Very long, rambling, but informative article
Miriam
ECUADORS US-BACKED ECOSOCIALIST CANDIDATE YAKU PÉREZ AIDS THE RIGHT-WING
By Ben Norton, The Grayzone.
February 10, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Ecuadors Presidential Candidate Yaku Pérez Supported Coups In Bolivia,
Brazil, Venezuela, And Nicaragua.
His US-backed party Pachakutik and supposedly left-wing environmentalist
campaign is being promoted by right-wing corporate lobbyists.
Puedes leer este artículo en español aquí.
This article was updated on February 8, following the first round of
Ecuadors presidential election.
Ecuadors February 7 presidential election concluded in a surprise: The
quick count published by the countrys National Electoral Council appeared
to show a little-known candidate named Yaku Pérez Guartambel in second
place, securing a narrow victory over right-wing candidate Guillermo Lasso,
a banker with significant influence in the country.
Most polls had predicted that the presidential race would boil down to two
presidential candidates, who could hardly have been more different: On one
side was the conservative banker Lasso, who had the backing of Ecuadorian
elites and the United States, and had unsuccessfully run for president twice
before; while on the other was a youthful left-wing economist, Andrés Arauz,
who follows in the footsteps of socialist former President Rafael Correa and
wants to return to his Citizens Revolution.
But while polling consistently showed him coming in third place, Yaku Pérez
stayed in the race until the end. And unlike Lasso, Pérez didnt claim
fidelity to the right-wing; he ran what was marketed as a progressive
environmentalist campaign.
Pérez, an Indigenous leader from Ecuadors party Pachakutik, purported to be
the true left-wing option in the election, condemning Arauz and the
socialist Correista movement he represents for being insufficiently pure.
But Pérezs political record suggests he is a Trojan horse for the lefts
most bitter enemies.
Pérez has viciously attacked other progressive movements in Latin America,
supporting right-wing US-backed coups targeting Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela,
and Nicaragua, and demonizing those countries leftist governments as
racist.
His political views fuse ultra-leftist, anarchistic critiques of existing
left-wing states with an objectively right-wing political agenda. And his
opposition to state power is deeply opportunistic. While Pérez harshly
criticizes China, he has simultaneously pronounced he would not think
twice about signing a trade deal with the United States.
Pérezs ostensibly progressive ideology is filled with contradictions. While
the Correista candidate Arauz has proposed giving $1000 checks to one
million working-class Ecuadorian families, Pérez has attacked the plan on
the grounds that poor citizens would spend all the money on beer in one day.
And while Pérez has criticized the current government of Ecuador and
protested against its right-wing, US-backed President Lenín Moreno who has
an approval rating of just 8 percent, and is thus politically poisonous for
all of the countrys electoral candidates Pérez previously praised the
corrupt and authoritarian leader as a good man.
Another Indigenous leader in Ecuador, Leonidas Iza, publicly warned that
right-wing activists and members of the banker Guillermo Lassos
conservative CREO party are in Pérezs inner circle and are advising him.
The party of Yaku Pérez, Pachakutik, identifies as ecosocialist and claims
to represent Ecuadors Indigenous communities. But like the candidate that
represents it, the party employs left-wing rhetoric to paper over regressive
goals.
Pachakutik is closely linked to NGOs funded by Washington and EU member
states. The partys leaders have been trained by the US government-funded
National Democratic Institute (NDI), a CIA cutout that operates under the
auspices of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The NED publicly lists more than $5 million in grants for NGOs in Ecuador
just in the years from 2016 to 2019. Much of this money has bankrolled
anti-Correa opposition groups like Pachakutik and its allies.
Pachakutik is the political arm of the Indigenous confederation CONAIE,
which helped lead protests against Ecuadors former President Correa,
forming an unspoken alliance with the countrys right-wing oligarchs in a
bid to destabilize and overthrow the socialist president.
In fact, CONAIE and Pachakutik played a significant role in a violent
US-backed 2010 coup attempt, supporting treasonous police that turned
against the elected Correista government, kidnapped the president, and came
close to undemocratically removing Correa from power.
In 2012, a co-founder of Pachakutik and former leader of CONAIE, Auki
Tituaña, went so far as to form an open alliance with right-wing
presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso, announcing that he would run as the
bankers vice president. In response, CONAIE expelled him.
