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June 15, 2015<br>
<b><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/rafael-correas-push-to-incense-the-oligarchy/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/rafael-correas-push-to-incense-the-oligarchy/</a></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><big><big><big><b>Ecuador's Strike
Across the Bow</b></big></big></big></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Rafael Correa’s Push to Incense the
Oligarchy</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by ROBERT FENTON</div>
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<p>Ecuador, after Bolivia and Venezuela, is perhaps the most
visible member of the left-leaning, anti-capitalist
partnership known as ALBA (Latin American Bolivarian
Alternative). The President, Rafael Correa, is an US-educated
economist by training, but has spent all of his years in
office bitterly opposing US-led incursions into the country
and Latin America in general. Tremendously popular, the
Citizen’s Revolution (<em>la revolucion ciudadana</em>) boasts
numerous infrastructure projects, redistribution programs,
modernization of social services, and so forth. Poverty
reduction has been drastic, perhaps not as comparable as that
of Venezuela, but definitely at a level of “progress” of which
the US working classes should be jealous. For the US, and
particularly for its oligarchical media, Correa is an
international pariah, someone who constantly speaks against
their neoimperialist designs in the region. The other thing
Americans might know of Ecuador and its president is that the
government represses the private press—of course we already
know this is selective reporting utilized to portray Correa as
some totalitarian dictator, which is patently unfounded. The
right-wing dominated press, particularly the newspapers, make
FOX News look like school children, except in the level of
absurdities that can be conjured by their imagination, which
deserves both admiration and scorn. There is certainly a level
of artistic genius involved in fabricating the outrageous
constructs that pass as news in Ecuador, perhaps a product of
the baroque aesthetic traditions still prevalent in Latin
American cultures.</p>
<p>Over the past few months, perhaps, the American audience came
to know Correa through the funny but ignorant portrayal by
HBO’s John Oliver. Correa, who regularly receives death
threats from the ardent opposition (not to mention a
suspicious police-led protest that had “coup attempt” written
all over it), has decided not to let anonymous bullying on
social media outlets to persist, and has devised a means by
which to expose the people who regularly use social media to
spout hatred and murder without any consequences whatsoever.
The US has no use for such actions, they can spy on you
wherever you may be. Yet this case turned out to be blip
rather than a ping, because the oppositional right-wing—the
most organized among them—are certainly smart enough not to
post death threats on Twitter, even if in “polite”
conversation with “<em>panas</em>,” sipping endless glasses of
12 year scotch diluted with mineral water, they certainly
fantasize about the idea of disposing of their president. The
history of 20<sup>th</sup> century Ecuador provides numerous
examples of how deadly the right-wing can be, how
uncompromising their tactics and strategies are, which
certainly have to have made an impact on Rafael Correa’s own
actions and approaches.</p>
<p>But what began as a political “revolution,” in the sense of
opening and deepening the political process to the millions of
people who live on the fringes of Ecuadorian society (those in
the <em>invasiones</em>, the informal working classes, the
Afro-ecuadorian population, and the highly visible and highly
exploitable indigenous population), has recently taken a more
revolutionary tenor. Currently under debate is the Law to
Redistribute the Wealth. Its most controversial element, at
least from the perspective of the ruling classes, is an
inheritance tax that seeks to break up intergenerational
wealth transfers, by which the elite tend to maintain their
power all over Latin America. This law has provoked a steady
stream of misinformation, but also of outrage and protests,
even from people who will not be affected by it. The law
essentially applies a progressive tax to inheritances above
$35,400 (a 2.5% tax), with the president reiterating that only
3 out of 100,000 Ecuadorians can be expected to receive
inheritances of $50,000 or more. The highest rate, for sums
above $849,600, would be 47.5% for children and 77.5% for
others who benefit from said inheritance. Accompanying such
“madness” would also be tax deductions for people leaving
inheritances for employees (shares of the company, for
example). The point, obviously, is to break apart the large
concentrations of wealth that get passed on from generation to
generation, or at least to redistribute some of these
excesses—certainly nothing any Western Social Democracy or
Welfare state hasn’t tried to do. The other stated goal,
however, is to create more social enterprises, collectives and
cooperatives. In this way, the Correa government is stepping
forward, albeit cautiously and with trepidation, into more
“revolutionary” territory. We may be seeing a Keynesian social
democratic experiment start taking on more decidedly socialist
overtones. Anyone who visits this country would, at present,
have a hard time pointing out “socialist” interjections, and
the “public” culture required for a revolution in social
relations seems to be a long way off. However, sometimes it is
moments and issues that can galvanize the masses, and they
must certainly begin to ponder such movement because the
opposition will not waste its opportunities.</p>
<p>And so it is, in Ecuador, that the right-wing seems to have
struck gold with this campaign to demonize the inheritance
tax, much like they have in the US (the so-called “death
tax”). The Middle Classes, which certainly won’t have much to
leave as far as inheritances go, are up in arms about supposed
government overreach. The slogans of “I work for my children”
have caught on with many in this sector. Memes abound,
personalizing the tax as a direct transference of wealth from
the person to the President, trending on Facebook and Twitter.
Of course they are absurd, but absurdity can be an effective
political mechanism in shifting public opinion, as any US
American of left-leanings knows. But even more salacious than
the absurdities of the right is the truth of the working
classes. Their numbers and their unleashed political presence
have certainly kept the counterrevolution in check, though not
permanently. Yet, in this case, they may need another
strategy. Perhaps the poor and working classes of Ecuador
should revisit the theory of exploitation proffered by Marx
long ago, and reconfigure the right’s phrase into their own
rallying cry: YO TRABAJO PARA TUS HIJOS! (I WORK FOR YOUR
KIDS!). Time will tell how this development shakes out, but
for now the class war deepens and intensifies in Ecuador, as
it does in all of the ALBA affiliated countries (and Europe
and the USA along other lines). Geopolitical shifts,
particularly the rise of China and the decline of US hegemony,
will probably tip the scales to one side or the other in the
long run, but battles can be won or lost, and right now the
battle boils beneath the surface, at any point it could erupt
into the streets.</p>
<p>(It should be noted that the government is aware of this
possibility, as anti-political violence campaigns are underway
in all major news outlets.)</p>
<p><em><strong>Robert Fenton</strong> is a doctoral candidate in
Sociology at George Mason University. He currently lives in
Ecuador conducting research on urban issues and
transportation.</em></p>
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