Four days after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa was rescued from a police hospital in Quito by members of the country’s special forces, reporters and analysts are still trying to make sense of the events surrounding Thursday’s crisis. The New York Times’ Simon Romero has a first take at recreating the surreal rescue mission which, reports now indicate, left five dead and 38 wounded. [The fatalities, the Times says, included a policeman, two soldiers, a police officer escorting the president, and a student who had come to support Mr. Correa]. While debates continue about whether Thursday’s events qualified as a “coup attempt” or not, what seems increasingly clear from the Times report is just how real the danger against Correa’s life was Thursday night. Consider this, from Romero’s report, for example:
“Amid the din of gunfire, an elite special operations squad entered the hospital, grasping M-16 assault rifles. Their voices crackled over Motorola radios. Arriving at Room 302, they put a helmet on Mr. Correa. Electricity in parts of the hospital went down. Using night-vision goggles, the soldiers guided him to his vehicle…The president’s armored Nissan sport utility vehicle showed bullet damage, including a shot to the windshield.”
It’s difficult not to be reminded of the Honduras coup of June 2009 when reading some commentary after Thursday’s “coup attempt.” On the one hand, there are those like Mary Anastasia O’Grady who reject the notion that Mr. Correa was ever in any significant danger. [O’Grady rejects not only the claim that Correa was “kidnapped” but also the claim, made by US State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley, that the police uprising “represented a challenge to the government.”] Like with Honduras, there have been a variety of debates about whether Thursday’s events constituted an “attempted coup” [here, here, and here, for example]. I, for one, find Miguel Centellas attempt to historicize the term “golpe” in the Ecuadorean/Andean context quite useful and, in fact, convincing. [Centellas ultimately argues Thursday’s events do qualify as a “failed golpe.”] And, as with Honduras before it, there has been significant discussion, by commentators and political figures alike, about whether or not the threat of coups is still alive in Latin America. Mark Weisbrot, in the Guardian, argues yes:
“As the South American governments feared, Washington's support for the coup government in Honduras over the last year has encouraged and increased the likelihood of rightwing coups against democratic left governments in the region. This attempt in Ecuador has failed, but there will be likely be more threats in the months and years ahead.”
Or, as Argentine foreign minister Hector Timerman put it, “The coup trend that began with Honduras is far from over.” The counter perspective can be found at Foreign Policy, which contrasts the “ghosts of the past” seen in Ecuador with the positive signs of a new era seen in Brazil’s Sunday election.
Moreover, what should not be lost amidst the above debates is that whatever Thursday’s events were, they did not succeed. Counterfactuals are difficult to prove, but it seems increasingly the case that Thursday’s insurrection failed in no small part because of the unequivocal support for Rafael Correa by Latin American governments of all political leanings – as well as the United States. WOLA’s Adam Isacson in the Guardian:
“What turned the tide was a rapid and decisive response from the international community and from important sectors in Ecuador. The US, the Organisation of American States, and nearly every government in Latin America, right or left, quickly condemned the uprising and declared unconditional support for Correa and Ecuador's constitutional order. The armed forces' high command also opposed it.”
While many believe Rafael Correa has emerged strengthened from Thursday [EFE says the law which police officers protested against will go into effect tomorrow], it will be interesting to watch how long that new political capital lasts. A post-crisis statement from CONAIE, Correa’s principal opposition on the “left,” suggests it could only be temporary.
For more Ecuador resources: Center for Democracy in the Americas, Americas Quarterly.
To other headlines:
· Brazilians will have to wait until October 31 for the election of a new president. In round-one of voting Sunday, the PT’s Dilma Rouseff won a resounding victory against the PSDB’s José Serra and Green Party candidate Marina Silva but could not break the 50% mark needed to avoid a runoff. The New York Times reports, that with 99.6 percent of the votes counted, Rousseff had 46.8 percent of the Sunday’s votes, comparted to Serra’s 32.6 percent. More analysis and numbers from Brazil’s elections, in Portuguese, from Folha de Sao Paulo.
· Meanwhile, in Lima, Peru, voters appear to have elected a center-left mayor for the first time in three decades. Human rights advocate and former minister of social development and women’s affairs, Susana Villarán, had a narrow 38.9% to 37.2% lead, as of this morning, reports the AP. The elections are being seen as a “barometer” ahead of next year’s presidential vote. The AP: “Villarán is not allied with the main leftist contender in that race, populist former military officer Ollanta Humala, though he endorsed her” in Sunday’s mayoral contest.
· In Nicaragua, reports El País, the FSLN-controlled Supreme Court has decided that President Daniel Ortega will be allowed to run for re-election next year. The court said Thursday that article 147 of the constitution – prohibiting consecutive re-election – was “inapplicable.” Opposition magistrates appear to have boycotted Thursday’s court session, in protest against the Ortega government’s controversial handling of judicial replacements.
· And finally on upcoming elections, CEPR’s Haiti Watch has a report on the Nov. 28 vote in Haiti. According to the piece, there is widespread citizen discontent about the election process which could lead to very high voter abstention.
· Various outlets have been reporting on the disturbing news that American public health doctors deliberately infected at least 700 Guatemalans with syphilis between 1946 and 1948 – a twisted attempt to test the effectiveness of penicillin. Wellesley professor Susan Reverby has brought the grotesque experiments to light in a soon-to-be-published paper in the Journal of Policy History. An advanced synopsis can be read here. For the United States part, both Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and HHS Secretary Kathryn Sebelius issued statements of apology last Friday to the government of Guatemala and the survivors and descendants of those infected.
· Lost among other major stories this weekend, the Mexican government is preparing a plan to significantly alter the structure of its police forces, reports the New York Times. The proposal which President Felipe Calderon is expected to announce in the coming weeks will “all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a ‘unified command.’” Such police forces are believed to be “heavily infiltrated” by organized crime. The Times:
“Mr. Calderón’s new plan would eliminate what are now wide variations in police training, equipment, operations and recruitment in favor of a single national standard, helping the government field a more professional, cohesive force to work alongside its soldiers and agents fighting the drug war.”
· AFP has the details of what was again a deadly weekend around Mexico. At least 47 individuals were killed in attacks being blamed on cartels. These include multiple grenade attacks in and around Monterrey – one very close to the US consulate there – as well as the kidnapping of 22 Mexican tourists in Acapulco. The Washington Post, meanwhile, has a weekend report on cartel targeting of Mexican mayors.
· While Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) was apparently in Havana this weekend attempting to broker the release of USAID contractor, Alan Gross, the AP says about a dozen Cuban political prisoners have been contacted and asked if they would be willing to accept freedom in return for leaving the island. The AP: “If such a deal became a reality, it would mark the year's second major release of Cuban political prisoners - once unthinkable in a single-party communist state.” Under the recent deal brokered by the Catholic Church 39 prisoners have been released so far and sent with their families into exile in Spain. In the International Herald Tribune, Julia Sweig argues that with these and other radical changes occurring on the island, it is unexplainable why the US has done nothing to change its Cuba policy in response.
· And finally, in Chile, the Mapuche-government conflict may be coming to an end. La Tercera says the majority of Mapuche hunger strikers will end their protest (23 of 34, reports La Tercera) after the government promised to drop the use of a Pinochet-era anti-terrorist law in their cases. The agreement comes after Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati acted as a negotiator between the Mapuches and the government.
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