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Ecuadorian police break into Mexican Embassy, arrest former Ecuadorian VP Jorge Glas

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Original article by Zoe Alexandra republished from peoples’ dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Ecuadorian police breaking into the Mexican Embassy in Quito.

After the Ecuadorian National Police forcibly entered its embassy in Quito, Mexico announced the suspension of diplomatic relations with the country

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Late on Friday April 5, dozens of Ecuadorian police officers forcibly entered the Mexican Embassy in Quito and detained former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas. Glas had been conceded political asylum by Mexico earlier that day after having applied in December 2023 amid intensified political persecution against him.

The move has been widely condemned by nearly the entire political spectrum in Mexico as a grave violation of Mexican sovereignty and has also been widely condemned by progressives in Ecuador.

Following the incident, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena announced that Mexico was suspending diplomatic relations with the country.

Roberto Canseco, the head of Foreign Ministry and Political Affairs at the Mexican Embassy in Quito who was present when the incursion took place, spoke to the press shortly after the incident. “They threw me to the floor. I tried to physically stop them from entering but like criminals they raided the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador. This is not possible, this cannot be, it is insane,” Canseco told reporters incredulously.

The diplomat told reporters that there had been no prior warning to the police raid, but that it clearly happened because Glas is being persecuted. He also expressed concern over the whereabouts and wellbeing of the former VP.

He added, “Risking my life, I defended the honor and sovereignty of my country.”

The unprecedented incident took place amid rising tensions between the two countries. Jorge Glas had been seeking refuge at the Mexican embassy since December 18, 2023 and residing at the embassy as a “guest” after Ecuadorian authorities began to intensify pressure on Glas and summon him for investigations. This past week, the government of Daniel Noboa announced that it declared the Mexican Ambassador Raquel Serur Smeke a “persona non-grata” allegedly in response to comments made by President López Obrador in his morning press conference which insinuated that Noboa had benefited from the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. However, many analysts have pointed to Glas’ presence in the embassy as the key factor behind Quito’s attacks on Mexico, and the events of April 5 seem to have confirmed this theory.

Jorge Glas: Victim of lawfare in Ecuador

Glas spent five years in prison, after being convicted of criminal conspiracy in the Odebrecht case, as part of the vicious lawfare campaign against members of Rafael Correa’s administration. Glas was later convicted in April 2020, along with Correa, in the “Bribes Case”, which alleged that they and 18 other government officials accepted bribes from private companies in exchange for public contracts. As prosecutors were unable to find evidence that the two received bribes, Glas and Correa were accused of “psychic influence” on their subordinates who allegedly carried out these deals and sentenced to several years in prison. Correa was also banned from participating in politics for 25 years.

Read more: Rafael Correa terms prison sentence an act of political persecution

Throughout the intense lawfare campaign against him and others, Glas has maintained that he is innocent and that both the charges and the harsh sentencing of him constitutes political persecution.

During the Correa presidency, Glas was one of the key leaders in the “Citizen’s Revolution” political project, which sought to make important social and economic reforms to better conditions for the majority. During this period, the Correa administration launched a Constituent Assembly to rewrite Ecuador’s constitution to guarantee essential rights for all, among other measures to promote national culture, Indigenous rights; it promoted Latin American regional integration over ties with the US and kicked out the US military base; and maintained anti-neoliberal economic policies, favoring social investment over cuts to public spending and social programs.

This project was brought to a halt in 2017 when Lenín Moreno was elected president and made a volte-face in Ecuador’s policies across the board, taking out a massive loan from the IMF, exiting regional integration spaces and attacking the country’s regional allies and economic partners like Venezuela, and imposing harsh austerity measures and brutally repressing protests against the measures. Under Moreno, the Attorney General also began its targeted attacks on leaders and officials of the Citizen’s Revolution.

Glas was eventually released on November 28, 2022 and granted “provisional freedom” as he had fulfilled over 40% of his prison sentence. However, in December 2023, days after he arrived at the Mexican embassy and weeks after Daniel Noboa took office as president, a judge revoked Glas’ provisional freedom and called for his arrest and imprisonment. Fearing for his life, Glas remained at the embassy and applied for political asylum, which was granted April 5, 2024.

