Ecuador: China’s Newest Client State

by Lorna Salzman (January 2015)

Some years back, linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the leading leftist intellectuals in the USA and a perpetual critic of American foreign policy, wrote a celebratory opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune upon the accession of several leftist governments to power in Latin America: Bachelet in Chile, Lula in Brazil, Chavez in Venezuela. (Morales in Bolivia appeared somewhat later).

Who facilitated and funded these monster industrial and earth-moving projects? Foreign corporations of course, from places like Chile and Canada. But the hundred-ton gorilla was China. Exit IMF and World Bank. Enter China. Not content with moving into Africa, it saw big opportunities in Latin America, historically underdeveloped, with weak or failed social movements, disenfranchised peasants, starved of industrialization, and eager to create a middle class of consumers so as to fend off domestic socialist and communist movements for social change. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this was Ecuador following the election of Pres. Rafael Correa, an economist with an aptitude for enticing populist speeches that readily smothered all leftist rhetoric. 

Two things converged in Ecuador, one preceding Correa and one following his election. The World Bank had approved a large loan to Ecuador contingent on it promising to fully exploit all of its natural resources, including those located on existing nature preserves and indigenous lands. The second was a $20 billion loan from China, much of which was put into a presidential discretionary fund rather than into a dedicated fund for social programs for the poor. It is generally understood that the sale of oil from the Yasuni preserve will be used to repay this debt.

With great fanfare, Correa announced his readiness to pull about one-third of the Yasuni preserve out of the oil drilling plan provided the world paid Ecuador $30 billion as compensation. Only a small fraction of this was ever promised, and then internal government documents were discovered showing secret talks with China to get them involved, indicating the fraudulence of this offer and exposing his secret plan to drill everywhere in the Yasuni preserve. (His government put up billboards in the main square of Quito claiming that “only” one million acres would be drilled out of ten million.)

As a result of this, the original Intag mining proposal, this time involving CODELCO, the Chilean mining company, was revived, leading to a massive protest in May 2014 in the Intag valley involving 400 community residents and nearly 300 police, who barged into a community checkpoint accompanied by the governor of the Imbabura province, the president of the Garcia Morena province, employees of ENAMI, the state mining company, and representatives of CODELCO. It now appears that this consortium has set up camp permanently throughout the provinces so as to more easily detect emerging resistance to the mining plan.

Sources:

The Guardian (UK)

Oscar Leon, The Real News Network/truthout, 12/10/2013

Pachamama Foundation (www.Pachamama.org)

DECOIN (www.decoin.org)

Caravana Climatica (www.caravanaclimatica.org)

Gerard Coffey, The Grinder,  01/14/2014

Translation of Villavicencio quote by Thérèse Balagna

Personal communication of Carlos Zorrilla and Arden Buck

Photo above by Lorna Salzman, Quito, September 2013

 

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