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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
CHRISTMAS IN THE TROPICS
La Guardia, Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, Thursday, 21 December 2006
It is hard to believe that Christmas is only a few days away. La Guardia and Porlamar seem a lot busier since the past weekend with more modern cars bearing mainland-province license plates more in evidence. The drivers seem more aggressive, too. We suddenly realise that the many beach houses that have been barred and shuttered since we arrived nearly two months ago, are actually inhabited. We notice this when we meander down to the nearby beach for our daily dip. School is out: there are a lot more kids playing down at the beach, sometimes tots with their mothers and fathers in tow. The cyber café has become constantly filled with clamouring 10 and 14-year-olds from early opening to late in the evening.
Our friend Jens is busily trying to wrap up his work and prepare for his Friday-night departure to Germany. He will be gone for about two months. In the meantime, we shall be helping out at his posada (pension) by picking up and dropping off guests at the airport or ferry. To this end Jens frequently comes by on short notice and whisks me off to the airport or various ferries to explain the drill. We already have a set of keys for his house and cars and we will keep his little car at Venamor.
One of the projects I have been eager to see finished is the installation of new storm drains for the patio. The hard part was getting it started but today, Francisco and Chilo will complete the job and will have also installed new lighting for the dark driveway where village people walk through at night and, more threateningly to us, where some drug dealing and drug stashing is done. Occasionally some people have been using the alley as a convenient toilet as well.
It has taken the guys two weeks but not only have more-than-adequate drainage pipes been placed under the patio but there they have even opened a direct hole in the wall for real Deluges and built a very large open culvert down the side of the house to the street to carry off nearly anything Mother Nature can throw at the house. Since a heavy tropical rain can come at any time of the year, I am glad to have the job done before Jens leaves.
Yesterday afternoon Jose (a.k.a. “JR”) and his wife Amelia drove by unannounced (how would they announce themselves anyway except to come by?) to invite us to a fiesta at their house in the village on Friday evening. Their children are all going to be there for Christmas and I assume there might be some who speak English. Neither Jose nor Amelia speak anything but Spanish. Actually, maybe Amelia is multilingual. But she generally just smiles seraphically and says nothing: that’s all right since Jose, 75, is exceedingly sociable and extroverted. He fancies himself a singer, we think, which is part of our attraction for him. I promised him I would sing at his 76th birthday on 03 February but, as Kathleen pointed out, probably Jose wants to sing. We are taking Jens to the aeropuerto for a 2200 Condor flight that evening so we said we would bring him first to the party, too.
Tonight, in fact, we are having an Abschiedsfeier for Jens. We agreed to have it at Jens’ own place. He has a German couple stopping, paying guests here for a month of vacation with their small child. We want to meet them, too. We’ll throw together some food and grill some meat on the BBQ set-up that Jens is so justifiably proud of. With the building work done at Venamor and Jens in Europe, we shall no doubt find life less interesting. Jens would come by once or twice a day ostensibly to check on Francisco’s and Chilo’s progress and sit around chewing the fat with us. We have grown to like him a lot.
On Wednesday, he whisked me over to Juangriego with him in his SUV. The trips are always “interesting” in part because Jens represents the “I-Am-Driving-a-Tank” school of motor-vehicle management, an approach also referred to in the scientific literature as “Nothing-Can-Happen –To-Me-Because-I-Have-The-Bigger-Truck” approach (sometimes also called “Denial”). This is of course totally disregards the fact that SUVs have been proven repeatedly actually to be more dangerous than any other type of passenger vehicle: they are far less manoeuvrable in a tight situation than cars, for example; they do not have a uni-body construction for protection in a crash; and an SUV’s braking distance is nearly double that of every normal passenger vehicles). Do I digress? Very well, I digress.
We are actually going to pick up a small fridge for one of the apartments in his posada. On the way back Jens spots a roadside ad hoc fish market and pulls on the brakes. Leaving the SUV half-parked into the street, he marches over and starts looking inside the plastic ice chests under the trees. We wind up buying three pargos each (red snappers) and a kilo of swordfish, the latter of which the fishmonger’s wife hacked into five large steaks before scraping the scales and gutting the snapper. Altogether we paid Bolivars 70,000 ($28) including Bs. 20,000 (ca. $8) for the 2 kilos of swordfish and we now have a freezer compartment full of fish. We eat the first snapper that very evening cooked Chinese style the way our friend Albert Pang showed us back in British Columbia: steamed briefly with onions and ginger and then with very hot oil and some soy sauce poured over the whole fish at the end when it is laid out on a platter: Delicious! Delicious! Delicious! Delicious! (Since Francisco and Chilo go fishing every weekend in partnership with Jens -Jens supplies the boat and motor-, maybe we can get connected that way to a steady supply of pescado.)