The left in Ecuador responds

Progressive groups in Ecuador immediately expressed outrage at the actions of Noboa’s government and the National Police and issued sharp condemnations.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) wrote in a statement on X, “The violation of the Mexican embassy in Ecuador is an extremely serious fascist act that threatens diplomatic relations and international law…It is worrying to observe how the authoritarian and fascist government of Ecuador uses force to secure its political trophies. This flagrant violation not only affects bilateral relations between Mexico and Ecuador, but also sends a dangerous message to the international community.”

Pabel Muñoz, the mayor of Quito and a member of the Citizen’s Revolution Movement party, stated, “Unacceptable, a global embarrassment. What just happened in the Mexican Embassy in Quito creates a complex situation for Ecuador before the international system and law. Is there any doubt that Jorge Glas is the victim of terrible persecution? The more concerning part is that he had already been granted political asylum.”

Correa also issued a short statement repudiating the attack on Mexico and the arrest of Glas, “What the government of Noboa has done is unprecedented in Latin American history. Not even in the worst dictatorships was the embassy of a country violated. We do not live under rule of law, it is a state of barbarie, with a guy who improvises [Noboa] that confuses the Homeland with one of his banana farms. We hold Daniel Noboa responsible for the safety and physical and psychological integrity of former Vice President Jorge Glas. To Mexico, its people and its Government, our apologies and eternal admiration.”

Mexico unites in defense of its sovereignty

People across Mexico have expressed outrage in response to the brazen violation of the country’s sovereignty and of international law. In the statement announcing the suspension of diplomatic relations, President López Obrador said it was “an authoritarian act” and a “flagrant violation of international law and Mexican sovereignty”.

Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said in an interview with TeleSur that in addition to suspending diplomatic ties, Mexico would take Ecuador to the International Court of Justice and all multilateral bodies over its unprecedented actions.

Presidential candidate for MORENA, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum called the incident “an attack on diplomacy and international law that is inadmissible”.

Mexico’s Senate also released a statement “energetically condemning” the Ecuadorian government’s actions and demanding “respect to our sovereignty and to the integrity of our Embassy and diplomatic personnel.” They called on the Ecuadorian government to reconsider its actions and resume the diplomatic path to resolve issues.

Both traditional right-wing parties PRI and PAN issued condemnations of the police invasion, while their joint candidate in the upcoming elections released a lukewarm statement saying that diplomatic missions cannot be violated.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil expressed their solidarity with Mexico and condemned Ecuador’s violation of international law.

Original article by Zoe Alexandra republished from peoples’ dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingEcuadorian police break into Mexican Embassy, arrest former Ecuadorian VP Jorge Glas

China cancels line of credit, pulling the plug on Argentina’s ‘anarcho-capitalist’ president

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Original article by JAMES MEADWAY republished from People’s World under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/.

Dollarization: Javier Milei holds up a giant cardboard sign depicting a U.S. $100 banknote emblazoned with an image of his face during a rally in La Plata, Sept. 12, 2023. Milei wants to replace the peso with the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s currency and says that the country’s Central Bank should be abolished. He’s got a new financial challenge, though: China just cut his line of credit. | Natacha Pisarenko / AP

The Chinese government may have pulled the plug on far-right “anarcho-capitalist” President of Argentina Javier Milei, just weeks after his shock election win.

In a spectacular demonstration of how the lines of geopolitical power are shifting, the People’s Bank of China has withdrawn its “swapline” to the Argentinian central bank, depriving it of a vital source of cheap funding.

This leaves debt-ridden Argentina without ready access to funding to meet its promises to pay creditors. These international creditors include the IMF, to whom Argentina owes a world-record $43 billion. China provided the Argentinian government with funds for its $2.7 billion IMF repayment over the summer, lending it ultra-cheap foreign currency through its swapline arrangement.

Milei, a fanatical free marketeer, was elected with 55% of the vote in November from a population desperate for a break with the failed political Establishment. Developing his public profile through TV appearances and his 1.4 million followers on TikTok, Milei was able to present his program of ferocious spending cuts and the abolition of the Argentinian currency, the peso, as the bitter medicine the country needed to end its economic crisis. Younger voters, in particular, flocked to him in droves.