Lasso is not threatened by the ecosocialist rhetoric of Pérez and
Pachakutik; he seems keenly aware that the label is a marketing plot. The
banker publicly declared before the February 7, 2021 vote that, if Pérez
made it to a second round, Lasso would gladly support Pérez to defeat the
Correistas.
The bankers endorsement is unsurprising when one considers that, back in
2017, before he changed his name from Carlos to Yaku, Pérez himself
supported Lassos presidential bid.
Pachakutiks ties to Washington are extensive. One of its most prominent
former members is Fernando Villavicencio, an Ecuadorian journalist who
spearheaded a disinformation campaign targeting journalist Julian Assange,
peddling discredited but deeply damaging claims about the Wikileaks
publisher through the major British newspaper The Guardian.
Villavicencios anti-Correa activism also appears to have been funded by the
US governments National Endowment for Democracy.
Villavicencio served as an advisor for Pachakutik National Assembly member
Cléver Jiménez, who helped lead the 2010 coup attempt against Correa.
Yaku Pérez held a public demonstration in support of Villavicencio and
Jiménez when Correa sued them for defamation for spreading blatant fake news
about him.
Pachakutiks tactics echo those of Nicaraguas Sandinista Renovation
Movement (MRS), another fringe US-backed party that played a leading role in
a violent 2018 coup attempt against the Central American nations
democratically elected Sandinista government. Like Pachakutik, the MRS is
supported by the US government and works closely with Western-funded NGOs.
Both groups act as though they are principled left-wing critics of popular
leftist movements, when in reality they form de facto political alliances
with right-wing oligarchs.
Then there is Pérezs wife Manuela Picq, a French-Brazilian academic,
herself a prominent anti-Correista activist and opponent of leftist
governments in Latin America who was deported by Correa in 2015. Her
opposition work in Ecuador has been funded by NGOs bankrolled by Western
governments.
Although she is today a liberal specialist on sexuality and gender studies,
Picq previously worked for Floridas Republican government and was involved
in unsuccessful negotiations of a neoliberal US trade agreement in Latin
America, which leftist leaders condemned as colonial.
The tactics of Pérez, his partner Picq, and his party Pachakutik mirror
another campaign in South America that exploited ostensibly left-wing forces
on behalf of right-wing ends.
During the lead-up to the US-backed coup against Bolivias democratically
elected socialist government in 2019, NGOs that claimed to support
environmentalist causes participated in a disinformation operation to
demonize then-President Evo Morales, the first Indigenous president in
Bolivias history, himself a strong supporter of environmental protections.
Regime-change activists from organizations funded by the US and European
governments accused the Morales administration of fueling fires in the
Amazon rainforest that were most concentrated in Brazil, where far-right
President Jair Bolsonaro proudly branded himself captain chainsaw.
Yaku Pérez and Pachakutik play a similar role in Ecuador, attacking popular
leftist forces from the left, thereby opening up space for the right-wing to
advance.
As in Bolivia, where Western environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion
helped support the 2019 coup on the grounds of green concerns, self-declared
anarchists from the ostensibly progressive organization are heaping praise
on Pérez.
Extinction Rebellion is joined in its praise for the marginal pseudo-left
figure by right-wing corporate lobby groups like the Americas Society and
Council of the Americas (AS/COA), which is funded by planet-destroying
fossil fuel corporations, weapons manufacturers, and banks that have a
vested interest in trying to stop the Correistas from returning to power.
Left-Wing Support For Right-Wing Coups In Latin America
Yaku Pérez Guartambel says he wants Ecuadorians to use fewer cars and plant
more trees. With campaign photos often showing him riding a bicycle at
rallies, Perezs image seems custom tailored to appeal to the sensibility of
Western green activists.
Pérez is especially critical of the Correista movement for its reliance on
extraction. He has proposed an end to mining in Ecuador and a restriction of
oil extraction.
Ecuador is a developing, formerly colonized country and thus relatively poor
compared to Global North imperialist nations. But it has an advantage: large
oil and mineral reserves.