For my part, I am sure that I would never have stopped to buy at such a street-side fish market. But there were lots of people buying and now I would not hesitate. The fishwife and her six-year-old daughter, both dark brown and barefoot, standing in the sun, were hard at it scarping scales and scaling fish, negotiating with the customers, the fishwife digging with her right hand into the left half of her brassiere for plastic bags and into the right side for change. Again, you are dealing with actual people, a far remove from the sanitised, impersonal and boring fish section of a supermarket like SIGO. The argument that large supermarkets make food available much more cheaply than little mom-and-pop shops was shown to be false in this case. The fish and the fishwife were local, the fish was fresher and the prices were lower. Go figure!
The fireworks continue unabated. We have finally realised that the fireworks have to do with the masses being sung every evening late over at the parish church. A man has a “rocket launcher” made of several vertical pipes and, while the mass is being sung, he sets them off outside the entrance using a cigarette to light the fuses. None of your silent, hushed, communing-with-thy-Maker style of religiosity here! It’s noisy and meant to be. Get God’s attention!
Saturday, December 23, 2006
VILLAGE NEWS
La Guardia, Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, Saturday, December 16, 2006
Our villagers, maybe all Venezuelans seem to be fascinated by fireworks. Every night and sometimes during the early hours of the morning there is likely to be somebody setting them off. Mostly they seem to be the kind that rockets upwards fifty metres or so and then explodes. This morning at about 0500 as I was getting up I was startled by fireworks just over our wall. Of course, the reverberation off our courtyard walls and down the hard surfaces of the hallway of the house had me wide instantaneously awake. The first few times I heard it I jumped. Now however I seem to have adjusted. Maybe it’s because I can hear the fizzle of the rocket first and am psychologically prepared for the explosion that follows one or two seconds later. I must remember to tell visitors about this when they arrive.
School seems now to have let out for Christmas. Strange as it feels to us, the 19th Century German ideal of Christmas has now taken over even the tropics: most houses here are now strung with coloured lights. (The shops have been full of Christmas gear since September! And I mean full! Another aspect of the European Christmas tradition, no doubt!) Like back home, next to every television there is a Christmas tree (exclusively synthetic ones here with winking lights and garish baubles. Friend Jens says that many businesses will close now for a month. He dropped into his local auto mechanic and they were in their last hours before shuttering till mid-January.
Casa Venamor is situated right next to the local parish church, a well-maintained small edifice where masses are sung every morning at 0800 (except Monday) and most evenings at 1730 (except Sunday). Instead of chanting, we hear Latin music coming from loudspeakers on the church plaza. A large group of families is ranged around the little amphitheatre of steps at the entrance. Just as in every other Christian country, this is the annual children’s Christmas pageant. Given the 25ºC temperatures, of course, it is being held outdoors and not in a dank church basement (there are no basements here in any case). There are the angels, there Maria and Joseph, the shepherds, etc. I never figure out who the two or three prepubescent girls in very tight, very short, very colourful, off-one-shoulder, butt-length T-shirts were supposed to be.
Being so close to the church we get a slightly different perspective of life here. We have not yet witnessed a wedding but every other week there is a funeral. So far these funerals are not those of the elderly who have reached their allotted time, though there are a lot of elderly people in La Guardia. We pass them with a greeting often as they sit in the shade outside their houses. A very big funeral three weeks ago was that of a young policemen of 19 who, along with two others, had been shot down in a drive-by shooting in Porlamar. He came from La Guardia and, as the rather clanky-sounding church bell tolled, his bier was followed from the church to the graveyard (at the other end of Avenida Bermudez near Jens’ house) not only by a very large body of mourners but by a small squadron of police cars and motorcycles with their lights flashing and their sirens and whistles going. The coffin was carried the whole way on shoulders; I could see the polished wooden coffin draped with large ribbons in Venezuelan colours swaying above the people but I could not see if it was policistas who were the pallbearers.
