Category Archives: trade

Ecuador bans opposition party, criminalizes ecological defenders, joins U.S. military attacks

by Jim Hodgson

In a just world, news that Ecuador has banned its largest opposition party would be enough to scuttle Canada’s plans for a free trade agreement with the country – and even end U.S. military collaboration. But that is not the world we live in.

The news came as 77 organizations from Ecuador, Canada and around the world sent a letter to Canada’s ambassador in Ecuador urging the embassy to adopt Canada’s 2019 Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders in response to the criminalization of Indigenous and environmental defenders. Among the signatories are MiningWatch Canada, Common Frontiers, and KAIROS Canada.

The letter to Ambassador Craig Kowalik was sent in response to the criminalization of Indigenous and environmental defenders from the Federation of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations of Azuay (FOA, Federación de Organizaciones lndigenas y Campesinas del Azuay). 

FOA members are facing criminal proceedings for their environmental defense work to safeguard the Kimsakocha páramo from the Loma Larga gold mining project, owned by Canadian mining company DPM Metals Inc.

The letter to the embassy expresses concern over criminal charges initiated by DPM Metals against six FOA members — Lauro Sigcha, Lizardo Zhaqui, Marco Tapia, Ruth Pugo, Carmita Pérez, and Yaku Pérez — following a peaceful clean-up action to remove mining waste left by the company near the headwaters of the Irquis and Tarqui rivers in the Kimsakocha páramo. The Kimsakocha páramo is a fragile ecosystem that regulates the regional hydrological cycle and provides fresh water to tens of thousands of people. For more than 30 years, Indigenous and peasant communities have defended this ecosystem against large-scale mining projects.

Ecuador bans opposition party

Acting on the request of the government-aligned Prosecutor General, an electoral judge in Ecuador on Friday (March 6) ordered the nine-month suspension of the country’s largest opposition party, the Citizens’ Revolution (RC ). 

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) denounced the ban as the latest escalation in a broader pattern of authoritarian regression, including lawfare against opponents, repeated states of emergency, and deepening military ties with the Trump administration.

“The government of President Daniel Noboa, who is strongly backed by President Trump, is trying to accelerate the destruction of what is left of democracy in Ecuador,” said CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot. The move bars RC –led by former President Rafael Correa – from local elections to be held in 2027.

U.S.-Ecuador military strikes

On the same day as the ban on the RC party, the Ecuadorian and U.S. militaries conducted joint airstrikes near the Colombian border targeting a site allegedly tied to dissidents from the former FARC guerrillas from Colombia. 

These “lethal kinetic operations,” as the U.S. military calls them, are another of Noboa’s efforts since his 2023 election to deepen ties with Washington — including a failed attempt to re-establish a U.S. military base in the country.

Days earlier, on Tuesday (March 3), the United States and Ecuador launched joint attacks against “designated terrorist organizations” – Trumpspeak for drug-traffickers.

Since September last year, the United States has attacked small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, but these attacks in Ecuador are the first known land operations by U.S. forces against drug cartels. At least 150 people have been killed in 44 known strikes. The United States has never shown proof that any of the dead were in fact moving illegal drugs.

While neither government will say precisely where the attacks are happening, Noboa ordered curfews in four provinces west and southwest of Quito, extending to the city of Guayaquil and beyond. Noboa said his country was “entering a new phase in the internal war.”

* An update (March 25 from Drop Site News:

A New York Times investigation raises serious questions about a March 6 airstrike that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicized on social media as proof the U.S. military was “now bombing Narco Terrorists on land.”

According to the Times, the target appears to have been a 350-acre cattle and dairy farm owned by a 32-year-old carpenter named Miguel, not a drug trafficking compound. Farm workers told the Times that Ecuadorean soldiers arrived three days earlier, beat and detained four Colombian workers, subjected them to waterboarding and electric shocks, doused structures with gasoline and set them alight—then returned on March 6 to film themselves bombing the smoldering ruins, producing footage Ecuador and the U.S. jointly promoted as the destruction of a traffickers’ training camp.

The Pentagon said the strike was conducted “jointly” with Ecuador, though Times sources said U.S. troops had no direct involvement in the bombing itself. Ecuador claimed to have recovered weapons and evidence of illicit activity but released no photographs, as it typically does following drug seizures. “It’s a lie that 50 people trained here,” Miguel said, standing amid his dead chickens. “There’s no logic.” (NYT)

"Another World is Possible," World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2005)

The old order is dead. Let’s make a new, more just order.

by Jim Hodgson

It was too much to hope that the well-heeled audience at Davos would boo Donald Trump from the stage a day after they had offered Mark Carney a standing ovation. But by the end of Wednesday, it seemed that the wall of resistance to any U.S. take-over of Greenland was successful, and the president backed down. An important victory.

