The Grayzone
Oct 29, 2025
In his latest exchange with The Grayzone, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and The Grayzone’s Óscar León discuss our recent reports on the lawfare campaigns that have poisoned Ecuadorian politics, and fueled the rise of neoliberalism. Together, Correa and León take a delve into the country’s descent into dystopian narco-state status, and call out the chief culprits.
Transcript:
We are here with former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who recently visited Cannes and received a standing ovation from the audience celebrating his support for Julian Assange. Tell us, Mr. President, how did that feel?
Thank you very much for this interview. It’s always nice to receive people’s affection, though we shouldn’t let it conquer us. Vanity is a constant enemy. Still, it’s gratifying to be recognized for our support of Julian Assange. I can proudly say we saved his life. Without granting him political asylum, he would have been extradited to the United States,
where they sought to try him under laws carrying the death penalty and sentences totaling over 170 years, essentially, life imprisonment. So it was recognition for that support, and a very pleasant experience. that environment of great luxury. It’s not my world, but it’s always interesting to learn from such events.
I would like to ask you to be patient for a moment. I’m going to share my screen. Let’s start with this one. On December 15, 2022, in Washington, D.C., U.S. Senators Bob Menendez and Jim Rich, then-chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were joined by Senators Tim Kaine, Marco Rubio, Chris Coons, Bill Cassidy,
and Ben Cardin, after the bipartisan United States-Ecuador Partnership Act of 2022 was approved by Congress. as part of the National Defense Authorizations Act and the AA for the fiscal year 2023. During the ceremony, the senators make remarks that clearly identify some of the goals of the Intergovernmental and Interagency Alliance.
Senator Rubio noted that in the context of a far-left and openly socialist government’s dominant in our hemisphere, Ecuador is a strategic partner. Ranking Member Rich celebrated that the bill will support Ecuador in developing resilience against state and non-state malign influences. Mr. President, it says here that, as we just saw,
in 2022 this treaty was signed which specifically states that the US government will seek to combat internal and external malign influences. The internal influences clearly include the anti-mining indigenous movement and your citizens revolution. What are your thoughts?
This shows a lack of respect for our people and for humanity itself. Even Ecuador, now a narco-state because of governments aligned with the United States, has become the most violent country in the region, something that transcends any ideology. Yet they remain focused on combating supposed ideological threats through military, violent, and undemocratic means,
all in service of their own ideological fundamentalism. It reveals how lost they are, how little they respect our nations, and how their concern is only for their own group and private, national interests, not the common good of our country or our citizens. That signed agreement, and those conversations say it all.
They’re not acting for the people, but for themselves. Meanwhile, our people are dying. The country faces recession, insecurity, energy shortages, moral and constitutional crises, and collapsing public services. And they’re busy plotting how to fight socialism. It’s incredible, truly incredible.
Si, incluso in the past, armies and countries had to physically invade other nations to seize their resources. Nowadays, they no longer need to do that because they rely on their intelligence services and lawfare. Let’s move on to the next video. Historically, invading and occupying a country has had a high cost.
Invading and occupying a country has historically come at a high cost, both financially and in terms of human lives. However, in the 21st century, where asymmetrical warfare prevails, dominating a nation can be achieved through more subtle means. Enter lawfare, an easier and less costly method of steering a key country in the geopolitical chess game.
What’s your comment on this?
Totalmente de acuerdo.
I completely agree. There are no more foreign invasions or 1970s-style military dictatorships in Latin America. Not because they don’t want them, but because they can’t. Today, everything is recorded and broadcast in real time. Torture and disappearances are no longer possible or even necessary. The methods are now more subtle. Control the media and you control minds.
We progressives don’t battle right-wing parties. We battle their media, which manipulates rather than informs, day and night. Control the justice system with corrupt prosecutors and judges, often guided by the embassy. And you can neutralize progressive movements. That’s lawfare, a legal war replacing the disappeared of the 1970s with reputational assassinations,
stripping leaders of rights and freedom through judicial persecution. It’s the same strategy behind Operation Condor, the U.S.-directed plan that coordinated dictatorships across Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Today’s targets, Cristina Fernandez, Lula, Morales, Fernando Lugo, Rafael Correa, are no coincidence but part of a regional strategy promoted by Washington to weaken progressives. Why?
