Alina Duarte
Mexico City

Evo Morales, former President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and President of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, was a special guest of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) during festivities marking the 212^th anniversary of Mexico’s independence. The other international guests included John and Gabriel Shipton, father and brother of journalist Julian Assange; family of the late farmworker and activist César Chávez; Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara; and former Uruguayan President “Pepe” Mujica.

On September 15 Morales witnessed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador calling out the cry for independence. In addition to the traditional “¡Viva México!” of the heroes of independence, AMLO yelled, “Death to corruption! Death to racism! Death to classism!”

The former President of Bolivia also stood on a balcony of the National Palace, where he received a standing ovation from the thousands of people attending the festivities. The next day, Morales was just a few yards away from the Mexican President when AMLO called for a five-year worldwide truce.

During his short visit, Evo Morales gave me a few minutes of his time to talk about Mexico, Latin America, lithium, and the present and future of our region.

After meeting with the Mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, Morales met with me at his hotel. He was in a hurry since his flight back to Bolivia was departing in a couple of hours. He gave a rushed greeting, sat down, took a breath, and while he was getting settled, I thanked him for taking the time to answer my questions.

Not one minute into the interview he said that he is in Mexico because he was invited by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

-Let’s cover that first, Evo. You are here precisely by invitation of President López Obrador. You were one of the big-name special guests to attend the Independence Day festivities. You were present when he issued the Cry of Independence—actually two events—the “cry” the night of September 15^th, and the parade on September 16^th, when President López Obrador gave a speech before a military parade, calling for a worldwide truce. The night before he had also called out “Death to Racism! Death to Classism!” etc. What do you think of all that?

-Andrés, the President of Mexico, is Andrés. This president has long been very humanistic, in solidarity, committed to poor families and their social programs. I met this President at his inauguration, and he greeted me saying, “my indigenous brother,” or something like that. After the coup d’etat he saved my life, he helped me, he helped us to return to democracy, along with other presidents such as the president of Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, President [Ernesto] Samper, [José Luis Rodríguez] Zapatero, even the President of Paraguay. And now I have been invited alongside my brother, Pepe Mujica. He invited me together with Julian Assange’s father and Che’s daughter, Aleida Guevara, and other guests. I am honored to participate and attend the Independence Day activities in Mexico.

On September 15th he surprised us by yelling “Death to racism! Death to Corruption! Death to Classism!” That is a strong message, but also a message of integration. I continue to think that some day we will have a plurinational Americas, of peoples for the people. Not America in the sense that the Americans say: “All of Latin America is the backyard of the United States.” What did we hear from the US Southern Command two or three weeks ago? They are concerned about Lithium. But what is more, they consider Latin America to be a neighborhood of the United States. It pains us to still hear these kinds of messages in the 21^st century. There are new leaders, such as my brother Andrés with his proposals. We heard an interesting message, a proposed [global] truce to avoid conflict, and above all, the financial crises that are leading the United States to use NATO to intervene militarily and surround Russia, provoking that armed conflict.

-And in that speech, Evo, President López Obrador said that he proposes a five-year worldwide truce “to address the major, serious economic and social problems that afflict and torment our peoples.” The proposal, which he says Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will formally present to the UN, “seeks the immediate suspension of military actions and provocations as well as military and missile tests.” It would seek to form a committee to foster dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, for which he even said he would propose the inclusion of Pope Francis and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, and on behalf of the UN, Secretary General Antonio Gutérrez.” What message does this send outside Mexico?

-First, it shows that our brother and President of Mexico is concerned about the situation with food and energy, that he is concerned with life and humanity. It is a good proposal deserving of our admiration. In fact, it surprised me and I think it surprised everyone, the idea of a truce with mediators from India, Pope Francis, the United Nations, and surely Mexico would also be with the initiative. We salute it and support it and hopefully the whole world will listen to it. I wish that NATO would stop attacking and encircling countries when they do not submit to the empire—that is the underlying issue. I heard that there was a big meeting today with China, India, I’m not sure whether it is with Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Russia. Hopefully it will go well and some light will be shed on how to attain peace, but with social justice.

-I think that these invitations President López Obrador is extending to you and other people are important. He might not have been able to do so four years ago when he came into office, but things have changed regionally. What is your assessment of the role that Mexico is playing in the region with all these issues you have put on the table, including at the global level?

-I feel that there is a democratic rebellion underway throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Two, three years ago there was the Lima Group to overthrow [Nicolás] Maduro. Where is the Lima Group today? Who made up the Lima Group? The former presidents of Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and particularly of Colombia.

