Skip to main content

How Ecuador’s US-backed, coup-supporting ‘ecosocialist’ candidate Yaku Pérez aids the right-wing

Ecuador’s presidential candidate Yaku Pérez supported coups in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. His US-backed party Pachakutik and supposedly “left-wing” environmentalist campaign is being promoted by right-wing corporate lobbyists.
 
by Ben Norton 

Part 2 - “Left-wing” support for right-wing coups in Latin America
 
Yaku Pérez Guartambel says he wants Ecuadorians to use fewer cars and plant more trees. With campaign photos often showing him riding a bicycle at rallies, Perez’s image seems custom tailored to appeal to the sensibility of Western green activists.

Pérez is especially critical of the Correista movement for its reliance on extraction. He has proposed an end to mining in Ecuador and a restriction of oil extraction.

Ecuador is a developing, formerly colonized country and thus relatively poor compared to Global North imperialist nations. But it has an advantage: large oil and mineral reserves.

These resources have been key to the political and economic program of Correa and his followers, who used them to turbocharge development of Ecuador, fund popular social programs, and invest billions of dollars in universal healthcare, high-quality education, and advanced infrastructure.

Yet the supposed progressive appearance of Pérez’s political program ends with his environmental policies. When it comes to international politics, he has shown himself to be deeply right-wing.

And while Pérez uses his Indigenous Kañari heritage to claim to represent Ecuador’s Native communities, many are in fact strongly against him and his party.

Indigenous outrage against Pérez especially grew when he supported the US-backed military coup in Bolivia in November 2019.

In October 2020, Evo Morales’ Indigenous-majority Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party won the election in a landslide, defeating the US-backed coup regime. Numerous Ecuadorian Indigenous leaders were invited to the inauguration of MAS President Luis Arce, but Pérez was not. When asked why, it was made clear that Pérez was shunned because he had supported the coup.

Even before the violent regime-change operation, Pérez was a harsh critic of Morales, accusing him and Correa of “authoritarianism, machismo, extractivism, and populism.” Pérez flatly refused to recognize the legitimacy of Evo’s government.

In 2017, Pérez attacked Evo again, tweeting, “His ignorance is encyclopedic. Evo is biologically Indigenous; in terms of his identity he whitewashed and colonized himself and doesn’t feel or understand the Native cosmovision.

After backing the coup, Pérez went silent about Bolivia, saying nothing as the junta, led by racist Christian extremists, massacred Indigenous protesters they dehumanized as “satanic.”

But the coup in Bolivia is not the only US-led regime-change campaign in Latin America that Yaku Pérez has supported.

In November 2016, Pérez praised the US-backed soft coup that removed Brazil’s left-wing Workers’ Party government from power, while endorsing a right-wing “lawfare” (legal warfare) campaign that had targeted Argentina’s progressive President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Pérez also openly called for Ecuador’s leftist President Correa and Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro to be overthrown.

Corruption ended the governments of Dilma [Rousseff] and Cristina,” Pérez tweeted approvingly. “Now all that’s missing is for Rafael Correa and Maduro to fall. It is just a matter of time.”

Pérez condemned the socialist governments of Correa in Ecuador and Maduro in Venezuela as “colonial, ethnocidal, and racist.” And he denounced the elected left-wing governments in Venezuela and Argentina as “authoritarian, extractivist, and corrupt.

Pérez resorted to the kind of superficial anti-Venezuela rhetoric favored by the Latin American right-wing once again on the day of the February 7 election. In a friendly interview with a conservative media outlet, Pérez denounced the leading leftist presidential candidate, stating, “Rafael Correa, as Chávez did giving power to Maduro, today he is trying to give power to Andrés Arauz. Arauz is the Maduro of Ecuador.

In 2017, when Brazil was ruled by the unelected neoliberal coup government of Michel Temer, Pérez publicly expressed hope that former left-wing Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff would be arrested, alongside Correa and his former Vice President Jorge Glas. (Ecuador’s US-backed Lenín Moreno government did arrest Glas and throw him in prison on bogus charges, as part of an authoritarian crackdown on leftist Correista politicians.)

In the same vein, Pérez supported a brutal US-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018.

After right-wing extremists, with support from Washington, spent months murdering, torturing, and terrorizing supporters of the socialist Sandinista Front, Pérez responded by blaming all of the violence on Nicaragua’s elected left-wing government.


Who would have thought that the Sandinistas that before fought against the dictatorship are now shooting their people,” Pérez wrote in October 2018.

Everything Pérez has said about Ecuador’s neighbors shows that, if he were to take power, he would help Washington and the region’s right-wing oligarchs wage war against the so-called Pink Tide, the wave of leftist governments that won power in Latin America starting in the early 2000s.

Source, links:


[1][3][4][5][6][7]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The real reason Zionists and their US-Western imperialist buddies are slaughtering Palestinian children in Gaza

globinfo freexchange   Gaza is gas-rich. At least 1.4 trillion cubic feet rich. Geologists and natural resources economists have confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip. Back in 1999, the Palestinian authority signed a deal with British Gas. Just off the Gaza coast two wells were drilled. It was a multi-billion dollar gift from God and economic boom for both home and abroad.    In 2007, Hamas came to power and Israel launched an offensive on Gaza Strip, leaving behind 1,400 dead Palestinians, but taking with it the gas fields. Within a year, Israel announced the discovery of the Leviathan natural gas field, which did include Gaza's riches, valued at 453 billion dollars. But Gazans have been denied around 47 billion dollars in revenue. As for Tel Aviv, it's gunning to become a new hub.   As Andy Rowell of priceofoil.org repo

Roger Waters & Abby Martin on Gaza Genocide

Empire Files   Legendary Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters joins Empire Files to discuss his longtime advocacy for Palestine and the crisis in Gaza.       