Yesterday afternoon, however, there was another funeral. Much smaller attendance. I looked out of the blue metal-courtyard door where Francisco is taking a break from building the new drains for the patio, leaning on his mattock and watching. “Un hombre muy malo! Muy malo!” he said with emphasis. A very bad man! Very bad! He went on to tell me that he was known throughout the village as a seriously bad, violent character. Well, he had met a violent end with a police bullet or police bullets.
In the pre-dawn of 0530 today I am surprised to hear singing and handclapping coming from the church. After all it’s rather early. There are still fireworks going off. Maybe they have something to do with each other. When I dress and go out to investigate I find church is brightly lit, full of people and a mass is in progress. I don’t wait around to ask why, so still not sure what this out-of-turn service is about. Lively singing this morning, though. Maybe the fireworks have something to do with the service. Maybe something to do with Advent?
We have been enjoying the visit of Kathleen’s parents from Baltimore. We have seen some sights and played some cards and swum at the beach nearly every afternoon. We shall be sorry to see them go when they leave on Sunday for the U.S.A. and then on to Christmas with Kathleen’s younger sister and her family in Los Angeles.
We took a little day-trip through Santa Ana, a very nice town with shady streets, and thence up in the hills at the eastern end of the island to visit pretty La Asuncion, the island’s capital. It is a colonial town with a very old church (16th Century), a tiny museum and a small, recently-restored fortress above the town with a lovely view down the long green valley to the sea. The Spanish built several fortifications around the island to protect settlements from the attacks of “pirates.” (By nationality they are often here said to have been English, Dutch or French but, unless they were commissioned by the home government as “privateers” - in which case the crown got a cut of the take of commerce raiding - most “pirates” were just freelance freebooters or simple outlaws. No doubt this island’s capital was also sited inland five or more miles to give it added protection from quick sea-borne raiders.
After looking around the town and the fort, we drive up the hill even farther to “El Paraiso”, a restaurant that Jens has told us about. It has a fabulous view down to Porlamar. Much cooler up here, too, at 650 metres above sea level. We are the only ones there. The owner says ruefully that there are no more American tourists coming and wonders why. I explain to him that, as part of the Bush Administration’s vendetta against Chavez, the State Department has been “warning US citizens away from Venezuela because it is too dangerous.” He scoffs. It is ridiculous, of course: even the elections were very quiet.
Back at the house, Francisco, approximately 22, and Chilo, his helper, have worked every day this week to open up new drainage for the patio. The two or three little drains that already exist have been augmented by two new and much larger ones. The two young men spent four days chipping away the reinforced concrete with small sledge hammers and chisels. All runoff water up until now leads to a collection pool outside the wall that leads underground along the length of the house to the street. Rainwater eventually flows down the street to the sandy beach. None of this system has so far apparently been able to cope with heavy downpours and the house gets flooded. So not only have these two extra 4-inch drainpipes now been laid under the patio but a simple hole has also been opened at the base of the wall at the patio’s lowest point: if the water rises and overwhelms the drain system, water can simply pour out there into the alley. And if the collection pool outside the wall cannot handle the volume, water can also now overflow into an open and cemented-storm culvert that also now runs along the wall of the house to the street. This is for really serious, serious rain. I am so glad that Jens has got this done before he leaves a week hence for Europe to visit family. (He is an architect and local character who is in charge of the project; Francisco and Chilo work for him.) At least I shall not have to get up in the night to pump the bilges!
In other countries the job might have been done faster and mechanised equipment might have been used: a small Bobcat front-end loader, perhaps; certainly a compressor with jackhammers; and cement would come ready-mixed in a huge truck. Machinery like that is expensive and can only be justified as wage levels rise and as enough work can be found to justify the cost of the equipment. Machinery like that also tends to make a lot of “collateral damage” which later has to be rectified. In our case here, Francisco and his helper did everything with hand tools: mattocks and shovels, pails, small sledges and rock chisels and trowels; an electric hand cutter to make a clean edge along the proposed drainage pathway was used. This latter put up huge clouds of dust that was soon blowing through house, i.e. collateral damage. After that it was days of chipping.
