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 3 - Friendly ties with the US government
While Yaku Pérez Guartambel has no problem demonizing revolutionary left-wing governments in Latin America as “colonial, ethnocidal, and racist,” he is curiously silent about the US government’s massive human rights violations.
That is because Pérez has fostered cozy ties with Washington, while advancing its agenda in his country.
Before running for president, Pérez served as the prefect for Ecuador’s Azuay province, whose capital, Cuenca, has become a major hub for US expats.
Entire communities of North Americans exist in Cuenca, speaking only English and paying for everything in US dollars (which have been the official currency of Ecuador since 2000 dollarization, following a 1999 economic crash overseen by former Economic Minister Guillermo Lasso, now the major right-wing candidate in the 2021 election).
In June 2019, just as the Donald Trump administration’s new representative in Ecuador, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, was sworn in, Pérez publicized his meeting with the US ambassador in Cuenca.
A month later, Pérez attended a celebration marking Independence Day in the United States, again welcoming the new US ambassador. He posed for a photo smiling in front of an illuminated US flag.
During his presidential campaign, despite garnering little support from the Ecuadorian public, Pérez has found an eager audience from the ambassadors of France and Germany.
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