De facto, Hugo Chavez is adding Ecuador to his growing roster of Bolivarian nations. He is close now with the final steps in place. Ecuador is following the Chavez nation-destroying playbook by ending its international trade and its own democracy.
How did Chavez do this? Easy. He followed the Fidel Castro playbook.
Harkening back to Napoleon????????s assault on Moscow, Chavez, as the Russian monarchy in the early 19th century knew, applied their best weapon: time and patience. Patience and time. In this case, time and patience has been propelled by oil profits out of Caracas to buy political and potential payoffs with a constant game plan.
With time and patience, Chavez and Castro have slowly but surely worked to their neo-communist political and economic advantage across the weaknesses in Latin American systems.
By preying upon the weakest actors, the most susceptible and lower level players, the paid foot soldiers for the neo-communist state are growing.
Chavez and Castro are surrounded by former KGB operatives and Cuban intelligence staff, coupled with an array of increasingly active business operatives and political hacks. The Caracas politburo has a plan. Normative diplomacy cannot ???????negotiate??????? with this new Iron Curtain which plays by its own undiplomatic rules.
Now, the constancy of their efforts has started to pay off. The Chavez plan has dovetailed and now utilizes the Fora de Sao Paulo activist agenda.
While Venezuela as a state has ceased to exist in a normative realm, the neo-communist hedge fund out of Caracas is winning players. This then is the command central which now radiates with total obedience to the Venezuelan outposts which are improperly called their embassies and information offices which are in fact pathways for bribery, extortion and propaganda. These are not embassies. These are old school Cold War installations for deception and disinformation campaigns. These paid minions illegally lobby the U.S. government and foreign governments. The Chavez regime actors, often hiding under diplomatic immunity, pass out cash and contracts and promised financial gain.
In other words, Chavez is trying to buy affection and compile an impressive array of corporatist alignments in what many call business streams- full cradle to grave control of operations from mining to manufacturing.
Chavez, and his inner circle, have no interest in legal business affairs or actual affairs of state. Their off-the-books transactions carry the veneer of government when in fact government neither knows what they do nor how they do this nor who or what benefits from their acts. In other words, Chavez hides behind the veneer of government for legitimacy while his acts are non governmental and are not of the people or of his government. His acts self-aggrandize his chosen cronies. The people- the raison d????????etre for all this mischief – are kept in the dark, ignorant and spoon-fed wildly emotional propaganda streams in this brave new world.
To understand the incapacity of foreign governments to withstand the Chavez infiltration, we acknowledge that his effects do best inside governments that have structurally weak operational system, scant to no rule of law and have suffered destabilizing external and internal shocks, whether political (real or engineered) or physical.
Unlike Chile which retained its Pinochet Era Toobin Tax that actually inoculated Chile from the ravages of the 1997-99 Latin American hot money attacks (financial shocks) which destabilized whole nations, including Brazil and Ecuador, Venezuela was not a victim of the hot money raids of that era since its government solely depended on petroleum and the money kept rolling in.
With numerous cross-border similarities, all Latin nations are distinct and fall uneasily in to generalizations. Any who assume, as is often seen in modern media, that one size foreign policy for South America fits all and is missing, is ignorant and na????ve.
However, the destructive effects of the hot money raids and economic collapses across Latin America in the Clinton Era have not been analyzed. This sweep of economic collapse, albeit in most cases self-engineered by failure to install sound fiscal policies and economic firewalls, in fact swept out what was historically called the oligarchy in Latin America.
Today a new oligarchy of self-made or state-enriched nouveau riche top the lists of moneyed classes in South America. Although little reported, in most arenas, the old elites have been replaced with a newer elite, appearing out of whole cloth by their capacity to buy and sell.
Incorrectly blaming globalization (whatever that is) for the failure of the old oligarchs to deliver any sustainable care for the common citizen, nations such as Ecuador saw its economy in full collapse, its banks shuttered, deposits seized and about 20% of its brightest in an economic diaspora???????fleeing for work anywhere they could find it. Poverty soared above 70% even as the government failed to rein in its own padded state rolls to the current level where a whopping 70% of all of Ecuador????????s GDP goes not to service the growing poverty but to union-mandated payrolls for state employees and vast, unknown executive salaries and payrolls which would make any ENRON leader blush.
Adding to these problems facing Ecuador is the simple fact that no one knows fully what happened to state income during the Gutierrez era. Ecuadoreans know that the state-run Petroecuador, their golden goose, is incompetent and is not laying golden eggs. Mired in mismanagement and malfeasance, Petroecuador has criminally squandered its mandate to deliver petroleum to benefit its commonweal. Ecuadoreans know that stubbornly high rates of poverty need not exist in their nation nor should their educational system remain in the dankest of sub-level, poorly paid educators who have ill-prepared Ecuadoreans for little else than low-level European-style union-controlled state jobs of no output.