-Now they are all gone…

-There is no more Lima Group. Look, after we founded UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) with [Hugo] Chávez, with Lula [da Silva], with [Rafael] Correa, and with [Néstor] Kirschner and other presidents (I very much regret that some parties have become submissive to the Empire), the Lima Group was able to, I would say temporarily, paralyze UNASUR. But together with [Hugo] Chávez and Fidel [Castro] we created CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States). But [Barak] Obama and other U.S. presidents responded to this integration proposal by organizing the Pacific Alliance to maintain the policies of the Washington Consensus or the FTAA.

Now I am wondering, where is the Pacific Alliance? These institutions or organizations that only serve to uphold U.S. policies have been defeated with this democratic rebellion.

-Such as the OAS [Organization of American States]…

-Of course, but in addition, imagine it! I am almost certain that our brother Lula will win (in Brazil) in next month’s election; plus Mexico—that is a great strategic alliance for all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It gives us great hope.

Fifty or 60 years ago, at least, we saw how Cuba was expelled from the OAS. Then countries were afraid of getting expelled from the OAS. Now it is a source of dignified pride to leave the OAS. We have a responsibility to relaunch CELAC in order to truly ensure integration—but not just of heads of state—of their peoples.

-Speaking of Latin America, I want to explore this further because some people call it the second cycle of progressive governments. Others talk about some unique characteristics. The truth is that there is a trend, not only in their discourse, but also in their actions, that are clearly anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist. We see this with the victory of Gustavo Petro together with Francia Márquez in Colombia. It is important that figures like yourself pointed out that the two of them together made the victory possible, not just Petro. We also have elections in just a few days in Brazil and we see Lula da Silva with great chances of returning. How do you perceive today’s Latin America?

-First, all of the doctrines of empire have collapsed. Where is the Cold War? Where is the War on Terrorism? Why am I saying this? Now, parties of political movements, social movements with socialist tendencies and principles, with communist doctrines, are getting elected to the presidency. This did not exist before; it was only Cuba.

Terrorists… for the Empire, who are the terrorists? Social movements. I recall in 2002 U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha telling people “Don’t vote for Evo Morales; Evo Morales is an Andean Bin Laden and the coca growers are the Taliban.”  He said, “Don’t vote that way, if you vote for Evo, there will be no aid or investment.” What a lie! In 2005 government expenditure was US$1.6 billion. In the last years I was in office before the coup, we programmed more than US$8 billion in government expenditure.

So we “terrorists” are now presidents. [Gabriel] Boric was a student leader; Pedro Castillo who was a rural patrolman or “rondero” and a leader of the teachers’ union, is now president. It was hard, but we won. I feel that the U.S. doctrine is falling to pieces. Look, some of our brothers even took up arms for their liberation 200 years after the founding of their republics, and now they are presidents, such as Daniel Ortega and Gustavo Petro. And some of us organize in social movements and some even took up arms, which I don’t support so much, but the people make it right and time will tell. But what is the danger that I see? When the Empire is in decay it resorts to violence. I do not want to think this but it is what happened to Cristina Fernández a few weeks ago. When the Empire loses its hegemony, it resorts to weapons. For that reason, I think we need to take advantage of this moment to armor ourselves, so that right-wing governments submissive to imperialism never return.

-At another point in time, talking about U.S. interference in the region was viewed as conspiracy theory, a myth, although how they orchestrate destabilization and coups d’etat has been extensively documented. We saw the social uprising in Chile; in Brazil they were liberating Lula but at the same time they were cooking up a coup d’etat in Bolivia. It is now three years since that coup. What is your view of the recovery of democracy in Bolivia, and what are the specific challenges of a right-wing which, as we have seen, has not given up its attempts to destabilize a democratically elected government, in this case, the government of Luis Arce?

-I look at the consciousness of the people. The MAS-IPSP (Movement Toward Socialism-Political Instrument for Sovereignty of the Peoples) has a political, economic, and social agenda beyond the bicentennial. The MAS-IPSP is the largest movement in the history of Bolivia, and it is headed by the indigenous movement. We in the indigenous movement have inherited our history; we have inherited the struggle going back to colonial times. We were threatened with extermination and hated during the days of the Republic, even though we engaged in a political movement to liberate all of Bolivia. I remember perfectly well that in 2005 our platform was based on three points: politically, the re-founding of the nation through the Constitutional Assembly; economically, the nationalization of natural resources and also basic resources; and socially, the redistribution of wealth. We made a lot of history in a short period of time. But there, the underlying theme, sister journalist, is that in addition to being gringos against Indians, the coup was against two things. First, it was against our economic model. The Empire does not accept new economic models that are better than the economic model of neoliberalism as dictated by capitalism. So, it was against our economic model.

And what was the basis of our economic model? The nationalization of our natural resources, but it also started with their industrialization, above all, the industrialization of lithium. You as a journalist know how many messages and evidence there was that the United States caused a coup d’etat over lithium. England had financed the coup over lithium. Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, acknowledged his interests in the Uyuni Salt Flats and there was a coup d’etat.

