What we learn when we compare mining concessions in Ecuador and the United States.
Archive for category: Equador
By Abayomi Azikiwe
An alliance of Indigenous organizations in Ecuador has held daily demonstrations after sharp increases in the costs for fuel and food.
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) began their general strike actions on June 13 after huge price hikes crippled the capacity of rural and urban communities to access transportation and food for their households.
In response to the demonstrations and an assortment of other forms of resistance, President Guillermo Lasso has declared a state of emergency in several provinces of the South American state. The order reads in part: “To declare a state of exception due to serious internal commotion in the provinces of Azuay (south), Imbabura (north), Sucumbios (east) and Orellana (east).”
Although the Indigenous organizations sparked the mass demonstrations which in some cases have turned violent, other key sectors of the population such as students and workers have joined in the nationwide protests. Conservative President Guillermo Lasso has failed to meet the demands of CONAIE and other organizations.
CONAIE has put forward ten demands to the government of President Lasso which calls for additional fuel subsidies, the reversal of plans to privatize state assets and a moratorium on the development of any new oil and mining projects. In the recent period inflation has swept through many countries in South America and across the world.
Many have suggested that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic related to supply chain bottlenecks and the failure of various capitalist governments to implement policies aimed at controlling prices, as being major triggering factors in the rapid increase in commodity prices and shortages. In Ecuador, demonstrators are blocking roads to prevent transport trucks from reaching their destinations. The military leadership of the country has committed to reopening the highways in order for commerce to resume.
The turmoil inside the country has impacted the political stability of the Lasso administration which recently survived an impeachment attempt by the parliament. Lasso came into office one year ago promising to create a more business-friendly atmosphere for foreign investment.
Guillermo Alberto Santiago Lasso Mendoza is a 66-year-old veteran businessman-banker and right-wing politician. He has served as the 47th president of Ecuador since taking office on May 24, 2021. The ascendancy of Lasso represented the first time in two decades that there has been an ideologically conservative head-of-state.
The president had previously served as the Governor of Guayas during 1998-1999. Later in 2003, he was appointed as an Itinerant Ambassador of Ecuador during the administration of Lucio Gutierrez. As a businessman, he is the previous CEO of Banco Guayaquil. When the left-wing government of Rafael Correa was in power, Lasso was a fierce critic of his policies.
Lasso was also appointed as the CEO of operations for Coca-Cola corporation in order to rebuild the company in the face of its bankruptcy in Ecuador. He has held seats on the Board of Directors Guayas Transit Commission and the Andean Development Corporation.
Later in 2012 he founded the Creating Opportunities Party and then ran for president the following year against Correa, when he lost by a landslide. In 2017, Lasso again failed to win the presidential election by a very narrow margin against Lenin Moreno. In 2021 he won the presidency and immediately imposed neo-liberal economic policies.
A report published by Bloomberg on June 29 described the current crisis saying:
“Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso survived an impeachment vote late Tuesday (June 28) after a hard-left opposition party failed to rally other smaller groups in congress to oust him as his government moved to make concessions to defuse the political crisis. With only 80 of 137 lawmakers voting to remove Lasso, the impeachment attempt failed to clear the 92-vote hurdle needed to remove the president from office. Another 48 lawmakers rejected the motion, with nine abstaining after a session that lasted about 12 hours and included three voting attempts.”
Developments in Ecuador can be viewed as a harbinger of the political mood throughout the South America, Central America and Caribbean region. In 2019, similar demonstrations led by the Indigenous communities erupted over the neo-liberal policies of former President Lenin Moreno.
A recent attempt by the administration of President Joe Biden in the United States to host a Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles was marked by controversy and boycotts. The Los Angeles gathering clearly illustrated the decline of U.S. hegemony over the Southern Hemisphere.
Colombia Elects a Left-leaning President
Results of the national elections in Colombia were announced on June 19 resulting in the ascendancy of a left-wing administration headed by Gustava Francisco Petro Urrego as president and Francia Elena Marquez Mina as vice-president. Marquez is the first Colombian of self-identified African ancestry in its two centuries of independence.
Colombia President Gustavo Petro and VP Francia Marquez
Marquez is a longtime environmental activist, feminist and human rights lawyer. She, along with Petro, became a part of the Historic Pact for Colombia Coalition which consists of several other political parties.
Petro was the founder of Humane Colombia political party in 2011. He is a former guerrilla fighter with the 19th of April Movement which demobilized and became the M-19 Democratic Alliance party. A split within M-19 led to the creation of Humane Colombia.
