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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">How the US gov't cultivated
environmental and Indigenous groups to defeat Ecuador's
leftist Correísta movement<br>
</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ben Norton·May
4, 2021</div>
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<h4>When socialist Rafael Correa became Ecuador’s
president, CIA cutouts poured money into environmental
and Indigenous groups, while the US embassy cultivated
opportunistic leaders to undermine his constituency.
These forces helped secure victory for right-wing
banker Guillermo Lasso in 2021.</h4>
<hr>
<p>The people of Ecuador were hit by a surprise in the
April 2021 presidential election: Hard-right banker
Guillermo Lasso, one of the richest and most corrupt
oligarchs in the country, who had unsuccessfully run
in two previous races, scored a narrow victory over
leftist Andrés Arauz.</p>
<p>Arauz, a progressive young economist, had served as a
minister in the government of Ecuador’s socialist <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/12/13/ecuador-rafael-correa-venezuela-assange/"
moz-do-not-send="true">President Rafael Correa</a>,
who had declared a <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/06/ecuador-election-citizens-revolution/"
moz-do-not-send="true">“Citizens’ Revolution” that
transformed the country</a> during his term from
2007 to 2017.</p>
<p>What was not conveyed in most media reports on
Lasso’s surprising victory, however, was that Lasso
only won thanks to the support he received, both
directly and indirectly, from environmental and
Indigenous groups that have been co-opted over that
last 15 years by the US government and its soft-power
networks.</p>
<p>The leaders of these opportunistic, pseudo-left
organizations have benefited from millions of dollars
in funding from CIA cutouts like the US Agency for
International Development and National Endowment for
Democracy. Together, they formed an alliance of
convenience with Lasso against the Correísta movement.</p>
<p>Some even endorsed the multimillionaire banker
openly, overlooking his well-documented corruption,
including <a
href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/333763-los-laberintos-offshore-de-guillermo-lasso-accionistas-del-b"
moz-do-not-send="true">offshore bank accounts</a>
and tens of millions of dollars of <a
href="https://cepr.net/tens-of-millions-in-florida-properties-linked-to-ecuadorian-presidential-candidate-guillermo-lasso/"
moz-do-not-send="true">real estate in Florida</a>.
Others, including right-leaning leaders in Ecuador’s
powerful Indigenous confederation, CONAIE, called on
their followers to vote null in the April 11
presidential election rather than support the leftist
Arauz.</p>
<p>CONAIE’s decision to call for a null vote was perhaps
the most important factor in making Lasso Ecuador’s
next president. The 2021 election saw a massive
increase in politically motivated null votes, with 1.1
million more than in the previous election in 2017.
The total of 1.76 million null votes greatly
outnumbered the 420,000 votes that Arauz lost by.</p>
<p>The role that conservative leaders of CONAIE, the
confederation’s political arm Pachakutik, and “green”
NGOs played in getting a notoriously corrupt
neoliberal banker elected in Ecuador was hardly a
secret. In fact, <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/06/yaku-perez-pachakutik-ecuador-us-coup/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Pachakutik’s presidential
candidate, Yaku Pérez</a>, boasted of defeating
Arauz immediately after the election, triumphantly
tweeting in all caps, “<a
href="https://twitter.com/yakuperezg/status/1381972076739784705"
moz-do-not-send="true">Pachakutik and the null vote
bury Correísmo</a>.”</p>
<p><a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/06/yaku-perez-pachakutik-ecuador-us-coup/"
moz-do-not-send="true">The Grayzone documented how
Yaku Pérez ran a right-wing, pro-US campaign</a>
while marketing himself as the face of the “new left”
in Ecuador, adopting a US Democratic Party-style
marketing scheme that combined neoliberal economic
policies and support for imperialism with liberal
environmentalism and identity politics.</p>
<p>Pérez revealed after the first round of the election
that he had the <a
href="https://twitter.com/RutaKritica/status/1358971944427749377"
moz-do-not-send="true">support of the US embassy.</a>
He also has a history of publicly boasting of friendly
meetings with Washington’s ambassador to Ecuador,
Michael J. Fitzpatrick.</p>
<p>It is unsurprising then, that among the CONAIE and
Pachakutik supporters who did not vote null, the vast
majority ended up backing Lasso.</p>
<p>A review of the official results published by
Ecuador’s National Electoral Council (CNE) shows that
roughly half of people who had voted for Pérez in the
first round of the presidential election in February
ended up voting null in the second round, whereas
approximately 40 percent of Pérez’s supporters voted
for Lasso.</p>
<p>Only around 7 percent of Pérez supporters ended up
voting for Arauz, according to a rough estimate
provided to The Grayzone by an electoral expert.</p>
<p>Yet in much of the punditry about the surprising loss
suffered by Arauz, who had been leading in nearly all
polls before the election, the names Yaku Pérez and
Pachakutik are not even mentioned. The omission is
particularly prevalent among English-speaking
analysts.</p>
<p><a
href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-DNcHfEAAAAJ&hl=es"
moz-do-not-send="true">Eduardo Enríquez Arévalo</a>,
an academic expert on Ecuadorian politics at the Simon
Bolivar Andean University, explained in an interview
with The Grayzone, “In general one can say that
Pachakutik has had a process of shifting to the right,
or at least becoming increasingly close to the right
wing by the 2010s.”</p>
<p>Pachakutik and CONAIE are also deeply embedded in the
non-profit industrial complex. Leaders and prominent
activists from the groups work in well-funded NGOs,
some of which are bankrolled by foreign governments.</p>
<p>Pachakutik’s rightward drift, then, is partially an
organic phenomenon, but it has also been heavily
incentivized by the huge sums of money flowing into
Ecuador from the United States and Western European
governments and foundations.</p>
<p>The grim reality is that Pérez and Pachakutik are at
the heart of a 15-year-long US destabilization project
that is little known outside of Ecuador.</p>
<p>Declassified government documents show how, on the
eve of Correa’s historic election 2006, Washington
began reaching out to Indigenous and environmental
leaders and poured millions of dollars into
cultivating these groups, as part of a campaign to
divide the country’s left.</p>
<p>State Department cables <a
href="https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=pachakutik"
moz-do-not-send="true">published by WikiLeaks</a>
clearly demonstrate that the US embassy was recruiting
opportunistic leaders of CONAIE and Pachakutik to
undermine Correa and his leftist movement.</p>
<p>The documents show that figures from CONAIE and
Pachakutik were acting as informants for the embassy,
regularly providing intelligence to a US political
officer. Some right-leaning Indigenous leaders even
themselves contacted the US ambassador and held
friendly meetings reassuring Washington of their
support.</p>
<img
src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WikiLeaks-US-embassy-Ecuador-Correa-left.png?resize=1170%2C902&ssl=1"
alt="WikiLeaks US embassy Ecuador Correa left"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="346"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">A confidential 2009 US embassy cable
notes how Ecuador’s socialist President Correa faced
attacks from the “left”</font>
<p>CIA fronts like the US Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for
Democracy also launched programs to build and finance
an anti-Correísta opposition. These
multimillion-dollar initiatives focused especially on
Ecuador’s environmental and Indigenous organizations.</p>