Because instead of backing governments that improve people’s lives and reduce migration, they prefer puppet regimes for geopolitical control, even if that means worsening conditions and fueling the very migration they later try to repress. Losing control of the region’s governments, to them, is the greater evil.
One technique they use is to focus on the politician rather than the politics or policies. aiming to provoke a more emotional reaction that if the policies themselves were analyzed. What was your approach? For example, if I were to ask if you could take over the country again now, or just like when you first took over,
the country was in chaos, what would be your approach? What did you do to make such a radical transformation happen? Una gran pregunta, y eso es lo que no se entiende. Llevamos 200 años de su desarrollo, Oscar, compañero de Grey Song, audiencia. ¿Cuál ha sido el factor clave? ¿Por qué América Latina no se desarrolló?
A great question, and that’s what many fail to understand. For 200 years, Latin America has been trapped in underdevelopment. What’s the key factor? Why haven’t we advanced? The first step toward true development is building public power, a state rooted in the common good and real independence. Instead, we’ve had what Bolivian thinker René Zavaleta calls apparent states.
uncertain states representing minorities and privileged groups, not the majority. We’re told the essence of democracy is the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. But the most crucial division is between public and private power. Public power’s only legitimacy comes from serving the common good. That’s what changed in 2007. After more than a century since the liberal revolution,
Ecuador finally had a state serving the majority, not private interests, and it was run by a competent government. Good intentions aren’t enough. You need the capacity to act. We had both, and the results proved it. Today, everything has regressed because public power has been co-opted again by private interests. They raise consumption taxes by three points, affecting everyone,
yet fail to collect from major tax evaders, starting with the president’s own family. That’s the clearest example of the difference between a state serving the common good and one serving private powers. In 2007, power shifted to the Ecuadorian people, not the oligarchy.
After doing that, and along the way to doing that, what kind of enemies did you make that you find notable?
Countless, many. And unfortunately, there are many cultural issues involved, countless reasons, many tied to culture, individual and social psychology, which we can’t underestimate. Studies show behavior is key to development. Small attitudes make a big difference. There’s a fictitious anecdote that captures the Latin American mindset. If a genie told an Anglo-Saxon, ask for anything,
but your worst enemy gets double, they’d request $1 billion. Happy enough, even if the enemy gets $2 billion. A Latin American might say, take one of my eyes so my enemy goes blind. That destructive view means we all lose. During my administration, we tripled teachers’ salaries,
yet many resented us because we required eight hours a day in one school, with class prep, student care, and grading. Before, they earned less, but could work multiple jobs or drive taxis. Education was a disaster. We tripled doctors’ salaries, yet many in public health opposed us. Previously, they worked part-time, often sending patients to private clinics they owned.
We required full-time work in well-equipped public hospitals, ending lucrative side businesses. The police too saw higher pay, but lost certain powers that fed corruption. Why so many enemies? Because we affected vested interests. Even though everyone lived better, business owners tripled profits, they had to pay taxes, end outsourcing, register workers, and pay fair wages.
Domestic workers once paid half the minimum wage with no rights gained full rights. Some households went from three employees to one and never forgave us. It’s irrational, rejecting a model that brought prosperity simply because it imposed fairness. Part of it is psychological, resenting that someone outside the oligarchy could command them. Another is the elite’s aversion to equality.
They’d rather be poorer but above others. And finally, they fail to connect cause and effect. They stop paying taxes or fair wages, then lament insecurity and decline, without realizing these are direct consequences of their own choices.