This was a product of desperation. Two-fifths of Argentinians live below the poverty line, and close to 60% of children. Inflation was over 140% when the election campaign ended, meaning prices doubling roughly every six months.

Since the government defaulted—halted payments—on its debts at the end of 2001, the two decades since have seen governments both pro and anti-neoliberal attempts to negotiate agreements with Argentina’s creditors and break the cycle of crises.

The latest round of these was a colossal 2018 loan from the IMF, attached to conditions on cutting government spending over the following three years.

But what tipped the country over the edge into its latest round of crisis has been the catastrophic drought that began in 2019. This ongoing drought is the worst for over 60 years, hammering farmers and severely cutting harvests—soybean production fell to its lowest level for a century.

For a country dependent on agricultural exports for foreign exchange earnings, it has been a disaster. Its trade deficit ballooned, taxes fell and government spending mushroomed. Government borrowing swelled and the Argentina central bank resorted to issuing more money to cover spending costs. Climate change almost certainly worsened the drought.

Milei’s program offered nothing on this—he is a climate change denier, claiming that those who “blame the human race” for climate change are “fake…only looking to raise funds for socialist bums who write for fourth-rate newspapers.”

The colorful language is very much part of his appeal, along with waving a chainsaw at his public appearances, to symbolize what he planned for government spending, and smashing a piñata of the central bank on live TV.

But cartoonish posing shouldn’t kid us: Milei’s program is neoliberalism on steroids. He campaigned on a promise to cut government spending by 15% of Argentina’s GDP.

His plan to abolish the peso and “dollarize” the economy was arguably even more radical, claiming this would prevent Argentinian bureaucrats and politicians from printing money. Although two other Latin American countries, Ecuador and Panama, use the dollar as their official currency, neither is the size of Argentina, the continent’s second-largest economy.

And while many Argentinians already use the dollar, with $246 billion in dollar savings, the government has no dollars to hand, and would have to either buy them to replace pesos, or perhaps seize them from those mostly middle-class savings.

The plan is a non-starter. Confronted with the economic realities, Milei has rapidly defaulted to conservative type, appointing a former president of the central bank, Luis Caputo, as his economy minister, and appointing a close associate of Caputo as the new central bank head. So much for “burning it down.”

The ferocious spending cuts are still planned, along with a 54% devaluation of the peso as part of a program approved by the IMF.

Far from a radical break, Milei is a stooge for the maintenance of Argentina’s failed elite—including even the rehabilitation of the dictatorship, with his running mate for Vice President, Victoria Villaruel, claiming the figure of 30,000 “disappearances” under the regime is a “myth.”

This is a familiar pattern. Across the world, supposed populists from the radical right have taken power, often with the promise of taking on corrupt local elites. They don’t follow through.

Italy’s radical right government, for example, in August threatened a windfall tax on banks that were profiteering from interest rate rises. But they rapidly backed down after howls of protests from the banks themselves.

Milei has almost certainly bitten off more than he can chew. Expecting protests, harsh new guidelines for police and military, including the criminalization of the parents of younger protests have been rushed through—“prison or bullet,” as one pro-government MP described them. Inflation has accelerated, to 3,678% a year, which the government are now using to justify their “shock therapy.”

However, it is anti-China posturing that could prove his undoing. China is Argentina’s second-biggest market for exports, and loans from China make up over 42 per cent of Argentina’s foreign exchange reserves.

Yet Milei called China an “assassin” during his election campaign, promising to sever ties and instead reorienting Argentina towards full-throated support for Israel and the U.S. Argentina’s foreign minister has confirmed that the country would not be joining the China-led BRICS coalition, as pledged by the last government.

This was treated as a “slap in the face” by China: Cutting loan support to Argentina is the inevitable response. As Milei himself might put it: Fuck around and find out.

Morning Star

Original article by JAMES MEADWAY republished from People’s World under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/.

