Apparently, dollarization turned Ecuador into a paradise for laundering narco-dollars, and narco-dollars became the engine of Ecuador's economy, hit by the pandemic, neoliberalism, that is, the reduction in the size of the state and public investments, which began in 2017, with the government of Lenin Moreno, who focused his interest on betraying and persecuting Rafael Correa and his collaborators, supported by Donald Trump, and the United States ambassador to Ecuador, in exchange for the delivery of the bases in Galapagos and Manta, for the return of American military advisers, in order to re-include Ecuador in the war against the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who had signed a peace agreement in that country, but had guerrilla groups that did not accept the agreement and became irregular armed groups, along with the paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. This was an important requirement to receive funds from the IMF and international banks, funds that ultimately became the spoils of the Moreno, Lasso, and now Noboa governments, which have doubled the foreign debt, enriched the rulers and their officials, and there are no works, everything is justified by vaccination during Covid, and investment in weapons, equipment, and more police and soldiers in this war on drug trafficking, which has cost us and is costing us much more than ever imagined. For this, a whole show was put on when the Ecuadorian guerrilla called Commander Wacho, named Walter Arizala, planted bombs in the Ecuadorian police and navy barracks in San Lorenzo, the port that shares with Tumaco the mouth of the Mira River in the Pacific, up to the mouth of the San Miguel River, but like what happened in 2024, with the takeover of the TC television channel in Guayaquil, the murder of 3 journalists from the Diario El Comercio, when the government of Lenin Moreno refused to exchange them for Wacho's brother, who was an important part of the Norte del Valle Cartel when it was run by Gerald, the Ecuadorian drug trafficker who came to run the operations of the Colombian cartel from Ecuador, and managed to introduce 280 tons of cocaine into the United States in just 3 years, almost double what Pablo Escobar introduced in 10 years. The international scandal that led to the deaths of three Ecuadorian journalists was as significant as the one caused by the seizure of the state television channel TC in the city of Guayaquil by drug traffickers from that city, which allowed the current president, Daniel Noboa, to declare war on drug trafficking, just as Lenin Moreno did after the kidnapping and murder of the journalists from Diario El Comercio.
This declaration of war on drug traffickers allowed the United States to return not only to Manta but also to the Galapagos, from which they left in 1946, after having used it since 1941 to control navigation in the South Pacific of America, and above all to protect the Panama Canal.
They had to leave Manta in 2010, because President Rafael Correa expelled the American ambassador for appropriating information from computers that had been lent to the national police and where criminals were registered, and expelled USAID for financing indigenous leaders and organizations to oppose the so-called 21st-century socialism, which was advocated by Venezuelan presidents such as Hugo Chavez, Lula of Brazil, Bachelet of Chile, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.
In 2010, the agreement they signed to occupy the Manta air base with their AWAC airborne radar planes with which they directed the fumigations with glyphosate from Ecuador on the southern border of Colombia in the Department of Nariño and the Department of Putumayo in the Colombian Amazon was not renewed.
He also handed over Julian Assange, who was wanted by the US government for revealing state secrets, after betraying and persecuting Correa and the Correa supporters through the Ecuadorian justice system, which he managed to seize through an Interim Council for Citizen Participation, hand-picked by Lenin Moreno, after a popular consultation in 2019, which also allowed him to appoint judges to the Supreme Court of Justice, members of the electoral council, superintendents of banks, companies, fair trade, telecommunications, etc. In other words, becoming a civil dictator with a legalistic facade, very well camouflaged by the United States, which allowed him to destroy UNASUR, the organization of South American nations that had its headquarters in La Mitad de Mundo, near Quito.
But this political persecution, to prevent the return of Correa and the Correa supporters, followed by state disinvestment, which abandoned dams, hydroelectric plants, highways, health centers, hospitals, millennium schools, Correa's new universities, and more, made the country vulnerable to droughts like the one we are now experiencing, which without being the most severe of the last 60 years have a greater impact, because the dependence of the population, which has grown on electricity is much greater than in the times when droughts occurred such as those of the government of Sixto Duran Ballén in 1995.
This abandonment of state constructions and public investment was followed by the government of Guillermo Lasso, a banker who barely finished high school, who lacked knowledge and relationship with the common people of his country, and who like Lenin Moreno, suffered from disabilities, but was the richest banker in the country, and his money served to buy the presidency, supported by the same United States ambassador, who was the puppeteer by Lenín Moreno.
The psychological and social impact of Covid was devastating in Ecuador, not only because of the dead and sick, but also because of the quarantine, social distancing, the closure of roads, ports, and airports, this led the country to the collapse that we are now experiencing, and which became a new way of life, in which education, commerce, public services on the Internet, and the manipulation of information, became the tragedy of Ecuadorians, a daily public spectacle, which fills the media, now only with the memory of those killed by the pandemic, but also with those killed by violence.
This added to unemployment, the permanent debt that the population lives in for public services, taxes, loans, etc., with the impossibility of paying them, turned Ecuadorians into fugitives from their country because in the fields and beaches, machines have expelled humans because they do the work better and cheaper; in the cities, prisoners and poor neighborhoods that multiplied, became schools, colleges and universities of crime, narcotrafficking, drug trafficking, extortion, and contract killing.
To this was added now a drought, which has paralyzed hydroelectric plants, at a time when cell phones, the Internet, and electricity in homes, industries, and businesses have become vital problems.
In the face of this, the president seems to be just another liar in the government, who offers what he cannot fulfill, who loses his head, who assaults embassies, who blames innocents, and who persecutes his adversaries starting with his vice president. This predicts an uncertain future, we are overcome with doubt every time the president opens his mouth, pretending to appear brave, surrounded by soldiers and police, wearing a bulletproof vest that hides the panic he feels when he goes out into the street or shows himself to his people.
