by Daniel Almeida / ROARMAG.org
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Rafael Correa has been Ecuador’s President since 2007, with at least 4 more years ahead of him. Prior to Correa, Ecuador experienced over 10 years of intense political instability, which included more than 6 presidents ousted over that period. But what started as a “revolutionary” leftist government which has permanently claimed rights and respect in the name of sovereignty, has recently started to signal authoritarianism, corruption, nepotism as well as other typical signs of a power-hungry government. Lately, the Ecuadorian government, with Rafael Correa as its main figure, keep saying that “everybody who is not with me, is against me and the revolution.”
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Coming back to the stage where this story takes place, it is important to mention that ecology and respect for the indigenous communities do not go together with oil drilling. This is particularly clear in Ecuador. Ecuador’s relation with oil drilling started over 40 years ago. Just one example of the what has happened in the Amazonian region in the East of the country since then is Chevron’s systematic dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of oil into the rainforest, in what has been called the worst ecological disaster in history, with thousands of people left dead and thousands more sick due to polluted water. The destruction of the forest has left very little revenue to Ecuador and even less to its people. Petroamazonas, the Ecuadorian public enterprise in charge of oil exploration and drilling, admitted that one spill occurs every week. After 40 years of oil exploitation, Ecuador is still a poor country.
What makes the characters in this story particularly difficult to define as the “bad guys”, is that not all of them were always willing to intervene in this highly sensitive area in exchange for money. President Correa himself devoted his first intervention to the UN General Assembly in 2007 to this topic. Using the same charm as years ago in New York or Rio de Janeiro during the Rio+20 global conference, President Correa announced on August 15 this year that he has been forced to start drilling oil in the most sensitive zone of the Yasuní National Park, claiming that “the world has failed us.” As a matter of fact the initiative was pretty much boycotted by the government itself.
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“The Tagaeri and Taronenane, the last peoples in voluntary isolation in Ecuador” [google translate]
As expected, a massive propaganda campaign followed Correa’s announcement. Claiming that oil drilling will only affect 0.1% of the Yasuní area, TV spots and radio commercials are broadcast every day on prime-time, followed by a strong social media campaign. One of the several spots shows a baby handed by its mother to be vaccinated. The Ecuadorian government actually compares a toddler being vaccinated to oil drilling. In the Amazonian provinces, where entire communities have paid the price of oil drilling with their health and life — including those impacted by Chevron’s oil damages — have been put up with the slogan “oil builds a better future.” The government is actually trying to convince us that those (supposedly) 18 billion dollars will contribute enormously to eradicate poverty. How is it that since Correa came to power the national budget has been over US$150 billion and people in Ecuador are still poor?
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