<p>USAID worked closely with the CIA during <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/22/us-war-sanctions-nicaragua-icj-carlos-arguello/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Washington’s terrorist war on
the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua</a>
in the 1980s, funneling money into far-right Contra
death squads. The agency has also been integral in
financing the US government’s ongoing coup attempt in
Venezuela, forking over <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/23/usaid-venezuela-regime-change-trump/"
moz-do-not-send="true">hundreds of millions of
dollars to the unelected parallel regime of Juan
Guaidó</a>.</p>
<p>A review of USAID contracts reveals that a company
called Chemonics was the agency’s main “private”
partner in Ecuador. One of the <a
href="https://www.developmentaid.org/#!/news-stream/post/48501/top-10-usaid-awardees"
moz-do-not-send="true">largest for-profit recipients
of US foreign aid</a>, with $2.5 billion in USAID
funding from 2018 to 2019 alone, Chemonics is closely
linked to intelligence agencies, and functions as a
private intelligence agency. Its wealthy founder said
he created the firm to “<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/11/business/cozy-links-to-a-us-agency-prove-useful-to-a-rice-trader.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">have my own CIA</a>.”</p>
<p>Chemonics has been involved in a series of scandalous
US regime-change operations targeting leftist
governments in Latin America, aimed at destabilizing
the socialist Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and
Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.</p>
<p>Chemonics played a similar role in the US dirty war
on Syria. The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal has
documented how <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2016/10/02/white-helmets-us-military-intervention-regime-change-syria/"
moz-do-not-send="true">USAID used Chemonics to
funnel tens of millions of dollars to the White
Helmets</a>, a regime-change lobby group that
collaborated closely with Salafi-jihadist extremist
militants, including al-Qaeda, as part of a Western
intelligence operation aimed at overthrowing the
government in Damascus.</p>
<p>As USAID’s top partner in Ecuador, Chemonics was
given an $11 million contract in the year 2013 alone,
greatly surpassing any other contractor, in order to
fund “Environmental Protection” initiatives.</p>
<p>When regime-change operations from USAID’s “Office of
Transition Initiatives” were exposed in Venezuela and
Bolivia, the Correa government froze relations with
USAID in December 2013, and then expelled the agency
in 2014.</p>
<p>But USAID renewed its activities at an all-time high
in Ecuador in 2018, when Correa’s successor <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/14/lenin-moreno-julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lenín Moreno took a
hard-right turn</a> and allied with Washington.</p>
<img
src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/USAID-Ecuador-2013-climate-change-environment.png?resize=1170%2C620&ssl=1"
alt="USAID Ecuador 2013 climate change environment"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="238"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">In 2013, USAID poured millions into
environmental groups to counter Correa’s
infrastructure projects</font>
<p>These Washington-backed environmentalist groups
organized large, and often violent, campaigns to
oppose Correa’s ambitious infrastructure projects,
which sought to develop Ecuador’s impoverished and
rural regions and better integrate the country.</p>
<p>In the name of “anti-extractivism” – a buzzword that
has become popular among the same <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/"
moz-do-not-send="true">astroturfed pseudo-left
networks in North America</a> – these US
government-funded NGOs in Ecuador also tried to block
the socialist-oriented Correa administration from
using the country’s plentiful oil and mineral
resources to fund universal education, healthcare, and
social programs aimed at poverty reduction.</p>
<p>Skeptical <a
href="https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/zoo/1/campesinos-detectaron-objetivos-de-ong-financiada-por-usaid"
moz-do-not-send="true">local media outlets</a> noted
at the time that the “environmental protection”
projects run by USAID and Chemonics in Ecuador
happened to be in the areas with the most natural
resources, leading peasants to raise concerns about
ulterior motives and undemocratic US meddling.</p>
<p>The fact that many of Correa’s infrastructure
projects involved contracts with Chinese state-owned
companies further motivated Washington to undermine
them.</p>
<p>Correa worked closely with China during his time in
office, becoming one of Beijing’s most important
allies in Latin America. The anti-Correísta opposition
on the other hand is staunchly pro-US, and has vowed
to distance Ecuador from Beijing, hyperbolically
claiming, “the Correísta discourse of an independent
country ends in the doorway of <a
href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2016/01/15/america/1452827107_202694.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">the Chinese banks</a>.”</p>
<p>Much of the pseudo-left environmental and Indigenous
opposition to Correísmo has harshly condemned China
while cozying up to Washington. Pachakutik candidate
Yaku Pérez made his name opposing China’s development
projects in Ecuador, and was avidly <a
href="https://dialogochino.net/es/comercio-y-inversiones-es/39773-yaku-perez-la-sorpresa-electoral-en-las-elecciones-de-ecuador/"
moz-do-not-send="true">promoted by a British
foundation</a> dedicated to monitoring Beijing’s
activities in Latin America. At the same time, Pérez
insisted he “will not think twice” to sign a <a
href="https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2021/01/14/nota/9528838/yaku-perez-no-es-descabellado-acuerdo-comercial-estados-unidos/"
moz-do-not-send="true">free trade agreement with the
United States</a>.</p>
<p>Supplementing the tens of millions of dollars that
USAID spent in Ecuador to help build this pseudo-left
opposition were grants from the <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/20/inside-americas-meddling-machine-the-us-funded-group-that-interferes-in-elections-around-the-globe/"
moz-do-not-send="true">National Endowment Democracy,
another CIA front</a>.</p>
<img
src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/NED-Ecuador-womens-rights-2020.png?resize=1170%2C745&ssl=1"
alt="NED Ecuador womens rights 2020"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="286"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">2020 NED contracts for women’s rights
groups in Ecuador</font>
<p>The NED bankrolled <a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20140109200734/http://www.andes.info.ec/es/noticias/politica-opositora-ecuador-tramita-ayuda-financiera-ned-eeuu-montar-fundacion-agencia"
moz-do-not-send="true">major anti-Correísta
politicians</a>, while focusing especially on
environmental, Indigenous, and women’s rights groups,
along with opposition media outlets.</p>
<p>A prime example of a US-backed, astroturfed
Indigenous organization in Ecuador is the Pachamama
Foundation. With the help of annual grants from the
NED going back years, the foundation <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/page/303405686423463/search/?q=correa"
moz-do-not-send="true">relentlessly attacked</a> <a
href="https://twitter.com/FPachamama_Ec/status/978341682121977856"
moz-do-not-send="true">Correa</a>, trashing him as
an authoritarian “extractivist,” while <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/page/303405686423463/search/?q=yaku%20perez"
moz-do-not-send="true">constantly promoting</a> <a
href="https://twitter.com/FPachamama_Ec/status/994639616367054848"