At local wage levels there is no way one could justify employing complicated and expensive machinery. (Francisco gets around twenty euros a day ($13) and his helper half that. The average per capita in Venezuela is under US$6,000 per annum. Assuming a 50-week work-year and a 40-hour work week, the average hourly wage in Venezuela is about US$3. Francisco makes less than that for his unskilled or semi-skilled work and his helper gets half Francisco’s wage.) A small and rather decrepit local dump truck brings the sand and gravel at intervals and leaves it in the dirt alley next to the house where the men are working. Not too much at once, Jens says, or it might tend to disappear at night! Francisco and Co. mix the cement. Sand and gravel with water in the alley and carry the wet concrete in rubber buckets to where it is needed. They clean up after themselves each day and leave punctually at 1600 having put in a full eight hours of work plus an hour for lunch. They still have to complete the storm culvert outside the patio but they are now essentially finished in the patio. If all this does not work in a heavy rain one could still add large gutters around the roof. For the moment, however, this ought to suffice.
I mentioned that La Guardia is basically a largish fishing village. All of the launches are built locally of wood, usually painted white with bright-coloured trim and orange on the inside. These boats are either drawn up on the beach using log rollers and manpower or anchored off in the swells. There are one or two largish fishing boats with inboard motors and there are tiny wooden dinghies for getting out to the other boats; plenty of times, however, I have seen a fisherman simply swim out. Most of the launches have outboards. At one time all the boats had sails.
We recently visit the excellent Museo del Mar to the east of us across the mangrove lagoon called “La Restinga”. This museum is extremely well done and, even leaving aside the audio-visual theatres, needs at least a couple of hours to tour. Besides interesting collections of shells, coral and fish (live and otherwise), there are quite a few model boats and ships. Some are of the bigger Spanish barks but also models of the traditional island boats. There were quite a few different ones but most had interesting rigs frequently with lateen sails.
Down the beach to the south of us, back up behind some houses, shaded under some large trees and canopied with a lattice of dried palm fronds is a large fishing boat about half completed. You can see the upper part above the fence with the bow pointing to the road. We go along to get a look at traditional boat construction and are invited into the Carpenteria. There are about five younger men in there: a couple of them I recognise from the beached fishing boats. Maybe they are just “hanging out” at the boatyard after a night of fishing. A couple of them flash big smiles. The maestro, Señor Sulacki, his name, I understood, is of indeterminate age and completely toothless, which along with his local accent does nothing to make his Spanish understandable to me. But I persevere with my questioning.
The boat is probably 40 feet or longer and they are in the process of planking it. All the interior wood has already been painted orange. I ask the boatwright what wood they are using. “Aceite,” he replies, which sounds like it might be oil wood, whatever that is. The frames appear sawn and sistered rather than steamed and bent like aboard Vilisar. I ask him if he uses water or steam to bend the planks around the bow but he says he did not. I can see that one or two of the planks have split a little with the bending but are still in place. Maestro Sulacki thinks the boat might be finished in February and then they will get a gang together to roll this 15-foot high hull to the beach and thence into the water. Jens thinks they will also have a wheeled front-end loader or some other pulling machine as well. I also ask Maestro about small sailing boats: “Todos eliminados!” All eliminated! I have rather been hoping I might find one to mess around in while I am here. I must remember to take an amble down to the boatyard every week or so to see how they are progressing.
Monday, December 18, 2006
The following is the text of an article that appeared in the December edition of Independent Voice in Canada
LEFTIST CORREA WINS IN ECUADOR
DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA?
By Ronald J. Bird
27 November 2006
Coming from behind after the first round of presidential voting six weeks ago in Ecuador, Rafael Correa, the 43-year-old progressive candidate and proponent of new directions for South America was swept to power yesterday. With two candidates espousing two well-articulated but contrary concepts to choose from, the voters were given a chance to pick their future as well as their president.
With over half of the votes counted, it appears that Correa has garnered some 68 % of the popular votes in this country of 13 million citizens and some 9 million voters. His banana-millionaire, right-wing, pro-American, neo-liberal and status-quo opponent, Álvaro Noboa, was able to collect no more than a meagre 31 % of the votes despite his lead going in, his support by private-media companies, his populist handouts of food, wheelchairs and computers, his blatant appeals to popular religion and his promises to build hundreds of thousands of low-cost housing.
Although Correa was behind a month ago, unofficial polls showed him nosing ahead of Noboa by the time campaigning ceased a few days ago. Voting is compulsory in Ecuador. But, as polling drew near, nearly one in five was still undecided. Apparently, in the end, they voted their hopes and aspirations and carried Correa into office with an overwhelmingly clear mandate.