What is happening should unite all of us much more. It is not only over lithium, over petroleum, over gas, or over natural resources. This is the struggle of humanity. Who do the natural resources belong to? Private parties to loot them for their transnational corporations? Or to the peoples of the world to exploit them for our States, for our governments? Of course, we need to tap into our natural resources while caring for the environment.

-Talking about the United States, Evo, you point out that the coup against you was to get the lithium, something that has been demonstrated, and this is nothing new for the United States to come after the natural resources of Latin America. But the people of Mexico are much more interested in this now that the López Obrador administration has decided to create its own company to industrialize lithium. In early August we read the news that the Bolivian and Mexican governments were trying to establish a partnership, not to sell lithium as a raw material—which is what the major powers want—but a partnership, essentially, to industrialize lithium. What did all of this mean for your administration and particularly what role did it play in the coup d’etat?

-I am a witness to that. In 2010 I was invited to visit South Korea. The job of the president is to do good business for the people. We signed some big agreements and they invited me to look at a new lithium battery industrial plant, which was beautiful. I asked them how much it cost, and the answer was “US$300 million.” At that time, our reserves were growing and we had US$10, US$11 billion in international reserves. I thought, “I can guarantee the US$300 million.” I told the Koreans, “We can build a plant just like it in Bolivia and I can guarantee the investment.” They said, “No, no, no.” And I have many other such memories. That was when I realized that, unfortunately, the industrialized countries only like us if we guarantee raw materials for them.

So then what did I do with Alvaro [García Linera], the vice-president? We started with laboratories, with a pilot plant in the great lithium industry. We hired experts for the laboratories. By the time we did the pilot plant, the young people had already learned and we had a beautiful project. And we decided that foreigners could not be involved in the extraction. Regarding markets, there are agreements and there is no problem.

-(Evo leafs through various media reports around the time of the coup d’Etat against him in 2019 and reads off some of the headlines.)

–Where is that article? November 20, 2019, a few days after the coup d’Etat, “Coup in Bolivia Smells of Lithium,” first-hand report. “Trump Applauds Departure of Morales under Pressure from the Army.” Unfortunately, then the military commanders turned. “Why might the United States be behind the coup in Bolivia?” Senator Richard Black explains that it is over lithium. “U.S. Senator assures that the United States intervened over Lithium.” And that is why the owner of Tesla, the electric car company, said, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” This shows who financed the coup mongers in Bolivia. Last year it was reported, “United Kingdom supported the coup in Bolivia to access its ‘white gold,’” lithium. And they had invested, they had financed it; it was not just their verbal support. That is why in the days of coup the British ambassador was in continuous meetings with the opposition, with the coup plotters.

We have a gold mine here, “The price of lithium went up from US$4,450 per ton of lithium carbonate in 2012, to US$17,000 per ton in 2021,” last year. [Now,] in just a ten-year period it has reached US$78,000 per ton of lithium carbonate!

-In this regard, what message can you send to the government and people of Mexico, thinking that one of the paths chosen has been to nationalize lithium?

-I salute my brother President and the government of Mexico for saying that the lithium belongs to the Mexican people. I understand that it has now been nationalized. How beautiful it would be if Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile were together on this. But in Chile it is totally in private hands; in Argentina, hopefully they can recover it. But in Bolivia and Mexico we should form a strategic partnership to industrialize our lithium.

And I remain convinced, sister journalist, that some countries of Latin America will become powerhouses in something, and we could become lithium powers, with tremendous prices. And they are going to continue to go up. Each of us and our governments have this task. I celebrate the fact that President “Lucho” Arce of Bolivia met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. The technical teams are at work. They were asking me what technical people we have. We must share work experiences. We have good technicians; we have learned a lot. We have to come together to launch our industrialization of lithium, but it must be led by our governments. A State controlled by the people, not the usual way of turning it over to transnational corporations; we do not agree with that. In our experience, the nationalization of our natural resources and of strategic companies, helped us change the image of Bolivia quite a bit.

-And, finally, Evo, I do not want to let you go without saying that I saw your arrival in Zacatecas, where you were given a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Zacatecas. We can now call you “Dr. Evo.” Tell me about it.

-Last year they invited me to come and receive some recognition. This year, with this invitation from President Andrés Manuel, I decided to take advantage of my visit to go to Zacatecas. Thanks to the Autonomous University of Zacatecas I was able to meet with the social movements, the peasant Indigenous movement, teachers, some political parties, and also the governor of Zacatecas. The recognition that I received is for the social movements and the Indigenous movement in particular. Without them, I would never have become president, and I thank the university and several comrades for taking this initiative. We talked quite a bit and I visited a mining area. In addition, it is a very interesting colonial town and we have a good relationship. I hope I never lose those relationships of so much trust, to open them up to humble people. Thank you very much.