These resources have been key to the political and economic program of
Correa and his followers, who used them to turbocharge development of
Ecuador, fund popular social programs, and invest billions of dollars in
universal healthcare, high-quality education, and advanced infrastructure.
Yet the supposed progressive appearance of Pérezs political program ends
with his environmental policies. When it comes to international politics, he
has shown himself to be deeply right-wing.
And while Pérez uses his Indigenous Kañari heritage to claim to represent
Ecuadors Native communities, many are in fact strongly against him and his
party.
Indigenous outrage against Pérez especially grew when he supported the
US-backed military coup in Bolivia in November 2019.
In October 2020, Evo Morales Indigenous-majority Movement Toward Socialism
(MAS) party won the election in a landslide, defeating the US-backed coup
regime. Numerous Ecuadorian Indigenous leaders were invited to the
inauguration of MAS President Luis Arce, but Pérez was not. When asked why,
it was made clear that Pérez was shunned because he had supported the coup.
Even before the violent regime-change operation, Pérez was a harsh critic of
Morales, accusing him and Correa of authoritarianism, machismo,
extractivism, and populism. Pérez flatly refused to recognize the
legitimacy of Evos government.
In 2017, Pérez attacked Evo again, tweeting, His ignorance is encyclopedic.
Evo is biologically Indigenous; in terms of his identity he whitewashed and
colonized himself and doesnt feel or understand the Native cosmovision.
After backing the coup, Pérez went silent about Bolivia, saying nothing as
the junta, led by racist Christian extremists, massacred Indigenous
protesters they dehumanized as satanic.
But the coup in Bolivia is not the only US-led regime-change campaign in
Latin America that Yaku Pérez has supported.
In November 2016, Pérez praised the US-backed soft coup that removed
Brazils left-wing Workers Party government from power, while endorsing a
right-wing lawfare (legal warfare) campaign that had targeted Argentinas
progressive President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Pérez also openly called for Ecuadors leftist President Correa and
Venezuelas socialist President Nicolás Maduro to be overthrown.
Corruption ended the governments of Dilma [Rousseff] and Cristina, Pérez
tweeted approvingly. Now all thats missing is for Rafael Correa and Maduro
to fall. It is just a matter of time.
Pérez condemned the socialist governments of Correa in Ecuador and Maduro in
Venezuela as colonial, ethnocidal, and racist. And he denounced the
elected left-wing governments in Venezuela and Argentina as authoritarian,
extractivist, and corrupt.
Pérez resorted to the kind of superficial anti-Venezuela rhetoric favored by
the Latin American right-wing once again on the day of the February 7
election. In a friendly interview with a conservative media outlet, Pérez
denounced the leading leftist presidential candidate, stating, Rafael
Correa, as Chávez did giving power to Maduro, today he is trying to give
power to Andrés Arauz. Arauz is the Maduro of Ecuador.
In 2017, when Brazil was ruled by the unelected neoliberal coup government
of Michel Temer, Pérez publicly expressed hope that former left-wing
Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff would be arrested, alongside
Correa and his former Vice President Jorge Glas. (Ecuadors US-backed Lenín
Moreno government did arrest Glas and throw him in prison on bogus charges,
as part of an authoritarian crackdown on leftist Correista politicians.)
In the same vein, Pérez supported a brutal US-backed coup attempt in
Nicaragua in 2018.
After right-wing extremists, with support from Washington, spent months
murdering, torturing, and terrorizing supporters of the socialist Sandinista
Front, Pérez responded by blaming all of the violence on Nicaraguas elected
left-wing government.
Who would have thought that the Sandinistas that before fought against the
dictatorship are now shooting their people, Pérez wrote in October 2018.
Everything Pérez has said about Ecuadors neighbors shows that, if he were
to take power, he would help Washington and the regions right-wing
oligarchs wage war against the so-called Pink Tide, the wave of leftist
governments that won power in Latin America starting in the early 2000s.
Friendly Ties With The US Government
While Yaku Pérez Guartambel has no problem demonizing revolutionary
left-wing governments in Latin America as colonial, ethnocidal, and
racist, he is curiously silent about the US governments massive human
rights violations.
That is because Pérez has fostered cozy ties with Washington, while
advancing its agenda in his country.