Outside observers provided by the OAS (Organisation of American States) confirmed today that the elections went smoothly and that there has been no evidence of fraud. Oh, that every democratic country could claim the same!
For the first time Ecuador will have a president who has no members of his party in Congress. This is likely to make life very difficult for Correa even despite his huge majority. He will have to appeal over the heads of Congressional leaders to the voters who put him in power.
Ecuador
Ecuador was for years a small, poor but politically relatively-stable country in the northwest corner of South America. The discovery of oil simply emphasised the resource nature of its economy (until then mainly bananas) as well as its dependency upon international markets. Like many oil countries, Ecuador loaded itself with debt in the 80s by mortgaging the prospect of ever-more-pricey crude. Several international clouds gathered to rain on this parade.
First, although prices for oil were expected to rise over time, no one expected them first to drop into the cellar in the 80s and 90s, ushering in the SUV boom in America and financial chaos in many oil countries. At one time crude oil prices dropped back as low as seven dollars a barrel. By the time prices bounced back countries like Ecuador were faced with unpayable international debt, a full-blown financial crisis leading to the collapse of both its own national currency and its banking sector, huge unemployment and massive impoverishment amongst its people, the flight of capital and the departure of a large part of the country’s working population to the USA or Europe and a revolving door of federal politicians without the know-how, means, power or support to deal with the situation. An IMF negotiating team arrived at the gate. As usual, the IMF doctor ordered neo-liberal policies - free markets; globalised trade; floating currencies: the works! - to stabilise the economy and reassure international investors. The dollar replaced the sucre.
Second, historically national politics has always been dominated in this country by a small and wealthy oligarchy which was already well-positioned to feather their nests when the petroleum money came along. The US, French and other oil multis found that payoffs produced easy access and high profits.
The petroleum deals were one-sided in favour of the oil companies, the benefits to Ecuadorians narrowly focussed on those in a position to be bought off. Most Ecuadorians remained poor and struggling. Instead of a poor country with poor people, Ecuador with oil became a rich country with a lot of poor people.
After eight presidents in as many years, most driven out by street-action, in the run-up to the 2006 presidential elections Ecuador was being led by an interim president, the population desperate for some stability and a return of at least some measure of prosperity. But, heading into the federal elections on 15 October, the electorate was also wary and suspicious of politicians in general and cynical of the real motives behind the campaign spin.
In the best democratic theory, the first round of the election when dozens of parties took part threw up two major end-round candidates representing clear alternatives for the future. Álvaro Noboa of the right and Rafael Correa of the left. They couldn’t have been more different personally or politically.
On my right, Álvaro Noboa
Noboa, 56, is by all accounts the richest man in Ecuador. At home in Guayaquil and Washington, Cape Cod and Miami, his wealth was inherited from his father, the founder of the family banana kingdom. Noboa himself is no wimp. He fought and won a hugely public and bitter inheritance battle with his mother and siblings. Known in the country for his tough business policies, he has been condemned by Human Rights Watch for his exploitation of child labour on his plantations and his bullying tactics toward labourers and labour organisers alike. Physically, he is short and stocky with a bull neck and thinning hair though not totally without charm, one supposes, since he has a young, blonde wife who is also a congresswoman.
More critically, he is seen as the representative of the old policies, the old oligarchy and the old corruption. He is a neo-liberal, pro-capitalism, pro-Washington, pro-Catholic, and pro-free-trade with the USA. He has run an over-spending populist campaign, handing out food, wheelchairs and computers and promising to build hundreds of thousands of low-cost housing for the poor. “I am sent by God to help the poor,” he cried to a huge crowd before then falling to his knees with a Bible in his hand.
Out of ignorance, true, many of the poor in the barrios and the hill farms may have swallowed this whole. The fearful small-businessman who supports Noboa, on the other hand, hopes only for economic stability and a continuation of the system he already knew.
And on my left, Rafael Correa
Expected to be the leader after the first round of voting in October, his mediocre showing worried his supporters and fired up his opponents on the right and centre. Over the last six weeks, however, Correa returned to the attack. His modern and youthful good looks, his excellent academic credentials (M.A. from Louvain, Belgium; PhD in Economics from University of Illinois), his straightforward appeal to all levels of voters including indigenous voters (indígenas represent some 30 % of the population, a caste of near-untouchables only now beginning to feel its political muscle; Correa alone of the candidates speaks Quechua).