Roger Waters on rise of neoliberalism, fascism & far-right - Julian Assange - Ukraine & Gaza strip

Kontra Channel   A global exclusive by journalist Panos Charitos on Kontra News 21:30 - Roger Waters interview 30 November 2023 on Kontra's main news bulletin.

Time for the anti-imperialist powers to take the keys of the planet from the declining and morally bankrupt West

It's time for China, Russia, the Global South and the Arab World to form a robust coalition with the mission to make sure that international law will truly apply to everyone   by system failure   We are witnessing a genocide in real-time. Israeli Apartheid state has launched another ethnic cleansing operation against Palestinians, not only in Gaza, but in the West Bank too. And the level of brutality of this operation shows that the Zionists of Netanyahu regime are absolutely determined this time to complete what the Israel is trying to do for decades: wipe out Palestinians from their land.   Therefore, in essence, this is just the culmination of an ongoing ethnic cleansing operation against Palestinians that is going on since 1948.   However, there are some new facts in this re-boosted cycle of violence this time, apart from the level of brutality against Palestinian civilians. One, is the fact that the US-Israeli propaganda doesn't seem to be very effective, despit

How US media legitimise Israel's barbarism against the Palestinians

By presenting Israel's terror campaign against Palestinians as if it were defensible, the US media are doing their part to help it continue   by Gregory Shupak   Part 4 - An ethical veneer Similarly, The Los Angeles Times declared that " Israel has every right to use military force to prevent " attacks like the ones that Hamas carried out on 7 October and that Israel " must stay true to its values by doing everything possible to minimize the suffering of innocent Palestinian residents of Gaza. " The piece applauds Biden for saying he will ask Congress for " an unprecedented support package for Israel's defense " and for vaguely suggesting that Israel reflect on whether killing thousands of Palestinians will help it " achieve [its] objectives ". The editorial then asserts: " That Israel does not target civilians is small comfort for the families of those killed or wounded. " Perhaps the authors think it magnanimous to mention th

Ο λόγος που οι δημοσκοπήσεις δείχνουν δεύτερο κόμμα το ΠΑΣΟΚ

του system failure     Σε προηγούμενο άρθρο , αμέσως μετά τις επαναληπτικές εκλογές του Ιουνίου, είχαμε επισημάνει ότι οι τρεις στόχοι που δεν κατάφερε να πετύχει η ντόπια ολιγαρχία είναι συνοπτικά, η στρατηγική ήττα ΣΥΡΙΖΑ και αντικατάστασή του από το ΠΑΣΟΚ, η απομάκρυνση Μητσοτάκη και το "ρετουσάρισμα" της ΝΔ, η αποτροπή εισόδου ακροδεξιών κομμάτων στη βουλή που θα μπορούσαν να αποτελέσουν πόλο έλξης μερίδας ψηφοφόρων της ΝΔ στο μέλλον.  Αναλυτικότερα, ο στόχος της ολοκληρωτικής ήττας του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ και η επιστροφή του στο 3% απέτυχε. Είναι χαρακτηριστικό ότι ο στρατός των διαδικτυακών τρολ του καθεστώτος Μητσοτάκη, επιδόθηκε σε ομοβροντία "λυσσασμένων" αναρτήσεων με κεντρικό θέμα την επιστροφή στο 3%, όπως είχε γίνει και στις εκλογές του 2019. Φάνηκε ότι ο διακαής πόθος του κατεστημένου ήταν να ξεφορτωθεί μια και καλή το κόμμα της Αριστεράς που, απ'ότι φαίνεται, θεωρείται, ακόμα, ένας μη ελεγχόμενος παράγοντας και άρα ένας συστημικός κίνδυνος που μπο

Who controls agricultural land in Ukraine?

The total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals, and large agribusinesses is thus over nine million hectares, exceeding 28 percent of the country’s arable land. The rest is used by over eight million Ukrainian farmers.   Part 9 - How will the post-war reconstruction plans proposed by international financial institutions affect the agricultural sector?   Ukraine’s staggering and growing foreign debt – estimated at US$132 billion in 2020 – makes it likely that reconstruction will be dictated by international financial institutions and foreign interests, which have already indicated that they will use their leverage to further privatize numerous sectors, including agriculture.    For instance, the World Bank has asserted that Ukraine’s reconstruction must be accompanied by “ further liberalization of the agricultural land market, ” while the Ukraine Reform Tracker, presented at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in July 2022, states that the post-war moment presents th

The BANNED Video Israel Doesn't' Want You To See

Double Down News   Is this what they don't want you to know? 

Gaza 'Textbook Case of GENOCIDE' - Holocaust Scholar

Owen Jones   Raz Segal - an Israeli associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in the US - is someone you need to listen to. When he uses the term 'genocide', it is not done lightly - it is with precision. Here he sets out the case that the Israeli state is committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza - and questions of intent, incitement, prevention and accountability.  

Zionist anti-Palestine censorship is surging

The Real News Network   Dylan Saba, a lawyer for Palestine Legal, was asked to write a piece on the silencing of pro-Palestine voices by The Guardian —only to then be informed at the last minute that his piece had been killed. Saba joins countless pro-Palestine activists and voices who have been targeted with termination, doxxing, harassment, censorship, and even death threats. Saba joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the intensifying war on civil liberties unfolding as public revulsion at Israel's crimes in Gaza grows.