-Thank you so much for your time, Evo. We hope that you will come back for other occasions, and more often. Thank you for this dialogue.

 

Alina Duarte is a journalist and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, COHA.

This interview was edited by COHA Director Patricio Zamorano.

Translation by Rita Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator

[Main photo credit: Alina Duarte]

By Joe Emersberger

Both Ecuador and Nicaragua elected a president and national assembly this year.  Ecuador’s elections took place in February, with the second round of its presidential election in April. Nicaragua’s took place on November 7. Just by scanning headlines in Western media, as most readers do, it’s easy to tell which was a U.S. ally and which was an official enemy.

(By “enemy,” I mean a government that poses no threat to the U.S.,  but still gets hit with  crippling sanctions, or worse, that it endures as best it can.)

A search of the Nexis news database for the word “crackdown” in articles about Ecuador and Nicaragua in newspapers in the U.S.,  Canada, and the UK for a five-month period before the election in each country reveals a significant contrast between reporting on Nicaragua and Ecuador. In the case of Ecuador, not a single headline alleged any kind of  crackdown on opposition to the government. In the case of Nicaragua, 55 headlines alleged an unjustifiable crackdown. Some examples:

• “Nicaragua’s Democracy Hangs by Thread as Crackdown Deepens” (New York Times, 6/6/21)
• “Human Rights Groups Have Eyes on Growing Crackdown; UN, Other Organizations Fear Upcoming Elections Won’t Be Fair and Free” (Toronto Star, 6/27/21)
• “Nicaragua Arrests Seventh Presidential Contender in November 7 vote” (Independent, 7/24/21)
• “We Are in This Nightmare’: Nicaragua Continues Its Brazen Crackdown” (Guardian, 8/12/21)
• “‘Everyone Is on the List’: Fear Grips Nicaragua as It Veers to Dictatorship” (New York Times, 9/5/21)
• “Nicaraguan Business Leaders Arrested in Ortega’s Pre-Election Crackdown” (Guardian, 10/22/21)
• “An Election in Nicaragua That Could Further Dim Democracy; Daniel Ortega Runs for His Fourth Consecutive Term as President of Nicaragua Virtually Uncontested, Having Imprisoned All His Political Rivals” (Christian Science Monitor, 11/4/21)

There was actually a crackdown in Nicaragua, but it was a defensible crackdown on persons receiving (and laundering) money from the U.S.,  a foreign power that has victimized Nicaragua for over a century. If one disregards that history, it’s easy, especially from afar, to take a libertarian position that the crackdown was unjustified. That was clearly the western media’s approach.

A U.S. crackdown since 1912

Remarkably, Daniel Ortega is the only president Nicaragua has had since 1912 who has not owed his position to murderous U.S. support. From 1912 until 1933, U.S. occupation troops ran the country directly, and structured the Nicaraguan military to ensure that brutal pro-US dictatorships (primarily of the Somoza family) would govern for decades afterwards.

Ortega first became president in 1979, after his Sandinista political movement overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in an armed revolution. Ortega was elected in 1984 (the first free and fair elections Nicaragua ever had–Extra!, 10-11/87), despite the country having to contend with US-backed terrorists known as the Contras, and with ruinous sanctions the U.S. imposed on the country throughout the 1980s (FAIR.org, 8/23/18).

By 1990, the Contra war had claimed 30,000 lives and, combined with U.S. sanctions, left the economy devastated. U.S. allies, backed by seditious media outlets in Nicaragua like La Prensa, secured Ortega’s defeat at the polls that year. The real winner was U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Allegations that Putin’s Russia influenced the 2016 election in the United States by hacking the DNC’s emails are a joke compared to what the U.S. undeniably achieved in 1990 in Nicaragua: The U.S. used terrorism and economic blackmail against an entire country to achieve an “electoral” victory in 1990.

In its coverage of the 2021 election, Reuters (11/5/21) referred to the 1990 triumph of U.S. aggression in Nicaragua by saying that Ortega’s “defeat left a deep mark on the leftist leader. Battling 16 years to regain the presidency, his opponents say he is now determined to retain power at any cost.” The article’s headline was “Ortega and Murillo, the Presidential Couple With an Iron Grip on Nicaragua.” (Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s spouse, is also his vice president.)

Ironically, the article actually mentioned some facts that expose the iron grip the U.S. has usually had on Nicaragua for over a century–referring to Somoza, for example, as “the last dictator of a US-backed family dynasty established in the 1930s.” But the article did not link that history to the grave threat the U.S. poses to Nicaragua today. That’s something it could easily have done by quoting independent critics of U.S. foreign policy who would have made that connection.