Another notable group of enemies you made, as we’ve seen here at the gray zone, is the Miami lobby of Ecuadorians, including the Isaías family, among others. It’s come out that there was a meeting in Miami where they all gathered and decided on a strategy to confront your government. Part of that involved weaponizing the US government, that is,
turning the American state into a weapon. This is something we’ve also seen with the elites of Iran, Venezuela, Syria and others. Looking at what happened to those countries, it’s been terrible. They’ve been subjected to what you could call a medieval or rather modern siege, not for the sake of their economies, but to make them an example.
And now, during the Ecuadorian election, you could hear people saying, no, I don’t want to be Venezuela. I don’t want to be Venezuela. And it seems to me that is like a sword of Damocles hanging over everybody, threatening them with fear, because they can make an example of your country if you guys win the election.
They even hired a public relations firm to discredit our government. We knew the powers we were up against. The left’s only asset is political power, and we lost it with Moreno’s betrayal. The Isaias pay journalists and own media outlets. They bankrupt their banks and their country, yet never go bankrupt themselves. We learned about their Miami meeting,
the coordination to harm us, and their lobbying against us in Washington. That continues today, paying journalists and others in Ecuador to keep discrediting and defaming us. When I took office in 2007, the 1999 banking crisis was still unresolved. The Bank Recovery Agency was full of assets wrongfully seized from citizens and amounts owed were never collected,
starting with the Isaias. We made them pay through nearly 200 companies they owned in Ecuador, not out of personal animosity, I don’t even know them, but because they defrauded the Ecuadorian people. The oligarchy won’t forgive that. These are formidable enemies, and we knew the fight ahead. The tragedy is their total lack of limits or scruples,
no democratic loyalty, no regard for human rights, justice, or the rule of law. Anything goes. Perhaps we underestimated just how far their hatred and persecution could go.
This leads me to a deeper question, perfect for this moment. Life is about balance and imbalance. In Latin America, where the left gain power amid great imbalance, it’s hard for them to give it up. They know, as you said, that a transnational, almost omnipotent force, that a transnational, very, very powerful force opposes leftist power.
not just socially, but over natural resources too. The media’s power, judicialization and lawfare are overwhelming. For Latin American leaders, it must be incredibly difficult to navigate this. There’s a fine line between hyper-presidentialism and realizing that if the left surrenders powers to those interests, Things like what’s happening in Ecuador and Argentina will unfold.
As I said earlier, development begins with a political process that changes power relations. Every honest Latin American politician must aim to end 200 years of underdevelopment, not just seeking prosperity, but prosperity with justice and dignity. That’s the left’s proposal. To achieve it, political power is essential. You must capture public power, the de jure power of the state,
while confronting the de facto powers that shape it – economic, social, military, foreign. The left’s only real asset is political power. We have no control over the media, military, or economy. In Ecuador, we lost that power with Moreno’s betrayal, which changed history and devastated the country. That loss is unacceptable.
By all democratic means we must retain public power. If that requires the same founding leader, capable of winning elections, to run again, so be it. We must stop sacrificing the essential for the secondary, such as alternation in office. Alternation can be desirable, but it is not fundamental.
When the US was at our level of development, there was no alternation or term limits. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times, and only in 1952 did both parties agree to a two-term limit. At our stage, they didn’t have the luxury of discarding good leaders. For the left,
surrendering political power means abandoning the only tool capable of transforming deeply unjust structures. If that means re-electing the same leader, Evo Morales, Lula da Silva, whoever, then it must be done. Let’s stop focusing on the superficial. After 200 years of underdevelopment, if the left gains political power, it must do whatever is necessary, democratically, to keep it,
even if that means the same leader must run repeatedly to ensure victory.
It is also like more dangerous because they can target that leader and affect the entire movement, like in your case. But what’s the alternative?
These aren’t mutually exclusive. If there’s a founding or prominent leader, how many Chávezes will Venezuela have or Lula’s in Brazil? That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t foster new leaders, but leaders aren’t decreed into existence. A new leadership doesn’t need to overshadow the national one. If the national leader guarantees the project’s continuity, they must keep assuming that responsibility.
If something happens to them, other leaders will emerge, perhaps not at the same level, but it’s not the same as if the founding leader simply retired. That risk must always be faced. This is the constant criticism. Why don’t they step aside? In other countries with mature democracies, it’s called leadership.