Some analysts have viewed the overall economic crisis in the oil-producing state as prompting the recent national results. There are a host of burgeoning problems stemming from a failed peace agreement with the armed revolutionary movement of FARC, the persistent impoverishment of millions inside the country and the inflation which has plagued the entire capitalist world.
One policy shift announced by the incoming Petro government is the re-opening of the border with the neighboring Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Relations between Colombia and Venezuela became extremely strained after repeated attempts by the U.S. to foment a pro-imperialist coup in Caracas.
A report on the elections published by Telesur on June 25 welcomed the initiative by Petro. The article emphasized:
“The contact held with the Venezuelan government shows the political will of president-elect of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, for opening the binational border, Tachira´s governor, Freddy Bernal, acknowledged. In statements to Union Radio, the Venezuelan western state´s highest authority said that the formal opening of the border crossings between the two countries will bring huge benefits to the economy of the region. For the last two years -he recalled- contacts have been maintained with the authorities of the Colombian department of Norte de Santander; the border remained closed ‘only and exclusively’ by instructions of the outgoing president, Ivan Duque, Bernal said.”
Nonetheless a separate article also published by Telesur seeks to draw a distinction between the South American governments which came to power during the late 20th and early 21st century, and the current wave of administrations. In Venezuela, since the time of the late President Hugo Chavez, the objective of government policy under the United Socialist Party has been non-capitalist development. President Nicolas Maduro has been unwavering in the government’s solidarity with Cuba and other socialist and anti-imperialist states.
Since February 24, when the Russian special military operation began in Ukraine, Venezuela, although having been approached by the U.S. State Department, has expressed its solidarity with Moscow and emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution to the war. Venezuela understands clearly that the expansion of NATO membership and military bases would be an existential threat to all peace and freedom-loving peoples throughout the world.
In a news analysis commentary published on June 24, Telesur notes:
“However, some characteristics of the new progressive wave differ to a certain extent from the first one. Whereas all the progressive governments have as their main concern the social problems and the well-being of the lower social classes, who have been impoverished and marginalized by the liberal policies historically applied in Latin America, the political narrative and ideological orientation are divergent when comparing both waves. The new wave of progressivism aims to change the society but not the system, as the intention to impart justice and redistribute wealth is carried out within the rules of capitalism. Thus, the aspiration to transform Latin America under the model of the ‘Socialism of the 21st Century’ has been lately forgotten. Without mincing my words, it seems socialism as a feasible society in the narrative of the progressive leaders died with Hugo Chavez and is no longer a benchmark for the current wave of governments. All in all, only time will tell which of the two waves obtain greater results regarding the implementation of people’s rights.”
However, the intervention of the masses as in Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and other states could portend much for a sharper turn to the Left in regard to socialist-orientation and anti-imperialism. What is clear is that Washington cannot provide an alternative to the leftward political trajectory in South America and the Central America-Caribbean region. The social contradictions prevalent in the U.S. have exposed the inconsistent foreign and domestic policies of Washington and Wall Street. The question is whether the rise in inflation and repressive state measures will spark discontent in the U.S. aimed at addressing the central concerns of workers and oppressed peoples.
Ecuador’s April 11 election that led to a 5-point victory by conservative banker Guillermo Lasso over progressive candidate Andrés Arauz was not what it appeared to be. On the surface, it was a surprisingly clean and professional election. But a fraud-free process for casting and counting ballots does not mean that the election was free and fair. Behind the scenes was a monumentally unequal playing field and dirty campaign designed to quash an Arauz win.
The post A spoiled ballot in Ecuador’s elections appeared first on Toward Freedom.
“While not disputing that pollution occurred, Chevron has alleged the villagers’ lawyer, Steven Donziger, and his associates went too far,” Reuters (1/20/17) reported.
Independent journalist Chris Hedges (ScheerPost, 8/25/20) wrote:
The flagrant corruption and misuse of the legal system to abjectly serve corporate interests in the Donziger case illustrates the deep decay within our judiciary and democratic institutions.
One of those deeply decayed institutions is the corporate media, as a review of several years of Reuters coverage of the case illustrates.
Attorney Steven Donziger has been under house arrest since August 6 of last year. He is charged with contempt of court for refusing to turn over his cell phone and computer to Chevron as ordered by a federal judge. The order is still being appealed on constitutional grounds, one reason Donziger refused to obey it. Public prosecutors declined to take on this case, so the judge had a private firm (which had Chevron as a client) act as prosecutors. Donziger faces six months in prison, but told me his time under house arrest will not count as time served. He is being denied a jury, and a judge has even ordered Donziger to defend himself with a lawyer he does not want.