As the old leadership refused to meet the challenges of the times Ägenerations of societal leaders who never once considered the plight of their own poor in any helpful fashion; even the word compassion really does not translate well in Latin American cultures; acts of charity are considered signs of foolishness and are regarded with scorn and derision in generalÅ, none moved to effect stabilizing reforms or acts with surety, insisting that political voices would miraculously repair what had been broken if only non state actors could have ???????space.???????
Many have written that many of the Latin oligarchs acted like a ruling class or as a mafia to retain power for its own subset of elites. This claim has been substantiated. But this mafia of self-serving, poorly prepared elites were ill-equipped to adapt to growing societal issues, never having contributed any personal effort or capital to actually assisting the communities and national needs.
Today, no one weeps for the loss of these self-styled ruling elites who did nothing to endear themselves to any community. Hugo Chavez preyed on this phenomena in his early political career, denouncing the old elites and insisting that his state-backed efforts would assist the poor. The IMF stepped in and debt cycles began. And still the substitute parenting of the IMF performed no functioning structural reforms to bolster democracy. Direct foreign investment ???????? still badly needed – has been spotty while speculative play has replaced long term growth investment.
All this is to say that Ecuador is an unstable, weak republic that had suffered wartime debts from the 1995 border war with Peru, a lengthy El Nino weather pattern that wiped out much infrastructure and the full collapse of its economy. Central Bankers came and went as did presidents. Instability became the norm, poverty soared, acts of charity and compassion were still ignored as political solutions were offered to save the nation.
Government as savior is a bad idea. To hasten the end of the old ways, Lucio Gutierrez led a coup against the utterly failed darling of Ecuador????????s oligarchy-riddled banking system, President Mahuad. As a golpista, Gutierrez promised political salve???????to help the poor to heal the nation????????s wounds. Instead, Gutierrez enriched his inner group by any means possible. As is now known, Ecuador????????s Lucio Gutierrez also made common cause with Hugo Chavez and ultimately suffered a revulsion by Ecuadoreans for his crude installation of a Chavez-style kangaroo court system and a Chavez-style presidentially controlled domestic épolice,???????? ineptly called the intelligence police.
Random brutality, politically motivated murder and crime under the Gutierrez-Bucaram-Chavez management plan for Ecuador soared and then politically backfired. Gutierrez fled his presidential home in disguise, departing as he had ruled: cloaked in dishonesty and disguise.
As a caretaker, short-term government, President Palacio, Gutierrez????????s vice president and successor, has in less than one year become known as the worst president in Ecuador????????s history, second only to Gutierrez, although the list of horrible presidents in Ecuador is legion. Palacio has surrounded himself with low-level operatives and sycophants operating in a haze of incompetency, gossip, and political gamesmanship. The preponderance of his cabinet and inner team have been fired for crude lies and coarse incompetence by Palacio.
In the last year, as each team was replaced, Palacio came more and more to depend on insiders who are directly involved with Hugo Chavez. Today, Ecuador is mired in the Chavez team machinations. Alfredo Palacio denies the connectivity while admitting his fear of Chavez????????s political groups.
The majority of Palacio????????s inner team are today deeply connected to Hugo Chavez. A roster of his cabinet and sub-official inner group exhibits a shocking political and personal neo-communist affiliation. Thus, a short-term weak government became an arm of the Bolivarian takeover plan by dint of its own weak and incompetent confusion.
Ecuador today faces an end to its republic and all that it stood for. Succuming to the lowest common denominator under Palacio????????s circle of advisors – persons one would never escort to a family dinner – we see a failure of leadership and integrity.
Due to the incompetence of the state to manage its own affairs, coupled with scandalous depletion of state coffers under the Gutierrez regime and past self-enrichment schemes by government operatives, Ecuador cannot sustain its own domestic obligations, cannot feed its burgeoning poor, refuses to climb out of its tax and spend economic plan (when it spends at all), and cannot compel its state-owned oil entity, Petroecuador to produce. Rather than growing its economy, Ecuador has chosen to destroy its economy and deny its own citizens a future. No statesman rises today in Ecuador to promote integrity and defend democracy due to an atmosphere of fear of reprisals.
With the current unconstitutional acts to seize the assets of OCCIDENTAL, Ecuador has joined the Bolivarian bloc of corrupt actors and thugs under Palacio.
Petroecuador has followed the business development plan of Hugo Chavez, slowly building to the current crisis where the state has ordered confiscation of an oil company????????s assets for no valid reason. These ongoing criminal acts of impunity have cut Ecuador off from free trade with the United States and will soon terminate its relations with Wall Street, the EU and the U.S. unless corrective steps are made rapidly to restore democratic principles and international comity. By playing to the weakest structures inside Ecuador and by illicitly enriching its weaker players, Chavez has brought Ecuador into his circle of nations.
There is small hope for Ecuador. Any chance of success depends on the private sector to immediately marshal what few resources it holds to defend its future.
This week Ecuador has ordered its military onto the U.S.-managed oil fields. The battle for the heart and soul of that republic is engaged. The neo-communist war against Ecuador????????s private sector is underway.
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