Angela Merkel was re-elected four times, and Germany remained a mature democracy. But when Evo Morales was re-elected four times, he was labeled a codillo, and Bolivia a dictatorship. That’s a double standard. The reality, beyond clichés, is that one must assume historical responsibility. The left must make the best decisions to ensure the political project’s continuity.
That is our duty.
Well, that’s not the only thing from the left that troubles the powerful. We’re also seeing a new political divide, nationalism versus globalism. It’s an important distinction. Take Millet’s government, for example. He’s not nationalist. he hands over the country’s resources to foreign interests. In contrast, Trump’s government was somewhat more nationalist.
It’s a very different approach, even though they’re both right-wing. In Argentina, Peronism is especially interesting. It’s not a strictly leftist movement, but a social coalition that includes nationalist business leaders and progressives. That’s where nationalism is more evident to me. Peronist nationalism versus what many call the global elite. Ecuador case is even more striking.
Your movement was clearly nationalist, focused on Ecuador’s well-being. Now, the country has a president who wasn’t even born there and serves purely international corporate interests. What’s your view on this growing divide between nationalism and globalism? Y que está representando intereses corporativos 100% internacionales.
¿Qué piensa usted de esa división de la política que hay ahora entre nacionalismo y globalismo? Y muy sencillo, Oscar. Nómbrame un país que se haya desarrollado sin un sano nacionalismo.
It’s very simple. Name me a country that developed without healthy nationalism. Not fascist nationalism, but one that favors its own, fostering national industry, production, and jobs, prioritizing national interests over foreign ones. Such a country doesn’t exist. In fact, Trump won partly because of this. Some things he said were true.
Blue-collar wages keep falling and unemployment rises as companies seek the cheapest labor abroad. Foreign companies then import their products to the US tax and tariff-free while creating jobs elsewhere. national production and employment must be protected, no country can develop without healthy nationalism. The left, I believe, is nationalist, not anti-internationalist.
But we cannot support a globalization that doesn’t create planetary citizens, only global markets and consumers. Neoliberal globalization is a disaster, yet we must recognize we live in an interdependent global system, as Balestra said. Still, we must prioritize the national. A true left that seeks to lift its country from underdevelopment must embrace healthy nationalism.
The divide between nationalists and globalists isn’t absolute. You can be both, in proper measure. Another threat to the left are the woke, who focus on postmodern issues like abortion or gay marriage when we haven’t solved 19th century problems, children still die from gastroenteritis, a disease of poverty. The left must know how to prioritize.
Before engaging in debates that divide rather than unite, we must first tackle the core causes of the classical left, massive socio-economic injustice and exclusion. Let’s focus there, then discuss the rest.
It’s part of this post-left-right world that we’re seeing, or at least culturally, there’s a superficiality and a lack of class analysis. Everything is analyzed as an immediate phenomenon, which mislead us. When you think like that, you lose your way. What I’m saying is that the political war has transformed into a cultural war.
At least here in the United States, and from what I saw in 2024 in Argentina, the narrative isn’t so much economic but cultural, and is used to divide people along cultural lines. And that’s the plan that the political right used to win said cultural war.
It’s not necessarily an economic debate, but a cultural war, it seems to me.
It also has an economic component. But where does that culture come from? From the media. Antonio Gramsci said it 80 years ago. Hegemonic culture. It’s not the one that dominates you by force, but the one that seduces you and makes you applaud your own chains, makes the poor reject taxes,
when it’s the rich who should be paying them to serve the poor. The poor, the vast majority, end up acting in the interests of the elites. How is that achieved? The methods have become ever more refined. Today, it’s done through mass communication, social media, and algorithms, what the German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls infocracy. They manipulate information,
feed you what you want to hear, control you by confirming your convictions, and know exactly how to use them. This is not power that imposes, it seduces. People now willingly sacrifice their privacy. And once privacy is gone, hegemonic culture imposes itself. It shapes common sense around the status quo and the interests of a minority.