moz-do-not-send="true">Yaku Pérez</a> as a <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/fundacionpachamamaec/photos/basw.AbrFSRFi8jjMU2vveXpkXPGxfXAR3s7cRGiQq94fi0kUe6ffr3rAfNxmj6ukP9RSHz5V8Df36J1LpBogZvCGrZ2doliXGm5ZuiyNtoWU83Ejw5gOMOwzjyPGWziSFvIroQNYVnzZI8CPcsRd1IOXEcx_CinpC8_Ak93Au_hYRqXpDg/1683277961769555/?opaqueCursor=AboHLONxiXDkzZXUZjLwFWfA-K2rBmNeK-UkVagaIOIwYrpSIKLAQ0wFzxALpMtO9dsBIw9JmJ0AlBX3xApRuVhcNHFrDkWeHoPlv5ThVsKL4S3k6H1zt_ANAB2xr4XMyAojt7iWYF5K3MQSJMRhV1wbLRWKhawwF-g-FA4WiYCaRGCkGDyjPVwBFuWe2xCKj6o3NlQlGjoSP0zDH520DcBW3XyVkrsANkRVLA_0Y-gsM4ElCvH9V8iFl1zMYulHNggYy-k70jL3FJQYgBEZuJGUXD0yMCiM4TiJefpWjO2psCBdwXfzPXMv8oOh3jgl5U1iNqZLOljgzJpttaQqNP_MIvUEi1LWTPsdeEg3agbv7XAQ_q9_WnBFul3jKljNfHZhdT8OTVFg_QIVqAScoJcfSSetJrB8zQjMbeRHDLbWjGehn1yu5JdX28aBsW6ADwtrv1WHJ6j1JXxnYXtD1s4HihHG1c7ZUeuk6Txr5ihn8WC_Zdd5Xi71YlqGK7Br7liUznxhDJUqUMKq_mj4Vt3sxS9py-fUDAh_Ezkp_i2YGtNeBd63UYM1y3YyRS-VYLeDtH0fj4vfxOukj1BuwfLZSamBt8Jkn5d6xk0d7bP8B94PM1rSPPx09AtimVlAebdhaxoc6Z7m5hqWEjyWOeuqFI_b8X-CdvL_CVMlTLnKlVJOXrBPVIoXuzJmVsvT7EdjUS2d-vTN91irFOBxX7GnTBpEAjAspYHH8Ui_R3hD-MPtSKsF15ULK3LUUzcyQU4"
moz-do-not-send="true">noble defender</a> of the
environment.</p>
<img
src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/NED-Ecuador-Indigenous-journalism.png?resize=1170%2C635&ssl=1"
alt="NED Ecuador Indigenous journalism"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="244"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">2020 NED contracts for Indigenous and
environmental groups in Ecuador, like the Pachamama
Foundation
</font>
<p>Given its role as a US government-funded opposition
group aimed at destabilizing his elected
administration, Correa closed the Pachamama Foundation
in 2013. But President <a
href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/fundacion-pachamama-ecuador-ong-ambiente.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lenín Moreno re-opened the
group</a> in 2017, the year he openly betrayed his
former ally and began to aggressively repress Correa’s
leftist movement.</p>
<img
src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Fundacion-Pachamama-Yaku-Perez-Ecuador-NED.png?resize=1170%2C893&ssl=1"
alt="Fundacion Pachamama Yaku Perez Ecuador NED"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="343"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">The NED-funded Pachamama Foundation
promoting Yaku Pérez
</font>
<p>The National Democratic Institute (NDI), which is
funded by the NED and loosely linked to the US
Democratic Party, was also an active supporter of the
anti-Correísta opposition. It had <a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120902234446/http://www.ndiecuador.org/"
moz-do-not-send="true">its own website specifically
focused on Ecuador</a>, which boasted of the US
government-backed institute’s activities in the
country (this webpage was later removed).</p>
<p>Leaders of the Indigenous Pachakutik party were <a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20101008062106/http://www.centrodealerta.org/documentos_desclasificados/usaidned_funding_political_.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">directly trained by the NDI</a>,
alongside other right-wing groups from Latin America,
including Venezuela’s conservative Primero Justicia
party and Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN).</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://issuu.com/ndiecuador/docs/guia_practica_codigo_de_la_democracia_y_organizaci"
moz-do-not-send="true">NDI also published lengthy
how-to manuals</a> for the Ecuadorian opposition,
which helped them lobby against Correa’s reforms and
sought to replicate the US political system in their
country.</p>
<img
src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/US-NED-NDI-Pachakutik-Ecuador-coup-Correa.png?resize=1066%2C694&ssl=1"
alt="US NED NDI Pachakutik Ecuador coup Correa"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="292"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">A 2007 document showing how the US
government’s National Democratic Institute (NDI)
trained the Ecuadorian opposition group Pachakutik</font>
<p>Washington’s strategy of recruiting Indigenous
leaders to oppose Correísmo echoes an operation the
CIA ran in Nicaragua in the 1980s, in which the spy
agency <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/03/weekinreview/miskitos-are-arguing-with-themselves.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">cultivated disgruntled
leaders of the Native Miskito community</a> in order
to destabilize the revolutionary Sandinista
government.</p>
<p>Similarly, the far-right government of Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro won support from Indigenous
communities living on the border with Venezuela and
used them to help <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/17/brazil-paper-reveals-bolsonaro-terror-plot-venezuela/"
moz-do-not-send="true">launch attacks on Venezuelan
soldiers</a>. In Mexico, meanwhile, the US
government has funded environmental and Indigenous
NGOs that oppose progressive President AMLO’s
infrastructure programs, such as the Maya Train, which
aim to develop the country’s impoverished southern
region.</p>
<p>This is not to say that the left-wing governments of
Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Mexico have had
perfect relations with Indigenous peoples, or that
these communities do not sometimes have justifiable
grievances. But Washington and its right-wing allies,
even open racists like Bolsonaro, have shown a
willingness to exploit and mislead Indigenous
communities to advance their geopolitical interests.</p>
<p>When Washington embarked on its strategy to use
Indigenous people as a wedge against Correa, it was in
fact actively working against the rights of Native
peoples internationally. A declassified State
Department cable published by WikiLeaks shows that the
US ambassador in Ecuador condemned and <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06QUITO1386_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">lobbied against the United
Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples</a>, arguing it was “fundamentally flawed.”
(The Correa administration, for its part, supported
the UN declaration.)</p>
<img
src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WikiLeaks-Ecuador-US-UN-Declaration-Rights-Indigenous.png?resize=1170%2C943&ssl=1"
alt="WikiLeaks Ecuador US UN Declaration Rights
Indigenous" style="margin-right: 25px;"
moz-do-not-send="true" width="449" height="362"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">A 2006 State Department cable in
which the US government condemns the UN Declaration on
the<br>
Rights of Indigenous Peoples as “fundamentally
flawed.”</font>
<p>For the imperial US bureaucrats assigned to South
America, and dedicated to pushing back its leftist
“Pink Tide,” weaponizing minority identities against
popular movements became practically second nature.</p>
<p>The same tactics were honed back at home. The US
Democratic Party and neoliberal leaders like Hillary
Clinton have mastered the art of using unsubstantiated
allegations of racism and sexism to undermine
social-democratic figures like Bernie Sanders, while
the Republican Party has <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/minister-minstrelsy/"
moz-do-not-send="true">leveraged corporate money</a>
to cultivate a small handful of Black and Latino
voices, promoting them to disrupt civil rights
coalitions and advance regressive policies. (In a
particularly glaring example of the tactic, Black
Republican Supreme Court Justice <a
href="https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/founding-father-black-conservative-movement/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Clarence Thomas</a> was
mentored by Jay Parker, a former registered lobbyist
for the Transkei bantustan of <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/08/opinion/l-judge-thomas-s-south-africa-connection-needs-clarification-858891.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">apartheid South Africa</a>.)</p>
<p>The CIA itself has openly adopted this strategy, <a
href="https://twitter.com/aishaismad/status/1388963034274701316"
moz-do-not-send="true">promoting “intersectional”
feminism</a> and liberal anti-racist and LGBTQ
rhetoric in its recruitment ads.</p>
<p>It is an age-old imperial tactic: divide and conquer.
