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

"Kidnapped in Int'l Waters": Israel Intercepts Gaza-Bound Aid Ship, Detains Greta Thunberg & Others

Democracy Now!   Eleven peace activists and one journalist on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship, the "Madleen," were detained by Israeli soldiers as their ship carrying vital humanitarian aid for starving Palestinians approached Gaza.    The ship was intercepted by Israeli forces in the middle of the night in international waters. Its supplies were seized and communications jammed. The unarmed activists will likely be transported to Israeli detention or "immediately deported," says Ann Wright, a U.S. military veteran who has participated in four Freedom Flotilla journeys and now serves on the steering committee of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. She calls on citizens of countries around the world to push for the activists' release and an end to Israel's war on Gaza. 

How Israel’s Supporters Play Victim to Justify Genocide & Silence Critics

BreakThrough News   As Israel commits a live-streamed genocide in Gaza, Western media and political elites continue to center one narrative: Jewish fear. But what about the actual victims of this genocide—Palestinians? Journalist Nora Barrows-Friedman joins Rania Khalek on Dispatches for a fearless conversation on Zionist indoctrination in the Jewish diaspora, how antisemitism is being weaponized to silence critics of Israel, and how Jewish identity politics has been manipulated to cover for unspeakable crimes. From the media blackout on Israeli war crimes to the erasure of anti-Palestinian hate crimes—even in the diaspora—Nora lays bare the contradictions and power structures behind it all. 

How the EU is using anti-Russia sanctions to criminalise journalism

The EU sanctioned me and my media outlet for covering Palestine protests in Germany. It’s part of Europe’s growing authoritarianism and militarism, cloaked in language of fighting disinformation and defending democracy.   by Hüseyin Dogru   Part 2 - How the EU uses anti-Russian hysteria to smear Palestine solidarity journalism   The official rationale for sanctioning me hinges on red .’s alleged links to Russian influence. The EU sanctions listing cited just two pieces of “evidence”: that some red. staff had previously worked for Russian-funded media, and that we covered “politically controversial subjects” – specifically: Palestine. That’s it. The listing accuses me, through my work with red ., of “facilitating violent demonstrations”, amplifying “radical Islamic terrorist narratives” and claims our staff “coordinated with occupiers”. Not a single piece of evidence is cited, apart from the fact that we published footage of a pro-Palestine student occupation in Berlin. I...

UN report confirms: Israel is a terrorist state and its goal is to exterminate all Palestinians

Israeli attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, UN Commission says.     globinfo freexchange Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip, part of a widespread and relentless assault against the Palestinian people in which Israeli forces have committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, said in a new report [yesterday]. While the Commission paid special attention to the situation in Gaza, the report focuses on attacks in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole, and in Israel. “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza,” said Navi Pi...

How the U.S. & Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowed the IAEA to be used by the United States and Israel—an undeclared nuclear weapons state in long-term violation of IAEA rules—to manufacture a pretext for war on Iran, despite his agency’s own conclusion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.   by Medea Benjamin - Nicolas J. S. Davies On June 12th, based on a damning report by Grossi, a slim majority of the IAEA Board of Governors voted to find Iran in non-compliance with its obligations as an IAEA member. Of the 35 countries represented on the Board, only 19 voted for the resolution, while 3 voted against it, 11 abstained and 2 did not vote. The United States contacted eight board member governments on June 10th to persuade them to either vote for the resolution or not to vote. Israeli officials said they saw the U.S. arm-twisting for the IAEA resolution as a significant signal of U.S. support for Israel’s war plans, revealing how much Isra...

Keir Starmer admits Ukraine a proxy war

The Grayzone   The Grayzone 's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on the British PM's unintentional acknowledgement of an inconvenient truth. 

[LIVE] War in the Middle East after Iran's retaliation against Israel

globinfo freexchange      Explosions in Tel Aviv as sirens sound across Israel amid Iranian missile attacks in response to Israeli strikes.      The Israeli military continues to launch waves of strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites, as well as major cities.   Updates:  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/6/13/live-explosions-reported-in-iran-amid-israel-tensions  

War criminal Netanyahu is pushing the Orange Clown and the US into the abyss

globinfo freexchange   It seems that the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, is rushing to accelerate the decline of the US empire by forcing Donald Trump into an utterly devastating war with Iran.   Trump shot himself in the foot during his first term by killing the Iran nuclear deal just because he wanted to erase everything from the Obama legacy. His insane narcissism pushed him into crazy acts and made him believe that he could make another deal with Iran credited solely on him.   But now he is in big trouble because he has to deal with a corrupted psychopath who won't hesitate to burn the entire planet just to save himself.  As if the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza was not enough, the out-of-control psychopath Netanyahu, is doing whatever he can to drag the US into a war with Iran. As he realized that the Iranians are approaching the negotiating table again, (rather surprisingly with the man that killed the first deal and assassinated Qasem Soleimani), he decide...

Trump in SHOCK: Putin & China FLIP His Grave Mistake into STUNNING Victory

Danny Haiphong   Putin & China just gave Trump a rude BRICS awakening, and this bombshell will change everything for generations to come. Geopolitical analyst Ben Norton details the truth about Trump's biggest failure against the rising power of BRICS led by Russia and China, and why the US's role as super power is now in serious question.     Related: Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

UNHINGED CNN, FOX War Propaganda After Iran Strikes

Breaking Points   Krystal and Saagar discuss unhinged war propaganda on mainstream media.