Before running for president, Pérez served as the prefect for Ecuadors
Azuay province, whose capital, Cuenca, has become a major hub for US expats.
Entire communities of North Americans exist in Cuenca, speaking only English
and paying for everything in US dollars (which have been the official
currency of Ecuador since 2000 dollarization, following a 1999 economic
crash overseen by former Economic Minister Guillermo Lasso, now the major
right-wing candidate in the 2021 election).
In June 2019, just as the Donald Trump administrations new representative
in Ecuador, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, was sworn in, Pérez publicized his
meeting with the US ambassador in Cuenca.
A month later, Pérez attended a celebration marking Independence Day in the
United States, again welcoming the new US ambassador. He posed for a photo
smiling in front of an illuminated US flag.
Yaku Perez celebrating United States Independence Day and the swearing in of
the new US ambassador in July 2019 in Cuenca, Ecuador.
During his presidential campaign, despite garnering little support from the
Ecuadorian public, Pérez has found an eager audience from the ambassadors of
France and Germany.
US-Backed Ecosocialists Ally With Right-Wing In Coup Attempt Against
Rafael Correa
The deployment of ostensibly progressive environmentalist talking points
to destabilize left-wing governments in Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico, and
beyond was developed over a decade ago, to weaken the democratically elected
government of Ecuadors former socialist President Rafael Correa.
To undercut Correa, the United States and Western European governments
funded civil society groups in Ecuador that claimed to support environmental
causes and indigenous rights, but ended up serving as tentacles of the
right-wing opposition.
Throughout their tenures in office, Ecuadors Correa and Bolivias Evo
Morales faced heavy opposition to their ambitious infrastructure
initiatives. Environmentalist and indigenous groups, many supported by the
United States, initiated widespread protests in 2011 to try to stop the
construction of a large highway in Bolivia, with similar demonstrations to
obstruct mining projects in Ecuador in 2012.
Cables from the intelligence firm Stratfor, known as the shadow CIA, that
were published by WikILeaks show that the US government contractor was
carefully monitoring anti-Correa protests, and specifically named Pérez
Guartambel, then known as Carlos Pérez, in 2011.
The most extreme attempt at destabilizing Correas government came with a
violent US-backed coup attempt on September 30, 2010. Defectors from the
Ecuadorian police and military occupied the parliament, blocked major
streets, took over state institutions, and effectively kidnapped Correa.
Five people were killed in the attempted putsch, and hundreds were wounded.
Ecuadors opposition nearly succeeded in removing the elected president from
power.
One of the main organizations involved in this coup attempt was the
Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE). CONAIE is an
indigenous organization that advances an ultra-leftist, anarchist-inspired
politics that is deeply suspicious of the state and industrial development,
even if the government is led by a democratically elected socialist.
CONAIE took a hardline position against Correa, hammering him constantly and
demanding his removal. This undercut Correas support from leftists abroad
and drove criticism of his Citizens Revolution movement.
What CONAIE did not acknowledge in its constant attacks on Correa was that
its political wing was heavily supported by the US government.
Indeed, CONAIEs de facto political arm is the party Pachakutik, whose 2021
presidential candidate is Yaku Pérez.
During the September 2010 coup attempt, Pachakutik published an open call
for Correa to be removed from power, expressing public support for the
police and soldiers who had defected. Pachakutik sent out a press release
accusing Correa of a dictatorial attitude, and Pachakutik leader and
National Assembly member Cléver Jiménez called on the indigenous movement,
social movements and democratic political organizations to form a single
national front to demand the exit of President Correa.
The Pachakutik press release stressed that Jiménez backed the struggle of
the countrys public servants, including the police troops who have
mobilized against the regimes authoritarian policies.
Journalist Eva Golinger later showed how Pachakutik had been supported by
the US governments National Democratic Institute (NDI), a subsidiary of the
NED regime-change umbrella that is loosely affiliated with the Democratic
Party and acts as a cutout for the CIA.
A 2007 NDI document showed that Pachakutik had been directly trained by the
US governments NDI, along with activists from Venezuelas anti-Chavista
opposition parties Acción Democrática and Primero Justicia, as well as
Mexicos right-wing National Action Party (PAN).