Still, “la rupture de l’ordre mondial” of which Carney spoke remains. And he’s right: we shouldn’t mourn it. The international financial institutions invented in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, gave overwhelming power to the rich countries of the Global North. 

And the United Nations system that followed, with a veto given to each of the five most powerful countries, has protected their interests – even in the face of overwhelming contrarian votes in the UN General Assembly. Think, for example, of the annual vote to end the cruel U.S. blockade of Cuba.

That order was designed by the nations that existed at the end of World War II, especially the colonial or neo-colonial states of Europe and the Americas. Most of the Caribbean, Africa and large parts of south Asia were still under colonial rule. That order imposed and perpetuated a Global North-based order on all the new nations that were born in the 25 years or so after the war: the majority of nations that exist today.

And that order, at least in the eyes of three of the five veto-holders, effectively imposed capitalism as a synonym for democracy. The United States and its allies were satisfied with a sort of formal democracy, a certain alternance between parties of the right and centre-right, and if that failed, then a military government was a useful interlude until the real order could be re-established and markets were safe. 

Canada would “go along to get along,” as Carney admitted. 

Just as it did less than three weeks ago when the United States bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president. And just as it has for more than two years over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

In his speech, Carney seemed to offer a vision of capitalism without the now-erratic United States. It’s still reliant on resource extraction, military spending, and massive capital investment.

But if we are all to grow and thrive, we must demand more. We require an end to practices that exploit social inequities and our shared ecology. 

Alternatives

Because of the paths on which my life has taken me, one that is especially close to my heart is the call from the Indigenous people of Zapatista communities in southern Mexico for “a world with room for all” – “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.” But other visions come from other places, including three decades of gatherings of the World Social Forum.

More than 50 years ago, the majority world united behind a vision of economic decolonization, sovereign development, and international cooperation across areas such as debt, trade, finance, and technology. That vision became known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and was adopted by the UN General Assembly. But, power relations being what they are, it was never implemented. (Progressive International put together a set of reflections that trace its history and update the proposals for the 21st century.)

In March last year, the World Council of Churches and several global communions of churches repeated their call for a New International Financial and Economic Architecture (NIFEA). “It is immoral that over a billion people – half of them children – subsist in poverty whilst billionaires increased their wealth by over 15% in 2024 to US$15 trillion. It is outrageous that the richest 10% of the global population receives more than half of global income, whereas the poorest half earns merely 8.5% of it,” they said in a statement.

They expressed deep concern about “a rapidly escalating climate and biodiversity emergency that jeopardises livelihoods and poses an existential threat to all life.” It notes that “several tipping points are close to being crossed or have already been crossed, leading us to recognise that we may be beyond a point of no return.”

The old order is dead. The time in which we are living demands we do better.

“Cuba does not live in peace. Cuba lives with permanent aggression.”

The Mexico City daily newspaper, La Jornada, published an interview May 9 with Cuba’s vice-minister of external relations, Carlos Fernández De Cossío.

Cuba’s lack of peace, he emphasized, is caused by Washington’s policies against the people of Cuba, characterized by economic coercion with the blockade. He warned that while practically the whole world has been the object of tariff threats by the administration of Donald Trump, “towards Cuba, the onslaught is already underway, and only military aggression is lacking” to complete the siege.

In the face of new global geopolitics, with Trump in power, he warned that the White House now attacks several countries: “you see this in Panama, Greenland, Canada;” the focus could also be the progressive governments elsewhere in Latin America.

“There are threats against several governments, and the United States will attempt, through force, economic pressure, and other methods, to influence the political processes of our countries. Venezuela is a country under attack. It’s evident that the region faces that reality….  The absence of armed conflict does not mean living in peace.” He also said that there is pressure on nations in the hemisphere to adopt measures to “reduce the ‘harmful influence’ of China.”

Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have worked with my former colleagues at The United Church of Canada, other churches, several trade unions and international development organizations to draw attention to the impact of U.S. sanctions (“the blockade”) on the Cuban people. Now that Canada’s new cabinet ministers are confirmed, we’ll likely launch a new call to “take action” in solidarity with Cuba.

Fernández de Cossío was in Mexico City for meetings May 8 with Mexico’s External Relations department (SRE) to talk about migration issues. 