If you talk about the cultural dimension, it’s inseparable from the economic one. They make you believe it’s irrational not to be capitalist or liberal, and that belief is instilled deep in the population. This is the power of information. Traditional media first, now supercharged by social media and algorithmic control. They don’t inform you.
They tell you what they want you to hear, shaping and deforming thought. Public debate ends. Convictions harden. Instead of information strengthening democracy, it destroys it. Public opinion disappears, debate vanishes, and society fragments. We no longer build community. We build tribes.
As Jesse Sousa said in his book, The Right Wing Poor, the argument goes something like this. The poor are poor because they want to be poor. But when then you think, hey, I’m also poor. And the response is, don’t worry, it’s not your fault. You’re poor because of the left wing.
That argument has been used in many ways and spread quickly. Do you think that’s accurate?
That is what’s called the aspirational mentality. And it may be that the left’s success is its failure, because I believe that even with the poor, they’re beating us in the narrative, as you rightly say. Before, there was a left that sowed division and said that the poor are poor because of the rich,
which isn’t as simplistic as that, but it’s a little more coherent. Now the poor are poor because of the left, and they convince them of that. But the left’s success is often its failure because it lifts people out of poverty. becomes the middle class, and that middle class no longer wants to listen to speeches,
no longer wants to defend the poor, aspires to be like the rich, and aspires to be like the elites. It’s already Doña Florinda syndrome, as Rafael Tongo, an Argentine writer, calls it. Then they differentiate themselves from the rest, they’re a little better off than the rest, and they spoil their spoiled son, Kiko,
teaching him to believe themselves superior to the rest. They mistreat the workers. Don Ramon, huh? And they wanna be, they’re sympathetic to the compassionate Mr. Capitalist. They want to be like the elites. So, as I was saying, the left’s success is its own failure, because the leftist rhetoric is running out.
And those people who fall for the siren song, the rightist rhetoric, the right seduces, seduces the middle class because of that middle class aspiration to be like the elites. And they’re already telling the poor too, making them believe that their problems are… No, it’s not the fault of the rich, of the accumulation of wealth, of inequality,
the lack of opportunity. They blame the left. That’s supposedly demagogic, doesn’t know how to govern, etc.
Let’s move on to the next video. According to the police report, the third international criminal structure operating in Ecuador is the Balkan Mafia or Albanian Mafia, as it is known in Ecuador. Just recently, Fernando Villavicencio, as head of the Parliamentary Commission that Controls Corruption, issued a report that showed connections between the Balkan Mafia and Ruben Chérez,
a close associate of Danilo Carrera, mentor of President Guillermo Lazo. Chérez was eventually murdered. This case played a significant role in the downfall of President Guillermo Lazo. So Ecuador has come to this. What are your thoughts?
Look, if they don’t want to eliminate the Albanian mafia, it’s not for lack of capacity but of will? How many Albanians are there in Ecuador? 200? How can they not identify the mafia among such a small group? The truth is, the problem is bigger. The Ecuadorian state has become a narco-state. Organized crime has infiltrated the state.
They dismantled it starting with Moreno. And now there is neither capacity nor will to fight it. Over $4 billion are laundered annually in the Ecuadorian financial system, huge for a $120 billion economy. Without this laundering, many banks and sectors would collapse. There’s no real will to act. These staged police operations,
with the president in a vest for the cameras, are not how you fight organized crime. This isn’t a Rambo job. It’s Sherlock Holmes’ work, tracking the money, using intelligence, international coordination, and high technology. But they’re lost. The state is dismantled. There’s no Ministry of Security coordination, justice, or prisons.
The intelligence service can no longer anticipate organized crime’s moves. The state, armed forces, police, judiciary, prosecutor’s office, Congress, government, and financial system are infiltrated, and some supposedly legal sectors profit from laundering. Your report confirms it. Check the numbers. Even if Albanians tripled since my government, we’d have about 600, including elderly women and children, maybe 120 families.
How can they not dismantle a mafia in such a small community?