Although on occasion arrogant and abrasive, he is a Catholic humanist with roots in both liberation theology and modern economics. He describes his approach as “practical socialism for the 21st Century”. He wants to remove the stranglehold of the oligarchy and clean up the corruption. Like most Latin Americans, too, he is sick of the American role in the Western Hemisphere where ignorance and arrogance have been too often the wellsprings of Latin-American policy in Washington, the iron fist too frequently the means.
The six-week run-off campaign was marked by mudslinging from the right. They called Correa a wild man, a spawn of Fidel Castro, pawn of Hugo Chávez and a naïve political-ingénue. But the electorate apparently believed the bad-mouthers were going overboard. The voters had also begun over recent weeks to recognise that Noboa’s vest was anything but clean: the Human-Rights Watch critique came back to haunt him, for example, and his banana empire of shell companies looked distinctly shady. Moreover, he appeared to be revealing his true authoritarian nature as the campaign progressed, threatening to jail Correa if Noboa won. Touting the advantages of his personal contacts to a regime in Washington that is itself barely legitimate, decreasingly democratic, nakedly aggressive, militaristic, imperialistic and now also even unpopular at home did nothing to help the cause. A vote for Noboa was going to be a vote for the Same Old, Same Old.
Policies
Correa was proposing new but not entirely untried directions. Right from the first he acknowledged his admiration for Hugo Chávez and the popular regime in Venezuela. Who else in our day has been able to offer a second road for Latin American development or an alternative to now discredited neo-liberal policies?
Free trade. At the grand end of his plans, Correa has from the beginning said that he will immediately drop the pursuit of a free-trade agreement with the USA. Washington has anyway been sitting on its hands to punish Quito for a conflict about oil. And, more and more, the U.S.A. with its huge trade deficits has less and less in purchasing power to offer.
A mainline economist himself (perhaps even a crypto neo-liberal?), Correa intends now to pursue regional-free trade with his neighbours in a pan-Bolivarian model promoted by Chávez. Although regional free trade is a longer-term aim, some of the neighbouring countries are perhaps anyway for the moment beyond the pale: Columbia and Peru, for example, have already signed free-trade agreements with the USA; Columbia is intimately tied to the USA in “Plan Columbia” to fight coca and drug running and to put down home-grown rebellions like FARC.
Washington has been trailing its own neo-liberal free-trade model for decades around Latin America. For its part, however, the U.S.A. has been almost totally unwilling to make any real concessions. Ecuadorians are not blind: they see what has happened to small farmers in Mexico and Central America when subsidised American maize floods in. Americans also demand extensive concessions for US patents and other intellectual rights that many feel would block development in Third World countries.
As the decade has progressed, too, Washington has uncorked Middle-Eastern genies that it is apparently unable to stuff back into the bottle. Not central to the so-called “War on Terror” (increasingly a cultural war against perceived “Islamo-fascists”) and contributing nothing to winning in Iraq, Latin America is largely ignored and left to doctrinaire politicians of a strongly neo-conservative bent whose outlook is anti-Castro, anti-communist, anti-change and ante-deluvian. If anything, American policy seems to be formulated with a view solely to the one million anti-Castro exiles in the critical swing-state of Florida. Over and above that, American international policy has anyway become so militarised of late that it appears unable even to articulate a cohesive trade policy of any sort.
Manta airbase. It is a minor facet of this new orientation that Correa also swears to allow the treaty for the US “Forward Operating Base” in Manta on Ecuador’s Pacific coast to expire when it comes due in 2009. Admittedly, the airbase is small, by treaty limited to drug interdiction and, since Ecuador has no coca, aimed mainly at Columbia. But it is on the other hand the only US military base in South America and an affront to the national pride of many Ecuadorians who also fear being drawn unwillingly into the Columbian narco-wars.
Constitutional reform. Correa has promised to introduce early constitutional reform similar to that in Venezuela. (Chávez called a constitutional assembly, presented the results to the voters in the form of both a referendum and a vote of confidence for himself. It and he won overwhelming support.) One supposes that the Ecuadorian approach will be similar and will put more power in the hands of the Executive by permitting two or more successive terms and lengthening the term of office, for example.
End corruption. Voters, admittedly, roll their eyes when they hear that Correa promises to clean up corruption in Ecuadorian politics. They have heard it all too frequently before. But they seem now to be giving Correa a chance. Since Correa has no party members in Congress, that famously venal body, he at least owes nobody anything there.