Ortega’s electoral record

Ortega regained the presidency in the 2006 elections, one of many left-leaning Latin American presidents (like Rafael Correa in Ecuador) who won elections in this century, after a disastrous neoliberal era under right-wing governments. By 2017, impressive economic gains by the Ortega  government made it the most popular in the Americas among 18 surveyed by Latinobarómetro, a Chile-based pollster funded by Western governments, including the US. The 67% approval rate for the Nicaraguan government in that poll was actually higher than the 47% of eligible voters who handed Ortega his 2016 re-election electoral victory (72% of the vote on a 66% turnout).

By December 2020, Latinobarómetro found Ortega’s government  enjoyed 42% approval (in a report that repeatedly called Nicaragua a “dictatorship”)–still above average in the region, despite the US-backed coup attempt in 2018, subsequent U.S. sanctions and threats, as well as the pandemic. That points to a substantial hardcore base of support for Ortega–and poll numbers (again, from a hostile pollster funded by hostile governments) that are not out of line with the 46% of the eligible vote Ortega won on November 7 (in an election with 65% turnout).  It’s worth stressing that Ortega is the historic leader of the movement that overthrew the Somoza family, a fact that by itself makes the existence of a hardcore Sandinista base easy to credit.

In mid-October, less than a month before the 2021 election, Nicaragua’s right-wing media hyped a poll by CID Gallup claiming that Ortega’s support had dropped to 19%, but the same poll suggested turnout in the election (in which there was allegedly no opposition) would be between 51% and 68%. It claimed 51% were very likely to vote and another 17% somewhat likely. In the wake of Ortega’s win, that contradictory finding in the CID Gallup poll (evidence that it was badly skewed in favor of anti-Sandinistas) was ignored to allege massive abstention of about 80%.

As usual, pollsters, independent election observers and independent journalists on the ground who refuted Western media claims about the election were simply ignored, in some cases suspended from social media, and in one instance subjected to vulgar abuse by a prominent U.S. pundit.

Coup attempt of 2018

In 2018, Ortega’s unpopular US-backed opponents clearly applied the lesson of 1990: Violence and sabotage backed by a superpower and its propagandists may eventually produce an “electoral” victory. Violent protests aimed at driving Ortega from office were launched in 2018 from mid-April until late July.

La Prensa–an anti-Sandinista paper that has been funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which ex-Contra spokesperson Edgar Chammoro described as a CIA “propaganda asset” (Extra!, 10–11/87)–predictably supported the 2018 coup attempt, claiming in June of that year that 70% of Nicaragua’s roads were blocked by protesters. Imagine how violent and well-armed U.S. protesters would need to be to block a large majority of the country’s roads for months. In 2011, 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were immediately arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours. In fact, careful assessments of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, that relied heavily on anti-Sandinista sources,  showed that the opposition was responsible for about as many deaths as the government and its supporters.

The coup attempt was defeated, but it gave the U.S. a “human rights” pretext to vilify and sanction Nicaragua’s government. Independent journalist John Perry, a Nicaraguan resident, recently noted in FAIR.org (11/3/21) that hundreds of people involved in the coup attempt actually benefited from an amnesty law passed in 2019. But Washington demands total impunity–no jail time and full political rights–for all the criminals it supports. Ben Norton explained the consequences of pressure the U.S.,  OAS and prominent human rights NGOs applied for the release of alleged poltical prisoners: “Droves of criminals with lengthy rap sheets have been freed, and one has already murdered a pregnant 22-year-old woman”.

In other cases, charges against Ortega’s opponents stemmed from  the “passage of a ‘foreign agents’ law designed to track foreign funding of organizations operating in the country,” as the Associated Press (9/2/21) put it. AP neglected to clarify that the law is aimed at disrupting the free flow of U.S. government funds to political groups that indisputably tried to overthrow Ortega in 2018 (COHA, 6/8/21). The wire service obscured these key facts by using vague language and by presenting facts as mere allegations made by Ortega, who “has claimed that organizations receiving funding from abroad were part of a broader conspiracy to remove him from office in 2018.”

Further highlighting that Ortega’s opponents and its U.S. sponsors feel entitled to overthrow the government, the “foreign agents” law indirectly led to charges against children of Violeta Chamorro, the ex-president who in 1990 scored an“electoral” victory over Ortega that was a product of US-backed terrorism.  The Chamorro Foundation received millions in USAID funding until it shut itself down in protest at the “foriegn agents” law. Ortega’s government then charged its director Cristiana María Chamorro Barríos with money laundering based on the allegation that she did not properly account for where all that money went.

No opposition in DC

On November 3, as Ortega and the Sandinistas were days away from an electoral victory, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to intensify sanctions on Nicaragua’s government. Reuters (11/3/21) reported that the “House of Representatives passed the bill 387–35 with strong bipartisan support, following a similar vote by the Senate this week.”  At the same time, U.S.-based social media corporations cracked down on pro-Sandinista accounts. In other words, U.S. state and private power united in attacking Nicaragua’s government while hypocritically alleging that Ortega had no real opposition.

