Venezuela and Ecuador in “Revolutionary Integration”

Diarios las Americas, 5 September, 2008

A meeting – another one- has just taken place between Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador at Camp Ayacucho, a 850 sq. kilometer area in the oil-bearing strip of the Orinoco, to sign a petroleum agreement. However, more than a petroleum agreement it is one of “revolutionary integration” and they have made clear that it means the revolutionary integration of Latin America. Actually, they are determined to convince other governments of Latin America to imitate Fidel Castro’s communist revolution that has been scourging the Cuban people for fifty years now.

In a political and revolutionary speech, Rafael Correa called Hugo Chávez his “brother and colleague”. The speeches that both men give always, in the past, now, and possibly in the future, continue to attack the United States of America and all the governments that are not in solidarity with Hugo Chávez and the regimes that are fully identified with his regime. More than identified those regimes are subordinated because of the huge financial aid that they get from the Venezuelan petrodollars.

The Ecuadorian nation is experiencing a very serious political crisis that is shaking the foundations of its institutional life. Fortunately, at least up to now, Correa has not been able to fully subdue the people of his country who have important leaders, with popular support, and are confronting the oratory and arbitrary and menacing measures of the president.

Alarming for Latin American solidarity, and also for inter-American solidarity in general and significant terms, is this alliance of Chávez with several governments in the region, especially those of Bolivia and Ecuador. Of course, more serious yet is the overt and challenging alliance with the totalitarian Marxist-Leninist tyranny of Fidel Castro that began fifty-years ago in José Marti’s homeland; that homeland whose people suffer all the outrages of such a totalitarian tyranny.

In view of these alliances it is necessary that democratic governments and political leaders throughout the continent join forces to strengthen in their countries a democratic consciousness, which is so seriously threatened and attacked by its enemies who are now in power in several countries of the region.