Keys to interpret what happens in Ecuador from the Venezuelan stage.
Many things have happened in recent days in Ecuador.
The turning point, as we well know, was the announcement of a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would be accompanied by a set of cuts to subsidies and social rights of the population.
Quickly after the announcement, the streets were filled with protests in the context of a transport strike that launched Carondelet Palace on the ropes . Only the brute force would remain to face the situation.
Ecuador is a secularly explosive and unstable country, and this trend was sharpened after the neoliberal shock therapies that the nation experienced at the end of the 20th century in the context of the Washington Consensus. Between 1997 and 2007, Ecuador had a total of nine presidents. None of them managed to complete their mandate as a result of social revolts, strenuous general strikes and coups.
It highlights the case of Jamil Mahuad, who was dismissed in 2000 after the dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy. It only lasted two years in government.
A similar fate ran Lucio Gutierrez in 2005 when he was taken out of power by the so-called "outlaw rebellion". Paradoxically, Gutierrez took a spoonful of his own medicine: the colonel was instrumental in the removal of Mahuad five years earlier.
This trend was reversed by Rafael Correa, who ruled the country for 10 consecutive years. He is the president who has held the first magistracy for the longest since the early twentieth century, being the result of a social and political pact that was based on a challenge to the existing neoliberal order.
Broadly speaking, what is currently happening in Ecuador corresponds to the historical fragility of its political system, but also to how the social response to neoliberalism formed one of the main polarization points of Ecuadorian society . Lenin Moreno played the wrong key, at the wrong time.
On the other hand, Lenín Moreno does not have an autonomous political base or his own leadership. His journey to the Carondelet Palace is due to Rafael Correa and the structure of the Alianza País party.
The legal war against Correa's cadres of trust (the most representative case is that of Jorge Glas) undermined the party and mass base that supported him during the presidential election.
Perhaps in an exercise of overestimation, given that his main opponents were virtually out of the game, Moreno bet on the pack believing that any social reaction could not be capitalized by the actors he defended.
Massive protests in Ecuador demonstrated Moreno's miscalculation.
Another important aspect is that the picture of the conflict is being defined by the political field of the so-called "Citizen Revolution", bringing political sectors representative of neoliberalism to a secondary position and of little influence.
The location of the IMF as the central axis of the political dispute can electorally and politically undermine the political actors who have made austericide their state program for Ecuador.
The role of the Armed Forces in moments of instability has always been defining, and this cannot be said to correspond to an Ecuadorian singularity.
The situation tends for the military to press the emergency button and abruptly cut the cycle of protests, without guaranteeing a return to stability.
The government of Lenín Moreno is in a position of extreme difficulty and it seems that the possibility of enduring the outbreak lies in the military body and in the repression of the police bodies, as long as it decides to advance in the line of the pack.
With Moreno, the US military presence in the country has been reactivated under the program of the Office of Security Cooperation (OCS), with a view to resuming the operations of the gringa mission at the Manta Base.
In this sense, the military must decide if they accompany Moreno until the end (with the obvious political costs that it brings) or if they take a position of institutional pressure that will unlock the political crisis by opening an electoral scenario. However, Moreno is the man of the United States to eliminate " correísmo " and guarantee the military subalternization of the country, that the Armed Forces understand perfectly.
But this aspect cannot be understood without the judicialization factor. In a probable electoral scenario, instances of the Ecuadorian State co-opted by the US can prolong the political persecution scenario, in order to benefit a balancing actor that does not challenge the commitments with the Pentagon and the IMF. A Gatopardian turn shielded by weapons.
With the ship half sunk, Lenín Moreno dusted off the manual that is often used in these cases: accuses Nicolás Maduro of the negative consequences that your own actions bring. Quiet, that the corporate media are there to forge the media consensus that Maduro is really to blame.
As laughable as the false accusation might sound, it is a clear sign that Moreno needs US help, while diverting attention and trying to turn his own crisis to the file that seeks to point to Venezuela as a "threat to the security of the region ", in accordance with and copy of the resolution adopted by the TIAR consultation body within the framework of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Moreno is also the man from the United States to add Ecuador to the "maximum pressure" campaign against Venezuela, after separating the Andean country from its international relations framework in the ALBA-CELAC axis. That is a commitment that we cannot lose sight of, since there is much defined in the Ecuadorian internal scenario.
In Venezuela, what happens in Ecuador represents a setback, but also a setback, for the regime change plans under the figure of Deputy Juan Guaidog .
The undermining of the Venezuelan State, although it advances through criminal sanctions in the economic and financial sphere, requires certain international conditions that sustain the push and sale of owners.
The United States played with a favorable correlation of forces in the region in early 2019 to inject power to Guaidog , but with Macri's electoral failure in PASO, the institutional crisis in Peru, the change of government in Panama, the protests in Haiti , the discredit of Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras and now Ecuador on fire in mass protests, the international scene has taken a turn that does not favor the hypothesis of a united region and focused exclusively on overthrowing Maduro.
That is why Moreno accuses Maduro of turning the country around and Juan Guaidog accompanies him in the approach. Turning the heated regional context to Venezuela is not only an appropriate resource for moments of instability, it is not just an electoral weapon: it is an obligation contracted with the geopolitics of the United States.
Again: Venezuela is the axis of gravitation that defines the behavior of foreign policy in Latin America.
The regime change operation implies a coupling of actors and factors. Therefore, the irrelevance in which Guaidog has fallen , has forced the United States to recalibrate the focus of pressure towards the international arena.
Based on this scenario, the US mobilized the activation of the TIAR and demands that Latin American countries take punitive sanctions against Venezuela, following the example of Washington.
While the White House moves its pieces in this direction, its partner countries go in another: mass protests (Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras), political crises (Peru and also Ecuador) and urgent economic problems (Argentina) that wear down their ruling classes.
Seen this way, it is logical that these crises be transferred to the self-appointed Lima Group causing its stagnation and its loss of strategic orientation with respect to Venezuela, reason and foundation of its creation in 2017.
The Guaidog plan loses international traction just when it requires it most.
The relative change in the correlation of forces in the region could announce other surprises: the change of government in Argentina, and eventually in Ecuador, would make the re-election of Luis Almagro as Secretary General of the OAS uphill for next year.
If so, the hawks, and specifically Senator Marco Rubio, would lose a key institutional arm to direct the plan towards military intervention.
Add all this and you will realize that what is played in Ecuador is much more than the survival of Lenín Moreno or the return of Correa. It plays, in part, the balance of power in the region and the viability of the regime change in Venezuela.