There’s been a lot of news coming out of Ecuador recently. To wit:

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It’s been a tense week in the Andes. On Saturday, Colombian forces launched a surprise raid on a camp inside the Ecuador border and killed a senior FARC member. The result has been an ongoing diplomatic kerfuffle between Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

AFP has a run-down of the events: “Regional tensions rise after Colombia raid into Ecuador.”

And the NY Times’s Simon Romero narrates a video report about the incident.

Meanwhile, Bolivia expert Miguel Centellas discusses a Bolivian dimension to the story.

Reuters has some analysis on the political implications for the region: “Andean crisis shakes hopes for regional unity.”

And as for Thailand…

Today we learned that a Russian man alleged to be a notorious arms dealer was arrested here in Thailand yesterday. He is accused of selling arms to al Qaeda and the Taliban, and he was lured to Bangkok by American DEA agents…posing as FARC members looking to buy weapons.

CNN: “‘Most-wanted’ arms dealer arrested in Thailand.”

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Reuters:

Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington’s lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.

“We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base,” Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

“If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.”

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year…

(Emphasis mine.)

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From Foreign Policy’s blog, Passport:

In a unique environmental scheme, Ecuador’s government is asking developed nations to pay $350 million for them NOT to drill for oil in a major field in the heart of the Amazon. The sum represents about half of the estimated revenue that Ecuador would receive from drilling in the Yasuni National Park, a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve that may contain up to a billion barrels of crude. Since Ecuador proposed the scheme last spring, politicians from Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain, and the EU have expressed interest, according to Ecuador’s minister of energy. President Rafael Correa…had this to say:

“Ecuador doesn’t ask for charity […] but does ask that the international community share in the sacrifice and compensates us with at least half of what our country would receive, in recognition of the environmental benefits that would be generated by keeping this oil underground.”

Read the whole post for more information.

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My latest globorati post is about the Ecuadorian capital’s rejuvenated historic center.

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Simon Romero had an excellent story in the New York Times yesterday about Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, fighting to defeat the high-altitude soccer ban I mentioned recently. I particularly like the lede (as well as the delightful image, above):

Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, donned a green jersey the other day, watched a llama sacrifice for good luck and flew to a snowy spot nearly four miles above sea level, where he scored the winning goal in a brief match pitting him and his aides against a group of mountain climbers.

It was a textbook lesson in Andean political theater, and the perils a globalized sport can meet when it comes up against a small country’s nationalist passions.

On the surface, Bolivia’s president was simply staging an amusing stunt to fight a ban on international soccer games at altitudes above 2,500 meters, or 8,200 feet.

It’s well known that Mr. Morales will play soccer against virtually anyone, from the foreign press corps to local squads in the hinterlands, to let off steam, and recently broke his nose doing so. But in fact, the ban, enacted last month by soccer bureaucrats in Switzerland, played right to Mr. Morales’ trademark populism, and gave him an opportunity to act as a unifier of his otherwise fractious country.

“Bolivia’s dedication to soccer cuts across the deep dividing lines in the country, which are economic, racial, regional and ideological,” said Jim Shultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba, in central Bolivia. “Fighting the ban is great domestic politics.”

(Emphasis mine.)

A friend of mine who’s studied politics in neighboring Ecuador once told me that he felt the Ecuadorian national football team was the single greatest cohesive force that the nation has working in its favor. The game trumps race, class, politics — everything.

Two related books that I recommend highly: “How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization,” and, in the case of Bolivia and its “market dominant minority,” “World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability.”

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Disappointing news for Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia: FIFA says no more international soccer games above 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) in altitude. So much for the legendary home field advantage courtesy of the rarefied Andean air.

BBC News:

Football’s governing body, Fifa, has banned international matches from being played at more than 2,500m (8,200ft) above sea level.

Fifa said the decision was made because of concerns over players’ health and possible distortion of competition.

The ruling was greeted with dismay in Latin America, notably in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, where games in La Paz are played at 3,600m (11,811ft).

Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, vowed to lead a campaign against the ban.

