shadow across the region, raising up the
ghosts of a previous era when military takeovers
routinely toppled governments in Latin America,
including those in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and
Ecuador. According to The Guardian, Correa said in the
aftermath of the Honduran coup, "We have intelligence
reports that say after Zelaya, I'm next."

After Zelaya was ousted, the coup-led government of
Roberto Micheletti organized elections-boycotted by
most the population-and put Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo into
power. Most countries in the region refuse to recognize
the Lobo government, including the region's major
players, Brazil and Argentina.

In spite of the fact that the Lobo government has
overseen a wave of terror directed at journalists,
trade unionists, gays and lesbians, and opposition
activists, Washington is pushing hard for countries to
end Honduras's regional isolation and its suspension
from the Organization of American States (OAS).

"Now is the time for the hemisphere as a whole to move
forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-
American community," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton told the OAS.

But most countries are wary of anything that might give
the appearance of endorsing a government brought in via
a coup. There is also concern about the ongoing human
rights crisis in Honduras. Reporters Without Borders
has labeled Honduras the most dangerous country in the
world for journalists-eight have been murdered in the
past year-and human rights groups, including Amnesty
International, the UN Office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights, and the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights have all condemned the on-going reign of
terror directed at members of the Honduran opposition,
the National Front of Popular Resistance.

While most nations in the region are reluctant to bed
down with the Honduran government, the U.S. has opened
the military aid spigot, donating $812,000 worth of
heavy trucks to the Honduran Army. In the meantime, the
United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) is handing out $75 million for development
projects, and $20 million for the "Merida" security
program.

"Washington's support for the coup government in
Honduras over the past year has encouraged and
increased the likelihood of rightwing coups against
democratic left governments in the region," writes The
Guardian's Latin American correspondent Mark Weisbrot.
"This attempt in Ecuador has failed, but there will
likely be more threats in the months and years ahead."

Two obvious candidates are Bolivia and Paraguay. In the
case of the former, organizations like USAID and the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-both of which
gave active support to organizations behind the
Honduran coup-are active.

In Honduras, NED and USAID helped finance the Peace and
Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union, both
dominated by the country's tiny elite, and which
strongly supported the coup. Many of the Honduran
Army's officers, including coup leaders Gen. Vasquez
Velasquez and Gen. Prince Suazo, have been trained by
the U.S. Western Hemispheric Institute for Security
Cooperation, the former "School for the Americas" that
has trained coup makers and human rights violators from
throughout Latin America.

According to !Presente!, a publication critical of the
School for the Americas, the commander of the police
barracks where Ecuadorean President Correa was
attacked,
Col Manuel Rivadeneira Tello, is a graduate of the
School's combat arms training course.

Bolivian President Evo Morales recently threatened to
expel USAID for its role in financing opposition
separatist groups based in the country's wealthy
eastern provinces. Along with the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)-an organization long
associated with the Central Intelligence Agency-USAID
and NED have underwritten separatist media and
organizations based in the wealthy province of Santa
Cruz, where most of the country's natural gas deposits
lie.

The possibility of Eastern Bolivia declaring
independence is very real and, if it happens, U.S.
organizations will have played a major role in
encouraging it.

In May of this year, Fernando Lugo, the progressive
president of Paraguay, reported to the Union of South
American Nations (UNASUR) meeting in Buenos Aires, that
he had evidence of a coup aimed at overthrowing his
government. Lugo had a closed-door meeting with the
UNASUR members, following which UNASUR reaffirmed its
full support for the Paraguayan government.

Paraguay is one of the poorest and most unequal
countries on the continent, and it was long dominated
by a military dictatorship. Lugo, who took office in
August 2008 for a five-year term, put together a
coalition that broke the 60-year stranglehold the
conservative Colorado Party had over the country.

Lugo has weathered some personal scandals-he is a
former Catholic Bishop who fathered a number of
children-and is currently suffering from lymphoma. He
is locked in a battle with his more conservative vice-
president, Federico Franco, and at loggerheads with a
fractious congress that has made getting legislation
through a trial. Those are the kind of difficulties
that might well encourage Paraguay's rightwing military
and the Coloradoans to consider a coup, particularly if
they think that Washington will eventually take a
position similar to the one it took on Honduras.

Of course not all coups are successful these days. An
outpour of popular support for Hugo Chavez reversed the
2001 Venezuela coup, and Correa's 67 percent positive
rating-he has doubled healthcare spending, increased
social services, and stiffed a phony $3.2 billion
foreign debt-certainly played a role in spiking the
Ecuador coup.

But U.S. organizations like NED and AIFLD, active
throughout the hemisphere, were closely associated with
the Venezuelan coup makers.

The Obama Administration promised a new deal in Latin
America and a break from the policies of the Bush
Administration. Instead it has beefed up its military
presence in Colombia, sharpened its attacks on
Venezuela, refused to back away from its blockade of
Cuba, and played footsie with Honduran government.

If countries in the region are paranoid, maybe they
have reasons for it.
_______________

To read other columns by Conn Hallinan go to
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com

_____________________________________________

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