Social and economic reform; economic development. Under a new constitution granting more power to the president and parallel to a clean-up of corruption, the new administration intends to make good on its social and economic reform: a just taxation system, investment in education, healthcare, housing and economic development.
Although the Right tars this as good old-fashioned Communism, there is nothing radical about this whatsoever. If it resembles the “Social Contract” or the “New Deal” that Americans and Europeans developed in the 150 years prior to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the only surprise here should be not the warmth with which progressives in Latin America embrace such humanistic concepts but the haste with which Americans, Canadians and Europeans have set about ditching them.
Petroleum is key; International debt is important too
None of this can happen without addressing macro-economic issues and, in the Ecuadorian context that means dealing with international oil. Ecuador might still be the largest exporter of bananas in the world, but selling oil to the USA brings in a lot more money. The country’s financial position – including its huge public debt sector - will be determined for years ahead by world oil markets and Ecuador’s cut of the deal.
Correa intends to renegotiate the royalty agreements with the US, French, Mexican and Brazilian oil multis to get a better deal for Ecuador, to limit the ongoing ecological damage to the headwater provinces of the Amazon River and to get more downstream processing done domestically (Ecuador exports crude and, curiously, re-imports finished products like diesel fuel and motor oil).
Although he is pro-American and pro-US free trade, it was the current conservative interim president of Ecuador who earlier this year grabbed the oil bull by the horns and took over Occidental Petroleum’s in-country operation. This was after Oxi had stalled for months about a new deal and about paying for environmental damage to the jungle. As punishment Washington stopped talks on free trade with Ecuador. Given his new regional free-trade initiative, this is unlikely to bother Correa now. Washington has also seen President Ove Morales nationalise natural gas and mineral resources in Bolivia and may realise the tide is turning. Perhaps it will force the USA to reappraise yet another of its neo-conservative precepts.
Fortunately for Ecuador and Correa, Big Oil has already been through this in Venezuela. It is not that Venezuela demanded more than what was just. Royalties there were generally well below what is normally paid in Canada or the USA. As the head of Royal Dutch Shell stated when signing with Chávez, international oil companies had simply become accustomed to a free ride in Latin America. That free ride is likely to be over soon. The royalty incomes will be essential to achieving Correa’s social and economic goals at home.
Expect Correa to renegotiate the repayment of international debt as well. He resigned from the last government as Economics Minister because he felt the IMF had demanded too much of the oil-royalty stream be devoted to debt pay-down and too little left for Ecuadorian economic development.
The way forward
Correa’s clear support from the voters will be his strength going forward. He must move fast to institute the constitutional reforms and show that he can deal with Big Oil. Venezuela has already set precedents for Big Oil; that makes Correa’s life easier. He will soon be talking to the IMF as well. If international investors mark down Ecuadorian government bonds, Correa can probably count on Chávez to back him up financially as he has already down for other South-America countries including indeed Ecuador.
Expect the new president to appeal over the heads of lower-level opposition politicians to the voters. Given the corrupt nature of the Congress, the electorate is likely to welcome this, feeling perhaps they have something ongoing to say in matters for a change. Correa’s constituency will certainly include the country’s large indigenous peoples now finding a legitimate political voice for the first time.
Distracted and out of touch, Washington’s attitude is likely to be as it has always been. How easy it would be for Washington to show the generous side of American’s nature, to show more sensitivity to countries like Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, and indeed all of Latin America! The strengthening of regional economic ties need not be seen from the White House as anti-American. But, whether Democratic or Republican, don’t expect the USA to change any time soon.
Democracy in Latin America?
Democrats everywhere should be giving three cheers following the presidential election in Ecuador. As democratic roots deepen across Latin America (by which is meant un-cynical and responsible involvement by the broad citizenry to determine its own affairs, a willingness of losers to accept the results of elections and of the military to stay in its barracks), in an era when moderate New-Deal, reformist governments are coming to power in Spanish-speaking America and pushing aside a failed neo-liberal agenda, progressives everywhere should be applauding these efforts and providing them with democratic encouragement and practical assistance.
Considering the other, more dreadful means by which democracy has been exported to the waiting world in our own day we should all be joyful at the results of Ecuador’s election and wish Rafael Correa luck in his efforts.
Democracy is apparently alive and well here!
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