Recently, it was even reported that the police and state institutions allowed the Albanian mafia to keep operating after their operations were shown on TV and they were supposed to be shut down.
Terrible things happen that are either unknown or deliberately hidden to blame us. That’s why they call the Albanian Mafia Korea’s open-door policy, as if there were 20,000 Albanians. In reality, during my government, there were only about 200. If such a mafia existed, how could they not dismantle it? They tell half-truths, but never mention that Moreno,
out of hatred for me and to tarnish us, eliminated the Ministry of Security. Security wasn’t just the police. It included the armed forces, foreign ministry, deportations, border control, international coordination, and the binational border commissions. Drugs enter from Colombia, weapons from Peru. It also involved the Ministry of Education to teach children prevention, the Ministry of Justice, ECU, 911,
and more. Moreno dismantled all that, including the Ministry of Justice. And what did he do with the prisons? In Guayaquil, instead of classifying inmates by risk level, as is done worldwide, he handed entire wings to gangs, the wolves, the choneros, the chon killers. From there, they directed organized crime, which is proven and scandalous.
Moreno should be in prison as a traitor, with blood on his hands. Yet they hide it to harm me, because admitting the truth about him would vindicate us. But the fact remains, Moreno gave the prisons to criminal groups, unleashing chaos and allowing organized crime to grow explosively, run directly from inside.
My question is clear.
Are you or are you not the owner of Novoa Trading, the company that exported cocaine-laced bananas in 2020-2022, And 2024, while you were already president, five prosecutors have been replaced and still no answers. No. Candidate Noboa, you have one minute to explain your answer.
No, I’m not the owner, but members of my family are. When he denied ownership, he did say it was his family’s. What’s the significance of this?
Absolutely. My investigation, conducted with journalists across Latin America, uncovered a scandal the Ecuadorian media tried to bury. Noboa trading, linked to President Noboa, through Inmobiliaria Zeus, S.A., Ecuador, and Lanfranco Holding S.A., Panama, was caught red-handed trafficking cocaine. 167 kilos in 2020, 400 kilos in 2022, and 78 kilos in 2023, 2024, all en route to Italy and Croatia.
This isn’t speculative intelligence like Lasso’s Leon de Troia, it’s a blatant crime. And Noboa himself admitted on live TV that the company belongs to his family. A confession with explosive political, legal and reputational consequences.
It seems that sometimes reality surpasses fiction.
It’s very serious, isn’t it? As I said earlier, Ecuador has become a narco-state, and nothing is done because stricter controls aren’t implemented at the ports where
drugs are exported.
Everyone knows bananas are shipped from private ports, mainly from Guayaquil and sometimes Puerto Bolivar, to Europe, especially Antwerp and Rotterdam. There’s no control, only complicity. Port workers are threatened, report it, and you’re killed. But why don’t higher authorities act? Because they’re involved. The problem runs deeper. Bernardo Manzano, Lasso’s Minister of Agriculture,
was still employed by Corporación Noboa while in office, affiliated with Social Security and on their payroll. As minister, he tripled banana export permits despite no increase in export capacity. Why? To let Albanian mafia shell companies export bananas that were actually cocaine shipments. Has this been investigated?
Today, Manzano is back managing Noboa, and his sister is a minister in Noboa’s government. At the very least, there’s permissiveness. These crimes happen in the president’s own companies. In recent years, Ecuador has become the world’s top cocaine exporter, mainly to Europe, especially through Guayaquil, hidden in containers of bananas, cocoa, and other goods, many belonging to Corporación Noboa,
owned by the president himself. And nothing is done.
As an Ecuadorian-American and someone who’s lived in both countries for quite some time, I remember watching an interview with Diana Salazar on CNN. It blew my mind. She openly admitted there was no evidence against you. It was very similar to what happened with Aldo Moro, who I believe was Lula’s judge,
and the same thing came up with her. The interviewer even asked her, but how is that possible? And then she kind of realized and tried to backtrack, but the truth slipped out. That there was no evidence of what? That you were guilty in the psychic influence case, which is the thesis they use against you.
