Happy Earth Day everybody! Can you name the country that manages to pack Pacific coastline, the Andes, the Amazon and “the Galapagos” into just over 100,000 square miles, and whose president happens to have two perfect Earth-like globes that come together to form his ass? Of course we are talking about Ecuador, and while we could talk about Rafael Correa any day of the year, we will especially talk about him on Earth Day for some reason! He’s been busy:
First! Correa has been promising since his campaign to boot the Americans from Ecuador when Manta airbase lease expires next year. Manta was the last U.S. base in South America (excluding “the nation of Colombia” of course) and U.S. Southern Command is cutely pretending to “respect Ecuador's decision” until his plane goes down mysteriously over Panama or something.Next! Raf fires his Defense Minister when it turns out that his own intelligence services have been spying on the Ecuadorian Congress—perhaps at the behest of the C.I.A.?. The replacement is, awesomely, “a journalist and poet” tasked with “mak[ing]the relationship between the military and civil society more transparent.” Sounds great!
Then! The New York Times exposes the extent of the infiltration of Ecuadorian intelligence agencies, who had been engaging in domestic spying and reporting their findings, not to their own chain of command, but to “Colombian forces and their American military advisers.”
And Finally! Rafael gives the awesome-ist interview of his career to the Spanish newspaper Publico. The gloves are now, officially, finally, forever, off. He calls Uribe a liar, the head of a “completely discredited” government, “the little emperor who follows his boss’s dictates,” and “terribly psychotic,” and then he really lays into him. Seriously, don’t miss it. Spanish speakers can watch the video. For the rest of you, Machetera’s got the full English language transcript.