And the United States has perfected this strategy in
Latin America – one of the most impoverished regions
of the world, where the many millions of dollars that
Washington throws around to advance its interests go a
long way.</p>
<p>In April 2021, the US government’s 15-year program
finally saw its first major success with the election
of Guillermo Lasso, a member of <a
href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983/07/their-will-be-done/"
moz-do-not-send="true">far-right Catholic sect Opus
Dei</a>, whose neoliberal policies represent the
legacy of the CIA-backed Chicago Boys who wreaked
havoc on Chile’s economy under the iron-fisted rule of
General Augosto Pinochet.</p>
<p>A look at how Ecuador’s anti-Correísta opposition
successfully divided the left, with US backing, is
very instructive, because these tactics have been
refined and exported in Washington’s operations
throughout Latin America and across the globe.</p>
<h3>How US-backed banker Guillermo Lasso won the 2021
election</h3>
<p>Much of the analysis of Andrés Arauz’s surprise
electoral loss has focused on the fact that the media
was uniformly against him, and constantly spread lies
about Correísmo; or that the multimillionaire banker
Guillermo Lasso had an enormous campaign war chest
that overpowered his opponent.</p>
<p>Both points are correct, and these factors were
important; but, alone, they are not sufficient to
explain the outcome. Over the course of multiple
successful campaigns for the presidency, Rafael Correa
had faced the same obstacles.</p>
<p>In fact, some of the fake news stories used to smear
Arauz were just slightly modified versions of attacks
on Correa. Right-wing media outlets, for example,
simply replaced the name of the Colombian guerrilla
group FARC with the name of another, ELN, to generate
a phony scandal based on the lie that it had
supposedly <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/15/us-oas-colombia-steal-ecuador-election/"
moz-do-not-send="true">funded the Ecuadorian
leftist’s campaign</a>. But Correa always had a
substantial enough support base to overcome the odds.</p>
<p>Then there is the fact that <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/12/lenin-moreno-persecution-ola-bini/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Ecuador’s current president,
Lenín Moreno</a>, had been Correa’s vice president,
and had originally claimed fidelity to the Citizens’
Revolution during the 2017 electoral campaign, before
later doing a political 180. Moreno allied with the
right-wing oligarchy and Lasso, humiliatingly
subjugating his country to the United States, and
withdrew from regional institutions like the ALBA
economic alliance and UNASUR political union, while
implementing unpopular neoliberal economic reforms and
<a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/14/lenin-moreno-julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador/"
moz-do-not-send="true">overseeing large-scale
corruption</a>.</p>
<p>The past associations that the deeply unpopular
President Moreno enjoyed with Correa did repel some
voters from Arauz. But this association should not be
overstated, because for his entire term, <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/06/ecuadors-moreno-persecutes-coronavirus/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Moreno had openly persecuted
Correa and his movement</a>, exiling and imprisoning
leftist politicians and activists who supported the
Citizens’ Revolution, and clearly throwing his weight
behind Lasso and other conservative forces.</p>
<p>By the end of Moreno’s term, his alliance with Lasso
was so clear that the Correístas were campaigning on
the slogan “Lasso is Moreno.”</p>
<p>Some progressive Ecuadorian activists who spoke with
The Grayzone also privately conceded that Arauz, a
young, highly educated, and soft-spoken technocrat who
ran a relatively moderate, center-left campaign, was
seen as a relatively weak candidate. In contrast,
Correa was a firebrand populist who had played on
popular anger against the country’s parasitic
oligarchy and was willing to challenge the US empire
head on.</p>
<p>All of these variables contributed to Arauz’s loss.
But the most important factor came in the form of a
call for “ideological” null voting, dividing the left
and giving Lasso just enough electoral space to swing
ahead.</p>
<p>According to <a
href="https://elecciones2021.cne.gob.ec/"
moz-do-not-send="true">official results</a> from the
Ecuadorian government’s National Electoral Council
(CNE), Arauz got 4,236,515 votes compared to Lasso’s
4,656,426 — a difference of just 419,911 votes.</p>
<img
src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CNE-results-Ecuador-election-2021-null-votes.png?resize=1170%2C443&ssl=1"
alt="CNE results Ecuador election 2021 null votes"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="170"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">The official CNE results from
Ecuador’s April 2021 presidential election, showing
1,761,433 null votes
</font>
<p>But there was a very significant third group that
ended up swinging the election for Lasso: null voters.
According to the official CNE results, there were
1,761,433 null votes, making up a staggering 16.3% of
total votes.</p>
<p>This was a whopping 10% increase in null votes in
comparison with the previous election. Official CNE
statistics from <a
href="https://cne.gob.ec/documents/Estadisticas/Publicaciones/LIBRO_RESULTADOS_2017.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">previous Ecuador elections</a>
show much smaller levels of null voting.</p>
<p>In Ecuador’s 2009 election, only 496,687 null votes
were cast, comprising just 6.3% of the total. In 2013,
there were 684,027 null votes, or 7.2% of the total.
And in 2017 there were 670,731 null votes, 6.3% of the
total.</p>
<p>Voting in Ecuador is legally mandatory, and
participation in 2021 held at the median level: 83%
participation in 2021, compared to the same as in 2017
and 82% in 2013.</p>
<p>There are reasons to doubt the accuracy of the CNE’s
results, given the council’s clear politicization
under the corrupt government of Moreno, which declared
all-out war on the Correísta movement and stacked the
body <a
href="https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2018/11/21/nota/7060776/atropellada-primera-reunion-nuevo-cne/"
moz-do-not-send="true">exclusively with opposition
figures</a> from Pachakutik and Lasso’s party CREO.</p>
<p>The left-wing Union for Hope (UNES) party of Arauz
said it <a
href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/pleno-cne-resultados-balotaje-provincias.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">detected irregularities in
5,000 actas</a>, or vote tallies, a significant
problem given that the average acta in Ecuador
includes roughly 270 votes. However, several technical
experts told The Grayzone that, although there indeed
appeared to have been irregularities, they were not
substantial enough to change the result of the
election.</p>
<p>The most salient difference in 2021 was simply the
gigantic increase in null votes. And what accounted
for this massive increase? Ecuador’s Indigenous
confederation CONAIE, its political arm Pachakutik,
and their presidential candidate Yaku Pérez had called
on their constituents to vote null.</p>
<img
src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CNE-Ecuador-elections-null-votes.png?resize=1170%2C698&ssl=1"
alt="CNE Ecuador elections null votes"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="268"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">Official CNE results from previous
Ecuador elections, showing much smaller levels of null
votes
</font>
<h3>The right-wing shift of Ecuador’s US-backed
Indigenous party Pachakutik</h3>
<p>CONAIE does not represent all Indigenous communities
in Ecuador, although it is the largest and most
influential Native organization. The country’s
Indigenous leaders are divided, and Native
politicians, both inside and outside CONAIE, can be
found across the political spectrum.</p>
<p>Some Indigenous leaders, such as <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/01/academic-letter-censor-grayzone-ecuador-yaku-perez/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Citizens’ Revolution National
Assembly candidate Ricardo Ulcuango</a>, a former
vice president of CONAIE, are avid supporters of the
Correísta movement. But numerous prominent politicians
from CONAIE and its political arm Pachakutik have a
history of forming opportunistic alliances with
Ecuador’s conservative elites, and with the United
States, especially when Correa was in power.</p>
<p>In 2017, Pachakutik’s <a
href="https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2017/02/22/nota/6059647/perez-guartambel-es-preferible-banquero-dictadura/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Yaku Pérez openly endorsed
Guillermo Lasso</a> for the presidential election.