How did this case devolve into such a dystopian farce? Which key facts about it have been ignored by Reuters, something it has a habit of doing on numerous topics? (FAIR.org, 6/14/19, 9/18/19, 12/17/19, 8/17/20). To answer, let’s get up to speed on this marathon case.
A lifetime of litigation against Big Oil
In 1993, Donziger, a recent graduate of Harvard Law School who played basketball with Barack Obama as a student, teamed up with other lawyers to file a lawsuit against Texaco in New York on behalf of Ecuadorian victims of pollution: thousands of villagers, largely Indigenous, from the Ecuadorian Amazon. The oil giant (which merged with Chevron in 2001) spent nine years fighting to have the case moved back to Ecuador. In 2002, Chevron prevailed, as it usually has in this case; US courts ruled that the case belonged in Ecuador, but also made Chevron promise to abide by the Ecuadorian jurisdiction it had fought so hard to obtain.
One of the many Chevron legal victories heralded by Reuters (3/4/14).
Why fight for Ecuadorian jurisdiction? Chevron’s annual revenues have ranged from $100 billion to $200 billion since 2006, depending on oil prices—often much higher than Ecuador’s entire GDP.
Chevron obviously believed it was even more likely to get its way in Ecuador than in the US, especially if it had to face a US jury, something it has always managed to avoid in this case. That speaks volumes about the kind of treatment the company expected in Ecuador, given how often US judges have ruled in its favor. Chevron’s many legal wins are documented in Reuters headlines about this case over the years.
From 1964 to 1992, Texaco dumped an estimated 16 billion gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The CIA had played a key role in bringing the dictatorship to power in 1963 that first allowed Texaco to work in Ecuador. (Philip Agee, the great CIA whistleblower of that era, described CIA tactics in Ecuador in his 1975 book Inside the Company: CIA Diary.) In 1992, only a year before Donziger sued the company in the US, Texaco turned over ownership and control of the area to Ecuador’s state oil company.
Economic collapse in 1999 led to massive political upheaval in Ecuador; the country had seven presidents from 1996 until 2006. Under President Rafael Correa (first elected in 2006), Ecuador’s judiciary became far less subservient to multinationals. Chevron was found guilty in a provincial court in 2011. The case held up on appeals all the way to the National Court of Justice—Ecuador’s supreme court—in 2013. The victims were awarded $9 billion in damages.
Remarkably clear bias
Lewis Kaplan went from defending Phillip Morris as a private attorney to defending Chevron as a state judge.
By 2011, Chevron had already come running back to the US, claiming it had been victimized by Donziger in Ecuador. New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan—as I’ll explain—made his corporate bias remarkably clear as he presided over Chevron’s counterattack on Donziger.
The stakes were higher for Chevron than in 2002, when it finally succeeded in moving the case to Ecuador. The corporation’s unexpected defeats on its originally chosen terrain of battle changed everything. Chevron’s gloves were off—but so, too, was the mask of the whole US judiciary, not just Kaplan (who had represented the tobacco industry before becoming a judge).
Kaplan brushed aside Chevron’s promise to abide by Ecuadorian jurisdiction. In 2014, he ruled that the lower court victory in Ecuador was won by Donziger using “corrupt means.” To dismiss upper court rulings in Ecuador (and to justify telling Chevron that it didn’t have to go back to Ecuador to fight the case), Kaplan also said (on page 418 of the ruling) that he was “obliged” to pass judgment on Ecuador’s entire judiciary, and, unsurprisingly, concluded that it “was not fair or impartial and did not comport with the requirements of due process,” and was “not entitled to recognition.”
Later in the ruling (page 483), Kaplan contradicted himself, saying he did not “disrespect” Ecuador’s legal system. One Reuters article at the time (3/8/14) uncritically reported that Kaplan “carefully” said his order against Donziger does not “disrespect” Ecuador’s legal system. A bit of journalism from Reuters could have “carefully” exposed that claim as nonsense.
Kaplan’s 2014 ruling frequently quotes from a deeply personal notebook Donziger kept that included correspondence with his wife. Kaplan doesn’t quote from the personal diaries of Chevron executives, because he made sure the discovery process was applied ruthlessly to Donziger, but not to Chevron. (See pages 24–29 of this appellate brief.) Meanwhile, Kaplan allowed Chevron to drop a “sham litigation” allegation against Donziger that would have scrutinized Texaco’s environmental record in Ecuador (the essence of the legal battle since 1993) during discovery (page 48 of the appellate brief).
