Colombia´s relationship with its smaller neighbor Ecuador was ignored
until the military operation against FARC commander Raul Reyes on March
1st, 2008 on Ecuadorian territory that sparked a diplomatic crisis
which remains unresolved. This article is the last of a 3 part article
analyzing relations between the two countries. Part one and two can be found here and here.
If it is the case
that the frayed relations between Colombia and Ecuador have more to
do with a personal antipathy between the two Presidents, they might
need reminding that, in spite of what many may think, Alvaro Uribe
and Rafael Correa they do actually have some things in common.
They have similar,
almost identical, positions on affairs regarding indigenous
populations, development projects and natural resource extraction. If
we recall Uribe´s justification for not ratifying the United
Nations Convention on indigenous rights, he did it on three counts;
opposition to the right of local communities to veto projects
pertaining to a national economic interest, defense of the nation´s
ownership of subsoil rights, and defense of the state´s right
to send troops onto indigenous territory. He also criticized
indigenous land protests on the basis that the indigenous peoples,
accounting for under 2% of the population, collectively own 27% of
the territory. What he did not mention was that, of that 27%, a vast
majority is in unproductive areas such as the Amazon rainforests,
paramo´s, or the deserts of the Guajira, still leaving over
400,000 indigenous people without access to cultivable land.
His
supporters, though, voice the belief that distributing land to
indigenous people is counter-productive from a national point of
view; they are claimed to be unproductive in their use of the land,
which would be better used by agro-industrial companies. Therefore,
whilst claiming to be a “friend” of the indigenous people
of Colombia, and taking credit for the weakened capacity of the FARC
to harass indigenous communities in areas like Cauca, Uribe has
little time for organizations such as the Organizacion Nacional de
Indigenas de Colombia (ONIC).
In his opposition to indigenous
protests, Uribe has often tainted indigenous organizations with links
to the FARC, something that seems ridiculous, if not downright
insulting, in light of recent FARC massacres of indigenous people in
Nariño. Perhaps his most controversial position is his
continuing support for oil exploitation in U´wa territory in
North Santander, an issue that prompted a famous struggle against
Occidental in the 1990´s. Uribe maintains that oil exploitation
must go ahead to benefit the nation, and his supporters in the media
have even insinuated that the U´wa are “selfish”
for resisting oil exploitation on their land
Correa, at least at
first, promised to be a totally different fish altogether. In his
youth, he actually took the time to spend a year in the indigenous
town of Zumbahau whilst researching for his thesis, and learnt
Quichua, a rare feat among Latin America´s white and mestizo
populations. Although he had scarce links to civil society
organizations, he quickly won support from Ecuador´s indigenous
population with his promises of a “citizen´s revolution.”
His rise, however, coincided with the apparently terminal decline of
Ecuador´s once mighty indigenous organization, the CONAIE
(Confederacion de Nacionalidades Indigenas del Ecuador). His
ability to propose himself as the sole leader of Ecuador´s
leftist trend has meant he has been able to maintain indigenous
support whilst preventing the CONAIE´s key proposals from ever
coming to force. Although it is true that some of his allies in the
Constitutional Assembly ensured the insertion indigenous concepts
into the new constitution, such as the right to “buen vivir”
(translation form the Quichua term, Sumaq Kawsay) Correa himself has
shown little desire to turn such ideas into policy. The differences
between him and other members of his party, Acuerdo Pais, are clear
when he talks vaguely about “infiltrators”, and
manifested in the marginalization of his one time friend and ally,
Alberto Acosta (an ally of the CONAIE and other social movements),
from the political process.