Just days before the vote in February 2021, Lasso
returned the favor, stating that, if Pérez won in the
first round, the <a
href="https://elmercurio.com.ec/2021/02/03/lasso-anticipa-su-apoyo-a-yaku-perez-si-este-llega-a-segunda-vuelta-en-su-lugar/"
moz-do-not-send="true">banker would endorse him</a>.</p>
<p>That same year, a small Ecuadorian environmentalist
organization called Yasunidos met with Lasso and
signed an agreement in support of the banker.
Yasunidos, whose protests against Correa were strongly
<a
href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2014/04/140414_ecuador_petroleo_parque_yasuni_mxa"
moz-do-not-send="true">promoted by the Western press</a>,
then went on to strongly advocate for Pérez in the
2021 election.</p>
<p>Pérez was by no means the only rightist Indigenous
leader to support Lasso. In the 2017 election, Fanny
Campos, a former coordinator of the Pachakutik party,
not only backed Lasso but even <a
href="https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/politiko-2017/3/excoordinadora-de-pachakutik-se-une-a-compromiso-ecuador-de-lasso"
moz-do-not-send="true">joined his campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Pachakutik politician Salvador Quishpe also publicly
endorsed the wealthy banker. And he revealed in 2016
that the Indigenous party was discussing potentially
running Pachakutik leader Lourdes Tibán as <a
href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/salvadorquishpe-guillermolasso-lourdestiban-politica-ecuador.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lasso’s vice-presidential
candidate</a>.</p>
<p>In 2021, Pérez, Pachakutik, and CONAIE decided to
indirectly help Lasso by calling on their followers to
null vote in protest of Correísmo. This decision,
which led to Arauz’s defeat, also created conflicts
within the Indigenous confederation.</p>
<p>CONAIE’s then-president, Jaime Vargas – who
represented a left-wing faction that had led huge <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/07/ecuador-revolt-lenin-morenos-neoliberal-drone-zangano/"
moz-do-not-send="true">protests against Moreno’s
neoliberal IMF-mandated economic reforms</a> in 2019
– broke with his own organization and endorsed Arauz
for president in April.</p>
<p>Days after his endorsement, Pachakutik expelled
Vargas for daring to support a Correísta candidate.
Next, <a
href="https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/politica/consejo-de-gobierno-de-la-conaie-cuestiona-a-su-presidente-jaime-vargas-y-anuncia-sanciones-nota/"
moz-do-not-send="true">CONAIE condemned him</a>,
announced it would sanction Vargas, and <a
href="https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/actualidad/44/leonidas-iza-es-candidato-a-la-presidencia-de-la-conaie"
moz-do-not-send="true">vacated his seat</a> as the
confederation’s president. <a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/news/lider-expulsado-pachakutik-critica-intereses-movimiento-20210406-0031.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Vargas responded by
criticizing Pachakutik</a> for acting against the
interests of Ecuador’s Indigenous communities,
accusing it of collaborating with the right wing.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Pérez’s running mate, Virna Cedeño, the
official vice-presidential candidate of Pachakutik, <a
href="https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/politica/excandidata-vicepresidencial-de-yaku-perez-anuncia-que-votara-por-guillermo-lasso-nota/"
moz-do-not-send="true">publicly endorsed Lasso</a>.
Echoing conservative rhetoric, she claimed the banker
could help save Ecuador from the clutches of the
“failed and deceptive Socialism of the 21st Century,”
a reference to the leftist economic model created by
Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.
(To save face, Pachakutik decided to expel Cedeño as
well.)</p>
<p><a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/06/yaku-perez-pachakutik-ecuador-us-coup/"
moz-do-not-send="true">The Grayzone documented how
Yaku Pérez personally advanced a raft of right-wing
and imperialist policies</a>, while deceptively
claiming fidelity to the left. He supported the
violent US-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019, which
overthrew the country’s first and only ever Indigenous
president, Evo Morales, as well as the soft coup
against Brazil’s Workers’ Party government in 2016.
Pérez also backed right-wing putsch attempts in
Venezuela and Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Pérez’s support for coups and alignment with US
foreign-policy interests in Latin America led Rafael
Correa and other Correísta leaders to brand him “<a
href="https://twitter.com/MashiRafael/status/1369676359325392896"
moz-do-not-send="true">Yankee Pérez</a>.”</p>
<p>During his presidential campaign, Pérez demonized his
country’s impoverished masses, opposing a proposal by
Andrés Arauz to give $1000 checks to 1 million
working-class Ecuadorian families by claiming they
would <a
href="http://ecuadorya.com/yaku-perez-los-pobres-se-gastan-la-plata-en-cerveza/"
moz-do-not-send="true">spend it on beer in one day</a>.
At the same time, Pérez said he would happily sign a
free-trade agreement with the United States, telling a
journalist, “I will not think twice.”</p>
<p>While Pérez ran on clearly right-wing policies, his
campaign <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/01/academic-letter-censor-grayzone-ecuador-yaku-perez/"
moz-do-not-send="true">weaponized themes of
identity, environmentalism, and gender and sexuality
to attack the leftist Correísta movement (and to
smear The Grayzone’s reporting)</a>.</p>
<p>Pérez’s candidacy was heavily amplified by Western
corporate media outlets and US right-wing lobby groups
like the Americas Society / Council of the Americas
(AS/COA), which is funded by Western corporations,
including a who’s who of the extraction industry.</p>
<p>Pérez quickly became a <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ctrc8JRAPA"
moz-do-not-send="true">favorite</a> on <a
href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/02/10/yaku-perez-lider-indigena-contendiente-sorpresa-elecciones-ecuador/"
moz-do-not-send="true">CNN en Español</a>, where he
spread baseless accusations of “<a
href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/02/18/yaku-perez-en-conclusiones-el-fraude-se-hizo-a-todo-el-pueblo-del-ecuador/"
moz-do-not-send="true">fraud</a>” after narrowly
losing first round of the presidential election. And
in a friendly interview on CNN following Lasso’s April
11 victory, Pérez absurdly claimed that socialist
former President Correa and his leftist movement <a
href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/ecuador-yaku-perez-correa-derecha-conecta2/"
moz-do-not-send="true">represent “the new right</a>.”</p>
<p>Eduardo Enríquez Arévalo, an Ecuadorian sociologist,
spoke with The Grayzone about the shifting political
orientation of CONAIE and Pachakutik.</p>
<p>“Pachakutik was born as an electoral instrument of
CONAIE in the mid-’90s, but in the 2010s it became
increasingly autonomous of CONAIE, which is visible in
CONAIE’s criticism of the closeness that Pachakutik
has had to Lasso and the right wing in recent years,”
Enríquez explained.</p>
<p>In the 2010s, as Correa solidified a massive support
base in Ecuador and expanded mining to fund popular
social programs, Pachakutik began to openly ally with
the right. In the 2014 mayoral election for the
capital city Quito, Pachakutik’s candidate Milton
Castillo openly <a
href="https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/elecciones-2014/3/presidente-de-la-conaie-repudia-apoyo-de-milton-castillo-a-mauricio-rodas"
moz-do-not-send="true">endorsed conservative
Mauricio Rodas</a>, calling on Indigenous supporters
to vote for the right wing in order to defeat the
Correísta candidate, Augusto Barrera.</p>
<p>Thanks in part to the Pachakutik candidate’s
endorsement, the rightist Rodas won the election and
began to use Quito’s local government to undercut
President Correa. CONAIE leadership responded by
publicly criticizing Castillo.</p>
<p>“That right-wing shift can be understood possibly as
a clarification of the ideological differences of the
different classes within Indigenous communities in
Ecuador,” Enríquez said, “but also as a generational
conflict between younger leaders like Leonidas Iza and
Jaime Vargas, who maintain a more left-wing
perspective, or are at least more radical in their
forms of struggle, when compared to the older leaders
who are closer to the political elites of the country,
such as Assembly member Salvador Quishpe and Lourdes
Tibán, who show a clear willingness to collaborate
with the right wing.”</p>
<p>“In 2019 Pachakutik not only found itself supporting
the right-wing government of Moreno but also taking a
turn toward social conservatism, when it opposed the
decriminalization of abortion in cases of rape, when
even the majority of the legislative bloc of the
Citizens’ Revolution supported that
decriminalization,” the scholar noted.</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/conaie-legisladores-pachakutik-ley-aborto.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">CONAIE again censured
Pachakutik</a>, its own political arm, for this vote
against decriminalizing abortion in cases of rape.</p>
<p>In October 2019, the Moreno government tried to ram
through a series of unpopular neoliberal economic
reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund.