But in Moreno’s and Lasso’s cases, it’s unnecessary, said psychic influence. They have direct links and facts supporting their involvement. With Novoa, it’s different. They were caught red-handed, not even under police surveillance. If I play devil’s advocate, one might say, contamination in a banana company with drugs is almost inevitable.
But the president’s lack of response says everything, or the kind of response. If my product was contaminated, I would go ballistic and find the culprit, one way or the other. but sweeping it under the rug will be the last thing I would do. A public figure should resolve this truly and ensure justice. Here,
the person in charge of the containers, a disabled employee, was arrested and then quickly released by a lawyer. After that, the investigation stopped. We uncovered five cases, not just three. Novoa’s political party CEO was involved, and she was acquitted shortly after the debate. The real alarm is the cover-up. not the contamination itself.
That’s why there’s the presumption of innocence, which is a human right. I can’t say that Noboa knows about drugs, but at least there’s negligence, at least there’s a lack of will, because if, as you rightly say, drugs are being smuggled into my own company, and I’m the President of the Republic,
I’ll ask for three months leave to fix the problem or I’ll turn the ports upside down. I’ll contact them. I’ll deploy dogs, radars, scanners, everything necessary to prevent it. You don’t see that here. It’s enormous indifference. A terrible passivity. I don’t know if that says much.
A lot. And you made a reference to this a little while ago, and I think it’s interesting to highlight so people can understand. I recommend people to watch the report we did on this because there’s a lot of interesting data there. A lot of interesting data there.
But the point is that people have to understand that Ecuador is dollarized. Its government is immobilized by… They’re facilitating money laundering, aren’t they? Of course, it’s underfunded, whether intentionally or not. There’s no real capacity to fight back. Journalist Andres Duran told me that one port control unit, the one that takes care of the drug sniffing dogs,
had a budget of just $5,000. That’s when the alarms went on and I began building this report. We have to understand that drugs aren’t bad with credit cards. Everything is cash. That cash slowly leaves the system daily, eventually peeling up to a lot.
But to keep the system healthy, that money has to return to the system from the underworld. Otherwise, the system needs to print more money. This happened in the United States with the Wachovia Bank case, where currency exchange houses were used to launder drug money. Wachovia’s lawyer told Congress to stop investigating. Because we’re too big to fail.
Congress refused to negotiate. Then, mysteriously, the cash flow was cut off over the next month. Six months later, the crisis hits. Banks had to borrow cash from each other, starting a domino effect. This case ended with just a symbolic fine. My reflection is that Ecuador plays a similar role internationally. With weak controls,
it becomes the place where lander dollars from the underworld re-enter the global economic system. What do you think of this theory?
Dollarization undoubtedly facilitates money laundering and organized crime. It’s not enough to simply debate whether it’s good or bad for the country. With proper controls, the risks could be reduced. But those controls don’t exist. And it’s clear who benefits. You said dollars come in. That’s closer to the truth. The money doesn’t necessarily leave, it’s laundered within the system.
How? Mainly through mining, especially illegal mining. A shell company in the US sells to one here, they ship less product but overpay. Instead of 100,000, they bill 1 million. Who can verify that? This is how money is laundered, through illegal and even legal mining, feeding the financial sector, which profits from it. Dollarization makes it easier.
When money is sent abroad, Ecuador’s dollars don’t need currency exchange, leaving no trace. Likewise, drug sales in Ecuador can be sent abroad without converting from a national currency, avoiding records. Mining extracts and sells minerals, and no one controls either end of the transaction. Those dollars flow into the financial system and some banks survive largely on that
laundered money.
I have two more questions and I appreciate your generosity with your time, Mr. Former President. When I interviewed you a few months ago, we discussed the possibility of a pact of your movement with the indigenous movement to face the elections, the upcoming elections. And the pact eventually did take place, although rather late.
And, you know, we saw what happened. But now it seems to me that the indigenous movement is at a delicate moment right now. What are your thoughts on all of this looking forward?