Perry noted that among the participants on November 7 were “two opposition parties that formed governments between 1990 and 2007, and still have significant support.” But the larger point is that Ortega’s most dangerous opposition resides in Washington, and it has always tormented Nicaragua with complete impunity.

A popular government defending itself against a violent US-backed opposition was depicted by Western media as instigating an unprovoked crackdown on defenders of democracy–ignoring the US’s grim record of successfully crushing Nicaraguan democracy since 1912.

Betrayal in Ecuador

That’s not the treatment the media dished out to the former president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, during elections this year.

The crackdown in Ecuador that merited no accusatory headlines was driven by a stunning betrayal of Ecuadorian voters in 2017. That year, then-Vice President Lenín Moreno ran as a staunch loyalist to left wing incumbent President Rafael Correa, who held office from 2007 to 2017. But after defeating right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso at the polls, Moreno proceeded to implement Lasso’s political platform for the next four years.

Western media outlets were delighted with Moreno’s cynicism (FAIR.org, 2/4/18, Counterpunch.org, 2/9/18). Voters were not so delighted, however, and by 2020 his approval rating fell to 9%, according to Latinobarómetro.

To pull off his betrayal of the political movement that got him elected, Moreno jailed, exiled and banned Correa loyalists from running in elections throughout his years in office (CounterPunch.org, 12/21/18, 10/15/19, 12/3/19; FAIR.org, 2/16/21). Moreno’s pretext was that Correa (whom he had always praised extravagantly) was actually corrupt, and had left the country heavily indebted. The lie about Ecuador’s debt was especially easy to refute, but Western media happily spread it anyway (FAIR.org 10/23/19).

Moreno’s harassment of WikiLeaks‘ Julian Assange (whom Correa had protected for years after he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London) also failed to damage Moreno’s credibility with Western media (FAIR.org, 11/3/18). Moreno eventually handed Assange over to UK police (FAIR.org, 4/12/19), thereby helping the U.S. crack down on press freedom around the world.

Banned for ‘psychic influence’

This year, Lasso ran against Andrés Arauz, a pragmatic leftist who tried to register Correa as his running mate. Lasso’s win in the fairly close runoff election owed an enormous debt to the persecution of Correa loyalists that Moreno had perpetrated for years (MRonline.org, 5/6/21).

Shortly before the election, Correa was banned from running for vice president, thanks to a farcical judgment (sped through judicial appeals in record time, despite the pandemic, to beat the electoral calendar) that found him guilty of “psychic influence” over officials who had taken bribes. Correa was therefore not just banned from running: He’d also be jailed if he returned to Ecuador.

Absurd rulings like this were possible because Moreno trampled all over judicial independence while in office. In 2018, a body that Moreno handpicked fired and appointed replacements to the Judicial Council and the entire Constitutional Court. (Counterpunch, 10/12/2018) The same handpicked body (the CPCCS-T in its Spanish acronym) also appointed a new attorney general and a new electoral council. [1]

Correa’s former vice president (Jorge Glas) has been jailed since 2017 on similarly trumped-up grounds.  Prominent Correa allies like Ricardo Patiño and Gabriela Rivadeneira remain in exile. Electoral authorities even banned the use of Correa’s image in campaign ads by his loyalists.

Several months before the election, a Moreno cabinet secretary openly bragged about the crackdown in a TV interview (FAIR.org 2/16/21), saying that it was a “big risk being a Correaist candidate, because the justice system will have its eyes on those who have not yet fled or been convicted.”

A key to Moreno’s crackdown was that Ecuador’s state media and big private TV were united in vilifying Correa and his loyalists. Weeks before the runoff election in April, Moreno’s attorney general appeared before the media with her Colombian counterpart to bolster absurd accusations that Arauz had been funded by the Colombian rebel group ELN.  Ten days later, the U.S. State Department singled out Ecuador’s attorney general as one of its “anti corruption champions.” (Incidentally, Arauz has just come under investigation again in retaliation for explaining exactly how Pandora Papers revelations prove that Lasso’s entire 2021 campaign was illegal.)

As Moreno’s term ended, the New York Times (2/7/21) portrayed this cynical authoritarian as a “highly unpopular” but sincere reformer–a man who merely punished corruption, and who genuinely worried that “leaders with too tight a grip on power are unhealthy for democracies.”

Correa and his political movement had become dominant in Ecuador for a decade by winning elections and implementing successful policies that broke with neoliberalism.  A ten year break from neoliberalism was a threat to democracy that warranted a crackdown in the eyes of the New York Times, not over a century (and counting) of a lethal U.S. assault on Nicaragua’s sovereignty.

