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A second struggle for independence

Richard Gott

Ecuador has joined the tide sweeping South America in a new fight for independence.

THE TIDE sweeping through Latin America, checked in Peru and Mexico, has achieved another memorable record this week in Ecuador. The substantial electoral victory of Rafael Correa, a clever, young, U.S.-educated economist and former finance minister, marks a further triumph for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and his Bolivarian revolution, which has long sought to ignite Latin America's "second independence." Mr. Correa joins Mr. Chavez, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Cuba's Fidel Castro in what some have termed "an axis of hope" for the continent. He promises to call a halt to Ecuador's participation in the U.S.-backed free trade area for the Americas, to close the U.S. military base at Manta, and to join OPEC.

Unlike most U.S.-trained academics in Latin America, Mr. Correa is an economist of a radical persuasion. He has been an outspoken critic of the neo-liberal economics of the globalised world, and an opponent of the so-called Washington consensus that has imposed this ideology on Latin America in the past 20 years. He cannot be easily dismissed as a caudillo or a populist, but was the intelligent choice against his absurdly right-wing millionaire opponent, Alvaro Noboa, whose electoral bribes were too outrageous to be effective.

The eruption into politics of Latin America's indigenous peoples has been one of the most significant developments of recent years. To mobilise peoples from many distinct nations — those of the Amazonian region being very different from those of the Andean plateau — and to decide with which white groups to combine, has been a hugely difficult task. Ecuador's powerful indigenous movement made a considerable investment in a previous President, Lucio Gutierrez, who had once echoed the vocabulary of Mr. Chavez. Failing to live up to his promises, he was thrown out after street protests in 2002, but still has substantial support. He was not allowed to stand in the recent election, but his votes appear to have gone to Mr. Correa.

Simon Bolivar, after travelling through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru during the independence wars in the early 19th century, recorded his impression in 1825 that "the poor Indians are truly in a state of lamentable depression. I intend to help them all I can: first as a matter of humanity; second, because it is their right; and finally, because doing good costs little and is worth much."

Nothing much has changed in the past two centuries, but the Bolivarian revolution espoused by Mr. Chavez, in which Mr. Morales and now Mr. Correa are embarked, seeks to remedy that. Evoking the memory of Bolivar, it seeks a second, and peaceful struggle for independence. If successful, it will change the face of Latin America. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

[Richard Gott is the author of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution (Verso).]

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