The left-wing faction of CONAIE helped organize
protests against the proposed austerity measures.</p>
<p>After 10 days of demonstrations, <a
href="https://www.dw.com/es/ecuador-ind%C3%ADgenas-cesan-protestas-tras-acuerdo-con-moreno/a-50818814"
moz-do-not-send="true">CONAIE met with Moreno</a>
and came to an agreement to end the protests. The
confederation’s willingness to negotiate with the
notoriously corrupt right-wing president drew
sustained criticism from the Ecuadorian left, given
CONAIE leadership had on occasions refused to
negotiate with Correa when he was president.</p>
<p>The 2019 protests were led by Jaime Vargas, the
former CONAIE president who was later expelled from
Pachakutik for endorsing Arauz, as well as Leonidas
Iza. Given his role in the popular rebellion, Iza
later sought nomination to run in the 2021
presidential election as Pachakutik’s candidate, but
the party rejected him in choosing the right-leaning
Yaku Pérez.</p>
<p>Pérez was noticeably not one of the leaders of the
anti-neoliberal protests. In fact, just a few weeks
after the demonstrations ended, Pérez quickly <a
href="https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/politica/yaku-perez-reconcilia-con-gobierno/"
moz-do-not-send="true">reconciled with the Moreno
regime</a>, holding a press conference with one of
its ministers. It was a clear sign to Moreno that he
was willing to play ball.</p>
<p>In the 2021 election, Pérez went on to run a hardline
anti-Correísta campaign, spreading lies and smears
against Correa and Arauz. <a
href="https://twitter.com/Ecuador_On_Q/status/1362126157605466114"
moz-do-not-send="true">Pérez incited against
Venezuelan immigrants</a>, accusing them of stirring
up chaos in Ecuador, and even echoed the thoroughly
debunked right-wing propaganda that falsely accused
Arauz of being funded by Colombian socialist
guerrillas in the ELN.</p>
<p>Iza, from CONAIE’s left-wing faction, was so
disturbed by Pérez’s reactionary campaign that he
publicly warned that the Pachakutik candidate was
collaborating with the right wing, revealing that
members of Lasso’s conservative CREO party were in
Pérez’s inner circle.</p>
<p>Pérez never came close to victory; he managed to win
only 19% of the vote in the first round of the
presidential election. When it was clear that he had
lost, Pérez desperately <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/10/ecuador-yaku-perez-military-nullify-election/"
moz-do-not-send="true">called on Ecuador’s military
to intervene in the election</a>, and for the Moreno
administration to nullify the results of the first
round and prosecute Arauz for supposedly taking ELN
money.</p>
<p>While he ultimately lost the election, Pérez managed
to fulfill his second goal, accomplishing what many
right-leaning Pachakutik and CONAIE leaders – and
their allies in Washington – had unsuccessfully tried
to do in past elections: confuse progressive-minded
Ecuadorians and divide the left-wing vote with his
call for null voting, thereby handing a victory to
Guillermo Lasso.</p>
<p>Pérez’s sabotage of a left-wing resurgence in Ecuador
represented the culmination of a years-long operation
conceived in Washington.</p>
<h3>US embassy cultivates anti-Correa Indigenous leaders</h3>
<p>Classified US State Department cables published by
WikiLeaks provide a host of examples of Washington
cultivating opportunistic Indigenous and environmental
leaders to weaken Ecuador’s left, going back to the
eve of Rafael Correa’s first electoral victory.</p>
<p>When Wikileaks first revealed these documents, the US
embassy’s collaboration with Native Ecuadorian leaders
was reported on in <a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Revelan-tratos-entre-EE.UU.-y-cupula-indigena-de-Ecuador-20150807-0034.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Spanish by TeleSUR</a>, but
it was almost entirely ignored in English-language
media.</p>
<p>Numerous 2005 and 2006 <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06QUITO817_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">US embassy</a> cables on
Indigenous-led protests in Ecuador reveal that <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06QUITO1837_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">many leaders</a> of CONAIE
and Pachakutik were in <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06QUITO694_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">regular contact</a> and <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05QUITO1420_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">participating in meetings
with</a> the embassy’s political officers,
frequently providing Washington with valuable
information.</p>
<p>One of the cables identified US diplomat <a
href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-schulz-zenji-77b363136/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Vanessa Schulz</a> as a
political officer (referred to in the documents with
the abbreviation PolOff) who was communicating with
Indigenous informants.</p>
<img
src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WikiLeaks-Ecuador-CONAIE-Pachakutik-US-embassy.png?resize=1170%2C703&ssl=1"
alt="WikiLeaks Ecuador CONAIE Pachakutik US embassy"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="270"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">2006 State Department cables released
by WikiLeaks show that opportunistic Indigenous
leaders of Ecuador’s CONAIE and Pachakutik were in
regular contact with a US embassy political officer
(PolOff)
</font>
<p>At this time, Washington’s top priority was the
passage of a free trade agreement with Ecuador and
other countries across Latin America.</p>
<p>A <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05QUITO586_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">2005 US embassy cable</a>
noted, “Most indigenous groups remain skeptical of a
Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and critical of
Plan Colombia, but open to dialogue with us.”</p>
<p>The document revealed that “CONAIE asked the USG [US
government] to intervene with the [Ecuadorian]
President to get CONAIE representatives back in these
[Ecuadorian] government institutions.”</p>
<p>“CONAIE’s new leadership seemed open to dialogue with
the Embassy, while maintaining their distance from
certain USG priorities,” the cable said.</p>
<p>The US embassy identified “More Moderate” Indigenous
leaders who were potentially interested in a free
trade agreement, such as CONAIE Vice President
Santiago De La Cruz, who it disclosed “appeared eager
to engage in dialogue with us” and “said he believed
the U.S. was ‘not all bad.'”</p>
<img
src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WikiLeaks-Ecuador-CONAIE-US-embassy.png?resize=1170%2C983&ssl=1"
alt="WikiLeaks Ecuador CONAIE US embassy"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="377"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">A 2005 embassy cable discusses
support for the US within Ecuador’s Indigenous CONAIE
leadership
</font>
<p>In August 2006, just weeks before Correa’s historic
election, an Indigenous leader from the confederation
CONAIE invited the US ambassador to his city for a
friendly meeting.</p>
<p>A US State Department cable reported positively on
the reunion with Auki Tituaña, mayor of the city of
Cotacachi. Using patronizing language, the embassy
referred to him as a “counterweight within the main
national Indigenous organization to the <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06QUITO2225_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">CONAIE leadership’s
increasingly leftist and globaphobic insulation</a>,”
adding that Tituaña had requested the meeting with the
US ambassador to show “pragmatic openness to
collaboration with diverse forces to promote his
people’s development.”</p>
<p>“During the hour-long meeting, Tituaña clearly sought
to set the Ambassador at ease, evincing pragmatism,”
the cable went on. “He did not criticize the USG [US
government] and, at one point, told us privately that
the major problem with an FTA [free trade agreement]
in Ecuador was simply a lack of information.”</p>
<p>Tituaña made it clear to the US government that he
opposed Correa. The embassy recounted, “Tituana told