Concealing Western hypocrisy is essential to helping the world’s most powerful state behave like a global dictator, and Western media reliably provide that assistance.

Research assistance: Jasmine Watson

[Main photo credit: by Becca Mohally Renk, from JHC-CDCA]

---

NOTE

[1] The National Assembly had 20 days to choose seven standing and seven alternates from a shortlist of 21 names Moreno gave them. Any posts left vacant by the National Assembly would be automatically filled from Moreno’s list taking into account in the order in which Moreno listed them;ee “Lenín Moreno presentó los 21 nombres de las ternas para el Cpccs transitorio,” El Comercio, February 19, 2018

COHA Webinar: Ecuadorian Presidential Elections and the comeback of the Citizens’ Revolution

With Ricardo Patiño, former Foreign Affairs Minister of president Rafael Correa (2010 to 2016).

Join COHA to analyze the decisive presidential election taking place this February 7 in Ecuador. 

COHA Senior Research Fellows Alina Duarte and Professor Danny Shaw will interview Ricardo Patiño about the national and regional social, economic, and political implications of the presidential election in Ecuador. 

On February 7, Ecuadoreans will choose between the increasingly unpopular neoliberal path forged by President Lenin Moreno since his surprise pivot to the right in 2017, and a resumption of the Citizens’ Revolution, which had advanced social investment and economic growth under former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017). While under Moreno, Quito has withdrawn from efforts at regional integration, presidential candidate Andrés Arauz (Union of Hope, UNES)  has promised to restore Ecuador’s role in UNASUR, ALBA and CELAC. There is, therefore, a great deal at stake for both Ecuador and the entire region.

Join COHA to analyze the decisive presidential election taking place this February 7 in Ecuador. 

Friday February 5, 2021

8pm EST |  5pm PST

ZOOM Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_msbqrIbDS8qdiJ-gSr0qww

The event will be streamed also through Facebook Live

By Lucy Pagoada-Quesada
From New York

Mr. President Joe Biden,

As a Honduran-US citizen, I am writing to urge you to change course in U.S. policy towards Honduras so that my country recuperates its democracy. You were Vice President when in 2009, the government of your party led by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, supported the military coup in Honduras against our Constitutional President Manuel Zelaya Rosales. This led to a series of events that undermined our democracy and forced thousands to abandon their homes for refuge in the United States.

In 2010, the US government imposed on us Porfirio Lobo-Sosa, whose son Fabio Lobo is imprisoned in the U.S. for cocaine trafficking. In 2013, they also imposed on us the narco dictator Juan Orlando Hernández whose brother Antonio (Tony) Hernández is imprisoned in New York for trafficking tons of cocaine and weapons to the United States. In 2017, the United States also imposed Hernández on us for the second time, and in an illegal reelection clearly fraudulent as the Organization of American States (OAS) also recognized. 

It was from the moment that this violent narco-dictatorship of the National Party was imposed on us that our country, Honduras, plunged into the worst social, economic, and political crisis in our history. It is for this reason and in the face of despair that the Honduran people flee in the massive exodus of displaced human beings called caravans. They do not come in search of the American dream but rather they flee from the nightmare that this country, the United States, has imposed on  them.

The Trump administration signed agreements with the countries of Guatemala and Mexico so that their security forces would be deployed to prevent the passage of the displaced victims in route to the U.S. border, thereby denying the right of those seeking asylum and refuge to emigrate.

So, President Biden, the caravans are the result of the failed policies of the “savage capitalist” system, as Pope John Paul II said, which the U.S. imposes on the Latin American region and the world. And if you and your government want the immigration “problem” to end, then we ask for a halt to U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Honduras. The neoliberal economic model that the United States imposes on other countries in the region, including Honduras, has not worked. On the contrary, it has produced and deepened extreme inequality, poverty, violence, and the massive and inhumane exodus of entire displaced families.

You have been elected at a time of profound racial division, inequity, and the economic and health crisis due to COVID-19. Therefore, you must understand how difficult it is to prepare and hold an electoral process under those circumstances.

Like you and the US people, we in Honduras are fighting to recover our democracy, justice, and peace, which was destroyed by the 2009 coup d’état. And this coming November 2021, we are going to hold presidential elections for the third time after that terrible historical moment that changed our lives. Therefore, the only thing we demand from your government is to allow us to cast our ballots without foreign interference and that our sovereign decision as a people be respected. I assure you, that, in this way, your government will not have to face the massive exodus of brothers and sisters who are fleeing from Honduras in search of what was unjustly taken away from them.

With all due respect and hoping that the purposes of your administration are fulfilled for the good of the people.

Lucy Pagoada-Quesada, U.S.-Honduran citizen, is a teacher from NY.