A 2007 document showing how the US governments National Democratic
Institute (NDI) trained the Ecuadorian opposition group Pachakutik.
CONAIE and Pachakutik do not represent all Indigenous communities in
Ecuador. There are major political divisions, and some communal
organizations and leaders support Correismo.
The United States has a history of backing specific Indigenous organizations
in order to divide Native communities. This strategy is far from new. During
Washingtons terror war on Nicaragua in the 1980s, for instance, the CIA
supported leaders from Nicaraguas Miskito community in order to undermine
the revolutionary Sandinista government.
The New York Times reported in 1986, Some Indian leaders said they fear
that their people could become like the Hmong and Meo tribesmen in Asia
indigenous people drafted into a war by the C.I.A. and later abandoned.
Today the Miskitos remain politically divided, but there are some Nicaraguan
Native organizations and leaders who support Sandinismo, just as there are
Ecuadorian Indigenous groups that support Correismo.
In a 2019 report, Ecuadorian-Canadian writer Joe Emersberger exposed
CONAIEs role as a Trojan horse for the right-wing.
Virgilio Hernandez, a leader from Ecuadors left-wing Correista movement who
was forced into asylum in Mexicos embassy following a brutal crackdown by
the US-backed Lenín Moreno government, explained to Emersberger:
Since about the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this century I would
say what is evident in CONAIE is that a current became dominant that wed
call a conservative indigenist current that has put everything into what
they call the ethnic cause and left aside the causes of social movements
and the left in the country. That explains
that in the last presidential
campaign they openly supported the candidate of the oligarchy and the banks,
Guillermo Lasso. It is very clear for almost two decades they lost course
and have been useful to the oligarchic groups that have always rabidly
opposed Rafael Correa and the Citizens Revolution.
Non-Indigenous Anti-Correa Activist From Indigenous Party Spreads
Disinformation Against Julian Assange
One of the co-founders of Pachakutik, who is not indigenous, Fernando
Villavicencio, played a major but under-acknowledged role in the Russiagate
conspiracy that consumed official Washington during the Trump era.
Villavicencio is an Ecuadorian opposition activist and journalist who
dedicated years of his life to destroying Rafael Correa. Besides his work
with Pachakutik, Villavicencio established an anti-Correa media outlet to
spread disinformation against the leftist president.
Villavicencio hated Correa so much that he publicly called for the United
States to impose sanctions on Ecuador to punish his government, and said he
would lobby the US Senate to do so. (This led Correa to dub Villavicencio a
traitor.)
In 2018, Villavicencio went on to co-author a highly dubious report in the
major British newspaper The Guardian, alongside its Russiagate-promoting
reporters Luke Harding and Dan Collyns, accusing WikiLeaks publisher Julian
Assange of holding secret meetings with Donald Trumps former campaign
manager Paul Manafort.
WikiLeaks strongly denied the report, calling it a complete fabrication and
launching a legal fund to sue The Guardian over the story.
The Guardian removed Villavicencios byline from the article, even as the
Ecuadorian activist boasted on Twitter that he had been a co-author and the
apparent source of the questionable claims.
Villavicencio also runs a website that publishes constant questionable
materials demonizing Correa and WikiLeaks. He calls it La Fuente
Periodismo de Investigación, or The Source Investigative Journalism.
This publication appears to be funded by the US governments National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front founded by the Ronald Reagan
administration to push regime-change in foreign socialist countries.
In its database, the NED has listed annual $65,000 grants for a media outlet
in Ecuador that is Promoting Investigating Journalism, using a description
that is almost identical to the about page on Villavicencios website La
Fuente.
Villavicencio frequently faced legal troubles when Correa was president. He
and Pachakutik National Assembly member Cléver Jiménez, for whom
Villavicencio served as an advisor, were accused of helping to hack Correas
emails and then publishing them to hurt the Ecuadorian president charges
they denied.
Correa took Villavicencio and Jiménez to court for spreading false,
defamatory claims about him and accusing the president of genocide and
crimes against humanity for quelling the September 30, 2010 coup attempt.
Yaku Peréz helped organized public demonstrations in support of
Villavicencio and Jiménez. Pérez condemned Correa as a caudillo over the
case, and in 2017 held a protest outside of the appeals court, which he
called a court of injustice.