us he had ruled out an alliance for fear of Correa’s
polemic and divisive style.”</p>
<p>The cable acknowledged that there were significant
political splits within Ecuador’s Indigenous
community. It praised Tituaña, stating that he
“signaled rare political openness, citing his personal
friendship with PSC Mayor of Guayaquil, Jaime Nebot,”
referring to a powerful right-wing politician in
Ecuador.</p>
<p>Tituaña’s closeness to the right became undeniable in
2012, when the Indigenous leader announced that he
would run as <a
href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/politica/auki-tituana-completa-binomio-guillermo.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Guillermo Lasso’s vice
presidential candidate</a> in the next year’s
election. CONAIE responded by expelling him.</p>
<img
src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WikiLeaks-US-ambassador-Ecuador-CONAIE-indigenous.png?resize=1170%2C903&ssl=1"
alt="WikiLeaks US ambassador Ecuador CONAIE
indigenous" style="margin-right: 25px;"
moz-do-not-send="true" width="449" height="347"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">A 2006 US embassy cable discusses how
Ecuador’s indigenous CONAIE/Pachakutik leader Auki
Tituaña wanted closer relations with Washington
</font>
<p>When Correa took power in 2007, the US embassy cables
show that the State Department was supporting not only
his right-wing opponents, but also the so-called “left
opposition,” and even had regular <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07QUITO345_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">contacts inside Ecuador’s
police</a>.</p>
<p>Numerous cables reveal that a representative from the
AFL-CIO’s <a
href="https://www.solidaritycenter.org/national-endowment-for-democracy-ned-ndi-iri-cipe-and-solidarity-center-welcome-increased-funding-from-congress/"
moz-do-not-send="true">NED-funded</a> Solidarity
Center, <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08QUITO921_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Patricio Contreras</a>, was
an “<a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05QUITO1403_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">embassy contact</a>” – a US
government informant, providing constant information
on Ecuador.</p>
<p>A <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09QUITO849_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">2009 cable reporting on
Indigenous protests</a> against Correa’s government
showed that the US embassy was still in regular
communication with Native leaders, revealing that the
national director of the Federation of Evangelical
Indigenous People of Ecuador (FEINE) was giving
information to Washington’s political officer.</p>
<p>Another <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09QUITO873_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">2009 US embassy cable</a>
monitoring Indigenous opposition to Correa noted that
the leftist president “called some of the leaders
‘rightists’ with ‘golden ponchos.'”</p>
<p>Reporting on CONAIE’s 2009 demonstrations against
Correa, the US embassy wrote: “The indigenous
protestors, apparently armed with shotguns and spears,
allegedly opened fire on police, injuring 40 police
and killing one of their own, a Shuar teacher named
Bosco Wisuma. The killing of Bosco Wisuma, although
reportedly an incident of ‘friendly fire,’ galvanized
CONAIE supporters.”</p>
<p>The 2009 death of this Indigenous supporter had been
used by the <a
href="https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/ecuador-indians-trade-blame-for-bloody-clash-1.1490619"
moz-do-not-send="true">international media</a> to
condemn Correa, smearing him as authoritarian and
anti-Indigenous, but the internal documents prove that
Washington was well aware that he was killed by his
own community members in a violent protest.</p>
<p>Perhaps the clearest sign of the US embassy
recognizing the power of pseudo-left opposition to
Correa is a classified 2009 cable signed by the charge
d’affaires, Andrew Chritton. Titled “<a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09QUITO951_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Correa and Social Movements:
Attacks from the Left?</a>“, the document noted:
“President Rafael Correa now faces strong but
fragmented opposition from leftist groups that were
part of his political base. In the last few months,
the GOE has confronted striking teachers, students,
and indigenous groups.”</p>
<p>The cable recalled that Correa accused some of these
ostensibly left-wing opposition groups of “‘doing the
work of the rightists’ and ‘imperialists.'”</p>
<p>“It is ironic that Correa, the self-proclaimed ’21st
century socialist,’ is facing his most active
opposition from the left of the political spectrum,
all the while accusing them of falling prey to
manipulation from the ‘rightists,'” the embassy
cheerfully noted.</p>
<p>The cable acknowledged, “Rumors in the indigenous
community suggest that corporate interests in
Guayaquil, or the losers in the last presidential
election, funded the most violent protests during the
September indigenous strike.”</p>
<p>In a blunt admission, however, the US embassy’s
charge d’affaires conceded that “many of these
organizations do not have much support from the
general population.”</p>
<h3>‘Private CIA’ and top USAID contractor cultivates
anti-Correa environmental groups</h3>
<p>Some of the environmental and Indigenous groups in
the opposition to Rafael Correa and his progressive
Citizens’ Revolution were funded by the <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/20/inside-americas-meddling-machine-the-us-funded-group-that-interferes-in-elections-around-the-globe/"
moz-do-not-send="true">US government’s National
Endowment for Democracy (NED)</a>, a front for US
intelligence created by the Ronald Reagan
administration’s CIA in the 1980s.</p>
<p>While the <a
href="https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-search.php"
moz-do-not-send="true">NED’s publicly available
grants database</a> shows hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of grants distributed to these
individual groups, the most substantial sums of money
in Ecuador flowed from the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID).</p>
<p>In 2006, in the final months of Ecuador’s neoliberal
government, USAID’s top activities in the country
consisted of ostensible anti-drug operations, with
“counternarcotics” initiatives making up the majority
of its budget.</p>
<p><a
href="https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ECU?fiscal_year=2006&measure=Obligations"
moz-do-not-send="true">USAID’s official statistics</a>
show that its top partners that year were the
Pentagon, State Department, and Ecuadorian government,
respectively. The contractor Chemonics had a
comparatively small $1.2 million contract as part of
the agency’s “Environmental Support Program.”</p>
<img
src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/USAID-Ecuador-2006.png?resize=1170%2C617&ssl=1"
alt="USAID Ecuador 2006" style="margin-right: 25px;"
moz-do-not-send="true" width="449" height="237"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">USAID’s funding for Ecuador in 2006
</font>
<p>But by 2009, Correa was publicly challenging US
imperialism, collaborating with other leftist leaders
in Latin America, particularly Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez, and turning Ecuador into a member of the
Bolivarian trade alliance ALBA. So USAID’s priorities
in the region quickly shifted.</p>
<p>The for-profit firm Chemonics became a top recipient
of USAID Ecuador contracts, raking in $5.4 million in
2009 to work on “<a
href="https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ECU?fiscal_year=2009&measure=Obligations"
moz-do-not-send="true">Sustainable Forests and
Coasts</a>,” suddenly one of USAID’s top programs in
the nation. Now, Washington was committed to funding
an environmentalist opposition to Correa.</p>
<p>Though it was wracked by a series of scandals,
including accusations of <a
href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-10-05/usaid-contractor-chemonics-cited-numerous-mistakes-haiti"