An indispensable liar
Despite rummaging through Donziger’s personal life, Kaplan’s ruling relies very heavily on the testimony of a defrocked Ecuadorian judge named Alberto Guerra. Chevron paid Guerra well over a million dollars worth of benefits for his testimony, but he later admitted to lying to Kaplan about being offered a bribe by Donziger, the substance of the “corruption” Kaplan used to overturn Ecuador’s ruling. In 2018, Kaplan absurdly claimed that Gueraa’s testimony was “far from indispensable” (page 12 of Kaplan’s opinion). Guerra’s name appears 13 times in the table of contents to Kaplan’s 2014 ruling alone, and an average of about once per page in the entire document.
More absurdly, and tellingly, Kaplan (page 43 of the legal brief) said during a hearing on February 8, 2011:
We are dealing here with a company of considerable importance to our economy that employs thousands all over the world, that supplies a group of commodities, gasoline, heating oil, other fuels and lubricants on which every one of us depends every single day. I don’t think there is anybody in this courtroom who wants to pull his car into a gas station to fill up and finds that there isn’t any gas there because these folks [Donziger’s clients] have attached it in Singapore or wherever else.
The first rule for presenting the subject of a story in an unflattering light: Make sure you get a photo of them with their mouth open (Reuters, 8/14/20).
So we are dealing here with a judge who is openly biased in support of large corporate interests, and appears disconnected from reality, if he really thinks he kept US gas stations open by protecting Chevron from Ecuadorian villagers. But he alone ruled on this case because, at the last possible moment, Chevron dropped its demand for monetary damages–thus allowing Kaplan to refuse Donziger a jury.
As for the contempt trial that Donziger now faces, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee and International Association of Democratic Lawyers (in a letter signed by over 75 organizations in May) noted, among other things, that Kaplan “bypassed the random case assignment process and handpicked Judge Loretta Preska” to rule on the contempt charges.
Judge Kaplan (a Bill Clinton appointee) has also been enabled by the wider US judiciary in his persecution of Donziger. The appeals court that upheld his ruling in 2016 also ruled that very same month that UN troops could not be held responsible for killing 10,000 Haitians through negligence. Donziger’s law license was suspended in 2018 based on Kaplan’s ruling. A judicial referee later recommended Donziger be reinstated, but then an appeals court quickly stepped in to disbar Donziger.
If the US judiciary is filled with people who enable Kaplan, and if a jury trial is easily evaded by powerful companies, then it would be nice if one of the world’s largest news agencies would shine a critical light on his case. That never happened.
Bullies can be truth-tellers?
Reuters legal columnist Alison Frankel (5/7/14) suggests that pollution in Ecuador’s Lago Agrio region is entirely coincidental to Texaco (now part of Chevron) drilling for oil there.
Many of the key facts I’ve just outlined above are impossible to learn by relying on Reuters’ extensive coverage—32 articles since November of 2013. None of them explained why there was no jury in the trial Kaplan presided over (because Chevron dropped its demand for monetary damages). None explained how Chevron (with Kapaln’s blessing) was able to go wild with discovery on Donziger while shielding itself from it, and never had to defend Texaco’s environmental record in Ecuador. None mentioned that a Chevron PR consultant declared internally in 2000 that the corporate “strategy is to demonize Donziger” (Intercept, 1/29/20). Only two articles (4/20/15, 12/16/15) vaguely mentioned that Chevron fought to move the case to Ecuador, but the articles did not say that this was a nearly decade-long process, or that Chevron had promised the US court that sent the case back to Ecuador that it would abide by Ecuadorian jurisdiction.
One article by Casey Sullivan (5/13/14) falsely stated that the “case traces back to 2003 when a group of Ecuadorean villagers sued Chevron” in Ecuador. An opinion piece by Reuters legal columnist Alison Frankel (5/7/14) wrote: “I’ve come to believe Donziger couldn’t make a case against the company. Sometimes, bullies are also truth-tellers.” Both Sullivan and Frankel conveniently missed that Donziger spent nearly a decade (1993 to 2002) fighting to bring his case before a US jury. Why would a company fight against that if Donziger’s case was weak?
Bullies are usually served by US judges, lawyers and corporate journalists. That’s the path a Harvard Law graduate like Donziger could easily have taken. He is being brutally punished for not taking it.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to Reuters here (or via Twitter: @Reuters). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Featured Image: Depiction of Steven Donziger in the Intercept (5/20/20).
Reuters routinely buries information that would badly damage the reputation of US allies in the Americas
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The post New waves of resistance against austerity in Ecuador appeared first on Toward Freedom.
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The post Women rise against violence in Ecuador appeared first on Toward Freedom.
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia’s self-declared interim president Jeanine Anez talks during a conference at the presidential palace on November 13, 2019 in La Paz, Bolivia. (Photo: Javier Mamani/Getty Images)
