The Andean country is sinking into an unprecedented multi-faceted crisis: insecurity, extreme poverty, the dismantling of the State, and submission to foreign powers. Amid privatisations, political persecution, and the return of military bases, Ecuador has become a key battleground for Washington’s interests and its confrontation with China in Latin America.
Luis Ernesto Guerra
Much has changed in this Latin American country in recent years.
It has effectively become a regional laboratory for siege and interference by US imperialism, which is itself grappling with a systematic and structural multi-faceted crisis, including a tariff or economic war triggered by the second term of the supremacist US president, Donald Trump.
This policy has unleashed chaos in the unilateral order, marked by social injustice and an invisibilised class struggle, with an irreversible decline in hegemony. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian people bear the burden of the State’s deinstitutionalisation and a multi-faceted crisis of insecurity, with the region’s highest criminal violence rate: 40 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
They are also enduring a socioeconomic crisis, declining employment, nearly three million people in extreme poverty, and the collapse of the education and healthcare systems.
Meanwhile, strategic public energy and oil companies are moving towards monetisation, concession, or privatisation, alongside those in telecommunications and the radio spectrum.
In other words, the devastation of fundamental and human rights, with prison massacres, torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the recurring use of selective political persecution or lawfare, alongside a media and communications structure that supports the narrative of a fortified Carondelet.
Likewise, the indigenous movement in Ecuador, through its political arm, reveals its subjugation and subordination to the political-oligarchic, corporate, and familial power of the far-right, termed “New Ecuador”. This exposes a profound shift towards the right and the abandonment of so-called collective rights, the product of a historic struggle. In addition, there is an agenda to retract subsidies on gas and diesel, increase VAT and raise the age of retirement and social security pensions.
This aligns with the electoral campaign proposal of the current president of the Republic, Daniel Noboa Azín, for a Constituent Assembly with full powers to dismantle the State of justice, social rights, and law.
Moreover, the Occasional Commission of the National Assembly (NA) repealed Article 5 of the Constitution which stated that: “Ecuador is a territory of peace. The establishment of foreign military bases or military installations shall not be allowed. It is prohibited to cede national military bases to foreign security forces.”
Consequently, this has opened the door to the establishment of US military bases, with the possibility of involvement from Israeli Zionism—which is committing genocide and extermination against the Palestinian people—under the guise of cooperation to combat insecurity. President Noboa, in a tour of some countries of the old neo-colonial Europe and the Middle East, including Israel, in dialogue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “The enemies of Israel are our enemies.”
These military bases serve geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geostrategic objectives in both Manta and the Galápagos. The Galápagos base controls access to the Caribbean, while the Manta base oversees the South Pacific, rather than combating drug trafficking structures.
The US Military Base in Manta, Ecuador, closed in September 2009 after 10 years of operations. The closure was formalised with a civic-military ceremony in which Ecuadorian authorities took control of the facilities.
Originally established in 1999 as a Forward Operating Location (FOL) to combat drug trafficking under a neoliberal regime, the base was set up through an agreement between Ecuador and the United States.
During their presence in Manta, certain crimes committed by US Marines went unpunished, including prostitution, rape of minors, human rights violations, and the forced disappearance of artisanal fishermen, owing to their criminal jurisdiction.
Regarding international policy, China and other nations are in the spotlight. The primary objective is to curb China’s presence, as it has emerged as the world’s leading economic, technological, and scientific power, having signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with several Latin American countries and solidified its leadership within BRICS. Its offensive stance also targets Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. PL
(Translated by Natasha Greenidge – Email: natashagreenidge1@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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