moz-do-not-send="true">corruption</a> and <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/21/top-us-government-aid-partner-to-pay-500k-damages-to-african-american-job-applicants"
moz-do-not-send="true">racism,</a> Chemonics was an
ideal partner for outsourcing gray operations and
ensuring plausible deniability for foreign meddling.</p>
<p>Indeed, Chemonics has long acted as a US intelligence
pass-through, with its founder explaining to the New
York Times that he created the firm in order to “<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/11/business/cozy-links-to-a-us-agency-prove-useful-to-a-rice-trader.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">have my own CIA</a>.”</p>
<p>When Washington and its allies launched a dirty war
on Syria in 2011, Chemonics was used to funnel tens of
millions of dollars to the <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2016/10/02/white-helmets-us-military-intervention-regime-change-syria/"
moz-do-not-send="true">White Helmets, a faux
humanitarian initiative that functioned as a
propaganda ancillary for the jihadist gangs</a> the
US had armed and trained to destabilize the country.</p>
<p>By 2013, USAID was pouring a plurality of its Ecuador
<a
href="https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ECU?fiscal_year=2013&measure=Obligations"
moz-do-not-send="true">budget into anti-Correa
environmental initiatives</a>. “Climate Change
Mitigation and Adaption” and “Sustainable Forests and
Coasts” were USAID’s top activities, and “General
Environmental Protection” was the largest sector, with
$16 million that year.</p>
<p>Chemonics was USAID’s top partner in Ecuador, with
$11 million in 2013 alone (significantly greater than
the second-biggest recipient, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society, with just $4 million that year).</p>
<img
src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/USAID-Ecuador-2013-climate-change-environment.png?resize=1170%2C620&ssl=1"
alt="USAID Ecuador 2013 climate change environment"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="449" height="238"><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-2">In 2013, USAID poured millions into
environmental groups to counter Correa’s
infrastructure projects
</font>
<p>2013 became a very controversial year for the US
agency. Bolivia’s socialist President Evo Morales, a
close ally of Correa, expelled USAID from his country,
condemning it for supporting opposition groups and
destabilizing his democratically elected government.</p>
<p>As with Ecuador, Chemonics had been one of USAID’s
top partners in Bolivia, with a <a
href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/05/01/180382925/bolivian-president-evo-morales-expels-usaid"
moz-do-not-send="true">$10.5 million contract for
“democracy-building”</a> in the country.</p>
<p>The “Strengthening Democratic Institutions” program
that USAID ran in Bolivia happened to share the same
name as a regime-change scheme targeting the
government of socialist President Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela.</p>
<p>That year, WikiLeaks published an explosive 2006 US
embassy cable that revealed that USAID’s Office of
Transition Initiatives (OTI) had a <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS3356_a.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">“5-point strategy” for regime
change in Venezuela</a>: “1) Strengthening
Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’
Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting
Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez
internationally.”</p>
<p>Morales and Correa understood that this USAID-OTI
plan was a regime-change blueprint, and Washington was
using the same tactics against them.</p>
<p>Around the same time in Ecuador, local media outlets
had begun to ask questions about USAID and Chemonics.
A 2012 report in the newspaper El Telégrafo, titled “<a
href="https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/zoo/1/campesinos-detectaron-objetivos-de-ong-financiada-por-usaid"
moz-do-not-send="true">Farmers discover ‘aims’ of
NGO funded by USAID</a>,” noted that Chemonics’
“Sustainable Forests and Coasts” program was based in
the provinces of Esmeraldas, Guayas, and Manabí.</p>
<p>“The project is exerting suspected political
interference because its site of operation is in the
areas with the most minerals and natural resources,”
the newspaper wrote. “The same occurs in other parts
of Latin America when the region tries to economically
and scientifically manage these resources for itself.”</p>
<p>A Correa administration official, Gabriela Rosero,
told El Telégrafo, “We realized that those who are
implementing this project do not even have legal
representation in Ecuador, but rather are in another
country or are remotely controlling it from where the
resources come from.”</p>
<p>These projects “are causing us doubts,” the
Ecuadorian government official said.</p>
<p>USAID’s cover had been blown. In December 2013, the
Correa government <a
href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/usaid-cierre-oficinas-ecuador-eeuu.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">froze its cooperation</a>
with the US agency.</p>
<p>In 2014, USAID announced that it was <a
href="https://www.larepublica.ec/blog/2014/09/30/usaid-sale-ecuador/"
moz-do-not-send="true">leaving Ecuador</a>.
Washington’s reaction was muted, but it was clear that
Correa had forced the agency to leave. His government
simultaneously expelled the US embassy’s military
attaché and its anti-narcotics group as well.</p>
<p>“We will not accept being a colony of anyone,” Correa
proclaimed at the time, adding that his country did
not need USAID’s assistance.</p>
<p>By Correa’s last year in office in 2017, USAID
Ecuador funding was at an all-time low of $18 million.
But then next year, something dramatically changed:
The Moreno government turned on its constituents,
threw its weight behind the right-wing oligarchy and
Washington, and declared war on Correísmo.</p>
<p>Moreno invited USAID back into the country, and
Washington returned the favor by helping to bankroll
the conservative regime he was constructing. The
agency’s contracts in Ecuador suddenly skyrocketed in
2018 by over 440%, from $18 million to $80 million.
Moreno was being rewarded for his turncoat behavior.</p>
<p>The drastic increase reflected how USAID functions
not as a traditional aid agency, but as a semi-covert
soft-power arm of US empire.</p>
<p>The large sums of money that the US government handed
out to opposition groups in Ecuador, along with the
declassified embassy cables published by WikiLeaks –
and even the words of CONAIE and Pachakutik leaders
themselves – paint a clear picture of how Washington
systematically divided Ecuador’s left.</p>
<p>Ecuadorian politics today remains deeply polarized
between Correístas and anti-Correístas, much as
politics in Venezuela is polarized between Chavistas
and anti-Chavistas, and in Nicaragua between
Sandinistas and anti-Sandinistas.</p>
<p>The Citizens’ Revolution has built a mass base in
working-class and poor communities, while other
political forces have been unable to substantially
erode its foundation.</p>
<p>Instead of challenging this popular core of
Correísmo, smaller groups have managed to whittle away
at the margins, targeting the middle class and
educated youth, who are more susceptible to liberal
identity-centered politics.</p>
<p>With millions of dollars in grants and control over
media narratives, the US government has helped to
astroturf a pseudo-left that has abandoned
working-class politics and anti-imperialism while
exploiting race, gender, and environmental issues to
divide Ecuador’s progressive forces and weaken
Correísmo.</p>
<p>In April 2021, when these small contingents managed
to swing the presidential election in favor of a
right-wing banker, Washington’s subversive long game
had finally paid off.</p>
<p>And it is only a matter of time before this
divide-and-conquer strategy <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/04/usaid-document-nicaragua-coup/"
moz-do-not-send="true">is repeated</a> in another
Latin American country with a left-wing government.</p>
<br>
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