Villavicencio went on to leave Pachakutik in 2017. In the 2021 election, he
was a National Assembly candidate running with the center-left Socialist
Party of Ecuador, another fringe anti-Correa group that officially broke all
ties with Marxism, calling itself social democratic, and has often found
itself in alliance with the right-wing.
Husband Of Western Government-Linked, NGO-Backed Anti-Correa Academic
Manuela Picq
Yaku Pérezs longtime partner is also a prominent opponent of Correismo who
has previously worked for the US government and whose activism has been
funded by NGOs bankrolled by Western governments.
In 2013, Pérez married Manuela Picq, a French-Brazilian academic who
specializes in Indigenous, sexuality, and gender studies, and who, like her
husband, is a staunch critic of leftist governments in Latin America who
supported the US-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019.
Picq works closely with regime-change-lobbying NGOs, and is infamous in
Ecuador for her anti-Correa activism.
Picq played a significant role in 2015 protests against President Correa,
which were often very violent. She was arrested at a demonstration in
August, and her visa was cancelled and she was deported from Ecuador.
With support from the European Union and billionaire-funded NGOs, Picq
turned her deportation case into a scandal, portraying herself as a victim
and using it to attack Correa and demonize his elected socialist government
as a chronic human rights violator.
Picq was allowed to return in Ecuador in 2018, under the right-wing
US-backed government of Lenín Moreno.
And while Yaku Pérez and Picq claim to be critics of Moreno, after he
entered power, a video interview shows that Picq called on Ecuadorians to
vote in a referendum that handed Moreno absolute power.
Before she became an academic, Manuela Picq worked with right-wing US
government institutions. According to her professional CV, in 2003, Picq
served as a foreign affairs specialist in the Office of International
Relations for Floridas Republican Governor Jeb Bush.
That same year, Picq served as a Miami-based co-coordinator for the
participation of civil society organizations for the Trade Ministerial for
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a neoliberal agreement pushed
aggressively by the US government.
The left-wing governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and
Bolivia opposed the FTAA. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called it a tool
of imperialism that would help Washington further exploit and dominate the
region.
It was in fact in rejection of the FTAA that Venezuela and Cuba in 2004
founded by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America Peoples
Trade Treaty, or ALBA-TCP, to integrate Latin Americas economies together,
excluding the United States, and strengthen their sovereignty.
Ecuador joined the ALBA under President Correa in 2009. His membership in
the organization was one of the reasons for the US-backed coup attempt
targeting him in 2010. Ecuadors right-wing US-backed Moreno government went
on to withdraw from the ALBA in 2018.
Manuela Picqs CV, showing her work for the Florida government and Free
Trade Area of the Americas.
According to her CV, Picq has worked since 2015 with Front Line Defenders,
an NGO funded by the European Union, numerous Western European governments,
Taiwan, anti-communist billionaire George Soros Open Society Foundations,
and the CIA cutout the Ford Foundation.
In 2016, Picq was rewarded for her anti-Correa activism in Ecuador with a
Human Rights Defender grant from ProtectDefenders.eu, a soft-power
instrument funded by the European Union that weaponizes human rights to push
regime change in foreign nations and advance the EUs economic interests.
In 2018, the publication Global Americans dubbed Manuela Picq one of the 20
New Public Intellectuals in the Americas. As The Grayzone previously
reported, Global Americans is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), a regime-change arm of the United States that acts as a CIA cutout,
and the website boasted of the NEDs role in laying the groundwork for
insurrection during a bloody US-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018.
Today, Picq is a professor of Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst
College in the United States. She is author of books with titles like
Queering Narratives of Modernity, Sexualities in World Politics, and
Sex and Tongue in International Politics.
Picq has also taught for years at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito,
one of Ecuadors most elite schools.
Before establishing her professional academic career, Picq got her start as
a postdoctoral fellow in the Study of Democracy in Latin America at the
Woodrow Wilson Center, a US government-funded think tank that has a
revolving door with the State Department and intelligence agencies, and is
physically located in the US governments Ronald Reagan Building.
From the United States, Picq continues writing anti-Correista articles for
liberal media outlets and the regime-change-lobbying NGO NACLA.