Correa was also the
main force in limiting the upgrade of Quichua to the status of a
national language. This demand is considered by the CONAIE to be an
essential pre-requisite to building a truly equal society, as it
would entail mestizos and whites to learn Quichua or other indigenous
languages. Radical as it sounds, there is already a model for this in
Paraguay, where a large sector of the non-indigenous population
speaks Guarani. Correa, however, used his influence in the
Constitutional Assembly to reduce the strength of such an amendment,
on the basis of it being impractical. CONAIE activists accuse him of
exploiting his own knowledge of Quichua to win indigenous support,
whilst simultaneously limiting the rights given to those same
indigenous communities. They accuse him of maintaining “racist”
attitudes and perpetuating “neo-liberal” policies.
In a not entirely
unrelated issue, Uribe and Correa both reject any idea that
environmental concerns should ever be allowed to override
developmental objectives. With regards to Correa, though, the issue
is far less clear-cut. In 2007, he set environmentalist´s
pulses racing by adopting one of their long-standing proposals:
avoiding exploitation of the Ishpingo Tambacocha Tiptuni (ITT)
oilfield in return for international compensation to offset lost oil
revenues. This compensation was justified on the basis that avoided
exploitation would protect the remarkable biodiversity of the Yasuni
National Park, safeguard the rights of the voluntarily isolated
indigenous peoples living in the area, and prevent the emission of
over 400 million tonnes of carbon into the Earth´s atmosphere.
In addition, he backed up this flagship policy by proposing a tax on
fossil fuels extraction, with the intention helping the world to move
beyond fossil fuel extraction and simultaneously providing a fund to
benefit developing countries. In 2009, sadly, such proposals have
been almost forgotten. Western governments have thus far failed to
respond to the ITT Initiative, and there is little hope that this
will change given the current economic crisis in the developed world.
Correa has made it clear that, in the absence of significant
international cooperation on the issue, a country as poor as Ecuador
cannot afford to forgo an oilfield estimated as having 20% of the
country´s reserves.
However, beyond the
particular issue of the ITT oilfield, he has shown a profound disdain
for indigenous and environmental organizations which oppose oil or
mining activities. In fact, his term in power has coincided with an
expansion of mining projects in indigenous territories, something
that was institutionalized recently by the controversial Ley de
Minas. He has even claimed to view “infantile leftist”
and “ecological fundamentalist” organizations as a
greater threat to 21st century socialism than the
conservative right. Similarly to the issue of “buen vivir”,
while the new Constitution has does make a conceptual leap by
referring to the “rights of nature”, further analysis
reveals that local communities have no right to veto development
projects, extractive activities are not explicitly prohibited in
protected areas, and there is no concession of subsoil rights to
local communities.
Moreover, whilst
Uribe is well known for using authoritarian strategies to crush
social protests, Correa has also shown a willingness to send the
troops in, most notably in the town of Dayuma in late 2007 when poor
mestizos protested about receiving insufficient benefits from
oil revenues. Both Uribe and Correa display centralizing tendencies,
and they have both altered their countries’ constitutions to
allow their own reelections. Finally, they both have difficult
relationships with media, leading them both to compare critical
journalism with “media terrorism” or something similar.
This is not, by any
means, to say they are the same; Correa´s vision of a
“citizen´s revolution” is diametrically opposed to
Uribe´s idea of salvation via international capital markets.
Correa supporters would also say that his feuds with the media are
necessary to counter-act the predominantly opposition controlled
press, whereas Uribe enjoys the comfort of general support from
newspapers such as El Tiempo. On the issue of extractive
industries, they would claim that at least Correa has tried to find a
viable alternative to oil exploitation, and that his government
guarantees a much higher percentage of resources going towards social
services. However, the justification of environmentally and
culturally destructive activities on the basis of national
well-being, and the contempt reserved for any groups which challenge
this, are essentially the same as in Colombia. The similarities
between the two Presidents on such issues remains an uncomfortable
issue for many in the international left, who are unwilling to
recognize a conflict between “developmental” and
“post-developmental”(less materially based, more
environmentally friendly, more open to non-western concepts)
left-wingers in Latin America.
Author Rachel Godfrey Wood is a British citizen living in Bogotá. She publishes on her own weblog, Rachel in Colombia.