Speaking after an emergency cabinet meeting, Mr Morales said the ruling amounted to discrimination.

“This is not only a ban on Bolivia, it’s a ban on the universality of sports,” he told reporters.

Mr Morales also said he would send a high-level delegation to Fifa’s headquarters in Zurich and called on other countries to join his campaign.

And for Spanish readers out there, here’s a story in Hoy Online, a daily paper in Quito, Ecuador, with the reaction from the mitad del mundo.

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According to the trend watchers over at BuzzFeed, Ecuador’s Mt. Chimborazo is currently all the rage in the blogosphere. That’s because the Andean peak is technically the tallest mountain in the world due to the fact that it sits on the equator’s bulge. (That’s when you measure distance from the center of the earth, not elevation in terms of sea level, mind you; a little hill in the Himalayas that starts with an “e” and ends with “t” still holds the most famous title.) Wikipedia has all the counterintuitive deets:

So, despite being 2,581 m (8,568 ft) lower in elevation above sea level, it is 6,384.4 km (3,968 mi) from the Earth’s center, 2.1 km farther than the summit of Everest.

Got it?

Okay, okay, so maybe Chimborazito wins on a technicality, but I’m just happy to see my beloved Ecuador in the news for something other than its chronic political instability.

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CNN/Reuters:

Ecuador’s first female defense minister was killed on Wednesday after only nine days in office in a mid-air collision of two helicopters, government and military officials said.

The accident in the Andean nation further rocks the leftist government of President Rafael Correa, who has clashed with Congress over his executive powers and prompted street protests since taking office along with his ministers on January 15.

Minister Guadalupe Larriva, a former teacher and senior official of a socialist political party supporting Correa, died in the crash in a Pacific coastal province east of Quito, presidential spokeswoman Monica Chuji said.

Correa wanted Larriva, one of only a few civilians to lead Ecuador’s 176-year-old military, to control an institution that has played a part in the ouster of three presidents in the last decade by publicly withdrawing its support as street protests erupted.

Larriva, one of the most popular members of the Cabinet, had promised to strengthen presidential control of military ranks, improve salaries for the armed forces and make the promotions system more transparent.

U.S. firemen stationed at an air base at the port city of Manta rushed to the scene of the crash, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.

(Emphasis mine.)

Note: In his presidential campaign, Correa vowed not to renew the US’s lease on the facility, which is set to expire in 2009.

Related: More on Ecuador’s new president.

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The AP’s Monte Hayes reports that Ecuador has elected a new president:

Ecuador’s president-elect Rafael Correa was once a Boy Scout, later a social worker in an impoverished highland Indian village and now describes himself as a Christian leftist.

Childhood friends still recall Correa’s natural leadership abilities and strong character on the soccer field.

But during his run for the presidency, the tall and charismatic nationalist picked up a reputation for also being confrontational and uncompromising, traits that could add to Ecuador’s political instability when he takes office in January.

Correa, a friend of Venezuela’s firebrand President Hugo Chavez, defeated banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, 56, in Sunday’s presidential runoff.

(Emphasis mine.)

The Miami Herald’s Steven Dudley and Carol Rosenberg report that Correa vows not to renew the US military’s lease on an airbase in the northern coastal city of Manta:

The leader in Ecuador’s presidential election Monday repeated his promise to end the U.S. military’s counternarcotics operations out of an airport in Manta, while his rival cried fraud.
…
The U.S. military considers Manta ”an effective tool” in the drug war. It estimates that from 2000 to 2005, the military flew 2,000 missions from Manta and claims those flights contributed ”directly or indirectly” to the seizure of 52 metric tons of illegal drugs with a street value of more than $2 billion.

Correa, however, has alleged that the United States has used the base to attack Colombian rebels, in violation of the agreement. During the campaign, he claimed the U.S. government was trying to drag Ecuador into neighboring Colombia’s war against leftist guerrillas. Correa has said his country will remain ”neutral” in that four-decades-old war.