With a long career in diplomacy, Fernández de Cossío has served as director for the United States in the Cuban foreign ministry. He also served as ambassador in Canada (2004-05) and South Africa, and was Cuba’s representative in the peace process between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said spaces like the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are key to creating a counterweight to Washington. “They must move beyond declarations and formality. Getting there is not easy.” What follows is a lightly-edited translation of his interview with La Jornada writers, Emir Olivares and Arturo Sánchez Jiménez.

Migration challenges

Q: What are the challenges to the region from the new anti-migration policies of Trump?

R: If the great gap between the industrialized, developed countries and the countries in processes of development is not reduced, it’s natural that there will be a growing flow from the south toward the north to seek better living conditions. That goes on in Africa, in Asia and in our continent, where the flow toward the United States, whether it be regular or irregular. The reality varies by each country.

Q: And for Cuba?

R: The case of Cuba is unique. The United States has applied a dynamic against it that both pushes and pulls migration, whether regular or irregular. Washington’s official policy is economic coercion. The blockade, aimed at depressing and making living conditions as difficult as possible, provokes a migration drive.

Furthermore, since the 1960s, Cuban immigrants have been privileged, regardless of how they cross the border, by sea or by land. They are assimilated, granted refugee status, protected, and provided with employment. Additionally, there is the Cuban Adjustment Act, which means that regardless of how they entered the United States, Cuban migrants can acquire residency within one year of arriving in the United States. No citizen of any other country in the world has that privilege. If Washington does not put an end to this reality, the irregular flow will continue.

Q: What do you think of the U.S. propaganda shared in mass media and internet platforms against migration, headed by the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem?

R: It’s media opportunism that seeks support in the population. They unfairly criminalize all immigrants. To a certain extent, society has been polarized since its inception, with cultural and racial prejudices. And it’s not difficult for these politicians to try to stir up those feelings to promote a policy of rejecting immigrants and blaming them for many of the problems: drug use, unemployment, crime, and social polarization. If some migrants participate in crime and social unrest, it’s because these phenomena already exist in the United States.

Historically, the United States has believed that Cuba belongs to them, but in reality, it is an inability to accept that Cuba is, and has the right to be, a sovereign state.

Medical students at the University of Medical Sciences in Matanzas come from around the world. (Photo: Jim Hodgson, 2007)

Campaign against the health brigades

Q: The campaign against Cuba’s medical brigades is within these new coercive measures?

R: Yes. Since February, they have threatened that countries that continue medical cooperation programs with Cuba, their officials and family members will lose their visas and their ability to travel to the United States. Today, around 60 nations have these programs. They provide care to thousands of people. It is a historic project, for which Cuba has been praised by governments, several UN secretaries-general, and even a US president (Barack Obama).

The campaign seeks two things: to discredit this symbol of the success of Cuban society, since one of the priorities of anti-Cuban sectors is to prevent recognition of Cuba’s successes. The second is to cut off a legitimate source of income obtained from agreements with countries that are more favourable (such as Mexico), although historically these are services for which not a cent has been received.

Q: Do Trump’s new geopolitics bring additional pressures to the hemisphere?

R: It’s part of the US government’s hostile and imposing behavior toward the region, and it’s a challenge not only for Cuba but for the entire region. There’s pressure to adopt measures to reduce “China’s harmful influence.” We find it absurd. In a recent congressional hearing, they showed alleged Chinese military bases in Cuba (they used to say they were Russian, during the Cold War). They presented images of what could have been a soccer field or a rice field to say: “This is evidence that there are Chinese military bases in Cuba,” but there wasn’t a single military officer there, no one from the Pentagon or the CIA, from the institutions that are supposed to bear witness to this.

There’s threatening behavior that tries to impose their will on the hemisphere. We saw this in Panama. We see it in Greenland (even though it is not part of the region) and with Canada. It’s a challenge for us all and it’s dangerous.

Q: What have been the errors of the revolutionary regime?

R: Fidel Castro once said that the biggest mistake was thinking that anyone knew how to build socialism and that it would be easy to do so. In Cuba, specific errors may have been made in some aspects of economic policy, in elements of social policy, but it’s very difficult to judge if one takes into account the challenges posed by the aggression of a power like the United States.

Q: Are the ideals of Martí, Castro and others still valid?

R: The ideas of Martí, Fidel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and other Marxists remain relevant and continue to shape our thinking. The challenge we face with youth is enormous, due to the communication influence that large corporations have exerted, a monopoly that is difficult to break. This, combined with a very depressed economic situation, has a serious and dangerous impact on the population. We are working with this; we accept it as a challenge, a very great challenge facing Cuban society.