Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ECUADOR: South American Community Faces Its First Test

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 22 2005 (IPS) - The nascent South American Community of Nations is facing up to its first trial by fire by resolving to send a mission to crisis-stricken Ecuador, with the task of engaging in dialogue with all of the country’s political forces and helping to establish "full normalisation" of the country’s institutions.

The decision was announced by Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who will participate in the mission alongside his counterparts from the other two countries currently heading the South American Community: Juan Ignacio Siles of Bolivia and Manuel Rodríguez of Peru.

Argentina will also send a representative, in view of its role as pro tempore secretary of the Rio Group, Latin America’s primary political forum.

A communiqué signed by the representatives of the three coordinating countries stressed their determination to contribute to the "speedy and full reestablishment of institutional normality" in Ecuador, "in accordance with the Inter-American Democratic Charter."

Their goal is to prevent a potential disaster for the fledgling South American Community: to be "born" with one of its members excluded for violating the democratic requirements established by the Organisation of American States.

Although the decision to send a mission to Quito was reached late Thursday night, a date has yet to be set, according to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.

Preparations for the trip will involve prior consultations with the different political forces in Ecuador and the interim government installed on Wednesday by Congress, after it removed President Lucio Gutiérrez from office.

Although the Brazilian government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Thursday that it would grant asylum to Gutiérrez, it has still not managed to arrange safe passage to transport him out of Ecuador.

For the moment, he remains holed up in Brazilian Ambassador Sergio Florencio’s home in Quito, which is surrounded by angry protesters demanding that he remain in Ecuador to be tried on charges of corruption.

Although now acting under the banner of this new regional bloc, Brazil has assumed a leading role in promoting institutional stability in the region for several years.

Lula participated actively in the so-called Group of Friendly Nations that sought to defuse the internal political conflict in Venezuela in the aftermath of the short-lived 2002 coup against President Hugo Chávez, and attempted to do the same more recently in Bolivia, where President Carlos Mesa is facing heavy opposition from different social, political and business sectors.

The existence of the Community of Nations is "an important source of support" for maintaining and consolidating democracy in the region, said Rosalía Arteaga, who was elected vice president of Ecuador in August 1996 alongside President Abdalá Bucaram, then briefly assumed the presidency when Abdalá was ousted by Congress six months later. (Gutiérrez is the third Ecuadorian president to be removed from office since 1997.)

Arteaga, who is currently the secretary general of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, said that stronger integration of South America will contribute to providing more effective support for countries facing problems of political instability, like Ecuador.

Nevertheless, according to Enrique Amayo, a Peruvian expert on the Andean region and researcher at the State University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, a mission sent by a Community of Nations still in the making will accomplish very little in the face of the "profound structural crisis" that is beginning to erupt not only in South America, but throughout the developing world, to a greater or lesser extent.

The underlying problem, he told IPS, is that "states do not respond to national interests," and neoliberal economic policies have exacerbated the social discontent that spawns popular mobilisations like the ones that have already overthrown three presidents in Ecuador since 1997.

Other South American countries are facing social problems that have begun to take on varying degrees of political expression, and this will also serve to limit the effectiveness of any actions undertaken by the Community, Amayo maintained.

In an interview published earlier this month in the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso predicted that social upheaval in "indigenous areas" will be the greatest problem facing the continent in the coming decades, a phenomenon that can already be observed in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

It is not only a question of poverty, but also of identity, which is why any solution to the problem must inevitably include "giving them more power, and more ability to live according to their own customs," he added, pointing to the large indigenous populations in Bolivia and Ecuador.

While Arteaga concurred that indigenous communities are "important actors who must be taken into account in political, economic and social decisions," and are moreover owed a "historical debt", they constitute only one component of the many difficulties facing the Latin American countries today.

"The overriding problem is the poverty and inequality that affects everyone," she maintained. In fact, unlike on previous occasions, Ecuador’s indigenous movements did not play a key role in bringing about the overthrow of Gutiérrez, she noted.

Amayo, for his part, stressed that "indigenous people are not the problem, but rather part of the solution." Subjected to centuries of poverty and discrimination, they have begun organising and fighting for their rights, in contrast to the situation seen in countries like Brazil, where marginalisation has bred gangs of criminals and drug traffickers, especially in big cities like Rio de Janeiro, he added.

The social movements that have emerged in countries with largely indigenous populations have helped foment the process of rebellion against "states created to imitate the European model, rather than to address the needs of the population," particularly in the countries of the Andean region, "where the poor do not even speak Spanish," he said.

Veteran Brazilian journalist Newton Carlos Figueiredo, who has been following the evolution of Latin America for almost 50 years, is pessimistic about the fate of democracies in the region.

The latest incidents in Ecuador and other recent political crises confirm the findings of a study by the United Nations Development Programme, with regard to the limited confidence in and support for democracy in Latin America today.

Political parties, which are essential to democracy, have lost their influence and representativity, and many leaders, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Gutiérrez himself, rose to power without party backing, Figueiredo said.

At the same time, a large sector of the population believes that the democratisation of the region over recent decades "has not produced social advances," he added.