Looking ahead, given everything that’s happened, there has never been a real divorce because we were never truly married. In the Citizens’ Revolution, indigenous sectors exist, and I believe those who support the revolution are already involved. There might be something redeemable in the indigenous movement, but I honestly think we shouldn’t waste more time.
There are deep contradictions within it. There are good people, within their limits. I believe Leonidas Isa is a dignified man, though limited. For example, my government aimed to break the system that enslaves the poor in Latin America, not slavery or racial segregation, but giving the poorest the worst education. The worst education is for indigenous people,
community schools with one teacher per grade, 15 students, no electricity, no computers. We tried to break that perverse system by providing better schools, especially in rural areas. But Leonidas Aiza fought to suspend the Millennium School program and return to the old community school model. Education there serves to control the community because the teacher is often
related to local leaders who dominate the community. Still, despite his sometimes rough politics, I think Leonidas Aiza can be redeemed, and there will be other redeemable leaders. I know good and bad people in the indigenous movement, but I fear a damaged sector dominates and sells out to the highest bidder. Look at the recent Pachakotik parliamentarians.
Pachakotik is the political arm of the indigenous movement, konay, its social expression. But there’s a contradiction. A political party should reflect a political ideology, not an ethnic identity. Not all Afro-Colombians or indigenous people are left-wing. A political party is either left or right. Defending indigenous rights is right, as they’ve been excluded for centuries, regardless of political leanings.
But having a political party representing an ethnic group is a mistake and inconsistent. Look at indigenous assembly members. They’re often the first to sell out to the highest bidder. This has always happened. It’s no exception. They’re infiltrated too. Many golden ponchos have foundations funded by groups like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy,
which Trump thankfully sought to end. Lords T. Bonds Foundation is funded by the NED, the CIA’s financial arm. So they’re heavily infiltrated, full of contradictions, and it’s historical, deep-rooted. Their internal conflicts make involvement exhausting and pointless. I think we must move forward on our own, not arrogantly, but welcoming anyone who wants to join. This is the path.
Not arguing, not yielding, and not accepting impossible or undesirable demands. They say no to mining, no to oil, but never offer solutions. We must present our proposals. Whoever wants to join is welcome. The rest, well, good luck to them.
It does seem that social movements and Ecuadorian society are in a very delicate moment. We seem to be on the brink of World War III. Some might say it has already begun. And Latin America is not exempt on this. There are blocks forming. Some countries clearly align with the US, others not necessarily opposing the US,
but outside the blocks, even on BRICS. How do you see the political dynamics and prospects for Latin America?
Despite all its contradictions, Latin America remains, for me, the continent of hope. We have vast natural resources, a growing middle class, an abundant human talent. Yet, we must resolve our internal contradictions. Like our difficulty organizing ourselves at a continental level, we remain too spontaneous. Beyond this enemy, there is widespread contempt for regulations.
Ignoring rules has become almost a sport. In countries like Ecuador, this reaches a high level, a culture that applauds cheaters rather than punishing them. At the individual level, we lack self-reliance, that healthy self-sufficiency Tocqueville called virtuous individualism, which Anglo-Saxons, especially Americans, possess. Often, the left itself is to blame. Through paternalism and victimization, poor things always mistreated.
The left offers handouts, not rights. We are the United States’ backyard. The first question Latin America must answer is why we remain the backyard and not vice versa. We began our republican life almost simultaneously and were both colonies, but they developed and we didn’t. This demands deep self-criticism.
Despite all this, I still believe we are the continent of hope. The first step is political, changing power relations. The second is integration. While Europe united 27 countries with different systems, languages and cultures that once waged brutal wars, Latin America, speaking mostly the same language, sharing culture, religion and political systems, has yet to unite.
Our first internal step must be changing power relations toward the common good. The second is building the nation of nations Simon Bolivar dreamed of, achieving prosperity denied for 200 years with justice, dignity, and a global presence to defend our legitimate interests and contribute to a better world. So despite all the challenges, I am optimistic.
I have faith that our America remains the continent of hope.
Bye.
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