Continue ReadingChina cancels line of credit, pulling the plug on Argentina’s ‘anarcho-capitalist’ president

Milei Couples ‘Total Crackdown’ on Protest With Economic Shocks in Argentina

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Original article by Julia Conley at Common Dreams shared under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Argentinian President Javier Milei looks on after the polls close in the presidential runoff election on November 19, 2023 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo: Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images)

“Protest is elemental to Argentine social and political life, so it’s not difficult to imagine how this ends,” said one journalist.

As the human impact of Argentinian President Javier Milei’s “shock treatment” to the South American country’s economy became increasingly clear with rising prices on Thursday, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich announced what one journalist said were doubtlessly “preemptive” new controls on protests to discourage a struggling population from speaking out.

Bullrich said four security forces—the Federal Police, the Gendarmerie, the Naval Prefecture, and the Airport Security Police—will work together to stop protests that block streets and suggested the protocol is aimed only at ensuring “that people can live in peace” without demonstrators blocking traffic.

But as Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler and others noted, the measures also include calls for armed forces to break labor strikes, create a national registry of people who organize protests, and sanctions against parents who bring their children to demonstrations.

The new package amounts to “a total crackdown on Argentine civil society,” Adler said.

https://twitter.com/davidrkadler/status/1735666098127733129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1735666098127733129%7Ctwgr%5Edc4c076d58c4fd3232ae472103691fce93a38f1a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fmilei

Bullrich’s announcement came days after Milei, a far-right libertarian economist who has called the climate crisis “a socialist lie” and has been compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump, announced in the first weeks of his presidency an economic “shock treatment” package including a devaluation of the peso by 50%, from 400 pesos to the U.S. dollar to 820 pesos.

The administration also said it would cut public spending by closing some government ministries, increasing retirements ordered by decree, reducing energy and transportation subsidies, and freezing public works, with further “profound” measures expected in the future.

Milei claimed that with the spending cuts, government revenues will ultimately increase by 2.2 points, helping to confront an economic crisis in which annual inflation exceeds 160%, the country has a trade deficit of $43 billion, and $45 billion is owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

But as Milei’s “open heart surgery of the economy,” as El País called the package, took hold, prices of some goods and services rose by 100% and some commuters worried that they will no longer to be able to afford their daily commutes it transit agencies are forced to raise prices due to lost subsidies.

“If [the bus fare] goes up, my salary will be spent on transport,” Julia González, who takes three buses and a train to her job in downtown Buenos Aires, toldThe Associated Press.

About 40% of Argentinians live below the poverty line and more than 9% are destitute, reported El País, with incomes insufficient to buy food.

Economist Juan Manuel Telechea told the outlet that monthly inflation could reach 30-40% due to the devaluation and that social aid will be “highly insufficient.”

Presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni said of the economy Wednesday that Milei “found a patient in intensive care about to die,” but one trade unionist told El País the president is “exaggerating the inherited crisis situation to justify inadmissible measures, which will increase poverty levels in Argentina above 50% in a matter of days.”

“The mega-devaluation that is being carried out is a matter of concern because it may devolve into hyperinflation,” Pato Laterra, an economist at the National University of La Plata, told the newspaper.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said last month that Argentina’s current economic crisis is the result of right-wing former President Mauricio Macri’s administration, which took out the largest loan ever from the IMF and pushed the economy into a recession, with poverty and inflation rising by 50% or more.

“But a crazed, economically suicidal approach would only make things worse—and as Argentina has experienced, things can get a lot worse,” said Weisbrot. “Milei displays a callous disregard for most people’s living standards, values, and well-being, as well as a commitment to widely discredited economic policies, that is unprecedented.”

Jacob Sugarman of the Buenos Aires Heraldsaid Wednesday that it remains to be seen “how long Argentine society is willing to tolerate this kind of pain” and suggested that Bullrich’s announcement of a crackdown on dissent is likely to further anger the public.

“Protest is elemental to Argentine social and political life, so it’s not difficult to imagine how this ends,” said Sugarman, “especially with Bullrich announcing that the government will use federal forces including the National Military Police to break picket lines.”

Original article by Julia Conley at Common Dreams shared under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingMilei Couples ‘Total Crackdown’ on Protest With Economic Shocks in Argentina