[Photo credit: Flirck, open license. 2009 coup d’état in Honduras]

With Dan Kovalik (USA)  and Foad Izadi (Iran)

• January 12, 2021
• 2pm-3pm US Eastern Time
• By Zoom and Facebook Live

ZOOM Registration:  https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkc-itqDsiEtc-JSg5AdPaJWoCcBGYiD68

The United States is imposing illegal sanctions against both Venezuela and Iran, causing great hardship and the suffering of thousands of people in these countries. Today, the natural alliance between Caracas and Tehran, which took root in the early days of the Bolivarian revolution, provides mutual life lines in defiance of a US economic and naval blockade. This webinar aims at providing critical analysis of the historical, regional, and geopolitical context of this  alliance.

COHA Senior Research Fellow Dan Kovalic teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and is the author of “The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela” and “The Plot to Attack Iran”. Foad Izadi teaches American studies at the Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran.

Co-sponsored by CodePink | Alliance for Global Justice | Popular Resistance

Open flyer:

COHA WEBINAR: The National and Regional Impact of Parliamentary Elections in Venezuela

Zoom and Facebook Live

Monday Dec. 14, 8PM EST | 5PM PT

Zoom registration, here

SPEAKERS:

• COHA Guest Scholar and Keynote Speaker: Steve Ellner
• Election Observer Brief: Dr. Margaret Flowers
• COHA Election Report From the Field: Danny Shaw and Alina Duarte

The Parliamentary Elections in Venezuela took place in the midst of severe hardship imposed by a US blockade, a pandemic, and a US-EU backed campaign to boycott the elections.  

Steve Ellner will provide an analysis of the implications of the Parliamentary elections for Venezuela and the region.

Steve Ellner is an Associate Managing Editor of the journal “Latin American Perspectives” and a retired professor of the University of the East in Venezuela. He is the author of Rethinking Venezuelan Politics and the editor of Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings and Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance. He has frequently published in NACLA: Report on the Americas, In These Times and Jacobin and has published on the op-ed page of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Professor Danny Shaw and independent journalist Alina Duarte are Senior Research Fellows at COHA. They were present in Venezuela as electoral observers, as well as Margaret Flowers.

Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/Council.on.Hemispheric.Affairs

Francesca Emanuele is a Peruvian journalist and a Ph.D. student of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC.  She interviewed a first-hand witness of the Senkata Massacre, that took place on November 19th, 2020, days after the overthrow of Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, on November 10 .  Under the

control of new authorities, led by de facto president Jeanine Añez, security forces that backed the coup were involved in several violations of human rights, including the mass killing of 9 people in Senkata, and 10 in Sencaba, although official number of victims has not been clarified. Several sources inform that at least 23 people died after the coup due to the repression. This podcast documents part of this historic drama.

 “While We were Sleeping”

The podcast that investigates overlooked cases of state violence and the human stories behind them

Host: Francesca Emanuele.

Length: 30 minutes

Podcast content — 2 Interviews:

1. Jhocelyn Caspa: Indigenous Aymara woman from Bolivia. Jhocelyn is a witness to the Senkata Massacre (November 19th, 2019). Her first-hand chronology addresses the events of the massacre that occurred just days after Bolivian president Evo Morales was forced to resign. Jhocelyn was on a bus arriving to her city, Senkata (El Alto, Bolivia), when the military stopped the vehicle, forcing everyone to get off. From 11 am to 7 p.m. she ran from the military through the streets of her city, running for her life. Along the way, she witnessed numerous acts of brutality perpetrated by the Bolivian military. According to the investigations of the Inter-American Commission of Human rights, the death toll was 9 people, but Jhocelyn questions this number and believes many more people were killed that day.

“In the middle of the highway, they had lined up the caskets of all of the fallen. There were approximately 8 to 10 bodies and those were just the bodies whose family members allowed for them to be shown. There are a lot of bodies that haven’t had their public wakes because their families have not wanted to politicize their deaths and so they arrange private wakes.”

“The days after the massacre, there were people who said that their children had disappeared, that they couldn’t find their spouses, that they had been on their way to work but it seems like they got caught in the clash and they never arrived.”

Jhocelin also shares the constant repression that her community and other predominantly indigenous communities have experienced under the interim government of Jeanine Añez.

2. Jake Johnston: Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. Johnston provides a broader perspective around the events that led to the forced resignation of Evo Morales: the unfounded allegations of electoral fraud by the Organization of American States and the geopolitical context, including the role of the United States in supporting the coup and the interim government. Johnston analyzes the changes in domestic and foreign policy that have occurred during the past 11 months in Bolivia.

“Since the coup there is this real consolidation of a far right in Bolivia that has used unelected power and it’s no surprise that the communities that have had the worst impacts from that are largely indigenous communities or areas with high support for Evo Morales and it’s MAS party.”