And like her partner Yaku Pérez, Manuela Picq has aggressively attacked
other leftist governments in Latin America and supported US-backed coup
attempts. (In 2019, she also called for Western governments to make a no
fly zone in northeastern Syria.)
Before a US-backed soft coup removed Brazils elected government from power
in 2016, Picq published articles criticizing its developmental projects.
Picq has expressed support for the right-wing opposition in Nicaragua,
demonizing the elected leftist Sandinista government as a patriarchal macho
rapist anti-women state. (In reality Nicaragua has the highest level of
gender equality in all of Latin America, and the fifth-best in the entire
world.)
In September 2019, in the lead-up to the US-backed coup in Bolivia, Picq
published an outlandish article preposterously accusing the countrys first
and only ever Indigenous President Evo Morales of carrying out an ecocide
and genocide. This helped fuel a smear campaign against Morales, setting
the stage for the violent putsch.
Mere days before the coup, Picq then joked on Twitter that she had wet
dreams fantasizing about overthrowing Evo Morales.
Then when the coup was being carried out in November, Picq spread absurd
disinformation, writing, Sisters from the Indigenous base in Bolivia are
denouncing massive violence by groups from the MAS [ruling Movement Toward
Socialism party] not only houses of the opposition being burnt, there is
also a network and rapes in the streets. There is fear that Evo is launching
a civil war with his militias.
The work of Pérez and Picq shows how Western governments can use ostensibly
left-liberal activists, academics, and NGOs to push their imperial
interests, destabilizing socialist states in Latin America in the guise of
purportedly protecting the environment, Indigenous communities, and human
rights.
Right-Wing Corporate Lobby Group AS/COA Promotes Yaku Pérezs Campaign
Articles by anarchist-oriented US environmentalist organizations like
Extinction Rebellion leave readers with the impression that Yaku Pérez
Guartambel is Ecuadors best choice for the left.
But a look at some of Pérezs most high-profile promoters, including
powerful right-wing corporate lobby groups, illustrates an ulterior agenda.
On February 1, the US website Americas Quarterly published a puff piece
praising the third-place candidate, titled Yaku Pérez: The New Face of
Ecuadors Left?
The article spread misleading disinformation demonizing Rafael Correa,
trumpeting, Pérez said he offers such voters an alternative to the
authoritarian and corrupt left of Correa.
Americas Quarterly said it conducted a survey of a dozen analysts who
ranked Pérez further to the left than Arauz.
The website also happily pointed out, On foreign policy, Pérez has said he
is open to a trade deal with the United States and has called out Chinas
aggressive policies around extractivism and human rights.
Author Brendan OBoyle shared the piece promoting the anti-Correa,
ecological left that he represents.
So what exactly is Americas Quarterly? Is it a left-liberal publication that
promotes environmentalism and Indigenous rights?
On the contrary: Americas Quarterly is an arm of the Americas
Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA), a right-wing lobby group funded by
most major US corporations.
AS/COA has played an important role in backing coups against progressive
governments in Latin America and propping up unpopular neoliberal regimes.
AS/COAs list of corporate members is a Whos Who of the most powerful
companies on the planet, many of which profit from destroying the
environment and waging war, such as Amazon, Apple, BlackRock, Boeing,
Caterpillar, Chevron, Chiquita, Exxon Mobil, Ford, GE, Goldman Sachs,
Google, JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Walmart.
So why would an organization funded by these mega-corporations, which
normally supports right-wing politicians across Latin America, suddenly
promote a left-wing candidate in Ecuador? And why would it have us believe
that Yaku Pérez is in fact even more left-wing than Andrés Arauz and the
Correista movement?
The answer is that Pérez does not truly represent the left; he is an
insidious vehicle for Washingtons interests in Ecuador. AS/COA has sought
to falsely portray Pérez as the left-wing alternative to Correismo because
it recognizes that he would serve their interests if he somehow managed to
win, and is splitting the left by simply staying in the race, making a
second round more likely.
It is for the same reason that right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso has said he
would support Pérez.
The United States is desperate to prevent the socialist wave that washed
across Latin America during the first decade of the 21st century from coming
back. And in Washingtons bid to stop the tide, ecosocialist figures like
Yaku Pérez are perfect tools.