How America Does Latin American Coups in the New Political Era

Le Monde / By Maurice Lemoine
How America Does Latin American Coups in the New Political Era

The days when U.S.-backed armed forces overthrew constitutional, democratically elected governments are long gone.

August 4, 2014 |

On 23 September 2010 the former Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutiérrez (deposed by a popular uprising in 2005) gave a talk to the InterAmerican Institute for Democracy in Miami, criticising his nation’s socialists for their mysticism, incoherent Marxism and dangerous populism. He told his listeners that to end 21st-century socialism in Ecuador (the subject of his talk), it would be necessary to get rid of President Rafael Correa.

His speech is on record; there’s a video that captures the thunderous applause it received. In the audience were Mario Ribadeneira, a minister in the government of Sixto Durán-Ballén (president 1992-96), when Ecuadorian neoliberalism was at its height; Roberto Isaías, wanted for fraud after the collapse of Filanbanco, Ecuador’s largest bank, of which he was part-owner; and Mario Pazmiño, a former head of army intelligence, sacked by Correa in 2008 for having too close a relationship with the CIA.

A week later, on 29 September in Quito, a meeting of members of the opposition continued late into the night. Next morning, the leader of the Patriotic Society Party, Galo Lara, appeared on the Ecuavisa network’s 7amshow Contacto Directo (Direct Contact), talking about the Public Service Law that the national assembly had just passed. This ended certain privileges — bonuses, cash payments with medals and other decorations, Christmas gifts — for some civil servants, including the police. Though it granted other benefits, including overtime pay and access to social housing programmes, Lara claimed that “President Correa has snatched the toys out of the hands of the policemen’s children — that’s why he is afraid of being lynched. That’s why he is packing his bags and getting ready to flee the country.” An apocalyptic article by leading columnist Emilio Palacio was published in the daily El Universo.

At 8am, Correa learned that police officers were protesting against the new law at the Quito barracks. He called it a “misunderstanding,” and said he would negotiate directly with the protestors. With interior minister Gustavo Jalkh, he left the presidential palace for the barracks, where 800 police greeted them with shouts of “The Communists are coming!” and “Out with the Chavistas!”

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