More on that from Nikolas Kozloff in Counter Punch:

It now looks as if Rafael Correa, a leftist candidate in Ecuador, has handily won his country’s presidential election. As of Monday morning, with about 21 percent of the ballot counted, Correa had 65 percent compared to 35 percent for Alvaro Noboa, according to Ecuador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal. If Correa wins, he will preside over Ecuador for a four year term.

It’s yet another feather in the cap for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had long cultivated the aspiring leader’s support. What’s more, it’s a stinging blow against the Bush administration which now must confront a much more unenviable political milieu in the region. Ecuador now joins other left leaning regimes such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Chile, all of which are sympathetic to Chavez.

Bush cannot dismiss the Correa victory as inconsequential: Ecuador is currently the second largest South American exporter of crude to the U.S. The small Andean country hosts the only U.S. military base in South America, where 400 troops are currently stationed. Correa opposes an extension of the U.S. lease at the air base in Manta, which serves as a staging ground for drug surveillance flights. The U.S. lease expires in 2009.

“If they want,” Correa has said ironically, “we won’t close the base in 2009, but the United States would have to allow us to have an Ecuadoran base in Miami in return.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Business Week’s Geri Smith, however, says Correa’s future is insecure, and that Washington is “taking a wait-and-see approach”:

A leftist economist who has vowed to break off free-trade talks with the U.S. and advocated defaulting on the country’s foreign debt has been elected president of Ecuador. But there is no telling whether 43-year-old Rafael Correa will remain in office long enough to carry out the platform that swept him to victory: Ecuador has had seven presidents in the last 10 years, several of them removed by its congress or forced out by violent street protests after just days or months in office.

Correa, running as an independent in a country where traditional political parties are widely discredited, won 57% of the vote to defeat billionaire banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, a populist. But Correa has no political base in Ecuador’s congress, and that means he has a tough road ahead: He campaigned on a promise to dissolve the congress and convene a special assembly to completely rewrite Ecuador’s constitution, but the congress is likely to block that initiative. “This is a president who will face possible impeachment at every turn,” says Patrick Esteruelas, a Latin America analyst for the Eurasia Group, a New York risk consultancy.

Describing himself as a “close friend” of Venezuela’s firebrand President Hugo Chávez, Correa is the latest leftist candidate to win at the polls in Latin America, where voters seem increasingly frustrated with the inability of governments to reduce the poverty that afflicts nearly half of the continent’s people, in spite of high world prices for oil and other commodities produced in the region. In early November, Nicaraguans elected former Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega, also friendly with Chávez, and with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, as president. By electing Correa, a political outsider, Ecuadorans made it clear that they are frustrated with corruption and incompetence among their country’s political class.

(Emphasis mine.)

Elsewhere, the CSM’s Sara Miller Llana reports:

The apparent victory of Rafael Correa - a left-leaning economist and friend of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - in Ecuador’s presidential runoff election Sunday is the latest triumph for leftist governments in Latin America.

“Hopefully, we will get much, much closer to Mr. Chávez,” Mr. Correa said after declaring victory Sunday night.

At press time, three exit polls, a quick count, and official results from more than half of the ballots showed Correa with close to 60 percent of the vote.

The election, which pitted Correa against billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, was watched closely in the US. Correa had promised to disregard a free trade agreement with the US and close down a US military base in the country. Correa’s win means Ecuador joins Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on the list of countries that have also elected leftist presidents in recent years.

But Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin American expert at Florida International University, says that while Correa will forge closer relations with Latin America’s leftist leaders, he is unlikely to become as radical or isolationist as his opponents have painted him. “[Ecuador’s] relationship with Chávez will be stronger, the relationship with Evo Morales [Bolivia’s leftist leader] will be stronger,” Mr. Gamarra says. “But these countries have gone too far on the side of democracy and the economic side to turn back. Ecuador cannot think of closing its doors.”

(Emphasis mine.)

And finally, my friend Ed P., on the ground in Paute, Ecuador, a small town outside Cuenca, sends along these images of graffiti there.

An anti-Noboa campaign poster. The headline on this sign says, “Who is Alvaro Noboa? He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Bush, terrorist. No war of empire.”

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